Culture

Our job seems easy when compared with that of our cells. While they are hard at work, breaking some molecules and building others, we mainly have to do one thing - feed them. But what exactly should we feed them? This is not an easy problem to solve considering the constant competition happening inside. Whereas some cell types, like fat-cells, crave lipids, others may prefer protein or sugars. How does the brain factor in all competing demands and spits out a decision when faced with difficult choices like: steak or ice cream?

Now, in a study performed in fruit flies, a team of scientists at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown in Portugal, make a surprising discovery. Their results, published today (August 31st) in the scientific journal Nature Metabolism, reveal that changes in the nutritional requirements of sex cells make female flies crave sugar. Until now, this phenomenon was mainly described in pathological conditions, namely cancer. Its discovery in the normal physiological process of egg formation, provides important insight into the link between fertility and nutrition.

Cells with a sweet tooth

How can a small group of cells influence the behaviour of an entire organism? "A hint to the answer comes from oncology. When a cell becomes cancerous, it turns on cellular machinery that preferentially consumes sugar and turns it into building blocks necessary for cell multiplication. This process, where the cell changes its 'dietary preference' and function, is called metabolic reprogramming, and it is key for tumour growth.", says Carlos Ribeiro, a principal investigator at Champalimaud and a senior author of the study.

"This phenomenon was also recorded in non-pathological processes, mainly related to development. However, it was not known whether the cells' metabolic transformation could hijack the feeding decisions of the organism", adds Ribeiro. "This is what we set out to explore."

Ribeiro, together with Zita Santos, the other senior author of the study, chose to focus on the reproductive system of the fruit fly, specifically on the process of egg generation. "An egg begins with a single sex cell, which divides, multiplies and grows. The descendants of this original cell transform into the different cell types that together make up the complete egg", Santos explains.

When the team examined the cells throughout the egg's assembly process, they discovered that just like cancer cells, they were undergoing metabolic reprogramming. But not only that, they were activating the exact same cellular mechanism cancer cells use to promote cell proliferation by increasing their sugar consumption. In other words, they developed a sweet tooth.

"We were fascinated by these results", says Santos. "They explain previous reports showing that the female's sex-cells absorb a high proportion of sugars eaten by the animal. And they also fit well with the role of the egg, which needs to synthesise nutrients for a developing embryo."

Driving food choice from below the belt

These encouraging results drove the team to test whether the metabolic reprogramming of the sex cells in the ovary influences the animal's food choice. When they compared the dietary preferences of normal female flies with flies that are unable to produce eggs, they observed a robust difference. "The group of sterile flies had a significantly lower appetite for sugar!"

Moreover, when the team manipulated the cells' ability to metabolise sugar, both the production of eggs and the animals' sugar appetite were affected. "This demonstrates that it's not the cells themselves that generate the change in behaviour, but their metabolic programme. It is this specific programme that drives the flies to obtain the fuel they need for egg production.

How do the cellular changes in the ovary reach the brain and change the flies' behaviour? To answer this question, the team investigated the expression of fit. This small molecule is produced in the fat tissue that surrounds the fly's brain. The more Fit a fly has in her system, the less she cares for sweets.

Again, the team discovered a clear difference between normal and sterile females. Fit levels were significantly higher in the infertile group. "This is a strong indication that the effect of the sex cells on the brain is mediated by Fit. We still don't know how the communication between the ovary and the brain's fat tissue happens, but we are looking into it", Santos adds with a smile.

Diet and Fertility

Together, the team's findings outline a novel mechanism by which the metabolism of a small group of cells in the ovary controls the feeding behaviour of the animal. Could these results be relevant for the field of fertility?

Santos and Ribeiro have recently received a pilot award by the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality to investigate the answer to this question. At the basis of their approach lies an original idea: reversing the process.

"It's a kind of a chicken and egg concept", says Santos. "What comes first: metabolic reprogramming, or changes in food preference? We discovered that the metabolic reprogramming of the cells causes the female to consume more sugar, which she needs to generate eggs. We wonder what happens during aging. Could changes in metabolism explain fertility decline? And if so, would we be able to influence the fly's fertility as she ages by manipulating her diet?"

