Tech

ITHACA, N.Y. - As soon as an ear of corn is taken off its stalk or a potato is pulled from the ground, it travels anywhere from a few miles to across continents and sometimes undergoes processes that transform it into the food we consume.

These miles and processes contribute to what's known as the food value chain (FVC), along which, as one might expect, the value of the product increases. However, most of the research and attention thus far paid to FVCs occurs at the ends of the chain - inside the farm gate and at the consumer's plate.

Less is understood about all of the other links in the FVC, in part due to a lack of standardized data and methods that can be applied universally. Many studies have been done on individual commodities, or in a single country, but coming up with an international method of analyzing FVCs has been elusive until now.

A team of researchers - led by Chris Barrett and Miguel Gómez, Cornell University professors in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management - has developed the "Global Food Dollar" method, which distributes the consumer's net purchasing dollar across all farm and post-farmgate activities.

"The key insight, from my perspective, is that the overwhelming majority of the value addition is happening after the farm gate," Barrett said. "People fall into thinking of food issues as being farm issues. And farm issues are important, but they're comparatively less important than most people realize. And they're becoming steadily less important over time."

Their methodology expands on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service (ERS), "food dollar series," published annually since 1947 but updated by Patrick Canning in 2011 to include modern inputs.

"People really don't understand how consumer dollars get apportioned, either between owners of land and intellectual property and workers, or between actors in different stages along the value chain," Barrett said. "And they don't know how that differs across countries. ... How much are you likely to get if you're a Sysco and you're thinking of entering a market to mediate wholesale food delivery?"

"We have lots of data on food production and food consumption," Gómez said, "but not much in between. And it's important, because 80% to 85% of the value is created beyond the farm."

For this research, the team used data collected from 2005-15 from 61 countries, representing 90% of the global economy. They found that farmers receive, on average, 27% of consumer expenditure on foods consumed at home, and a far lower percentage, just 7%, on food consumed away from home (in restaurants, for instance). And as countries' income goes up, the share goes down.

One of the main takeaways, Barrett said, is that more research is needed on all the links in the middle of the value chain.

"The big economic players in the food we consume aren't actually the primary producers on farms," Barrett said. "So when we think about food issues ... maybe we need to spend a little bit more time thinking about what's happening in that post-farmgate value chain, with the processors, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and restaurants."

Cambridge, UK, 7th June 2021: The Cambridge Research Laboratory of Toshiba Europe today announced the first demonstration of quantum communications over optical fibres exceeding 600 km in length. The breakthrough will enable long distance quantum-secured information transfer between metropolitan areas and is a major advance towards building the future Quantum Internet.

The term Quantum Internet describes a global network of quantum computers connected by long distance quantum communication links. It is expected to allow the ultrafast solution of complex optimization problems in the cloud, a more accurate global timing system and highly secure communications across the globe. Several large government initiatives to build a quantum internet have been announced, for example in the US, EU and China.

One of the most difficult technological challenges in building the quantum internet, is the problem of how to transmit quantum bits over long optical fibres. Small changes in the ambient conditions, such as temperature fluctuations, cause the fibres to expand and contract, thereby scrambling the fragile qubits, which are encoded as a phase delay of a weak optical pulse in the fibre.

Now Toshiba has demonstrated record distances for quantum communications by introducing a novel 'dual band' stabilisation technique. This sends two optical reference signals, at different wavelengths, for minimising the phase fluctuations on long fibres. The first wavelength is used to cancel the rapidly varying fluctuations, while the second wavelength, at the same wavelength as the optical qubits, is used for fine adjustment of the phase. After deploying these new techniques, Toshiba found it is possible to hold the optical phase of a quantum signal constant to within a fraction of a wavelength, with a precision of 10s of nanometers, even after propagation through 100s of km of fibre. Without cancelling these fluctuations in real time, the fibre would expand and contract with temperature changes, scrambling the quantum information.

The first application for dual band stabilization will be for long distance Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). Commercial QKD systems are limited to around 100-200 km of fibre. In 2018, Toshiba proposed the Twin Field QKD protocol as a way to extend the distance, and tested its resilience to optical loss using short fibres and attenuators. By introducing the dual band stabilization technique, Toshiba has now implemented Twin Field QKD on long fibres and demonstrated QKD over 600km, for the first time.

"This is a very exciting result," comments Mirko Pittaluga, first author of the article describing the results. "With the new techniques we have developed, further extensions of the communication distance for QKD are still possible and our solutions can also be applied to other quantum communications protocols and applications".

Andrew Shields, Head of the Quantum Technology Division at Toshiba Europe remarks, "QKD has been used to secure metropolitan area networks in recent years. This latest advance extends the maximum span of a quantum link, so that it is possible to connect cities across countries and continents, without using trusted intermediate nodes. Implemented along with Satellite QKD, it will allow us to build a global network for quantum secured communications."

Taro Shimada, Corporate Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer of Toshiba Corporation reflects, "With this success in Quantum Technology, Toshiba is willing to further expand its quantum business with rapid speed. Our vision is a platform for quantum information technology services, which will not only enable secure communication on a global scale, but also transformational technologies such as cloud-based quantum computing and distributed quantum sensing."

The details of the advancement are published today in the scientific journal, Nature Photonics. The work was partially funded by the EU through the H2020 project, OpenQKD. The team is now engineering the proposed solutions to simplify their future adoption and deployment.

