Tech

COLLEGE STATION - Endangered and invasive species may be better managed in the future with new techniques outlined by a Texas A&M University scientist and others.

Texas A&M department of wildlife and fisheries research scientist Dr. Hsiao-Hsuan "Rose" Wang and four international researchers teamed up during the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis to publish an article in Trends in Ecology & Evolution highlighting "Niche Estimation Above and Below the Species Level."

The "ecological niche" describes how an organism or population responds to its habitat and its distribution of resources and competitors, and in turn, how it alters those same factors.

Reaching beyond the species level would assist in introducing endangered species to habitats beyond their normal realms, Wang said. This could provide an opportunity to conduct field surveys and/or implement endangered species restoration and reallocation plans. And with invasive species introductions, vulnerable habitats could be identified for control and prevention strategies.

Wang focuses on the application of techniques in endangered species management, management of invasive species and vectors of emerging diseases.

"For example, my colleagues and I have estimated the niches of an endangered species, Navasota Ladies' Tresses; a native and economic species, Loblolly pine; and an invasive species, Chinese tallow tree," Wang said. "Ideally, we should estimate a species' niche/range by considering information above or below its taxonomic level."

"Many ecologists have been trying to estimate where a species can sustain itself under climate change," Wang said.

"Ecological niche models (ENMs) and species distribution models (SDMs) are two of the most popular tools in ecology and evolution used to address diverse research questions such as niche evolution and conservatism, invasion and extinction risk, and impacts of climate change on species distributions," said Dr. Adam Smith, ecologist, Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri.

"For example, if we could preserve some habitats for Navasota Ladies' Tresses where the results of ENMs/SDMs suggest good locations, we potentially could reallocate some Navasota Ladies' Tresses there," Wang said. "Also, we could use some future climate or urban sprawl scenarios in ENMs/SDMs to see the potential decrease of Navasota Ladies' Tresses habitat."

In the study, http://bit.ly/NicheEstimationAboveBelowSpeciesLevel, three strategies were reviewed for incorporating evolutionary information into niche models.

"We hope the approaches we reviewed become adopted by the conservation community because it will help them design better conservation plans," said Smith.

With ENMs and SDMs popularity, one of the assumptions is that the species have the same responses to the environment in different locations, noted Wang.

"Unfortunately, it is not always true, especially for invasive species," she said. "Therefore, my coauthors and I hope this collaborative work will provide guidance on which modeling strategy is appropriate under a range of ecological and evolutionary scenarios."

In efforts to curb our use of greenhouse gas-generating fossil fuels, plant-based biofuels are among the top contenders as alternative liquid energy sources for transportation. However, strategies to produce high yields of biomass for fuels are not a one-size-fits-all proposition, according to a study led by UC Santa Barbara professor of ecology David Tilman.

"It is difficult to make a biofuel that actually has environmental benefits," said Tilman, a faculty member in the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, and co-author of a paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability. "When a food crop is used to make a biofuel, this, in essence, takes food away from poor people around the world, and, it turns out, offers little, if any, greenhouse gas reductions."

Whereas conventional production of biofuels has largely used food crops such as corn, soybeans, oil palm and sugarcane, these practices have their pitfalls, such as intensive use of nitrogen fertilizers, and competition for fertile croplands that had been growing food. In Tilman's 10-year experiment, the researchers explored alternative ways to generate biomass, but with fewer environmental and economic side effects.

"We wanted to see if prairie grasses might prove to be a better crop," he said. In contrast to relatively shallower-rooted annual crops, the deep roots of the perennial grasses of the Midwest are better able to store carbon in the earth -- an additional environmental benefit. Moreover, according to the study, growing a diversity of perennial grasses on lands so infertile that they had been abandoned from agriculture "could minimize competition with food and the greenhouse gas emissions associated with potential direct or indirect land clearing, enhance recovery of ecosystem services and provide wildlife habitat."

However, because the land was depleted of nutrients, some agricultural treatment might have value. And so the researchers, working with 36 plots and 32 native grassland species, set out to find the optimal amount of fertilizer and irrigation that would yield the greatest -- and most diverse -- amounts of biomass, while also resulting in underground carbon storage and minimal nitrate leaching.

The result, after a decade of observation and analysis? More is not necessarily better.

"Our results indicate that different intensification levels have different environmental benefits and costs," said lead author Yi Yang, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota.

In fact, moderate treatments with a low rate of nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation water resulted in the best biomass yields and carbon storage -- twice the yield and storage of untreated plots. Meanwhile, the more intensively treated plots resulted in 30 percent lower greenhouse gas savings, 10 times greater nitrate leaching and 120 percent greater loss in plant diversity than their moderately-treated counterparts.

While the results indicated that the energy yield from optimal management of prairie grasses was still somewhat lower per hectare than for traditional corn ethanol, the prairie grasses were grown on land too infertile for corn. Moreover, because much less nitrogen fertilizer was used than for corn and especially because of the high rate of carbon storage in soils, the bioenergy from the optimally grown prairie grasses gave much greater greenhouse savings. All this, with the benefits of ecological restoration.

The promising results of this study lead to the notion that a more tailored, ecologically friendly approach to biofuel production could be beneficial in other regions as well, as we continue to explore ways to generate biomass for alternatives to fossil fuels.

"Our study suggests that optimizing multiple environmental benefits requires sustainable intensification practices appropriate for the soils, climate and plant species of a region," Yang said.

In a world where we can travel the globe by jet, diseases that were once thought to plague faraway places can now strike close to home.

