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BUFFALO, N.Y. — A study of seven wastewater treatment plants in the Eastern United States reveals a mixed record when it comes to removing medicines such as antibiotics and antidepressants.

The research points to two treatment methods — granular activated carbon and ozonation — as being particularly promising. Each technique reduced the concentration of a number of pharmaceuticals, including certain antidepressants and antibiotics, in water by more than 95%, the scientists’ analysis found.

Activated sludge, a common treatment process that uses microorganisms to break down organic contaminants, serves an important purpose in wastewater treatment but was much less effective at destroying persistent drugs such as antidepressants and antibiotics.

“The take-home message here is that we could actually remove most of the pharmaceuticals we studied. That’s the good news. If you really want clean water, there are multiple ways to do it,” says Diana Aga, PhD, Henry M. Woodburn Professor of Chemistry in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences.

“However, for plants that rely on activated sludge only, more advanced treatment like granular activated carbon and/or ozonation may be needed,” Aga adds. “Some cities are already doing this, but it can be expensive.”

The findings are important because any drugs discharged from treatment plants can enter the environment, where they may contribute to phenomena such as antibiotic resistance, or be consumed by wildlife.

"Our research adds to a growing body of work showing that advanced treatment methods, including ozonation and activated carbon, can be very effective at removing persistent pharmaceuticals from wastewater," says Anne McElroy, PhD, Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

The study — funded by New York Sea Grant — was published in November in the journal Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.

Aga and McElroy led the project, with UB chemistry PhD student Luisa Angeles as first author. The paper was a partnership between researchers at UB, Stony Brook University, the Hampton Roads Sanitation District and Hazen and Sawyer, a national water engineering firm that designs advanced wastewater treatment systems, including some of the systems studied.

The research analyzed a variety of technologies in use at seven wastewater treatment plants in the Eastern U.S., including six full-scale plants and one large pilot-scale plant. According to the paper, “more precise locations are not provided in order to protect the identity” of the facilities.

Angeles says the study’s findings could guide future decision-making, especially in areas where water is scarce and in cities that may want to recycle wastewater, converting it into drinking water.

The research is also important for environmental conservation. It demonstrated that larval zebrafish did not change their behavior when they were exposed to wastewater discharged from treatment plants. However, much more work is needed to understand how longer-term exposures may impact wildlife, Aga says.

In a separate study in 2017, Aga’s team found high concentrations of antidepressants or the metabolized remnants of those drugs in the brains of numerous fish in the Niagara River, part of the Great Lakes region. Scientists still don’t fully understand the behavioral and ecological impacts that may occur when chemicals from human medicines build up in wild animals over time, Aga says.

Though wastewater treatment plants were historically designed and operated for purposes such as removing organic matter and nitrogen from used water, the new research and other prior studies demonstrate that these facilities could also be harnessed to remove different classes of medicines.

STONY BROOK, NY, January 8, 2020 - In a new study published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Adam Singer, MD, et al reported that quickly correcting high potassium levels, a condition known as hyperkalemia, in emergency department patients cut mortality in that population by half.

In the study, Singer, professor and vice chair of research for the Department of Emergency Medicine in the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University, and colleagues, reviewed nearly 115,000 Stony Brook University Hospital ED visits during 2016 and 2017, finding the mortality rate was significantly reduced in this patient cohort (6.3 % vs. 12.7 %).

Millions of patients suffering with diabetes, heart failure, hypertension and renal failure are at an increased risk for hyperkalemia. Many therapies to treat these conditions may also increase potassium levels.

"Because of the increasing risk of hyperkalemia in this population, it is important, as our study showed, to develop protocols that help quickly identify and correct hyperkalemia while the patient is still in the emergency department," said Dr. Singer.

Have you ever seen a sea star move? To many of us, sea star seem motionless, like a rock on the ocean's floor, but in actuality, they have hundreds of tube feet attached to their underbelly. These feet stretch and contract to attach to rough terrain, hold on to prey and, of course, move.

Any one tube foot on a sea star can act autonomously in responding to stimuli, but coupled together, they can synchronize their motion to produce a bouncing motion -- their version of running. For years, researchers have wondered exactly how a sea star accomplishes this synchronization, given it has no brain and a completely decentralized nervous system.

The answer, from researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, was published today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface: sea star couple a global directionality command from a "dominant arm" with individual, localized responses to stimuli to achieve coordinated locomotion. In other words, once the sea star provides an instruction on which way to move, the individual feet figure out how to achieve this on their own, without further communication.