As Santos explains, female flies, similarly to women, experience age-related infertility. She hypothesises that changes in the ovarian metabolic programmes drive reproductive decline and that this phenomenon can be reduced or even reversed using targeted dietary interventions.

"We will explore this hypothesis in the fruit fly by using a combination of single-cell RNA sequencing and metabolomics. In parallel, we will characterise the cellular outcomes of ovarian decline and monitor the feeding behaviour of these animals. This will allow us to devise dietary strategies to reverse the identified alterations and increase reproduction in older female flies. We believe that this is a powerful path to identify potentially reversible processes underlying reproductive age-related decline. Also, since this is a mechanism that is shared by cancer cells, our findings may also be relevant for treating cancer", Ribeiro Concludes.

Scientists have estimated for the first time how nature-based solutions for agricultural pest control deliver US$ 14.6 to US$ 19.5 billion annually across 23 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

The new research, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, suggests that non-chemical crop protection (or biological control) delivers economic dividends that far surpass those attained through improved "Green Revolution" rice germplasm (estimated at US$ 4.3 billion a year).

The study, led by Dr Kris Wyckhuys and including contributions from CABI's Dr Matthew Cock and Dr Frances Williams on the data collection, unveils the magnitude and macro-economic relevance of biodiversity-based contributions to productivity growth in non-rice crops over a 100-year period between 1918 and 2018.

Scientifically-guided biological control of 43 exotic invertebrate pests allowed for between 73% to 100% yield loss recovery in critical food, feed and fibre crops including banana, breadfruit, cassava and coconut.

Dr Wyckhuys said, "The Green Revolution is credited with alleviating famine, mitigating poverty and driving aggregate economic growth since the 1960s - enabled through a tripling of rice output. Cornerstone of the Green Revolution were the 'packaged' seed x agro-chemical technologies and biological innovations such as high-yielding, disease-resistant cereal varieties.

"Our research is the first to gauge the financial benefit of using biological control to fight crop pests in the Asia-Pacific region and demonstrates how these ecologically-based approaches promoted rural growth and prosperity in marginal, poorly-endowed, non-rice environments.

"By thus placing agro-ecological innovations on equal footing with input-intensive measures, our work provides lessons for future efforts to mitigate invasive species, restore ecological resilience and sustainably raise output of global agri-food systems."

The scientists, who show how 75 different biological control agents mitigated 43 pests over a 100-year range, outline how biodiversity-driven ecosystem services underpin food systems and societal wellbeing in the face of environmental change.

Co-author Dr Michael Furlong added, "Biological control delivered durable pest control in myriad Asia-Pacific agriculture sectors, permitting yield-loss recoveries up to 73%, 81% and 100% in cassava, banana and coconut crops respectively.

"The ensuing economic dividends are substantial, as pest-induced losses up to US $6.8, $4.3 and $8.2 billion annually for the above crops were offset (at respective
values of $5.4-6.8 billion, $1.4-2.2 billion and $3.8-5.5 billion/year, for a conservative to high impact scenario range). As many of the underlying programs were run on a shoestring, the rate of return on biological control science is extraordinary.

"Our work constitutes an empirical demonstration of how insect biological control helped solidify the agrarian foundation of several Asia-Pacific economies and - in doing so - places biological control on an equal footing with other biological innovations such as Green Revolution germplasm.

"Not only does it spotlight its transformative impacts - especially in light of increasing global reliance on chemical pesticides - but it also celebrates the century-long achievements of dedicated, yet often, unacclaimed insect explorers and biological control pioneers."

Next time you head outside for a socially distant walk in between your Zoom meetings, notice the rich diversity of plants along your path. As we approach late summer, be sure to also notice the diversity of disease symptoms on those plants, including spots, blotches or fuzzy growth caused by bacteria, viruses or fungi.

