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The polar willow (Salix polaris) may not seem like much when you look at it -- just a jumble of tiny green leaves in a dense mat that pokes out of the tundra.

But beyond its humble appearance, this little shrub plays an outsized role when it comes to the creatures living in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.

It's not just that Svalbard's reindeer depend on it for food. It's also that how it grows reflects what happens with the growth of all other plants across the whole of Svalbard.

Now, researchers have found that the polar willow and other plants grow in synchrony across Svalbard, in direct response to July temperatures.

Mathilde Le Moullec, a postdoc at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Centre for Biodiversity Dynamics, has spent much of her academic career investigating all of the interlocking puzzle pieces that make the Svalbard plant and animal community work.

She's searched for reindeer for four summers as a way to get a highly accurate population estimate for the animals. She's hunted for old reindeer antlers and bones during those years, so she could carbon date them.

All of that information combined allowed her to see where on Svalbard the animals formerly lived, and how their populations had changed over time. She used all this information to document how Svalbard's reindeer population rebounded after being hunted down to very low numbers for centuries.

But Le Moullec realized she needed to look beyond just reindeer to have a deeper understanding of the whole ecosystem.

"Salix is an important part of their main diet, especially because there is almost no lichen on Svalbard," she said. One study found that lichen makes up just 2 per cent of the diets of Svalbard reindeer, she said.

By studying what controls the growth of the polar willow across Svalbard, "you can also see how climate is affecting primary production in different places," meaning growth of things like plants, which are at the base of the food chain, she said. "It also gives you a window on what different reindeer populations have to eat."

Another advantage of studying something like the polar willow is that "you can go to one place, one time, dig up a willow, and come back with 40 years or more of data," she said.

So that's what she did. In 2015, when two friends offered the use of their sailboat Sillage to help her reach some of Svalbard's more remote locations to count reindeer, she and her friend Morgen Bender, a PhD candidate from UiT -- The Arctic University of Norway also set about digging up polar willows.

Thirty of their plants came from Semmeldalen, in south central Svalbard. The advantage of Semmeldalen was that René van der Wal, a professor at the University of Aberdeen and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who worked with Le Moullec on other willow research, had established a long-term study of plants there starting in 1998.

But that was only the beginning.

Because then she and colleague Lisa Sandal, then a master's student in the Department of Biology, had to count the microscopic growth rings in this miniature arctic shrub.

Even though some of the willows being studied were more than 40 years old -- the oldest was 70 -- the growth rings were teeny-tiny.

"The entire root is the thickness of the tip of a fork, it is just a few millimetres across," Le Moullec said. "Each growth ring is just a few micrometres, so we cut cross sections that are a cell thickness of two micrometres."

To put that in perspective, a strand of spider's web silk is 3-8 micrometres in diameter.

The researchers also had to look at multiple cross sections from each plant.

That's because some shrubs might not put on growth rings every year. Or the cross section might only have partial growth rings on one side that the researchers might not see, depending on where in the plant the cross section came from.

They put the cross sections under a powerful microscope and took photographs -- as many as 70 for a cross section -- so they could merge the pictures together to make a single stunningly beautiful photo with a great amount of detail.

"The lab part took almost two years," Le Moullec said. "One person couldn't do it alone. And with Lisa, we joked the whole time, if this research never becomes science, we can sell it as art. "

In fact, one of the images won the British Ecological Society's 2018 Capturing Ecology photo competition in the Art of Ecology category.

"Fortunately, the art also became science!" Le Moullec said.

The shrub rings show distinctive patterns, year by year, based on how good or poor the growing conditions were. But the researchers wanted to know if one particular weather factor was more important than others in determining how well the plants would grow.

Certain years, called pointer years, are very good growth years for all plants. That makes the pointer year rings easy to find, making them like a time stamp in the rings of each willow. Using the pointer years enabled the researchers to figure out if some willows were missing growth years, or if the cross section they had might have had a ring that grew on only one side.

They needed to know this to know the year of formation for each growth ring for each shrub.

From there it was a matter of looking at weather data across Svalbard, and looking at five different weather-related factors to see which were best reflected in tree ring growth.

These factors were the onset of spring, amount of snowfall, rain-on-snow events, summer temperature and summer precipitation.

Of all these factors, July temperature was the most important for willows growing in all 8 sites. Yes, across a huge archipelago, July temperatures ruled for willow -- and had an effect for all other vegetation there, causing vegetation to grow in lock-step. That also has significance for grazing animals, like reindeer.

Researchers have seen this kind of synchronous pattern before, in boreal or temperate forests, where summer temperatures have a coordinating effect on tree growth across large areas. But this is the first time this kind of research has been done in the Arctic, Le Moullec said, and in a tree where the largest structure -- the root -- is half the size of your pinkie finger.

Le Moullec and her colleagues did find another factor that negatively affected willow growth in some areas, and that was rain-on-snow events. These are exactly what they sound like -- a weather event where rain falls on snow, and then the plants become covered in a thick layer of ice which seals them away from the air and essentially smothers them until the ice melts away.

In earlier research, Le Moullec's supervisor, Brage Bremset Hansen, documented how rain-on-snow events could cause widespread problems for reindeer populations, ultimately causing a ripple effect for the other species that overwinter on Svalbard.

Researchers expect more rain-on-snow events on Svalbard as increasing climate change causes arctic temperatures to skyrocket.

As a result, the relative importance of seasons for growth patterns may change, Le Moullec said. Because the effect of rain-on-snow was so different in different parts of Svalbard, the synchronizing effect of July temperature on vegetation growth may be weakened over time, she said.

On one hand, that could be better for the overall health of the ecosystem, because when one area has a bad growth year, other areas may do fine. As a consequence, even though reindeer in areas with poor growth may have a hard time surviving, not all reindeer populations on the island will be equally affected.

On the other hand, if rain-on-snow become widespread all across Svalbard, all populations may have a hard time simultaneously.

Van der Wal, who has worked with Le Moullec although not on this study, said he was impressed by her "painstaking but elegant work."

"We knew that warm summers allowed high arctic plants to grow well, but always believed that this was what happened above ground. For Mathilde to show that good years above ground also means good growth below ground, and for this to reflect the productivity of all higher plants together is a major step forward," he said.

Perhaps no region of the brain is more fittingly named than the claustrum, taken from the Latin word for "hidden or shut away." The claustrum is an extremely thin sheet of neurons deep within the cortex, yet it reaches out to every other region of the brain. Its true purpose remains "hidden away" as well, with researchers speculating about many functions. For example, Francis Crick of DNA-discovery fame believed that the claustrum is the seat of consciousness, responsible for awareness and sense of self.