The researchers, including Professor Eva Kanso in USC Viterbi's Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and Sina Heydari, a USC Viterbi Ph.D. candidate, were joined by Matt McHenry, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine; Amy Johnson, professor of marine biology at Bowdoin College; and Olaf Ellers, research associate in biology and mathematics at Bowdoin College.

The work builds on an existing hierarchal model of behavior, but goes further in explaining how much of sea star locomotion happens locally versus globally.

"The nervous system does not process everything in the same place at the same time, but relies on the idea that the sea star is competent and will figure it out," said Kanso, a Zohrab A. Kaprielian Fellow in Engineering. "If one tube foot pushes against the ground, the others will feel the force. This mechanical coupling is the only way in which one tube foot shares information with another."

A third model of locomotion

The nervous system of a sea star is characterized by a nerve ring that surrounds its mouth and connects to each individual arm through a radial nerve. The muscles of each tube foot are stimulated by neurons connected to the radial and ring nerves.

All feet step in the same direction while crawling, but their movement is not synchronized. However, when achieving the bouncing gait, sea star seem to coordinate tens of feet into two or three synchronized groups. The research team, led by Kanso, looked at both modes of motion, and the transition between them. The result is a model that describes how much of a sea star's locomotion is determined by local sensory-motor response at the tube feet level versus global sensory-motor commands.

In the animal world, behavior is often described by one of two prevailing models of locomotion; behavior such as insect flight is the result of sensory feedback traveling through a central processing system, which sends a message activating a response, or it is the result of completely decentralized, individual responses to sensory information such as in fish schools or ant colonies.

Neither of these models seem to describe the motion of a sea star.

"In the case of the sea star, the nervous system seems to rely on the physics of the interaction between the body and the environment to control locomotion. All of the tube feet are attached structurally to the sea star and thus, to each other."

In this way, there is a mechanism for "information" to be communicated mechanically between tube feet. An individual tube foot would only need to sense its own state (proprioception) and respond accordingly. Because its state is coupled mechanically to other tube feet, they work together collectively. As the tube feet begin to move, each produces an individual force that becomes a part of the sensory environment. In this way, each tube foot is also responding to the forces produced by other tube feet and eventually, they establish a rhythm with each other.

This is similar to other mechanical models of coordination. For example, take a set of mechanical metronomes, devices used to help keep rhythm or time for a musician. You can start a set of 10 at all different phases, resting them on the same flat surface. Over time, they will synchronize. At play is the mechanical coupling effect seen with the sea star; each metronome is mechanically interacting with the phases created by the other metronomes and as such, is effectively "communicating" with the other metronomes until they begin to beat in complete rhythm and synchrony.

How sea star behavior can help us design more efficient robotics systems

Understanding how a distributed nervous system, like that of a sea star, achieves complex, coordinated motions could lead to advancements in areas such as robotics. In robotics systems, it is relatively straightforward to program a robot to perform repetitive tasks. However, in more complex situations where customization is required, robots face difficulties. How can robots be engineered to apply the same benefits to a more complex problem or environment?

The answer might lie in the sea star model, Kanso said. "Using the example of a sea star, we can design controllers so that learning can happen hierarchically. There is a decentralized component for both decision-making and for communicating to a global authority. This could be useful for designing control algorithms for systems with multiple actuators, where we are delegating a lot of the control to the physics of the system -- mechanical coupling -- versus the input or intervention of a central controller."

Next, Kanso and her team will look at how the global directionality command arises in the first place and what happens if there are competing stimuli.

Viruses subvert or remodel host cells from the inside, relying on the host cellular machinery for fundamental aspects of replication and dispersal. Because viruses are so intimately associated with all aspects of the functioning of the host cell, study of plant viruses has revealed much about the inner workings of plant cells, providing insight into plasmodesmatal connections, cell-cell signaling, secretion, cytoskeletal dynamics and the role of the chloroplast, among others.

Increased understanding of the mechanisms underlying the interactions between viruses and the inner workings of the cells they infect is essential for improved management of virus-induced disease in crops. Our knowledge of this area has increased tremendously in the past decade; however, many open questions remain, and the cell biology of virus-host and virus-vector interactions is one of the most exciting areas of research in the molecular plant-microbe field.

The January focus issue of the Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions journal addresses several of these areas, with four open access reviews and several research articles covering a variety of current topics examining the cell biology of virus-plant and virus-vector interactions, including cellular RNA hubs, plasmodesmal functioning, tripartite interactions, mechanisms of host defense suppression, and biotechnological approaches to induce host resistance.