A key to surviving in the wild is fighting off infection -- and not just once. As in humans, one infection may or may not leave a plant with lasting immunity.

In fact, an early infection might make things worse. New research from an international team including an assistant professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis shows that infection actually makes a plant more susceptible to secondary infection -- in experiments and in the wild. The findings are published in the Aug. 31 issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution.

"We found that early infection facilitated later infection," said Rachel Penczykowski, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and co-first author on the study. She performed the field experiments as a postdoctoral researcher with Anna-Liisa Laine, senior author on the paper, now at the University of Zürich.

"And the order in which pathogen strains infect a plant matters," Penczykowski said. "Some pathogen strains are especially likely to facilitate infection by later-arriving strains."

The findings -- obtained through a series of elegant experiments that capture how pathogen strains naturally accumulate on plants over a growing season -- reveal the importance of understanding interactions among pathogens when developing strategies for maintaining healthy crop populations.

Early infection promotes later infection

A common roadside weed, Plantago lanceolata is native to Europe, where this study took place, and Asia; it is also commonly found in North America. Infection by the pathogen Podosphaera plantaginis, a powdery mildew fungus, is easy to spot with the naked eye.

In the wild, plant populations are exposed to and infected by multiple powdery mildew strains over the course of their lifetime. The authors wondered if prior exposure to one strain of powdery mildew affects the plant's susceptibility to a second.

To simulate what would happen in the wild, the authors took young, disease-free plants and brushed pathogen spores from one of four pathogen strains onto a single leaf per plant. The rest of the leaves were temporarily covered with a plastic bag.

The inoculated leaf was then covered with a spore-proof pouch for the duration of the experiment, which prevented infection from spreading between it and the other leaves. This method works because powdery mildew produces a localized, leaf-surface infection that does not spread systemically in the plant. Otherwise identical control plants received a sham inoculation instead of powdery mildew spores.

The plants were then placed in a common garden environment in a large field (without locally occurring Plantago or powdery mildew), where they were simultaneously exposed to all four pathogen strains.

Penczykowski and co-first author Fletcher Halliday, a current postdoctoral researcher in the Laine lab, found that none of the four strains of powdery mildew inoculated onto plants protected the plants from a secondary infection. In fact, prior exposure to mildew made plants more susceptible to a second powdery mildew infection compared to infection-naïve controls.

"If you look at each strain individually, some of the strains were better than others at promoting later infection," Penczykowski said.

"Because crop plants may also be exposed to a diversity of pathogen strains during a given growing season, understanding the ways in which different pathogen strains impact each other is important for developing sustainable disease control strategies in agricultural systems."

Into the wild

Scientists sometimes place cohorts of healthy, greenhouse-grown "sentinel plants" into field populations to measure the risk of pathogen infection. Doing this with sentinel plants allows researchers to control for genetic background, age and condition.

To test how prior inoculation affected the probability of plants becoming infected during epidemics in wild populations, the authors inoculated plants as they did in the common garden experiment (again, with uninoculated controls for comparison). Except this time, they moved the potted sentinel plants into wild populations and waited for naturally occurring mildew spores to arrive.

The researchers found that previously infected sentinel plants acquired secondary mildew infections more often than control plants that had never been infected. This was true even though the only way plants were catching the naturally occurring pathogen strains was through the wind.

"What we saw in both our common garden and our sentinel plant experiments was that previously inoculated plants were more susceptible to later infection," Halliday said. "But could we detect the signature of pathogen strain facilitation in naturally infected wild plant populations? That would require an intensive survey of wild plant-pathogen dynamics."

And into the wild the scientists went -- that is, using data from wild populations that were fortunately collected the previous year.

In an intensive survey of 13 field populations, the scientists tracked mildew infection in wild plants over the course of two months. They tagged plants as they found mildew infection; otherwise, they were not manipulated in any way and had been growing in the field their whole lives.

A small leaf area of each infected plant was cut and brought to the lab to identify the mildew strains that infected the plants at different times throughout the growing season.

