Tech

Amongst the world's most challenging problems is the need to feed an ever-growing global population sustainably.

Securing the food supply is of paramount importance, and more attention must be given to the threat from fungal pathogens competing with us for our own crops.

We need to raise awareness of this fact across all of society - from politicians to the general public.

Research at the University of Exeter has a strong emphasis on understanding fungal plant disease and in developing new ways to protect our crops.

In a new article, published in Nature Food this week, led by Professor Sarah Gurr and Dr Helen Fones (UKRI Fellow), a consortium of world-leading Exeter-based fungal researchers has merged their expertise to highlight the threat of fungal disease for our food security.

Professor Gurr said: "Over the past centuries, crop diseases have led to the starvation of the people, the ruination of economies and the downfall of governments.

"Today, the threat to plants of fungal infection outstrips that posed by bacterial and viral diseases combined.

"Indeed, fungal and oomycete diseases have been increasing in severity and scale since the mid 20th Century and now pose a very serious threat to global food security.

"We face a future blighted by known adversaries, by new variants of old foes and by new diseases.

"Modern agricultural intensification practices have heightened this challenge.

"Moreover, climate change compounds the saga as we see altered disease demographics - pathogens are on the move, as shown so elegantly by Professor Dan Bebber and PhD student Tom Chaloner (co-authors)."

Dr Helen Fones said: "Our review looks to the future; summarising our main challenges and knowledge gaps, and highlighting the research needed to face the threat of emerging crop pathogens.

"We consider this challenge in terms of both the crops essential for providing calories and those commodities that fuel global trade and the global economy that we rely upon.

"We show that in this increasingly interconnected world we must be prepared, with more robust agricultural systems, to weather pathogen outbreaks that might impact food production either in individual countries or around the globe.

"From writing the article to its publication, COVID-19 has arisen and demonstrated how deeply affected we can all be by outbreaks of new pathogens.

"This reminds us that we need to make agriculture less reliant on fungicides which are also used to treat fungal infections in humans, as this can lead to resistance moving from agricultural to clinical settings (as highlighted in an article in Science in 2018, authored by Sarah Gurr, with Mat Fisher from Imperial College).

"Here, we discuss the need for new fungicides, especially ones that have complex modes of action, and are harder for the pathogen to develop resistance to."

But not all is "doom and gloom" as illustrated in recent work, led by co-author Professor Gero Steinberg.

In a recent publication in the journal Nature Communications, Exeter scientists described the development of a new fungicide, which holds the potential to help protect our food crops against fungal pathogens.

Professor Steinberg said: "The challenge of fungal crop diseases is enormous.

"With the help of the BBSRC and the University of Exeter, Sarah Gurr's and my research group are following a dual strategy: to raise awareness, illustrated by this article in Nature Food, and also to develop new 'weapons' in our fight to secure global food security."

KAIST researchers developed a new algorithm for brain imaging data analysis that enables the precise and quantitative mapping of complex neural circuits onto a standardized 3-D reference atlas.

Brain imaging data analysis is indispensable in the studies of neuroscience. However, analysis of obtained brain imaging data has been heavily dependent on manual processing, which cannot guarantee the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of the results.

Conventional brain imaging data analysis typically begins with finding a 2-D brain atlas image that is visually similar to the experimentally obtained brain image. Then, the region-of-interest (ROI) of the atlas image is matched manually with the obtained image, and the number of labeled neurons in the ROI is counted.

Such a visual matching process between experimentally obtained brain images and 2-D brain atlas images has been one of the major sources of error in brain imaging data analysis, as the process is highly subjective, sample-specific, and susceptible to human error. Manual analysis processes for brain images are also laborious, and thus studying the complete 3-D neuronal organization on a whole-brain scale is a formidable task.

To address these issues, a KAIST research team led by Professor Se-Bum Paik from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering developed new brain imaging data analysis software named 'AMaSiNe (Automated 3-D Mapping of Single Neurons)', and introduced the algorithm in the May 26 issue of Cell Reports.

AMaSiNe automatically detects the positions of single neurons from multiple brain images, and accurately maps all the data onto a common standard 3-D reference space. The algorithm allows the direct comparison of brain data from different animals by automatically matching similar features from the images, and computing the image similarity score.

This feature-based quantitative image-to-image comparison technology improves the accuracy, consistency, and reliability of analysis results using only a small number of brain slice image samples, and helps standardize brain imaging data analyses.

Unlike other existing brain imaging data analysis methods, AMaSiNe can also automatically find the alignment conditions from misaligned and distorted brain images, and draw an accurate ROI, without any cumbersome manual validation process.

AMaSiNe has been further proved to produce consistent results with brain slice images stained utilizing various methods including DAPI, Nissl, and autofluorescence.

The two co-lead authors of this study, Jun Ho Song and Woochul Choi, exploited these benefits of AMaSiNe to investigate the topographic organization of neurons that project to the primary visual area (VISp) in various ROIs, such as the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (LGd), which could hardly be addressed without proper calibration and standardization of the brain slice image samples.