Could the division of labor in an anthill be driven by the same social dynamics governing the gap between liberals and conservatives? That was the surprising question tackled by Princeton biologists Chris Tokita and Corina Tarnita.

"Our findings suggest that division of labor and political polarization -- two social phenomena not typically considered together -- may actually be driven by the same process," said Tokita, a graduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology. "Division of labor is seen as a benefit to societies, while political polarization usually isn't, but we found that the same dynamics could theoretically give rise to them both."

In a paper published today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, Tokita and Tarnita examined two forces known to drive political polarization and added them to an existing model for how division of labor arises in ant communities. They found that a feedback between these two forces simultaneously resulted in division of labor and polarized social networks.

"It suggests that maybe there's a common process underlying the organization of societies," Tokita said.

The two forces are "social influence," the tendency of individuals to become similar to those they interact with, and "interaction bias," which leads us to interact with others who are already like us. The researchers combined those with a "response threshold" model of ant social dynamics, in which ants choose their activities based on which need meets a critical internal threshold.

In other words, if ants A and B have both checked community food stores recently and checked on their young recently, but A has a lower threshold for hunger while B has a lower threshold for worrying about the health of the larvae, A will head out foraging while B rushes back to the nursery. Over time, this leads A to interact with other hunger-sensitive ants, who become the foraging team, while B spends more time with other care providers, and they become the nurses. Combine that with social influence and interaction bias, and the gulf between the foragers and the nurses grows steadily wider.

When this leads to societies eating well and raising healthy young, it's called division of labor and heralded as a cornerstone of civilization. When it leads to tribalism, it's called a breakdown of civil discourse.

But the underlying forces might be the same, say the researchers.

"Social insect colonies thrive on the heterogeneity that leads to division of labor, but sometimes they need to make decisions that have to be embraced by the whole nest," said Tarnita, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "For example, when honeybees need to move their nest to a new location, it would be problematic if the colony couldn't reach consensus and it ended up splitting,"

So what the researchers wondered next was how the social forces that polarized the ants into doing different tasks could be tamed to rebuild consensus when that was needed. Their model predicted a clear way back from polarization: fight the tendency to interact only with those who are similar, and be willing to let your internal thresholds shift a little.

"Our model predicts that if you interact with those who are different from you, over time, you'll become similar to each other," Tokita said. "It basically erases those differences."

It even applies to scientists and sociologists, he added. "One of the things I hope comes from this project is that it causes people in different fields, coming at and thinking about social behavior from different perspectives, to talk to each other a little more. In this project, we learned a lot by borrowing theories from sociology and political science, and combining them with our biological model."

Microplastics (plastic particles under 5 mm) are an abundant type of debris found in salt and freshwater environments. In a Limnology & Oceanography Letters study, researchers demonstrated the transfer of microplastics through the food chain between microscopic prey and larval fish that live in coastal ecosystems. They also found that microplastic ingestion interferes with normal growth in fish larvae.

The investigators also looked at the effects of a common pollutant (the pesticide DDT) that attaches to microparticles in coastal waters. Organisms were not able to detect or discriminate against ingesting microparticles with high levels of DDT.

"Our findings indicate that trophic transfer may be an important route for microplastic exposure in estuarine food webs and that even short exposure to high levels of microplastics can impair growth of an important prey fish," said lead author Samantha Athey, of the University of Toronto. "Because estuaries are incredibly productive habitats that are home to many of our commercial seafood species in the United States, it is important to understand the sources, fate, and effects of microplastics and associated pollutants in these systems."

For women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), taking certain steps to ensure that they have a healthy pregnancy leads to a reduced risk of complicated birth or miscarriage, according to a study in Arthritis Care & Research.

The study included 443 women with RA and 6,097 women in the general population. In the RA population, patients who followed an "ideal clinical pathway" that included certain medical tests, therapies, and prenatal follow-up had a 40% lower risk of complicated birth or miscarriage compared with those who did not. Compared with the general population, patients with RA who followed an ideal pathway had a similar risk of complicated birth or miscarriage.

"Preconception counselling and risk stratification are key points for successful pregnancies because they allow for modification of treatment according to an individual's risk profile," said senior author Carlo Alberto Scirè, MD, PhD, of the University of Ferrara, in Italy. "Our study suggests that simple interventions may have a relevant impact on a successful pregnancy outcome in women with RA."

Directional antennas convert electrical signals to radio waves and emit them in a particular direction, allowing increased performance and reduced interference. This principle, which is useful in radio wave technology, could also be interesting for miniaturised light sources. After all, almost all Internet-based communication utilises optical light communication. Directional antennas for light could be used to exchange data between different processor cores with little loss and at the speed of light. To enable antennas to operate with the very short wavelengths of visible light, such directional antennas have to be shrunk to nanometre scale.

