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The BioScience Talks podcast features discussions of topical issues related to the biological sciences.

In a career-spanning installment of the journal BioScience's In Their Own Words oral history series, Missouri Botanical Garden President Emeritus Peter Raven illuminates numerous topics, sharing insights related to the sustainability of human civilization, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the importance of science in addressing the world's greatest challenges.
Raven, a recent coauthor of "A Call to Action: Marshaling Science for Society," highlights the importance of public outreach in overcoming deeply rooted societal problems. Among them, he argues that our present economic system "sees natural productivity like every other commodity," as something that grows in proportion with demand. "Guess what," says Raven, "it doesn't. It's got a real limit. The limit is known as the planet Earth."
Raven goes on to argue that young scientists, after they have forged a solid framework of skills within their field, should turn their attention to public engagement, "to understand what's really going on in the world, to try to act on it, to try to act on it personally in terms of consumption and other parameters, and to act on it in terms of the people we elect and the international choices we make."
Discussing his own contributions, Raven explains that he hopes his work in leading the Missouri Botanical Garden during a period of expansion will persist into the future: "I would like that global reach, that global service, and that understanding between people and between nations, with the realization that we're not all competing with one another, but we're all pursuing a common goal and ought to be nurturing and encouraging one another, to be remembered."
Dr. Raven's autobiography, "Driven by Nature," will be jointly published by the University of Chicago Press and the Missouri Botanical Garden in March 2021.

Before the pandemic, the lab of Stanford University biochemist Peter S. Kim focused on developing vaccines for HIV, Ebola and pandemic influenza. But, within days of closing their campus lab space as part of COVID-19 precautions, they turned their attention to a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Although the coronavirus was outside the lab's specific area of expertise, they and their collaborators have managed to construct and test a promising vaccine candidate.

"Our goal is to make a single-shot vaccine that does not require a cold-chain for storage or transport. If we're successful at doing it well, it should be cheap too," said Kim, who is the Virginia and D. K. Ludwig Professor of Biochemistry. "The target population for our vaccine is low- and middle-income countries."

Their vaccine, detailed in a paper published Jan. 5 in ACS Central Science, contains nanoparticles studded with the same proteins that comprise the virus's distinctive surface spikes. In addition to being the reason why these are called coronaviruses - corona is Latin for "crown" - these spikes facilitate infection by fusing to a host cell and creating a passageway for the viral genome to enter and hijack the cell's machinery to produce more viruses. The spikes can also be used as antigens, which means their presence in the body is what can trigger an immune response.

Nanoparticle vaccines balance the effectiveness of viral-based vaccines with the safety and ease-of-production of subunit vaccines. Vaccines that use viruses to deliver the antigen are often more effective than vaccines that contain only isolated parts of a virus. However, they can take longer to produce, need to be refrigerated and are more likely to cause side effects. Nucleic acid vaccines - like the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines that have recently been authorized for emergency use by the FDA - are even faster to produce than nanoparticle vaccines but they are expensive to manufacture and may require multiple doses. Initial tests in mice suggest that the Stanford nanoparticle vaccine could produce COVID-19 immunity after just one dose.

The researchers are also hopeful that it could be stored at room temperature and are investigating whether it could be shipped and stored in a freeze-dried, powder form. By comparison, the vaccines that are farthest along in development in the United States all need to be stored at cold temperatures, ranging from approximately 8 to -70 degrees Celsius (46 to -94 degrees Fahrenheit).

"This is really early stage and there is still lots of work to be done," said Abigail Powell, a former postdoctoral scholar in the Kim lab and lead author of the paper. "But we think it is a solid starting point for what could be a single-dose vaccine regimen that doesn't rely on using a virus to generate protective antibodies following vaccination."

The researchers are continuing to improve and fine-tune their vaccine candidate, with the intention of moving it closer to initial clinical trials in humans.

Spikes and nanoparticles

The spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 is quite large, so scientists often formulate abridged versions that are simpler to make and easier to use. After closely examining the spike, Kim and his team chose to remove a section near the bottom.

To complete their vaccine, they combined this shortened spike with nanoparticles of ferritin - an iron-containing protein - which has been previously tested in humans. Before the pandemic, Powell had been working with these nanoparticles to develop an Ebola vaccine. Together with scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the researchers used cryo-electron microscopy to get a 3D image of the spike ferritin nanoparticles in order to confirm that they had the proper structure.

For the mouse tests, the researchers compared their shortened spike nanoparticles to four other potentially useful variations: nanoparticles with full spikes, full spikes or partial spikes without nanoparticles, and a vaccine containing just the section of the spike that binds to cells during infection. Testing the effectiveness of these vaccines against actual SARS-CoV-2 virus would have required the work to be done in a Biosafety Level 3 lab, so the researchers instead used a safer pseudo-coronavirus that was modified to carry SARS-CoV-2's spikes.

