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Providing a glimpse the hidden workings of evolution, a group of researchers at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that embryos that appear the same can start out with surprisingly different instructions.

"We found that a lot of undercover evolution occurs in early embryos," said Joel Rothman, a professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, who led the team.

Indeed, although members of the same species are identical across the vast majority of their genomes, including all the genetic instructions used in development, Rothman and his colleagues found that key parts of the assembly instructions used when embryos first start developing can differ dramatically between individuals of the same species.

This finding may shed light on two important areas: how animals can evolve quickly, and why patients can show very different responses to particular drugs.

The scientists' research is published in the journal eLife.

"Many of the distinctive features that make us unique, including our color, height and susceptibility to diseases, are determined by our genomes," Rothman said. "But since everyone looks pretty similar as embryos, the genetic assembly instructions that get us started at conception were thought to be nearly identical between us."

Enter the C. elegans nematode worm, a celebrated laboratory animal model used for decades to investigate how animals develop. Rothman's team, which included researchers at the University of Auckland, targeted the gene switches that turn on the development of the animal's intestine with a tool called RNAi -- a technique that shuts down individual gene functions. What they learned was that the widely accepted "standard one-size-fits-all" concept of genetic assembly instructions did not apply.

"This remarkable difference is well-hidden in the genome, but was uncovered when one of the switches was removed," noted Yamila Torres Cleuren, formerly of University of Auckland and now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bergen and lead author of the study. "We were startled to find that while some members of the species absolutely require one of the critical switches to start making an intestine, others can almost dispose of it." While some animals generally failed to develop intestines, relatives from the same species made them regardless.

"It's stunning that such an important event at the earliest stages of embryo formation can occur by such different means within one species and yet produce essentially the same outcome," said Rothman. "Prior to these findings, we were unaware that the blueprints for an early embryo change so rapidly within a species."

This discovery would be equivalent to finding that the manufacturing of two iPhones, which look and function identically, started out with different assembly instructions, the researchers said.

While humans are a far cry from C. elegans, once the initial events in embryo development begin, the later genetic instructions that create the endoderm appear to be similar to those likely used in all animals with a digestive tract, including humans.

This result is particularly striking given that the endoderm is both the first layer formed in embryos and was probably the first to evolve over half a billion years ago. "It reveals an extreme version of the first part of the 'hourglass' view of embryo development, in which very similar instructions across widely different animals during the middle stages of development are preceded and followed by very different starting and ending points," Rothman said.

These findings also shine light on why patients can respond so differently to drug therapies. "We found that these animals with relatively subtle genetic differences respond wildly differently to a genetic 'drug' that we used to turn off a gene," Torres Cleuren said.

Thus, just as two people who might look very similar can respond very differently to a drug therapy, so these little worms of the same species respond dramatically differently to an administered substance as a result of their subtle but all-important genetic individuality, the researchers said.

The discovery of such hidden genetic mechanisms could help guide how pharmaceuticals are developed in this era of precision medicine, in which drugs are ideally tailored to an individual's genome.

This discovery also underscores the importance of natural variation in allowing evolution to occur. "Genetic variation fuels the machine of evolution," Rothman said. "Without it, life would be stuck in a dead end. There is much more of this variation than we had realized when evolution sculpts the remarkable entities known as embryos."

When reading words on a screen, the human brain comprehends words placed on the right side of the screen faster. The total amount of presented information on the screen also affects the speed and accuracy of the brain's ability to process words. These are the findings of HSE University researchers Elena Gorbunova and Maria Falikman presented in an article that was published in the journal, Advances in Cognitive Psychology.

The study, which was carried out at the Laboratory for the Cognitive Psychology of Digital Interface Users, allowed the researchers to determine how the speed and accuracy of the human brain's ability to process words on a screen depend on the words' placement and quantity. This is due to the fact that cognitive functions are divided between the hemispheres of the brain. In this case, information received from the left field of vision - the left side of a screen - is received by the brain's right hemisphere, while an image in the right field of vision is received by the left hemisphere.

In a series of experiments, the HSE researchers used a visual search method. First, subjects were shown a target letter that they would subsequently be required to find. Then a word or a random set of letters was shown on the left or right side of a screen, or two stimuli were shown on both sides of the screen simultaneously. The participants' task was to locate the target letter as quickly as possible and press a specified key on the console. The reaction time and accuracy of their answers made it possible to determine in which visual hemifield information of various types is processed faster.

The results showed that the left and right hemispheres are characterized by different word processing strategies. When a familiar word appeared on the screen, the left hemisphere of the right-handed participants processed it holistically and found the target letter faster, while the right hemisphere was engaged in a slower search, 'checking' each letter in sequence. When participants were presented a meaningless set of letters, the opposite effect was observed: the left hemisphere processed the letter sets letter by letter, and the right processed them quickly and holistically.

Thus, words placed on the right of the screen were processed faster. Moreover, the word processing strategy the brain chooses depends on the total amount of information presented on the screen.

'When there is a lot of information, that is, when we need to process two words on the left and on the right, our brain begins to save energy and processes the words simultaneously. When there is not enough information, the brain relaxes and processes the information sequentially,' says study author Elena Gorbunova. 'Therefore, when placing text on the screen, you need to monitor how much information you are presenting to the user.'

This and other laboratory studies build upon earlier discoveries in the field of usability. When developing interfaces, sites, and applications, experts advise taking factors of cognitive information processing into consideration. These factors include:

Picture superiority effect. A user will notice and remember a picture more quickly and easily than text.

Banner blindness. Banner advertising is noticed more often when the content of the banner text matches the theme of the main material.

Masking. If a first and second object are presented in succession on a screen too quickly, the brain's perception of the objects worsens.

Change blindness. The user will not notice a change in details if you do not draw their attention to it, especially if the change did not occur in the zone of the user's focused attention.

Spatial cueing. If a hint is presented to a user in anticipation of the introduction of a new object, the user is more likely to pay attention to this object.

Scientists note that research in this area is useful not only for creating convenient interfaces, but also for understanding the nature of dyslexia and other reading disabilities, as well as for developing online courses and game projects.

A phenomenon that is well known from chaos theory was observed in a material for the first time ever, by scientists from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. A structural transition in the ferroelastic material barium titanate, caused by an increase or decrease in temperature, resembles the periodic doubling seen in non-linear dynamical systems. This 'spatial chaos' in a material was first predicted in 1985 and could be used in applications such as adaptable neuromorphic electronics. The results were published in Physical Review Letters on 22 August.

A team of physicists at the University of Groningen, led by Professor of Functional Nanomaterials Beatriz Noheda, made their observation in thin films of barium titanate (BaTiO3), a ferroelastic material. Ferroic materials are characterized by their ordered structure, in shape (ferroelastic), charge (ferroelectric) or magnetic moment (ferromagnetic), for example. 'These materials are always crystals in which the atoms are arranged with characteristic symmetries,' Noheda explains.