The U.S. had to learn this the hard way. In 2014, a patient harboring Ebola returned home to Dallas, Texas from Liberia. Within 15 days of this person's arrival, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had confirmed two secondary cases in nurses who were treating the infected patient.

Ebola virus is very easily contracted from body fluids -- a mere ten viral particles will do it -- and people who get it have up to a 78 percent chance of dying. Health care workers are among the most vulnerable.

According to a 2015 report by the World Health Organization, health care workers can have an infection rate up to 32 times higher than the general population in certain parts of the world. Infected health care workers can unknowingly spread the disease, and once sick, are unable to care for patients.

In addition to a human toll, Ebola also exacts an economic one. Treatment of an Ebola patient in the U.S. can range from $30,000-$50,000 per day, limiting the number of hospitals who can treat it, and making its spread a very costly problem

The best hope for controlling this lethal foe is to prevent it. Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) have created an online software package via the SmartState spin-off company, SimTunes, LLC, to train health care workers using simulation in safe Ebola disease response. They report promising findings in a small cohort of MUSC health care workers in an article published in the December 2018 issue of Health Security.

"This training program takes information from multiple resources, including the CDC, the National Ebola Training and Education Center and the European Network for Infectious Diseases," says Lacey MenkinSmith, M.D., assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at MUSC and first author of this article.

"What makes the program unique is that it combines all that information into one training program that is widely distributable."

"The entire course, including background material and hands-on simulation practice, is delivered over the Internet, so people can be trained immediately," adds Jerry G. Reves, M.D., distinguished professor and emeritus dean of the College of Medicine at MUSC and principal investigator of the CDC-funded study.

The software package includes a self-study component, a "hands-on" simulation workshop and a data-driven performance assessment toolset. A post-test evaluates trainees' knowledge of Ebola treatment, and software tracks and scores individual and team performance in Ebola treatment scenarios.

This training package aims to reduce the number of critical errors and risky actions committed when treating an Ebola patient. Critical errors put an individual at risk of infection or contaminate the clean zone. Risky actions increase the chance of committing a critical error.

The researchers tested the usefulness of their software package in 18 health care workers at MUSC, a state treatment center for Ebola. The health care workers were divided into two groups based on their experience level with treating high-risk infectious disease. The software package increased the knowledge of both groups about effective prevention by up to 19 percent.

Both groups also performed extremely well in simulation scenarios, with only 2.3 percent of 341 total steps flagged for critical errors in both groups. These scenarios included cleaning up spills, putting on a biosuit correctly and properly responding to a needle stick. Practicing all of these scenarios helps to reduce the risk of infection of the health care workers treating the Ebola patient.

These results validate this software package as a way to streamline and adequately educate health care workers on proper techniques to reduce infection when treating an Ebola patient.

The MUSC team plans next to test their training program in other health care settings relevant to Ebola. These include community hospitals, where Ebola patients might first be seen, or intermediary hospitals, which would care for them until they could be sent to a treatment center like MUSC.

MenkinSmith, who specializes in global emergency medicine, would also like to test the program in developing countries, and is planning to use the course in Uganda.

"I want to see how we can adapt what we have to a place that is a low-resource health care setting, such as a site like Uganda that I am set to visit," says MenkinSmith. Uganda's neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo, is currently experiencing an Ebola outbreak.

"Instituting this training at various universities and hospitals across the world will take time and adjustments" says Reves. "However, this represents the beginning of a concrete way to ensure that health care workers are protected from Ebola with just-in-time training anywhere in the world."

Researchers at the Nagoya Institute of Technology (NITech) in Japan have demonstrated that a specific material can act as an efficient battery component for sodium-ion batteries that will compete with lithium-ion batteries for several battery characteristics, especially speed of charge.

The findings were published in Scientific Reports in November of 2018 and was headed by Naoto Tanibata, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor at the Department of Advanced Ceramics at NITech.

The popular lithium-ion batteries have several benefits - they are rechargeable and have a wide application spectrum. They are used in devices such as laptops and cell phones as well as in hybrid and fully electric cars. The electric vehicle - being a vital technology for fighting pollution in rural areas as well as ushering in clean and sustainable transport - is an important player in the efforts to solve the energy and environmental crises. One downside to lithium is the fact that it is a limited resource. Not only is it expensive, but its annual output is (technically) limited (due to drying process). Given increased demand for battery-powered devices and particularly electric cars, the need to find an alternative to lithium - one that is both cheap as well as abundant - is becoming urgent.

Sodium-ion batteries are an attractive alternative to lithium-based ion batteries due to several reasons. Sodium is not a limited resource - it is abundant in the earth's crust as well as in seawater. Also, sodium-based components have a possibility to yield much faster charging time given the appropriate crystal structure design. However, sodium cannot be simply swapped with lithium used in the current battery materials, as it is a larger ion size and slightly different chemistry. Therefore, researchers are requested to find the best material for sodium ion battery among vast number of candidates by trial-and-error approach.

Scientists at NITech have found a rational and efficient way around this issue. After extracting about 4300 compounds from crystal structure database and following a high-throughput computation of said compounds, one of them yielded favorable results and was therefore a promising candidate as a sodium-ion battery component. The researchers identified that Na2V3O7 demonstrates desirable electrochemical performance as well as crystal and electronic structures. This compound shows fast charging performance, as it can be stably charged within 6 min. Besides, the researchers demonstrated that the compound leads to long battery life as well as a short charging time.