The researchers determined the potential effectiveness of each vaccine by monitoring levels of neutralizing antibodies. Antibodies are blood proteins produced in response to antigens; neutralizing antibodies are the specific subset of antibodies that actually act to prevent the virus from invading a host cell.

After a single dose, the two nanoparticle vaccine candidates both resulted in neutralizing antibody levels at least twice as high as those seen in people who have had COVID-19, and the shortened spike nanoparticle vaccine produced a significantly higher neutralizing response than the binding spike or the full spike (non-nanoparticle) vaccines. After a second dose, mice that had received the shortened spike nanoparticle vaccine had the highest levels of neutralizing antibodies.

Looking back at this project, Powell estimates that the time from inception to the first mouse studies was about four weeks. "Everybody had a lot of time and energy to devote to the same scientific problem," she said. "It is a very unique scenario. I don't really expect I'll ever encounter that in my career again."

"What's happened in the past year is really fantastic, in terms of science coming to the fore and being able to produce multiple different vaccines that look like they're showing efficacy against this virus," said Kim, who is senior author of the paper. "It normally takes a decade to make a vaccine, if you're even successful. This is unprecedented."

Vaccine access

Although the team's new vaccine is intended specifically for populations that may have more difficulty accessing other SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, it is possible, given the rapid progress of other vaccine candidates, that it will not be needed to address the current pandemic. In that case, the researchers are prepared to pivot again and pursue a more universal coronavirus vaccine to immunize against SARS-CoV-1, MERS, SARS-CoV-2 and future coronaviruses that are not yet known.

"Vaccines are one of the most profound achievements of biomedical research. They are an incredibly cost-effective way to protect people against disease and save lives," said Kim. "This coronavirus vaccine is part of work we're already doing - developing vaccines that are historically difficult or impossible to develop, like an HIV vaccine - and I'm glad that we're in a situation where we could potentially bring something to bear if the world needs it."

Noise exposure accounts for 22% of worldwide work-related health problems. Excessive noise not only causes hearing loss and tinnitus, but also increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases. To provide protection, workers normally wear earplugs. However, commonly available earplugs are often uncomfortable, since they don't fit everyone's ears equally well.

How could we improve the comfort and effectiveness of these earplugs? What aspects of the ear canal must be taken into account? To answer these questions, researchers from the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS University) and the Institut de recherche en santé et sécurité du travail (IRSST) analyzed the varying structure of ear canals to find a correlation between their shapes and the effectiveness of three commonly-used models of earplugs.

Each one is unique

Just like fingerprints, ear canals are unique. So, to find the best compromise between comfort and efficiency, you need to understand the relationship between the shapes of ear canals and of earplugs.

Earplugs must not only fit properly inside the ear canal, but must also exert pressure against the walls of the canal in order to make a tight seal. However, if the plugs put too much pressure on the ear canal walls, they will cause the wearer pain.

The methodology

To study these aspects, 3D models of volunteer workers' ear canals were created. These people wore three different types of earplugs. To obtain the geometry of their ear canals, a moulding material was injected to create canal moulds. These moulds were then scanned by measurement software to establish the geometric characteristics of the ear canal, such as the width at various locations and the overall length.

The noise attenuation of the three models of earplugs was then measured for each volunteer. Two miniature microphones were installed in and around the plugs to measure the noise outside and inside the ear plug.
A statistical analysis as well as algorithms based on artificial intelligence helped categorize the morphology of ear canals as a function of the degree of noise mitigation of each earplug.

Concrete applications

The results of the study show that the area of the ear canal called the "first elbow" is closely linked to noise attenuation by earplugs. Groups of similar structures created using artificial intelligence will allow researchers to develop a multitude of tools for manufacturers, who will then be able to produce a range of more comfortable ear plugs. This will allow prevention professionals to suggest models suited to each worker's ear canals.

A new study in the Oxford Economic Papers finds that migration flows the last 500 years from high sunlight regions to low sunlight regions influence contemporary health outcomes in destination countries.

The researchers here noted that people's ability to synthesize vitamin D from sunlight declines with skin pigmentation, and that vitamin D deficiency is directly associated with higher risk of mortality, from illnesses including cardiovascular disease, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and certain cancers. Recent research even .finds that vitamin D affects the severity of COVID-19.

Researchers here focused on groups from high sunlight regions that migrated to low sunlight regions between 1500 and today. The resulting population shifts caused the risk of vitamin D deficiency to rise substantially. The researchers explored the aggregate health consequences of such migration over a long historical perspective.