Twins

Electric or magnetic dipoles are aligned within domains in the crystals. 'However, the dipoles could be pointing up or down, as both states are equivalent.' As a result, crystals of these materials will have both types of domains. The same goes for ferroelastic materials, best known for their shape memory. In this case, however, the situation is a bit more complicated, Noheda explains: 'The unit cells in these crystals are elongated, which means that domains of the different unit cells do not easily match in shape. This creates an elastic strain that reduces the crystal stability.'

The crystal can improve the stability naturally by forming twins of domains, which are slightly tilted in opposite directions to relieve the stress. The result is a material in which these twinned pairs form alternating domains, with a fixed periodicity. Heating causes a phase change in the material, in which both the direction and the periodicity of the domain walls is altered. 'The question was how this change takes place,' says Noheda.

Domain walls

Increasing the temperature increases the disorder (entropy) in the material. Thus, a tug-of-war starts between the intrinsic tendency for order and the increasing entropy. It is this process that was observed for the first time by the Groningen team, using atomic force microscopy. When heating samples from 25 °C to 70 °C, a phase change takes place, altering the position of domain walls. When the transition starts, domain walls of the new phase appear gradually and both phases exist together at intermediate temperatures (30 °C to 50 °C). 'This doesn't happen in a random way, but by repeated doubling,' says Noheda. Cooling the material reduces the periodicity of the domains by repeated halving.

'This doubling or halving is well known in non-linear dynamical systems, when they are close to the transition to chaotic behaviour,' explains Noheda, 'However, it had never been observed in spatial domains, but only in time periods.' The resemblance between the behaviour of the thin films and non-linear systems suggests that the material is itself at the edge of chaos during heating. 'This is an interesting observation, because it means that the response of the system is highly dependent on initial conditions. Thus, we could get very diverse responses following a small change in these conditions.'

Neuromorphic computing

The paper includes theoretical calculations from colleagues at Penn State University (US) and the University of Cambridge (UK), which show that the behaviour observed in the ferroelastic barium titanate is generic for ferroic materials. Thus, a ferroelectric material at the edge of chaos could give a highly diverse response over a small range of input voltages. 'That is exactly what you want, to create the type of adaptable response needed for neuromorphic computing, such as reservoir computing, which benefits from non-linear systems that can produce highly diverse input-output sets.'

The paper in Physical Review Letters is a proof of principle, showing how a material can be designed to exist at the edge of chaos, where it is highly responsive. Noheda also points out how the doubling of domains creates a structure similar to the bifurcating dendrites connecting the pyramidal cells in the brain. These cells play an important role in cognitive abilities. Ultimately, ferroic materials on the edge of chaos may be used to create electronic brain-like systems for complex computing.

Amsterdam, September 3, 2019 - Globally, dementia cases are increasing at a rate of more than 20% a year. Most of these cases are in low- to middle-income countries. In a special supplement to the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, from the International Research Network on Dementia Prevention (IRNDP), an international group of scientists presents new research from around the world examining the potential risk factors for dementia and how to reduce them.

"This IRNDP issue demonstrates impressive progress in dementia prevention research and provides an invaluable collation of recent research and an up-to-date overview of the dementia prevention evidence base," commented Guest Editors Ruth Peters, PhD, and Kaarin Anstey, PhD, both of the University of New South Wales and Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia. "It also serves to highlight the substantial remaining evidence gaps and the next steps forward in this area of research. We have already achieved a lot, but now is the time to refine and develop our understanding to be able to build the next generation of dementia risk reduction interventions with translatable and applicable policies to protect human cognitive health."

With no cure for neurodegeneration or the diseases that cause dementia, there is an urgent need to link both knowledge translation and researchers more closely together in a global effort to tackle prevention more effectively. In this issue noted experts around the globe report on some of the ongoing and crucial risk reduction trials and highlight some of the population level considerations and the remaining evidence gaps.

"Alzheimer's disease (AD) is increasingly recognized as a chronic age related disease resulting in part from a lifetime of what we do and do not do. There may be no magic pill or vaccine to cure AD, but there can be a lifetime of prevention. Evidence-based guidance of best practices is essential as we work to improve brain health throughout the world," noted George Perry, PhD, University of Texas at San Antonio, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

Up to 30% of all late-life dementia is believed to be attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors. Risk factors for dementia include obesity, social isolation, and vascular and lifestyle factors such as diabetes or smoking. Other factors recently linked to dementia risk include poor kidney function, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, sleep disorders, and air pollution.

Ruth Peters and colleagues examine evidence associating air pollution with later cognitive decline and dementia. Exposure to air pollution, especially fine particulate matter, is associated with factors such as inflammation, and higher cardiovascular risk including risk of stroke, which also raise the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. They conclude there is evidence to suggest a link, and that while more research is needed, further regulation and reduction of exposure has huge potential for health benefits and cost savings including potentially reducing dementia risk. "The growing evidence linking pollution to dementia emphasizes the need to address this problem," noted Dr. Peters.

Articles on risk reduction report on protocols for two of the many ongoing trials in dementia risk reduction: the Systematic Multi-Domain Alzheimer's Risk Reduction Trial (SMARRT) and the Maintain Your Brain trial; important adherence data from the Australian Imaging Biomarkers and Lifestyle (AIBL) active-study; and an evaluation of an online health education tool for older adults in Malaysia. An associated editorial raises related questions on future trial design, intensity of intervention, and populations to target.

Contributors also examine some of the gaps in the evidence and draw attention to the lack of data across age ranges and in global populations. In a major, and important, synthesis of the global observational literature on risk factors for dementia, Kaarin Anstey and colleagues pull together the results of 40 systematic reviews. They summarize risk factors for AD, vascular dementia, and any dementia and highlight the lack of evidence for many risk factor exposures in midlife and a lack of data on risk factors for vascular dementia and from low- and middle-income countries. They identify important gaps in the literature and map out the findings in relation to age of exposure and geographical region. A related editorial focuses on the need for a life-course understanding and the importance of risk factor prevalence or saturation in particular populations or those with relatively small numbers (such as indigenous Australian populations). "Working together globally to understand risk factors for dementia relevant to specific populations, and how to bring about population level change in levels of risk, are key goalsl of the IRNDP," commented Dr. Anstey.

Further articles report on population-based approaches to dementia risk reduction in different countries including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Mozambique and Brazil. The identification of potentially hidden cases in Japanese communities and the importance of understanding the patterns of risk factor exposure, lifestyle, and available resources in different communities are highlighted in articles by Kenichi Meguro, MD, PhD, Tohoku University, Japan, and Deborah Oliveira, PhD, Federal University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and University of Nottingham, UK. Oliveira and colleagues compare the population-attributable risk for common risk factors in three very different Portuguese speaking countries, adding important data from low- and middle-income countries and demonstrating the variation in risk factor distribution between countries.