This latest development follows the announcement last year that BT and Toshiba had installed the UK's first industrial quantum-secure network. Transmitting data between the National Composites Centre (NCC) and the Centre for Modelling & Simulation (CFMS), Toshiba's multiplexing compatibility allows the data and the quantum keys to be transmitted on the same fibre, eliminating the need for costly dedicated infrastructure for key distribution. The combined arrival of multiplexed QKD using existing infrastructure for shorter distances, alongside Twin Field QKD for longer distances, paves the way for a commercially viable global quantum-secure network.

QKD allows users to securely exchange confidential information (such as bank statements, health records, private calls) over an untrusted communication channel (such as the internet). It does that by distributing to the intended users a common secret key that can be used to encrypt, and thus protect, the information exchanged over the communication channel. The security of the secret key rests upon the fundamental properties of individual quantum systems (photons, the particles of light) which are encoded and transmitted for the key generation. In the event that these photons are intercepted by an undesignated user, quantum physics guarantees that the intended users can perceive the eavesdropping, and consequently protect the communication.

Unlike other existing security solutions, the security of quantum cryptography derives directly from the laws of physics we use to describe the world around us, and for this reason, it is secure against any future advances in mathematics and computing (including the advent of quantum computers). In light of this, QKD is expected to become an essential tool for protecting operation-critical communications for businesses and governments.

An international group of researchers has developed a new technique that could be used to make more efficient low-cost light-emitting materials which are flexible and can be printed using ink-jet techniques.

The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge and the Technical University of Munich, found that by swapping one out of every one thousand atoms of one material for another, they were able to triple the luminescence of a new material class of light emitters known as halide perovskites.

This 'atom swapping', or doping, causes the charge carriers to get stuck in a specific part of the material's crystal structure, where they recombine and emit light. The results, reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could be useful for low-cost printable and flexible LED lighting, displays for smartphones or cheap lasers.

Many everyday applications now use light-emitting devices (LEDs), such as domestic and commercial lighting, TV screens, smartphones and laptops. The main advantage of LEDs is they consume far less energy than older technologies.

Ultimately, also the entirety of our worldwide communication via the internet is driven by optical signals from very bright light sources that within optical fibres carry information at the speed of light across the globe.

The team studied a new class of semiconductors called halide perovskites in the form of nanocrystals which measure only about a ten-thousandth of the thickness of a human hair. These 'quantum dots' are highly luminescent materials: the first high-brilliance QLED TVs incorporating quantum dots recently came onto the market.

The Cambridge researchers, working with Daniel Congreve's group at Harvard, who are experts in the fabrication of quantum dots, have now greatly improved the light emission from these nanocrystals. They substituted one out of every one thousand atoms with another - swapping lead for manganese ions - and found the luminescence of the quantum dots tripled.

A detailed investigation using laser spectroscopy revealed the origin of this observation. "We found that the charges collect together in the regions of the crystals that we doped," said Sascha Feldmann from Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, the study's first author. "Once localised, those energetic charges can meet each other and recombine to emit light in a very efficient manner."

"We hope this fascinating discovery: that even smallest changes to the chemical composition can greatly enhance the material properties, will pave the way to cheap and ultrabright LED displays and lasers in the near future," said senior author Felix Deschler, who is jointly affiliated at the Cavendish and the Walter Schottky Institute at the Technical University of Munich.

In the future the researchers hope to identify even more efficient dopants which will help making these advanced light technologies accessible to every part of the world.

To describe something as slow and boring we say it's "like watching grass grow", but scientists studying the early morning activity of plants have found they make a rapid start to their day - within minutes of dawn.

Just as sunrise stimulates the dawn chorus of birds, so too does sunrise stimulate a dawn burst of activity in plants.

Early morning is an important time for plants. The arrival of light at the start of the day plays a vital role in coordinating growth processes in plants and is the major cue that keeps the inner clock of plants in rhythm with day-night cycles.

This inner circadian clock helps plants prepare for the day such as when to make the best use of sunlight, the best time to open flowers for pollinators and release pollen and when to get ready to respond to drought conditions.

There is a peak of gene activity within an hour of dawn; many of these genes code for transcription factors - proteins that regulate expression of a host of downstream genes - with roles related to light, stress and growth hormones, but the detail of how this peak is controlled is not understood.

Researchers at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) and University of York set out to investigate this burst of activity so as to better understand what happens at the genetic level by sampling thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana, every two minutes from dawn to measure gene activity.

"We set out to characterise 'dawn burst' dynamics in more detail, focussing on the expression of transcription factor genes. We found three distinct gene expression waves within two hours after dawn. The first of these occurs just 16 minutes after dawn and lasts only 8 minutes." said Dr Martin Balcerowicz, researcher at SLCU and first author of the research published in Molecular Plant.

"Many of these genes are known to be sensitive to light and temperature, but we wanted to find out specifically how the transcription of these genes is coordinated. Interfering in photoreceptor signalling, the circadian clock and chloroplast derived light signals did cause problems in some genes' expression, but there was a large proportion of genes still unaffected. This indicated to us that some of the upstream pathways are redundant and that additional regulators are in play."

The team integrated their data with already published transcription factor-DNA binding data and identified a gene regulatory network at dawn, with two key regulators of light signalling - HY5 and BBX31 - at its core. These transcription factors are known to jointly control de-etiolation, which is the developmental switch a seedling undergoes when it emerges from the soil, experiencing light for the first time, and starts greening and unfolding its leaves. It appears that these genes also play a central role during the dark-to-light transition at dawn.