Researchers here constructed a measure that proxied the risk of vitamin D deficiency in a given population. The measure tracked the difference between sunlight intensity in the ancestral place of residence of the population, as well as the actual level of sunlight intensity at the place of current residence.

Using the difference between ancestor and ambient sunlight as a measure of the potential risk of vitamin D deficiency, researchers then examined its explanatory power in relation to life expectancy around the world. Researchers found that greater risk of vitamin D deficiency is negatively correlated with life expectancy, all else equal.

Researchers here noted that today there is widespread awareness of the harmful effects of excessive exposure to sunlight, which leads people to try to prevent sunburn through methods like sunscreen and limited outdoor exposure. Effective treatments of skin cancer are also widely available. People also spend more time indoors than their prehistoric ancestors, which lowers their exposure to sunlight. Consequently, the risk of premature death due to excessive sun exposure has decreased since prehistoric times.

However, the lower exposure times to sunlight increases the risk of vitamin D deficiency, particularly in people with higher skin pigmentation, whose ancestors came from high sunlight regions.

Ultimately the researchers here concluded that a migration-induced imbalance between the intensity of skin pigmentation and ambient sunlight can both relate and explain present-day global health differences: .Low sunlight regions that have received substantial immigration from high sunlight regions experience lower life expectancy than would have been the case in the absence of such migration flows.

"This research is important because it is the first research to document a link between an increased risk of vitamin D deficiency and differences in life expectancy across countries and regions. It thus serves to highlight the potentially huge benefit in terms of additional life years of taking vitamin D supplements, particularly during the autumn and winter" said author Dr. Thomas Barnebeck Andersen.

A new study has found that spending time outdoors and switching off our devices is associated with higher levels of happiness during a period of COVID-19 restrictions.

Previous academic studies have indicated how being outdoors, particularly in green spaces, can improve mental health by promoting more positive body image, and lowering levels of depression and anxiety.

Jointly led by academics from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in the UK, the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences in Austria, and Perdana University in Malaysia, this new research examined how levels of happiness during a national lockdown were affected by being outdoors, the amount of daily screen time (use of TV, computer and smartphone) and feelings of loneliness.

Using an experience sampling method (ESM), the researchers measured levels of happiness amongst a group of 286 adults three times a day, at random intervals, over a 21-day period. This allowed the participants to provide data in real-time rather than retrospectively, helping to avoid recall biases.

The research, published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, was carried out in April 2020, when the Austrian participants were allowed to leave their homes only for specific activities, which included exercise.

It found that levels of happiness were higher when participants were outdoors rather than indoors. In addition, more daily screen time and higher levels of loneliness were both associated with lower levels of happiness. The impact of loneliness on happiness was also weaker when participants were outdoors.

Co-lead author Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), said: "While lockdowns can help slow down the transmission of COVID-19, research has also shown that prolonged periods of lockdown take their toll on mental health.

"Our results are important in this context because they show that being able to spend time outdoors under conditions of lockdown has a beneficial impact on psychological wellbeing. Being outdoors provides opportunities to escape from the stresses of being confined at home, maintain social relationships with others, and engage in physical activity - all of which can improve mental health.

"Our findings have practical health policy implications. Given that further lockdown restrictions have now become necessary in the UK, public health messages that promote getting some fresh air instead of staying indoors and staring at our screens could really help to lift people's mood this winter."

Christina Krienke and colleagues have designed an mRNA vaccine that delayed the onset of and reduced the severity of multiple sclerosis-like disease in mice. The vaccine restores the body's tolerance to its own proteins, suppressing the characteristic immune overreactivity of the disease. The vaccine developed by Krienke et al. works in a targeted fashion to promote tolerance to specific disease-related proteins, an improvement over other approaches to treating the disease that induce systemic immune suppression that can leave an individual vulnerable to other infections. The vaccine consists of a lipid nanoparticle packed with modified and purified mRNA that encodes disease-related self-antigens that are normally the triggers for an autoimmune response. In their experiments in mice with autoimmune encephalomyelitis, a mouse model for human multiple sclerosis, the researchers found that the vaccine caused the antigens to be presented on lymphoid dendritic cells without provoking an inflammatory immune response. This new antigen tolerance led to the expansion of regulatory T cells that suppressed the autoimmune response against these types of antigens, and promoted the suppression of other T cells that attack proteins in myelin, the insulating sheath around nerve fibers that is destroyed in multiple sclerosis. The ability to quickly produce mRNA vaccines containing the code for an individual's own antigens may point the way to creating personalized autoimmune disease treatments, the researchers suggest.