In collaboration with Professor Seung-Hee Lee's group of the Department of Biological Science, the researchers successfully observed the 3-D topographic neural projections to the VISp from LGd, and also demonstrated that these projections could not be observed when the slicing angle was not properly corrected by AMaSiNe. The results suggest that the precise correction of a slicing angle is essential for the investigation of complex and important brain structures.

AMaSiNe is widely applicable in the studies of various brain regions and other experimental conditions. For example, in the research team's previous study jointly conducted with Professor Yang Dan's group at UC Berkeley, the algorithm enabled the accurate analysis of the neuronal subsets in the substantia nigra and their projections to the whole brain. Their findings were published in Science on January 24.

AMaSiNe is of great interest to many neuroscientists in Korea and abroad, and is being actively used by a number of other research groups at KAIST, MIT, Harvard, Caltech, and UC San Diego.

Professor Paik said, "Our new algorithm allows the spatial organization of complex neural circuits to be found in a standardized 3-D reference atlas on a whole-brain scale. This will bring brain imaging data analysis to a new level."

He continued, "More in-depth insights for understanding the function of brain circuits can be achieved by facilitating more reliable and standardized analysis of the spatial organization of neural circuits in various regions of the brain."

Marc Colomer and Núria Sebastián Gallés, members of the Speech Acquisition and Perception (SAP) research group of the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) at UPF have investigated whether 14 month-old infants understand that language is a communication tool for transmitting information between speakers of the same language. The study is published in the advanced online edition of the journal Cognition.

"Before the study, we knew that infants at this age already see language as a conventional system, that is, a way of conveying information that is agreed upon and shared by a group of people. For example, when you learn the word "hammer", you not only learn a way to refer to a certain kind of tool but also presuppose that any speaker of your language will use the same word to refer to a hammer", Colomer and Sebastián Gallés explain. According to the authors, this knowledge is the basis of communication. Even when we see two people who speak a language we do not know, we expect them to share the same conventions and, therefore, be able to communicate. But if the people speak different languages, then language will not be an optimal system of communication.

"The question we posed in this study is whether 14-month-old infants understand that to communicate, the communicator and the recipient must speak and/or understand the same language. In addition, we investigate whether the infants' experience interacting with people who speak only one language, or more than one language, influences their predictions on who can communicate with who". Hence, the researchers tested a group of infants with a monolingual background and a group of infants from bilingual environments.

In the first study, infants who grew up in environments where only Catalan and/or Spanish was spoken watched videos of two girls speaking different languages (Hungarian and Catalan/Spanish) targeted sentences at them. In the second study, the infants saw that the two girls spoke the same foreign language (Hungarian). After the presentation, the infants watched a scene in which there were two toys on a table and one of the girls (Hungarian) showed her preference for one of them. In a second scene, this same girl could not reach the toys because there was a wall preventing it. In this scene, the second girl was present and could reach the toys. At that moment, the first girl (in Hungarian) asked the second to pass her her object of preference.

"The question we posed was whether the infants would expect the girl who was speaking in Spanish/Catalan to understand the message in Hungarian, and thus give her the toy she wanted", explains Colomer, first author of the study. "To investigate the infants' expectations, we use the "Violation of Expectation" paradigm. This paradigm is based on the presupposition that infants look for longer at a scene when what happens in it is unexpected and, therefore, more difficult to process", Colomer adds.

Infants' expectations according to the results of the experiments

What the researchers were able to observe was that the participants expected the two girls who spoke the same language, even when it was totally unknown to them, to understand each other. However, under the condition where the two girls spoke different languages, only the infants growing up in a bilingual environment expected the girl who spoke Catalan or Spanish to understand the phrase in Hungarian.

This suggests, first, that infants expect language to communicate information even among people who speak a foreign language. Second, infants understand that communication depends on the use of a shared language. In other words, they expect two people to be able to communicate verbally only if they speak and/or understand the same language. Finally, the results indicate that infants that grow up in bilingual environments expect people to be able to understand more than one language (even Hungarian). However, infants that grow up in monolingual environments expect others also to be monolingual.

Understanding that language is a tool for communication, and understanding under what conditions it enables conveying information, is essential to develop the capacities that babies need to start to communicate and understand their environment. This study demonstrates that even at 14 months, infants have a complex knowledge of the role and limitations of language as a communication tool. In addition, the study shows that the infants' environment (monolingual or bilingual) influences their predictions about who can communicate with who.

You emerge from the supermarket, struggling under the weight of the extra wine and chocolate biscuits you've bought to get through lockdown, and then... you draw a total blank... where did you park the car?

New research by psychologists at the University of York has looked at how these irritating and highly-relatable moments of amnesia come about, and asks: when we forget is the memory entirely lost or has it instead become fuzzier over time?

The online study, involving more than 400 participants aged 18-35, reveals that memories for specific locations are either totally forgotten or, if they are remembered, it's with as much precision as when they were first learnt.