"In fact, multiple BBX genes form part of the dawn burst alongside BBX31, HY5 and its homologue HYH," says Dr Balcerowicz. "These genes include both positive and negative regulators of the light response. We found that they act downstream of phytochrome and cryptochrome photoreceptors to control a light-induced subset of dawn burst genes, with HY5 and BBX31 having largely antagonistic roles. This observation strengthens the idea that HY5 and BBX genes act in concert to fine-tune light responses in the context of the day-night cycle."

Dr Daphne Ezer, lecturer in Computational Biology at the University of York and senior author of the study, investigates gene-environment interactions through analysis of gene networks. "By studying gene networks we can interpret how plants integrate light and temperature signals in the early morning to entrain the circadian clock. Taken together, our results show that phytochrome and cryptochrome signalling is required for fine-tuning the dawn transcriptional response to light, but separate pathways can robustly activate much of the programme in their absence."

"Characterising the peak we see in gene expression that results from the onset of light is useful in helping us to understand how plants respond to light and, in particular, for crops grown under artificial lighting, how this dawn burst impacts longer term on growth."

ITHACA, N.Y. - Building lights are a deadly lure for the billions of birds that migrate at night, disrupting their natural navigation cues and leading to deadly collisions. But even if you can't turn out all the lights in a building, darkening even some windows at night during bird migration periods could be a major lifesaver for birds.

Research published this week in PNAS found that over the course of 21 years, one building sustained 11 times fewer nighttime bird collisions during spring migration and 6 times fewer collisions during fall migration when only half of the building's windows were illuminated, compared to when all windows were lit.

In the study, the factors that had the strongest effect on bird collisions were the intensity of the migration (more birds migrating = more collisions), the wind direction (westerly winds = more collisions), and area of illuminated windows (more surface area lit = more collisions).

The authors also calculated that if half of the building's windows had been darkened during peak migration periods, bird kills would have been reduced by around 60% over the past two decades.

The sheer strength of the link between lighting and collisions was surprising," says Benjamin Van Doren, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and lead author of the research. "It speaks to the exciting potential to save birds simply by reducing light pollution."

To reach their conclusions, researchers from the Cornell Lab, the University of Michigan, and the Field Museum in Chicago, Colorado State University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst examined bird data from McCormick Place, a 3-story convention center in the eastern section of Chicago, over 21 years (2000-2020).

At the heart of the study were the records of over 40,000 dead birds--including when they were killed, which window, and what species--collected at the convention center since 1978.

Since 2000, these records have also included information about which windows bays were illuminated when each bird kill happened. By comparing this data from McCormick Place with other potential collision-risk factors such as weather conditions, moonlight, and migration intensity, researchers teased apart which conditions were deadliest for migrating birds.

Building strikes kill hundreds of millions of birds a year, and many of these occur at night and during the migration seasons, when hundreds of species of songbirds are moving across the hemisphere under the cover of darkness.

In response, a growing number of "lights out" initiatives and green building guidelines call for reductions in lighting to aid migrating birds. Lights Out Chicago is among the oldest of over 40 initiatives across North America and brings together building managers, local conservation organizations, city staff, and scientists at the Field Museum. The results of the study strengthen the science behind lights out programs by showing that darkening windows can directly reduce bird mortality.

The researchers also aim to engage people in lights-out efforts with local migration alerts, which give advance warning of nights with large bird migration events. "Although permanently reducing light pollution is the ultimate goal, we hope to raise awareness through BirdCast migration forecasts. Our forecasts predict the nights when large numbers of migrating birds will be at risk and turning off lights is critically important," says Van Doren.

Previous studies have shown that lights from city buildings, installations and events can attract and disorient migrating birds, shifting migration routes toward urban areas. And a 2018 study showed Chicago is the highest-ranked U.S. city for light pollution exposure risk to night-migrating birds; as many as 100 million birds pass through the greater Chicago area in the spring, and over 150 million in the fall.

Ben Winger, an assistant professor and curator at the University of Michigan and a senior author on the research, says one of the powerful things about this study is that it confirms a number of phenomena that have been observed, but not previously quantified. "We identified specific weather conditions during which collisions happen more frequently," says Winger, "but the importance of illumination from the building emerged as a very important part of the story."

The study also speaks to the importance of natural history collections in documenting global change. "These collision data are even more valuable because they are backed up by specimens that are available for study in the Field Museum," Winger says. "This will allow future scientists to go a step further in connecting different aspects of avian biology to the hundreds of millions of birds killed each year by window strikes."

Dave Willard, now collections manager emeritus at the Field Museum, started collecting dead birds around McCormick Place in 1978, and hopes that having a data-driven analysis of the hazards of nocturnal lighting can help inform positive change in the ways cities build and the ways buildings use their lights at night. "This paper brings together weather, radar and bird-collision data and shows unequivocally that reduced building lighting at night can substantially reduce bird fatalities."

Biomolecules regulate the biological functions inside every living cell. If scientists can understand the molecular mechanisms of such functions, then it is possible to detect the severe dysfunction which can lead to illness. At a molecular level, this can be achieved with fluorescent markers that are specifically incorporated into the respective biomolecules. In the past, this has been achieved by incorporating a marker in the bio-molecule by completely rebuilding it from the beginning, necessitating a large number of steps. Unfortunate-ly, this approach not only takes a lot of time and resources, but also produces unwanted waste products. Researchers at the Universities of Göttingen and Edinburgh have now been able to show that a non-toxic complex of the common metal manganese makes it possible to conveniently label a class of special bio-molecules known as peptides right at the last minute of their synthesis. This means the mechanism of action of these labelled peptides can be investigated efficiently. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.