They point out that, after adjusting for non-independence of risk factors, 24% to 40% of dementia cases could be related to seven potentially modifiable risk factors in Mozambique, Brazil, and Portugal: low educational attainment, physical inactivity, midlife hypertension, midlife obesity, depression, smoking, and diabetes. Reducing the prevalence of each risk factor by 20% per decade could, by 2050, potentially reduce the prevalence of dementia in Mozambique, Brazil, and Portugal by 12.9%, 16.2%, and 19.5%, respectively. An associated editorial draws together the key threads in this area and highlights the nuanced nature of practical dementia risk reduction, observing that in the absence of disease-modifying treatments, population-based approaches examining dementia prevention have the potential to play a key role in reducing the incidence and impact of dementia worldwide.

"There are lots of exciting interventions underway and the field is now burgeoning with exciting new findings that can help develop practical advice on dementia risk reduction," noted Dr. Peters. "We expect results of several large interventions to become available in the next three to five years and are hopeful that will lead to significant advances."

"Working together globally will accelerate discovery and implementation," added Dr. Anstey. "Gathering evidence that is relevant to specific population groups and that can be translated into culturally acceptable and specific interventions is crucial. Science needs to inform policy and public messaging.

"Dementia risk factors come from multiple domains and it will take a concerted, interdisciplinary approach to tackle at local, national and global levels. Communication strategies for risk reduction will need to be culturally and country specific, and intervention work in this field is still preliminary in terms of demonstrating that dementia can be delayed or prevented. There is much work to be done!"

OAK BROOK, Ill. - Researchers in South Korea have found that patients with family and personal history of allergic reactions to contrast media are at risk for future reactions, according to a large study published in the journal Radiology. Allergic reactions to commonly used CT contrast media may be prevented by premedicating patients with antihistamines and using a different type of contrast agent.

Iodinated contrast media (ICM) is used in a vast number of CT exams to improve visualization of the areas of the body being studied. Half of the approximately 88 million CT scans conducted each year in the United States include the use of an ICM.

As ICM use is growing, so too is the occurrence of ICM-related hypersensitivity reactions (HSRs). Most symptoms are mild; however, in some cases ICM-related reactions can cause severe, life-threatening allergic reactions. Despite the potential complications, efforts to identify people at risk of an allergic reaction and take steps to mitigate these risks have been inconsistent. In South Korea, for instance, a country where more than 4 million CT scans involving ICM usage are performed each year, there is no registry for ICM-related HSRs.

For the new study, researchers examined ICM use and the value of preventive measures for ICM-related reactions in almost 200,000 patients, average age 59, who received ICM in 2017 at seven participating institutes.

Of the 196,081 patients who received ICM, 1,433, or 0.73 percent, experienced HSRs. Most of the events were mild; however, 16.8 percent of the events were classified as moderate to severe. Predictors of reaction included a patient's previous individual history of an ICM-related HSR, hyperthyroidism, drug allergy, asthma and other allergic diseases, and a family history of ICM-related HSRs.

The researchers found that use of antihistamines and switching to an iodinated contrast media with a different safety profile were useful for reducing the recurrence of reactions.

"We wanted to emphasize in our study the importance of premedication and change of iodinated contrast media type as useful preventive measures to prevent recurrent hypersensitivity reaction," said study co-lead author Min Jae Cha, M.D., from the Department of Radiology at Chung-Ang University Hospital in Seoul. "Hypersensitivity reactions to iodinated contrast media are not rare, but many of them are still preventable."

The link between family history as well as previous individual history of HSRs to ICM suggests that some people have a genetic predisposition to a reaction, Dr. Cha said. The researchers are studying this potential genetic susceptibility with an eye toward developing a better understanding of HSR-related genetic pro?les. Susceptibility genes for other conditions such as asthma, allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis have been identified, Dr. Cha noted.

Even with adequate premedication and the changing of contrast media, up to one-third of patients in the study experienced allergic reactions--a finding that underscores the importance of a nationwide registry for ICM-related HSRs as the basis for establishing a strategy to prevent recurrent HSR.

"We hope that we can establish a systematic nationwide integrated registry for ICM-related HSRs in Korea soon, and our study could be a first step toward that goal," Dr. Cha said. "Large-scale and long-term registries involving continuous data collection with standardized protocols will help us unravel all aspects of the contributors to the occurrence and recurrence of hypersensitivity reactions to iodinated contrast media."

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Archaeology have used DNA testing to prove close genetic kinship between three individuals buried in a mass grave following the capture of the Russian city Yaroslavl by Batu Khan's Mongol army in 1238. This confirms the hypothesis made by archaeologists and anthropologists after studying the remains of 15 persons interred on a historic estate.

"In addition to recreating the overall picture of the fall of the city in 1238, we now see the tragedy of one family," said Asya Engovatova, deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology, RAS, and head of excavations on the Yaroslavl site. "DNA analysis has shown that there were remains of genetically related individuals representing three generations. Anthropological data suggest these were a grandmother aged 55 or older, her daughter aged 30 to 40 and grandson, a young man of about 20. A fourth member of the family related through the female line was buried in the neighboring mass grave."

"Importantly, these family relations were initially postulated by archaeologists and anthropologists, and then confirmed by genetic data," the scientist added. "This makes our research more evidential and allows us to discuss the 13th-century events and way of life with more certainty."

The researchers announced their discovery at the eighth Alekseyev Readings, an international conference held Aug. 26-28 at the Anuchin Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology in Moscow.

Historical records name Yaroslavl among other cities devastated by Batu Khan's army during his military campaign against the Grand Duchy of Vladimir in the early 13th century. However, the true scope of the tragedy only became clear in 2005, when salvage excavations began on the site of the city's Assumption Cathedral, built in the early 13th century, demolished in 1937, and restored between 2004-2010. Over just five years, nine mass graves and over 300 buried individuals who had died a violent death were found, more than in the other ravaged cities. The findings of prior research then enabled a detailed reconstruction of the events: It was proved that the unearthed victims died during the capture of Yaroslavl by Batu Khan's forces in February 1238.

"Batu Khan's conquest was the greatest national tragedy, surpassing any other event in cruelty and destruction. It is not by chance that it is among the few such events that made its way into the Russian folklore," Engovatova said. "What we now know about those raids suggests that chronicle descriptions of 'a city drowned in blood' were not merely a figure of speech."

"The first third of the 13th century saw the conquest of China, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Volga Bulgaria, and the part of the East European Plain where Yaroslavl lies," the researcher went on. "Some publications of the past 10-15 years took the viewpoint that the inclusion of Rus [the present-day Russia] into the Golden Horde was almost peaceful and voluntary, with practically no major atrocities committed. But it is now obvious this was not really the case."

One of the mass graves -- now identified as No. 76 -- was located at the center of the inner city citadel. There, corpses were buried in a shallow pit on a rich homestead burned during the assault on the city. The main wooden house and the outbuildings on the estate contained many artifacts, pointing to the high status of the owners.

That grave in particular attracted the researchers' attention, because the pit for it was dug on purpose, while the other mass graves nearby were located in the basements of houses and burned-down outbuildings. That kind of burial contradicted the norms of the day and did not observe the ritual. The 15 men, women, and children in the pit were unearthed in different poses, and some of the corpses had badly decomposed by the time they were interred. This strongly suggests that the bodies were simply disposed of in that way, for sanitary reasons.

