Tech

New research has discovered how plant roots sense the availability of moisture in soil and then adapt their shape to optimise acquisition of water.

The discovery could enable crops to be bred which are more adaptive to changes in climate conditions, such as water scarcity, and help ensure food security in the future.

These findings, published in the journal Science, describe a new molecular mechanism discovered by collaborating teams at the universities of Nottingham and Durham, primarily funded by a joint award from the BBSRC.

Roots are critical for plants to acquire water and soluble nutrients from the soil. Water is essential for plant growth, yet changing climatic conditions makes acquiring moisture from soil even more challenging. Plants are able to adapt to different soil moisture conditions by altering their root architecture, but up until now, it was not understood how this is done.

Root branches only form when in direct contact with soil moisture using an adaptive response termed 'hydropatterning'. Professor Malcolm Bennett of the University of Nottingham, and Professor Ari Sadanandom from the Department of Biosciences at Durham University, discovered that hydropatterning is controlled by a branching master gene called ARF7. Their teams observed plant roots lacking ARF7 were no longer able to hydropattern. The researchers concluded that when roots are exposed to moisture ARF7 remains active and promotes root branching, but when exposed to air, ARF7 is modified and inactivated, blocking root branching.

Professor Sadanandom explained: "Plants are relatively immobile and therefore their growth and development is very much dependent on their environment. Our research has identified the particular protein which can modify, and even inactivate root branching, therefore limiting plant growth and development.

"This is hugely exciting as it opens up the possibility for us to adapt this protein interaction and potentially develop plants that could continue to branch roots even in challenging conditions such as water scarcity."

Professor Bennett concluded: "Water is critical for plant growth, development and, ultimately, their survival. Surprisingly, understanding how plants sense water availability has eluded scientists until now. By studying how plant roots modify their branching in response to water availability, we have uncovered a novel molecular mechanism. This represents a major step forward and opens the way for breeders to develop new crops better adapted to climate change and helping deliver global food security."

Food security represents a pressing global issue. Crop production must double by 2050 to keep pace with global population growth. This target is even more challenging given the impact of climate change on water availability and the drive to reduce fertilizer inputs to make agriculture become more environmentally sustainable. In both cases, developing crops with improved water and nutrient uptake efficiency would provide a solution.

Children born prematurely often develop neuromotor and cognitive developmental disabilities. The best way to reduce the impacts of those disabilities is to catch them early through a series of cognitive and motor tests. But accurately measuring and recording the motor functions of small children is tricky. As any parent will tell you, toddlers tend to dislike wearing bulky devices on their hands and have a predilection for ingesting things they shouldn't.

Harvard University researchers have developed a soft, non-toxic wearable sensor that unobtrusively attaches to the hand and measures the force of a grasp and the motion of the hand and fingers.

The research was published in Advanced Functional Materials and is a collaboration between The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Children's Hospital.

One novel element of the sensor is a non-toxic, highly conductive liquid solution.

"We have developed a new type of conductive liquid that is no more dangerous than a small drop of salt water," said Siyi Xu, a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the paper. "It is four times more conductive than previous biocompatible solutions, leading to cleaner, less noisy data."

Harvard's Office of Technology Development has filed a portfolio of intellectual property relating to the architecture of novel soft sensors and is seeking commercialization opportunities for these technologies.

The sensing solution is made from potassium iodide, which is a common dietary supplement, and glycerol, which is a common food additive. After a short mixing period, the glycerol breaks the crystal structure of potassium iodide and forms potassium cations (K+) and iodide ions (I-), making the liquid conductive. Because glycerol has a lower evaporation rate than water, and the potassium iodide is highly soluble, the liquid is both stable across a range of temperatures and humidity levels and highly conductive.

"Previous biocompatible soft sensors have been made using sodium chloride-glycerol solutions but these solutions have low conductivities, which makes the sensor data very noisy, and it also takes about 10 hours to prepare," said Xu. "We've shortened that down to about 20 minutes and get very clean data."

The design of the sensors also takes the need of children into account. Rather than a bulky glove, the silicon-rubber sensor sits on top of the finger and on the finger pad.

"We often see that children who are born early or who have been diagnosed with early developmental disorders have highly sensitive skin," said Eugene Goldfield, coauthor of the study and an Associate Professor in the Program in Behavioral Sciences at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Associate Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. "By sticking to the top of the finger, this device gives accurate information while getting around the sensitively of the child's hand."

Goldfield is the Principal investigator of the Flexible Electronics for Toddlers project at the Wyss Institute, which designs modular robotic systems for toddlers born prematurely and at risk for cerebral palsy.

Goldfield and his colleagues currently study motor function using the Motion Capture Lab at SEAS and Wyss. While motion capture can tell a lot about movement, it cannot measure force, which is critical to diagnosing neuromotor and cognitive developmental disabilities.

