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The Atlantic Rainforest has been so savagely clearcut and burned over several centuries that only approximately 12% now remains. Nevertheless, it is still one of the planet's largest repositories of biodiversity, and counter to a process that appeared irreversible, forest cover in the biome has begun to grow back in recent decades.

To confirm this trend and understand the dynamics of forest fragment degradation and regeneration, a study conducted at the National Space Research (INPE) in Brazil compared recent high-resolution satellite images with georeferenced aerial photographs taken in 1962 and deployed powerful computational resources to analyze the changes in forest cover using two pioneer tree species as markers: Cecropia hololeuca (silver embaúba) and Tibouchina pulchra (glory bush).

Pioneer species are hardy species that are the first to colonize previously disrupted or damaged ecosystems.
An article on the study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"Both species are pioneers that grow after degradation. Our study shows that C. hololeuca is a marker of degraded forest and that T. pulchra is an indicator of forest regeneration on former pastureland. By comparing the images, we were able to determine whether the forest fragments investigated evolved from pasture or were already there before 1962," Fabien Hubert Wagner, lead author of the article, told.

Wagner explained that understanding the history of Atlantic Rainforest remnants is important because biodiversity is potentially greatest in older, less degraded forest formations, and this kind of information is crucial for conservation.

The region studied is in the state of São Paulo and lies between São José dos Campos, a large upland city, and Ubatuba on the coast. It includes part of the Serra do Mar State Park. "There are over 2,000 forest fragments in this quadrilateral, which measure approximately 100 km by 60 km," Wagner said. "We computed maps of species dominance for these two tree species and found that at least 4.3% of the region's natural forest cover regenerated after 1962."

Wagner believes these areas regenerated after the passage of Federal Law 5106 in 1966, whereby afforestation or reforestation initiatives were encouraged by means of tax incentives. "Another interesting finding of the study that corroborates this hypothesis is that the eucalyptus groves seen in the region today were planted where there was previously no forest cover," he said. "They're poor in biodiversity but contributed to the expansion of forest cover."

In addition to the excellent database comprising images produced by the WorldView-2 and WorldView-3 satellites, with spatial resolutions of 0.5 m and 0.3 m, respectively, as well as 40 aerial photographs taken in 1962, the study benefited from the use of the powerful artificial intelligence/machine learning tool U-net, a convolutional neural network (CNN).

"It reproduces what the human eye does but on an incomparably larger scale. It can map millions of objects in a single image," Wagner said.

Convolutional neural networks are deep learning algorithms used for image classification and recognition because of their high accuracy.

"We found that T. pulchra clearly indicates forest regeneration, as almost all the individuals of this species were located inside or adjacent to forest remnants that have recovered since 1962. C. hololeuca, however, appeared almost exclusively in older fragments already present in 1962," Wagner said.

The same procedure will be extended to the entire Atlantic Rainforest biome, remnants of which are located on the coast of 17 Brazilian states. "It isn't enough to know there's a forest in a particular area. We need to know its history, whether it's old or recent, in order to conserve it. That's the aim of our research," Wagner said.

Concerns about environmental and health risks of some fluorinated carbon compounds used to make non-stick coatings and fire-fighting foams have prompted manufacturers to develop substitutes, but these replacements are increasingly coming under fire themselves. To get a handle on the scope of the problem, scientists have been studying how widely these chemicals have contaminated the environment. Now, researchers report in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology that, in one case, they have dispersed more broadly than previously realized.

These per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, known as PFAS, include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). Because of exceptional stability, these chemicals don't break down, so they can linger in soils and rivers if released into the environment, and they can persist in the body if ingested. Possible health effects include cancer, liver toxicity and disruption of the immune, endocrine and reproductive systems. As an alternative, industry has turned to other PFAS thought to be less likely to bioaccumulate, such as hexafluoropropylene oxide dimer acid (HFPO-DA), though their potential toxicity is unknown. Prior studies documented historical PFOA contamination mainly west and southwest of a fluoropolymer production facility in Parkersburg, West Virginia, that switched from PFOA to HFPO-DA in 2013. Linda Weavers and colleagues wanted to assess ongoing impacts from the plant on a broader scale, including areas north and northeast of the facility. In addition, the researchers wanted to check for dispersal of HFPO-DA, for which little environmental information is available.

The team collected surface water, drinking water and soil samples downwind and upstream from the plant and near landfills that contain PFAS waste. Sample analysis by mass spectrometry showed PFOA and HFPO-DA had dispersed to surface water and soil in multiple locations as far as 30 miles from the plant, with atmospheric transport playing a key role. The findings suggest HFPO-DA, like PFOA, could get into groundwater, and that these PFAS are being carried outside current surveillance zones. The researchers recommend more widespread monitoring of surface and drinking water to better define how and where PFAS exposures are occurring.

Led by King's College London in collaboration with the University of Zimbabwe and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and published in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine journal, the research examined a group of people with depression in Zimbabwe and found that people are nearly three times more likely to suffer this illness long-term if they also have a high level of anxiety.

This is the first report of this finding from a low-income country and, according to the researchers, programmes aimed at tackling depression in these countries must consider the implications that this complex combination of anxiety and depression has for the effectiveness of treatments.

Depression is common worldwide with 4.4% of people estimated to be affected at any given point in time, and 5.9% of women in African countries. Many LMICs, ranging from small low-income countries like Zimbabwe and Malawi, to large middle-income countries like India, south Africa and China are trying to develop programmes for mental health with limited resources.