Co-author of the study, Dr Aidan Horner from the Department of Psychology at the University of York, said: "Our study set out to discover what kind of information is lost when forgetting occurs and we show that forgetting involves losses in memory accessibility with no changes in memory precision.

"The question of how we forget is an important one. Rather than being something purely negative, forgetting may actually be beneficial to the decision making process. Our brains need to be able to discard distracting or unnecessary information so we can prioritise core information that helps to guide decision making."

The researchers asked participants to learn the locations of words on a circle. They were then tested by being shown the word and asked to move a marker to its location on the circle, analogous to walking to where you think you parked the car.

In order to discover whether precision fades over time, they tested groups of participants at different time intervals ranging from 10 minutes to four days after they had learnt the information.

The researchers found that while participants who were tested later had forgotten a significant proportion of word-location associations, the ones they did remember were recalled with the same precision (i.e. they were able to pinpoint exact locations) as the groups tested earlier.

The researchers also looked at whether allowing participants to extract a pattern by clustering words on the same theme in one location would aid memory. When a pattern was present, they found that participants remembered more word-location associations (accessibility went up), but the precision with which things were remembered went down.

Dr Horner added "We found that when participants were able to learn the locations of words via a pattern, there was a trade-off between accessibility and precision. What you gain in number of word-location associations remembered, you lose in the precision with which you remember them.

"For example, if you parked your car in roughly the same spot every day, you'd be more likely to remember where you parked it, but perhaps be less able to remember precisely where you parked it that specific day - you'd remember the rough, but not the precise, location."

Astronomers acting on a hunch have likely resolved a mystery about young, still-forming stars and regions rich in organic molecules closely surrounding some of them. They used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to reveal one such region that previously had eluded detection, and that revelation answered a longstanding question.

The regions around the young protostars contain complex organic molecules that can further combine into prebiotic molecules that are the first steps on the road to life. The regions, dubbed "hot corinos" by astronomers, are typically about the size of our Solar System and are much warmer than their surroundings, though still quite cold by terrestrial standards.

The first hot corino was discovered in 2003, and only about a dozen have been found so far. Most of these are in binary systems, with two protostars forming simultaneously.

Astronomers have been puzzled by the fact that, in some of these binary systems, they found evidence for a hot corino around one of the protostars but not the other.

"Since the two stars are forming from the same molecular cloud and at the same time, it seemed strange that one would be surrounded by a dense region of complex organic molecules, and the other wouldn't," said Cecilia Ceccarelli, of the Institute for Planetary Sciences and Astrophysics at the University of Grenoble (IPAG) in France.

The complex organic molecules were found by detecting specific radio frequencies, called spectral lines, emitted by the molecules. Those characteristic radio frequencies serve as "fingerprints" to identify the chemicals. The astronomers noted that all the chemicals found in hot corinos had been found by detecting these "fingerprints" at radio frequencies corresponding to wavelengths of only a few millimeters.

"We know that dust blocks those wavelengths, so we decided to look for evidence of these chemicals at longer wavelengths that can easily pass through dust," said Claire Chandler of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and principal investigator on the project. "It struck us that dust might be what was preventing us from detecting the molecules in one of the twin protostars."

The astronomers used the VLA to observe a pair of protostars called IRAS 4A, in a star-forming region about 1,000 light-years from Earth. They observed the pair at wavelengths of centimeters. At those wavelengths, they sought radio emissions from methanol, CH3OH (wood alcohol, not for drinking). This was a pair in which one protostar clearly had a hot corino and the other did not, as seen using the much shorter wavelengths.

The result confirmed their hunch.

"With the VLA, both protostars showed strong evidence of methanol surrounding them. This means that both protostars have hot corinos, and the reason we didn't see the one at shorter wavelengths was because of dust," said Marta de Simone, a graduate student at IPAG who led the data analysis for this object.

The astronomers caution that, while both hot corinos now are known to contain methanol, there still may be some chemical differences between them. That, they said, can be settled by looking for other molecules at wavelengths not obscured by dust.

"This result tells us that using centimeter radio wavelengths is necessary to properly study hot corinos," Claudio Codella of Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory in Florence, Italy, said. "In the future, planned new telescopes such as the next-generation VLA and SKA, will be very important to understanding these objects."

"Tracers have been and are essential to manage the pandemic. Today, the tracing is done by hand and this work is slow and inaccurate. However, as we have seen, technology can be highly useful: contact tracing with smartphones and smartclocks help find out who has been in contact with an infected person, thanks to the use of localization and communication technologies, such as GPS, cell phone networks, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth," explains Enrique Hernández Orallo, researcher at the Networking Research Group-DISCA of the Universitat Politècnica de València.

In their study, UPV researchers assessed the effectiveness of each one of these technologies. In order to do that, they designed an epidemiological mathematical model which allowed them to study its efficiency and impact--in terms of number of persons that must enter in self-quarantine from the results obtained. "Bluetooth is the most suitable technology because it allows tracers to detect contacts within a range of 2-3 meters. Those contacts are considered by epidemiological models as a contact capable of passing the infection. Therefore, it helps to reduce the number of false contacts, and also allows them to be more efficient when establishing which people must self-quarantine," explains Enrique Hernández Orallo.

