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BELLEVUE, WA--The International Space Station, like all human habitats in space, has a nagging mold problem. Astronauts on the ISS spend hours every week cleaning the inside of the station's walls to prevent mold from becoming a health problem.

New research being presented here finds mold spores may also survive on the outside walls of spacecraft.

Spores of the two most common types of mold on the ISS, Aspergillus and Pennicillium, survive X-ray exposure at 200 times the dose that would kill a human, according to Marta Cortesão, a microbiologist at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Cologne, who will present the new research Friday at the 2019 Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon 2019).

Pennicillium and Aspergillus species are not usually harmful, but inhaling their spores in large amounts can sicken people with weakened immune systems. Mold spores can withstand extreme temperatures, ultraviolet light, chemicals and dry conditions. This resiliency makes them hard to kill.

"We now know that [fungal spores] resist radiation much more than we thought they would, to the point where we need to take them into consideration when we are cleaning spacecraft, inside and outside," Cortesao said. "If we're planning a long duration mission, we can plan on having these mold spores with us because probably they will survive the space travel."

The new research also suggests planetary protection protocols designed to prevent visiting spacecraft from contaminating other planets and moons in our solar system with microorganisms from Earth may need to consider fungal spores a more serious threat.

But fungi aren't all bad. Cortesão investigates fungal species' capacity to grow in the conditions of space with the aim of harnessing the microorganisms as biological factories for materials people might need on long space voyages. Fungi are genetically more closely related to humans than bacteria. Their cells have complex inner structures, like ours, with the cellular equipment needed to build polymers, food, vitamins and other useful molecules astronauts may need on extended trips beyond Earth.

"Mold can be used to produce important things, compounds like antibiotics and vitamins. It's not only bad, a human pathogen and a food spoiler, it also can be used to produce antibiotics or other things needed on long missions," Cortesão said.

Cortesão simulated space radiation in the laboratory, hitting fungal spores with ionizing radiation from X-rays, heavy ions and a type of high-frequency ultraviolet light that doesn't reach Earth's surface but is present in space. Ionizing radiation kills cells by damaging their DNA and other essential cellular infrastructure. Earth's magnetic field protects spacecraft in low Earth orbit, like the ISS, from the heavy radiation out in interplanetary space. But spacecraft going to the Moon or Mars would be exposed.

The spores survived exposure to X-rays up to 1000 gray, exposure to heavy ions at 500 gray and exposure to ultraviolet light up to 3000 joules per meter squared. Gray is a measure of absorbed dose of ionizing radiation, or joules of radiation energy per kilogram of tissue. Five gray is enough to kill a person. Half a gray is the threshold for radiation sickness.

A 180-day voyage to Mars is expected to expose spacecraft and their passengers to a cumulative dose of about 0.7 gray. Aspergillus spores would be expected to easily survive this bombardment. The new research did not address their ability to withstand the combination of radiation, vacuum, cold, and low gravity in space. Experiments designed to test fungal growth in microgravity are set to launch in late 2019.

DURHAM, N.C. -- In the search for new weapons against malaria, most drug development has focused on the parasites that cause the disease. But Duke University researchers are trying a different tack. Instead of targeting the malaria parasite directly, the idea is to discover drugs aimed at the human cell machinery conscripted to do malaria's dirty work.

In a new study, a team led by assistant professor of chemistry Emily Derbyshire has identified more than 100 human genes that malaria parasites commandeer to take up residence inside their victim's liver during the 'silent' earlier stages of infection, before symptoms appear.

Before their work only a few such genes were known. The findings could eventually lead to new ways to stop malaria parasites before people get sick and help keep the disease from spreading, via treatments that are less likely to promote resistance than existing malaria drugs, the researchers say.

The study appears online June 27 in the journal Cell Chemical Biology.

Malaria is caused by Plasmodium, a single-celled parasite spread through the bites of infected mosquitoes. Within hours of entering a person's body, the parasite finagles its way into a liver cell, which it uses as a sort of living nursery. There, it steals bits of the host's cell membrane to help build a protective pouch inside the cell where it quietly matures and multiplies before bursting out by the thousands into the bloodstream.

That's when the parasite starts to invade red blood cells and cause malaria's characteristic waves of fever and chills. The blood stage is also when parasites can be picked up by another biting mosquito and transmitted to the next person. If we could stop the parasite while it still lurks in the liver, before it reaches the blood, researchers say, we could keep people from developing symptoms or contributing to its spread.

For this study, researchers used snippets of silencing RNA to trick human liver cells into tamping down each of roughly 7,000 protein-coding genes. Then they infected the liver cells with a mouse malaria parasite similar to the Plasmodium species that causes human malaria. The researchers looked to see if, by preventing the cells from making a given protein, they could reduce the parasite load within the liver without killing the liver cells themselves.