Many of the corpses bore marks of a violent death on the bones -- traces of unhealed piercing and cutting wounds. Some of the bones were burnt, pointing to the fire that ravaged the city.

Fly larvae, shown in figure 1 (left), were found in the remains, indicating advanced stages of decomposition and allowing the researchers to date the burial. By identifying the blowfly species, entomologists knew at what average daily temperature their larvae would reach the observed stage of development. That temperature corresponded to late May or early June conditions.

"The data on the time they were buried are very precise and support the anthropologists' hypothesis that the corpses had partly decomposed. These people were killed, and their bodies remained lying in the snow for a fairly long time. In April or May, flies started to multiply on the remains, and in late May or early June they were buried in a pit on the homestead, which is where they probably had lived," Engovatova said.

Anthropologists studying the remains were the first to hypothesize kinship between some of the buried individuals. This was suggested by epigenetic feature similarities: the presence of a birth defect known as spina bifida, a persistent metopic suture, an expressed osteoma on the cranial vault, and intercondylar fossa characteristics.

The anthropology group also inferred possible intermarriages within the family from certain abnormalities that are characteristic of children born from such marriages. Apart from that, the members of this family suffered from tooth decay more than the other buried individuals. Since it predominantly develops in connection with a diet rich in sugars and carbohydrates, the family apparently consumed more sugar and honey than their average contemporaries.

Kharis Mustafin and Irina Alborova led the research team from MIPT's Historical Genetics, Radiocarbon Analysis and Applied Physics Lab, which undertook a complex molecular and genetic study of the remains of eight buried individuals. The team cleaned the archaeological samples of bones and teeth, pulverized them, and recovered the ancient DNA. Its analysis revealed the same mitochondrial DNA mutations in three individuals, while studying autosomal DNA markers supplied the data on how closely the persons were related. In addition, one mitochondrial DNA line pointed to a fourth possible maternal relative, buried in a neighboring grave.

"Genetic studies have confirmed the relationship between three of them. They were probably members of the same wealthy, high-ranking family," Engovatova said. "The location of the estate at the center of the citadel confirms this, and so do the archaeological finds made on the estate. Even a hanging seal was found. This might well be the very family that owned the rich homestead excavated 3 meters from the grave."

At first glance, the numbers recorded between 1980 and 2012 appear to be quite balanced. 68 of the 158 bird species that inhabit the area around Lake Constance became more populous, while 67 species declined; each of these figures approximates to 43 percent of all the bird species in the region. The total number of species has even increased slightly: although eight species have died out, 17 have either returned to the region or settled there for the first time. These include the white stork, the peregrine falcon and the eagle owl, all of which have benefitted particularly from the protective measures put in place.

This seeming contradiction is due to the fact that the most common species are disappearing particularly rapidly. Six of the ten most common bird species around Lake Constance have declined dramatically in number, while two have remained the same and only two have increased. The population of house sparrows, for example, has declined by 50 percent since 1980, at which time it was still the most common species. "These are really shocking figures - particularly when you consider that the bird population started declining decades before the first count in 1980," explains Hans-Günther Bauer from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. Viewed over a lengthier period, the fall in numbers may therefore be even greater.

Agricultural landscape hostile to birds

It is particularly noticeable how differently the various habitats have been affected. The study indicates that bird populations around Lake Constance are dwindling particularly rapidly in countryside, which is intensively used by humans. This applies above all to modern farmland: 71 percent of the species that inhabit fields and meadows have declined in numbers, in some cases drastically. The partridge, for example, which was once a common inhabitant of the region's farmland, has completely died out around Lake Constance. The great grey shrike, the meadow pipit and the little owl have also disappeared from the area.

One of the main reasons for this decline is the scarcity of food. According to the ornithologists, 75 percent of the bird species that eat flying insects and 57 percent of those that eat terrestrial invertebrates have decreased in number around Lake Constance. "This confirms what we have long suspected: the human extermination of insects is having a massive impact on our birds," says Bauer. In addition, today's efficient harvesting methods leave hardly any seeds behind for granivorous species. Moreover, the early, frequent mowing of large areas of grassland, the agricultural practice of monoculture, the early ripening of winter grains, the implementation of drainage measures and the shortage of fallow land are destroying the habitats of many species that live in the open countryside.

However, the birds are disappearing not only from the fields and meadows but also from the towns and villages around Lake Constance. "The increasing need for order and decreasing tolerance of dirt and noise are making life more and more difficult for local birds. It appears that successful breeding is becoming increasingly rare since the birds are being forced to nest amid tower blocks, ornamental trees and immaculate kitchen gardens," says Bauer. Even species that can survive virtually anywhere, such as blackbirds (down 28 percent), chaffinches and robins (each down 24 percent) are suffering greatly due to the deteriorating conditions in settled areas.

Winners and losers in the woods and on the water

In contrast, the woodland birds around Lake Constance appear to be doing comparatively well. 48 percent of the forest-dwelling species are increasing in number, while only 35 percent are dwindling. One example is the spotted woodpecker, whose numbers have grown by 84 percent. Like other woodpeckers, it seems to have benefited from the larger quantities of timber in the forest. Furthermore, more of the species that inhabit the wetlands around Lake Constance have increased than decreased. The winners here include the mute swan.

Nevertheless, the numbers of many forest-dwelling species are also declining. The wood warbler population, for example, has fallen by 98 percent, firecrest numbers by 61 percent. This is how the intensive use of timber around Lake Constance and the shorter felling intervals are making themselves felt. Trees containing nests are being felled even in protected areas, and breeding seasons are largely being ignored. Older trees are often felled for traffic safety reasons; new paths are laid in the forests and wet areas are drained.

All in all, the last population count in 2010-2012 documents the same developments and causes as those that preceded it. However, the situation has clearly worsened in some cases. There is hardly any indication that things have changed for the better since then. "The living conditions for birds around Lake Constance have in fact deteriorated further over the last seven years. This means that their numbers have presumably fallen still further in this time," says Bauer.

More food and living space for birds

With its diverse structure and location in the foothills of the Alps, the Lake Constance region actually provides excellent living conditions for birds. However, the changes it has undergone over the last few decades are typical of densely populated regions with intensive farming and forestry. "This means that the rapid decline in the populations of many species that we have observed around Lake Constance is sure to be happening in other regions as well," says Bauer.

The study is one of only a few long-term investigations of breeding bird populations ever conducted in Germany. In order to collect the most recent data, which dates from between 2010 and 2012, 90 volunteers joined the scientists and counted all the birds in an area of approximately 1,100 square kilometres surrounding Lake Constance. The ornithologists first recorded the bird population between 1980 and 1981 and have repeated the count every ten years ever since. The next count will take place between 2020 and 2022.

- Measures that would benefit the bird populations include:

- The scientists are calling for agricultural and forestry policy to be reconsidered in order to counteract the rapid loss of biodiversity.

