Tech

A recently published book on some aspects of the ecology of woody introducents in the Murmansk oblast of Russia provides the information on 19 species of plant-damaging insects out of which only 4 species are identified correctly. Dr Mikhail V. Kozlov from the University of Turku provides correct identifications for the insects, illustrated in the book, in his paper, published in the open-access journal Arctic Environmental Research, in order to prevent the spread of erroneous information across future publications and databases.

Insect fauna of the Murmansk region is relatively well-studied and that's why any new faunistic records from this region immediately attract the attention of entomologists. Those findings are especially exciting when they extend the distribution range of certain species by 1,000 to 2,000 km towards the North Pole.

The published misidentifications of insect species can lead to a cascading effect of mistakes, because entomologists commonly use faunistic data published by colleagues decades and even centuries ago. That's why it is very important to keep a track of such cases and provide correct identifications if possible, remarks the author.

"In particular, three moth species (Archips crataegana, A. podana
and Erannis defoliaria) reported in this book to occur around Kirovsk have not yet been found either in the Murmansk oblast or in the more southern Karelia. In neighbouring Finland, the northernmost records of these species are from locations some 1,000 km to the south of Kirovsk," Dr Kozlov shares his concerns.

The most striking examples of misidentification in the book are at the order level: a syrphid fly (Diptera) identified as a leafcutter bee (Hymenoptera), and a sawfly (Hymenoptera) identified as a psyllid (Hemiptera).

In conclusion, Dr Kozlov's revision found that 15 out of the 19 species illustrated were incorrectly identified. Thus, the leaf damage associated with certain insect species, considered in the book, also becomes very questionable.

"The misidentification of pest species can easily result in incorrect pest management and face unnecessary costs, while publication of incorrect data distorts our knowledge of the distribution and biology of insects. Therefore, insect identification for scientific, educational or pest management purposes should always be performed by professionals or by volunteers and students who have specific training for this
purpose," concludes Dr Mikhail V. Kozlov.

Light is the main source of energy for photosynthesis, it underlies the production process in plants. At the same time, excessive lighting can lead to photodamage of the photosynthetic apparatus and, indirectly, of other structures of the plant cell. In order to avoid such damage, plants have developed a number of protective mechanisms, including the so-called non-photochemical fluorescence quenching.

Non-photochemical fluorescence quenching develops under the action of high intensity lighting and other stressors, which leads to a decrease in the light flux absorbed by the photosynthetic apparatus.

According to Vladimir Sukhov, Head of the Laboratory of Plant Electrophysiology at the Institute of Biology and Biomedicine of Lobachevsky University, non-photochemical quenching plays a key role in protecting plants from adverse lighting conditions, and the research in this field is very important in plant physiology and agricultural sciences.

"The development of mathematical models of non-photochemical quenching is of special importance, as such models allow us to predict photodamage and adaptive changes in plant resistance under certain lighting modes without additional experimental research", Vladimir Sukhov notes.

The forecasts obtained by Lobachevsky University researchers can be used both for solving fundamental scientific problems and for applied purposes (for example, when developing new modes of artificial illumination of plants in greenhouses or for forecasting plant damage under certain weather conditions).

The article of Ekaterina Sukhova, post-graduate student of the Lobachevsky University Department of Biophysics, published with co-authors in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Bioenergetics, one of the leading journals in the field of photosynthesis research, focuses on the development of a mathematical model of non-photochemical quenching of chlorophyll fluorescence in plants and describes the peculiarities of such quenching under fluctuations of lighting intensity.

The proposed model describes the transitions between "open" (those that have not received a quantum of light) and "closed" (those that have received a quantum of light) reaction centers of photosystem II and the subsequent activation of the nonphotochemical quenching component by closed reaction centers.

"The peculiarity of the model is the description of photosystem II activation in the light and its inactivation in the dark, which was implemented in one of the versions of our model. This description significantly expands the applicability of the proposed model. In particular, it became possible to use the model to predict the effect of rapid light intensity changes on plants", explains Ekaterina Sukhova.

The model was verified on the basis of experimental data obtained using the modern method of photosynthesis research - PAM-fluorometry (pulse amplitude modulated fluorometry).

The verification showed that the model allows an accurate prediction of the development of non-photochemical quenching and photodamage in plants under fluctuating light intensity, including alternating periods of darkness and periods of plant illumination.

"From the practical point of view, the proposed model should become a tool enabling quantitative prediction of photodamage and the development of adaptive changes in plant photosynthetic apparatus under fluctuations in light intensity", concludes Ekaterina Sukhova.

Lobachevsky University researchers have identified only some areas for potential application of this new and important tool:

prediction of light damage to plants under specific weather conditions in the field (i.e., at certain intensity and fluctuations of natural lighting).

accelerated search for the most effective additional lighting modes in mixed plant lighting greenhouses (natural light plus additional artificial lighting).

theoretical search for lighting modes that provide additional resistance of the photosynthetic apparatus to stressors of different nature.