"Early diagnosis is the name of the game when it comes to treating these developmental disabilities and this wearable sensor can give us a lot of advantages not currently available," said Goldfield.

This paper only tested the device on adult hands. Next, the researchers plan to scale down the device and test it on the hands of children.

"The ability to quantify complex human motions gives us an unprecedented diagnostic tool," says Rob Wood, the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, Founding Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute, and senior author of the study. "The focus on the development of motor skills in toddlers presents unique challenges for how to integrate many sensors into a small, lightweight, and unobtrusive wearable device. These new sensors solve these challenges - and if we can create wearable sensors for such a demanding task, we believe that this will also open up applications in diagnostics, therapeutics, human-computer interfaces, and virtual reality."

Tropical Cyclone Cilida appeared as a large and powerful hurricane on imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite on Dec. 21. Cilida is located north of the island of Mauritius in the Southern Indian Ocean.

Mauritius has posted warnings for the approaching storm. A tropical cyclone warning Class 2 is in force in Mauritius, and a class 1 warning in Rodrigues.
Suomi NPP passed over Cilida on Dec. 21 and the VIIRS instrument provided a visible image. The VIIRS image showed Cilida continued to intensify rapidly. The VIIRS image showed an eye surrounded by powerful storms. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC noted, satellite imagery shows the system continued to rapidly intensify as it maintained a 10 nautical mile wide eye and rain bands that wrapped tightly into the center.

At 10 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) Tropical Cyclone Cilida was located near 15.1 degrees south latitude and 57.7 degrees east longitude. That’s about 301 nautical miles north of Port Louis, Mauritius. Cilida is moving to the south-southwest and has maximum sustained winds near 135 knots (155 mph/250 kph). Cilida is a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

JTWC forecasters expect Cilida will move south, later southeast as it strengthens to 140 knots after today. Peak intensity will occur as the storm passes between Mauritius and Rodrigues Island. In four days, the storm should transition into an extra-tropical cyclone and rapidly weaken.

A newly published study by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) has found that impacts of Tropical Cyclone Winston on the coastal communities of Fiji went beyond the immediate loss of lives and infrastructure. The cyclone also had a lingering effect on the fisheries many communities depend on, particularly on the availability of commercially important crustaceans.

In the aftermath of the 2016 Category 5 cyclone that wrecked widespread havoc on the islands of Fiji, many women fishers stopped fishing for mud crabs altogether while they focused instead on repairing their homes. Fisherwomen who continued the harvest reported fewer and smaller crabs, and catches were sold mostly to local traders to raise money for home repair as opposed to being eaten by fishers.

The study titled "Impact of Tropical Cyclone Winston on women mud crab fishers in Fiji" appears in the latest version of the journal Climate and Development. The authors are: Alyssa S. Thomas, Sangeeta Mangubhai, Chloe Vandervord, Margaret Fox, and Yashika Nand of WCS.

"It's important to realize that tropical cyclones can have immediate effects on food security and the economic well-being of small villages that depend on natural resources," said Dr. Sangeeta Mangubhai, Country Director of WCS's Fiji Program and a co-author on the study.

While many studies on the impact of cyclones on communities focus on the damage done to services and infrastructure, few quantify the impact on community fisheries or the fishers themselves. And even fewer look at the impact to women in the fisheries sector.

The research authors used on the mud crab (Scylla serrata) as a lens to better understand the cascading effects of Tropical Cyclone Winston on natural resource use in the coastal communities in the Bua Province of Vanua Levu, Fiji's second largest island. The crab is an important source of food and income for fisherwomen due to the crustacean's large size and delicate meat. The objectives of the study were to gauge the social and economic impact of Tropical Cyclone Winston two to three months after the story, and to formulate recommendations for the government based on the study's findings.

The researchers conducted one-on-one surveys with mostly women (who make up the majority of mud crab fishers) in 16 villages located near mangroves, habitat where mud crabs are usually numerous and harvested with consistency. The same villages had participated in a previous survey (before the cyclone) focused on the mud crab fishery. The authors found that, after the cyclone, some 52 percent of the survey participants had stopped harvesting crabs for a number of reasons (i.e. the need to focus on home repair, the difficulty of accessing fishing locations and local traders after the story).

Mangubhai added: "The findings that mud crab fisheries are especially vulnerable is key to helping government agencies to design effective strategies to mitigate the effects of natural disasters."

Researchers from UCLA Samueli School of Engineering and Stanford have demonstrated a computer system that can discover and identify the real-world objects it "sees" based on the same method of visual learning that humans use.