Würzburg physicists have now laid the foundation for this technology in a pioneering publication: In the magazine "Nature Communications", they describe for the first time how to generate directed infrared light using an electrically driven Yagi-Uda antenna made of gold. The antenna was developed by the nano-optics working group of Professor Bert Hecht, who holds the Chair of Experimental Physics 5 at the University of Würzburg. The name "Yagi-Uda" is derived from the two Japanese researchers, Hidetsugu Yagi and Shintaro Uda, who invented the antenna in the 1920s.

Applying the laws of optical antenna technology

What does a Yagi-Uda antenna for light look like? "Basically, it works in the same way as its big brothers for radio waves ," explains Dr. René Kullock, a member of the nano-optics team. An AC voltage is applied that causes electrons in the metal to vibrate and the antennas radiate electromagnetic waves as a result. "In the case of a Yagi-Uda antenna, however, this does not occur evenly in all directions but through the selective superposition of the radiated waves using special elements, the so-called reflectors and directors," says Kullock. "This results in constructive interference in one direction and destructive interference in all other directions." Accordingly, such an antenna would only be able to receive light coming from the same direction when operated as a receiver.

Applying the laws of antenna technology to nanometre scale antennas that radiate light is technically challenging. Some time ago, the Würzburg physicists were already able to demonstrate that the principle of an electrically driven light antenna works. But in order to make a relatively complex Yagi-Uda antenna, they had to come up with some new ideas. In the end, they succeeded thanks to a sophisticated production technique: "We bombarded gold with gallium ions which enabled us to cut out the antenna shape with all reflectors and directors as well as the necessary connecting wires from high-purity gold crystals with great precision," explains Bert Hecht.

In a next step, the physicists positioned a gold nano particle in the active element so that it touches one wire of the active element while keeping a distance of only one nanometre to the other wire. "This gap is so narrow that electrons can cross it when voltage is applied using a process known as quantum tunnelling," explains Kullock. This charge motion generates vibrations with optical frequencies in the antenna which are emitted in a specific direction thanks to the special arrangement of the reflectors and directors.

Accuracy dependent on number of directors

The Würzburg researchers are fascinated by the unusual property of their novel antenna that radiates light in a particular direction although it is very small. As in their "larger counterparts", the radio wave antennas, the directional accuracy of light emission of the new optical antenna is determined by the number of antenna elements. "This has allowed us to build the world's smallest electrically powered light source to date which is capable of emitting light in a specific direction," Hecht details.

However, much work still needs to be done before the new invention is ready to be used in practice. Firstly, the physicists have to work on the counterpart that receives light signals. Secondly, they have to boost the efficiency and stability.

People have used the phrase "drone on and on" for a long time. Webster's dictionary defines this figure of speech as "to speak for a long time in a dull voice without saying anything interesting."

Yet, in agriculture, drones aren't dull, at all!

Farmers use drones to be more efficient. Drones help farmers improve yields and stay ahead of problems before they become too big.

Olga Walsh, University of Idaho, is researching the use of drones for fruit trees. Most of the agricultural applications for drones - or, more technically unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) - have been on grain crops like wheat, corn and soy.

"Adoption and use of crop sensors in production agriculture saves thousands of dollars every year in many crops," says Walsh. "Crop sensors also help to significantly improve the efficiency of agricultural inputs, such as fertilizers and water. Finally, drones can minimize negative impacts of agricultural activities on environmental quality."

In Idaho, the fruit industry grows grapes, cranberries, apples, and even alternative fruits like Asian pears. Apples are the largest fruit crop in Idaho, with over 60 million pounds of apples produced per year.1

Walsh's research team focused on applying UAV technology to fruit trees. Her previous work has been with wheat and other crops. "We know drones can be used in orchards," says Walsh. "But there aren't any grower recommendations regarding what data needs to be collected and what kind of data is most useful, depending on the grower objective."

The most promising ways the drones could be employed for the orchards and tree nurseries are:

taking inventory of tree height and canopy volume;

monitoring tree health and quality;

managing water, nutrients, pests and disease in-season;

estimating fruit/nut production and yield; and,

creating marketing tools (videos for promotion of the orchard, or sale of trees and fruit).

Like with other uses of drones in agriculture, Walsh's work helps to collect detailed information about the crops, faster than humans could by physically "scouting" the fields. "The UAVs are capable of acquiring images with high resolutions that are ideal for detecting various crop issues," says Walsh.