"Our aim was to tackle the biggest hurdle that large-scale batteries face in applications such as electric cars that heavily rely on long charge durations. We approached the issue via a search that would yield materials efficient enough to increase a battery's rate performance".

Despite the favorable characteristics and overall desired impact on sodium-ion batteries, the researchers found that Na2V3O7 underwent deterioration in the final charging stages, which limits the practical storage capacity to the half of theoretical one. As such, in their future experiments, the researchers aim to focus on improving the performance of this material so that it can remain stable throughout the entire duration of the charging stages. "Our ultimate goal is to establish a method that will enable us to efficiently design battery materials via a combination of computational and experimental methods," Dr. Tanibata adds.

NIMS and Hokkaido University jointly discovered that proton transfer in electrochemical reactions is governed by the quantum tunneling effect (QTE) under the specific conditions. In addition, they made a first ever observation of the transition between the quantum and classical regimes in electrochemical proton transfer by controlling potential. These results indicated the involvement of QTE in electrochemical proton transfer, a subject of a long-lasting debate, and may accelerate basic research leading to the development of highly efficient electrochemical energy conversion systems based on quantum mechanics.

Many of the state-of-the-art electronic devices and technologies that have realized present modern lives were established based on the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. Quantum effects in electrochemical reactions in fuel cells and energy devices are, however, not well understood due to the complex movement of electrons and protons driven by electrochemical reaction processes on the surfaces of electrodes. As the result, application of quantum effects in electrochemical energy conversion is not as successful as the fields of electronics and spintronics, which surface and interfacial phenomena are equally critical in all of these fields. Assuming that electrochemical reactions are closely associated with quantum effects, it may be feasible to design highly efficient energy conversion mechanisms based on these effects: including QTE, and devices that take advantage of such mechanisms.

In this study, the NIMS-led research team focused on oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) mechanisms--the key reaction in fuel cells--using deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen having a different mass. As a result, the team confirmed proton tunneling through activation barriers within a small overpotential range. Furthermore, the team found that an increase in overpotential leads to electrochemical reaction pathways to change to proton transfer based on the semiclassical theory. Thus, this research team discovered the novel physical processes: the transition between the quantum and classical regimes in electrochemical reactions.

This research shows the involvement of QTE in proton transfer during the basic energy conversion processes. This discovery may facilitate investigations of microscopic mechanisms of electrochemical reactions which are not understood in detail. It may also stimulate the development of highly efficient electrochemical energy conversion technology with a working principle based on quantum mechanics, capable of operating beyond the classical regime.

Treating male infertility using a new IVF technique called PICSI, which is already offered in some private clinics, does not increase the likelihood of having a baby, according to the results of a randomised controlled trial.

During the PICSI treatment, sperm were selected to fertilise eggs based on whether they could bind to hyaluronan, a substance normally found surrounding the surface of eggs.

In a trial involving over 2,700 couples across the UK, researchers looked at the difference that hyaluronan made to the success rate of treatment for male infertility following injection of PICSI-selected sperm into the egg.

Led by the University of Leeds, the study found no meaningful difference in full-term live births using the new PICSI technique, with a success rate of around one in four couples for both the PICSI and the standard ICSI treatment.

Published in The Lancet, the study was the largest randomised controlled trial assessing whether or not PICSI would lead to more live births than current techniques, providing vital evidence to help guide both clinics and couples who are making decisions about treatment for male infertility.

Although PICSI treatment did not significantly increase the number of live births, the researchers found that it significantly reduced the number of miscarriages by 39% overall (4.3% of couples on PICSI experienced miscarriage compared with 7.0% on ICSI).

The couples involved in the trial were randomly assigned to either the standard ICSI treatment, or the new PICSI treatment, which costs more and is already offered in some fertility clinics, despite the lack of evidence that it increases success rates.

Lead author Dr David Miller, Andrologist at the University of Leeds, said: "ICSI treatment is currently used by millions of couples around the world and is becoming the dominant treatment for infertility in many places, so any improvements that can be made to the technique have the potential to create a widespread positive impact.

"Our findings, however, suggest that more work is needed to refine and improve PICSI before it can be more widely recommended to treat infertility.

"This trial has paved the way for further research to focus on miscarriage and look into exactly how and why hyaluronan-selected sperm can reduce the incidence of this devastating outcome."

The study was funded by the EME Programme - a Medical Research Council (MRC) and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) partnership - and supported by the NIHR Clinical Research Network Yorkshire and Humber.

Co-author Professor Yakoub Khalaf, Medical Director and Consultant Gynaecologist at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, said: "Couples can be put under pressure to consider add-ons and other techniques that give them added hope and expectations of successful treatment, but it is important that there is good evidence to support their use.

"We hope these new findings can help couples who are considering IVF to decide which treatments to choose.

"IVF success rates have remained at roughly 25% of all treatment cycles for the past decade, so it is vital that we keep developing new effective techniques aimed at improving success rates."

Led by the University of Leeds, the clinical trial was coordinated by Queen Mary University of London, and involved sixteen fertility centres in England and Scotland, as well as the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and Examen Limited.

Professor David Crossman, Chair of the EME Funding Committee, said: "We are very pleased to be supporting great research like this, looking at critical medical interventions.

"This study adds authority to decision making in the field of IVF because of the careful way it was conducted, and the authors have shown there is little benefit to the new treatment. Whilst helping patients with their decisions these investigators have also highlighted the pressing need for further work in this important area."

PICSI treatment is different to the commonly offered IVF treatment add-on 'embryo glue', as PICSI involves pre-selecting sperm based on whether or not they bind to hyaluronan. 'Embryo glue' involves the fertilised embryos being coated in hyaluronan to increase their chances of implanting in the womb.