Heat, dry conditions, and the resulting low flows in rivers and lakes characterized the summer months of 2003, 2015 and 2018 in Europe. Another low flow period is on the cards for the summer of 2020. Researchers from the University of Freiburg, working with the Universities of Trier and Oslo, Norway, have presented a new method which can help scientists tell more precisely how vulnerable rivers are to drought conditions. Their findings are published in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.

"We are seeing that different rivers react very differently to a lack of precipitation," says the author of the study, Dr. Michael Stölzle from Environmental Hydrosystems at the University of Freiburg. The heart of the newly-developed method is a filter algorithm that divides the streamflow into faster and slower components. If a catchment is dominated by fast components and surface runoff, the catchment is often less able to store water and is therefore more dependent on regular rain - and is thus less resistant to droughts. If, on the other hand, most of the runoff components are slower - such as those from snowmelt or large groundwater reservoirs, the rivers will have longer stable streamflow even during prolonged dry periods. With the help of the filter, researchers can also determine after how many days a faster runoff component stops contributing significantly to a rivers's total streamflow.

"Filtering the streamflow signal is not a new idea," says Stölzle, "but it was often separated only into a fast and a slower component". In this study, the hydrologists refined the existing filters to identify three or four streamflow components with different delays. This showed that alpine regions, for example, not only have snowmelt in summer as dominant component, but also have very stable runoff conditions in winter. "From this we conclude that even in steep alpine regions there may be important subsurface storages which may ensure continuous runoff downstream," says Stölzle.

The study used streamflow data from areas in Baden-Württemberg and Switzerland. Since only streamflow data are required for the new method, it can in principle be applied worldwide and can also be used in water management. The researchers suggest applying the method to other variables such as groundwater levels or using it to separate glacier and snowmelt components.

"In Baden-Württemberg, this method may in future help us to better understand how sensitive a catchment is to drought," Stölzle explains. "A current survey among the lower water authorities has shown that both the irrigation demand and applications for water use will most likely increase in the future."

The biggest impacts on the sea life in Swansea Bay, Wales, come from waves and tides rather than human activity, a wide-ranging new study - encompassing over 170 species of fish and other sea life such as crabs, squid and starfish - has revealed.

Combining data on species, human impacts, and wave and tide patterns, the study, by a Swansea University team, provides the most comprehensive picture to date of the factors that drive change in Swansea Bay. It will give planners a better understanding of the Bay and of the potential impacts of new developments on its ecosystem.

With its two urban centres in Swansea and Port Talbot, Swansea Bay is home to around 290,000 people and is a centre for industry, including a large steelworks and two ports. It has the second highest tidal range in the world, as Atlantic tides are funnelled into the narrowing Bristol Channel and then spread across the shallow bay.

For scientists studying what's happening to the environment, highly-urbanised coastal areas like Swansea Bay present a problem. There are so many different natural and human influences on the environment that it can be difficult to disentangle them, or to work out which are the most significant.

Yet without this knowledge of the full picture, planners and environmental managers cannot make the best decisions about ecological impact.

This is where the new research comes in. The Swansea team, which included a biologists and engineers, gathered data on species, human impacts and wave and tide patterns and fed it into a statistical model. This meant they could then assess the significance of different factors.

They found that:

The waves and tides had a bigger impact on the Bay than human activity

Waves and tides accounted for over half of all the variation in species that was observed

Different species were affected by different factors, and to varying degrees - for example, dredge spoil disposals had the biggest impact on fish, whereas marine life was not affected by wastewater discharge.

The impetus for this study came from the tidal lagoon project, which revealed that there were gaps in our understanding of Swansea Bay, a highly-used, urbanised coastal ecosystem. So the Swansea University team, who had been working on separate studies, joined forces to produce this new research as part of SEACAMS, an EU-funded initiative focusing on marine renewable energy.

Dr Ruth Callaway of the College of Science at Swansea University, who led the work, said:

"It may be a surprise given that it is a highly-urbanised area, but the biggest impact on the ecology of Swansea Bay are the waves and tides. Our research shows that these natural factors shape the marine life more than human activity, such as wastewater discharge and discarding dredged material.

However, Swansea Bay remains a complex ecosystem that has been changed dramatically over the past centuries, and we need as full a picture as possible of impacts on it. That's what our research findings will help to provide."

Dr Callaway underlined how the scope of the research allowed them to build a comprehensive picture:

"What is new about this research is that we used a combination of computer models and empirical field data: we examined the wave environment and tidal currents and measured various natural and human factors.

We also studied a wide range of species. Often judgement about ecological quality and environmental impact is based on a sub-set of coastal fauna, for example the biodiversity of small animals living inside the seafloor sediments. In contrast, our investigation also included fauna living on top of the seafloor, revealing significant differences between the different groups."