The researchers identified over 100 human genes that malaria co-opts for its own benefit as it develops inside the liver, including several involved in carrying cargo between different cell compartments that the team is investigating further. Drugs that suppress some of these targets could potentially stunt the parasite's development before it runs rampant in the blood, the researchers say.

Drugs to prevent and treat malaria have been around for centuries. And yet worldwide the disease still kills about 500,000 people a year, in part because parasite populations have developed ways to evade attack.

"Many of the drugs that are available aren't working very well because of resistance," Derbyshire said.

Some say the only way to stay ahead is to keep finding new drugs. The early liver stage is seen as a promising target because people harbor fewer parasites at that point, which could slow the rise of resistance.

"Even though tens of thousands of parasites come out of the liver, that's still a very small number compared to the billions that build up later in the blood stage," said co-first author Maria Toro-Moreno, a chemistry graduate student at Duke.

This choke point could make for an easier target, Toro-Moreno explained. "It's a population bottleneck. The parasite is vulnerable at this stage."

Lower numbers also mean the parasites in an infected person's body are less genetically diverse. A drug administered at this stage is less likely to promote resistance than one administered after Plasmodium has multiplied more, during which time random genetic mutations could arise that enable some parasite strains to survive treatment.

Identifying potential targets is just a first step in drug development, a process that can take over a decade and require millions of dollars of investment before reaching the clinic. But by better understanding the intimate relationship between the malaria parasite and its host, the researchers hope to get closer.

This year, German environmentalists collected 1.75 million signatures for a 'save the bees' law requiring an immediate transition toward organic farming. But to create healthy ecosystems
worldwide, people in communities across the globe will need to take similar action based on empathy for insects--and not only for bees and butterflies--according to entomologists Yves Basset from the Smith-sonian Tropical Research Institute and Greg Lamarre from the University of South Bohemia, writing in Science. The authors present immediate, science-based actions to mitigate insect decline.

"What is new is the clear call to present our research in ways that everyone can understand it be-cause communities need specific information to justify local political initiatives," said Basset, who coor-dinates a project to monitor insects in nine countries as part of the ForestGEO research program at the Smithsonian.

"It takes specific legislation to preserve the amazing variety of insects in the world and the critical services they provide by stopping the destruction of natural habitats, limiting road building in parks and reserves and producing food without the use of pesticides," Basset said, "Conserving insects is not the same as conserving big mammals or rare frogs. You can't keep millions of insects in a zoo."

A recent article in Entomology Today suggests that successful programs to save insects have a clear and simple objective and a strategically chosen audience. By focusing on bees and butterflies and other beautiful, familiar insects, it is possible to enact legislation to protect the habitat of lesser known, less attractive, but equally important species.

But there are still huge gaps in information about how different species of insects are doing, es-pecially in the tropics. Even in temperate areas, where insect declines are reasonably well documented, some pest species are on the rise.

"It is next to useless to weigh insects collected in an area and say that insect communities are in-creasing or declining." Basset said. "We need much more specific information. That is expensive and we are also hindered by the effort that it takes just to identify the species, especially in the tropics. What we are doing now is to group insects by their main function: pollinators, decomposers, predators on other insect species, and then to determine how each group is doing in a specific area of the world."

For example, some of the top predators of insects are other insects. When we eliminate these spe-cies it may result in a population explosion of smaller insects, some of which carry dangerous diseases: more insect biomass does not necessarily mean that we are protecting insect diversity.

Basset published a paper in 2017 showing that the response of butterflies to environmental change was very different from the response of termites. This illustrates the need to study insects as dis-tinct entities, each with different ecological requirements and exposed to different threats.

When people refer to global insect declines, there is very limited information from the tropics where the majority of all insect species live. And much of the data is from reserves far from pesticide use and habitat destruction. The article calls for more research on tropical insects.

"Barro Colorado Island, the Smithsonian research station in Panama's tropical forest, is only about 15km2 and there are more than 600 butterfly species," Basset said. "We can only tell you if about 100 of them are declining. For the rest, we simply have no data. In the tropics, insects outnumber mam-mals 300 to one. High-ranking scientific journals would publish a graph of jaguar decline, but not 300 graphs showing declines of obscure insect species."

Basset points out the window at a patch of trees in the courtyard of STRI headquarters in Pana-ma. "There are probably thousands of species in that little grove of trees. I'm not kidding."

"The creation of sustainable systems for environmental protection, transportation and agriculture will depend on biologically literate, empathetic people who join together to create knowledge-based legis-lation as they did in Germany," Basset said.