IVF is used to treat both female and male infertility, which each account for around half of referrals to IVF clinics for assisted conception. In treating male infertility, embryologists manually choose the best sperm with which to fertilise an egg, by sight for ICSI and by hyaluronan binding for PICSI, as the sperm would be less able to cause pregnancy naturally.

A meta-analysis finds that despite less evidence in the over 75s than in younger patients, statins reduce the risk of vascular events in older people. The research found no adverse effects of statin therapy on non-vascular mortality or cancer.
Statin therapy reduces major vascular events, and a new meta-analysis shows this is the case even in patients over 75 years of age. The research, published in The Lancet, summarises evidence from 28 randomised controlled trials, including 186,854 patients, 14,483 of whom were aged over 75.

Irrespective of age, statins reduced risks of major vascular events by about a fifth per 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol. For major coronary events the overall reduction was about a quarter per 1 mmol/L reduction overall, but ranged from about 30% in those aged 75. The relative risk reductions for stroke and for coronary revascularisation (coronary stenting or bypass surgery) were similar in all age groups.

Dr Jordan Fulcher of the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' (CTT) Collaboration, who is based at the University of Sydney NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, Australia, says: "Statins are a useful and affordable drug that reduce heart attacks and strokes in older patients. Until now there has been an evidence gap and we wanted to look at their efficacy and safety in older people. Our analysis indicates that major cardiovascular events were reduced by about a fifth, per mmol/L lower LDL cholesterol, by statin therapy across all age groups. Despite previous concerns we found no adverse effect on cancer or non-vascular mortality in any age group." [1]

Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs that are widely prescribed to patients at increased risk of heart attacks or strokes. Evidence from randomised trials has shown that statin therapy reduces this risk among a wide range of individuals but there has been uncertainty about their benefits in older people.

In the past, trials that looked at the effect of statin therapy reported significant cardiovascular risk reductions in the 65-70 age group but there have been questions about their benefits in older patients, particularly those over 75. Statin therapy is often discontinued in older patients in part because of this question around risk and benefit.

The Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' Collaboration looked at 23 trials that compared statin treatment to a control group and a further five that investigated intensive versus standard statin therapy. They divided patients into six age groups, and investigated effects on major vascular events (comprising major coronary events, strokes and coronary revascularisations), cancer incidence and cause specific mortality.

Of the 186,854 participants in the trials that were reviewed, with a mean age of 63 years, 14,483 were older than 75 years.

The analysis shows that the reduction in major vascular events - 21% per 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol overall - is similar and significant in all age groups, including those over 75 years of age. For major coronary events the overall reduction is 24% per 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL, but decreases slightly with age. The study also shows no increased risk of non-vascular mortality or cancer in any age group.

The researchers noted that their results were influenced by four trials done exclusively among patients who had heart failure or were on renal dialysis. Statins have not been shown to be effective in these people, and are not recommended for them. When these participants were excluded, similar reductions in risk were seen across all age groups, including for major vascular events and cardiovascular mortality. A slightly smaller reduction in the risk of major coronary events with increasing age persisted.

The research also examined the effects of statins on major vascular events in people with a history of vascular disease (secondary prevention) and in people without known vascular disease (primary prevention). In the secondary prevention setting, the researchers found similar proportional risk reductions regardless of age, which would equate to a larger absolute benefit in older people. In the primary prevention setting the results were similar, but as there were fewer such older participants in the trials, the conclusions were less definite. More evidence from randomised trials in older people without previous vascular disease will be helpful and trials are ongoing.

In the primary prevention setting (ie, in individuals with no known history of vascular disease), two individuals aged 63 years and 78 years with otherwise identical risk factors might have projected major vascular event rates of 2.5% versus 4.0% per year, respectively. Reducing those risks by a fifth with a 1.0 mmol/L LDL cholesterol reduction would prevent first major vascular events from occurring each year in 50 individuals aged 63 years and 80 individuals aged 78 years per 10 000 people treated.

In the secondary prevention setting (ie, with known history of vascular disease), the absolute risks of a major vascular event are typically at least twice as large, so every year the same LDL cholesterol reduction in people with prior vascular disease would prevent first major vascular events in at least 100 individuals aged 63 years and at least 160 aged 78 years per 10,000 treated [2].

The present analyses focused on the effects of statin therapy on major vascular events, mortality and cancer, and the authors limited their meta-analysis to large trials, known to generate the most reliable evidence. Previous studies have shown that the benefits of statins outweigh the risk of other adverse events (such as myopathy), and ongoing work in this area is being conducted by the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' Collaboration.

Writing in a linked Comment, Bernard M Y Cheung of the Queen Mary Hospital at the University of Hong Kong says: "Even if risk reduction in people older than 75 years is less than expected, statin therapy may still be justified by a high baseline cardiovascular risk, which is usually present in older people. The present meta-analysis makes a case to reduce LDL cholesterol in people at risk of cardiovascular events regardless of age, provided that the benefits outweigh the risks and the patient accepts long term treatment."

Little life could endure the Earth-spanning cataclysm known as the Great Dying, but plants may have suffered its wrath long before many animal counterparts, says new research led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

About 252 million years ago, with the planet's continental crust mashed into the supercontinent called Pangaea, volcanoes in modern-day Siberia began erupting. Spewing carbon and methane into the atmosphere for roughly 2 million years, the eruption helped extinguish about 96 percent of oceanic life and 70 percent of land-based vertebrates - the largest extinction event in Earth's history.