Dr Iain Fairley, of Swansea University College of Engineering, who modelled the wave environment of the Bay, said:

"The high correlation between both hydrodynamic models of this study and each of the surveyed faunal communities confirmed that good quality three-dimensional environmental models can be useful tools in understanding the distribution of marine life. They are important tools to support ecosystem management, particularly in areas with complex, highly variable hydrodynamic patterns."

Dr Jose Horrillo-Caraballo, also of the College of Engineering, added:

"In the paper we discuss the balance between the hydrodynamic regime and anthropogenic factors in shaping the biota. We touch on the question of resistance of an ecosystem to change, but also differentiate between the current and historical situation."

The research was published in "Science of the Total Environment".

A novel class of antimalarial compounds that can effectively kill malaria parasites has been developed by Australian and US researchers.

In preclinical testing, the compounds were effective against different species of malaria parasites, including the deadly Plasmodium falciparum, and at multiple stages of the parasite lifecycle. The compounds target a previously unexplored parasite pathway and could overcome existing issues of parasite drug resistance, an ongoing and increasingly urgent problem.

The researchers hope that drugs based on these early compounds will soon enter phase 1 clinical trials.

The research, a collaboration between the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and global pharmaceutical company MSD, was published in Cell Host & Microbe.

Exciting new development

Professor Alan Cowman, an international malaria expert and deputy director at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, led the Australian research team, alongside MSD scientist and US team lead Dr David Olsen.

"This is an exciting new class of antimalarial compounds that could fill a critical and widening gap in our efforts to control and eliminate malaria," Professor Cowman said.

"In preclinical testing, the lead compound WM382 inhibited growth of the malaria parasite in the host and prevented transmission back to the mosquito. These results indicate that this class of compounds is very promising as a potent new treatment for malaria. We hope that drugs based on these compounds will soon progress to human phase I clinical trials."

WM382 not only killed malaria parasites in the blood, it also killed parasites in the liver and prevented parasites in the blood being transmitted to mosquitoes, he said.

"This novel class of compounds has the potential to not only cure people with malaria, but also prevent transfer of the parasite to the mosquito and, consequently, halt further transmission of the disease. This is an exciting prospect, as current antimalarial drugs kill the malaria parasite in the blood but do not fully prevent transmission," Professor Cowman said.

An emerging crisis

A major problem with current antimalarial drugs is that malaria parasites evolve and develop resistance to the drugs over time.

"Much like antibiotic resistance, malaria resistance is an emerging crisis," Professor Cowman said.

"Effective antimalarial drugs are not just critical for the infected individual, they are also critical for breaking the cycle of infection and an important way for us to reach our goal of eliminating malaria from highly endemic regions."

Once parasite resistance emerges, it can quickly spread through a region, or even globally. "In some areas, parasites are resistant to all three frontline malaria treatments. So novel drugs are urgently needed," he said.

In recent years, the focus of international efforts to develop new malaria drugs have centred on two criteria; they must target a novel process or pathway to avoid pre-existing resistance to current drugs; and they must be active at multiple stages of the parasite lifecycle.

Professor Cowman said WM382 successfully met both of these criteria.

"An exciting feature of WM382 is that it kills the malaria parasite in a very different way to current antimalarial drugs. In preclinical testing, malaria parasites that were resistant to the lethal effects of current antimalarial drugs were fully susceptible to WM382. It was also very difficult to induce resistance to this compound in malaria parasites in the lab. This is uncommon in drug discovery, and is a positive sign, as it suggests it will be harder for malaria parasites to acquire resistance in the field," Professor Cowman said.

Combatting malaria

More than 600,000 people - predominantly pregnant women and children under the age of five - die from malaria every year. According to the World Health Organization, one child in Africa continues to die from malaria every two minutes.

The malaria parasite has a complex lifecycle. Humans are infected by the bite of an infected mosquito. The parasites migrate to the liver to grow and divide undetected. It is then released into the blood, where it can be transmitted back to a mosquito and passed on to their next victim.

Professor Cowman said WM382 targeted two crucial enzymes in the malaria parasite, blocking their function and killing the parasite. "This compound has a two-pronged approach to disable the parasite, which helps explain its potency and effectiveness," Professor Cowman said. "It targets plasmepsin IX (PMIX) and plasmepsin X (PMX), two 'master regulators' that are critical for parasite survival. PMIX and PMX are involved in multiple stages of the parasite lifecycle and, because the compound hits both these targets, it is harder for parasites to develop resistance."

Hydrate formation has long been a problem for hydrocarbon production in the Arctic. Kazan Federal University's EcoOil research unit works on inhibitors to help mitigate the problem - one of the results was publicized by us just recently.