- Drastically restricting the use of insecticides and herbicides in forestry and agriculture, in public spaces and in private gardens

- Significantly reducing the use of fertilisers

- Converting at least ten percent of agricultural land to ecological conservation areas

- Leaving some areas of arable land and grassland uncultivated in winter and during the breeding season

- Late mowing outside the grassland birds' breeding season, maintenance of flower strips and fallow areas for seed production

- At least five percent of woodland should be left completely unused

- Creating natural gardens using indigenous plants

The discoveries in the cellular and molecular biology of cancer, the development of drugs against specific genetic mutations, and the emergence of immunotherapy are allowing the cure or improvement of the quality of life and life expectancy of patients with tumors. However, there is a type of cancer that resists this encouraging news: the brain tumor.

This tumor, which is not born from neurons but from support cells named glial, represents a sad exception. The mortality of brain cancer is around 85% within two years since its diagnosis. It is, therefore, an area of intense biomedical research.

The group of Dr. Manel Esteller, Director of the Josep Carreras Research Institute, ICREA Researcher and Professor at the University of Barcelona, has published this finding in the journal Acta Neuropathologica. The research describes an epigenetic lesion that allows identifying those patients with brain tumors of good prognosis, 15% of remaining cases that will have prolonged survival.

"We began the study looking for genes with regulatory functions of genome expression that lost their activity in cancer. We identified a particular gene called NSUN5 of which we knew almost nothing about its function. What surprised us most from the beginning was that its alteration, among the many types of tumors of the human body, was almost exclusive to gliomas, a type of brain cancer. We investigated it in laboratory cells and experimental models. When we got to analyze its impact on patients with glioma, we realized the importance of the finding. The epigenetic lesion of NSUN5, independently to other biomarkers, predicted that minority percentage of patients who will be doing well. It was astonishing since most of the time we discover factors that indicate tumors that will go bad". - Explained Dr. Esteller about the research in Acta Neuropathologica,- "Mechanically, it seems that by the evolutionary selection, a brain tumor that is about to become extinct ends up causing the alteration of NSUN5. Then, NSUN5 "freezes" as if standing in time so that cancer progresses less and survival lengthens.

Microenvironment factors surrounding the glioma such as lack of oxygen and lack of local nutrients contribute to induce NSUN5's inactivation. This process allows the tumor not to die, but grow so little that the patient shows a good prognosis. Therefore, we now have a marker that allows us to predict 15% of cases with good clinical course. Furthermore, it would be exceptional to convert 85% of the remaining cases into patients who "touching" the NSUN5 gene also had extended survival. We still don't know how to do it, but it deserves to be investigated carefully. "- concludes the researcher.

Professor Hongsoo Choi's research team in Department of Robotics Engineering & DGIST-ETH Microrobot Research Center (DEMRC) at DGIST (President Young Kuk) succeeded in developing a biodegradable microrobot that can perform hyperthermia treatment and control drug release. This research can treat cancer cells through hyperthermia and controlled drug release more precisely and systematically, expecting to raise the safety and efficiency of anti-cancer treatment.

Anti-cancer treatment is carried out in various ways such as drug and hyperthermia, radiation, and medical surgery. Although drug treatment is the most commonly used method among them, it is difficult to deliver a desired amount accurately to a certain part because it highly depends on the circulatory function of body. Hyperthermia is hard to be delivered to a certain part as well despite its recent popularity due to little side-effects. To overcome these limitations, Professor Hongsoo Choi's research team at DGIST developed 3D bio-degradable microrobots that can hold magnetic nano particles and drugs with 3D laser lithography process1.

To use a microrobot inside human body, it must go through an in vivo degradation or retrieved after use to minimize additional harmful effects. As a result, the research team made a microrobot with a biodegradable polymer and designed it to be bio-degraded after it is completely used. It can also carry out transport of drugs fast and accurately through wireless control using external magnetic field.

When a high frequency of alternating magnetic field2 is given to the robot that reached a desired part, the heat generated from the magnetic nano particles inside the microrobot raise the surrounding temperature to perform hyperthermia treatment on the target area. A big achievement of this research is enabling accurate drug release by controlling the intensity and exposure time of alternating magnetic field. The research team confirmed the significant effectiveness of hyperthermia treatment using microrobot on cancer cells cultured in vitro and the therapeutic effects of different drug release modes controlled by alternating magnetic field.

Professor Choi in the DEMRC said "We expect to improve the treatment of cancer through our research, enhancing the efficiency of cancer treatment and reducing side-effects. By continuously performing a follow-up research with hospitals and related firms, we will strive to develop microrobot-based precise treatment system that can be used in actual medical sites."

Arthropod-transmitted viruses, known as arboviruses, can cause pandemic diseases in humans, animals, and crops. The Zika virus and cassava geminivirus are two such arboviruses. These pathogens often alter host characteristics to directly or indirectly influence arthropod vector behaviors or host-herbivore interactions, thus facilitating disease transmission.

Pathogen-infected hosts may promote the performance of vector insects; but whether and how pathogens affect nonvector insects have been largely unexplored.

In a study published online in Science Advances, a group of scientists led by Prof. YE Jian from the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences discovered that viruses mobilize plant immunity to deter nonvector insect herbivores. They uncovered the mechanism used by begomoviruses (the largest genus of plant viruses in the world) to alter a host plant's immune system. This discovery may facilitate the development of biological methods to control vector-borne diseases.

Unlike animal viruses, the transmission of plant viruses depends more on insect vectors due to the lack of host mobility. Among 1,320 plant viruses worldwide, nearly 80% are transmitted by insect vectors. Currently, controlling viral plant diseases relies almost completely on chemical pesticides, creating enormous ecological and environmental costs.

"Previous studies on arbovirus diseases often focused on the interactions of viruses and plant hosts, or viruses and host insects, thus failing to generate effective measures for controlling viral diseases. Our findings identify better control methods for arbovirus diseases," said Prof. YE.

Prof. YE's team focused on the geminivirus and bunyavirus - two types of arbovirus that cause many notorious crops diseases in developing countries. Both the geminivirus and bunyavirus are capable of manipulating the host plant to attract their corresponding vector insects by inhibiting host-derived olfactory cues, in turn promoting pathogen transmission among host plants. Relevant studies were published in The Plant Cell and PLOS Pathogens, respectively.

Whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) species are the only known agricultural super-insect vectors to transmit pathogens and are also a major global invasive pest. Whiteflies can transmit more than 500 plant viruses, including many geminivirus species that have recently emerged as one of the most destructive pathogens in the past decade, particularly in the tropics and subtropics.

The scientists found that geminivirus infection hijacks the function of plant WRKY20 to dramatically reduce the accumulation of specialized metabolites, such as insecticidal glucosinolates, in the vascular tissues on which the virus and whitefly feed, leading to an easier life for the geminivirus and whitefly. Meanwhile, geminivirus infection redistributes plant insecticidal metabolites among different cell types and causes enhanced glucosinolate levels in nonvascular leaf tissues, e.g., mesophyll cells.