"The UAV systems allow scanning the crops from above. They obtain high quality images and high-resolution spectral data. This is correlated with plant growth, health, water and nutrient status, and can be used to estimate biomass production." All are indicators of potential yield.

It's not just about the speed of scouting a field. "Sensors can function within regions of the electromagnetic spectrum where human eyes can't," says Walsh. "Sensors are much more reliable and objective than visual assessment. They provide quantitative information (numeric data that can be measured and compared) versus qualitative information (descriptive data that can be observed)."

Team members also perform outreach. "We conduct grower education on the use of remote sensing and using UAVs for crop monitoring," says Walsh. "We do demonstration flights and produce publications to boost grower adoption of precision agriculture methods."

"The overall goal of this work is to strengthen sustainability and competitiveness of Idaho fruit tree producers," says Walsh. "Our findings increased awareness, knowledge, and adoption of crop sensors and UAVs."

And, that's not dull at all!

Walsh presented her work at the November International Annual Meeting of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America in San Antonio. Funding for this project came from the Idaho State Department of Agriculture Nursery Advisory and Florist Advisory Committee.

While LED lighting can enhance plant growth in greenhouses, standards are needed to determine the optimal intensity and colors of light, according to Rutgers research that could help improve the energy efficiency of horticultural lighting products.

Many lighting companies market their LED (light-emitting diode) products with claims of delivering an optimal "light recipe" that often consists of a combination of wavelengths and color ratios, such as a 4-to-1 red to blue ratio on the spectrum (colors of a rainbow). Plant scientists often use this information to evaluate the potential effects of lamps on plant growth and development. But standardized procedures on how to calculate these ratios are lacking, according to a study soon to be published in the journal Acta Horticulturae.

"The more efficient supplemental lighting sources are, the less electric power growers need to finish their crops," said senior author A.J. Both, a professor and extension specialist in controlled environment engineering in the Department of Environmental Sciences in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "We hope to help make indoor crop production more sustainable and affordable."

Increased energy efficiency can have a big impact on the bottom line, and information about new crop lighting strategies will help the burgeoning indoor farming industry, Both said.

In greenhouses and controlled environments, electric lamps are used to supplement sunlight and extend lighting times to produce horticultural crops, such as vegetables, flowers and herbs, according to a previous study led by Both. Recent advances in energy-efficient LED technology provide the horticultural industry with multiple lighting options. But growers can't easily compare technologies and LED options because of a lack of independent data on how lamps perform. That study led to a proposed standardized product label allowing for comparisons of lamps across manufacturers.

Both and colleagues continue to focus on independently assessing performance metrics such as power consumption, efficiency, light intensity and the light distribution pattern and relaying that information to commercial growers. Recent advancements have provided opportunities to precisely control the light from LED lamps and study their impacts on plant growth and development, according to Both's research. Both and his team work closely with plant scientists who study the impact of light on plants grown for food or ornamental crops.

The new study recommends using a spectroradiometer, an instrument that measures light output across a specific range of wavelengths. Using such an instrument, various light ratios can be calculated. The researchers reported substantial differences in light ratios comparing sunlight with common lamps, including LED, high-pressure sodium, incandescent and fluorescent lamps used for plant lighting. The researchers hope that their work will contribute to the development of standard definitions for specific wavebands (ranges of wavelengths) that are important for plant growth and development.

The lead author of the new study is Timothy Shelford, a part-time research specialist at Rutgers who also works at Cornell University. Claude Wallace, a Rutgers graduate and part-time employee, also contributed to the study.

DGIST announced that Professor Hyuk-Jun Kwon in the Department of Information and Communication Engineering developed a 'patch-based health diagnosis sensor system' that is easily attached to skin with Professor Sunkook Kim's research team at Sungkyunkwan University. This sensor is attached to skin as if attaching band-aid and collects various health information in real-time by monitoring biosignals and certain movements, drawing huge expectations for diverse applications.

Research on wearable healthcare devices has been actively conducted with the well-being era. However, product developments have faced many difficulties due to barriers in collecting biometric information such as body movements, sweats, and secretions. Professor Kwon's team focused on developing sensors that can collect stable biometric data from various situations including intense workouts and emergencies.

As a result, the research team has successfully developed precise structures for daily life using laser and increased the stability of sensor that collects biometric information. Inspired by the crooked movements of snakes and spider webs, Professor Kwon's team created a stable structure for sensors to operate without damage despite huge body movements. Moreover, the team greatly improved the vertical elasticity of the sensors by applying the zigzag paper craft structure, so that sensors endure intense body movements.