The importance of being early

Powdery mildew strains vary in their ability to survive the winter and in the timing of their reproductive cycle.

Some strains arrive earlier in the growing season and are likely to be the ones that had successfully overwintered and reproduced quickly.

Halliday dove into the genetic data compiled from the surveys of the 13 field populations and found that strains detected early in the season commonly facilitated subsequent infections, and strains that arrived to the populations later in the season benefited from that facilitation.

"The early-arriving strains are the ones that are driving the course of epidemics and also affecting the diversity of pathogen strains that assemble in plant populations," Halliday said.

"In other words, the strains that are ready to hit the ground running in spring may impact both the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of plant-pathogen interactions," Penczykowski added.

Flu season comes around like clockwork every year, and sooner or later everyone gets infected. The annual flu shot is a key part of public health efforts to control the flu, but the vaccine's effectiveness is notoriously poor, falling somewhere from 40% to 60% in a typical year.

A growing body of evidence suggests that a history of exposure to influenza virus might be undermining the effectiveness of the annual flu vaccine. Partial immunity developed during prior flu seasons -- either through natural infection or vaccination -- might interfere with the body's response to a new vaccine, such that vaccination mainly boosts the recognition of prior influenza strains but does little to create the ability to fight new strains.

Now, a team led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has developed an approach to assess whether a vaccine activates the kind of immune cells needed for long-lasting immunity against new influenza strains. Using this technique, the researchers showed that the flu vaccine is capable of eliciting antibodies that protect against a broad range of flu viruses, at least in some people. The findings, published Aug. 31 in the journal Nature, could aid efforts to design an improved flu vaccine that provides protection not only against old influenza viruses but also new ones.

"Every year, about half of the U.S. adult population gets vaccinated against influenza," said senior author Ali Ellebedy, PhD, an assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University. "It's necessary for public health, but it's also incredibly expensive and inefficient. What we need is a one-and-done influenza shot, but we are not there yet. Anything that helps us understand how immunity develops in the context of prior exposures would be important as we try to make a better vaccine."

The key to long-lasting immunity lies in lymph nodes, minuscule organs of the immune system positioned throughout the body. Easy to miss in healthy people, lymph nodes become swollen and tender during an infection as immune cells busily interact and multiply within them.

The first time a person is exposed to a virus - either by infection or vaccination - immune cells capture the virus and bring it to the nearest lymph node. There, the virus is presented to so-called naïve B cells, causing them to mature and start producing antibodies to fight the infection. Once the virus is successfully routed, most of the immune cells that take part in the battle die off, but a few continue circulating in the blood as long-lived memory B cells.

The second time a person is exposed to a virus, memory B cells quickly reactivate and start producing antibodies again, bypassing naive B cells. This rapid response quickly builds protection for people who have been reinfected with the exact same strain of virus, but it's not ideal for people who have received a vaccine designed to build immunity against a slightly different strain, as in the annual flu vaccine.

"If our influenza vaccine targets memory cells, those cells will respond to the parts of the virus that haven't changed from previous influenza strains," Ellebedy said. "Our goal is to get our immune system up to date with the new strains of influenza, which means we want to focus the immune response on the parts of the virus that are different this year."

To get decades-long immunity against the new strains, the flu strains from the vaccine need to be taken to the lymph nodes, where they can be used to train a new set of naïve B cells and induce long-lived memory B cells specifically tailored to recognize the unique features of the vaccine strains.

To find out what happens inside lymph nodes after influenza vaccination, Ellebedy enlisted the help of co-authors Rachel Presti, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine, and Sharlene Teefey, MD, a professor of radiology at Washington University. Presti led a team at the Infectious Disease Clinical Research Unit that coordinated the sampling of blood and lymph nodes from healthy volunteers before and after vaccination. Guided by ultrasound imaging, Teefey carefully extracted so-called germinal centers that hold immune cells from underarm lymph nodes of eight healthy, young volunteers vaccinated with the 2018-19 quadrivalent influenza vaccine. That vaccine was designed to protect against four different strains of influenza virus. The immune cells were extracted at one, two, four and nine weeks after vaccination.