There is a growing interest in low-cost programmes which can be delivered on benches in the community by non-specialist workers who provide basic education and simple talking therapies. However, this approach could mean those with more complex combinations of mental health problems may not receive the support they need.

Lead author, Professor Melanie Abas from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN), King's College London and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust said: 'In parts of many African countries people face situations likely to provoke severe anxiety and fear more frequently than most people living in high income countries. These situations include poverty, living with serious infectious diseases like HIV, malaria, cholera and now potentially COVID-19, sudden death of family members, and sexual and domestic abuse. As such, anxiety levels are already likely to be high for many people living in low to middle income countries but anxiety and depression are often conceptualised together as one syndrome.'

The study analysed measures of depression and anxiety in 329 people in Zimbabwe who had been assessed as having probable major depression and were experiencing significant low moods.

Participants were taking part in a randomised clinical trial of a therapy for depression called the Friendship Bench, which is delivered by a grandmother lay worker on a wooden bench and aims to train and empower people to solve problems that are negatively impacting their mood. As such some received the Friendship Bench therapy and some received simple education about their symptoms and advice on psychosocial issues which might be causing them. The results of the trial have already been published in JAMA (see notes to editors). The aim of this study was to analyse the data to understand how many people suffer both anxiety and depression symptoms and the links this has to long-term depression.

The study found that over three quarters of participants suffered from anxiety alongside major depression, where anxiety consists of feelings of nervousness, worry, restlessness, and fear that continues for over two weeks.

Over a third of the women and men in the study were still suffering depression at six months. After taking into account other influencing factors such as gender, age and socioeconomic status, the study found that those with anxiety were 2.8 times more likely to still be suffering depression at six months.

The analysis suggests that persistent depression is more likely in those who also experience symptoms of anxiety and that, although the Friendship Bench is successful at helping most of these people, some who use it will still have long-term depression.

Dr Dixon Chibanda, Associate Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Director of the Friendship Bench and last author on the paper said: 'These findings demonstrate the need to integrate anxiety screening in our work with grandmothers on the Friendship Bench. By understanding who is more likely to have longer lasting depression and need more care, we can ensure they get the support and mental health care they need.

'Addressing mental health is even more important given the coronavirus pandemic. I hope our further support of online Friendship Bench sessions, and extra COVID-19-related material will support people with anxiety and depression during these tough times.'

The researchers highlighted that many of the psychological treatments being advocated for use in LMIC countries such as problem-solving therapy and interpersonal therapy may improve common mental disorders but do not specifically target fear, avoidance, excessive worry, and the re-living of traumatic experiences. They suggest that screening for anxiety needs to be made available in low income countries and that treatments need to include education about coping with anxiety and therapies specifically targeted at anxiety, such as relaxation and therapy that addresses thoughts and behaviours.

Professor Melanie Abas added: 'More research is needed to understand typical experiences of anxiety in LMICs and to adapt therapies for anxiety. This must be done in partnership with local service providers. In the same way that we have adapted evidence-based treatments for depression for use in low income settings, we also need to forge ahead to develop and test culturally adapted therapies for anxiety.'

Only those people on the trial who were assessed as having probable major depression were included in the study. 186 of these participants received the Friendship Bench therapy and 168 received psychosocial education. Depression was assessed using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and anxiety was assessed using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7).

A new study shows that people with a rare genetic disease that causes bleeding in the brain have gut microbiomes distinct from those without the disease. Moreover, it is the molecules produced by this bacterial imbalance that cause lesions to form in the brains of these patients.

The results are the first in any human neurovascular disease. They have implications both for treating the disease and in examining other neurovascular diseases that could be affected by a person's gut microbiome.

The study was led by investigators at University of Chicago Medicine and published May 27 in Nature Communications. It examined the gut bacteria of patients with cavernous angioma (CA), a disease where blood vessel abnormalities develop in the brain and cause strokes, seizures and serious neurologic complications. The disease is caused by a genetic mutation in the lesion --which may be inherited or occurs sporadically -- and its severity and course vary widely among patients.

UChicago is a leader in studying this disease. It has been designated as a cavernous angioma center of excellence and treats patients with the condition from all over the world.

Investigators had hints that the disease could be affected by the gut microbiome: Senior author Issam Awad, MD, the John Harper Seeley Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of Neurovascular Surgery at UChicago Medicine, was a partner in a previous study in mice, which showed that the cells that lined the blood vessels of the brain reacted to the animals' gut bacteria.

"The implications of that were very big," he said. "But we didn't know if this concept of a unique microbiome that favors the development of lesions would be true in human beings."

To find out, UChicago researchers -- working with investigators at the University of California San Francisco, University of New Mexico, University of Pennsylvania, and the Angioma Alliance patient support group -- collected stool samples from more than 120 CA patients.

The samples were then analyzed for their bacterial content and compared with samples from the general population. The CA samples showed significantly higher amounts of gram-negative bacteria and less gram-positive bacteria. The researchers identified a combination of three common bacterial species, whose relative abundance can distinguish CA patients from control patients without CA lesions, with high sensitivity and specificity.

The CA samples also showed an imbalanced network of bacteria that was much more disordered than the general population's bacterial network. "The CA patients from all the different collection sites had the same distinctive microbiome, regardless of whether they had inherited the mutation or had a sporadic lesion, and regardless of the number of lesions they had," Awad said. The investigators further showed that the bacterial imbalance in patients with CA produces lipopolysaccharide (LPS) molecules, which travel through the bloodstream to the brain and attach to the brain's blood vessel lining, facilitating lesion development. "All this evidence pointed to the microbiome as a cause of lesions rather than an effect," Awad said.