"Nature red in tooth and claw" - The battle to survive is fought down to the level of our genes. Toxin-antidote elements are gene pairs that spread in populations by killing non-carriers. Now, research by the Burga lab at IMBA and the Kruglyak lab at the University of California, Los Angeles shows that these elements are more common in nature than first thought and have evolved a wide range of mechanisms to force their inheritance and propagate in populations - a parasite within the genome.

Originally described in the model nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, toxin-antidote elements consist of two linked genes, a toxin and its antidote. While the toxin is loaded into eggs by mothers, only embryos that inherit the element express the antidote. Thus, the offspring must inherit the element to survive. In this way, toxin-antidote pairs promote their own survival and spread in the population. This comes at great expense of their host's fitness - a quarter of their progeny, those that don't inherit the element, fall prey to the toxin.

Arrested development

"Before our study, only a handful of toxin-antidote pairs were known, and they were serendipitously discovered in different labs. We wondered: what if we actually go and look for these selfish elements, would they be rare or common?", says IMBA group leader Alejandro Burga. In their study, the teams of Burga and Kruglyak hunted for toxin-antidote pairs in a second nematode species Caenorhabditis tropicalis. The researchers identified five novel toxin-antidote pairs. Another selfish element was found in a third nematode species, C. briggsae. "This suggests that this class of selfish elements are not rare, but quite common in nematodes", explains Burga. Surprisingly, some of the newly identified toxin-antidote pairs do not act by disrupting embryonic development - like those identified in C. elegans - but rather kill non-carriers at a later stage of development. One element, which Burga and his team genetically dissected, does not even go as far as killing non-carriers. Instead, this selfish element delays the onset of reproduction in non-carriers. This turns out to be enough to allow the element to spread through the population. The researchers are now further investigating its mechanism of action.

Selfishness may support diversity

Burga and colleagues made another startling observation. The researchers found that different toxin-antidote pairs can be located on homologous chromosomes. "Because of this pairing, not only do we see a conflict between the selfish element and the individual, but also between selfish elements, which try to kill each other", says Burga. It is a war between selfish genes, but individuals get caught in the crossfire. "We hypothesize that selfish elements could have a direct role in speciation. At some point, carrying so many elements can just overwhelm their ability to produce viable offspring", adds Eyal Ben-David, co-first author of the study, now Assistant Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As a stark illustration of this, Burga and colleagues discovered that toxin-antidote elements can jointly cause defects in over 70% of the progeny from a single cross between two strains. "Such degree of incompatibility is likely insurmountable in the wild", says Ben-David.

Knowledge gained from studying toxin-antidote pairs could be used to improve gene drive systems. Synthetic gene drives have been engineered in the lab to control vector-borne disease, for instance, by spreading genes that affect the fertility of mosquitos. However, gene drives are often hampered by mutations, and more resilient systems are needed to ensure success, says Burga. "By studying selfish elements, which are natural gene drive systems, we hope we can engineer better synthetic ones in the near future. Selfish elements have evolved over thousands of years in nematodes and spread around the world - nature indeed is the best teacher," says Pinelopi Pliota, co-first author of the study.

Toxin-antidote pairs were first found in the 1980s in bacteria, and analogous elements have emerged in yeast, plants, insects and nematodes. "Toxin-antidote elements have independently evolved all over the tree of life. Either we humans are a unique case where they haven't evolved, or we haven't found them yet," says Burga.

What The Study Did: Researchers compared changes in preoperative aided speech recognition with postoperative speech recognition among individuals who received cochlear implants.

Authors: Theodore R. McRackan, M.D., M.S.C.R., of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2020.5094)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Some people have lost their eyesight, but they continue to "see." This phenomenon, a kind of vivid visual hallucination, is named after the Swiss doctor, Charles Bonnet, who described in 1769 how his completely blind grandfather experienced vivid, detailed visions of people, animals and objects. Charles Bonnet syndrome, which appears in those who have lost their eyesight, was investigated in a study led by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The findings, published today in Brain, suggest a mechanism by which normal, spontaneous activity in the visual centers of the brain can trigger visual hallucinations in the blind.

Prof. Rafi Malach and his group members of the Institute's Neurobiology Department research the phenomenon of spontaneous "resting-state" fluctuations in the brain. These mysterious slow fluctuations, which occur all over the brain, take place well below the threshold of consciousness. Despite a fair amount of research into these spontaneous fluctuations, their function is still largely unknown. The research group hypothesized that these fluctuations underlie spontaneous behaviors. However, it is typically difficult to investigate truly unprompted behaviors in a scientific manner for two reasons, since, for one, instructing people to behave spontaneously is usually a spontaneity-killer. Secondly, it is difficult to separate the brain's spontaneous fluctuations from other, task-related brain activity. The question was: How could they isolate a case of a truly spontaneous, unprompted, behavior in which the role of spontaneous brain activity could be tested?