Co-author of the latest article, Research Associate of the Rheological and Thermochemical Research Lab Abdolreza Farhadian, explains, "So far, kinetic inhibitors prevail, created on the basis of polyvinyl polymers, showing good results, but they do not decompose at all under natural conditions. This is their huge disadvantage. With that in mind, over the past few years, our research team has focused on creating a unique inhibitor based on natural compounds. And we thought: maybe it's worth adding certain functional groups to the natural polymer chitosan, increasing its water solubility and its effectiveness in inhibiting hydrate formation and corrosion? And we've succeeded."

KFU's inhibitors present a unique combination of biodegradability and eco-friendliness. According to Dr. Farhadian, they are also quite cheap and non-toxic.

"Based on chitosan, we obtained a completely water-soluble reagent, and the synthesis was single-stage and was carried out under fairly mild conditions. This experiment helped to find a unique method for solving at least two problems," he shares.

The new reagent is effective in protecting pipelines from corrosion; at the same time, it can stifle hydrate formation. It's an interdisciplinary by KFU's physicist, chemists, and geologists.

The results have been presented overseas, at the University of Stavanger (Norway) in 2019.

In recent times, researchers have increasing found that the power of computers and artificial intelligence is enabling more accurate diagnosis of a patient's current heart health and can provide an accurate projection of future heart health, potential treatments and disease prevention.

Now in a paper published today in European Heart Journal, researchers from King's College London, leading the Personalised In-Silico Cardiology consortium, show how linking computer and statistical models can improve clinical decisions relating to the heart. Lead researcher Dr Pablo Lamata, from King's College London, said: "We found that making appropriate clinical decisions is not only about data, but how to combine data with the knowledge that we have built up through years of research."

The team have coined the phrase the Digital Twin to describe this integration of the two models, a computerised version of our heart which represents human physiology and individual data.

"The Digital Twin will shift treatment selection from being based on the state of the patient today to optimising the state of the patient tomorrow," the researchers wrote in the paper.

This could mean that a trip to the doctor's office could be a more digital experience. "The idea is that the electronic health record will be growing into a more detailed description of what we could call a digital avatar, a digital representation of how the heart is working," said Dr Lamata.

Mechanistic models see researchers applying the laws of physics and maths to simulate how the heart will behave. Statistical models require researchers to look at past data to see how the heart will behave in similar conditions and infer how it will do it over time. Models can pinpoint the most valuable piece of diagnostic data and can also reliably infer biomarkers that cannot be directly measured or that require invasive procedures.

Dr Lamata said more information about how the heart is behaving could be retrieved by using these models. "We already extract numbers from the medical images and signals, but we can also combine them through a model to infer something that we don't see in the data, like the stiffness of the heart. We obviously cannot touch a beating heart to know the stiffness, but we can give these models with the rules and laws of the material properties to infer that importance piece of diagnostic and prognostic information. The stiffness of the heart becomes another key biomarker that will tell us how the health of the heart is coping with disease."

The team of researchers believe that the power of computational models in cardiovascular medicine could also provide us with more control over our daily heart health. Much like the popularity of wearable monitoring devices, a digital twin of our hearts could inform about its current health and alert wearers to any risk factors. "It is also the vision of people being more empowered and being more in control and aware of the impact of their lifestyle choices in the health of their hearts. We will have more wearables that can monitor aspects of our health rhythm, heart sounds or level of physical activity. This unit is also talking to the digital twin that lives in the hospital," said Dr Lamata.

"It's like the weather: understanding better how it works, helps us to predict it. And with the heart, models will also help us to predict how better or worse it will get if we interfere with it."

Someday, microscopic robots could perform useful functions, such as diagnostic testing in lab-on-a-chip sensors, micropatterning surfaces or repairing equipment in tight spaces. But first, scientists need to be able to tightly control the microbots' speed. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Chemistry of Materials have developed micromotors with three "engines" that they can control separately with chemical fuel, magnets and light.

Micromotors are tiny tools that convert stimuli, such as chemical fuel, light, magnetic fields or sound, into motion to perform tasks. Previously, researchers have demonstrated micromotors powered by one or two of these stimuli. For example, micromotors containing platinum nanoparticle engines can be powered by adding a small amount of hydrogen peroxide to a solution. The engine's catalyst converts the hydrogen peroxide fuel into bubbles, which propel the micromotor through the liquid. Beatriz Jurado Sánchez, Alberto Escarpa and colleagues wanted to build a "supercharged" micromotor with three engines that run on different types of fuel.

To make their micromotors, the team coated polystyrene microspheres with layers of gold and 2D nanomaterials. Then, they attached three different nanoparticles that functioned as engines and that made the micromotors responsive to hydrogen peroxide, magnets and light. When the researchers exposed the micromotors to all three stimuli simultaneously, the speed increased by as much as 73% over that attained with micromotors containing only two engines. The supercharged micromotors could travel at relatively high speeds even through viscous fluids, including saliva, blood and milk. By varying factors, such as the hydrogen peroxide concentration, the type of catalyst used and the light intensity, the new micromotors offer a "myriad of controllable propulsion behaviors," the researcher say.