The investigators also collected blood from several CA patients and used advanced computational machine learning to identify the combination of molecular signals associated with the disease. Those with CA had significantly different LPS-related related blood biomarkers and inflammatory molecules. The result was essentially a smart, personalized test for each CA patient. "By looking at both bacteria combinations and the blood biomarkers, we were able to measure just how aggressive the disease was in each patient," said Sean Polster, MD, a neurosurgery resident at UChicago Medicine and first author on the paper. Polster spent two years of his neurosurgery residency coordinating the study among the different institutions.

The researchers are beginning to think about how these results affect treatment. Earlier studies in mice showed that those fed emulsifiers -- which are often used as preservatives in processed foods -- had more bleeding in the brain, likely due to the way they disrupted the gut's bacterial network. The researchers now tell patients to avoid these preservatives.

Though antibiotics and probiotics might seem like natural courses of treatment, they could change the bacterial balance in ways that lead to bigger problems. "This is more complicated than it appears," said Awad. However, he tells CA patients who have infections caused by gram-negative bacteria (such as urinary tract infections or prostatitis) to have them treated right away to avoid more potential brain lesions.

The researchers are also looking into whether this microbiome-brain connection can be examined in other diseases. Already, they showed that the same genes and biomarkers involved in CA are also active in the human brain as we age. "Patients have a lot of hope that we are working on this," Polster said.

An early age of pregnancy (25 years and younger) is known to reduce the overall risk of breast cancer by over 30%. CSHL Assistant Professor Camila dos Santos spent several years teasing out the molecular details behind the protective effects of pregnancy. She discovered that one way breast cells protect themselves from cancer after pregnancy in mice is to tuck away a particularly potent cancer gene, cMYC, where it cannot cause harm. Another trick is to keep breast cells suspended in a state of "pre-senescence," a moment in the cell's life cycle between dying, living, and potential cancer. These findings provide new insights into future cancer treatment and better ways to identify risk before a tumor develops.

Pregnancy blocks the deadly action of cMYC by rolling the gene away. Dos Santos suggests a familiar image:

"The event of pregnancy itself changes how regions of DNA are open or closed. Think of a yo-yo. The center of the yo-yo is what we call the nucleosome. It's a bunch of proteins that protects the DNA. When you release a yo-yo, you have a string, which represents that part of the DNA became open. And because it's open, now transcription factors can bind and either turn on or off genes. If you pull your yo-yo back, everything gets inside the yo-yo. That's what we call closed chromatin, so transcription factors cannot bind there."

Pregnancy turns off the cMYC gene and turns on another set of genes that promotes senescence. Cells repeat the pattern open and closed DNA in subsequent pregnancies.

Senescent cells "are in the gray zone, not growing or dying," says dos Santos. Depending on how the cells are pushed, they can either stay senescent, die, or grow too much and turn into cancer cells. "It's a very strong system, but you can mess up with it. And if you do mess up with it, that's when cancer develops. It allows us now to work on how we can keep those senescent cells from being perturbed."

Dos Santos says this is one of the few examples showing that a normal developmental process such as pregnancy can inhibit a cell from interacting with a cancer-promoting gene. She summarized her key findings this way: "You have cancer genes being shut down at the same time that genes leading this cell to a kind of a precipice, like they're going to jump out and die, get turned on. We believe these signals are the key players for why these cells do not turn into cancer."

Dos Santos and her team are currently working with human breast tissue organoids to see if human tissues act like those in mice. She's also transplanting cells altered by pregnancy into mice that have never been pregnant, in order to ascertain whether the altered cells can affect a non-pregnant environment. Both experiments suggest new drug targets. "This has opened up doors for us to further explore questions that have not been explored before," said dos Santos, such as whether puberty or aging can prevent cancer the way pregnancy does.

Irrigation agriculture not only requires a large amount of water but it also uses a significant amount of energy, which in addition to affecting the environment, constitutes a major financial burden for the agricultural sector. According to a study by the Hydraulics and Irrigation research team at the University of Cordoba and Trinity College Dublin, recovering energy in water distribution networks for irrigation could mean a 12.8% savings of energy each year.

These are the data obtained from a prediction model that analyzed the potential that this emerging technology could have in the provinces of Cordoba and Seville. This system obtains energy thanks to excess pressure in water distribution networks and uses pumps as turbines to generate electricity.

The team carried out 177 observations of 18 irrigation networks and studied the different variables such as the hydraulic configuration of the distribution system, the irrigated surface area, crop water requirements, rainfall and topographic slope. From there, and by means of artificial intelligence techniques, they were able to extrapolate the results for more than 164,000 hectares of irrigated surface area. This study makes up part of the research results for researcher Miguel Crespo's doctoral thesis studies and his advisors are Professors Juan Antonio Rodríguez and Jorge García.

According to the data obtained, the use of recovered energy during the 2018 season would have meant a savings of 21.05 de GWh (Gigawatt hours) in these provinces, which equals a savings of 12.8% for the energy consumed by these irrigation systems during the season under study. Therefore, this kind of technology could mean important financial relief for water user associations since, according to the data from the research team, the cost of energy makes up 40% of the total cost of water on average.

In addition to saving energy, this system could provide a competitive advantage since it reduces the carbon footprint of the crops, something that is valued more and more by consumers. Even so, as researcher Juan Antonio Rodríguez points out, the technology's main advantage is that "energy for irrigation could be obtained in places where there is no electricity available", and in places where diesel generators are often used to supply energy.