The research group developed the selective labelling of peptides and natural biological products at a late point in the series of steps necessary for synthesis by activating carbon-hydrogen bonds in tryptophan residues. This experimentally simple strategy makes it possible to efficiently access novel fluorescent pep-tides that are highly sensitive to their biological environment. This enabled the team to create a highly sensi-tive "rotor" with the ability to show changes in the composition of membranes of immune cells. Its fluores-cence is dependent on the viscosity of the cell membrane. The researchers observed radiant fluorescence in the presence of cholesterol in the cell membrane. In this way, the rotor can be used to screen certain mole-cules in cells that are important for the adaptive immune system to fight infections and cancer.

"The project demonstrates the power of combining chemical, biological and medical research, which allows the direct observation of cell-specific events," says project leader Professor Lutz Ackermann from Göttin-gen University. "Furthermore, the successful collaboration ensures our discoveries to have an immediate impact not only in the field of chemistry, but also in the biomedical sciences. Sharing ideas and expertise between the teams enabled a joint approach to real-life problems."

If you're a beer drinker, you've noticed that hoppy beers have become increasingly popular. Most of the nation's hops come from the Pacific Northwest. However, commercial hop production regions have expanded significantly. In Michigan hop production nearly tripled between 2014 and 2017 and in 2019, Michigan growers harvested around 720 acres of hops.

Michigan hop growers contend with unique challenges as a result of frequent rainfall and high humidity during the growing season. In 2018, growers approached Michigan State University researchers and the Michigan State University's Plant & Pest Diagnostics lab with concerns about a leaf blight they had never seen before. This was followed by reports of hop cones shattering during harvest and yield losses in fields with the affected leaves.

Michigan State University scientists, including Doug Higgins, investigated, observing a fungus growing in the symptomatic leaves. They set out to determine if the fungus was causing the symptoms and if the leaf and cone symptoms were linked to the same pathogen. They also wanted to determine how far the disease had spread in Michigan.

They determined that the fungus was the same on both the leaves and the cones. "The fungus was shown to infect and cause disease in healthy hop plants," said Doug Higgins. "Interestingly, genetic testing showed that DNA from the fungal pathogen did not match DNA from other known fungal species. We concluded that it is novel species and for now called it Diaporthe sp. 1-MI."

As this novel fungal pathogen causes yellow margins to form around leaf lesions and the browning of cones, Higgins and colleagues named the disease "halo blight." Their surveys indicated that halo blight is widespread in Michigan, and that other production regions with similar climatic conditions might also be at risk.

"In Michigan, hop is a niche crop used by many local breweries. A disease outbreak could impact the supply of local hops to many small and independent businesses," explained Higgins. "Additionally, cone discoloration can alter hop quality and may have downstream implications on beer quality." Higgins recommends that additional research be conducted to understand how the disease moves and develop management strategies.

A traditional Vietnamese meat snack could hold the key to developing a safe and natural food preservative, addressing the twin global problems of food waste and food-borne illnesses.

Key Points

Bacteria-killing compound discovered in Nem Chua, a fermented pork snack

Toxic to bacteria but safe for humans, it's a natural alternative to artificial food preservatives

New study reveals ideal growth conditions to potentially make the bacteria-killer at industrial scales

The fermented pork snack, Nem Chua, is eaten raw but does not cause food poisoning when prepared correctly.

This is because friendly bacteria that thrive in the fermented meat make a special compound that destroys more dangerous bacteria.

Now researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have shown how this natural bacteria-killing compound could be used to keep food fresh for longer.

Food waste is a global issue that costs around $US680 billion annually in industrialised countries, consumes nearly a quarter of the water used in agriculture and produces 8% of global greenhouse emissions.

Food-borne diseases like Listeria or Salmonella affect millions each year and can be life threatening for pregnant women, older people and those who are immunocompromised.

Co-lead researcher Professor Oliver Jones said changes in consumer habits have led to a greater demand for natural alternatives to artificial food preservatives.

"Scientists have known about these bacteria-killing compounds for many years but the challenge is to produce them in large enough quantities to be used by the food industry," said Jones, Associate Dean of Biosciences and Food Technology at RMIT.

"The Nem Chua compound is colourless, odourless, tasteless and very resilient.

"Through this new research, we've identified the right growth conditions that would enable us to make it in large amounts, potentially at industrial scales.

"With further development, we hope this could be an effective, safe and all-natural solution for both food waste and food-borne disease."

Bacteria-killing weapon

A team of RMIT researchers was inspired to investigate Nem Chua for its potential antibacterial properties after travelling to Vietnam and observing people eating the raw meat snack without getting sick, despite the hot and humid climate.

The team, led by Professor Andrew Smith (now at Griffith University) and Dr Bee May, discovered a new type of bacteria-killing compound in Nem Chua.

Plantacyclin B21AG is one of a group of compounds known as bacteriocins, which are produced by bacteria to destroy rival bacterial strains.

Bacteriocins form holes in the membranes of target bacteria. This causes the contents of the cell to leak out - effectively killing the bacteria.