The growth of agriculture led to unprecedented cooperation in human societies, a team of researchers, has found, but it also led to a spike in violence, an insight that offers lessons for the present.

A new study out today in Environmental Archaeology by collaborators from UConn, the University of Utah, Troy University, and California State University, Sacramento examines the growth of agriculture in Eastern North America 7,500 to 5,000 years ago, and finds that while the domestication of plants fostered new cooperation among people, it also saw the rise of organized, intergroup violence.

"We were interested in understanding why people would make the shift from hunting and gathering to farming," says Elic Weitzel, a UConn Ph.D. student in anthropology. "Then I started to get interested in what happened in society after they made that shift and started farming on a larger scale."

The team used the "ideal free distribution" model to look at patterns of how individuals distribute themselves in an area, meaning places where people will begin occupying the best locations first. A number of factors make an area more suitable such as access to food, water, raw materials, and shelter. To measure suitability, the team looked at an indicator called "net primary productivity," which is a measure of available energy based on the plants in the area. In areas of higher net primary productivity, there were more people clustered together - and more conflict.

"If you are living in a suitable area, you can lay claim and keep others from accessing what you have. That becomes a cooperative process, because one person is not as effective as a whole group is at defending a territory," says Weitzel.

A growing population can decrease the suitability of a location over time, but that does not always mean declining quality of life. To study this, the team also took into consideration the concept known as Allee's Principle, which states that individual fitness, or likelihood of survival and reproduction, increases as the density of the population increases due to cooperative behaviors. Weitzel explains that for something like a crop of plants, they represent something valuable, and the value of cooperative behavior becomes apparent.

"The transition from a hunting and gathering society to an agricultural society is dependent on collaboration," says co-author Stephen Carmody, of Troy University. "The development of agriculture appears to only have happened in nine places around the world so Eastern North America is a unique part of the world to study. Agriculture was one of the most consequential transitions that happened in the past. It changed our whole economic situation."

Developments such as combined efforts for harvesting and defense, and possibly even sharing seeds among groups, could happen with interpersonal cooperation, which leads to greater chances of survival for the group.

As the saying goes, many hands make for lighter work and, Weitzel says, the research is about cooperation and competition at the same time.

"When a resource like domesticated crops is dense and predictable, that is when we expect that it would be defendable," he says. "Other groups may want access to your crop in case their crop failed, for example. There is cooperation and there are aspects of competition. Harvesting and defending."

Weitzel explains that this time period - 7,500 to 5,000 years ago - is not only when researchers found people aggregating and living cooperatively in high-quality locations, it is also when they saw an uptick in intergroup violence, as shown by skeletons showing the effects of "trophy-taking."

"Of course there are signs of violence throughout history, but trophy-taking is a different type of violence," Weitzel says. "The victor removes a part of the loser as a signal they won. They took scalps, hands, feet, heads - that first evidence appears to have happened at the same time as plant management."

This reflects the Allee Principle's limit: a point at which population density surpasses an optimum number, and suitability declines as a result.

"As the ideal free distribution and Allee effects predict, at a certain point, the benefits of cooperation start to wane and you see dispersal again. There are incentives to be around other people, but not too many other people," says Weitzel.

After the spike in trophy-taking violence, there was a period of time when the populations dispersed once again, although populations still aggregated. During the dispersal period, researchers found a corresponding decrease in trophy-taking violence.

"We see a lot of things that look modern to us, for example social inequality and climate change," Carmody says. "However, these are fundamental processes and large-scale issues. A lot of these issues tie back to the origin of agriculture."

By understanding early human interactions, Weitzel says this knowledge can help understand our present and even influence the way we think about the future.

"This is one of the ways archaeology is relevant to contemporary and future society," he says. "The modeling of human behaviors in society and our relationships can help us overcome current collective action problems. We are all better off if we cooperate."

WASHINGTON -- Researchers have incorporated ultra-thin optical devices known as metasurfaces into off-the-shelf contact lenses to correct deuteranomaly, a form of red-green color blindness. The new customizable contact lens could offer a convenient and comfortable way to help people who experience various forms of color blindness.

"Problems with distinguishing red from green interrupt simple daily routines such as deciding whether a banana is ripe," said Sharon Karepov from Tel Aviv University in Israel, a member of the research team. "Our contact lenses use metasurfaces based on nano-metric size gold ellipses to create a customized, compact and durable way to address these deficiencies."

In The Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Letters, Karepov and colleagues report that, based on simulations of color vision deficiency, their new metasurface-based contact lens can restore lost color contrast and improve color perception up to a factor of 10.