Nevertheless, this new irrigation system, which could be paid off in 5 or 6 years due to energy savings (faster than traditional turbines), has certain disadvantages. The pumps that work as turbines and make use of excess water pressure in order to generate energy, known as PATs (as in pump as turbines) "are efficient within a fairly limited range of flow levels, so the fluctuations common in irrigation networks could lower their performance", though "this issue could be sorted out by means of hydraulic regulation elements that would make a PAT work near its optimal performance point", explains Professor Juan Antonio Rodríguez.

With the aim of making the most of this system, the research group continues to work on this line within the framework of the international project called Redawn (Reducing the energy dependency in Atlantic water networks, http://www.redawn.eu), an initiative about energy efficiency and water use that aims at fostering the implementation of this hydroelectric energy-recovering technology in water distribution networks in the Atlantic area. The project, part of the 'Interreg Atlantic Area' program, envisages installing an industrial water distribution network pilot plant in Portugal, another for supplying urban areas in France and another for irrigation networks has been installed in a water users association in the town of Palma del Río (in the province of Cordoba, Spain), that began operating in April 2019 and has allowed for permanently eliminating the use of diesel generators.

A joint research team led by Sunney Xie, Director of Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics (ICG) at Peking University (PKU) has successfully identified multiple highly potent neutralizing antibodies against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus of the respiratory disease COVID-19, from convalescent plasma by high-throughput single-cell sequencing. Generated by human immune system, neutralizing antibodies can effectively prevent viruses from infecting cells. New results from animal studies showed that their neutralizing antibody provides a potential cure for COVID-19 as well as means for short-term prevention. This marks a major milestone in the fight against the pandemic.

This study has been published online in Cell, titled "Potent neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 identified by high-throughput single-cell sequencing of convalescent patients' B cells ". This work was jointly conducted by Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics and Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center of Peking University, Beijing YouAn Hospital of Capital Medical University, Institute of Laboratory Animal Science (ILAS) of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Comparative Medicine Center, Peking Union Medical College, Beijing Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Sino Biological, Inc., WuXi Biologics and Singlomics. The co-authors of this article are Yunlong Cao, Bin Su, Xianghua Guo, Wenjie Sun, Yongqiang Deng, Linlin Bao, Qinyu Zhu. The corresponding authors are Chuan Qin, Chengfeng Qin, Ronghua Jin, and Sunney Xie. The work which began on Jan. 27, 2020 was supported by The People's Government of Beijing Municipality, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China.

There has been an urgent need for highly effective drugs to cure COVID-19. Repurposed small-molecule drugs lack in specificity thus efficacy is compromised. Although plasma therapy has exhibited certain efficacy, it's limited by convalescent plasma supply. The active component of plasma therapy is the target-specific neutralizing antibody. Antibody drugs as a kind of biologics have been successfully applied to treat viruses like AIDS, Ebola, and MERS. However, it is often time-consuming to develop neutralizing antibodies suitable for clinical use, taking months or even years.

By using their expertise in single-cell genomics, Sunney Xie's team at ICG, PKU in collaboration with researchers of Beijing YouAn Hospital collected blood samples from over 60 convalescent patients, among which 14 highly potent neutralizing antibodies were selected from 8,558 antigen-binding IgG1+ clonotypes. Their most potent antibody, BD-368-2, exhibited an IC50 of 8pM and 100pM against pseudotyped and authentic SARS-CoV-2. Experiments on the authentic virus were completed in the P3 laboratory of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

The in vivo antiviral experiment of neutralizing antibodies has recently been completed, using hACE2 transgenic mice model developed by Dr. Chuan Qin's lab at ILAS. The results showed that BD-368-2 antibody could provide strong therapeutic efficacy and prophylactic protection against SARS-CoV-2: When the BD-368-2 antibody was injected into infected mice, virus load was decreased by ~ 2400 times; when uninfected mice were injected with BD-368-2, they were protected from the virus infection.

In addition, the structural biologists Xiaodong Su and Junyu Xiao and their group members in the PKU team also obtained the 3.8Å Cryo-EM structure of a neutralizing antibody in complex with the Spike-ectodomain trimer. It revealed the antibody's epitope overlaps with the ACE2 binding-site, which provides the structural basis of neutralization. Moreover, they showed that SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies could be selected with high efficiency based on similarities of their predicted structures to those of SARS-CoV neutralizing antibodies, hence greatly expediting the screening process.

The potent neutralizing antibody could be used to develop drugs for both therapeutic intervention and prophylactic protection against SARS-CoV-2. Clinical trials are underway, and the research team have strong confidence in finding a cure. "If the COVID-19 epidemic reappears in the winter," remarked Sunney Xie, "Our neutralizing antibody might be available by that time."

Oak Brook, IL - The June issue of SLAS Technology features two related research papers authored by Georges Muller, Ph.D., (SEED Biosciences, Switzerland) the SLAS2019 Ignite Award winner and a top ten 2020 SLAS Innovation Award finalist. Both of Muller's contributions to the issue include research based on a single-cell cloning method and pipet his teams created to help solve efficiency and regulatory issues.

In "Traceable Impedance-Based Dispensing and Cloning of Living Single Cells," the issue's cover article, Muller and his co-authors detail their creation and validation of a one-step cloning method that isolates single stem cells using an engineered cloning pipet. This method is compliant with regulatory guidelines - something that has been difficult to achieve in recent years - and also efficient, cell- and user-friendly. The paper's co-authors include David Bonzon, Ph.D., (SEED Biosciences and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland), Stéphanie Claudinot, Ph.D. and Ariane Rochat, Ph.D., (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland), Philippe Renaud, Ph.D., (Institute of Microengineering of Ecole, Switzerland) and Yann Barrandon, Ph.D., (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne University Hospital, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and Singapore General Hospital; Switzerland and Singapore).