The problem is most bacteriocins only work against one or two types of bacteria and they are not very stable in different environmental conditions.

Only one - Nisin, which came to market in the 1960s - is currently licensed for use as a food preservative, in a market estimated to be worth more than $US513 million in 2020, but this compound is temperature and pH sensitive limiting its use.

Tough and effective

The Nem Chua-derived compound is more robust than Nisin and is effective against a wide range of bacteria even after exposure to a range of environments typical in food processing.

It can survive being heated to 90C for 20 minutes and remains stable across high and low pH levels.

The compound can also destroy a range of disease-causing organisms commonly found in food including potentially life-threating Listeria, which can survive refrigeration and even freezing.

Co-lead researcher Dr Elvina Parlindungan, who completed the new study as part of her PhD research at RMIT, is now a postdoctoral fellow at APC Microbiome, part of University College Cork in Ireland.

"Using bacteriocins as food preservatives effectively means we are turning bacteria's own toxic weapons against them - harnessing nature's smart solutions to tackle our big challenges," Parlindungan said.

"In the future, these compounds might also be useful as an antibiotic in human medicine."

Researchers at RMIT's School of Science have begun experimenting with methods to further purify the compound and are planning to incorporate it into test food products.

The friendship paradox is the observation that the degrees of the neighbors of a node within any network will, on average, be greater than the degree of the node itself. In other words: your friends probably have more friends than you do.

While the standard framing of the friendship paradox is essentially about averages, significant variations occur too.

In the Journal of Complex Networks, Santa Fe Institute and University of Michigan researchers George Cantwell, Alec Kirkley, and Mark Newman address this by developing the mathematical theory of the friendship paradox.

Some people have lots of friends, while others have only a few. Unless you have good reason to believe otherwise, it's reasonable to assume you have roughly an average number of friends.

But if you compare yourself to your friends, you may see a different picture. In fact, a simple calculation -- provided by Scott L. Field's 1991 paper entitled "Why your friends have more friends than you do" -- shows it's likely many of your friends are more popular than you.

Almost by definition, your friends are likely to be the sorts of people that have lots of friends. Perhaps worse, this effect means your friends might not only be more popular than you but also more wealthy and more attractive.

These kinds of friendship paradoxes have been explored by network scientists for 30 years.

"Standard analyses are concerned with average behavior, but there's a lot of heterogeneity among people," says Cantwell. "Could the average results, for example, be skewed by a few outliers? To get a fuller picture, we studied the full distribution describing how people compare to their friends -- not simply the average."

The researchers found that applying mathematics to real-world data reveals a slightly more nuanced picture. For example, popular people are more likely to be friends with one another, whereas less popular people are more likely to be friends with less popular people.

Conversely, some people have just one or two friends, while others have hundreds. "This has a tendency to magnify the effect," says Cantwell. "While there are surely other effects at play, around 95% of the variation within social networks can be explained by just these two."

We should all "simply be wary of impressions we get about our success and social status from looking at the people around us because we get a distorted view," Cantwell adds. "In the offline social world, the bias is partially mitigated by the fact we tend to end up around similar others. On online social media, however, the effect can be exacerbated -- there's virtually no limit on the number of people who can follow someone online and no reason to only look at 'similar' people."

Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is a rare form of kidney inflammation (glomerulonephritis) in which the glomeruli become increasingly scarred (sclerotic), leading to progressive loss of kidney function. Dysregulation of the immune system plays a role in pathogenesis, which is why immunosuppressive therapy with glucocorticoids can be successful, alongside supportive therapy (especially blocking of the renin-angiotensin system with ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers). Many patients nevertheless require dialysis in the course of the disease. New therapeutic approaches that stabilize or protect kidney function are therefore needed.

In patients with type 2 diabetes, who often have concomitant kidney damage, treatment with an oral antidiabetic agent from the group of SGLT2 inhibitors (gliflozins) results in stabilization of renal function and improvement of clinical (renal and cardiovascular) outcomes. These medications inhibit SGLT-2 (sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter 2) in the proximal renal tubule, thereby increasing urinary glucose excretion. The DAPA-CKD study showed that the SGLT2 inhibitor dapagliflozin markedly reduces the risk of progressive loss of renal function in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), both in the presence and in the absence of diabetes mellitus [1].

A pre-specified subgroup analysis specifically investigated safety and efficacy in study patients with FSGS [2]. The trial included 115 participants with FSGS randomized to receive either 10 mg dapagliflozin (n=53) or placebo (n=62) on top of standard treatment. The combined primary endpoint included a ?50% decrease in eGFR, reaching dialysis requirement, or cardiovascular death. In the present analysis, the course of kidney function (eGFR) was specifically investigated during the median 2.4-year follow-up. The FSGS patients were 53.7±13.9 years old, had a glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) of 41.6±11.6 ml/min/1.73 m2 and a median urinary protein excretion of 1553 (758-2257) mg/g.

The results showed that four out of 53 patients on dapagliflozin (7.5%) and nine out of 62 patients on placebo (14.5%) reached the primary endpoint (HR 0.54). In the first two weeks after the start of the study, the familiar phenomenon of initial eGFR decline occurred (eGFR dip of -4.5 ml/min/1.73m2 in the dapagliflozin group compared to -0.8 ml/min/1.73m2 in the placebo group). Over the remainder of the study, the annual eGFR loss was -1.9 versus -4.2 ml/min/1.73 m2. Tolerability and safety of dapagliflozin were good, and discontinuations due to side effects were similar in both groups.