The system is an advance in a type of technology called "computer vision," which enables computers to read and identify visual images. It is an important step toward general artificial intelligence systems--computers that learn on their own, are intuitive, make decisions based on reasoning and interact with humans in a more human-like way. Although current AI computer vision systems are increasingly powerful and capable, they are task-specific, meaning their ability to identify what they see is limited by how much they have been trained and programmed by humans.

Even today's best computer vision systems cannot create a full picture of an object after seeing only certain parts of it--and the systems can be fooled by viewing the object in an unfamiliar setting. Engineers are aiming to make computer systems with those abilities--just like humans can understand that they are looking at a dog, even if the animal is hiding behind a chair and only the paws and tail are visible. Humans, of course, can also easily intuit where the dog's head and the rest of its body are, but that ability still eludes most artificial intelligence systems.

Current computer vision systems are not designed to learn on their own. They must be trained on exactly what to learn, usually by reviewing thousands of images in which the objects they are trying to identify are labeled for them.

Computers, of course, also cannot explain their rationale for determining what the object in a photo represents: AI-based systems do not build an internal picture or a common-sense model of learned objects the way humans do.

The engineers' new method, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows a way around these shortcomings.

The approach is made up of three broad steps. First, the system breaks up an image into small chunks, which the researchers call "viewlets." Second, the computer learns how these viewlets fit together to form the object in question. And finally, it looks at what other objects are in the surrounding area, and whether or not information about those objects is relevant to describing and identifying the primary object.

To help the new system "learn" more like humans, the engineers decided to immerse it in an internet replica of the environment humans live in.

"Fortunately, the internet provides two things that help a brain-inspired computer vision system learn the same way humans do," said Vwani Roychowdhury, a UCLA professor of electrical and computer engineering and the study's principal investigator. "One is a wealth of images and videos that depict the same types of objects. The second is that these objects are shown from many perspectives--obscured, bird's eye, up-close--and they are placed in different kinds of environments."

To develop the framework, the researchers drew insights from cognitive psychology and neuroscience.

"Starting as infants, we learn what something is because we see many examples of it, in many contexts," Roychowdhury said. "That contextual learning is a key feature of our brains, and it helps us build robust models of objects that are part of an integrated worldview where everything is functionally connected."

The researchers tested the system with about 9,000 images, each showing people and other objects. The platform was able to build a detailed model of the human body without external guidance and without the images being labeled.

The engineers ran similar tests using images of motorcycles, cars and airplanes. In all cases, their system performed better or at least as well as traditional computer vision systems that have been developed with many years of training.

New Haven, Conn. -- In a new study, Yale Cancer Center (YCC) scientists suggest that as the number of clinical trials in cancer immunotherapy grows exponentially, some caution should be exercised as we continue to better understand the biology of these new therapeutic targets. The findings are published today in the journal Cell.

Researchers around the world have been racing to create therapies that unleash the power of our immune systems against cancer. The most successful of these immunotherapies, which target a molecular pathway known as PD-1/PD-L1, have brightened the landscape for many people suffering with lung cancer and other types of tumors.

Lieping Chen, M.D., who pioneered work on the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway, cautions that some immunotherapy research is going off track by moving into drug development without a firm foundation of basic biological understanding. Chen is the United Technologies Corporation Professor in Cancer Research and co-director of the Cancer Immunology Program at YCC.

A case in point is the LAG-3 molecule, notes Chen. Like PD-1, the LAG-3 protein is found on the surface of the immune system's T cells, and tumors can use it to shield themselves from the T cell attack. Most scientists have believed that a surface protein called MHC class II (MHC-II) is the major "ligand" molecule that cancer cells can use to connect with the LAG-3 molecule in order to dial down T cell activity, and that targeting MHC-II will help to unblock the T cells.

However, the YCC team has shown that the leading role in LAG-3 immunosuppression instead is filled by a protein known as FGL1.

Although pharmaceutical companies have already brought LAG-3 inhibitors that block MHC-II into several clinical trials, such drugs are not likely to perform well, Chen said. "The overall LAG-3 pathway is a lot more complicated than believed," he added. "FGL1 is the major ligand for immunosuppression, and designing LAG-3 drugs to block the MHC-II ligand only could be problematic." Chen's lab discovered PD-L1 in 1999 and first developed anti-PD-L1/PD-1 antibodies for cancer immunotherapy.

Looking through the scientific literature, Chen and his colleagues found surprisingly little evidence that MHC-II is the major ligand to enable LAG-3 immunosuppression. To determine what mechanism is at work, the Yale team first looked to see if LAG-3 connects to other ligands, using a "Receptor Array" system developed in the Chen lab that can individually generate nearly all human cell membrane proteins, and then analyze how these proteins interact with other molecules. This experiment clearly showed for the first time that LAG-3 binds to the FGL1 protein.