As a backgrounder to the cover article, "Impedance-Based Single-Cell Pipetting," summarizes the engineering behind the disposable pipet created for use in the single-cell cloning method outlined in the cover article outlined above by Muller, Bonzon, Jean-Baptiste Bureau, Ph.D., (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) Nicolas Uffer, Ph.D., (SEED Biosciences and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) Nicolas Beuchat, Ph.D., (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) Barrandon and Renaud. In this particular research summary, the group outlines the modeling, design and testing of a disposable pipette integrated with a cell sensor to allow for proof of single-cell isolation without effecting cell viability.

A UCLA-led research team has found an increase in the incidence of domestic violence reports in two cities, Los Angeles and Indianapolis, since stay-at-home restrictions were implemented in March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The scholars, who are leaders in applying mathematics to interpret and make sense of police crime data, predict that the incidence should gradually decrease as people return to normal routines, but would likely increase again if there is a second wave of COVID-19 infections that prompts new stay-at-home orders.

Their study is published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Criminal Justice.

"Shelter-in-place rules, by mandating more time at home, are very likely to increase the volume of domestic or intimate partner violence, which thrives behind closed doors," said the study's senior author, Jeffrey Brantingham, a UCLA professor of anthropology. "During the COVID-19 pandemic, both Los Angeles and Indianapolis already have seen significant increases in domestic violence calls to the police, and we know domestic violence is one of the crimes least reported to the police."

The researchers analyzed police calls for service before and during the coronavirus pandemic -- from Jan. 2 to April 18 in Los Angeles, and from Jan. 2 to April 21 in Indianapolis. Los Angeles implemented "safer-at-home" rules were on March 20, and Indianapolis enacted similar orders on March 24. School, restaurant and bar closures were ordered in both cities on March 16.

The researchers also analyzed reported crime statistics -- different sets of figures reflecting that police investigations into alleged crime have occurred -- through April 10 in Los Angeles and April 18 in Indianapolis.

Both cities saw a statistically significant increase in domestic violence calls for service after stay-at-home policies, the researchers report. If stay-at-home rules are reinstated, the researchers expect the number of calls for service to remain high as long as these rules are in place.

By comparison, the numbers of reported robberies have decreased significantly in Los Angeles, and stayed relatively consistent in Indianapolis. Burglaries have decreased significantly in Los Angeles and slightly in Indianapolis. Vehicle thefts were moderately higher in Los Angeles, but unchanged in Indianapolis. Traffic stops were significantly down in both cities.

"Overall, these shifts are perhaps less substantial than might be expected given the scale of the disruption of social and economic life brought on by COVID-19," Brantingham said. "Overall, people were still finding opportunities to commit crimes at approximately the same level as before the crisis."

The researchers also write that physical distancing measures are likely to significantly alter and disrupt the conditions under which crime typically occurs. Crime patterns, they note, may provide valuable insights into whether individuals and communities are complying with critical public health measures.

Having crime patterns remain stable overall despite physical distancing measures may suggest the need to devote more resources to enforcing distancing rules, Brantingham said.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (May 26, 2019)-- Researchers led by biologists at Tufts University have discovered that the brains of developing frog embryos damaged by nicotine exposure can be repaired by treatment with certain drugs called "ionoceuticals" that drive the recovery of bioelectric patterns in the embryo, followed by repair of normal anatomy, gene expression and brain function in the growing tadpole. The research, published today in Frontiers in Neuroscience, introduces intervention strategies based on restoring the bioelectric "blueprint" for embryonic development, which the researchers suggest could provide a roadmap for the exploration of therapeutic drugs to help repair birth defects.

Earlier studies had shown that nicotine disrupts the normal electrical patterns in the brain of the growing embryo, basically washing out, or reducing the contrast, of the bioelectric blueprint -- a "map" of varying voltage levels around the cells that guides the pattern and growth of tissues and organs. Nicotine in humans has been linked to prenatal morbidity, sudden infant death, attention deficit hypersensitivity disorder (ADHD), and other deficits in cognitive function, learning, and memory, but many questions had remained about how this molecule induces structural defects in the brain.

The authors applied nicotine to developing frog embryos to create neural defects with the intention of identifying specific interventions that could reverse the chemical's harmful effects. Their previous research identified one particular element in the natural electric signalling that controls brain development, hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide gated channel-2 (HCN2), which was able to restore the bioelectric patterns - much like dialing up the contrast with a photo edit tool - and protect against nicotine-induced defects.

There are two major new discoveries in this study. First, unlike the prior work in which a form of gene therapy modifying the expression of HCN2 was used to repair the defects, the new experiments showed that the same effect can be achieved without introducing a gene - instead, small molecule drugs were used to activate HCN2 channels already present in the frog embryo. Second, the researchers demonstrated that the electrical patterning information that governs brain development can be reset from a distant location on the embryo.

"What was remarkable about the experiments in this study is that when we increased expression of HCN2 at a distance from the brain, in non-neural regions, the defects in the brain were still repaired or prevented," said Michael Levin, Vannevar Bush Professor of Biology at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences and director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. "We saw that HCN2 in one part of the embryo could restore the bioelectric pattern not only locally, but at a distance as well."