The results of several previous studies have demonstrated that SGLT2 inhibitors improve cardiovascular and kidney outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes. We know that for dapagliflozin, these benefits extend to patients with heart failure and chronic kidney disease who do not have diabetes. New data from this subgroup analysis suggest that FSGS patients also gain benefit,' said Professor David Wheeler.

'SGLT2 inhibitors offer a promising new therapeutic option in the field of nephrology and are likely to be used more extensively in future, both in diabetic and non-diabetic kidney diseases. Not only do these agents slow progression of kidney disease, but they also reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, which are important comorbidities in this patient population.'

In young women, Staphylococcus saprophyticus is a main cause of urinary tract infections (UTI), reaching 20% prevalence. Understanding the epidemiology of this microorganism can help identify its origin, distribution, causes, and risk factors. Now, ITQB NOVA researchers led by Maria Miragaia showed evidence that Staphylococcus saprophyticus can originate in food, namely in the meat-production chain.

Europe is the world's second-biggest producer of pork, the most favored meat type in these countries. One of the contaminants of that meat is S. saprophyticus, which is found also in the environment, the gut and rectal flora of pigs, and in the human gastrointestinal tract, vagina, and perineum.

In the study published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, by using a combination of phenotypic, genomic, and pan-genome wide association approaches, researchers identified two different lineages (G and S) of S. saprophyticus. The lineage G, from food origin and transmitted to humans by contact with food products, and lineage S, from human origin. Both are associated with disease and may be transmitted directly or indirectly between persons within the community, showing not only a local but an extensive geographic distribution.

In order to understand if these bacteria causing urinary tract infections could be related to the ones in pork, the research group looked at S. saprophyticus from a slaughterhouse and compared them to those causing human urinary tract infections. The team analysed bacteria collected from UTI worldwide over 20 years, and from UTI and pork meat production chain in Portugal.

The results revealed that bacteria from the slaughterhouse (equipment, meat, workers colonisation) were similar to human UTI bacteria and had the same antibiotic resistance profile. Although S. saprophyticus pig's colonisation rate was extremely low (1%), 35% of slaughterhouse samples were contaminated. The presence of an antiseptic resistance gene (qacA) by all the lineage G bacteria could be part of the explanation for the ineffective cleaning procedures that were used. "S. saprophyticus strains of animal origin (lineage G) enters the slaughterhouse through food animals, persist on the equipment, disseminate and contaminate the meat processing chain and humans. Human colonization is a crucial step for the later occurrence of UTI", explains Opeyemi Lawal, first author of the study developed during his PhD.

Additionally, by studying genomic data of bacteria collected from patients attending three hospitals in the Lisbon area, the researchers were able to clearly understand that the transmission of these pathogenic bacteria from both lineages (G and S) occurs between persons within the community. With this deep-structured analysis, researchers were also able to identify putative new virulence factors for this unexplored bacterium. The team will continue to search for reservoirs of this bacterium in humans and animals, and to study the mechanisms of S. saprophyticus dissemination and disease to provide the groundwork towards strategies to combat this pathogen, "This a clear example of how food manipulation can impact in human health, and how important it is to educate consumers regarding good individual hygiene practices to avoid spreading of infectious diseases", says Maria Miragaia, head of the Bacterial Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology Lab. "This adds to the list of bacteria that are transmitted to humans through contact with animals and animal-derived food. But the exact mechanisms associated to the conversion from a colonizer to an infectious agent remains to be clarified", adds Henrik Westh from the Copenhagen University Hospital - Amager and Hvidovre, University of Copenhagen (Denmark).

Climate experts warn that, without urgent action, climate change will continue to cause an increase in the intensity of extreme rainfall that can lead to severe flooding.

An international research team have concluded that increases in extreme rainfall and associated flooding are projected to continue as global temperatures continue to rise. Efforts to limit warming to +1.5C will help limit changes in extreme rainfall, though some societal adaptations will still be required.

Sharing their findings in a new ScienceBrief Review, published today (7 June), scientists from Newcastle University, the University of East Anglia (UEA), the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), São Paulo, Brazil, analysed over 170 peer-reviewed scientific papers. They found that in small and in urban catchments in many parts of the world extreme rainfall has increased the chance of floods occurring and their magnitude, severely impacting local populations and infrastructure. In larger, rural catchments floods depend on many different factors and flooding is less directly linked with extreme rainfall events.

Their analysis also suggests that increases in daily extreme rainfall rates have been observed globally and on continental scales through the 20th and early 21st centuries, and that global warming is driving increases in short-duration rainfall extremes in some regions. The study shows that human activity has an impact on increases in extreme daily rainfall, increasing the likelihood of some significant events.

The findings show that the risk of flash flooding on urban areas has likely increased in recent decades, due to the expanding impermeable landscape increasing surface runoff, and increased extreme rainfall, while increases are projected to continue.

Study lead, Dr Stephen Blenkinsop, of Newcastle University's School of Engineering, said: "Global warming means the atmosphere can hold more moisture and could also change the way storms behave. More intense rainfall extremes coupled with changes in other factors could increase the frequency and severity of flooding in many regions.

"Even if action is taken to limit the extent of global warming we will need to improve our understanding of how extreme rainfall and flooding will change in the future in order to adapt our cities and other communities to more frequent or more extreme events."