Individuals experiencing Charles Bonnet visual hallucinations presented the group with a rare opportunity to investigate their hypothesis. This is because in Charles Bonnet syndrome, the hallucinations appear at random, in a truly unprompted fashion, and the visual centers of the brain do not process outside stimuli (because these individuals are blind), and are thus activated spontaneously. In a study led by Dr. Avital Hahamy, a former research student in Malach's lab who is now a postdoctoral research fellow at University College London, the relation between these hallucinations and the spontaneous brain activity has indeed been unveiled.

The researchers first invited to their lab five people who had lost their sight and reported occasionally experiencing clear visual hallucinations. These participants' brain activity was measured using an fMRI scanner while they described their hallucinations as these occurred. The scientists then created movies based on the participants' verbal descriptions, and they showed these movies to a sighted control group, also inside the fMRI scanner. A second control group consisted of blind people who had lost their sight but did not experience visual hallucinations. These were asked to imagine similar visual images while in the scanner.

The same visual areas in the brain were active in all three groups - those that hallucinated, those that watched the films and those creating imagery in their minds' eye. But the researchers noted a difference in the timing of the neural activity between these groups. In both the sighted participants and those in the imagery group, the activity was seen to take place in response either to visual input or to the instructions set in the task. But in the group with Charles Bonnet syndrome, the scientists observed a gradually increasing wave of activity, reminiscent of the slow spontaneous fluctuations, that emerged just before the onset of the hallucinations. In other words, the hallucinations were not the result of external stimuli (eg., sensory images or instructions to imagine specific things), but were rather evoked internally by the slow, spontaneous, brain activity fluctuations.

"Our research clearly shows that the same visual system is active when we see the world outside of us, when we imagine it, when we hallucinate, and probably also when we dream," says Malach. "It also exemplifies the creative power of vision and the contribution of spontaneous brain activity to unprompted and creative behaviors," he adds.

In addition to the scientific value of the work, Hahamy hopes it may raise awareness of Charles Bonnet syndrome, which can be frightening to those who experience it. "These individuals may keep their visual hallucinations a secret - even from doctors and family - and we want them to understand that these visions are a natural product of a healthy brain, in which the visual centers remain intact, even if the eyes have ceased to send them sensory input," she says.

In a study spanning four decades, researchers from the University of Hong Kong's Research Division for Ecology & Biodiversity (HKU) in the Faculty of Science, and Toho University's Department of Biology (Toho), Japan, have discovered that predation by snakes is pushing lizards to be active at warmer body temperatures on islands where snakes are present, in comparison to islands free from snakes. Their work also detected significant climatic warming throughout the years and found lizard body temperatures to have also increased accordingly. The findings show that lizard thermal biology is highly dependent on predation pressures and that body temperatures are rising suggest that such ectothermic predator-prey relationships may be changing under climatic warming.

Lizard VS Snakes on Izu Islands

The research published in the journal Ecology Letters is the first to present long-term observations on the thermal biology behind the prey-predator relationship of snakes and lizards on the Izu Islands. Less than a million years old, these islands are located near the southeastern coast of the Japanese mainland and represent a valuable natural laboratory for studying ecological and evolutionary processes. Similar to the reasons initially drawing evolutionary biologists to the Galapagos, the simplified island system with low numbers of species overall provides an opportunity to directly study selective pressures on species.

In this system, one dominant lizard species is found on all these islands; Okada's five-lined skink (Plestiodon latiscutatus). Its mainland predator, the Japanese four-lined rat snake (Elaphe quadrivirgata), is found on most but not all of the islands. This has resulted P. latiscutatus populations that have experienced different evolutionary pressures, either free from or subject to predation by E. quadrivirgata.

The research was conducted by PhD student Félix LANDRY YUAN (HKU) and PhD Candidate Shun ITO (Tohoku University's Graduate School of Life Science) and led by Dr Timothy BONEBRAKE (HKU) and Professor Masami HASEGAWA (Toho). Initial observation and data collection was first started by Professor HASEGAWA in the early 1980's, when he first noticed lizard behaviour differed on islands with and without snakes. Professor Hasegawa has since continually visited the islands annually to catch lizards and snakes for body temperature and morphological measurements. The researchers have accordingly detected that annual temperatures across the Izu Islands had increased by just over 1°C since Professor Hasegawa first started his observations, and that lizard body temperature had also increased with the same magnitude.