"The instructions to build a fully grown animal, including organs as complex as the brain, are distributed among all the cells of the embryo," he added. "These results suggest that we might not have to directly target the damaged region, and we can use drugs instead of genetic manipulation, which opens a lot of opportunities for biomedical deployment."

In a developing embryo, the bioelectric signals help guide the patterning of tissue and organ formation, as well as regeneration after injury. They are formed by electrically charged ions moving in and out of cells to create voltage differences across the cell membranes. The pattern of voltage differences among the entire ensemble of cells in the embryo helps guide asymmetry between left and right sides of the body, the formation and development of heart, muscle, limbs and face, and of course the growth and organization of the most complex organ in the body - the brain.

A computational model of an ensemble of cells representing an embryo and its electrical patterns confirmed that rescuing normal brain development from nicotine damage did not require specific targeting of the damaged region. HCN2 increases the hyperpolarization of a cell (increased internal negative charges), so when the model was asked to hyperpolarize a small patch of tissue far from the brain, that patch could propagate and restore polarization of regions all the way to the brain, setting the stage for normal development.

"When thinking about birth defects, especially involving the brain, these results suggest that we don't need to target the specific region that is damaged. We can place the fix almost anywhere in the embryo, and the information will communicate with the rest of the embryo to reset the body's instructions back to normal," said Vaibhav Pai, Ph.D., research scientist at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and first author of the study. "That led us to think, could we find a drug that activated HCN2, and use that to prevent defects anywhere in the embryo, or even repair defects that are already underway?"

Drugs that activate HCN2 exist - lamotrigine and gabapentin - and they are already FDA approved for other indications. The researchers again exposed the frog embryos to nicotine, and then treated them with the drugs at different stages of embryonic development. Nicotine-exposed embryos that were not treated with drugs led to about 68% of tadpoles with brain defects. By comparison, treatment of nicotine exposed embryos with lamotrigine or gabapentin led to significant reduction in brain defects (as few as 10% and 16% of tadpoles with brain defects, respectively).

Restoration extended beyond electrical and physically observed defects, as the authors demonstrated that nicotine-exposed tadpoles treated with the drugs not only restored expression of genetic markers of normal brain development, but remarkably, exhibited normal learning capacity (e.g. training to avoid red light), which is lost in untreated nicotine-exposed tadpoles, showing a very complete rescue from molecular histology to behavior.

Tropical forests contain some of the most biodiverse and dynamic ecosystems in the world. Environmental conditions such as precipitation, temperature, and soils shape the biota of the landscape. This influence is especially noticeable when comparing the towering trees found in low elevation forests to the hardier, shorter ones found at the top of tropical mountains. Together, these factors create an ever-changing and heterogeneous ecosystem, with each niche harboring different species of uniquely adapted trees.

Scientists have sought to understand the links between geology (the rock types that soils originate from), biogeochemistry (feedbacks between environmental conditions, nutrient cycling, and plants), biodiversity (the variety of life in an ecosystem), and biogeography (how trees are distributed across a landscape) to paint a more complete picture of how life coevolved with our planet. Now, in a new study published today in Ecology Letters, researchers from Stanford University and Arizona State University (ASU) used maps of leaf chemistry, high-resolution topography data, and computer models to reveal new insights into the processes governing these complex interactions.

"We wanted to explore how long-term processes that shape the Earth's surface also act to control the organization of ecosystems across landscapes. Understanding these organizing processes requires the integration of concepts from across disciplines. The purpose of this study was to combine high-resolution airborne remote sensing datasets that contain information on both ecosystems and the morphology of landscapes, to understand how the two are interrelated on this iconic tropical mountain," said Dana Chadwick, lead author of the study.

The study analyzed data from Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo--a 4,095-meter high mountain harboring a wide diversity of trees across topographically varied terrain. As tropical rains drench the mountain's surface, elevation differences between its shallow slopes and steep peaks create imbalances in soil erosion rates--generally, the steeper the hill, the faster the rain rushes down its surface, taking soil with it. Soils carry nutrients needed by plants to grow, and erosion contributes to the distribution of these plant-required nutrients. Some areas become nutrient-rich and others become nutrient-poor, influencing the kinds of trees that can grow there. Adding to this dynamic process, some soil types are more or less prone to erosion than others depending upon their geological origins, and can also contain more nutrients plants need than others.

To overcome limitations of previous studies conducted in tropical mountains at a local scale, the researchers used maps created by ASU's Global Airborne Observatory to collect large-scale data across 32 watersheds and at elevations ranging from 700 to 2800 meters. The maps included the concentrations of nutrients in the tropical forest canopy as well as the structure and architecture of the trees. This provided the researchers an unprecedented look at the forests of Mt. Kinabalu and its remote complex terrain.

"Although we originally deployed our airborne observatory to Borneo for conservation impact, such as the new protected area now under development, the opportunity to discover all-new patterns of biodiversity also presented itself in ultra-remote areas like Mt. Kinabalu," said Greg Asner, author of the study and director of ASU's Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science.

The chemical maps revealed that leaves from trees contained different amounts of nutrients depending upon both the elevation and geology of its environment. Along hillslopes, from ridge to valley, trees contain more nutrients while their ability to capture and utilize sunlight also increases. The researchers found that this trend was significantly impacted by changing erosion rates, highlighting the important role erosion plays in distributing fresh nutrients to the soil.

"The discovery of such strong and beautifully complex geologic control on forest composition gives us new insight into the fundamental make-up of Bornean forests, in ways that inspire even more exploration," Dr. Asner added.

Chimpanzee lip-smacks exhibit a speech-like rhythm, a group of researchers led by the University of Warwick have found.