Yet the new study suggests that a byproduct of the eruption - nickel - may have driven some Australian plant life to extinction nearly 400,000 years before most marine species perished.

"That's big news," said lead author Christopher Fielding, professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences. "People have hinted at that, but nobody's previously pinned it down. Now we have a timeline."

The researchers reached the conclusion by studying fossilized pollen, the chemical composition and age of rock, and the layering of sediment on the southeastern cliffsides of Australia. There they discovered surprisingly high concentrations of nickel in the Sydney Basin's mud-rock - surprising because there are no local sources of the element.

Tracy Frank, professor and chair of Earth and atmospheric sciences, said the finding points to the eruption of lava through nickel deposits in Siberia. That volcanism could have converted the nickel into an aerosol that drifted thousands of miles southward before descending on, and poisoning, much of the plant life there. Similar spikes in nickel have been recorded in other parts of the world, she said.

"So it was a combination of circumstances," Fielding said. "And that's a recurring theme through all five of the major mass extinctions in Earth's history."

If true, the phenomenon may have triggered a series of others: herbivores dying from the lack of plants, carnivores dying from a lack of herbivores, and toxic sediment eventually flushing into seas already reeling from rising carbon dioxide, acidification and temperatures.

'IT LETS US SEE WHAT'S POSSIBLE'

One of three married couples on the research team, Fielding and Frank also found evidence for another surprise. Much of the previous research into the Great Dying - often conducted at sites now near the equator - has unearthed abrupt coloration changes in sediment deposited during that span.

Shifts from grey to red sediment generally indicate that the volcanism's ejection of ash and greenhouse gases altered the world's climate in major ways, the researchers said. Yet that grey-red gradient is much more gradual at the Sydney Basin, Fielding said, suggesting that its distance from the eruption initially helped buffer it against the intense rises in temperature and aridity found elsewhere.

Though the time scale and magnitude of the Great Dying exceeded the planet's current ecological crises, Frank said the emerging similarities - especially the spikes in greenhouse gases and continuous disappearance of species - make it a lesson worth studying.

"Looking back at these events in Earth's history is useful because it lets us see what's possible," she said. "How has the Earth's system been perturbed in the past? What happened where? How fast were the changes? It gives us a foundation to work from - a context for what's happening now."

ITHACA, N.Y. - New research from Cornell University shows zebra finches engage in socially-guided vocal learning, where they learn their songs by watching their mothers' reactions to their immature songs.

Researchers found that adult females guide juveniles' song development through specific interactions, similar to how human babies learn to talk.

Using slowed-down video, researchers were able to identify tiny movements, imperceptible to the human eye, made by the female zebra finches to encourage the baby songbirds. The movements included wing gestures and "fluff ups," an arousal behavior in which the bird fluffs up its feathers.

"Over time, the female guides the baby's song toward her favorite version," co-author Samantha Carouso-Peck said. "There's nothing imitative about it."

The study included nine pairs of zebra finches, genetic brothers raised for the first 35 days by their respective parents. When they reached the age at which they begin to produce song, the siblings were split up, moved into individual soundproof containers and monitored on how the two groups learned the same song - with and without timely feedback from their mothers.

"Historically, we've been studying these birds in isolation," said co-author Michael Goldstein. "That means we've been missing out on the entire social aspect of song learning."

Similarly, most labs study human babies more or less in isolation.

"But what babies - zebra finch or human - are good at is exploiting social information in their environment," he said. "These immature behaviors are not mindless practice and noise. Their function is to motivate the adults in the room to provide information."

The study, "Female Social Feedback Reveals Non-Imitative Mechanisms of Vocal Learning in Zebra Finches," published in Current Biology, brings the number of species known to engage in socially guided vocal learning to four: zebra finches, humans, marmosets and cowbirds. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and Cornell's Institute for Social Sciences.

If you think traffic in city centers is bad now, just wait until self-driving cars emerge on the scene, cruising around to avoid paying hefty downtown parking fees.

Even worse, because cruising is less costly at lower speeds, self-driving cars will slow to a crawl as they "kill time," says transportation planner Adam Millard-Ball, an associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"Parking prices are what get people out of their cars and on to public transit, but autonomous vehicles have no need to park at all. They can get around paying for parking by cruising," he said. "They will have every incentive to create havoc."

Millard-Ball analyzes "The Autonomous Vehicle Parking Problem" in the current issue of Transport Policy.

That scenario of robot-fueled gridlock is right around the corner, according to
Millard-Ball, who says autonomous, or self-driving, vehicles are likely to become commonplace in the next five to 20 years. Millard-Ball is the first researcher to analyze the combined impact of parking costs and self-driving cars on city centers, where the cost and availability of parking is the only tool that effectively restricts car travel.

Under the best-case scenario, the presence of as few as 2,000 self-driving cars in downtown San Francisco will slow traffic to less than 2 miles per hour, according to Millard-Ball, who uses game theory and a traffic micro-simulation model to generate his predictions.

"It just takes a minority to gum things up," he said, recalling the congestion caused at airports by motorists cruising the "arrivals" area to avoid paying for parking: "Drivers would go as slowly as possibly so they wouldn't have to drive around again." Free cell-phone parking areas, coupled with strict enforcement in loading areas, relieved the airport snarls, but cities will be hard-pressed to provide remote parking areas for self-driving cars at rates lower than the cost of cruising--which Millard-Ball estimates at 50 cents per hour.