What is known is that this region contains a large number of receptors targeted by psychedelic drugs such as LSD or psilocybin ¾ the hallucinogenic chemical found in certain mushrooms. To see what happens in the claustrum when people are on psychedelics, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers compared the brain scans of people after they took psilocybin with their scans after taking a placebo.

Their findings were published online on May 23, 2020, in the journal NeuroImage.

The scans after psilocybin use showed that the claustrum was less active, meaning the area of the brain believed responsible for setting attention and switching tasks is turned down when on the drug. The researchers say that this ties in with what people report as typical effects of psychedelic drugs, including feelings of being connected to everything and reduced senses of self or ego.

"Our findings move us one step closer to understanding mechanisms underlying how psilocybin works in the brain," says Frederick Barrett, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of the school's Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. "This will hopefully enable us to better understand why it's an effective therapy for certain psychiatric disorders, which might help us tailor therapies to help people more."

Because of its deep-rooted location in the brain, the claustrum has been difficult to access and study. Last year, Barrett and his colleagues at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, developed a method to detect brain activity in the claustrum using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

For this new study, the researchers used fMRI with 15 people and observed the claustrum brain region after the participants took either psilocybin or a placebo. They found that psilocybin reduced neural activity in the claustrum by 15% to 30%. This lowered activity also appeared to be associated with stronger subjective effects of the drug, such as emotional and mystical experiences. The researchers also found that psilocybin changed the way that the claustrum communicated with brain regions involved in hearing, attention, decision-making and remembering.

With the highly detailed imaging of the claustrum provided by fMRI, the researchers next hope to look at the mysterious brain region in people with certain psychiatric disorders such as depression and substance use disorder. The goal of these experiments will be to see what roles, if any, the claustrum plays in these conditions. The researchers also plan to observe the claustrum's activity when under the influence of other psychedelics, such as salvinorin A, a hallucinogen derived from a Mexican plant.

What kind of interactions did the various Stone Age cultures have with one another? In a new interdisciplinary study, researchers have combined archaeological and genetic information to better understand Battle Axe cultural influences discovered in graves of the Pitted Ware culture. The findings are published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.

Archaeological remains have shown that in the middle part the Stone Age, there were at least three different but partially contemporary cultural groups in Sweden. The groups are often called: Funnel Beaker culture, which is associated with Scandinavia's first farmers; Pitted Ware culture, which is mainly linked to fishing and hunting; and Battle Axe culture, which represents a blended culture of herding and farming.

In addition to sustaining themselves in different ways, the three groups had different burial rituals and different kinds of objects. The research team behind the new study has previously been able to show that people in the three cultural groups also differed genetically.

The genetic mapping the researchers did at that time was invaluable as they investigated why some Pitted Ware graves seemed to be influenced by the Battle Axe culture, even though the two cultures lived relatively differently during their centuries of co-existence.

Gotland has several large, well-preserved cemeteries with typical Pitted Ware culture graves. The dead were usually buried lying on their backs and with gifts, such as hunting tools and bones from seals, among other things. Neither large stone blocks nor mounds were placed on the graves.

"In addition to the typical Pitted Ware graves, there were also several atypical graves with apparent influences from Battle Axe culture. For example, some individuals were buried lying on their sides with their legs pulled up, and some had battle axes as burial gifts, which is usually associated with Battle Axe culture," says Professor Jan Storå, archaeologist at Stockholm University and one of the authors of the study.

The researchers have analysed DNA from 25 Stone Age individuals from four Pitted Ware culture burial grounds on Gotland. About half of the individuals were buried in typical Pitted Ware culture graves and the other half of the graves showed influences from Battle Axe culture.

To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the individuals were genetically related to people from Battle Axe culture. On the contrary, everyone appeared to belong to a very homogeneous group that demonstrated the most genetic similarity to the hunter-gatherer groups of earlier periods.

"This is a unique study that contributes to our understanding of the interactions between the cultural groups of the Stone Age. We can conclude that people in Pitted Ware culture were influenced by, among others, Battle Axe culture, but because we found no genetic connection between the groups, contact was likely in the form of trade and other means, rather than through migration," says Helena Malmström, archaeogeneticist at Uppsala University and one of the authors of the study.

EL PASO, Texas - The contributions of researchers from The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) have yielded the first indication that carbon quantum dots, a class of nanoparticles, can be utilized to combat neurological disorders, according to a paper published in the journal Processes as part its special issue on protein biosynthesis and drug design and delivery.

The study, titled "Untangling the Potential of Carbon Quantum Dots in Neurodegenerative Disease," was co-authored by Sreeprasad T. Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Mahesh Narayan, Ph.D., assistant professor and professor, respectively, in UTEP's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The pair contributed to work by Prakash Narayan, Ph.D., vice president of preclinical research for Angion Biomedica Corp. in Uniondale, New York; and Lindsey Jung, a student at Tenafly High School in New Jersey, who works under Prakash Narayan's supervision.

The study focuses on carbon quantum dots (CQDs), biofriendly materials synthesized from waste materials such as wood, fruit peel, algae and even salmon. A road map laid out by the research team addresses, for the first time, key requirements for the transitioning of their use from environmental-sensing applications into the neurodegenerative domain; a crossing-over that requires their separation and total characterization, including aspects related to safety and their ability to target specific receptors in the brain.

"The carbonaceous quanta are finally making their way from physics into chemistry and now, biology," Prakash Narayan said. "This work lays the foundation for harnessing the enormous potential of carbon quantum dots for therapeutic intervention in neuro disease."

The CQDs are made by "pressure-cooking" waste biomaterials such as fruit peel, amino acids, algae and even fish. As an outcome of the procedure, they are synthesized as a mixture of carbon dots and non-carbon dots. Some of the compounds in the mixture can be toxic. This aspect would negate their use in biomedical applications.

To facilitate the crossing-over of CQDs into preclinical and eventually clinical use, the research team provides a path for their safe use while demonstrating their potential to both prevent and treat neurodegenerative disorders, Mahesh Narayan said.

The research was conducted at Angion Biomedica, and at UTEP's Functional Quantum Materials Laboratory and the Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Research.

The transitioning of CQD applications from electrochemistry, catalysis and environmental sensing to biomedicine represents an important milestone in its 15-year history; a bellwether for its yet-unrealized potential in interventional biology, imaging, diagnostics, prophylaxis and therapy.