The patch-based sensor developed this time was made of a biometric-friendly waterproof material, thus improving the difficulties in acquiring accurate information due to the skin-attachment problem. In addition, the sensor can also be connected to smartphone using Bluetooth, so biometric data can be saved to a cloud server 24/7. This will enable making timely response to various emergencies such as infants, young children, and elders living alone who are need care as well as soldiers and firefighters who are constantly exposed to dangerous environments.

Professor Kwon said that "The key for this sensor development was securing structural stability and skin adhesion that can endure very intensive physical movements. The sensor is very useful because as long as it is attached to skin like a band-aid, it can collect various biodata information. It is expected to be applied to observe and monitor animal and livestock diseases as well in the future."

Astronomers at Harvard University have discovered a monolithic, wave-shaped gaseous structure - the largest ever seen in our galaxy - made up of interconnected stellar nurseries. Dubbed the "Radcliffe wave" in honor of the collaboration's home base, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the discovery transforms a 150-year-old vision of nearby stellar nurseries as an expanding ring into one featuring an undulating, star-forming filament that reaches trillions of miles above and below the galactic disk.

The work, published in Nature on 7 January, was enabled by a new analysis of data from the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft, launched in 2013 with the mission of precisely measuring the position, distance, and motion of the stars. The research team combined the super-accurate data from Gaia with other measurements to construct a detailed, 3D map of interstellar matter in the Milky Way, and noticed an unexpected pattern in the spiral arm closest to the Earth.

The researchers discovered a long, thin structure, about 9,000 light years long and 400 light years wide, with a wave-like shape, cresting 500 light years above and below the mid-plane of our Galaxy's disk. The Wave includes many of the stellar nurseries that were previously thought to form part of "Gould's Belt", a band of star-forming regions believed to be oriented around the Sun in a ring.

"No astronomer expected that we live next to a giant, wave-like collection of gas - or that it forms the Local Arm of the Milky Way," said Alyssa Goodman, the Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy at Harvard University, research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, and co-director of the Science Program at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study. "We were completely shocked when we first realized how long and straight the Radcliffe Wave is, looking down on it from above in 3D - but how sinusoidal it is when viewed from Earth. The Wave's very existence is forcing us to rethink our understanding of the Milky Way's 3D structure."

"Gould and Herschel both observed bright stars forming in an arc projected on the sky, so for a long time, people have been trying to figure out if these molecular clouds actually form a ring in 3D," said João Alves, professor of stellar astrophysics at the University of Vienna and Radcliffe Fellow (2018-2019). "Instead, what we've observed is the largest coherent gas structure we know of in the galaxy, organized not in a ring but in a massive, undulating filament. The Sun lies only 500 light years from the Wave at its closest point. It's been right in front of our eyes all the time, but we couldn't see it until now."

The new, 3D map shows our galactic neighborhood in a new light, giving researchers a revised view of the Milky Way and opening the door to other major discoveries.

"We don't know what causes this shape but it could be like a ripple in a pond, as if something extraordinarily massive landed in our galaxy," said Alves. "What we do know is that our Sun interacts with this structure. It passed by a festival of supernovae as it crossed Orion 13 million years ago, and in another 13 million years it will cross the structure again, sort of like we are 'surfing the wave'."

An insider's view of the galaxy

Disentangling structures in the "dusty" galactic neighborhood within which we sit is a long-standing challenge in astronomy. In earlier studies, the research group of Douglas Finkbeiner, professor of astronomy and physics at Harvard, pioneered advanced statistical techniques to map the 3D distribution of dust using vast surveys of stars' colors. Armed with new data from Gaia, Harvard graduate students Catherine Zucker and Joshua Speagle recently augmented these techniques, dramatically improving the ability of astronomers to measure distances to star-forming regions. That work, led by Zucker, is published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"We suspected there might be larger structures that we just couldn't put in context. So, to create an accurate map of our solar neighborhood, we combined observations from space telescopes like Gaia with astrostatistics, data visualization, and numerical simulations." explained Zucker, who is an NSF Graduate Fellow and Ph.D. candidate at Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences based in Harvard’s department of Astronomy.

Zucker played a key role in compiling the largest-ever catalog of accurate distances to local stellar nurseries - the basis for the 3D map used in the study. She has set herself the goal of painting a new picture of the Milky Way Galaxy, near and far. "We pulled this team together so we could go beyond processing and tabulating the data to actively visualizing it - not just for ourselves but for everyone. Now, we can literally see the Milky Way with new eyes," she said.