"Extremely useful" in a possible new outbreak

Since the infection rate of COVID is extremely high, the contact tracing technology must be accurate and perform a quick search. However, in order to do it more effectively, a significant percentage of the population must install the contact tracing application on their smart devices.

"These strict requirements make contact tracing based on smartphones quite inefficient to contain the infection propagation during the first outbreak of the virus. However, in the case of a new outbreak of the pandemic, with a percentage of the population immune, or in combination with other less strict measures that reduce the spread of the virus (such as social distancing), contact tracing based on smartphones could be extremely useful, even if only a part of the population--less than 60%--would be willing to use it. In any case, Bluetooth will be the most suitable tool to do the tracing," concludes Enrique Hernández-Orallo.

In previous research, it has been assumed that insects in temperate regions would cope well with or even benefit from a warmer climate. Not so, according to researchers from the Universities of Uppsala and Lund in Sweden and Oviedo, Spain, in a new study. The earlier models failed to take into account the fact that insects in temperate habitats are inactive for much of the year.

The research group's study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, presents new knowledge about the potential effects of global warming on insect populations. The results show that insects may be more threatened by climate change than previous estimates have indicated.

"Insects in temperate zones might be as threatened by climate change as those in the tropics," says Uppsala University professor Frank Johansson.

The researchers found new, disturbing patterns in a modified analysis of a previously used dataset on insects' critical temperature limits and their survival. Their conclusion is that temperate insects might be just as sensitive to climate change as tropical ones. The previous studies showed that tropical insects are severely threatened by climate change since they already live very close to their optimal temperature and "critical thermal maximum". However, the scientists responsible for those previous studies also assumed that temperate insects live far below their own optimal and maximum temperatures, and might therefore benefit from climate change.

The problem is that the earlier studies used mean annual temperatures for all their estimates. In so doing, they failed to consider that the vast majority of insects in temperate latitudes remain inactive in cold periods - that is, for much of the year.

When more biological details about the various insect species, and only the months in which the species are active, are entered in the models, the new estimates show that in temperate insects' habitats, too, the temperatures are close to the insects' optimal and critical maximum. This is because the average temperature for the months when the insects are active clearly exceeds the mean year-round temperature. Temperate insects are thus as vulnerable as tropical species to temperature increases

When the temperature is close to insects' optimal temperature or critical upper limit, there is a great risk of their numbers declining. The decreases in insect populations would also affect humans, since many insect species provide ecosystem services, such as pollination of fruit, vegetables and other plants we eat.

Many may have seen bright pink light in some windows - it comes from special lamps that are used for providing sufficient lighting to house plants. Similar lamps are also used by farmers in greenhouses. Still, specialists in photophysiology argue that such lamps do not provide all the light that plants need. Scientists from ITMO in collaboration with their colleagues from Tomsk Polytechnic University came up with an idea to create light sources from ceramics with the addition of chrome: the light from such lamps offers not just red but also infrared (IR) light, which is expected to have a positive effect on plants' growth. The research was completed as part of a Russian Science Foundation grant, and the results were published in Optical Materials.

Growing vegetables, fruit and berries in huge greenhouses rather than in the open is becoming more and more common. In such facilities, plants are protected from hail, droughts and chill. Then again, farmers have to compensate for the lack of natural sunlight in such greenhouses. Advanced agricultural facilities use light diodes for this purpose: they consume little energy, give bright light and can be easily set up in a greenhouse. The light they emit is pink, which is produced by simultaneous use of blue and red diodes.

"Scientists found out that such lighting isn't optimal," says Anastasia Babkina, a lab assistant at the Faculty of Photonics and Optical Information. "Thing is, a red diode lights in the range of about 650 nanometers, and its spectrum is very narrow, similar to that of a laser. Plants, however, absorb red and IR light better in the range that's a bit more than 650 nanometers, which people can barely see. So you see, this means that we use the light that's more comfortable for humans and not optimal for plants."

All this means that we need to find a material that can be used in light diode lamps in such a way that they would produce light of a wider spectrum, including the IR range. A group of researchers from ITMO and Tomsk Polytechnic University took up this task. Classical red light diodes use materials based on manganese and europium compounds. The crystals of this chemical element make the diode emit at the wavelength of about 650 nanometers, making the light red, and jointly with the emission of the blue diode - pink.

"We decided to use not a different crystal but glass-ceramics," says Anastasia Babkina. "This is a transitive material between glass and crystal. What's the difference? We have to specifically grow crystals, whereas glass is synthesized by moulding, and it can be produced quickly and in large amounts, in any shape you need. The drawback is that glass is fragile. For this reason, we take glass and begin to slowly crystallize it so that it doesn't lose transparency. In result, we get glass with microscopic crystals inside that are invisible to the eye. Such a material is more sturdy, has better luminescent properties - and is called glass-ceramics."