They found chimpanzees produce lip-smacks at a speech-like rhythm of open-close mouth cycles close to 5Hz (i.e. 5 open-close cycles per second), confirming that speech-rhythm was built upon existing primate signal systems.

Similarly to chimpanzees, fast-paced mouth signals with a speech-like rhythm have now been described in orangutans and several monkey species, confirming altogether that speech has ancient roots within primate communication.

One of the most promising theories for the evolution of human speech has finally received support from chimpanzee communication, in a study conducted by a group of researchers led by the University of Warwick.

The evolution of speech is one of the longest-standing puzzles of evolution. However, inklings of a possible solution started emerging some years ago when monkey signals involving a quick succession of mouth open-close cycles were shown to exhibit the same pace of human spoken language.

In the paper 'Chimpanzee lip-smacks confirm primate continuity for speech-rhythm evolution', published today, the 27th May, in the journal Biology Letters, a consortium of researchers, including St Andrews University and the University of York, led by the University of Warwick, have found that the rhythm of chimpanzee lip-smacks also exhibit a speech-like signature - a critical step towards a possible solution to the puzzle of speech evolution.

Just like each and every language in the world, monkey lip-smacks have previously shown a rhythm of about 5 cycles/second (i.e. 5Hz). This exact rhythm had been identified in other primate species, including gibbon song and orangutan consonant-like and vowel-like calls.

However there was no evidence from African apes, such as gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees - who are closer related to humans, meaning the plausibility of this theory remained on hold.

Now, the team of researchers using data from 4 chimpanzee populations have confirmed that they too produce mouth signals at a speech-like rhythm. The findings show there has been most likely a continuous path in the evolution of primate mouth signals with a 5Hz rhythm. Proving that evolution recycled primate mouth signals into the vocal system that one day was to become speech.

African great apes, the closest species to humans, had never been studied for the rhythm of their communication signals. Researchers investigated the rhythm of chimpanzee lip-smacks, produce by individuals while they groom another and found that chimpanzees produce lip-smacks at an average speech-like rhythm of 4.15 Hz.

Researchers used data across two captive and two wild populations, using video recordings collected at Edinburgh Zoo and Leipzig Zoo, and recordings of wild communities including the Kanyawara and the Waibira community, both in Uganda.

Dr Adriano Lameira, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick comments:

"Our results prove that spoken language was pulled together within our ancestral lineage using "ingredients" that were already available and in use by other primates and hominids. This dispels much of the scientific enigma that language evolution has represented so far. We can also be reassured that our ignorance has been partly a consequence of our huge underestimation of the vocal and cognitive capacities of our great ape cousins.

"We found pronounced differences in rhythm between chimpanzee populations, suggesting that these are not the automatic and stereotypical signals so often attributed to our ape cousins. Instead, just like in humans, we should start seriously considering that individual differences, social conventions and environmental factors may play a role in how chimpanzees engage "in conversation" with one another.

"If we continue searching, new clues will certainly unveil themselves. Now it's a matter of mastering the political and societal power to preserve these precious populations in the wild and continue enabling scientists to look further."

A major UK government-funded research study suggests particles released from vehicle tyres could be a significant and previously largely unrecorded source of microplastics in the marine environment.

The study is one of the first worldwide to identify tyre particles as a major and additional source of microplastics. Scientists have previously discovered microplastics, originating from microbeads in cosmetics and the degradation of larger items such as carrier bags and plastic bottles, in marine environments globally - from the deep seas to the Arctic.

Following the government's ban on rinse off microbeads, which is one of the toughest in the world, the Defra-funded study led by the University of Plymouth now reveals vital new information that will improve our scientific understanding of how tiny particles from tyres, synthetic fibres from clothing and maritime gear also enter the ocean.

This project will be used to guide future research already underway on marine plastic pollution and the impact of human activities on the marine environment, as the Government continues in its fight against the scourge of plastics. This includes the 5p plastic bag charge - which has led to 15 billion fewer bags distributed - and plans to end the sale of plastic straws and stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds later this year.

The study shows the tyre particles can be transported directly to the ocean through the atmosphere, or carried by rainwater into rivers and sewers, where they can pass through the water treatment process. Researchers estimate this could place around 100million m² of the UK's river network - and more than 50million m² of estuarine and coastal waters - at risk of contamination by tyre particles.

Its findings also highlight some of the optimal places for intervention, for example, that fitting filters to washing machines could be less effective than changing fabric designs to reduce fibre loss, with another study at the University having recently shown that normal wear and tear when wearing clothes is just as significant a source of microplastic pollution as release from laundering.

Domestic Marine Minister, Rebecca Pow, said: "Reducing plastic pollution in the ocean is one of the greatest environmental challenges that we face. This study will help us face that challenge by identifying areas for future research, such as changes to roadside drainage and textile design. The UK is at the forefront of a global fight against the scourge of plastics. In addition to the pioneering ban on microbeads and the 5p plastic bag charge, plans are also in place to end the sale of plastic straws, stirrers and plastic-stemmed cotton buds."

The study was directed by Professor Richard Thompson OBE, Head of the International Marine Litter Research Unit, and Plymouth researchers Dr Imogen Napper and Florence Parker-Jurd. It also involved Dr Geoff Abbott from the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University (who developed a breakthrough method using mass spectrometry to detect tyre-derived microplastics in the environment), Dr Stephanie Wright from Kings College London, and Simon Hann from Eunomia Research & Consulting Ltd.