"This will allow pharmaceutical companies to tailor carbon quantum dots for specific uses," Mahesh Narayan said. "Individuals with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's could benefit greatly from this kind of therapy."

Scientists at the University of Liverpool and University of Utrecht have taken another step forward on their quest to develop a viable drug based on teixobactin - a new class of potent natural antibiotic capable of killing superbugs.

Research published in Nature Communications provides fundamental new insights into how teixobactins kill bacteria, including the discovery of a new killing mechanism that could help inform the design of improved teixobactin-based drugs.

Teixobactin was hailed as a 'game changer' when it was discovered in 2015 due to its ability kill multi-drug resistant bacterial pathogens such as MRSA without developing resistance. If made suitable for humans, it would mark the first new class of antibiotic drug for 30 years.

Dr Ishwar Singh, an expert in Antimicrobial Drug Discovery and Development and Medicinal Chemistry at Liverpool's Centre of Excellence in Infectious Diseases Research, has led pioneering research over the past six years to develop teixobactin-based viable drugs. His research team was the first in the world to successfully create simplified synthetic forms of teixobactins which are effective in treating bacterial infections in mice.

Dr Singh explained: "We know that the therapeutic potential of simplified synthetic teixobactins is immense, and our ultimate goal is to have a number of viable drugs from our synthetic teixobactin platform which can be used as a last line of defence against superbugs to save lives."

In collaboration with NMR expert Professor Markus Weingarth at the University of Utrecht, the team used high resolution solid state NMR, and microscopy to show, for the first time, how synthetic teixobactins bind to lipid II (an essential component of the bacterial membrane) and kill the bacteria.

Dr Singh said: "It had been assumed that teixobactins kill the bacteria by binding to bacterial cell wall bricks such as lipid II, but never shown until now. Our work also suggests that teixobactins kill the bacteria by capturing lipid II in massive clusters, a new killing mechanism, which we were excited to discover."

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a grave threat to human health and prosperity. The O'Neill report, commissioned by the UK government and published in 2016, suggests that without action AMR will cause the deaths of 10 million people a year by 2050. The development of new antibiotics is therefore a crucial area of study for scientists around the world.

Dr Singh added: "A significant amount of work remains in the development of teixobactins as a therapeutic antibiotic for human use. Our study is a real step in right direction and opens the door for improving teixobactins and moving these toward clinic.

"So far, we have demonstrated that we can make teixobactins which are effective in treating infections from resistant bacterial pathogens and understand their binding modes in a bacterial membrane. Now we need to expand our understanding on mode of action on a library of teixobactins with different bacterial membranes to develop a catalogue of molecules which have potential to become a drug for human use."

A new study has revealed that almost 13,000 tonnes of microfibres, equivalent to two rubbish trucks every day, are being released into European marine environments every year - but this could be reduced by as much as 30% if we made a small change to our laundry habits.

The findings have been published by the scientific journal PLOS ONE today (Friday 5 June), ahead of World Oceans Day on Monday 8 June.

Every time you wash your clothes, thousands of tiny microfibres from the fabric are released into rivers, the sea and the ocean, causing marine pollution. Scientists have speculated for some time that these microfibres may cause more harm than microbeads, which were banned from UK and US consumer products in recent years.

Researchers from Northumbria University worked in partnership with Procter & Gamble, makers of Ariel, Tide, Downy and Lenor on the first major forensic study into the environmental impact of microfibres from real soiled household laundry.

Their forensic analysis revealed an average of 114 mg of microfibres were released per kilogram of fabric in each wash load during a standard washing cycle.

Given that a 2013 AISE report suggested 35.6 billion wash loads are completed in 23 European countries each year, the researchers suggest a massive 12,709 tonnes of microfibres are being released from washing machines into rivers, the sea and the ocean each year in Europe alone. This is the equivalent of two rubbish trucks worth of waste ending up in marine environments each day.

However, the researchers achieved a 30% reduction in the amount of microfibres released when they performed a 30-minute 15?C wash cycle, in comparison to a standard 85-minute 40?C cycle, based on typical domestic laundering.

If households changed to cooler, faster washes, they would potentially save 3,813 tonnes of microfibres being released into marine ecosystems in Europe.

The researchers found even more significant differences when they compared different microfibre release from different types of North American washing machines.

Households in North America and Canada have historically used high volume traditional top loading washing machines with an average 64 litre wash water volume. The market is gradually moving to high-efficiency machines which use up to 50% less water and energy per load.

As a consequence, these high-efficiency machines released less microfibres than traditional top-loading machines, with notable examples including a 70% reduction in microfibres from polyester fleece fabrics and a 37% reduction from polyester T-shirts.

Other key findings emerging from the study include:

Larger wash loads led to a decrease in the release of microfibres, due to a lower ratio of water to fabric. As such, the research team advises consumers fill - but do not overfill - their washing machines. A correctly filled washing machine should be around three-quarters full.

New clothes release more microfibres than older clothes. Microfibre release was more prominent in new clothes during the first eight washes.

Fabric softeners were found to have no direct impact on microfibre release when tested in both European and North American washing conditions.

A novel aspect of the study was the involvement of forensics expertise from Dr Kelly Sheridan, an expert in forensic textile fibres who has worked on several high-profile murder cases. Her guidance ensured the research could be conducted without cross-contamination of fibres from other sources.

The team applied test methods used in forensic science, such as spectroscopic and microscopy techniques, to examine the structure and composition of the microfibres released from the clothing. This enabled the fibres to be weighed and characterised to determine the ratios of manmade to natural fibres being released from wash loads.

The researchers found that 96% of the fibres released were natural, coming from cotton, wool and viscose, with synthetic fibres, such as nylon, polyester and acrylic accounting for just 4%.

A positive point to note is that the natural fibres from plant and animal sources biodegrade much more rapidly than synthetic fibres. A previous study has identified that cotton fibres degraded by 76% after almost eight months in wastewater, compared to just 4% deterioration in polyester fibres. This means that natural fibres will continue to degrade over time, whereas petroleum-based microfibres plateaued and can be expected to remain in aquatic environments for a much longer period.

John R. Dean, Professor of Analytical and Environmental Sciences at Northumbria University, who led the study, said: "This is the first major study to examine real household wash loads and the reality of fibre release. We were surprised not only by the sheer quantity of fibres coming from these domestic wash loads, but also to see that the composition of microfibres coming out of the washing machine does not match the composition of clothing going into the machine, due to the way fabrics are constructed.