"Studying stellar births is complicated by imperfect data. We risk getting the details wrong, because if you're confused about distance, you're confused about size." said Finkbeiner.

Goodman agreed, "All of the stars in the universe, including our Sun, are formed in dynamic, collapsing, clouds of gas and dust. But determining how much mass the clouds have, how large they are - has been difficult, because these properties depend on how far away the cloud is."

A universe of data

According to Goodman, scientists have been studying dense clouds of gas and dust between the stars for over a hundred years, zooming in on these regions with ever-higher resolution. Before Gaia, there were no significant datasets expansive enough to reveal the galaxy's structure on large scales. Since its launch in 2013, the space observatory has enabled measurements of the distances to one billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

The flood of data from Gaia served as the perfect testbed for innovative, new statistical methods that reveal the shape of local stellar nurseries and their connection to the Milky Way's galactic structure. In this data-science-oriented collaboration, the Finkbeiner, Alves, and Goodman groups collaborated closely. The Finkbeiner group developed the statistical framework needed to infer the 3D distribution of the dust clouds; the Alves group contributed deep expertise on stars, star formation, and Gaia; and the Goodman group developed the 3D visualizations and analytic framework, called "glue", that allowed the Radcliffe Wave to be seen, explored, and quantitatively described.

Scientists at UCL have identified how a subset of immune cells are activated to kill cancerous cells, a finding in mice which could hold the key to new powerful therapies against cancer.

This new study built on previous research*, also led by Professors Sergio Quezada and Karl Peggs (both UCL Cancer Institute), which found that following immunotherapy some CD4+ T cells, traditionally thought to be 'helper' and 'regulator' immune cells, become cytotoxic and directly engage with and kill cancer cells.

Published in Immunity, scientists examined the molecular and cellular mechanisms underpinning this activity, as part of an experimental study of immunotherapy in mice, funded by Cancer Research UK.

Researchers found that IL-2, a 'growth factor' for T cells and the 'transcription factor' Blimp-1 are responsible for initiating potent killer activity in CD4+ T cells within cancerous tumours.

Co-lead author, Professor Sergio Quezada, (UCL Cancer Institute), said: "We knew these immune cells had the ability to proactively kill cancer cells with incredible potency, but to maximise their potential, we needed to know how this mechanism was activated.

"Our discovery provides the evidence and rationale for utilising Blimp-1 to maximise the anti-tumour activity of CD4+ T cells.

"Work is now underway in our lab to develop new personalised cell therapies where the activity of Blimp-1 can be maxed up to drive potent tumour control."

T cells are a subset of lymphocytes (white blood cells), which play a key role in the body's immune response. In immunotherapy T cells are modified and used to attack cancer. These cells move around our bodies, looking for infected cells and killing them. However, T cells do not recognise most cancers, since cancers develop from our own tissues and appear normal to most T cells. The main challenge with T cell immunotherapy approaches is to find ways to direct T cells to attack cancer cells.

Co-lead author, Professor Karl Peggs, (UCL Cancer Institute), said: "Cellular therapies have only recently entered the mainstream in terms of clinical application.

"Much remains unknown regarding how best to optimise these therapies, particularly to enable better activity in solid organ cancers.

"Our findings broaden our understanding of the regulators of T cell differentiation, illuminating new elements that might be targeted to enhance therapeutic efficacy."

Dr Emily Farthing, research information manager at Cancer Research UK, said: "Research like this helps scientists better understand the intricacies of our immune system and how it can be utilised to kill cancer cells.

"This work in the lab adds to growing evidence for the potential of immunotherapy and will hopefully lead to the development of more effective treatments for people affected by cancer."

A major international study of the genetics of breast cancer has identified more than 350 DNA 'errors' that increase an individual's risk of developing the disease. The scientists involved say these errors may influence as many as 190 genes.

The results, published today in the journal Nature Genetics, provide the most comprehensive map of breast cancer risk variants to date. The researchers involved, from over 450 departments and institutions worldwide, say the findings will help provide the most detailed picture yet of how differences in our DNA put some women at greater risk than others of developing the disease.

The majority of the DNA is identical between individuals, but there are some differences, known as genetic variants, and these changes can have a profound effect, increasing an individual's susceptibility to disease.

Our DNA - the blueprint for the human body - contains between 20,000-25,000 genes. Many of these code for proteins, the building blocks that make up the human body. Genetic variants can be located within genes, altering the protein. However, most of genetic variants are located outside genes, sometimes regulating the function of genes, turning their 'volume' up or down or even off. Finding which gene is targeted by these variants is not straightforward.