The origin of a single, transient radio pulse has been pinpointed to a distant galaxy several billion light years away, representing the first localization of a non-repeating fast radio burst (FRB). The FRB's burst source and host galaxy are distinct from those of the only other localized FRB, a repeating fast radio burst pegged to its galaxy in 2017. Short blasts of radio energy from powerful, yet currently unknown, astrophysical processes travel far and wide across vast intergalactic expanses. Upon reaching Earth, these pulses - which often last no longer than a few milliseconds - are mere electromagnetic whispers that require sensitive radio telescopes to detect. Although FRBs are known to have extragalactic origins, the host galaxies from which they were emitted remain mysterious, largely due to difficulties in precisely locating the radio emission. Understanding where these FRBs are coming from, and how far the signals had to travel to reach Earth, could help determine what produces them and allow FRBs to be used to measure and map the vast corridors of intergalactic medium that bridge the space between galaxies. Most identified FRBs are known to be non-repeating, occurring only as a single flash of detectable energy. Two have been shown to repeat; one of these, FRB 121102, is the only FRB to date that has been localized with enough accuracy to determine its host galaxy. Here, Keith Bannister and colleagues report on the detection and localization of a new, non-repeating FRB. Using a 36-antenna radio interferometer telescope with a specialized mode designed to locate FRBs, Bannister et al. discovered the non-repeating FRB 180924, named after the date it occurred. They find it came from a medium-sized galaxy over 4 billion light years from Earth. What's more, the results show that the properties of the burst source and its host galaxy are markedly different than those of the only other localized FRB. "...if the hosts of other bursts are similarly luminous as the host of FRB 180924," say the authors, "identifying hosts at high redshift will be easier than if bursts are exclusively hosted in dwarf galaxies, like the host galaxy of FRB 121102."

June 27, 2019 - Recent advances in artificial intelligence and precision medicine led to the emergence of new businesses that trade and process human health data. Most pharmaceutical companies are acquiring large volumes of clinical and other data for research and marketing purposes. However, there are few examples of companies turning this data into new therapeutic products and it is difficult to estimate the potential benefits stemming from a specific data type or a combination. Unlike in finance, where there are established methods for pricing anything from money to complex derivative securities, there are no established models for estimating the value of human life data.

One of the ways to develop the data economics models is to establish a marketplace for human life data where patients can take control of their data and profit from either the direct sale of this data, or share in the profits generated using this data. In the paper titled "The Advent of Human Life Data Economics" in Cell Trends in Molecular Medicine, George Church, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the co-founder of Nebula Genomics and Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of Insilico Medicine present a concept of data economics with the multiple parameters impacting the value of human life data. The paper provides an overview of the blockchain-enabled platforms for exchanging medical records after the burst of the blockchain bubble.

"In addition to these hack-resistant public ledgers, we have rapidly improving tools for whole genome sequencing and homomorphic encryption queries to deliver better privacy so that many people can finally benefit from knowing and owning their own genomes," said George Church, Ph.D., Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard.

The healthcare industry has increasingly adopted blockchain technologies for life data management to improve the quality, efficiency, and transparency of the health care system. The growth of electronic patient records has led to the artificial intelligence-based data analysis that can provide unprecedented insights into human health. Adopting big data technologies in the healthcare sector carries many benefits, but it also raises some barriers and challenges.

With the continued growth of the blockchain technology within the healthcare system, data security, patient data privacy and the ability to manage consent and share data benefits with the patients, has become more vital than ever. Storing and processing medical data in the cloud, or the closed ecosystem, which prevents its illegal usage, blockchain technology can increase patients' engagement by allowing them to make profit from the initial sale of the data.

"George Church pioneered many areas of science and technology and inspired three generations of scientists in multiple areas. This paper presents a call for new models for valuing human life data with the many proposed parameters. Leading economists and mathematicians are invited to collaborate on data pricing models in the context of human health. When human life data can be considered to be an asset in the context of financial accounting and can be easily traded, we are likely to see an explosion of data-driven biomedical innovation," said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D, Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine.

Bottom Line: An online survey study suggests how people feel about cosmetic surgery may be associated with what social media and photo editing apps they use. Most of the 252 survey participants were white and women, with an average age of almost 25, and had not previously undergone any cosmetic surgeries. Self-esteem and acceptance of cosmetic surgery attitudes were measured. YouTube and WhatsApp social media users had lower self-esteem scores than nonusers, as did photo editing platforms users of VSCO and Photoshop. Users of Tinder, Snapchat and Snapchat filters had higher overall acceptance of cosmetic surgery scores. These findings could help to inform discussions between patients and physicians regarding expectations and outcomes of cosmetic surgery. However, the results aren't representative of most patients seeking cosmetic surgery because of the young age of survey participants.

Fleeting differences in gene expression between individuals that occur at different points in time during cell development may have consequences on the ultimate risk for disease in mature tissues and cell types.