Chrome is added to glass-ceramics at the production stage: this gives the material a pink tone that allows it to produce red and IR light at the same time. There are two potential applications for the new material.The first is to mill it to get microparticles which can be used to produce a new type of light diodes. This offers great prospects, but the introduction of such a technology calls for a lot of time and money. Another option is to use it to create lampshades.

"We can take blue and green light diodes and use our glass-ceramics as a filter to obtain a wide-spectrum emission that will include the IR range," explains Anastasia Babkina.

Professor Tilo Pompe from the Institute of Biochemistry at Leipzig University has now reported on the scientific basis of the project together with his colleagues in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

"Until now, scientists have used costly laboratory methods to detect glyphosate. The detection principle we have developed uses the natural reaction of glyphosate in plants. By imitating this mechanism, the detection principle is highly specific," he said. The corresponding enzyme is bound to a chip surface. During detection, elastic hydrogel microparticles bind to this surface. If glyphosate is present in the detection solution, then depending on the concentration this inhibits the binding of the microparticles to the chip surface. "By using microparticle binding, the detection method offers an extremely high level of sensitivity with regard to pesticide limits for drinking water," said Pompe. At the same time, the method could be applied in practice as a simple, mobile detection principle using optical readout procedures.

For this reason, the current research project is also working with Saxon companies to develop a mobile readout device. At the same time, a patent application has been filed for the detection principle and companies are currently being sought to bring it to market.

Nairobi, 8 June 2020 - Seagrass meadows can be a powerful nature-based climate solution and help sustain communities hard-hit by stressors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, but these important ecosystems continue to decline. The importance of seagrasses is highlighted in a new report, "Out of the Blue: The Value of Seagrasses to the Environment and to People", released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) together with GRID-Arendal and the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC).

Seagrass meadows are among the most common coastal habitats on Earth, covering more than 300,000 km2 in at least 159 countries. They nurture fish populations, weaken storm surges, and provide numerous other services to coastal communities. Seagrass ecosystems are biologically rich and highly productive, providing valuable nursery habitats to more than 20 per cent of the world's largest 25 fisheries. They can filter pathogens, bacteria, and pollution out of seawater, and are home to endangered and charismatic species such as dugongs, seahorses, and sea turtles.

But an estimated 7 per cent of seagrass habitat is being lost worldwide each year, and at least 22 of the world's 72 seagrass species are in decline. Since the late 19th century, almost 30 per cent of known seagrass area across the globe has been lost. The main threats to seagrass meadows include urban, industrial, and agricultural run-off, coastal development, dredging, unregulated fishing and boating activities, and climate change.

The report, launched on World Oceans Day, finds that seagrass ecosystems play an outsized role in combating the climate crisis. Though they cover only 0.1 per cent of the ocean floor, these meadows are highly efficient carbon sinks, storing up to 18 per cent of the world's oceanic carbon. Countries aiming to do their part under the Paris Agreement can include seagrass protection and restoration in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to help reduce the amount of heat-trapping carbon in our atmosphere.

"Maintaining the health of seagrass ecosystems - which provide food and livelihoods to hundreds of millions of people, support rich biodiversity, and constitute one of the planet's most efficient stores of carbon - is important for healthy marine life and for healthy people around the world", said Susan Gardner, Director of the Ecosystems Division at UNEP. "Seagrasses represent powerful nature-based solutions to the climate challenge and sustainable development. "

As the global community works to build back better and strengthen economies and societies in the wake of the devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, preserving and restoring seagrass ecosystems can be a highly effective way to protect food chains and create jobs in industries such as fishing and tourism.

The well-being of human communities all around the globe is closely tied to the health of seagrass meadows. In Tanzania, a decline in seagrass was found to have a negative impact on the livelihoods of women who collect invertebrates such as clams, sea snails, and sea urchins from seagrass meadows. In the North Atlantic, seagrass provides critical habitat to juvenile Atlantic cod, a major commercial species that is fished by fleets from more than a dozen nations. Seagrasses are also part of the cultural fabric of many island communities. For example, in the Solomon Islands, fishers twist seagrass leaves together and shout to seagrass spirits for good luck.

"Seagrasses are the super ecosystems of our oceans, providing an incredible range of benefits to people around the world. Yet, while their flashier counterparts attract more attention, they remain among the most unheralded aquatic environments on Earth. The Out of the Blue report showcases the many ways that seagrasses help people thrive and sustain the healthy natural environment that we all depend on", said Dr. Maria Potouroglou, seagrass scientist at GRID-Arendal and lead editor of the report.

Despite their importance, new data suggest that seagrasses are among the least protected coastal habitats. Only 26 per cent of recorded seagrass meadows fall within marine protected areas (MPAs) compared with 40 per cent of coral reefs and 43 per cent of mangroves.

"Seagrasses can help us solve our biggest environmental challenges. They purify water, they protect us from storms, they provide food to hundreds of millions of people, they support rich biodiversity, and they efficiently store carbon. In light of everything seagrasses do for people and nature, protecting and restoring them is vital", said Ronald Jumeau, Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Ambassador for Climate Change, Republic of Seychelles.