Adam Smith, from School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, added: "this is an active area of research and our review highlights that the science is becoming increasingly clear on how climate change influences extreme rainfall and how that combines with other factors to increase the chance of floods in many places."

Health has always been affected by climate and weather, but is increasingly clear that the change in climate is a significant threat to human health. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 24% of global deaths are linked to environmental factors [1]. Climate change and pollution can lead to undernutrition, mental disorders, and noncommunicable diseases including chronic kidney disease and acute kidney injury [2].

The burden of addressing the death and disability associated with climate change falls to nephrologists and other healthcare professionals. At the same time, the healthcare sector makes a major contribution to the climate crisis, producing 4.4% of the global carbon footprint [3]. The treatment of kidney disease is particularly resource intensive; for example, current hemodialysis practice is energy demanding, uses large quantities of water and creates substantial waste.

ERA-EDTA President Professor Christoph Wanner commented: "The ERA-EDTA was one of the first international medical societies to urge investment in the transformation to a greener healthcare [4]. The theme of this year's fully virtual Congress, Healthy Environment, Healthy Kidneys, underlines the ERA-EDTA's commitment and the important role of nephrologists in addressing climate change."

The burden of climate change will fall heavily on younger people. During the ERA-EDTA Congress, a symposium* will provide the opportunity to hear the views of younger healthcare professionals on climate change and health. There will also be a 45-minute discussion following the symposium between the speakers and medical students and nephrologists.

Dr Martin Herrmann, President of the German Alliance for Climate and Change and Health, will discuss the threat of climate change to the public health achievements of the last century. At the same time, there is a major opportunity in addressing climate change, since climate protection measures are associated with great health benefits. Climate activists have shown how citizens, including health professionals, can take the lead in building momentum to achieve real change that transforms policy.

Professor Christian Witt (Germany) will highlight the morbidity and mortality induced by climate change in people with chronic diseases. More research is needed to identify the patients most vulnerable to global warming. Adaptive strategies are essential, especially in the heat islands of metropolitan areas, which will be 11C warmer than rural areas. Examples include the green, climate-adapted hospital of the future, and telemedicine and early-warning systems to prevent disease exacerbation caused by heat stress.

Dr Sylvia Hartmann, Vice Chair of the German Alliance for Climate Change and Health, will present the perspectives of the coming medical generation on the climate crisis. Healthcare professionals have a unique responsibility to take action. Beyond daily medical routines, healthcare professionals must demonstrate the health emergency represented by climate change. It is essential to act at once to protect the climate, and conserve and restore the environment. This calls for personal, professional and political action, and for the support of all of society.

"Throughout the world younger people are in the vanguard of action against global warming, and have shown us that addressing climate change is everyone's responsibility. I look forward to hearing their views on climate change and health during the ERA-EDTA Congress," concluded Professor Wanner.

SGLT2 inhibitors (gliflozins) were developed as oral antidiabetics. They enhance urinary glucose excretion by inhibiting SGLT-2 (sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter-2) in the renal tubuli. The discovery of kidney benefits beyond the lowering of blood sugar has been made by Professor Christoph Wanner from Germany: The EMPA-REG OUTCOME study [2] initially showed that the rate of cardiovascular events in type 2 diabetic pa-tients is significantly reduced if the SGLT2 inhibitor empagliflozin is administered. Kidney function in diabetics who already had diabetic nephropathy was also found to benefit sig-nificantly from the treatment (as an incidental finding, so to speak) [3]. In other cardio-vascular outcome studies, this effect has been confirmed for other SGLT2 inhibitors in type 2 diabetics with diabetic nephropathy (albuminuria) [4, 5, 6]. The DAPA-CKD study [7, 8] showed that, even in non-diabetic CKD patients, i.e., in patients with other under-lying causes of kidney disease, the combined renal endpoint (loss of renal function ?50%, dialysis requirement or mortality) is significantly delayed by SGLT2 inhibition with dapagliflozin (HR 0.61).

The mechanisms by which SGLT2 inhibitors produce their renoprotective effect are still largely unknown. A post-hoc analysis using data from the EMPA-REG OUTCOME study looked for possible factors that could mediate or be correlated with this effect. The pooled treatment group (empagliflozin 10 and 25 mg/d) was compared with the placebo group. A total of 17 different potential factors from different physiological areas were reg-istered at the start of the study and statistically evaluated on a time-dependent basis (Cox regression with time-dependent covariates) and also at the time of week 12 (orien-tation point analysis). The variables were incrementally summed according to the strength of their effect on the composite renal endpoint.

In time-dependent analysis, the unadjusted EMPA effect on the renal endpoint was HR 0.56 (probability or risk reduction, i.e., treatment was 44% less likely to reach the renal endpoint).

In more advanced CKD stages, the kidneys no longer produce sufficient amounts of the blood-forming hormone erythropoietin, thus resulting in renal anemia (as indicated by lowered hematocrit levels). After adjusting the hematocrit (HK) value over time, the HR for the EMPA effect was 1.0; the HK value was therefore the strongest mediator. Other factors were serum uric acid concentration (33.2%) and albuminuria (31%). At week 12, the unadjusted HR for the treatment effect on the renal endpoint was 0.54. Once again, HK was the strongest mediator of the EMPA effect. After adjusting for the HK value, the HR was 0.69 - from which a mediation effect of 40.7% was calculated. Other factors were HbA1c (28.3%), blood pressure (16.8%) and fatty acid levels (16.5%). The compo-site effect of HK, HbA1c, blood pressure and fatty acid levels was 78.9%.