The approach used to introduce new and tailor-designed functionalities to contact lenses could be expanded to help other forms of color vision deficiency and even other eye disorders, according to the researchers.

Customized correction

Deuteranomaly, which occurs mostly in men, is a condition in which the photoreceptor responsible for detecting green light responds to light associated with redder colors. Scientists have known for more than 100 years that this vision problem can be improved by reducing detection of the excessively perceived color but achieving this correction in a comfortable and compact device is challenging.

"Glasses based on this correction concept are commercially available, however, they are significantly bulkier than contact lenses," said Karepov. "Because the proposed optical element is ultrathin and can be embedded into any rigid contact lens, both deuteranomaly and other vision disorders such as refractive errors can be treated within a single contact lens."

To solve this problem, the researchers turned to metasurfaces -- artificially fabricated thin films designed with specific optical properties. Metasurfaces made of nanoscale gold ellipses have been extensively studied in the past few decades and can be designed to achieve specific effects on the light transmitted through them. However, the researchers needed a way to get metasurfaces, which are conventionally made on flat surfaces, onto the curved surfaces of contact lenses.

"We developed a technique to transfer metasurfaces from their initial flat substrate to other surfaces such as contact lenses," said Karepov. "This new fabrication process opens the door for embedding metasurfaces into other non-flat substrates as well."

From a flat to curved surface

The researchers tested the optical response of the metasurface after every step of the new fabrication procedure and acquired microscopy images to closely examine the structure of the metasurface. Their measurements showed that the metasurface's light manipulation properties did not change after transfer to the curved surface, indicating that the process was successful.

The researchers then used a standard simulation of color perception to quantify the deuteranomaly color perception before and after introducing the optical element. They found an improvement of up to a factor of 10 and showed that visual contrast lost due to deuteranomaly was essentially fully restored.

Although clinical testing would be needed before the contact lenses could be marketed, the researchers say that manufacturers could embed the metasurface during the molding stage of contact lens fabrication or thermally fuse them to a rigid contact lens. They plan to keep studying and improving the metasurface transfer process and test it for other applications.

ORLANDO, March 4, 2020 - Sea level rise and hurricanes are a threat to sea turtle nesting habitat along national seashores in the Southeast, but a new study predicts the greatest impact to turtles will be at Canaveral National Seashore.

The University of Central Florida-led study, which was published recently in the journal Ecological Applications, examined loggerhead and green sea turtle nests to predict the amount of beach habitat loss at Canaveral, Cumberland Island, Cape Lookout, and Cape Hatteras national seashores by the year 2100. Sea turtles help maintain the coastal ecosystem and are indicators for the health of sandy beaches.

When comparing sea turtle nesting density with predicted beach loss at the sites, they found nesting habitat loss would not be equal. The researchers predicted that by 2100, Canaveral would lose about 1 percent of its loggerhead habitat, while the three other seashores will lose between approximately 2.5 to 6.7 percent each.

Although Canaveral's percentage loss is smaller, the impact at this national seashore will be greater because of its nesting density.

"Canaveral is part of the core loggerhead nesting area for the Southeast," says Marta Lyons, a preeminent postdoctoral fellow in UCF's Department of Biology and the study's lead author. "The nests are already pretty well packed in there, so even a small loss of area can have a big impact on nesting sea turtle populations."

To determine beach loss at the study sites, the researchers used sea level rise and storm surge estimates and considered the effects of impervious structures along the shorelines, such as roads and buildings, in restricting natural beach movement. To do this, they developed a new method to calculate current and future sea turtle nesting areas that takes into account nesting data, beach length and width, and the impact of impervious surfaces.

Lyons says one of the goals was to create digital maps for the National Park Service to understand how sea turtle nesting areas will change with sea level rise and how resources could be managed.

"As the National Park Service thinks about future developments, whether that's putting in a new lifeguard station or new bathrooms, this method of calculating current and future sea turtle nesting area can help them decide where to put them," she says.

An improved method to predict the temperature when plastics change from supple to brittle, which could potentially accelerate future development of flexible electronics, was developed by Penn State College of Engineering researchers.

Next-generation flexible electronics, such as bendable displays and medical implants, will rely on semiconductor materials that are mechanically flexible. Accurate predictions of the temperature when embrittlement occurs, known as the glass transition temperature, is crucial to design conducting polymers that remain flexible at room temperature.

"Previous work to predict the glass transition of polymers relied on complex, multi-parameter models but nevertheless led to poor accuracy," said Enrique Gomez, professor of chemical engineering and principal investigator. "In addition, accurate experimental measurements of the glass transition of conjugated polymers are challenging."

All polymers become brittle when cooled. However, some polymers, such as polystyrene used in Styrofoam cups, become brittle at temperatures higher than room temperature while other polymers, such as polyisoprene used in rubber bands, become brittle at much lower temperatures.