Following up with studies in mouse models, the investigators demonstrated that removing FGL1 either by genetic engineering or with antibody drugs produced an increase in T cells. Additionally, the mice often slowly developed mild forms of autoimmune disease. Both findings suggested that the protein can indeed dampen T cell activity, say the researchers. Moreover, in mouse models of cancer, blocking the FGL1/LAG-3 interaction boosted T cell activity and slowed tumor growth.

Next, Chen's team found that FGL1 is produced at strikingly high levels in various human cancers, including lung cancer and melanoma. The researchers also found that higher levels of FGL1 in the blood of these cancer patients are linked to poor prognosis and resistance to anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy.

In short, said Chen, "we need to pay attention to the fundamentals of FGL1/LAG-3 interaction before we can develop efficient drugs for LAG-3 cancer immunotherapy."

An infrared look by NASA's Aqua satellite revealed where the strongest storms were located within recently formed Tropical Cyclone Cilida. Cilida formed in the Southern Indian Ocean on Dec. 18.

On Dec. 19 at 4:35 a.m. EDT (0935 UTC) the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed cloud top temperatures of Tropical Cyclone Cilida in infrared light. AIRS found cloud top temperatures of strongest thunderstorms were south of the center. Coldest temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius). Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

Satellite imagery shows a consolidating system with a weak and partially exposed low level circulation. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that "fragmented formative rain bands are spiraling in mostly from the east."

On Dec. 19 at 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Cyclone Cilida was located near latitude 11.6 degrees south and longitude 60.6 degrees east. That's about 544 nautical miles north-northeast of Port Louis, Mauritius. Cilida is moving to the south-southwest. Maximum sustained winds were near 35 knots (40 mph/65 kph).

Threatened landmasses include St. Brandon, Mauritius, and Rodrigues Island as Cilida is forecast to move southwest, and later southeast as it strengthens to 95 knots (109 mph/175 kph) after 4 days. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects Cilida to pass to the east of Mauritius on Dec. 22.

For updated forecasts from Mauritius and Cilida's local effects, visit: http://metservice.intnet.mu/warning-bulletin-special-weather.php

The quest to discover what drove the last, long-term global climate shift on Earth, which took place around a million years ago, has taken a new, revealing twist.

A team of researchers led by Dr Sev Kender from the University of Exeter, have found a fascinating new insight into the causes of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT) - the phenomenon whereby the planet experienced longer, intensified cycles of extreme cold conditions.

While the causes of the MPT are not fully known, one of the most prominent theories suggests it may have been driven by reductions in glacial CO2 emissions.

Now, Dr Kender and his team have discovered that the closure of the Bering Strait during this period due to glaciation could have led the North Pacific to become stratified - or divided into distinct layers - causing CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere. This would, they suggest, have caused global cooling.

The team believe the latest discovery could provide a pivotal new understanding of how the MPT occurred, but also give a fresh insight into the driving factors behind global climate changes.

The research is published in Nature Communications on December 19th 2018.

Dr Kender, a co-author on the study from the Camborne School of Mines, based at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus in Cornwall said: "The subarctic North Pacific is composed of some of the oldest water on Earth, which has been separated from the atmosphere for such a long time that a high concentration of dissolved CO2 has built up at depth. When this water upwells to the surface, some of the CO2 is released. This is thought to be an important process in geological time, causing some of the global warming that followed past glaciations.

"We took deep sediment cores from the bottom of the Bering Sea that gave us an archive of the history of the region. By studying the chemistry of sediment and fossil shells from marine protists called foraminifera, we reconstructed plankton productivity, and surface and bottom water masses. We were also able to better date the sediments so that we could compare changes in the Bering Sea to other global changes at that time.

"We discovered that the Bering Sea region became more stratified during the MPT with an expanded intermediate-depth watermass, such that one of the important contributors to global warming - the upwelling of the subarctic North Pacific - was effectively curtailed."

The Earth's climate has always been subjected to significant changes, and over the past 600,000 years and more it has commonly oscillated between warm periods, similar today, and colder, 'glacial' periods when large swathes of continents are blanketed under several kilometres of ice.

These regular, natural changes in the Earth's climate are governed by changes in how the Earth orbits around the sun, and variations in the tilt of its axis caused by gravitational interactions with other planets.

These changes, known as orbital cycles, can affect how solar energy is dispersed across the planet. Some orbital cycles can, therefore, lead to colder summers in the Northern Hemisphere which can trigger the start of glaciations, while later cycles can bring warmer summers, causing the ice to melt.,

These cycles can be influenced by a host of factors that can amplify their effect. One of which is CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

As the MPT occurred during a period when there were no apparent changes in the nature of the orbit cycles, scientists have long been attempting to discover what drove the changes to take place.