Conserving and restoring seagrass meadows can contribute to achieving as many as 10 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as well as the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

(Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itsG_bZdY7w&feature=emb_logo)

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, another source of deadly and increasingly frequent disease outbreaks goes largely unnoticed by much of the world. Stanford researchers working in rural Kenya have identified the most productive breeding habitats for certain mosquitoes - spreaders of untreatable viruses that sicken millions every year - and revealed related community perspectives that could inform a solution. Their findings, published recently in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, point to more effective and efficient health interventions spearheaded by women and children.

"Until everyone in the world has reliable access to safe piped water, low-tech community interventions that target unused water containers can lead to large reductions in human health risk from vector-borne diseases," said study senior author Desiree LaBeaud, a professor of pediatrics in the Stanford Medical School.

Outsized threat

Tiny as it may be, the Aedes aegypti mosquito poses an outsized threat to global public health. It transmits a host of viruses, such as dengue, chikungunya, Zika and yellow fever, for which there are no vaccines or therapies. Human victims suffer a range of symptoms that can include life-threatening encephalitis and hemorrhage or debilitating arthritis that persists for years. The past two decades have seen mosquito-caused disease outbreaks grow increasingly common and unpredictable.

Countries on every continent except Antarctica have suffered a number of Aedes aegypti-spread virus outbreaks in recent years. These outbreaks have been underreported and infections often misdiagnosed in some African countries where public health efforts have long focused on night-time biting mosquitoes that transmit malaria. For example, the researchers found that residents in the study area had limited awareness of daytime-biting Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, and prioritized sleeping under bednets as a primary protection against mosquito-borne disease.

A new approach to source reduction

Because of a lack of piped water, most people in the region obtain water from rainfall and wells or boreholes. Many people also leave stored water uncovered in various containers. The researchers surveyed hundreds of residents and measured mosquito abundance in buckets, jerry cans and other water-holding containers - the most common breeding habitat for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

More than half of the mosquitoes the researchers found were in tires, buckets and small containers with no immediate purpose, and nearly 40 percent of the mosquitoes they found were in buckets used for laundry. Although tires accounted for less than 1 percent of all containers, they contained nearly a third of the mosquitoes the researchers found.

The findings suggest that reducing the number of unused containers lying around could be an efficient and effective means of mosquito control. Rather than try to cover or reduce the number of all water-holding containers or all containers of a certain type - a complex and difficult approach for community members to sustain - national and local health interventions should target the most likely mosquito-breeding habitats, such as laundry buckets and containers without a purpose, such as tires and trash, according to the researchers.

Key to the effort is education and empowerment, as well as community events such as trash clean-ups to manage the accumulation of purposeless containers, according to the researchers who emphasize that women and children are the most likely agents of change. Women, who are most likely to collect and store water for households, can use simple nets, such as torn bednets, to cover laundry buckets. Children, who are generally more willing to engage with new ideas and take up new behaviors, can collect unused containers or turn unused tires into toys so they won't collect water for mosquito breeding.

"It sounds simple, but targeting specific containers by purpose can have a huge impact," said study lead author Jenna Forsyth, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "It's low cost, requires relatively little behavior change and can be scaled up easily."

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 8, 2020 -- A team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory synthesized a tiny structure with high surface area and discovered how its unique architecture drives ions across interfaces to transport energy or information. Their "nanobrush" contains bristles made of alternating crystal sheets with vertically aligned interfaces and plentiful pores.

"These are major technical accomplishments and may prove useful in advancing energy and information technologies," said ORNL's Ho Nyung Lee, who led the study published in Nature Communications. "This is an excellent example of work that is only feasible with the unique expertise and capabilities available at national labs."

The team's researchers hail from DOE national labs Oak Ridge and Argonne and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, University of South Carolina, Columbia, and University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

The bristles of their multilayer crystal, or "supercrystal," are grown freestanding on a substrate. Former ORNL postdoctoral fellow Dongkyu Lee synthesized the supercrystals using pulsed laser epitaxy to deposit and build up alternating layers of fluorite-structure cerium oxide (CeO2) and bixbyite-structure yttrium oxide (Y2O3). Realization of the nanoscale bristles was made possible by the development of a novel precision synthesis approach that controls atom diffusion and aggregation during the growth of thin-film materials. Using scanning transmission electron microscopy, or STEM, former ORNL postdoctoral fellow Xiang Gao was surprised to discover atomically precise crystalline interfaces within the bristles.

To see the distribution of CeO2 and Y2O3 within the nanobrush, ORNL's Jonathan Poplawsky measured samples from the bristles using atom probe tomography, or APT, at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at ORNL. "APT is the only technique available that is capable of probing the three-dimensional positions of atoms in a material with sub-nanometer resolution and 10 parts per million chemical sensitivity," Poplawsky said. "APT clarifies the local distributions of atoms within a nanosized object and was an excellent platform for providing information about the 3D structure of the interface between the cerium oxide and yttrium oxide layers."