Renxuan Xie, previously a doctoral student at Penn State and now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Santa Barbara, found a way to measure glass transition temperatures by keeping track of the mechanical properties as embrittlement occurs, laying the foundation for understanding the relationship between the glass transition and structure. Follow-up studies then determined the glass transition for 32 different polymers by measuring mechanical properties as a function of temperature.

"This advancement, coupled with data for various polymers in our later studies, revealed a simple relationship between the chemical structure and the glass transition," Gomez said. "Therefore, we can now predict the embrittlement point from the chemical structure."

According to Gomez, this work, reported in a recent issue of Nature Communications, allows researchers to predict the glass transition temperature from the chemical structure of conducting polymers before they are synthesized for use in electronics. Most currently used conducting polymers are brittle and inflexible, so this advancement could accelerate the development of flexible electronics.

"Although it sounds simple, we're the first to use the mechanical properties of conducting polymers to measure the glass transition temperature," Gomez said. "We combine the data from many different polymers to derive a simple relationship that predicts the glass transition temperature based on the chemical structure in a more accurate way than previously possible."

Gomez's study was funded by a four-year, $1.75 million grant awarded in 2019 by the National Science Foundation to explore the integration of theory, simulations and experiments to accelerate the development of flexible electronics based on organic compounds. The next steps for this research, Gomez said, are more extensive tests and exploration of practical applications.

"We now want to use our model to design conducting polymers to make ultra-flexible and stretchable electronics," Gomez said. "We also want to push our model to find the limits and see where the model breaks down."

Researchers at the University of Bristol have come up with a new type of nanoelectromechanical relay to enable reliable high-temperature, non-volatile memory.

The work, which is reported in Nature Communications, was carried out in collaboration with the University of Southampton and the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

The invention is an important development for all-electric vehicles and more-electric aircraft which require electronics with integrated data storage that can operate in extreme temperatures with high energy efficiency.

As transistor leakage current increases with temperature, nanoelectromechanical relays have emerged as a promising alternative to transistors for such applications. However, until now, a reliable and scalable non-volatile relay that retains its state when powered off, to implement memory, has not been demonstrated.

Dr Dinesh Pamunuwa, who leads a group that carries out research in the field of Microelectronics at the University of Bristol and is the lead investigator, explains: "Part of the challenge is the way electromechanical relays operate; when actuated, a beam anchored at one end moves under an electrostatic force. As the beam moves, the airgap between the actuation electrode and beam rapidly reduces while the capacitance increases. At a critical voltage called the pull-in voltage, the electrostatic force becomes much greater than the opposing spring force and the beam snaps in. This inherent electromechanical pull-in instability makes precise control of the moving beam, critical for non-volatile operation, very difficult.

Now, though, Dr Pamunuwa and the team have demonstrated a rotational relay that maintains a constant airgap as the beam moves, eliminating this electromechanical pull-in instability.

Using this relay, they have succeeded in demonstrating the first high-temperature non-volatile nanoelectromechanical relay operation, at 200 °C.

Dr.Pamunuwa said: "This is a truly exciting development as the need to develop technology that reduces our dependency on fossil fuels increases. This relay operation is a significant step forward in developing electronics for all-electric vehicles and energy-efficient more-electric aircraft, as well as for creating zero-standby power intelligent nodes for the IoT.

"Electronics built from nano relays instead of transistors can work at much higher temperatures while also having zero standby power. Any digital electronic system needs logic and memory, and this relay makes it easier to build relay-based memory that retains the stored state when powered off, by using stiction. Maintaining a constant airgap as the relay switches allows very precise electrostatic control, and greatly improves reliability."

CABI scientists, as part of an international team of researchers, have discovered a new biological control in the fight against the highly noxious and invasive weed parthenium (Parthenium hysterophorus) in Pakistan.

As outlined in a new paper published in the journal BioInvasions Records, the scientists report the first record of the rust species Puccinia abrupta var. partheniicola - more commonly known as winter rust - in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provinces.

The presence of winter rust marks the second natural enemy, in addition to the leaf-feeding beetle Zygogramma bicolorata Pallister (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), which could help the management of parthenium in Pakistan.

According to the CABI Evidence Note 'Parthenium: Impacts and coping strategies in Central West Asia', parthenium is an aggressively-spreading weed, now classed as a 'superior weed', which is extremely prolific and capable of producing up to 30,000 seeds per plant.

CABI scientists say parthenium can cause severe allergic reactions in humans and livestock, may harbour malaria-carrying mosquitoes, displace native plant species and reduce pasture carrying capacities by as much as 80% to 90% where in India, for example, the cost of restoring grazing land is around USD 6.7 billion per annum.

The evidence note also highlights that parthenium weed can have a significant impact on crop yields - through direct competition as well as by inhibiting germination of seeds - where, for instance, in Ethiopia sorghum grain yield was reduced from 40 to 97 percent.