For this research, Dr Kender and his team drilled for deep-sea sediment in the Bering Sea, in conjunction with the International Ocean Discovery Program, and measured the chemistry of the fossil shells and sediments.

The team were able to create a detailed reconstruction of oceanic water masses through time - and found that the closure of the Baring Strait caused the subarctic North Pacific became stratified during this period of glaciation.

This stratification, that argue, would have removed CO2 from the atmosphere and caused global cooling.

Dr Kender added: "Today much of the cold water produced by sea ice action flows northward into the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait. As glaciers grew and sea levels fell around 1 million years ago, the Bering Strait would have closed, retaining colder water within the Bering Sea. This expanded watermass appears to have stifled the upwelling of deep CO2-rich water and allowed the ocean to sequester more CO2 out of the atmosphere. The associated cooling effect would have changed the sensitivity of Earth to orbital cycles, causing colder and longer glaciations that characterise climate ever since.

"Our findings highlight the importance of understanding present and future changes to the high latitude oceans, as these regions are so important for long term sequestration or release of atmospheric CO2."

A team from the Research and Educational Center "Functional Nanomaterials" of Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (BFU) together with an international scientific group studied a correlation between the structure of ceramic materials based on bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) and their magnetic properties. In their work the scientists theoretically justified the obtained results and determined the factors that affect structural evolution of materials and changes in their magnetic behavior. The work will help create new ceramic materials with given properties. The article of the scientists was published in the Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids.

The structure of bismuth ferrite is similar to that of perovskite, a calcium and titanium-based mineral, but also contains oxygen atoms. Well-known high-temperature superconductors (i.e. materials able to conduct the current without resistance at certain temperatures) have the same structure. Many materials with perovskite-like crystal grids are used as solar energy processors.

When ions of different elements are added to source bismuth ferrite, it leads to changes in its crystal lattice and therefore in physical properties. BFU physicists added ions of metals (calcium, manganese, titanium, and niobium) to it and measured the material's magnetic characteristics. It turned out that the insertion of new atoms leads to the compression of the crystal lattice regardless of the type of the transitional elements. This, in turn, is followed by changes in the material's magnetic structure. It loses spontaneous polarization, i.e. dipole moments of the atoms (that determine the direction of electric forces) are deprived of fixed orientation in the absence of an external electric field. When atoms of other metals are added to bismuth ferrite, the latter also loses its ferromagnetic properties: dipole moments of atoms are no longer directed towards each other. Moreover, when calcium is added together with niobium or titanium, the magnetic structure of the material turns into ferromagnetic: the dipole moments became codirectional. After the influence of a magnetic field stopped, these samples showed residual magnetism, a property typical for ferromagnetic materials.

"We've demonstrated that the magnetic properties of bismuth ferrite-based materials are to a great extent determined by structural distortions caused by substitutions, lattice defects, and the nature of exchange interaction between the atoms of iron, oxygen, and the transitional metal. Weak ferromagnetic states that occurred when calcium was added to the material together with titanium or niobium, are explained by the reaction between magnetic atoms that goes through the non-magnetic ones. Usually, it is not taken into account due to its minor values, but in case of ferromagnetic materials it may cause considerable fluctuations in the magnetic behavior of the material," says Vadim Sikolenko, a co-author of the work, candidate of physics and mathematics, and senior researcher at the Research and Educational Center "Functional Nanomaterials".

Wild animals are increasingly exploited for entertainment and photo opportunities. A new study highlights that tourists in Morocco object to the use of barbary macaques as photo props, raising concerns about the animal's welfare and risk to human health. The findings are presented today at the British Ecological Society annual conference in Birmingham.

Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus, L.), the only primate species endemic to Morocco and Algeria, have been categorised as 'endangered to extinction' on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species since 2008. It is prohibited to sell or keep them as pets.

Despite the restrictions, barbary macaques are used as photo props for tourists, principally in Marrakech's famous Jemaa el-Fna square (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) and reportedly in other major Moroccan cities and Algeria. An infant macaque might act as a photo prop 18 times per hour costing visitors as much as 100 Dirhams (~£20). This practice could earn their handlers the equivalent of an average monthly Moroccan household income in just 3-4 working days.

Researchers from Edinburgh Napier University surveyed 513 national and international visitors to Jemaa el-Fna square during an Easter holiday period when tourism was at a peak, using a 25-item questionnaire to evaluate their perception of primate photo props.

88% of the respondents neither intended to use the photo props nor did. More than 200 people found it unacceptable because of ethical or animal welfare reasons.

Jay Mackinnon, a lecturer in applied sciences at Edinburgh Napier University, commented: "Most of the survey respondents didn't see the macaques as an attraction and found the photo props off-putting. They pitied the animals and raised concerns about hygiene and the risk of serious infections being transmitted."