In a new study published this week in Science, researchers from the University of Chicago and Johns Hopkins University analyzed RNA sequence data from 16 time points in human stem cells as they developed into cardiomyocytes, or heart muscle cells. In the process, they identified hundreds of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs), sections of DNA that are associated with differences in gene expression between individuals.

These differences in how genes are expressed may have functional significance and perhaps even explain varying risk for diseases. Since many of these differences in expression occur at intermediate points during development, however, scientists can't see them by studying only mature, fully-developed tissues.

"Those associations are like shooting stars," said Yoav Gilad, PhD, Chief of Genetic Medicine at UChicago and senior author of the study. "They appear at one point and never again during development, and they might actually be important to the phenotype of the mature tissue and maybe even disease. But unless you study those particular cell types at that particular time, you'll never see them."

The project was a collaboration between Gilad's lab at UChicago and the lab of Alexis Battle, PhD, an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. They started with pluripotent stem cells, a type of artificial stem cells that can be coaxed into growing into many different cell types. For this study, the cells were differentiated into cardiomyocytes, the primary contracting muscle cells in the heart.

The researchers sampled RNA from the cells once a day over 16 days as they developed into cardiomyocytes. This allowed them to measure gene expression every single day in cell types that were not truly the beginning stem cells and not truly mature heart cells either. Instead of getting one snapshot of genetic activity by sampling adult tissues, they were able to see 16 additional snapshots leading up to that point as well.

The fleeting differences that occur during development could help explain differences in risk for complex diseases such as cancer, heart disease or diabetes that aren't caused by a single genetic mutation. Instead, these complex diseases are likely caused by dozens, if not hundreds, of subtle genetic mutations combined with interactions with lifestyle and the environment. On their own, these small mutations don't affect your overall health, but together they can elevate risk for particular diseases. The new research shows that these small genetic differences could impact gene expression at many points along the way.

"We think a lot of the relevant molecular changes that can ultimately explain your risk profile are not going to occur in your mature tissues of the heart, liver or pancreas that we can sample from adults. They're probably occurring somewhere much earlier."

The process of taking stem cells from a person, coaxing them into different kinds of mature cells--while periodically sampling RNA expression along the way--is still time consuming and expensive, so the findings of this study won't immediately turn into a diagnostic tool. But Gilad says as researchers learn more about what these "shooting star" differences in gene expression mean, they may be able to spot the final genetic signatures they leave in mature tissues. That way, if they saw a certain pattern in the genome, for example, they might know it meant there was a particular level of expression on a certain day of development for those specific cell types.

"We can now think in another dimension," Gilad said. "Instead of taking a human and sampling everything you see in front of you, we now know there's a history of how we got here, and some of those differences can't be observed anymore."

Lung cancer cells use antioxidants, endogenous or dietary, to spread in the body by activating a protein called BACH1 and increasing the uptake and use of sugar, Swedish and American researchers report in two independent studies. The studies, which are published in the eminent scientific journal Cell, pave the way for new therapeutic strategies for lung cancer.

It is a known fact that cancer cells, owing to their special metabolism, are exposed to oxidative stress caused by free oxygen radicals. It is also well-known that cancer cells are characterised by the high uptake and use of glucose, or sugar, and that this is one of many factors that govern their ability to divide and metastasise. Studying mice and human tissue, two independent research teams have now discovered how these circumstances interact when cancer cells metastasise to other parts of the body.

The process begins when the cancer cells manage to reduce their oxidative stress, which can happen in one of two ways: the cancer cells can either obtain antioxidants, such as vitamins A, C or E, from the diet, or synthesise their own. In about one in every three cases of lung cancer, the tumour cells have special mutations, linked to the NRF2 and KEAP1 genes, which enable them to start producing their own antioxidants.

It is when the oxidative stress has subsided that the fundamental process of the new discovery occurs: the protein BACH1 is stabilised and accumulates in the cancer cells. This protein presses several start buttons in the cancer cell which stimulates metastasis mechanisms, including one that orders the cancer cell to increase both the metabolism of glucose into cell fuel and lactic acid, and the stockpiling of glucose from the blood stream. The higher rate of glucose use then greatly boosts the ability of the cancer cells to spread.

"There is nothing to suggest, however, that the amount of glucose in the blood has anything to do with this; rather, it is the tumour cells' ability to utilise glucose that is essential to the accelerating metastasis," says Martin Bergo, professor at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition at Karolinska Institutet, who led the Swedish study.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The most life-threatening aspect of lung cancer is metastasis.