"Even when you factor in electricity, depreciation, wear and tear, and maintenance, cruising costs about 50 cents an hour--that's cheaper than parking even in a small town," says Millard-Ball. "Unless it's free or cheaper than cruising, why would anyone use a remote lot?"

Regulation also falls short because, as Millard-Ball puts it, "It's difficult to regulate intent. You can pass a law saying it's illegal to drive more than 10 minutes without a passenger, but what if the car is picking up a parcel?"

The solution: congestion pricing, which can take different forms but essentially amounts to a user fee. In London, motorists pay a flat fee of £11.50 (about $15) to enter the city center. Singapore and Stockholm employ similar models. More sophisticated models could charge by miles driven, or assign different fees to particular streets.

Economists and environmentalists agree that congestion pricing effectively reduces congestion and pollution, but it's a politically fraught strategy because it raises the ire of commuters. Which is where Millard-Ball sees opportunity.

"As a policy, congestion pricing is difficult to implement. The public never wants to pay for something they've historically gotten for free," he said. "But no one owns an autonomous vehicle now, so there's no constituency organized to oppose charging for the use of public streets. This is the time to establish the principle and use it to avoid the nightmarish scenario of total gridlock."

Moreover, he noted, self-driving cars could be outfitted with devices that would give policymakers options for levying fees based on location, speed, time of day--even which lane the vehicle occupies.

"The fees could raise money for cities to improve transportation," he said. "The idea is to do it now before autonomous vehicles become widespread."

Obesity - as research in the past decade has shown - is first and foremost a brain disease. Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum München, partners in the German Center for Diabetes Research, have now discovered a molecular switch that controls the function of satiety neurons and therefore body weight. The findings were published in the journal Nature Metabolism.

The worldwide epidemic of obesity has reached record levels, and what was once a problem only of industrialized countries is now also affecting the developing world. Consequently, scientists are working with great commitment to identify the mechanisms underlying the disease in order to find new treatments. Researchers at the Institute of Diabetes and Obesity (IDO) of Helmholtz Zentrum München have recently taken a further step in this direction.

Yin and yang of energy metabolism

"Whether we're hungry or feel full is largely determined in the brain - specifically in the hypothalamus," explains IDO scientist Dr. Alexandre Fisette, together with Dr. Carmelo Quarta lead co-authors of the aforementioned paper. "Two groups of neurons in the hypothalamus control body weight and energy balance via various molecular messengers. Like yin and yang, they help strike a good balance." While neurons known as Agrp increase appetite, their counterparts, Pomc neurons, produce a sensation of satiety. However, if the interplay between the two is disturbed, the result can be obesity or type 2 diabetes.

"In our recent study we discovered that a transcription factor* called Tbx3 plays a key role in this mechanism," says Carmelo Quarta, describing the new findings. "Specifically, in the absence of Tbx3, the neurons responsible for producing a feeling of satiety are no longer able to synthesize the expected molecular messengers." Applying a broad range of techniques, the scientists were then able to show that Tbx3 plays a pivotal role in maintaining energy and sugar metabolism.

Lack of Tbx3 leads to an identity crisis

"Both in a preclinical model and in fruit flies, the absence of Tbx3 leads to a kind of identity crisis of satiety neurons, resulting in obesity," says Alexandre Fisette. The same signaling pathways also appear to be present in humans: "In preliminary experiments with human neurons, we were able to show that they are no longer able to carry out their function in the absence of Tbx3," Carmelo Quarta adds.

"Humans with genetic defects in the Tbx3 gene have long been reported to suffer from obesity," explains study director Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Matthias H. Tschöp, CEO of Helmholtz Zentrum München and holder of the Chair for Metabolic Diseases at the Technical University of Munich.** "Our study explains for the first time the underlying mechanisms and once again focuses attention on the central role of the brain in regulating energy metabolism. We hope that Tbx3 may come into consideration one day as a target for drug therapies."

Water molecules distort the electrical resistance of graphene, but a team of European researchers has discovered that when this two-dimensional material is integrated with the metal of a circuit, contact resistance is not impaired by humidity. This finding will help to develop new sensors -the interface between circuits and the real world- with a significant cost reduction.

The many applications of graphene, an atomically-thin sheet of carbon atoms with extraordinary conductivity and mechanical properties, include the manufacture of sensors. These transform environmental parameters into electrical signals that can be processed and measured with a computer.

Due to their two-dimensional structure, graphene-based sensors are extremely sensitive and promise good performance at low manufacturing cost in the next years.

To achieve this, graphene needs to make efficient electrical contacts when integrated with a conventional electronic circuit. Such proper contacts are crucial in any sensor and significantly affect its performance.

But a problem arises: graphene is sensitive to humidity, to the water molecules in the surrounding air that are adsorbed onto its surface. H2O molecules change the electrical resistance of this carbon material, which introduces a false signal into the sensor.

However, Swedish scientists have found that when graphene binds to the metal of electronic circuits, the contact resistance (the part of a material's total resistance due to imperfect contact at the interface) is not affected by moisture.

"This will make life easier for sensor designers, since they won't have to worry about humidity influencing the contacts, just the influence on the graphene itself," explains Arne Quellmalz, a PhD student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and the main researcher of the research.

The study, published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, has been carried out experimentally using graphene together with gold metallization and silica substrates in transmission line model test structures, as well as computer simulations.

"By combining graphene with conventional electronics, you can take advantage of both the unique properties of graphene and the low cost of conventional integrated circuits." says Quellmalz, "One way of combining these two technologies is to place the graphene on top of finished electronics, rather than depositing the metal on top the graphene sheet."