Interestingly, while 66% agreed the practice should be illegal, 80% were unaware it is already illegal in the country.

"Barbary macaque numbers have plummeted by more than 50% since the 1980s due to habitat loss and juveniles being sold illegally as pets. Only one in four survey participants was aware that this species is endangered", said Kristina Stazaker who led the research as part of her master's project at the university.

"Seeing primates as pets or photo props, whether that is in the media or at tourism destinations, can lead to the assumption that there are a lot of them and it is suitable to keep them as pets", she added.

Visitors who did have their photos taken with a macaque, or planned to do so, valued the rare opportunity to interact with the animal, although half of them said they did not enjoy the experience as traders had pressured them or mistreated the macaques.

Mackinnon concluded: "Jemaa el-Fna square is a stunning place with street performers, food and souvenir stalls, attracting tourists from all over the world. We know that the perception of poor animal welfare can contribute to a negative experience or image of the destination visited. It would be a shame if tourists were taking away some memories of Morocco that are negative because of this unethical practice."

Barbary macaques can be seen in the wild at Ifrane National Park and the waterfalls of Ouzoud. The study points out that, if managed appropriately, ecotourism enterprises could provide a better experience for tourists who value animal encounters at these sites.

The team will present their findings on Tuesday 18 December 2018 at the British Ecological Society annual meeting, which will bring together 1,200 ecologists from more than 40 countries to discuss the latest research.

On December 16 and 17, NASA's GPM core observatory satellite and NASA's Aqua satellite, respectively, passed over the Southern Indian Ocean and captured rainfall and temperature data on Tropical Cyclone Kenanga.

Kenanga formed on Dec. 15 about 1,116 miles east of Diego Garcia, and strengthened into a tropical storm.

When the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite passed overhead, the rainfall rates it gathered were derived from the satellite's Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument. GPM provided a close-up analysis of rainfall around tropical cyclone Kenanga. Data from GPM's microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) were used in this analysis. DPR found that a powerful storm northeast of Kenanga's center of circulation was dropping rain at a rate of over 119 mm (4.7 inches) per hour.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, imagery and animations were created using GPM data. A 3-D animation used GPM's radar to show the structure of precipitation within tropical Cyclone Kenanga. The simulated flyby around Kenanga showed storm tops that were reaching heights above 13.5 km (8.4 miles). GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.

On Dec. 17 at 3:05 a.m. EST (0805 UTC), the AIRS or Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided an infrared look at Tropical Cyclone Kenanga. Coldest cloud top temperatures were near 63 degrees Fahrenheit (53 degrees Celsius) and indicated where strongest storms appeared. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC noted "animated enhanced infrared satellite imagery depicts a central dense overcast feature with a formative eye. Another image shows a compact system with curved banding wrapping into an oblong microwave eye feature."

On Dec. 17 at 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC), maximum sustained winds were near 60 knots. Kenanga was centered near 12.8 degrees south latitude and 86.0 degrees east longitude, approximately 885 nautical miles east-southeast of Diego Garcia. Kenanga has tracked west-southwestward.

JTWC forecasters expect Kenanga to continue strengthening for the next two days and then conditions will deteriorate. After three days the storm is forecast to begin weakening as it interacts with cooler, drier air.

A team of scientists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University together with their colleagues from Russia, Japan, and Australia studied the influence of inhomogeneity of magnetic field applied during the fabrication process of thin-film structures made from nickel-iron and iridium-manganese alloys, on their properties. These systems can be used in various types of magnetic field sensors. The article of the team was published in the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials.

Magnetic materials are divided into several types depending on their reaction on an external magnetic field. For example, diamagnetic materialsbecome magnetized in opposite direction to the external field, while paramagnetic ones acquire the magnetic moment with the same direction as that of the field. Two more classes of magnetic materials - ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic - are different because they are able to preserve magnetic properties even in the absence of an external field. Ferromagnetic materials possess a remnant magnetic moment and can be used as permanent magnets, while the magnetic moment of antiferromagnetic materials is equal to zero in the absence of a magnetic field due to magnetic moments of sublattices that have opposite directions and cancel each other.

A typical phenomenon for the ferromagnetic materials is a magnetic hysteresis, i.e.a change in the intrinsic magnetic field strength of a ferromagnet upon increase or decrease of an external magnetic field strength. A hysteresis loop of a ferromagnetic material is usually symmetrical over the point of origin. However, for materials that consist of two thin layers (an anti- and a ferromagnetic one) the hysteresis loop can be shifted over the origin point. This phenomenon is called the exchange bias and is explained to be caused by exchange coupling between ferromagnetic material with an antiferromagnetic one.