"Finding an ultimate solution to the pollution of marine ecosystems by microfibres released during laundering will likely require significant interventions in both textiles manufacturing processes and washing machine appliance design."

Dr Neil Lant, Research Fellow at Procter & Gamble, said: "This study has proven that consumer choices in the way they do their laundry can have a significant and immediate impact on microfibre pollution. These won't eliminate the issue but could achieve a meaningful short-term reduction while other solutions such as washing machine filters and low-shedding clothing are developed and commercialised."

The researchers say that the study provides evidence for appliance manufacturers to introduce filtering systems into the design of machines and develop approaches to reduce water consumption in laundry. Procter & Gamble laundry products, such as Ariel Pods, are suited to low temperatures and the company intends to use this evidence to bring further innovations to enable consumers to wash with low temperatures without compromising on performance.

They also hope it will encourage textile manufacturers to help by conducting filtered pre-washing to remove the most labile fibres which can easily break down and displace.

The study is a further example of the work undertaken at Northumbria University which led to it being ranked 6th in the UK and 27th globally for sustainability last month.

NASA's Aqua satellite gathered infrared imagery and cloud top temperature data on Tropical Depression Cristobal, and it revealed the heavy rainmaking capability of the storm.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasts Cristobal to track northward through the Gulf of Mexico and toward Louisiana's coast. Watches and warnings have gone into effect.

On June 5, the NHC issued a Storm Surge Watch for the northern Gulf of Mexico coast from Indian Pass to Arepika, Florida, and from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, including Lake Borgne. In addition, a Tropical Storm Watch has been issued for the northern Gulf of Mexico coast from Intracoastal City Louisiana to the Alabama/Florida border, including Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas.

Infrared Imagery and Cloud Top Temperatures

NASA's Aqua satellite used infrared light to analyze the strength of storms in Cristobal. Infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures. On June 5 at 4:05 a.m. EDT (0805 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite gathered temperature information about Cristobal's cloud tops.

MODIS found several areas of powerful thunderstorms where temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 Celsius). Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms with the potential to generate heavy rainfall. Those areas were located over Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, northeastern Guatemala, and out over the Eastern Pacific Ocean just off the coast of the Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca.

NHC rainfall forecasts for Mexico's Yucatan and Central America called for large quantities of rainfall. NHC noted of expected rainfall, "Mexican states of Campeche, Quintana Roo, and Yucatan...Additional 4 to 6 inches, isolated storm totals of 25 inches. Belize and the Mexican states of Tabasco and Oaxaca...Additional 4 to 6 inches, isolated storm totals of 12 inches. Southern Guatemala, coastal portions of Chiapas, and El Salvador...Additional 4 to 6 inches, isolated storm total amounts of 35 inches dating back to Saturday, May 30. Southern parts of Honduras...Additional 3 to 4 inches, isolated 8 inches." Rainfall across Southeast Mexico and northern Central America would continue the risk of life-threatening flash floods and mudslides.

NHC forecasters said, as Cristobal moves north through the Gulf of Mexico, "Through Wednesday morning, for portions of the eastern and central Gulf Coast and the lower Mississippi Valley, rainfall accumulations of 4 to 8 inches, with local amounts to 12 inches, are forecast."

Cristobal's Status on June 6, 2020

The NHC said at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on June 6, the center of Tropical Depression Cristobal was located near latitude 20.0 degrees north and longitude 89.9 degrees west. That puts the center about 40 miles (65 km) east of Campeche, Mexico. The depression was moving toward the north near 12 mph (19 kph), and this general motion is expected to continue for the next couple of days. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1000 millibars. Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph (55 kph).

NHC Forecast for Cristobal

On the NHC forecast track, the center will move back over the southern Gulf of Mexico this evening, over the central Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, and be near the northern Gulf of Mexico coast Sunday evening. Some strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours, and Cristobal is expected to regain tropical storm strength later today. Some additional strengthening is forecast thereafter.

Typhoons/hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

URBANA, Ill. - New Illinois ECE research is advancing the field of optical microscopy, giving the field a critical new tool to solve challenging problems across many fields of science and engineering including semiconductor wafer inspection, nanoparticle sensing, material characterization, biosensing, virus counting, and microfluidic monitoring.

The question is often asked, "Why can we not see or sense nanoscale objects under a light microscope?" The textbook answers are that their relative signals are weak, and their separation is smaller than Abbe's resolution limit.

However, the Illinois ECE research team, led by Illinois ECE Professor Lynford L Goddard, along with postdoc Jinlong Zhu, and PhD student Aditi Udupa, is challenging these cornerstone principles with a brand-new optical framework.

Their work, published in Nature Communications opens new doors to using optical microscopy to unravel difficult problems that impact our daily lives.

"Our work is significant not only because it advances scientific understanding of optical imaging but also because it enables researchers to directly visualize unlabeled objects that have deep sub-wavelength separations. We can see nanoscale structure without performing any image post-processing" said Goddard.

The team's breakthroughs began in May 2018 when Zhu and Goddard stumbled upon a remarkable result in one of their simulations. "At the time, we were conducting a theoretical study on wafer defect inspection and needed to build a simulation tool to model how light propagates through a microscope system. When we saw the simulation result for one of the configurations, we were quite confused by it," Goddard recalls. "We worked day and night for the next three months trying to understand the physics behind it. Once we developed a closed form analytic expression that explained what was going on, we could devise an experiment to test our hypotheses."

However, it would take another five months of trial and error to learn how to build and align the optical system such that the experimental configuration replicated the model assumptions. Meanwhile, Ms. Udupa fabricated suitable test samples at both the Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory and the Materials Research Laboratory with the assistance of Dr. Edmond Chow and Dr. Tao Shang. In January 2019, the team finally realized the necessary experimental conditions and directly visualized their first set of deep sub-wavelength objects.

"Using a standard optical microscope to visualize nanometric objects is extremely challenging not only because of the diffraction barrier, but also the weak signal," said Zhu. "Our experiment had to utilize two new and interesting physical concepts, anti-symmetric excitation and non-resonance amplification, to boost the signal-to-noise ratio of the nanoscale objects."

The team demonstrated the technique can sense both free-form and fixed-form nanoscale objects across a wide field of view (726-μm × 582-μm) using a low numerical aperture objective (0.4 NA). Zhu explains, "We were quite lucky that some of the nanowires on our test sample shown above had fabrication imperfections. This allowed us to demonstrate the visualization of sub-20 nm defects in a semiconductor chip. In the future, one may also apply our method for the visualizable sensing of biological objects (e.g., viruses or molecule clusters) by choosing nanowires with optimized geometry and proper refractive index and patterning functional groups around nanowires. Once target analytes are trapped, they act as objects that may be directly visualized from the optical images."