"We know that severe anemia is a predictor not only for CKD progression, but also for cardiovascular events," explains Prof. Dr. Christoph Wanner. "According to the new study data, hematocrit is the most important mediator of the positive gliflozin effects, i.e., the main mechanism by which the SGLT2 inhibitors stabilize renal function and improve the clinical outcome correlates with the percentage increase in erythrocytes. These correla-tions now need to be investigated further - for example, to determine whether a role is played here by hemoconcentration due to increased urinary excretion induced by gliflozin, or by enhanced erythrocyte production."

"With gliflozins, we have been experiencing the first real breakthrough in the treatment of chronic kidney disease in a long time, or since the establishment of the standard RAS blockade (with ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers), the aim being to delay the need for dialysis treatment as long as possible."

Lauren Dreier was paging through a 19th century book by the German architect Gottfried Semper when she spotted some intriguing patterns inspired by lace. A professional artist and designer who often incorporates technology into her work, Dreier, who is also a doctoral student at the School of Architecture at Princeton University, decided to recreate the printed illustrations in 3D.

She grabbed ribbon-like plastic material she had been experimenting with in her studio, bending and connecting the semi-rigid strips. To Dreier's surprise, the structure she built assumed a bumpy geometry, with four distinct hills and valleys. "I thought it would make a dome, but it was this unusual shape," Dreier said. Curious to know what caused this unexpected twist, she reached out to Sigrid Adriaenssens, an associate professor in Princeton's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Adriaenssens couldn't explain it, either, but she, too, was intrigued. She proposed a joint investigation to find out what was behind the strange structural mechanics.

Dreier's discovery wound up leading to the creation of a reconfigurable structure the researchers termed a bigon ring. By tweaking the specific design of the structure's patterns, the team was able to produce multiple geometries that arise from different looping behaviors. According to a paper describing the findings in the Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, the numerical framework behind the discovery can be applied to any general elastic rod network, whether made of thread, bamboo or plastic. It could also lead to the creation of new products and technologies that are capable of changing shape to improve performance under variable conditions from spacecraft to wearable technology.

"Drawing inspiration from patterns in lacing, I think we can say nobody's done that before," Adriaenssens said. "Some of these behaviors were very unexpected, and just by adjusting the angle or the width, you get a totally different behavior."

To investigate the physics behind these observations, Dreier worked closely with several collaborators, including Tian Yu, a postdoctoral researcher in Adriaenssens' lab. "This is my first time working with an artist, and I never expected to work on a project inspired by lace," Yu said. "I'm fascinated by the mechanics part of this project."

Unlike traditional lace makers who use soft threads twisted together, the researchers arranged their creations into loose, looping formations. "It's all about creating excess space between the nodes," Dreier said. The team started by making closed structures called bigons by fixing the ends of two initially straight strips at a certain angle, creating eye- or almond-like forms. Similar to metal hair clips from the 1990s, the bigons exhibited bistability, or two different stable shapes that the structures could toggle between when slight pressure was applied.

From there, the researchers arranged multiple bigons into a chain, and then a loop by connecting their ends. The bistable bigons together created an overall structure that could form numerous possible geometries. The structures were multistable, meaning they were made up of a collection forms each of which could be stable independent of the others. Bigon rings, as they called these new forms, sometimes exhibited a similar folding behavior as a bandsaw blade, looping back on themselves. But their behavior could also be tuned by adjusting the intersection angle and the aspect ratio of the strips that composed the bigons, and by changing the number of bigons that made up the ring.

As Dreier worked on building these structures, Yu created a numerical model specific to them using Kirchhoff rod equations for how a thin, elastic rod behaves when loaded with forces and displacements. The researchers were able to confirm the accuracy of the model by taking measurements from Dreier's physical creations and comparing the results. The computational model also made it possible to identify different configurations that the bigons or bigon rings might be able to take theoretically. The researchers then tested those mathematical predictions through the physical models to see which equilibria were stable and which were not. "A lot of back and forth came from Tian going deep into the data and saying, 'If you make a six-bigon ring at such-and-such an angle, what happens?'" Dreier said.

The team eventually produced a new numerical model that captures multistable behavior, and that the researchers say can be applied to other studies that examine the mechanics of general interlaced elastic networks.

In future work, the team plans to conduct a more extensive investigation of the many shapes that bigon-based structures are capable of forming, and how to best achieve specific target shapes. Eventually, their findings could lead to new designs for materials that need to be packed to take up as little room as possible, but that assume a much larger form when unpacked. "For example, materials and structures that go into space have to be folded into a bundle, put in a rocket and then have to expand into as large a size as possible," Adriaenssens said. "Some of these combinations of parameters do that."

Other potential real-world applications include novel soft robotic arms, toys and wearable technology. The latter, for example, could include special textiles that stiffen to support someone's arm in a certain position, and loosen in others. "It can envelop things or not, stiffen or not," Adriaenssens said. "It can have many functions."

In addition to the practical applications of the work, the project also demonstrates the largely untapped value of interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and engineers. While art tends to be driven by intuition and feelings that operate outside of the realm of scientific thinking, "it can lead to discoveries of some interesting phenomena," Dreier said. "I was really excited that these different worlds could come together in a very relevant way."