Higher body temperature helps the lizards

In addition to body temperature measurements, in 2018 and 2019 Félix Landry Yuan carried a portable racetrack, tripod and camera to the islands to measure the speed at which lizards ran at different temperatures. By analyzing thermally dependent running speeds of over 150 lizards across the islands, the researchers were able to establish how predation by snakes affected lizard thermal biology and the probable consequences for their fitness. Dr Bonebrake notes that: "by racing lizards of different temperatures down a track, Félix was able to show that optimal temperatures were higher for lizards on the island with snakes, consistent with the high body temperatures observed on the island. Shun Ito was also able to identify differences in lizard hind leg length that had consequences for survival. Thus, the higher body temperatures and morphological differences help the lizards run faster and better escape the snakes. The exciting and unique aspect of this work is how the experimental work matches and supports the extensive natural history data and observation."

With climate change ongoing, the dynamics of this prey-predator relationship could be affected on islands with snakes, as lizard body temperatures are likely to continue to rise. In addition, as predation has considerable consequences for the thermal biology of its prey, the presence or absence of snake predators could differentially influence general vulnerability of lizards to climatic warming across islands.

The Izu Islands demonstrate the value of island systems in teasing apart mechanisms through which predation directly influences behaviour, morphology and physiology of prey species. On the other hand, understanding the ways in which predation can affect prey responses to climate change requires long-term study. This international collaboration between HKU and Toho used these unique properties of this system (and Professor Hasegawa's forethought and intensive data collections since the 80s) to show how predator-prey relationships may be vulnerable in a warming climate. "It is a great pleasure to reveal ecological and evolutionary responses among prey and predator interactions by this international research team. I'm very hopeful that the Izu islands become a key model island system to study ongoing evolution under global environmental change by attracting ambitious young Asian biologists to research this further." Professor HASEGAWA said.

Geneva, Switzerland, 7 January 2021 - 'Mini-brains' are pin-head sized collections of several different types of human brain cell. They are used as a tool, allowing scientists to learn about how the brain develops, study disease and test new medicines. Personalized 'mini-brains' can be grown from stem cells generated from a sample of human hair or skin and could shed light on how brain disease progresses in an individual and how this person may respond to drugs.

Research published today by a team of scientists and engineers from HEPIA and the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering, in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, has revealed the detailed internal anatomy of 'mini-brains', for the first time.

"Despite advances in growing 'mini-brains', it has been difficult to understand in detail what is going on inside - until now," said Professor Adrien Roux from the Tissue Engineering Laboratory, HEPIA, senior author on the paper.

"Typically, to look inside a 'mini-brain', we slice it thinly and view it on a slide under a microscope. This is a slow process that can damage the sample. Now, for the first time, we have produced high resolution 3D images of single neurons within intact 'mini-brains', revealing their remarkable complexity," added Dr Subashika Govindan, lead author on the paper, who carried out the work at HEPIA and is now Wellcome DBT early career fellow at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM).

The team combined a novel technique for labeling individual neurons with a method to make the whole sample completely transparent.

Leveraging the Wyss Center's microscopy capabilities, the team developed a state-of-the-art custom module, including a bespoke sample holder and sensitive imaging detectors, for capturing 3D images of entire intact 'mini-brains', without slicing them. They were then able to visualize and analyze the 3D morphology of specific neurons and their anatomical distribution inside the 'mini-brains'.

Dr Laura Batti, Microscopy Facility Manager at the Wyss Center said: "Human 'mini-brains' have a life span of more than a year and, with our new ability to visualize them in more detail, we can envision benefits such as reducing some animal testing."

The new approach could also enable imaging of large numbers of 'mini-brains', making it suitable for high-throughput screening for drug discovery or toxicity testing. It is reproducible and cost-effective and could potentially help accelerate personalized medicine studies.

Until now, the reason why the drug levodopa (L-Dopa), which reduces the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, declines in efficacy after a few years' use has been unknown. A side effect that then often occur is involuntary movements. A Swedish-French collaboration, led from Uppsala University, has now been able to connect the problems with defective metabolism of L-Dopa in the brain. The study is published in Science Advances.

"The findings may lead to new strategies for treating advanced Parkinson's," says Professor Per Andrén of the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences at Uppsala University. He and Dr Erwan Bézard of the University of Bordeaux, France, headed the study jointly.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is caused by the slow death of nerve cells that produce the key neurotransmitter dopamine. This results in the typical symptoms, such as rigidity and tremor. Treatment with L-Dopa, a precursor to dopamine, initially works very well as a rule; but after a few years, the effect of each dose becomes progressively more short-lived. Adverse side effects, such as rapid alternation between rigidity and uncontrolled movements that become increasingly severe over time, are very common. Finally, the benefits of L-Dopa treatment are jeopardised and the symptoms can become debilitating. Which neurochemical mechanisms cause these side effects is unknown. The involuntary movements are collectively known as "L-Dopa-induced dyskinesia".