Diamonds, those precious, sparkling jewels, are known as the hardest materials on Earth. They are a high-pressure form of carbon and found deep in the ground.

While diamonds are commonly thought of as hard and stable, carbon from about 100 miles beneath the African plate is being brought to shallower levels where diamond will become unstable. Molten rock (magma) brings the excess carbon towards the surface, and earthquakes open cracks that allow the carbon to be released into the air as carbon dioxide.

PhD student Sarah Jaye Oliva and Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Marshall-Heape Chair in Geology Cynthia Ebinger are among a group of international researchers who co-authored a paper "Displaced cratonic mantle concentrates deep carbon during continental rifting," which was published in the journal Nature on June 3.

"Somewhat amusedly," Ebinger said, "the paper is evidence that Diamonds Aren't Forever."

The pair report on their findings about the African continent splitting in two and the massive amounts of CO2 (carbon dioxide) being released into the atmosphere.

Ebinger said of her student, "Sarah Jaye contributed to the gas measurements, and she analyzed the deep structure and state-of-stress data that enabled us to deduce the process leading to the excess CO2 in some rift zones."

Oliva participated in a month-long campaign in 2018 to sample gases released diffusely through the soil and at springs that dot the East African Rift System in Tanzania.

Through the sampling, Oliva and other researchers found that CO2 fluxes [flows] and the number of earthquakes are highest where the rift intersects the edge of the ancient, thick cratonic plate that is more than 60 km (about 37 miles) thicker than the adjoining area.

Oliva said this made sense because the steep edge of the bottom of the plate is "where we expect magmas (molten rock material within the Earth that will cool to form igneous rock) to form and where faulting and fracture networks should be most intense."

"The resulting faults and fissures, we think, act as conduits through the crust that concentrate fluxes of CO2 sourced from beneath," said Oliva.

Modeling by the researchers also suggests that the mantle underneath the study region may be enriched in carbon due to the local erosion of the cratonic lithosphere that may even contain diamonds. (A craton is an old and stable part of the continental lithosphere, which consists of the Earth's two topmost layers, the crust and the uppermost mantle.)

"The eroded material could melt as it moves towards thinner lithosphere, and this would be another factor in increasing the CO2 flux through the rift valley margin," said Oliva.

She added, "Participating in this project was extremely rewarding for me. We, as seismologists, geodynamicists, structural geologists and geochemists all came together to understand how rifts help mobilize CO2 that is sequestered in the deep Earth. This newly liberated CO2 ultimately influences Earth's climate over geologic time, temporarily contributing to global warming."

An international study by the Institute of Neuroscience of the UAB (INC-UAB), Emory University and Hospital Universitario La Paz, published in the PNAS journal, shows that patients suffering from Lesch-Nyhan, a rare neurological disease, present biochemical alterations in skin cells (fibroblasts), urine and cerebrospinal fluid. Researchers have also discovered why these alterations had not been observed before: the high levels of folic acid (B9 vitamin) usually used in cell cultures reverse them. This is a key discovery to advance in the research of this disease and its treatment, which may also have implications in the research of other pathologies, especially in those in which nucleotide metabolism is affected.

Lesch-Nyhan is a rare genetical disease, affecting 1 in 380,000 newborns. Patients suffer from overproduction of uric acid, anemia, severe neurological problems, and compulsive self-injurious behavior. The pathology is caused by a deficiency of HGprt, an enzyme that participates in the metabolism of purine nucleotides. Purines regulate many biological processes and are part of the basic structure of DNA and RNA. They can be synthesized in two different metabolic pathways: the de novo synthesis, from simple precursors, such as amino acids and folic acid derivatives; and the salvage pathway, a recycling system where HGprt participates, in which the cell saves energy. A HGprt deficiency causes the acceleration of the de novo synthesis pathway to try to compensate the system.

Since measuring the nucleotide concentration in the brain of a living patient is not feasible, scientists often use cell cultures. However, the studies conducted until now in Lesch-Nyhan patients' cultured cells have never revealed any abnormalities in their nucleotide content. In this work, led by José Manuel López from the INC-UAB, and in collaboration with H. A. Jinnah from Emory University in Atlanta, and Rosa Torres from the Hospital Universitario La Paz in Madrid, the researchers show that these alterations could not be detected because, in most laboratories, cells are maintained in mediums that have extremely higher levels of folic acid than physiological concentrations.

"Culture mediums usually have 100 times more folic acid than the levels found in blood. This is for cells to divide and grow faster in a culture plate, but it does not reproduce what happens in the body", explains José Manuel López.

In this study, published in PNAS, researchers used physiological levels of folic acid in their culture mediums and observed two important alterations in patients' fibroblasts. Firstly, an accumulation of ZMP, an intermediate product in the de novo nucleotide synthesis that is potentially toxic; and secondly, a reduction in ATP, the most abundant purine nucleotide in cells, which is essential for obtaining energy. Researchers also found ZMP derivatives increased in the urine and cerebrospinal fluid of patients, concluding that the alterations detected in fibroblasts can also occur in the brain and in other tissues.

"We present cell culture conditions that allow for the study of the mechanisms involved in the development of this disease. Our study also suggests a possible treatment, since the alterations observed in the cultures are reversed with high levels of folic acid", indicates José Manuel López.

According to the researchers, the study may have highly relevant consequences, since manipulating folic acid levels can be a valuable strategy to study the pathogenesis of this rare disease, for which there is no known treatment. The discovery could also have implications in the research of other diseases in which high concentrations of folic acid in the culture medium could be masking cellular alterations, such as those in which nucleotide metabolism is affected.

A new study led by Queen Mary University of London has demonstrated the effectiveness of using a novel light technology to monitor the presence of anti-drug antibodies in the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS), which can lead to drug resistance and treatment failure.

The researchers say that they have also applied the technology to COVID-19 for potential use in antibody testing to determine whether someone has previously been infected with the virus.

Antibodies are proteins that are made by the immune system to fight infection. They can also be used as drugs to fight disease. Alemtuzumab is an antibody designed to kill T and B cells - the major cellular components of the adaptive immune response - and was first used in white blood cell cancers and more recently in MS. However, this can sometimes result in the production of anti-drug antibodies, which prevent Alemtuzumab from working as effectively and lead to patients not responding to treatment.