"We now have important new information on lung cancer metastasis, making it possible for us to develop new treatments, such as ones based on inhibiting BACH1," says Professor Bergo. "In this present study, we show that the aggressive metastasising induced by antioxidants can be blocked by stopping the production of BACH1 or by using drugs that suppress the breakdown of sugar. Our American colleagues show how inhibiting another enzyme, heme oxygenase, which is linked to BACH1, can also curb the metastasis process."

Professor Bergo and his Swedish colleagues have previously shown that antioxidants, such as vitamin E, in dietary supplement doses accelerate tumour growth. When the first studies to show this were presented in 2014 they drew a great deal of media attention and sparked a fierce debate, since it was generally believed that antioxidant supplements had beneficial effects on cancer. What the researchers have done now is to explain how antioxidants go about expediting the course of the disease - specifically, in the case of the present study, lung cancer.

"This is one of the most exciting findings we've made," says Volkan Sayin, assistant professor at the Department of Clinical Sciences, University of Gothenburg, and co-corresponding author. "Our results also provide a new explanation for how the so-called Warburg effect is activated. The Warburg effect describes how cancer cells absorb sugar and convert it into energy and lactic acid under normal aerobic conditions. Since this is one of the most well-known hallmarks of cancer, our results provide a crucial new piece in the oncological puzzle."

Overeating, by cutting the brain's natural brakes on food intake, may result in neurological changes that continue to fuel pathological eating and lead to obesity, reports a new study in mice. The results demonstrate how diet-induced obesity alters the function of a crucial neurological feeding suppression system - findings that could help identify novel therapeutic targets for eating disorders and obesity in humans. Obesity, a disease that affects more than 500 million adults worldwide and is a large factor in the increased incidence of a myriad of other serious health issues, is often considered to be one of the most pressing global health concerns. While obesity can be linked to a few, rarely occurring medical causes, unhealthy eating habits are widely recognized as the largest determinant. However, little is known about how obesity impacts the brain or underlying neurological mechanisms, to contribute to these adverse eating behaviors. Previous research suggests that the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA), a brain region that mediates physiological functions related to survival, plays a crucial role in controlling eating behavior. In a mouse model of obesity, Mark Rossi and colleagues used a combination of single-cell RNA sequencing and two-photon calcium imaging to identify obesity-related alterations in particular cells within the LHA. The results identified a discrete class of cells - glutamatergic neurons - that functionally put the brakes on feeding to suppress food intake beyond satiation, in ideal conditions. However, in mice fed high-fat, obesogenic diets, Rossi et al. found these neurons to be highly and uniquely modified in a way that disrupted this natural feeding suppression system to promote overeating and obesity. In a related Perspective, Stephanie Borgland discusses the study in more detail.

New research at The University of Texas at Austin shows that injecting air and carbon dioxide into methane ice deposits buried beneath the Gulf of Mexico could unlock vast natural gas energy resources while helping fight climate change by trapping the carbon dioxide underground.

The study, published June 27 in the journal Water Resources Research, used computer models to simulate what happens when mixtures of carbon dioxide and air are injected into deposits of methane hydrate, an ice-like, water-rich chemical compound that forms naturally in high-pressure, low-temperature environments, such as deep in the Gulf of Mexico and under Arctic permafrost.

Lead author Kris Darnell, a recent doctoral graduate from the UT Jackson School of Geosciences, said the research is the next step in solving two significant global challenges: energy security and carbon storage.

"Our study shows that you can store carbon dioxide in hydrates and produce energy at the same time," said Darnell, whose research was funded by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).

In the process, the nitrogen in the injected air sweeps the methane toward a production well and allows carbon dioxide to take its place, researchers said. The beauty of this approach is that it extracts natural gas from methane hydrate deposits and at the same time stores carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, in a deep environment where it is unlikely to be released into the atmosphere where it could contribute to climate change.

This is not the first time that hydrate deposits have been proposed for carbon dioxide storage. Earlier attempts either failed or produced lackluster results. The new study breaks down the physics behind the process to reveal why previous attempts failed and how to get it right.

The next step, said Darnell, is to test their findings in a lab. The Jackson School and the UT Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering are currently testing the method in a specialized facility in the Jackson School, which is one of the few in the world that can store and test methane hydrate. This work is being led by Peter Flemings, a Jackson School professor and senior UTIG research scientist, and David DiCarlo, a professor in the Hildebrand Department. Both are co-authors on the paper.

"Two things are really cool. First, we can produce natural gas to generate energy and sequester CO2," said Flemings. "Second, by swapping the methane hydrate with CO2 hydrate, we disturb the (geologic) formation less, lowering the environmental impact, and we make the process energetically more efficient."

If the process can be shown to work in the field on an industrial scale, it has enormous potential.