Cotton ballworms dislike feeding on geminivirus-infected plants. The superior inhibitory effect on cotton ballworms due to geminivirus infection was as good as that of a widely used commercial transgenic cotton cultivar engineered to produce insecticidal toxins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). Not only leaf-chewing herbivore like cotton ballworms, but also benefit other piercing insects such as aphids, can be highly growth-inhibited by geminivirus infected plant. The feeding of aphid could activate the production of the aspirin-like drug chemical salicylic acid, which in turn inhibits aphid growth and the production of offspring.

These results demonstrate how the geminivirus promotes its vector and deters its nonvector competitors in the plant community, partially explaining why the geminivirus is so successful worldwide.

In Africa and South Asia, the cotton leaf curl virus, a type of geminivirus, causes a major viral disease in cotton with millions of bales of cotton fiber lost annually. This pandemic geminivirus has invaded Southeast Asia and China in the last decade and has rapidly established itself in many cotton-growing provinces in China. This is a serious problem for China, since it produces 30% of the global cotton crop, making it the world's largest producer.

"It is really critical to identify cotton germplasms that are resistant to the whitefly-borne geminivirus since most high-quality fiber cultivars are sensitive to this virus. We are now generating new resistance germplasms by genome-editing technology to secure high-quality cotton fiber production," said Prof. YE.

A study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet shows that a treatment adjustment algorithm based on lung function and symptoms in a mobile phone can be an efficient tool in managing uncontrolled asthma. For fuss-free measuring of lung function, the phone connects to a wireless spirometer and the app can register respiratory symptoms and provide visual feedback on treatment. The study is published in the highly respected European Respiratory Journal.

Asthma is a widespread disease that affects around 10 per cent of Sweden's population. Approximately half the affected people have so-called uncontrolled asthma and frequently experience breathing difficulties or asthma attacks. Inadequate management and/or incorrect use of medicines are common causes of this.

"Previous research has shown that asthma sufferers' health and quality of life improves with patient education that focuses on self-care, self-testing and clear management plans. Additionally, health and medical care costs fall if patient involvement and knowledge can be leveraged," states Björn Nordlund, paediatric nurse and research group leader at the Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

Consequently, along with his colleagues, Björn developed a digital, automated, self-care system for asthma. Called AsthmaTuner, it enables the measuring of lung function via a wireless spirometer connected to a mobile telephone app. Symptoms are evaluated using questions linked to an individual treatment plan. The system was approved for use in medical care in 2018. It is now marketed by MediTuner AB, a company partly owned by Björn Nordlund.

"The system analyses lung function and symptoms in accordance with asthma-care guidelines," he explains. "It then gives feedback in the form of automated, doctor-prescribed, treatment recommendation. Users also receive a picture of the inhaler that is to be used and instructions on whether the medication is to be maintained, increased or decreased."

The now published study was carried out in primary care and at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden. Its purpose was to evaluate the digital tool's impact on symptoms and whether users more readily remembered to take their medicines.

The study comprised 77 uncontrolled asthma sufferers aged 6 upwards. Around half of these were children and adolescents. Study participants were randomly chosen to use AsthmaTuner for at least eight weeks as a support for self-management; and, also for at least eight weeks, receive traditional asthma care with a printed, individual, treatment plan.

"In parts, the results were hard to interpret. However, we could see that asthma symptoms improved more with the digital tool than they did with traditional care. Adult patients who used the tool at least once a week also more often remembered to take their medicines. Thus, we conclude that this tool can contribute to alleviating uncontrolled asthma sufferers' symptoms," says Björn Nordlund.

As asthma requires long-term, regular management, the researchers regarded the shortness of the study as a weakness. Hence the plans to continue the work.

"We do not know if the effects last longer than eight weeks. Thus, we are starting a larger study this autumn. It will run for a longer period and be conducted in Norrtälje's Tiohundra medical care district and paediatric medical care in Stockholm (the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital)."

HAMILTON, ON (Sept. 3, 2019) - More than 70 per cent of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and deaths around the world may be attributed to a small number of common but modifiable risk factors.

A large international study, involving more than 155,000 people in 21 countries, has found some of the risks are the same around the world, such as hypertension or low education, but other risks vary by a country's level of economic development, such as air pollution and poor diet which impact health more in middle- and low-income countries.

The 14 modifiable risk factors making up 70 per cent are metabolic factors such as hypertension, blood lipids, abdominal obesity; behavioural factors including smoking, diet, physical activity, alcohol consumption, salt intake; strength as shown by hand grip; psychosocial factors such as education and depression, and environmental factors of indoor and outdoor air pollution.

In middle- and low-income countries, the risk factors of low education, poor diet, indoor air pollution from solid fuel use and low strength were most important.

Hypertension was found to be the largest factor among the metabolic factors; low education level was the single largest risk factor, and air pollution was the most important community-level risk factor.

The research, presented today at the European Society of Cardiology Congress and published in The Lancet, was led by researchers of the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences in Hamilton, Canada.

More than 38 researchers from 21 countries around the world, including five from Canada, are authors of the research paper from the Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study led by the PHRI. It is the first global study to measure the same information the same way across five continents.

For this study, people were followed for an average of 9.5 years.

"It's clear the majority of cardiovascular disease cases and deaths are accounted for by a small number of common and modifiable risk factors, these could be improved," said Philip Joseph, a joint lead author of the paper. He is also a PHRI investigator, an associate professor of medicine at McMaster University and a cardiologist with Hamilton Health Sciences.

"What is notable is that several risk factors that have a large effect such as strength, low education and indoor and outdoor air pollution have been underappreciated in the past have turned out to be more important than others that we have paid much attention to such as obesity or salt," he said.

The study clearly lays out direction for global improvements in prevention, said Salim Yusuf, principal investigator of the study, executive director of PHRI and professor of medicine at McMaster.

"Health policies should focus on risk factors that have the greatest impact on averting CVD and death globally, with additional emphasis on the risk factors of greatest importance in different countries," he said.

Two reports from the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiologic (PURE) study published in the Lancet and presented together at the ESC Congress 2019 provide unique information on [1] common disease incidence, hospitalisation and death, and [2] modifiable cardiovascular risk factors, in middle-aged adults across 21 High-Income, Middle-Income, and Low-Income Countries (HIC, MIC, LIC).

Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of mortality among middle aged adults globally, accounting for 40% of all deaths, but this is no longer the case in HIC, where cancer is now responsible for twice as many deaths as CVD, according to a new report [1] from the PURE study published in The Lancet and presented at the ESC Congress 2019 [3]. It was estimated that 55 million deaths occurred in the world in 2017, of which approximately 17·7 million were due to cardiovascular disease (CVD) [see infographic 1].

The PURE study is the only large prospective international cohort study that involves substantial data from a large number of MIC and LIC, as well as HIC, and employs standardised and concurrent methods of sampling, measurement and follow-up.