The GloBody™ platform is a new tool which uses a light-producing enzyme, called nanoluciferase, to detect if anti-drug antibodies are present in a patient sample, which can cause allergies and stop the treatment from working. This is used to show which people are likely to respond to treatment and can predict which people are likely to fail treatment before it occurs, so that they can be switched to a different drug. This can prevent people from accumulating disability due to treatment failure.

This study, published in the journal Neurology: Neuroimmunology & Neuroinflammation and carried out in collaboration with Cardiff University, demonstrated the high reliability of using the GloBody™ platform to detect the anti-drug antibodies and predict which patients were subsequently likely to fail treatment.

The results from the study can be used to improve the safety of drug treatments for MS, and testing has already been moved into the researchers' and others' clinical practices. The researchers hope that their work will help more people to recognise the importance of anti-drug antibodies and use a simple method to monitor these in patients and avoid the issues that they cause.

Lead researcher Dr Angray Kang from Queen Mary University of London said: "Although we only looked at anti-drug antibody responses in multiple sclerosis, this approach can be applied to any therapeutic antibody in any clinical condition. The technology can also be used in pre-clinical animal models, saving time and effort before moving to clinical trials in humans.

"If you can predict that a drug will not work in a patient, then you prevent them from receiving futile and often expensive treatments. Some of these treatments cost the NHS close to half a million pounds per person a year, so being able to tell if a treatment is not working is important so you can quickly switch to something else."

The researchers say that the technology has also been developed to detect immune responses against infections and monitor disease outbreaks, including COVID-19.

Dr Kang added: "With COVID-19, we know there has been a lot of attention on the potential of antibody testing to see if someone has previously been infected. The GloBody™ tests have potential to be applied to COVID-19 in this way. Some antibody tests will only give you a 'yes' or 'no' answer, however GloBody™ technology could tell you how much antibody is present and if the antibodies can block re-infection. This will be needed when assessing the effectiveness of a vaccine.

"Within a few days, we have already been able to produce sufficient amounts of the COVID-19 GloBody™ reagent to potentially test 1.6 million people for COVID-19. That's enough to test all of the NHS staff in the UK. And if the virus mutates, a new test could be made just as quickly."

The researchers caution that any GloBody™ COVID-19 antibody test would first need to be validated as an accurate test before being put into widespread use. The validation process has started within Barts Health NHS Trust and Queen Mary University of London.

Using a unique combination of nanoscale imaging and chemical analysis, an international team of researchers has revealed a key step in the molecular mechanism behind the water splitting reaction of photosynthesis, a finding that could help inform the design of renewable energy technology.

"Life depends on the oxygen that plants and algae split from water; how they do it is still a mystery, but scientists, including our team, are slowly peeling away the layers to get to the answer," said Vittal K. Yachandra, co-lead author of a new study published in PNAS and a chemist senior scientist at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). "If we can understand this step of natural photosynthesis, it would enable us to use those design principles for building artificial photosynthetic systems that produce clean and renewable energy from sunlight and water."

With an instrument that the team designed and fabricated, they analyzed photosynthetic proteins using both X-ray crystallography and X-ray emission spectroscopy. This dual approach, which the team pioneered and have been refining for the past 10 years, generates chemical and protein structure information from the same sample at the same time. The imaging was performed with the X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) at the LCLS at SLAC National Laboratory, and at SACLA in Japan.

"With this technique, we get the overall picture of how the entire protein structure dynamically changes and we see the chemical intricacies occurring at the reaction site," said co-lead author Junko Yano, a chemist senior scientist in Berkeley Lab's Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division. "The X-ray free electron laser produces extremely bright, short bursts of X-rays that allow us to not only analyze a protein at room temperature, which is how these reactions occur in nature, but also capture various moments over the reaction time scale."

Traditional crystallography methods often require the sample proteins to be frozen; consequently, they can only generate snapshots of static proteins. This limitation makes it difficult for scientists to get a handle on how proteins actually behave in living organisms, because the molecules morph between different physical states during chemical reactions.

"The water-splitting reaction in photosynthesis is a cyclical process that needs four photons and cycles between four stable 'states,'" said Yano. "Previously, we could only take pictures of these four states. But by taking multiple snapshots in time, we now can visualize how one state goes to the other."

"We saw, really nicely, how the structure changes step-by-step as it transforms from one state to the next state," said Jan F. Kern, MBIB chemist and co-author. "It is pretty exciting, because we can see the 'cause and effect' and the role that each moving atom plays in this transition."

Nicholas K. Sauter, co-author and MBIB computational senior scientist, added: "Essentially, we're trying to take a 'movie' of a chemical reaction. We made a lot of progress to get to this point, in terms of our technology and our computational analyses. The work of our co-author Paul Adams and others in MBIB was critical to interpreting the XFEL and X-ray data. But we still have to get the other frames to see how the reaction is completed and the enzyme is ready for the next cycle."

The Berkeley Lab researchers hope to continue the project once the many research sites that the entire international team relies upon - located in the U.S., Japan, Switzerland, and South Korea - are operating normally following the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kern concluded by noting that the technological milestone presented in this paper benefited greatly from the diverse expertise of the authors from SLAC, Uppsala and Umeå Universities in Sweden, Humboldt University in Germany, and from the capabilities of five DOE Office of Science user facilities: the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and LCLS at Stanford University, and the Advanced Light Source, Energy Sciences Network, and National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Berkeley Lab.

INDIANAPOLIS - The largest study to date of electronic dental records delves into both previously inaccessible data and data from understudied populations with the ultimate goal of improving oral treatment outcomes. The work presents a learning health system - a mechanism for dentists to learn from their own experience and the experiences of fellow practitioners.

Researchers led by Regenstrief Institute Research Scientist Thankam Thyvalikakath, DMD, PhD, associate professor and director of the Dental Informatics Core at Indiana University School of Dentistry, evaluated de-identified data from the electronic dental records (EDRs) of 217,887 patients of 99 solo or small dental practices across the United States. These EDRs contained more than 11 million observations, with observation periods as long as 37 years.

The study determined that it is feasible to mine and utilize enormous amounts of EDR data to learn which dental therapies work and which do not, empowering quality improvement by individual dentists. EDR data is sufficiently reliable for purposes beyond the clinical care of individual patients.