For a 2017 paper, the ORNL-led researchers used epitaxy by pulsed laser deposition to precisely synthesize nanobrushes with bristles containing only one compound. For the 2020 paper, they used the same method to layer two compounds, CeO2 and Y2O3, fabricating the first hybrid bristles with interfaces between the two materials. Traditionally, interfaces are aligned laterally by layering different crystals in thin films, whereas in the novel nanobrushes when grown on a particular surface, interfaces are aligned vertically through surface energy minimization in bristles that are only 10 nanometers wide -- about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

"This is a truly innovative way to build crystalline nanoarchitectures, providing unprecedented vertical interfaces that were never thought viable," Ho Nyung Lee said. "You cannot achieve these perfect crystalline architectures from any other synthesis method."

He added, "There are many ways to utilize interfaces, which is why 2000 Nobel Prize winner Herbert Kroemer said, 'the interface is the device.'" Conventionally, depositing layers of thin film materials on substrates creates interfaces that are horizontally aligned, allowing ions or electrons to move along the substrate's 2D plane. The ORNL-led achievement is proof of concept that it is possible to create vertically aligned interfaces through which electrons or ions can be transported out of the substrate's plane. Moreover, architectures like the nanobrush could be combined with other nanoscale architectures to create devices for quantum technologies and sensing as well as energy storage.

The low-energy configuration of the fluorite structure caused the formation of unique chevron patterns, or inverted "V" shapes. A slight mismatch between different structures of fluorite and bixbyite crystal subunits causes mismatch of the electronic charges at their interfaces, causing oxygen atoms to vacate the fluorite side, which leads to the formation of functional defects. The spaces that are left behind can form interfacial oxygen ions and create an atomic-scale channel through which the ions can flow. "We are using the interfaces not only to artificially create oxygen ions, but also to guide ion movement in a more deliberate way," Lee said.

With the help of ORNL's Matthew Chisholm, Gao used STEM to uncover the atomic structure of the crystal and electron energy-loss spectroscopy to reveal chemical and electronic insights about the interface. "We observed that a quarter of oxygen atoms are lost at the interfaces," said Chisholm. "We were also surprised by the chevron growth pattern. It was critical at the beginning to really understand how the interfaces form within the bristles."

The nanobrush has a high porosity, and its architecture is advantageous for applications needing large surface area to maximize electronic and chemical interactions, such as sensors, membranes and electrodes. But how could the scientists determine the porosity of their material? Neutrons -- neutral particles that pass through materials without destroying them -- provided an excellent tool for characterizing porosity of the bulk material. The scientists used resources of the Spallation Neutron Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility at ORNL, for extended Q-range small-angle neutron scattering that determined the upper limit of porosity to be 49%. "Quickly grown bristles can provide about 200 times as much surface area as a 2D thin film," said ORNL co-author Michael Fitzsimmons.

He added, "What we learn may advance applications of neutron science in the process. Whereas thin films do not provide sufficient surface area for neutron spectroscopy studies, ORNL's novel nanobrush architecture does, and could be a platform for learning more about interfacial materials when an even brighter neutron beam becomes available at SNS's Second Target Station, which is a funded construction project."

Theoretical calculations of the material system from the electronic and atomic level supported findings about oxygen-vacancy creation at the interfaces. MIT contributor Lixin Sun performed density functional theory calculations and molecular dynamics simulations under the direction of Bilge Yildiz.

"Our theoretical calculations revealed how this interface can accommodate a largely different chemistry at this type of unique interface compared to bulk materials," said Yildiz. The MIT calculations predicted the energy needed to remove a neutral oxygen atom to form a vacancy close to the interface or in the middle of a cerium oxide layer. "In particular, we found that a large fraction of oxygen ions is removed at the interface without deteriorating the lattice structure."

Lee said, "Indeed, these critical interfaces could form inside of nanobrush architectures, making them more promising than conventional thin films in many technological applications. Their much greater surface area and larger number of interfaces -- potentially, thousands inside each bristle -- may prove a game changer in future technologies in which the interface is the device."

ITHACA, N.Y. - New smart parking software developed by Cornell University researchers, which matches drivers with parking garage spots based on travel time and other factors, could reduce congestion and emissions while saving drivers the time of circling to look for available spots.

The system proposes an efficient price for customers and considers the walking distance from the parking spot. Using San Francisco parking data, the software decreased the amount of time spent looking for parking an estimated 64% per vehicle compared with other parking strategies.

"One of the key issues that causes congestion and extra emissions is cars cruising to look for parking," said H. Oliver Gao, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of systems engineering at Cornell University, and senior author of "A Scalable Non-Myopic Atomic Game for a Smart Parking Mechanism," which published in the journal Transportation Research Part E.

"Imagine if the parking garage was equipped with a smart software - they know where their empty spots are," said Gao, also a fellow with the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. "Drivers would come to an area and know which parking garage still has spots, and if you have software telling you the quickest path it will save you a lot of time, and it will also bring business to the parking garage."