Methane hydrate is one of a group of chemical compounds known as gas hydrates in which gas molecules become trapped inside cages of water ice molecules rather than chemically bonding with them. UT and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are working together to study naturally forming methane hydrates with the aim of figuring out their potential as an energy resource. This is important because estimates suggest that methane harvested from hydrate deposits found beneath the Gulf of Mexico alone could power the country for hundreds of years.

In the paper, the authors showed that a process in which one type of molecule trapped in hydrate is exchanged for another (called guest molecule exchange) is a two-stage process and not a single, simultaneous process, as it was previously thought to be.

First, nitrogen breaks down the methane hydrate. Second, the carbon dioxide crystalizes into a slow-moving wave of carbon dioxide hydrate behind the escaping methane gas.

The computer simulations indicate that the process can be repeated with increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide until the reservoir becomes saturated. The authors said that unlike some methods of carbon storage, this provides a ready incentive for industry to begin storing carbon dioxide, a major driver of climate change.

"We're now openly inviting the entire scientific community to go out and use what we're learning to move the ball forward," Flemings said.

The application of large enough magnetic fields results in the disruption of superconducting states in materials even at drastically low temperature, thereby changing them directly into insulators--or so was traditionally thought. Now, scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), The University of Tokyo and Tohoku University report curious multi-state transitions of these superconductors: going from superconductor to special metal and then to insulator.

Characterized by their zero electrical resistance or alternatively their ability to completely expel external magnetic fields, superconductors have fascinating prospects for both fundamental physics and applications for e.g., superconducting coils for magnets. This phenomenon is understood by considering a highly ordered relationship between the electrons of the system; due to a coherence over the entire system, electrons form bounded pairs and flow without collisions, as a collective, resulting in a perfect conducting state without energy dissipation. However, upon introducing a magnetic field the electrons are no longer able to maintain their coherent relationship and the superconductivity is lost. For a given temperature, the highest magnetic field under which a material remains superconducting is known as the critical field.

Often these critical points are marked by phase transitions. If the change is abrupt like in the case of melting of ice, it is a first-order transition. If the transition takes place in a gradual and continuous manner by the growth of change-driving fluctuations extending on the entire system, it is called a second-order transition. Studying the transition path of superconductors when subjected to the critical field can yield insights into the quantum processes involved and allows us to design smarter superconductors (SCs) for application to advanced technologies.

Interestingly, two-dimensional superconductors (2DSCs) are the perfect candidates to study this type of phase transitions and one such novel candidate is a mono-unit layer of NbSe2. Because smaller dimension (thickness) of superconductor implies a smaller number of possible partners for electrons to form superconducting pairs, the smallest perturbation can set a phase transition. Furthermore, 2DSC is relevant from the perspective of applications in small-scale electronics.

In such materials, raising the applied magnetic field past a critical value leads to a fuzzy state in which the magnetic field penetrates the material, but the resistance is still minimal. It is only upon increasing the magnetic field further that the superconductivity is destroyed. The material is rendered an ordinary insulator. This is called the superconductor to insulator phase transition. Because this phenomenon is observed at very low temperatures, the quantum fluctuations in the system become comparable to or even larger than the classical thermal fluctuations. Therefore, this is called a quantum phase transition.

To understand the path of phase transition as well as the fuzzy or mixed state that exists between the critical field strengths in the NbSe2 ultrathin superconductor, a group of researchers measured the magnetoresistance of the material (see Fig. 1), or the response of a SC's resistivity when subjected to external magnetic field. In a nutshell (see Fig.2), Prof. Ichinokura lead summarizes, "Using a four-point probe, we estimated the critical magnetic field at the respective quantum phase boundaries in the mono-layered NbSe2." They found that as a small magnetic field is applied to the SC, the coherent flow of electrons is broken, but the electron pairs still remain. This is due to motion of vortices; the moving vortices create a finite resistance. The origin of this minimal resistance was interpreted as the material entering a special metal state, called the Bose metal (BM), which changed into an insulating state upon further increasing the magnetic field. The team also found that the transition between normal and SC states around the critical temperature was driven by quantum fluctuations with also reflecting a similar multi-transition pathway. Excited by the results, Prof. Ichinokura comments, "The scaling analysis based on the model of the Bose metal explained the two-step transition, suggesting the existence of a bosonic ground state."

This study bolsters the theoretical claims of multi-phase transitions in superconductors thanks to the thinnest sample of atomic-scale thickness, and pushes the boundary of research further. This time it's the transition path that came out of investigating the fluctuating vortices; where will peeping into the vortex take us from here? Only science will tell!

(Millbrook, NY) Since its discovery in 1999, Nipah virus has been reported almost yearly in South and Southeast Asia, with Bangladesh and India being the hardest hit. In a new study, published today in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, scientists used machine learning to identify bat species with the potential to host Nipah virus, with a focus on India - the site of a 2018 outbreak. Four new bat species were flagged as surveillance priorities.

Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, is a co-lead author on the paper. She explains, "While there is a growing understanding that bats play a role in the transmission of Nipah virus in Southeast Asia, less is known about which species pose the most risk. Our goal was to help pinpoint additional species with a high likelihood of carrying Nipah, to target surveillance and protect public health."

Raina K. Plowright, a disease ecologist at Montana State University, was also a co-lead author. She notes, "As this paper was going to press, another case of Nipah virus was confirmed in Kerala. The public health community has again been forced into reactive mode. Our study is a starting point for the research needed to contain Nipah at its source, so we are managing spillover risk, instead of human suffering."

Nipah virus is a highly lethal, emerging henipavirus that can be transmitted to people from the body fluids of infected bats. Eating fruit or drinking date palm sap that has been contaminated by bats has been flagged as a transmission pathway. Once infected, people can spread the virus directly to other people, sparking an outbreak. Domestic pigs are also bridging hosts that can infect people. There is no vaccine and the virus has a high mortality rate.

"Bat-borne viruses are found all over the world, yet surveillance and sampling efforts have been patchy," says Han. "There are likely many competent Nipah hosts that have not been identified. For this reason, there is a need to devise new methods that take all available data into account to guide sampling efforts in India and in other regions."

India is home to an estimated 113 bat species. Just 31 of these species have been sampled for Nipah virus, with 11 found to have antibodies that signal host potential. Plowright notes, "Given the role bats play in transmitting viruses infectious to people, investment in understanding these animals has been low. The last comprehensive and systematic taxonomic study on the bats in India was conducted more than a century ago."

Machine leaning, a form of artificial intelligence, was used to flag bat species with the potential to harbor Nipah. Han explains, "By looking at the traits of bat species known to carry Nipah globally, our model was able to make predictions about additional bat species residing in India with the potential to carry the virus and transmit it to people. These bats are currently not on the public health radar and are worthy of additional study."

First, the team compiled published data on bat species known to carry Nipah and other henipaviruses globally. Data included 48 traits of 523 bat species, including information on foraging methods, diet, migration behaviors, geographic ranges, and reproduction. They also looked at the environmental conditions in which reported spillovers occurred.

Then they applied a trait-based machine learning approach to a subset of species that occur in Asia, Australia, and Oceana. Their algorithm identified known Nipah-positive bat species with 83% accuracy. It also identified six bat species that occur in Asia, Australia, and Oceana that have traits that could make them competent hosts and should be prioritized for surveillance. Four of these species occur in India, two of which are found in Kerala.

Plowright explains, "We set out to make trait-based predictions of likely henipavirus reservoirs near Kerala. Our focus was narrow, but the model was successful in identifying Nipah hosts, demonstrating that this method could serve as a powerful tool in guiding surveillance for Nipah and other disease systems."

The authors note that their predictions must be combined with local knowledge on bat ecology - including distribution, abundance, and proximity to humans - to design sampling plans that can effectively identify bat hosts that pose a risk to humans. This work provides a list of species to guide early surveillance and should not be taken as a definitive list of reservoirs.

"Surveilling high-risk bat populations can provide early warning for veterinarians and public health authorities to take preventative measures needed to preempt an outbreak. Identifying which species harbor disease is an important first step in surveillance planning. We also need to prioritize research on which virus strains pose the greatest risk to people. Ultimately, the goal is to extinguish risk, not fight fires," Han concludes.

The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM)--the flagship publication of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI)--has again been ranked among the top medical imaging journals worldwide, according to new data just released in the 2018 Journal Citation Reports© published by Clarivate Analytics.

The Journal Citation Report publishes an immediacy index for journals as an indicator of the speed with which citations to a specific journal appear in published literature. JNM's immediacy index for 2018 is 3.094, a 25% increase over last year and almost double the index of the previous year.

JNM's 2018 impact factor was 7.354, with a five-year impact factor of 6.738. The journal's citations increased from 27,101 to 27,551, and its article influence score increased from 1.852 to 1.876. JNM ranked fifth of the 129 journals included in the medical imaging category? the highest rank among all nuclear medicine journals?with the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging close behind.

"The dramatic increase in JNM's immediacy index over the past two years demonstrates the journal's influential role in molecular imaging, and we are honored that it is the journal of choice for many distinguished researchers," said Editor-in-Chief Johannes Czernin, MD, professor of molecular and medical pharmacology and chief of the Ahmanson Translational Imaging Division at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California. "Among nuclear medicine journals, JNM continues to have the highest number of citations, the highest average 5-year impact factor, the highest number of citable articles, and the highest influence score."

Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite showed Tropical Storm Alvin had organized and strengthened into a strong tropical storm, just over 500 miles from Mexico's Baja California peninsula.