Learning from aggregating data across practices gives each dental practitioner the opportunity to acquire knowledge not only from his or her own patient data but also the opportunity to compare their practice with their peers. Information obtained during each patient's visit thus contributes to improved care for all, creating a true learning health system.

Now that the they have completed the proof of concept; the researchers will use the data to evaluate of the long-term effectiveness of two common dental procedures performed on permanent teeth -- root canal therapy and tooth-colored fillings in rear teeth. Data analysis for that portion of the study, which will determine how well and how long root canal treated teeth and back teeth filled with tooth-colored fillings continue to function, will help both dentists and the patients make evidence-based care decisions. Data analysis is currently nearing completion and the findings will be published in the future.

"Here in the real world of the dentist's office we are seeing patients with all kinds of real-world conditions - pain, underlying medical conditions, lack of adequate past oral health care -- so this large data set provides a unique insight into the treatments offered in the type of dental offices where most Americans receive care," said Dr. Thyvalikakath, the founding director of Regenstrief-IU School of Dentistry dental informatics program.

Information on demographics, reason for visit, medical and dental history, social history, tooth characteristics and treatment, as well as practice and practitioner characteristics was collected for each patient visit.

Dr. Thyvalikakath describes the work as groundbreaking in four areas:

1. Dentists were able to share their data for research in an anonymized process with their EDR vendors' help, because a typical solo dentist or even small practice does not have dedicated IT staff.

2. Data from two electronic dental record systems with varying formats and operating systems were combined. Interoperability has proved difficult with data from electronic medical record systems.

3. It is the largest study to evaluate data quality in a regular patient setting.

4. It looked at the oral health and treatment options of both insured and uninsured patients. Past studies have relied on insurance records and thus have provided no information on uninsured patients.

"Findings derived from patient data in real-world conditions is typically less difficult for clinicians to translate at the point of care than studies performed in large health systems which often represent a patient population that does not mirror the community dentists see in their practices," said Dr. Thyvalikakath. "We are presenting a mechanism for dentists, many of whom practice by themselves or with only one or two others, to learn from their own experience and from the experiences of their peers to assist in improving skills and facing problems."

DeKalb, Ill. -- A new study finds that about 31 million people worldwide live in coastal regions that are "highly vulnerable" to future tropical storms and sea-level rise driven by climate change. But in some of those regions, powerful defenses are located just offshore.

Of those 31 million people, about 8.5 million directly benefit from the severe weather-protection of mangroves and coral reefs, key buffers that could help cushion the blow against future tropical storms and rising waters, according to the study published May 29 in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE.

Because the two "natural infrastructures" absorb wave energy, reduce wave heights and provide a host of other environmental benefits, the study findings underscore the need for worldwide conservation and restoration of these natural resources. A particular focus, the authors said, should be placed on the most vulnerable regions, which lack available resources for more expensive protective measures, such as construction of levees or sea walls.

"Simply put, it's much cheaper to conserve a mangrove than to build a sea wall," said Northern Illinois University scientist Holly Jones, the study's lead author.

A 100-meter-wide coastal strip of mangroves can reduce wave heights by as much as two-thirds, previous research has shown. Coral reefs meanwhile buffer wave energy by up to 97% in some contexts, significantly reducing erosion and cutting flood-damage costs in half annually.

"Coral reefs and mangroves serve as cost-efficient buffers against the adverse impacts of climate change, and they already play important roles in protecting human lives and livelihoods, while providing a multitude of biodiversity benefits," said Jones, who holds a joint appointment at NIU in biological sciences and environmental studies.

Her co-authors on the research are Barry Nickel and Erika Zavaleta of the University of California, Santa Cruz; Tanja Srebotnjak of Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California; and Will Turner, Mariano Gonzalez-Roglich and David G. Hole of Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia.

The 'most vulnerable'

The study aimed to identify highly vulnerable coastal regions that would benefit most from "ecosystem-based adaptation," or using conservation, restoration and sustainable management of existing ecosystems to address climate impacts.

Regions meeting study criteria for "highly vulnerable" were within two miles of coastline and scored in the top 10th percentile of the authors' vulnerability index for being highly exposed to the effects of tropical storms and/or sea-level rise, dense in population and low in "adaptive capacity." The authors developed the adaptive-capacity measure to take into account economic data, education levels and other factors that play into a region's ability to adjust to climate variability.

The authors found that 30.9 million people globally live in regions that are most vulnerable to tropical storms and projected sea-level rise.

"Our estimate is very conservative," Jones said. "This population lives in regions in the top 10th percentile for vulnerability. If we apply our model to coastal regions that scored in the top half for vulnerability, the population soars to over 700 million people."

Highly vulnerable, coastal regions that would benefit the most from the conservation of mangroves and coral reefs span across Central America, the Caribbean, Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific region. And yet only 38% of mangroves and 11% of coral reefs located along the most vulnerable coastlines are protected, according to the study.

"Protection of mangroves and coral reefs is critical," said Will Turner, study co-author and senior vice president of global strategies at Conservation International. "They have the potential to save lives, store carbon and support fisheries; the co-benefits they provide are great. At Conservation International, we're working with local communities, carbon finance, governments and the insurance industry to ensure that generations will benefit from the protection and restoration of these ecosystems."

The authors noted that many of the world's coastal zones already bear the brunt of extreme weather. Events such as Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas and hurricanes Maria, Harvey and Irma in the United States and the Caribbean claimed thousands of lives and generated financial costs running into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Additionally, past research indicates that the loss of lives and assets in coastal zones is likely to increase significantly as a result of demographic and socio-economic trends alone, leading to a doubling or more of hurricane damages by 2100.

U.S. could benefit, too

Coastlines in Florida and the U.S. island territories of Puerto Rico and Guam also stand to benefit from mangrove and coral reef conservation and restoration.

Globally, the densest populations receiving adaptation benefits (people protected per hectare) from mangroves are in India, the United States and Ghana, the study found. The greatest amount of people protected per hectare of coral reefs are in South Africa, Singapore, China and the United States.

More than a billion coastal dwellers worldwide face some degree of vulnerability to climate change. While most coastal regions are outside of tropical zones and aren't buffered by mangroves or coral reefs, other ecosystems such as wetlands, estuaries and seagrasses provide protective benefits, Jones said.

"The United States is a wealthy country and has more ability to adapt than other countries, but it still could see significant benefits from conservation and restoration of existing natural infrastructure," Jones said. "Coastal ecosystems reduce the proportion of vulnerable people and infrastructure along exposed U.S. coastlines by around half through their absorption of wave energy."