The researchers conducted surveys for winter rust covering 65 sites in 19 districts of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The species was recorded at 21 sites in 8 districts. The most severe attack was found in the northern part of Punjab including Lahore, Attock and Narowal districts, while in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa medium rust infection was recorded only in Manshera district. In other districts rust infection was considered low or absent.

Dr Philip Weyl, a co-author on the paper and Research Scientist, Weed Biological Control at CABI, said, "Parthenium weed is considered to be a dominant weed species of natural ecosystems and agriculture in Pakistan and is also highly allergic to humans and toxic to livestock.

"Management options in Pakistan are limited and have tended to focus on manual removal and the application of herbicides. However, manual removal of the weed without protective clothing is very risky due to contact dermatitis while large-scale control using herbicides is economically and environmentally unsustainable."

The scientists reveal that while winter rust has previously been introduced deliberately to tackle parthenium in Australia in 1991 it has also appeared unintentionally in China, India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritius, Nepal, South Africa and Tanzania. They believe the rust could have entered Pakistan via India or Nepal.

Lead author Iram M. Iqbal, from the University of the Punjab, said, "While the winter rust may not kill the parthenium it can significantly reduce biomass and seed production, especially when applied at the rosette stage of the weed.

"Furthermore, the suppressive effect of the rust was enhanced in the presence of competitive pasture plants and is likely to maintain its effectiveness under elevated CO2 concentrations. We believe that the presence of winter rust in Pakistan will aid the management of parthenium weed."

Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report that the number of disabled students admitted to U.S. medical schools rose from 2.9% to 4.9% over the last three years. However, the percentage of NIH-funded researchers with disabilities declined between 2008 and 2018. The grant success rate for this group was lower than for researchers without a disability, indicating that despite more people with disabilities prepared to enter biomedical research, their prospects as professionals are weakening.

The findings, published Nov. 26 in the Journal of the American Medical Association and March 3 in PLOS, highlight the need for more intense efforts to remove barriers to training, employment and research support for people with disabilities.

"There is a lot of value to including people with disabilities in medicine -- taking care of patients with the same experience is a nuanced perspective that I think is greatly overlooked," says Bonnielin Swenor, Ph.D., M.P.H., professor of ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a member of its Wilmer Eye Institute. "We need to do more to understand the barriers keeping people with disabilities from opportunities and identify the specific unmet needs in the workforce." Swenor herself has vision impairment.

The first study, published Nov. 26, evaluated 56,217 responses to a survey at 87 U.S. allopathic medical schools. Some 2,600 (4.9%) students self-reported having at least one of eight disabilities identified in the survey. This is an increase from 2.9% of medical students reporting disability in a 2016 baseline report.

"The good news is that the number of medical students admitted with disabilities is growing, but their path after they finish their training is far from clear," says Swenor.

A follow-up study, published March 3 in PLOS, found that instead of increasing with a burgeoning number of trainees, federal funding for researchers with disabilities decreased between 2008 and 2018 by almost 1%. Additionally, researchers with disabilities were less likely to receive grant funding compared with those without a disability, signaling a potential bias for those with disabilities in the grant review process. The researchers determined this by analyzing the data of NIH grant applicants and awardees recorded each fiscal year within the eRACommons portal. This is in contrast to grants awarded to researchers not reporting a disability, which increased from 86.6% in 2008 to 89.7% in 2018.

Though the data cannot address the reasoning behind the drop in funding to researchers with disabilities, Swenor says there are three potential scenarios: First, there could be fewer people with disabilities entering research than before. Second, researchers with disabilities are submitting fewer applications than researchers without disabilities. Or third, more researchers with disabilities are withholding their disability status because their disability is not listed in the application or they are fearful of discrimination against their disability status.

According to the CDC, about 26% of Americans have a disability. However, the researchers say only about 10% of employed scientists report a disability. "To reflect the realities of our society, we should have far more people with disabilities working in research and medicine," says Swenor.

"Federal funding agencies like the NIH have made clear commitments to increasing diversity in research. However, this data shows that there is still a lot of work to be done, especially for researchers with disabilities," says Swenor.

Swenor found this trend extends to the general workforce in a third study, published Dec. 5 in JAMA Opthalmology. Her research team found that people with vision or hearing disabilities had higher unemployment rates than groups without a disability, 33.3% and 24.9% respectively. However, those with both a visual and hearing impairment had the highest rates of unemployment of any group, with a 61% unemployment rate.

"These groups often fall through the cracks when it comes to getting accommodations and are more vulnerable to discriminatory unemployment," says Swenor.

The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 to provide people with disabilities employment opportunities and benefits equal to those provided people without a disability. However, Swenor suggests that stigma, workplace culture and access to accommodations still present barriers to their full inclusion. "We need to challenge these barriers with innovation and societal change, says Swenor. "We can't stop here."