IKBFU physicists studied how the inhomogeneous magnetic field, applied during fabrication of thin films made from nickel-iron (NiFe) and iridium-manganese (IrMn), influence its properties.. The samples of thin films were made by the magnetron sputtering method. In this technology a target (a piece of a metal that should be sputtered) is bombarded by the inert atoms (e.g. atoms of a noble gas).

"We've demonstrated that the presence of an inhomogeneous magnetic field during the manufacture process of thin film exchange-coupled structures changes their magnetization reversal mechanism. If homogenous magnetic fields are used in this process, it leads to the classic shift of the hysteresis loop. Changes in the homogeneity of the magnetic field affect both the value of the loop shift and the shape of the loop in the NiFe/IrMn film structure. We demonstrated that a step-wise hysteresis loop can be obtained for the sample that was created in the area with the highest gradient of the magnetic field. The regularities we discovered will help increase the sensitivity of magnetic field detectors," says Valeria Rodionova, a co-author of the work, candidate of Physico-Mathematical Sciences, and the Head of the Laboratory for New Magnetic Materials of IKBFU.

MADISON, Wis. -- More than 700 million adults and children worldwide are obese, according to a 2017 study that called the growing number and weight-related health problems a "rising pandemic."

New battery-free, easily implantable weight-loss devices developed by engineers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison could offer a promising new weapon for battling the bulge.

In laboratory testing, the devices helped rats shed almost 40 percent of their body weight. Results of the study were published today (Dec. 17, 2018) in the journal Nature Communications.

Measuring less than 1 centimeter across, or about a third of the area of a U.S. penny, the tiny devices -- which are safe for use in the body and implantable via a minimally invasive procedure -- generate gentle electric pulses from the stomach's natural churning motions and deliver them to the vagus nerve, which links the brain and the stomach.

That gentle stimulation dupes the brain into thinking that the stomach is full after only a few nibbles of food.

"The pulses correlate with the stomach's motions, enhancing a natural response to help control food intake," says Xudong Wang, a UW-Madison professor of materials science and engineering.

Unlike gastric bypass, which permanently alters the capacity of the stomach, the effects of the new devices also are reversible. When Wang and his collaborators removed the devices after 12 weeks, the study's rats resumed their normal eating patterns and weight bounced right back on.

Wang's device has several advantages over an existing unit that stimulates the vagus nerve for weight loss. That existing unit, "Maestro," approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2015, administers high-frequency zaps to the vagus nerve to shut down all communication between the brain and stomach. It requires a complicated control unit and bulky batteries which frequently must be recharged.

That ongoing maintenance can be a big barrier to use, says Luke Funk, a surgery professor in UW-Madison's Division of Minimally Invasive, Foregut and Bariatric Surgery. "One potential advantage of the new device over existing vagus nerve stimulators is that it does not require external battery charging, which is a significant advantage when you consider the inconvenience that patients experience when having to charge a battery multiple times a week for an hour or so."

In fact, Wang's device contains no batteries, no electronics, and no complicated wiring. It relies instead on the undulations of the stomach walls to power its internal generators.

That means the device only stimulates the vagus nerve when the stomach moves.

"It's automatically responsive to our body function, producing stimulation when needed," says Wang. "Our body knows best."

Wang is a world expert in wearable and implantable capacitive electricity-generating devices, having previously created implantable nanogenerators that harvest energy from people's beating hearts and breathing, a motion-powered bandage for wound healing, and other such devices.

He and his collaborators patented the weight-loss device through the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and are moving forward with testing in larger animal models. If successful, they hope to move toward human trials.

"Our expectation is that the device will be more effective and convenient to use than other technologies," says Wang.

More than 85 well-preserved dinosaur footprints - made by at least seven different species - have been uncovered in East Sussex, representing the most diverse and detailed collection of these trace fossils from the Cretaceous Period found in the UK to date.

The footprints were identified by University of Cambridge researchers between 2014 and 2018, following periods of coastal erosion along the cliffs near Hastings. Many of the footprints - which range in size from less than 2 cm to over 60 cm across - are so well-preserved that fine detail of skin, scales and claws is easily visible.

The footprints date from the Lower Cretaceous epoch, between 145 and 100 million years ago, with prints from herbivores including Iguanodon, Ankylosaurus, a species of stegosaur, and possible examples from the sauropod group (which included Diplodocus and Brontosaurus); as well as meat-eating theropods. The results are reported in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

Over the past 160 years, there have been sporadic reports of fossilised dinosaur footprints along the Sussex coast, but no new major discoveries have been described for the past quarter century and the earlier findings were far less varied and detailed than those described in the current research.

The area around Hastings is one of the richest in the UK for dinosaur fossils, including the first known Iguanodon in 1825, and the first confirmed example of fossilised dinosaur brain tissue in 2016. However, trace fossils such as footprints, which can help scientists learn more about the composition of dinosaur communities, are less common in the area.