The first report, which followed 162,534 middle-aged adults (aged 35 - 70, 58% women) in 4 HIC, 12 MIC and 5 LIC over a median of 9.5 years (between 2005 - 2016), found that CVD related deaths were 2.5 times more common in middle-aged adults in LIC compared with in HIC, despite LIC experiencing a substantially lower burden of CVD risk factors compared with wealthier countries. Authors suggested that higher CVD related mortality in LIC may be mainly due to lower quality of healthcare, given that the report found first hospitalisation rates and CVD medication use to be both substantially lower in LIC and MIC, compared with in HIC.

Common diseases in transition

"The world is witnessing a new epidemiologic transition among the different categories of non-communicable diseases (NCD), with CVD no longer the leading cause of death in HIC," said Dr. Gilles Dagenais, Emeritus Professor at Laval University, Quebec, Canada and lead author of the first report. "Our report found cancer to be the second most common cause of death globally in 2017, accounting for 26% of all deaths. But as CVD rates continue to fall, cancer could likely become the leading cause of death worldwide, within just a few decades." [4]

While the study found the incidence of CVD per 1000 person years to be 7·1, 6·8 and 4·3 in LIC, MIC, and HIC respectively, it conversely found cancer, pneumonia, COPD and injuries to each be least common in LIC and most common in HIC. Overall mortality rates were twice as high in LICs compared with MIC, and four times higher in LICs compared with HIC, though rates of deaths from cancer were similar across all country income levels.

Dr Salim Yusuf, Professor of Medicine, McMaster University, and Principal Investigator of the study remarked: "While long-term CVD prevention and management strategies have proved successful in reducing the burden in HIC, a change in tack is required to alleviate the disproportionately high impact of CVD in LIC and MIC. Governments in these countries need to start by investing a greater portion of their Gross Domestic Product in preventing and managing non- communicable diseases including CVD, rather than focussing largely on infectious diseases." [4]

About 70% of CVD cases and deaths due to modifiable risks

A further report [2] from the PURE study, also published in The Lancet and presented simultaneously at the ESC Congress 2019, explored the relative contribution (population attributable factor, or PAF) of 14 modifiable risk factors to CVD, among 155,722 community-dwelling, middle-aged people without a prior history of CVD, within the same 21 HIC, MIC and LIC [see infographic 2].

Overall, modifiable risk factors, including metabolic, behavioural, socioeconomic and psychosocial factors, strength and environment, accounted for 70% of all CVD cases globally. Metabolic risk factors were the largest contributory risk factor globally (41.2%), with hypertension (22.3%) the leading factor within this group.

However, the relative importance of risk factors for CVD cases and death varied widely between countries at different stages of economic development. For deaths, the largest group of PAFs overall were for behavioural risk factors (26·3%), but in MIC and LIC, the importance of household air pollution, poor diet, low education, and low grip strength were substantially larger compared to their impact in HIC. In line with the findings of the first report [1], metabolic risk factors including high cholesterol, abdominal obesity or diabetes, played a larger role in causing CVD in HIC, compared with in LIC.

"We have reached a turning point in the development of CVD prevention and management strategies," said Annika Rosengren, Professor of Medicine from Goteborg, Sweden. Sumathy Rangarajan, who coordinated the study said "While some risk factors certainly have large global impacts, such as hypertension, tobacco, and low education, the impact of others, such as poor diet, household air pollution, vary largely by the economic level of countries. There is an opportunity now to realign global health policies and adapt them to different groups of countries based on the risk factors of greatest impact in each setting." [4]

Dr Philip Joseph, Associate Professor of Medicine at McMaster University and the co-lead of the paper concluded: "Efforts to tackle CVD through focusing on a small number of behavioural risk factors, such as reducing smoking, are important, but these efforts should expand to better Blood Pressure control and better use of secondary prevention, with simple and effective low-cost medications." [4]

PURE: informing global policy development and resource allocation

Authors of both studies acknowledged some limitations. Despite being the only studies involving as many as 21 countries in a cohort study, caution should be exercised in generalising results to all countries. In particular, PURE does not include data from west Africa, north Africa or Australia; the number of participants from the Middle East is modest; and data from LICs are predominantly from south Asia with a few African countries.

"However, the inclusion of nearly 900 urban and rural communities from multiple countries in different regions of the world provides substantial diversity of risk factors and contextual variables and makes it likely that the PURE results are more broadly applicable than most previous studies", said Dr Tony Dans from Manila, Philippines.

Despite limitations, Stephanie H Read & Sarah H Wild conclude in a Linked Comment: "[These] findings can inform the effective use of limited resources--for example, by indicating the importance of improving education across the world and improving diet and reducing household air pollution in less developed countries. The value of collecting similar data to inform policy in a wider range of countries is clear, while improving lifestyle choices and modifying their social and commercial determinants remain a challenge."

Countries analysed in these two reports from the PURE Study include: Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe.

HOUSTON - (Sept. 3, 2019) - A common greenhouse gas could be repurposed in an efficient and environmentally friendly way with an electrolyzer that uses renewable electricity to produce pure liquid fuels.

The catalytic reactor developed by the Rice University lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Haotian Wang uses carbon dioxide as its feedstock and, in its latest prototype, produces highly purified and high concentrations of formic acid.

Formic acid produced by traditional carbon dioxide devices needs costly and energy-intensive purification steps, Wang said. The direct production of pure formic acid solutions will help to promote commercial carbon dioxide conversion technologies.

The method is detailed in Nature Energy.

Wang, who joined Rice's Brown School of Engineering in January, and his group pursue technologies that turn greenhouse gases into useful products. In tests, the new electrocatalyst reached an energy conversion efficiency of about 42%. That means nearly half of the electrical energy can be stored in formic acid as liquid fuel.

"Formic acid is an energy carrier," Wang said. "It's a fuel-cell fuel that can generate electricity and emit carbon dioxide -- which you can grab and recycle again.

"It's also fundamental in the chemical engineering industry as a feedstock for other chemicals, and a storage material for hydrogen that can hold nearly 1,000 times the energy of the same volume of hydrogen gas, which is difficult to compress," he said. "That's currently a big challenge for hydrogen fuel-cell cars."

Two advances made the new device possible, said lead author and Rice postdoctoral researcher Chuan Xia. The first was his development of a robust, two-dimensional bismuth catalyst and the second a solid-state electrolyte that eliminates the need for salt as part of the reaction.

"Bismuth is a very heavy atom, compared to transition metals like copper, iron or cobalt," Wang said. "Its mobility is much lower, particularly under reaction conditions. So that stabilizes the catalyst." He noted the reactor is structured to keep water from contacting the catalyst, which also helps preserve it.

Xia can make the nanomaterials in bulk. "Currently, people produce catalysts on the milligram or gram scales," he said. "We developed a way to produce them at the kilogram scale. That will make our process easier to scale up for industry."