Most diseases are complex, polygenetic diseases - in other words, no single genetic variant or gene causes the disease, but rather the combination of a number of them act together to increase the likelihood that an individual will develop a particular disease. Breast cancer is one such disease.

Previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS), which involve comparing the DNA of patients against that of healthy controls, have found around 150 regions of the genome that clearly affect breast cancer risk. Within these regions, researchers know there are one or more genetic changes that affect the risk of developing cancer, but rarely are they able to pinpoint the specific variants or genes involved. Fine-mapping studies, such as this one, allow scientists to narrow down which variants contributing to the disease, how they might work and predict which are the genes involved.

"We know from previous studies that variants across our DNA contribute towards breast cancer risk, but only rarely have scientists have been able to identify exactly which genes are involved," said Dr Laura Fachal from the Wellcome Sanger Institute. "We need this information as it gives us a better clue to what is driving the disease and hence how we might treat or even prevent it."

In this new study, researchers from hundreds of institutions worldwide collaborated to compare the DNA of 110,000 breast cancer patients against that of some 90,000 healthy controls. By looking in much closer detail than was previously possibly, they identified 352 risk variants. It is not yet clear exactly how many genes these target, but the researchers have identified 191 genes with reasonable confidence; less than one in five of these had been previously recognised.

"This incredible haul of newly-discovered breast cancer genes provides us with many more genes to work on, most of which have not been studied before," said Dr Alison Dunning from the University of Cambridge. "It will help us build up a much more detailed picture of how breast cancer arises and develops. But the sheer number of genes now known to play a role emphasises how complex the disease is."

Of the newly-discovered genetic variants, a third predispose women towards developing hormone-responsive breast cancer, the type of disease found in four out of five breast cancer patients, which respond to hormonal treatments such as tamoxifen. 15% of the genetic variants predispose women to the rarer type, estrogen-receptor-negative breast cancer. The remaining genetic variants play a role in both types of breast cancer.

In the majority of cases, the genetic change affected gene expression - in other words, how active a particular gene was and how much of a particular protein it created - rather than altering the type of protein itself. For instance, nine different variants regulate the same gene, the Estrogen Receptor (ESR1) gene. Many other variants affect places in the DNA where the Estrogen Receptor protein binds, and, in turn regulates other genes. This highlights the importance of the ESR1 gene and its protein product, the Estrogen Receptor, in breast cancer development.

While each genetic variant only increases the risk of developing breast cancer by a very small amount, the researchers say that added together, these will allow them to 'fine tune' genetic testing and give women a much clearer picture of their genetic risk. This will then allow doctors and clinicians to provide advice on the best strategy for reducing their risk and preventing onset of the disease.

Professor Doug Easton, also from the University of Cambridge, said: "Our work would not have been possible without the help of the 200,000 volunteers who allowed us to study their DNA. It is also testament to the work of hundreds of researchers from all over the world who collaborated on this study."

NASA's Terra satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean on January 7 and found the center of Tropical Storm Blake just of the Kimberley coast of Western Australia.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology or ABM noted that the Warning Zone for the storm stretches from Bidyadanga to De Grey, extending inland to Shay Gap.

On January 7, the Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Blake that showed a rounded center of circulation surrounded by strong thunderstorms. A rounded shape of a tropical cyclone indicates an organized storm. That center was located just off shore from Bidyadanga. Bidyadanga is also known as La Grange and has the largest Aboriginal community in Western Australia.

The MODIS image showed the extent of the southern quadrant of Blake's clouds stretching inland into the northwestern part of Western Australia.

At 7 a.m. EST (1200 UTC/8 p.m. AWST local time), Blake had maximum sustained winds near 75 kph (47 mph). Blake is centered near latitude 19.1 degrees south and longitude 121.0 degrees east, about 85 kilometers (km) (53 miles) north northeast of Wallal Downs and 95 km (59 miles) west southwest of Bidyadanga. Blake is moving to the south.

ABM forecasters said that Blake is likely to track close to the west Kimberley coast this evening and cross the coast along Eighty Mile Beach near Wallal Downs early Wednesday morning, January 8. "There is a chance the system may take a more southwest track early Wednesday morning close to the coast. If this occurs, it may stay just far enough off the coast to intensify slightly further before making landfall later Wednesday morning between Wallal Downs and Pardoo Roadhouse," according to ABM.

Tropical Cyclone Blake is moving south and is expected to make landfall near Wallal Downs early Wednesday morning, January 8.

NASA's Terra satellite is one in a fleet of NASA satellites that provide data for hurricane research.