Previous research shows that searching for parking creates 30% of the congestion in crowded areas, where drivers spend an average of 7.8 minutes looking for a spot. For example, a 2006 study found that vehicles in a 15-block range in Los Angeles' Westwood Village cruise more than 950,000 miles a year, wasting 47,000 gallons of gas and generating 730 tons of carbon dioxide.

The proposed parking app includes several functions such as walking distance, cruising time and parking facility occupancy. In addition to factoring in travel times, the new software includes a dynamic pricing policy that accounts for drivers' waiting times and offers priority to drivers willing to pay more.

The system incorporates an individual driver's preferences in order to make the most efficient collective decisions. The algorithm can be designed to minimize drivers' out-of-pocket costs - the price of parking - or to reduce a total cost that considers both money and time.

Gao hopes the software could eventually be used as an app connecting parking garages and drivers, as well as showing drivers the optimal paths to their destinations.

Research on traffic congestion generally focuses on improving traffic flow, Gao said, but improving parking systems not only eases the burden on individual drivers, it also gets cars off the streets faster and reduces congestion for everyone.

"Smart parking can actually help mitigate congestion and reduce emissions," he said. "When the car goes in the parking lot, it improves the on-road traffic."

Study filters consist of a defined combination of search terms to pre-select references with a specific study design as accurately as possible. Controlled NRS are presented very differently in databases. Without a special study filter for NRS, searches have therefore so far produced a very large number of hits, from which relevant NRS have to be filtered out manually in a very time-consuming process. With the help of the new study filters, the number of hits can now be markedly reduced when conducting a systematic search for NRS in the PubMed and Medline (Ovid) databases.

An IQWiG team developed two NRS search filters in collaboration with researchers from the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence & Impact at McMaster University/Canada. On the basis of 4544 pre-identified relevant NRS, the two new filters were developed with the help of the McMaster Clinical Hedges Database: The search filter for a comprehensive search identifies controlled NRS in PubMed and Medline with a high sensitivity of 92.17%. The second search filter is optimized for more focused searches for NRS and yields a specificity of 92.06%. Details on the development and validation of the search filters are now available in a publication.

An experimental study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania links a specific procedure - embryo culture - that is part of the assisted reproduction process (ART) to placental abnormalities, risk for preeclampsia, and abnormal fetal growth. The team, led by Marisa Bartolemei, PhD, a professor of Cell and Developmental Biology, published their findings today in Development.

Millions of births across the world have occurred with the aid of ART, and while its use continues to rise globally, this revolution in human reproduction does come with some problems, the underlying cause of these issues remain unclear.

"The question has always been, is increased risk a function of infertility or is it due to these procedures, because you're doing all these manipulations outside the normal environment," Bartolomei said.

Bartolomei and colleagues used a mouse model to study the effects of four individual ART procedures - hormone stimulation, in vitro fertilization (IVF), embryo culture and embryo transfer - on placental development and fetal growth. All four procedures led to reduced fetal weight at mid-gestation, and at late gestation groups utilizing embryo culture still had reduced fetal weight, larger placentas, and altered placental cell composition. The full IVF procedure led to an increased risk of preeclampsia, and the embryo culture procedure, a necessary component of IVF, was associated with defective methylation of placental DNA, which has the potential to result in abnormalities in the placenta and possible adverse effects on the fetus.

"With the ART process, there's hormone stimulation to produce eggs, the actual IVF, the embryo culture, and the embryo transfer procedure - there's a lot going on," said Lisa Vrooman, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow of Cell and Developmental Biology and first author on the paper. "In the mouse model, we were able to pull apart those four different procedures and look at how they individually contribute to placental development. We also looked at different time points - one close to placental formation, a mid-point, and then at term - to try to understand how placental development may be altered at these different time points."

ART procedures in mice cause placental abnormalities unrelated to underlying infertility. Researchers found that the embryo culture procedure - where the fertilization of the egg with the sperm takes place in a medium meant to replicate the essential nutrients found in the oviduct and is placed in an incubator meant to mimic the womb - had the strongest effects on abnormalities and adverse outcomes.

"ART is more art than science," Bartolomei said. "We don't really know exactly what's going on in the human body. Reproductive endocrinologists are looking at whether or not the embryo in the embryo culture developed in what we think is the right amount of time, with the right number of cells for the stage it's in, and so on. The embryo sits in culture for a week, as opposed to oviducts in the mother's body and the embryo culture is an attempt to simulate that environment."

The authors conclude that efforts should be focused on optimizing embryo culture to ensure healthy outcomes for mothers and offspring.

This study is part of a larger effort to investigate infertility and reproduction at Penn through the National Centers for Translational Research in Fertility and Reproduction. Bartolomei's research team partners with Christos Coutifaris, MD, PhD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Monica Mainigi, MD, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Jeremy Wang, MD, PhD, Professor of Developmental Biology at the School of Veterinary Medicine.

"This collaboration between clinical and basic researchers is designed to look at causes of infertility and when you have infertility using assisted reproduction, what are features that can be optimized for healthier outcomes - that's the goal of this work," said Bartolomei.