Professor Thompson oversaw Defra's first research project on microplastics and their impact on marine life nearly a decade ago. It was this, and some of his team's subsequent work, that led to the UK's pioneering ban on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products coming into force in 2018.

Professor Richard Thompson OBE, said: "Scientists have long suspected that tyre debris is posing a hidden threat to the marine environment. However, there have been few studies measuring abundance in aquatic environments. Now we have a clearer indication on quantities we need to gain a better understanding on transport in the environment and the potential impacts on marine life. This study gives us a real insight into the importance of tyre wear as a source of microplastics. However there are still many unknowns, and compared to other forms of microplastics we know relatively little about tyre wear particles. So it is important to continue to take steps to reduce emissions of better understood sources like fibres from textiles and the fragmentation of larger items.

"What this study also does is provide further evidence of the complex problems posed by microplastic pollution. We have looked at three pathways and shown that all of them are substantive pathways to the environment. As we work to understand their potential distribution and impacts it is important to also work together with industry and policy makers to identify potential solutions which may include changes in behaviour, changes in product design and waste management."

Defra is continuing to invest in research on waste management, ocean littering and microplastics to support the delivery of the government's 25 Year Environment Plan and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This research will help identify evidence gaps and recommendations to tackle marine plastic pollution, both in the UK and globally.

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. - Using advanced machine learning, drones could be used to detect dangerous "butterfly" landmines in remote regions of post-conflict countries, according to research from Binghamton University, State University at New York.

Researchers at Binghamton University had previously developed a method that allowed for highly accurate detection of "butterfly" landmines using low-cost commercial drones equipped with infrared cameras. Their new research focuses on automated detection of landmines using convolutional neural networks, the standard machine learning method for object detection and classification in the field of remote sensing. This method is a game-changer in the field, said Alek Nikulin, assistant professor of energy geophysics at Binghamton University.

"All our previous efforts relied on human-eye scanning of the dataset," said Nikulin. "Rapid drone?assisted mapping and automated detection of scatterable mine fields would assist in addressing the deadly legacy of widespread use of small scatterable landmines in recent armed conflicts and allow to develop a functional framework to effectively address their possible future use."

It is estimated that there are at least 100 million military munitions and explosives of concern devices in the world, of various size, shape and composition. Millions of these are surface plastic landmines with low-pressure triggers, such as the mass-produced Soviet PFM-1 "butterfly" landmine. Nicknamed for their small size and butterfly-like shape, these mines are extremely difficult to locate and clear due to their small size, low trigger mass and, most significantly, a design that mostly excluded metal components, making these devices virtually invisible to metal detectors. Critically, the design of the mine combined with a low triggering weight have earned it notoriety as "the toy mine," due to a high casualty rate among small children who find these devices while playing and who are the primary victims of the PFM-1 in post-conflict nations, like Afghanistan.

The researchers believe that these detection and mapping techniques are generalizable and transferable to other munitions and explosives of concern. For example, they could be adapted to detect and map disturbed soil for improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

"The use of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)?based approaches to automate the detection and mapping of landmines is important for several reasons," wrote the researchers. "One, it is much faster than manually counting landmines from an orthoimage (i.e. an aerial image that has been geometrically corrected). Two, it is quantitative and reproducible, unlike subjective human?error?prone ocular detection. And three, CNN?based methods are easily generalizable to detect and map any objects with distinct sizes and shapes from any remotely sensed raster images."

Hundreds of people die at sea every year due to vessel and airplane accidents. Emergency teams have little time to rescue those in the water because the probability of finding a person alive plummets after six hours. Beyond tides and challenging weather conditions, unsteady coastal currents often make search and rescue operations exceedingly difficult.

New insight into coastal flows gleaned by an international research team led by George Haller, Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at ETH Zurich, promises to enhance the search and rescue techniques currently in use. Using tools from dynamical systems theory and ocean data, the team has developed an algorithm to predict where objects and people floating in water will drift. "Our work has a clear potential to save lives", says Mattia Serra, former Ph.D. student at ETH and now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, who is the first author of a study recently published in Nature Communications.

Hidden traps lead to missing persons

In today's rescue operations at sea, elaborate models of ocean dynamics and weather forecasting are used to predict the path of drifting objects. For fast-changing coastal waters, however, such predictions are often inaccurate due to uncertain parameters and missing data. As a result, a search may be launched in the wrong location, causing a loss of precious time.

Haller's research team obtained mathematical results predicting that objects floating on the ocean's surface should congregate along a few special curves which they call TRansient Attracting Profiles (TRAPs). These curves are invisible to the naked eye but can be extracted and tracked from instantaneous ocean surface current data using recent mathematical methods developed by the ETH team. This enables quick and precise planning of search paths that are less sensitive to uncertain-ties in the time and place of the accident.

A new tool for rescuers

In collaboration with a team of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, a group of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the US Coast Guard, the ETH team tested their new, TRAP-based search algorithm in two separate ocean experiments near Martha's Vineyard near the north-eastern coast of the United States. Working from the same real-time data available to the Coast Guard, the team successfully identified TRAPs in the region in real time. They found that buoys and manikins thrown in the water indeed quickly gathered along these evolving curves. "Of several competing approaches tested in this project, this was the only algorithm that consistently worked in situ," says Haller.

"Our results are rapidly obtained, easy to interpret and cheap to implement", points out Serra. He adds that the method they have developed also has the potential to predict the evolution of oil spills. The next plan of the research group is to test their new prediction tool in other ocean regions as well. As Haller stresses: "Our hope is that this method will become a standard part of the toolkit of coast guards everywhere."