On June 27, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image of Alvin. Satellite imagery revealed that Alvin's clouds appeared more organized than they did the previous day.

Recent microwave imagery also showed that Alvin's "convective structure," or the development and organization of thunderstorms around the low-level center) has improved during the morning of June 27. AT 6:57 a.m. EDT (1057 UTC). The Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) instrument aboard Defense Meteorological Satellite Program satellite showed a closed ring of convection (clouds and storms) around the mid-level center of the small tropical storm. Infrared satellite imagery revealed that Alvin has not changed significantly.

NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Alvin was located near latitude 15.8 degrees north and longitude 113.1 degrees west. That's about 535 miles (855 km) south-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.

Maximum sustained winds are near 60 mph (95 kph) with higher gusts. Alvin is moving toward the west-northwest near 14 mph (22 kph), and this general motion is expected to continue for the next day or so. The estimated minimum central pressure is 999 millibars (29.50 inches).

Some strengthening is possible during the next 24 hours before Alvin reaches cooler waters. Weakening is the expected to begin on Friday and the NHC said Alvin is forecast to become a remnant low on Saturday.

The more naturally verdant an area is, the more likely it will contribute to the general health of the habitats and the organisms in and around it. Sometimes, though, tracing these qualities to specific benefits can be a challenge.

However, in a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, Arturo Keller, a professor of environmental biogeochemistry at UC Santa Barbara, presents a hard link between reforestation of marginal, degraded or abandoned agricultural land and significant benefits in water quality. This relationship, he argues, lends itself toward a program that incentivizes facilities that discharge pollutants, and local farmers to plant trees for water quality credits.

"While we have intuitively known that reforestation can be a very positive action, to date, determining how much bang for your buck you can get in terms of water quality has not been reliably quantified," said Keller, the study's lead author and a faculty member in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. "Here we present an approach for identifying areas where reforestation will be most effective for improving water quality, using a widely available USDA model and data sets that anyone can access."

For this study, Keller and co-author Jessica Fox, from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), focused on a section of America's bread basket -- the Ohio River Basin, more than a third of which is engaged in agriculture, and a water source for millions of people. Importantly, the entire basin, along with five other major river basins, drains into the Gulf of Mexico via the Lower Mississippi River Basin. Nutrients -- in particular, nitrogen and phosphorus -- transported via runoff mainly from farms and other agricultural operations all flow into the Gulf, creating a massive algae bloom and subsequent oxygen-free "dead zone" in the summer months that threatens or kills marine life within its boundaries.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that the dead zone this summer could encompass a 7,829-square-mile area, one of the largest Gulf of Mexico dead zones on record.

According to the study, marginal croplands -- lands with low agricultural value due to conditions such as poor soil quality, inadequate water supply and slopes that render farming difficult -- when planted with trees could be used not only to store carbon, but also to substantially reduce the movement of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediments from land to streams and rivers.

"Trees retain soil and sediments almost completely, compared to open fields, and take up the available nitrogen and phosphorus, as well as store carbon," said Keller, whose primary expertise lies in water quality management at the watershed level and the fate and transport of pollutants in the environment. "Quantifying these effects can now be used to give tradable credits for improving water quality."

Additionally, according to Keller, reforestation of marginal croplands also increases biodiversity, provides habitat and can be used economically by sustainably harvesting the timber -- all without sacrificing prime agricultural value. Ideal candidates for reforestation are croplands on hill slopes that have poor soil infiltration, yet are close to a receiving water body.

The Ohio River Basin is also the location of the world's largest water quality trading program. Administered by EPRI, the Ohio River Basin Water Quality Trading Project is a market-based approach to achieving better water quality by issuing permits to discharging facilities and requiring them to meet nutrient limits. Facilities can earn credit for these permits by paying local farmers to employ practices such as reducing fertilizer use, preventing manure from washing into streams, or planting trees by streams to help reduce runoff. The nutrient reductions can be used as credits to help the facilities meet permit requirements.

According to the study, approximately 10% of the current cropland in the Ohio River Basin region was identified as a high priority for reforestation.

"If this area was converted from marginal cropland to healthy forests, there would be the potential to avoid 60 million kilograms of nitrogen and two million kilograms of phosphorus from reaching the streams and rivers of the northern Ohio River Basin," Keller said. "That's on the order of a 12% decrease in total nitrogen, and a 5% decrease for total phosphorus for the entire basin, which drains to the Gulf of Mexico."

While the results might differ for projects with varying local conditions, the potential for reducing nutrient loading demonstrated in the study, the ancillary benefits to the environment and economy, and the low impact to prime agricultural cropland together make this approach worth considering for managing water quality in waterways throughout the world, he said.