The study authors also pointed to other benefits of natural infrastructures, which provide habitats for a host of marine and terrestrial animals and create recreation and tourism opportunities. In the most vulnerable coastal regions alone, mangroves store at least 896 million metric tons of carbon.

"Ensuring the resiliency of mangroves is a win-win-win for people, nature and the climate," said Dave Hole, co-author of the study and senior director within Conservation International's Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science.

"Mangroves store more carbon than any other forest ecosystem on Earth, drawing CO2 down from the atmosphere and storing it for decades, and so helping slow global warming," he said. "As interest in ecosystem-based adaptation continues to grow, it's vital that its multiple co-benefits are part of the conversation."

Next step: site-specific studies

The authors noted that their global study provides "a coarse approximation" of threats and of regions of the world that might benefit most from ecosystem-based adaptation.

Despite mounting interest in ecosystem-based adaptation, implementation has mostly been in the form of site-specific projects. What's needed next, the authors said, is systematic assessment of the broader potential, analyses of the ways in which ecosystem protection varies from site to site, and further investment in conservation and restoration.

"It's a relatively new option that's gaining more traction," Jones said. "Beyond engineering solutions, there are these ecosystems that have been providing benefits to us for centuries. They're worthy of our attention and resources."

A paper recently published in Nature Communications is the first to show a connection between demand from certain developed countries for agricultural commodities and the growing risk of malaria in the countries that supply those goods. The study was conducted by scientists affiliated with the School of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (FSP-USP) in Brazil and colleagues at the University of Sydney in Australia.

According to the article, approximately 20% of the malaria risk in deforestation hotspots is due to the international trade in goods such as timber, wood products, tobacco, cocoa, coffee and cotton.

The researchers used data for the period 2000-2015. The study was part of the "Latitudinal landscape genomics and ecology of Anopheles darlingi" Thematic Project supported by São Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP.

The methodology, which correlates world trade routes with data on forest cover loss in the agricultural commodity exporting countries where malaria occurs, was developed by Maria Anice Mureb Sallum, a professor at FSP-USP, and her PhD student Leonardo Suveges Moreira Chaves, the first author of the article, in collaboration with Manfred Lenzen, a professor at the University of Sydney, and his research group.

"Lenzen maintains a database on international trade covering 189 countries and sources such as the World Trade Organization and World Bank, among others," Sallum said. "We know from the data who sells what and where, who they sell to, who processes the commodities, and where the processed end-products are consumed. For example, certain countries buy cocoa, produce chocolate and export to the rest of the world. All links in the supply chain were taken into account."

According to Suveges, more than 1 billion commodity trade routes were analyzed by Lenzen and his group using high-performance computing. "Malaria incidence correlates closely with landscape change due to deforestation, which favors the proliferation of vectors and exposes human communities to these insects," Suveges explained. "So, we attributed part of the total number of malaria cases to deforestation and called it 'malaria risk,' meaning how many cases there would be in the presence of deforestation but in the absence of public health interventions to control the disease, such as insecticide-impregnated mosquito netting and artemisinin-based drug treatment. Part of this risk is associated with the world trade in commodities."

The researchers selected the countries that had cases of malaria and deforestation hotspots and cross-tabulated this dataset with commodity supply chain data, particularly for the final destinations of the goods in question. They concluded that 10% of deforestation-linked malaria risk was associated with ten countries that import these commodities: Germany, the United States, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

The demand for certain commodities in these countries may exacerbate the malaria risk for 10.7 million people in low-income net exporting countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

Malaria risk by numbers

Deforestation-implicated malaria risk, as defined by the researchers, was highest in Nigeria, corresponding to 5.98 million cases in 2015. These were due in part to exports of timber to China (USD 332?million in 2015) and exports of cocoa beans to the Netherlands (USD 334?million), Germany (USD 72 million), and Belgium, France, Spain and Italy (USD 35 million), as well as exports of charcoal to Europe (USD 35 million).

Next came Tanzania, with 5.66 million people at risk of deforestation-linked malaria in 2015, partly owing to exports of raw tobacco to Europe and Asia (USD 344 million), raw cotton to Southeast Asia (USD 41 million), and sawn timber to India (USD 20 million).

Uganda had 5.49 million deforestation-linked malaria risk cases, potentially driven by exports of raw coffee to Italy (USD 88 million in 2015), Germany (USD 63 million), Belgium (USD 40 million), the United States and Spain (USD 21 million each) and to a lesser extent by exports of raw cotton to South and Southeast Asia (USD 15 million).

Finally, the authors write that deforestation-linked malaria in Cameroon (5.49 million risk cases) could be connected to exports of cocoa to the Netherlands (USD 300?million), Spain, Belgium, France and Germany (altogether USD 79?million in 2015), rough timber to China (USD 175?million), and sawn timber to China, Belgium, Italy, the United States, and many other destinations (altogether USD 440?million).

According to the article, other countries with high levels of deforestation-linked malaria risk were (in descending order) DR Congo, India, Zambia, Myanmar, the Central African Republic, and Burundi. Their main trading partner was China, to which they mainly exported timber.

In a supplementary note to the article, the authors add that Chinese imports of commodities in 2015 accounted for 1.7 million cases of malaria in countries where deforestation is linked to the production and export of the commodities in question. Next came imports by Germany, accounting for 1.5 million cases, followed by Japan (986,000), the United States (770,000), the United Kingdom (815,000), Italy (595,000), the Netherlands (581,000), Spain (466,000), France (463,000), and Belgium (361,000).

Insufficient compensation

"It's striking that the US, the UK, France, Germany and Japan, some of the main importers of malaria-implicated products, provide financial support for malaria control programs, especially in sub-Saharan Africa," Suveges said.

However, the numbers do not add up. In 2017, global investment in malaria control and prevention totaled USD 3.2 billion, with high-income donors providing 72%. However, the authors write that malaria-endemic countries bore 28% of the total, which was less than half of what was required to reduce malaria morbidity and mortality rates in line with Health Target 3.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed for 2030 by the United Nations.

The countries that produce and export commodities remained in this position throughout the period analyzed, Sallum stressed. "We know from previously published studies that malaria is affected by the social impact of economic development, when people have better housing and better conditions for land use, all of which protects them. If commodity exporters became suppliers of manufactured goods, they would add more value to their production, and their societies would benefit. This in turn could reduce the need for deforestation and mitigate malaria risk," she said.

"However, the fact that supply chain roles don't change demonstrates the inequality prevailing in these relations. Commodity prices are set by the importers."