Using a new method, "matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation mass spectrometry imaging" (MALDI-MSI), the researchers were able to map numerous neurotransmitters and other biomolecules directly in non-human primate brain tissue, which had not been possible before. The samples came from a French biobank.

Thus, they were able to compare in detail, and identify the differences between, the brains of two groups of parkinsonian animals. One group was suffering from motor complications caused by long-term L-Dopa treatment. In the second group were individuals who had PD symptoms to the same degree, and were receiving identical L-Dopa treatment, but in whom the medication had not caused the motor side effects.

In the group with motor disorders, abnormally elevated levels of both L-Dopa and 3-O-methyldopa were detected. The latter, a metabolite, is a product formed when L-Dopa is converted to dopamine. This was seen in all the brain regions examined, except - to the researchers' surprise - the particular part of the brain known as the striatum, which is thought to be involved in L-Dopa-induced movement disorders.

This suggests that brain mechanisms other than those that were previously recognised may underlie the motor disorders. Instead of originating in the striatum, these problems are most likely triggered by a direct effect of L-Dopa or dopamine, or a combination of the two, in some other part of the brain.

"Although there seems to be a direct connection between L-Dopa and motor complications, the mechanism that brings about the involuntary movements is still unclear and subject to further research. On the other hand, the new results show a direct role for L-Dopa in this motor disorder - independently from dopamine. And this indicates that L-Dopa may also act on its own in the brain," Andrén says.

People view the wolf as either a threatening predator or a sign of a healthy natural habitat. Many proponents of nature and animal conservation welcome the spread of wolf populations in Germany. By contrast, farmers who graze herds directly impacted by the wolves' return are more critical. The team of Nicolas Schoof, Prof. Dr. Albert Reif of the Chair of Site Classification and Vegetation Science at the University of Freiburg, and Prof. Dr. Eckhard Jedicke of the Competence Center Cultural Landscape and the Department of Landscape Planning and Nature Conservation of Hochschule Geisenheim University has assessed the existing legal situation. On the basis of a range of environmental data they have determined the conflicts and drawn up possible solutions. In an article in the German specialist journal "Naturschutz und Landschaftsplanung" (Nature Conservation and Landscape Planning) the researchers present in detail how wider distribution of the predator could negatively affect legally binding nature conservation goals.

Schoof explains that experts - based on the assumption that the wolves were living mainly in isolation - initially ascribed those that have reappeared in Germany to the Central European Lowlands population. Nevertheless, newer genetic studies show the population is at least interacting with the Baltic wolf population, meaning that incest risk is low. The Freiburg researcher goes on to say that European law is very strict and does not allow - other than has been often maintained - any type of regulatory culling. "As a result," says Schoof, "there is a high growth and survival rate for young animals, allowing the wolf to spread to many regions."

The species itself primarily indicates there has been growth in the native fauna. Schoof's team is analyzing the consequences the growing wolf population - and with it the increasing attacks on livestock and resulting demands to protect herds in Germany - will have for maintaining biodiversity. "There's the threat of a partial abandonment of livestock grazing, especially in locations that are crucial to conserving nature," explains Schoof. Areas affected could, for example, be meadows or grasslands on steep slopes as well as those with stony soils. These habitats are - like the wolf itself - the focus of legally binding conservation measures and are dependent on the continuation of grazing. Unlike the wolf habitats, these environments are so rare that they are at risk.

In many cases, new fences can offer herds much better protection. But this isn't possible on steep slopes, for example. Dependent on the size and condition of the pastures, sheepdogs could be introduced. But the researchers say that is a markedly labor and cost intensive option which would only come into question for a few livestock owners. But sheepdogs cannot be effectively used above all in partially open pasture lands that are an essential component for conserving biodiversity. Yet it is precisely in these areas that the problems caused by wolves could increase, says Schoof, meaning that only fixed, wolf-resistant fences are a solution, but these would limit the spatial efficacy of large grazing projects. What is more, the expected erection of fencing systems will generally form a massive impediment to other wildlife that have found an optimal habitat on grazing land.

Based on these conflicts, the researchers say they have no doubt that the permissible legal regulatory measures to cull problematic individuals through hunting must be simplified significantly and stringently implemented. Taken in perspective, comprehensive active management of the wolf population must be considered and the necessary legal regulatory changes undertaken. The researchers argue that the wolf population is not endangered because of the individual numbers that have been reached, the generally low incest risk, and the current exponential growth in population. Schoof points out that simpler solutions are not in sight or legally possible as yet.