As part of the European CO2-DETECT project, the authors are applying this new approach to create the first prototypes of graphene-based sensors. More specifically, the purpose is to measure carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, by means of optical detection of mid-infrared light and at lower costs than with other technologies.

In addition to the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the companies SenseAir AB from Sweden and Amo GmbH from Germany are likewise participants in the CO2-DETECT project, as is the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology (ICN) from Barcelona.

A study carried out in Bajondillo Cave (in the town of Torremolinos, in the province of Malaga) by an international team made up of researchers from Spain, Japan and the U.K. revealed that modern humans replaced Neanderthals 44,000 years ago. This study, published today in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution and in which University of Cordoba and University of Granada scientists participated, demonstrates that replacing Neanderthals for modern humans in southern Iberia is an early, not late, occurrence, in the context of Western Europe. That is to say it happened 5,000 years before previously thought up until now.

Western Europe is a key area for dating when modern humans replaced Neanderthals. The first ones are associated with Mousterian industries (named after a Neanderthal archaeological site in Le Moustier, France), and the second ones with Aurignacians (named after another French archaeological site in Aurignac) that followed. To date, radiocarbon dating available in Western Europe dated the end of this replacement around 39,000 years ago, even though in the southern part of the Iberian Peninsula Mousterian industries (and for that matter, Neanderthal ones) continued to exist and would until 32,000 years ago. In this area there is no evidence of the early Aurignacians that is documented in Europe.

The new dating from Bajondillo Cave (Torremolinos, Malaga) has narrowed down the replacement of Mousterian industries for Aurignacian ones to a range between 45,000 and 43,000 years ago, which raises questions about the late continued existence of Neandertals in southern Iberia.

New research will be necessary to determine if indeed these new dates show an earlier replacement of Neanderthals in the entire southern peninsula, or if they show more complex scenarios of a "mosaic" coexistence between both groups for millennia.

However it occurred, the dates revealed in the Nature Ecology and Evolution article, in which University of Cordoba Professor José Antonio Riquelme is a coauthor, prove that the establishment of modern humans in Bajondillo Cave are separate from phenomenons of extreme cold (known as Heinrich events), since they occurred before the closest one, Heinrich event 4 (39,500 years ago).

Francisco J. Jimenez-Espejo, a researcher at the Andalusian Earth Science Institute (the Spanish National Research Council and the University of Granada) and one of the coauthors of the article, points out that "Heinrich events represent the most intense and fluctuating climate conditions in Western Europe on a millenium scale, even though in this Mediterranean coastal region, they do not appear to be involved in the transition from Mousterian to Aurignacian."

The location of Bajondillo indicates that coastal passages were favorite routes in the dispersal of the first modern humans. In this sense, the researchers maintain that finding such an early Aurignacian in a cave so close to the sea strengthens the idea that the Mediterranean coastline was a route modern humans took to get to Europe, reinforcing those dates that prove that more than 40,000 years agos Homo sapiens had spread rapidly throughout a considerable part of Eurasia.

Lastly, seeing as the relevance of coastal areas abounds, the authors of this study suggest that the evidence in Bajondillo Cave has revived the idea that the Strait of Gibraltar was a potential dispersal route for modern humans leaving Africa.

A team of UCLA-led scientists has discovered important clues to what goes wrong in the brains of people with autism -- a developmental disorder with no cure and for which scientists have no deep understanding of what causes it.

The new insights involve RNA editing -- in which genetic material is normal, but modifications in RNA alter nucleotides, whose patterns carry the data required for constructing proteins.

"RNA editing is probably having a substantial physiologic effect in the brain, but is poorly understood," said co-author Dr. Daniel Geschwind, UCLA's Gordon and Virginia MacDonald distinguished professor of human genetics, neurology and psychiatry and director of UCLA's Institute for Precision Health. "RNA editing is a mysterious area whose biological implications have not been much explored. We know what only a handful of these RNA editing sites do to proteins. This study gives a new critical clue in understanding what has gone awry in the brains of autism patients."

More than 24 million people worldwide are estimated to have autism. In developed countries, about 1.5 percent of children have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as of 2017. The disorder affects communication and behavior, and is marked by problems in social communication and social interaction, and repetitive behaviors.

"We need to understand how a panoply of genetic and environmental factors converges to cause autism," Geschwind said. "RNA editing is an important piece of the autism puzzle that has been totally under-appreciated."

The researchers analyzed brain samples from 69 people who died, about half of whom had autism spectrum disorder (which includes autism and related conditions), and about half of whom did not and served as a control group.

Xinshu (Grace) Xiao, the senior author of the research and UCLA's Maria R. Ross professor of integrative biology and physiology, and her research team analyzed seven billion nucleotides for each brain sample.

Xiao's team discovered reduced editing in the group members with autism. Specifically, they identified 3,314 editing sites in the brain's frontal cortex in which the autism patients had different levels of RNA editing from the control group. In 2,308 of those sites, the individuals with autism had reduced RNA editing, said lead author Stephen Tran, a graduate student in UCLA's bioinformatics interdepartmental program who works in Xiao's laboratory. In the 1,006 others, they had increased levels of RNA editing, he added.

In the brain's temporal cortex, the people with autism had different levels of RNA editing from the control group in 2,412 editing sites, with 1,471 of those sites showing reduced editing levels, Tran said. In the brain's cerebellum, the autism group members had different levels of RNA editing from control group members in 4,340 sites, of which 3,330 sites in the autistic brain had decreased levels. All three of these brain regions are very important in autism.