Ellebedy and colleagues ­- including co-senior authors Steven Kleinstein, PhD, a professor of pathology at Yale University School of Medicine, and Andrew Ward, PhD, a professor of integrative structural and computational biology at Scripps Research Institute, as well as co-first authors Jackson Turner, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher who works with Ellebedy, Julian Zhou, a graduate student in Kleinstein's lab, and Julianna Han, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar who works with Ward - analyzed the immune cells in the germinal centers to find the ones that had been activated by vaccination.

In three volunteers, both memory B cells and naïve B cells in the lymph nodes responded to the vaccine strains, indicating that the vaccine had initiated the process of inducing long-lasting immunity against the new strains.

"Our study shows that the influenza vaccine can engage both kinds of cells in the germinal centers, but we still don't know how often that happens," Ellebedy said. "But given that influenza vaccine effectiveness hovers around 50%, it probably doesn't happen as often as we would like. That brings up the importance of promoting strategies to boost the germinal centers as a step toward a universal influenza vaccine."

Loneliness is recognized as a serious threat to mental health. Even as our world becomes increasingly connected over digital platforms, young people in our society are feeling a growing sense of isolation. The COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many countries to implement social distancing and school closures, magnifies the need for understanding the mental health consequences of social isolation and loneliness. While research has shown that social isolation during childhood, in particular, is detrimental to adult brain function and behavior across mammalian species, the underlying neural circuit mechanisms have remained poorly understood.

A research team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has now identified specific sub-populations of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex, a key part of the brain that regulates social behavior, that are required for normal sociability in adulthood and are profoundly vulnerable to juvenile social isolation in mice. The study findings, which appear in the August 31 issue of Nature Neuroscience, shed light on a previously unrecognized role of these cells, known as medial prefrontal cortex neurons projecting to the paraventricular thalamus, the brain area that relays signals to various components of the brain's reward circuitry. If the finding is replicated in humans, it could lead to treatments for psychiatric disorders connected to isolation.

"In addition to identifying this specific circuit in the prefrontal cortex that is particularly vulnerable to social isolation during childhood, we also demonstrated that the vulnerable circuit we identified is a promising target for treatments of social behavior deficits," says Hirofumi Morishita, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Ophthalmology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, a faculty member of The Friedman Brain Institute and the Mindich Child Health and Development Institute, and senior author of the paper. "Through stimulation of the specific prefrontal circuit projecting to the thalamic area in adulthood, we were able to rescue the sociability deficits caused by juvenile social isolation."

Specifically, the team found that, in male mice, two weeks of social isolation immediately following weaning leads to a failure to activate medial prefrontal cortex neurons projecting to the paraventricular thalamus during social exposure in adulthood. Researchers found that juvenile isolation led to both reduced excitability of the prefrontal neurons projecting to the paraventricular thalamus and increased inhibitory input from other related neurons, suggesting a circuit mechanism underlying sociability deficits caused by juvenile social isolation. To determine whether acute restoration of the activity of prefrontal projections to the paraventricular thalamus is sufficient to ameliorate sociability deficits in adult mice that underwent juvenile social isolation, the team employed a technique known as optogenetics to selectively stimulate the prefrontal projections to paraventricular thalamus. The researchers also used chemogenetics in their study. While optogenetics enables researchers to stimulate particular neurons in freely moving animals with pulses of light, chemogenetics allows non-invasive chemical control over cell populations. By employing both of these techniques, the researchers were able to quickly increase social interaction in these mice once light pulses or drugs were administered to them.

"We checked the presence of social behavior deficits just prior to stimulation and when we checked the behavior while the stimulation was ongoing, we found that the social behavior deficits were reversed," said Dr. Morishita.