The polymer-based solid electrolyte is coated with sulfonic acid ligands to conduct positive charge or amino functional groups to conduct negative ions. "Usually people reduce carbon dioxide in a traditional liquid electrolyte like salty water," Wang said. "You want the electricity to be conducted, but pure water electrolyte is too resistant. You need to add salts like sodium chloride or potassium bicarbonate so that ions can move freely in water.

"But when you generate formic acid that way, it mixes with the salts," he said. "For a majority of applications you have to remove the salts from the end product, which takes a lot of energy and cost. So we employed solid electrolytes that conduct protons and can be made of insoluble polymers or inorganic compounds, eliminating the need for salts."

The rate at which water flows through the product chamber determines the concentration of the solution. Slow throughput with the current setup produces a solution that is nearly 30% formic acid by weight, while faster flows allow the concentration to be customized. The researchers expect to achieve higher concentrations from next-generation reactors that accept gas flow to bring out pure formic acid vapors.

The Rice lab worked with Brookhaven National Laboratory to view the process in progress. "X-ray absorption spectroscopy, a powerful technique available at the Inner Shell Spectroscopy (ISS) beamline at Brookhaven Lab's National Synchrotron Light Source II, enables us to probe the electronic structure of electrocatalysts in operando -- that is, during the actual chemical process," said co-author Eli Stavitski, lead beamline scientist at ISS. "In this work, we followed bismuth's oxidation states at different potentials and were able to identify the catalyst's active state during carbon dioxide reduction."

With its current reactor, the lab generated formic acid continuously for 100 hours with negligible degradation of the reactor's components, including the nanoscale catalysts. Wang suggested the reactor could be easily retooled to produce such higher-value products as acetic acid, ethanol or propanol fuels.

"The big picture is that carbon dioxide reduction is very important for its effect on global warming as well as for green chemical synthesis," Wang said. "If the electricity comes from renewable sources like the sun or wind, we can create a loop that turns carbon dioxide into something important without emitting more of it."

Building resilience in renewable energy and food production is a fundamental challenge in today's changing world, especially in regions susceptible to heat and drought. Agrivoltaics, the co-locating of agriculture and solar photovoltaic panels, offers a possible solution, with new University of Arizona-led research reporting positive impacts on food production, water savings and the efficiency of electricity production.

Agrivoltaics, also known as solar sharing, is an idea that has been gaining traction in recent years; however, few studies have monitored all aspects of the associated food, energy and water systems, and none have focused on dryland areas - regions that experience food production challenges and water shortages, but have an overabundance of sun energy.

"Many of us want more renewable energy, but where do you put all of those panels? As solar installations grow, they tend to be out on the edges of cities, and this is historically where we have already been growing our food," said Greg Barron-Gafford, an associate professor in the School of Geography and Development and lead author on the paper that was published today in Nature Sustainability.

A recent high-profile study in Nature found that current croplands are the "land covers with the greatest solar PV power potential" based on an extensive analysis of incoming sunlight, air temperature and relative humidity.

"So which land use do you prefer - food or energy production? This challenge strikes right at the intersection of human-environment connections, and that is where geographers shine!" said Barron-Gafford, who is also a researcher with Biosphere 2. "We started to ask, 'Why not do produce both in the same place?' And we have been growing crops like tomatoes, peppers, chard, kale, and herbs in the shade of solar panels ever since."

Using solar photovoltaic, or PV, panels and regional vegetables, the team created the first agrivoltaics research site at Biosphere 2. Professors and students, both undergraduate and graduate, measured everything from when plants germinated to the amount of carbon plants were sucking out of the atmosphere and the water they were releasing, to their total food production throughout the growing season.

The study focused on chiltepin pepper, jalapeno and cherry tomato plants that were positioned under a PV array. Throughout the average three-month summer growing season, researchers continuously monitored incoming light levels, air temperature and relative humidity using sensors mounted above the soil surface, and soil surface temperature and moisture at a depth of 5 centimeters. Both the traditional planting area and the agrivoltaic system received equal irrigation rates and were tested using two irrigation scenarios - daily irrigation and irrigation every second day.

They found that the agrivoltaics system significantly impacted three factors that affect plant growth and reproduction - air temperatures, direct sunlight and atmospheric demand for water. The shade provided by the PV panels resulted in cooler daytime temperatures and warmer nighttime temperatures than the traditional, open-sky planting system. There was also a lower vapor pressure deficit in the agrivoltaics system, meaning there was more moisture in the air.

"We found that many of our food crops do better in the shade of solar panels because they are spared from the direct sun," Baron-Gafford said. "In fact, total chiltepin fruit production was three times greater under the PV panels in an agrivoltaic system, and tomato production was twice as great!"

Jalapenos produced a similar amount of fruit in both the agrivoltaics system and the traditional plot, but did so with 65% less transpirational water loss.

"At the same time, we found that each irrigation event can support crop growth for days, not just hours, as in current agriculture practices. This finding suggests we could reduce our water use but still maintain levels of food production," Barron-Gafford added, noting that soil moisture remained approximately 15% higher in the agrivoltaics system than the control plot when irrigating every other day.

In addition to the benefits to the plants, the researchers also found that the agrivoltaics system increased the efficiency of energy production. Solar panels are inherently sensitive to temperature - as they warm, their efficiency drops. By cultivating crops underneath the PV panels, researchers were able to reduce the temperature of the panels.

"Those overheating solar panels are actually cooled down by the fact that the crops underneath are emitting water through their natural process of transpiration - just like misters on the patio of your favorite restaurant," Barron-Gafford said. "All told, that is a win-win-win in terms of bettering our how we grow our food, utilize our precious water resources, and produce renewable energy."

Barron-Gafford's research into agrivoltaics has expanded to include several solar installations on Tucson Unified School District, or TUSD, land. Moses Thompson, who splits his time between the TUSD and the UA School of Geography and Development, notes that the team is also using the TUSD solar installations to engage with K-12 students.

"What draws me to this work is what happens to the K-12 learner when their involvement is consequential and the research lives in their community," Thompson said. "That shift in dynamics creates students who feel agency in addressing grand challenges such as climate change."

The authors say more research with additional plant species is needed. They also note the currently unexplored impact agrivoltaics could have on the physical and social well-bring of farm laborers. Preliminary data show that skin temperature can be about 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler when working in an agrivoltaics area than in traditional agriculture.

"Climate change is already disrupting food production and farm worker health in Arizona," said Gary Nabhan, an agroecologist in the UA Southwest Center and co-author on the paper. "The Southwestern U.S. sees a lot of heat stroke and heat-related death among our farm laborers; this could have a direct impact there, too."

Barron-Gafford and the team are now working with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Lab to assess how well an agrivoltaics approach can work in other regions of the country and how regional policies can promote adoption of novel approaches to solve these pervasive problems.

"This is UA innovation at its best - an interdisciplinary team of researchers working to address some of our most challenging environmental dilemmas," said co-author Andrea Gerlak, a professor in the School of Geography and Development in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. "Imagine the impact we can have in our community - and the larger world - by more creatively thinking about agriculture and renewable energy production together."