The research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is the first comprehensive study of RNA editing in autism spectrum disorder.

Xiao said RNA editing can be thought of as RNA mutations, analogous to the DNA mutations that are linked to many diseases.

"The same piece of DNA can generate multiple versions of RNA, and possibly lead to different protein sequences," said Xiao, director of UCLA's bioinformatics interdepartmental graduate program. "RNA editing allows cells to create novel protein sequences that are not written in the DNA."

Scientists had long assumed that a sequence of RNA is a faithful copy of a gene's DNA sequence -- and that RNA is merely the cellular messenger that carries out DNA's instructions to other parts of the cell. "This assumption was proved to be wrong when RNA editing was first discovered in the 1980s," Xiao said, "and we are finding many examples where the genetic codes we inherit from our parents are edited in our cells."

In another major finding, the researchers identified two proteins, called FMRP and FXR1P, that regulate abnormal RNA editing in autism spectrum disorder. FMRP increases RNA editing and FXR1P decreases RNA editing, Tran discovered. The autism group had reduced editing levels regulated by FMRP, as well as reduced RNA editing overall.

"This is the first strong data showing a broad and direct functional role for FMRP and FXR1P in the human brain and autism," Xiao said.

"Something about what FMRP does is clearly critical to autism pathogenesis," Geschwind said. "Grace and her team show that these two related proteins are likely responsible for the reduced RNA editing, as well as the occasional increased RNA editing."

It is currently unknown, he said, whether the changes the people with autism had in RNA editing caused their autism, contributed to the disorder or were a result of it. "We can't assign causality," said Geschwind, who praised the research of Xiao's team as "elegant and brilliant."

RNA editing may also be disrupted in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression. The research team plans to continue to study this as well as other brain diseases.

Xiao and Tran replicated their findings by analyzing the frontal cortex from a different group of 22 people who had autism spectrum disorder and a control group of 23 without the disorder. They found the same pattern of editing reduction as they found originally, Tran said.

The researchers found RNA editing alterations in genes of critical neurological relevance to autism, including CNTNAP2 and CNTNAP4, NRXN1 and NRXN3, ANK2, NOVA1 and RBFOX1.

Xiao and Tran used powerful methods of bioinformatics and statistics to identify the RNA editing sites, including a method similar to GIREMI that Xiao designed in 2015 with Qing Zhang, a former postdoctoral scholar in her laboratory.

In searching for causes of diseases, most research has focused on searching for mutations in the DNA. "What was missing, until recently," Xiao said, "is to look for RNA mutations that are not coded in the DNA. These changes in the RNA could have similar impact as DNA mutations."

This study may eventually lead to new treatments for autism, but likely not for many years, the researchers said.

Acinic cell carcinoma is the third most common malignant form of salivary gland cancer. These tumours are similar to normal salivary gland tissue and occur most frequently in the parotid gland. Until now, the molecular causes for the illness were unknown. Researchers at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen at FAU, the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) in Heidelberg and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) have now been able to shed light on them.

Using genome sequencing on tumour tissue, the researchers identified a translocation of genetic material between chromosomes 4 and 9, which was present in all acinic cell carcinomas examined. Typically, such translocations in tumours lead to a new combination of genes, which then acquire new oncogenic, i.e. carcinogenic, properties. In the case of acinic cell carcinomas, the translocation which has now been discovered causes regulatory elements of DNA to be transferred from an active chromosome region to a normally inactive oncogene.

In this unusual form of translocation, the regulatory elements come originally from an area where genes which are responsible for functions in saliva and are highly active in salivary glands are located. When the chromosomes are rearranged, these highly active regulatory elements come into the vicinity of gene NR4A3, which is usually switched off once embryonic development has been completed. The activation signals of the regulatory elements in the acinic cell carcinoma cause the gene to be switched on again. NR4A3 acts as a transcriptional factor to regulate the activity of a number of other genes, which then trigger cell division and growth, leading ultimately to the tumour starting to grow. Researchers were able to prove this mechanism by carrying out molecular testing on tumour tissue and functional analyses of cell culture models specially prepared for this purpose.

'Our research means that we can now diagnose acinic cell carcinomas in the salivary glands more easily and understand the fundamental biological processes behind tumour growth. In the long-term, we hope that we will also be able to develop new ways of treating patients on the basis of this new research,' explains Prof. Dr. Florian Haller from the Institute of Pathology at FAU. Similar genetic rearrangements of regulatory elements of DNA as a potential cause of malignant tumours have also recently been observed in brain tumours in children, referred to in this context as 'enhancer hijacking'.

Collaboration with other institutions

Prof. Dr. Stefan Wiemann from the German Cancer Research Centre emphasises that collaboration with other institutions was key to unlocking the molecular causes: 'Our study shows how successfully answers can be found to clinical questions by linking molecular and functional studies and working closely together with other large research institutions and clinical facilities.' Prof. Dr. Abbas Agaimy, from the Institute of Pathology at FAU, adds: 'The results of this study clearly indicate the correlation between the histomorphological features, or phenotype, of tumours, and the genetic modification, or genotype, on which they are based. As salivary gland tumours are relatively rare, this study was only possible in cooperation with a large ENT clinic with an excellent nationwide reputation.' Matthias Bieg from Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) agrees: 'Once again, this study underlines how important it is to bring together researchers from various areas. If it wasn't for our fruitful cooperation, we would not have been able to extract the best possible results from the data available to us.' Our interdisciplinary collaboration revealed that the shifting of epigenetic control elements can have a considerable impact on the development of tumours.'