"Whole body fossils of dinosaurs are incredibly rare," said Anthony Shillito, a PhD student in Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences and the paper's first author. "Usually you only get small pieces, which don't tell you a lot about how that dinosaur may have lived. A collection of footprints like this helps you fill in some of the gaps and infer things about which dinosaurs were living in the same place at the same time."

The footprints described in the current study, which Shillito co-authored with Dr Neil Davies, were uncovered during the past four winters, when strong storms and storm surges led to periods of collapse of the sandstone and mudstone cliffs.

In the Cretaceous Period, the area where the footprints were found was likely near a water source, and in addition to the footprints, a number of fossilised plants and invertebrates were also found.

"To preserve footprints, you need the right type of environment," said Davies. "The ground needs to be 'sticky' enough so that the footprint leaves a mark, but not so wet that it gets washed away. You need that balance in order to capture and preserve them."

"As well as the large abundance and diversity of these prints, we also see absolutely incredible detail," said Shillito. "You can clearly see the texture of the skin and scales, as well as four-toed claw marks, which are extremely rare.

"You can get some idea about which dinosaurs made them from the shape of the footprints - comparing them with what we know about dinosaur feet from other fossils lets you identify the important similarities. When you also look at footprints from other locations you can start to piece together which species were the key players."

As part of his research, Shillito is studying how dinosaurs may have affected the flows of rivers. In modern times, large animals such as hippopotamuses or cows can create small channels, diverting some of the river's flow.

"Given the sheer size of many dinosaurs, it's highly likely that they affected rivers in a similar way, but it's difficult to find a 'smoking gun', since most footprints would have just washed away," said Shillito. "However, we do see some smaller-scale evidence of their impact; in some of the deeper footprints you can see thickets of plants that were growing. We also found evidence of footprints along the banks of river channels, so it's possible that dinosaurs played a role in creating those channels."

It's likely that there are many more dinosaur footprints hidden within the eroding sandstone cliffs of East Sussex, but the construction of sea defences in the area to slow or prevent the process of coastal erosion may mean that they remained locked within the rock.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Parents may plan for transportation and childcare ahead of holiday gatherings but are they prepared for a potential, day-after "parenting hangover?"

A quarter of parents of young children who drink alcohol on special occasions do not think about limiting how much they drink or whether they'll be able to take care of their child the next day, according to a report from the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health at the University of Michigan.

The nationally-representative report is based on responses from 1,170 parents with at least one child ages 0-9 years.

Three in 10 parents (29 percent) also said they know of an adult who may have caused an unsafe situation for their child due to drinking alcohol at a special celebration. These parents were most concerned that the other adult was too impaired or hung over to supervise their child (61 percent) or to handle a possible emergency (48 percent); and less commonly that the adult drove with a child while impaired (37 percent), got violent or out of control in front of the child (28 percent), or injured the child (7 percent).

Another 1 in 12 parents (8 percent) admitted to a prior situation where they may have been too impaired from alcohol to take care of their parenting responsibilities. About the same proportion of mothers and fathers acknowledged a prior lapse in judgment related to alcohol.

"Most parents planning to drink alcoholic beverages on a night out arrange for a designated driver and childcare for the event itself," says poll co-director Sarah Clark. "Fewer parents may consider how their alcohol consumption could impact parenting responsibilities to their young children the next day."

Most parents reported drinking alcoholic beverages during special events, either often (27 percent), sometimes (36 percent) or rarely (17 percent). Among those, 73 percent said they were very likely to make plans in advance for someone to watch their child during the event, and 68 percent were very likely to plan for safe transportation.

However, just 47 percent were very likely to think in advance about how much they will drink, and 64 percent said they are very likely to make plans for someone to take care of their child the day after the event.

"The amount of alcohol consumed can affect parenting the next day," Clark says. "A parent passed out on the couch will not be effective in recognizing and reacting to the everyday safety risks that occur with children."

One particularly interesting finding: Parents who said they drink rarely were less likely to plan in advance for childcare and transportation the night of the special event and childcare responsibilities the following day compared to parents who drink sometimes or often.

However, even rare instances of celebrating with alcohol can have serious consequences for children, Clark says.

Parents may prevent overindulging by alternating alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic drinks, Clark notes. But if they aren't sure whether their alcohol consumption may impair parenting abilities, it's better to be safe than sorry.

"Parents who plan to drink alcoholic beverages during an outing should plan ahead for transportation to ensure they arrive home safely," Clark says.

"If alcohol use may potentially impact their ability to take care of their children the following day, parents may also consider childcare arrangements. Having children stay the night at a relative's home or asking a grandparent to stay overnight are options to ensure young children are in a safe and supervised environment."