Additionally, the researchers propose in their study that on the one hand, all the required measures to protect herds should be comprehensively supported. "On the other hand, better financial support for the frequently economically unattractive farming of grazing animals could contribute to moderating the existing conflicts," says Schoof. "In that way, owners of grazing livestock would clearly be shown that they are key partners when it comes to implementing practical conservation efforts," he adds.

January 7, 2021 (BRAMPTON - HAMILTON) -- When dealing with a life-limiting illness, palliative care can improve the quality of life for patients and families. However, for many people, the fear of "end of life" care prevents them from exploring it. A recent study from William Osler Health System (Osler) and McMaster University examined awareness of palliative care in the South Asian community and found that culture plays a critical role in the perception of palliative care. This perception, in turn, affects whether or not patients will be open to receiving it.

Funded by a McMaster University, Department of Family Medicine, Pilot Research Project Funding Grant, the observational study is one of the few person-centered palliative care studies focused on the South Asian community outside India. The results showed that seventy per cent of participants in the study had a lack of understanding of palliative care and forty-four per cent thought that palliative care went against their values and beliefs.

At the same time, many of the participants agreed that when facing a life-limiting illness, they wanted to ensure that they or their family members had a better quality of life and alleviated suffering - which is what the palliative care paradigm provides.

"This research is an essential first step in understanding how the South Asian community perceives what it's like to deal with a serious illness and their fears about palliative care," said Dr. Naheed Dosani, Palliative Care physician, William Osler Health System. "Too often in health care a one size fits all approach is used in communities with diverse populations. This study illustrates how creating customized approaches focusing on the needs of the local community will allow us to provide more effective palliative care."

Recent Ontario research also indicates that immigrants of South Asian origin are at a higher risk of aggressive end-of-life care that is often contrary to their wishes. There is a strong likelihood that perceptions of palliative care within the South Asian populations are contributing to this.

"Being aware of cultural differences is an important part of working with patients," said Dr. Martin Chasen, Medical Director of Supportive and Palliative Care, William Osler Health System. "This study is a key part of Osler's mandate to strengthen our expertise in treating diverse populations and to ensure all our patients have access to safe, compassionate, quality care."

Other key findings in the study showed that participants had differing attitudes when it came to talking about death - ranging from discomfort to frank acceptance. Participants also acknowledged the key role of the family in providing care. While the study showed education is necessary to change common perceptions of palliative care, cultural values, faith, and spiritual beliefs didn't necessarily pose a barrier to participants accepting palliative care services.

"Insights from this study will have implications on the development and implementation of culturally competent palliative care services for health care professionals," said Dr. David Price, Chair and Professor, McMaster University Department of Family Medicine. "The term 'palliative care' can mean so many things and this research illustrates the importance of taking into account cultural differences when recommending care in diverse populations."

The study was conducted out of Brampton Civic Hospital, where the surrounding community per capita population of South Asian immigrants and peoples of descent is seventy per cent.

"I always thought palliative care was focused on end-of-life care," said Tejinder Cheema, the daughter of an Osler palliative care patient. "However, after speaking with the team at Brampton Civic and learning that palliative care is focused on managing symptoms and improving quality of life, I was happy to include it in my mother's treatment plan."

TROY, N.Y. -- In a money-saving revelation for organizations inclined to invest in specialized information technology to support the process of idea generation, new research suggests that even non-specialized, everyday organizational IT can encourage employees' creativity.

Recently published in the journal Information and Organization, these findings from Dorit Nevo, an associate professor in the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, show standard IT can be used for innovation. Furthermore, this is much more likely to happen when the technology is in the hands of employees who are motivated to master technology, understand their role in the organization, are recognized for their efforts, and are encouraged to develop their skills.

"What this study reveals is that innovation is found not just by using technology specifically created to support idea-generation," Nevo said. "Creativity comes from both the tool and the person who uses it."

Most businesses and organizations use common computer technologies, such as business analytics programs, knowledge management systems, and point-of-sale systems, to enable employees to complete basic job responsibilities. Nevo wanted to know if this standard IT could also be used by employees to create new ideas in the front end of the innovation process, where ideas are generated, developed, and then championed.

By developing a theoretically grounded model to examine IT-enabled innovation in an empirical study, Nevo found that employees who are motivated to master IT can use even standard technology as a creativity tool, increasing the return on investment on the technologies companies already have in-house.

"An organization can get a lot more value out of their IT technology if they let the right people use them and then support them," Nevo said. "This added value will, in turn, save organizations money because they don't always have to invest in specialized technology in order for their employees to generate solutions to work-related issues or ideas for improvement in the workplace. You just have to trust your employees to be able to innovate with the technologies you have."