Given that social behavior deficits are a common dimension of many neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders, such as autism and schizophrenia, identification of these specific prefrontal neurons will point toward therapeutic targets for the improvement of social behavior deficits shared across a range of psychiatric disorders. The circuits identified in this study could potentially be modulated using techniques like transcranial magnetic stimulation and/or transcranial direct current stimulation.

A study analysing over 650,000 hip replacement patients across England and Wales over 14 years sought to investigate why one hospital has consistently been identified as having better than expected outcomes compared to other settings. The findings have shown that the outstanding hip implant survival results seen in one centre in the UK are associated with implant choice more than surgeon skill.

The study by researchers from the Musculoskeletal Research Unit at the University of Bristol, the NIHR Bristol Biomedical Research Centre, and the University of Exeter, using data from the National Joint Registry has been published in PLOS Medicine.

Mr Jonathan Evans, Academic Clinical Lecturer at the Bristol Medical School; Translational Health Sciences (THS), based at Southmead Hospital, Bristol and lead author, said: "These findings are vitally important to making sure as many of our patients have a good outcome from their hip replacement as possible.

"We want patients across the country to feel empowered to ask their surgeon not only what implants they plan to use for their hip replacement but more importantly to ask for the long-term evidence that the implant works well. If they do not feel happy with the answer, then patients should feel confident asking for another opinion or even vote with their feet and go to a different hospital."

In 2017, there were over 822 different types of hip replacements implanted in England and Wales, but the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust (RD&E) has used only three in the last 14 years. In the RD&E, only 1.7 per cent of hips needed to be re-done 14 years after the hip replacements were put in, but in the rest of the country this figure was 2.9 per cent. Given that about 100,000 people have a hip replacement every year, this difference could lead to many more patients needing further surgery.

The researchers considered age, sex and general health in their analyses and showed that when the patient's outcomes from the RD&E were compared to cases nationwide where the same implants had been used, there was no difference in how many of the hips lasted 14 years. This suggests that consistent use of a reliable hip replacement implant may be a more important determinant of success than the surgeon performing the operation.

It has long been seen that there is variation in success rates between hospitals (as seen in the National Joint Registry annual report) and it is a priority of the NHS to reduce this variation, ensuring best possible results for all patients. The Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) initiative in the UK seeks to reduce variation in outcomes between hospitals and learning from centres with statistically "better than expected" results is key to that.

A hip replacement principally consists of two components, one that replaces the ball and another that replaces the socket. There is variation in how these parts are fixed to the bone, as well as in the materials used to create the bearing (contact) surface.

Hip and knee replacements are two of the most common and effective forms of surgery. Yet even in the best-case scenarios, they will eventually fail due to processes such as infection, fracture, normal wear and tear or reaction to wear particles. In many of these cases, patients require revision surgery which is more prone to failure, associated with poorer function and more expensive than primary surgery. Making the first hip replacement last as long as possible is in the best interest of patients, surgeons and the NHS as a whole.

Mr Michael Whitehouse, Reader in Trauma and Orthopaedics at the Bristol Medical School: THS and joint senior author on the study feels this information is critical to help patients make the best decisions about their care. He explained: "It is important to recognise that this study is not about encouraging surgeons to use one particular implant but to use the information available to them in the National Joint Registry and other reliable sources to choose implants with a track record of long-term success.

"Our study shows that long-term survival of a hip replacement is primarily down to a surgeon's implant decisions rather than the particular way they perform the operation."

In a world-first, the extent of human development in oceans has been mapped. An area totalling approximately 30,000 square kilometres - the equivalent of 0.008 percent of the ocean - has been modified by human construction, a study led by Dr Ana Bugnot from the University of Sydney School of Life and Environmental Sciences and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science has found.

The extent of ocean modified by human construction is, proportion-wise, comparable to the extent of urbanised land, and greater than the global area of some natural marine habitats, such as mangrove forests and seagrass beds.

When calculated as the area modified inclusive of flow-on effects to surrounding areas, for example, due to changes in water flow and pollution, the footprint is actually two million square kilometres, or over 0.5 percent of the ocean.

The oceanic modification includes areas affected by tunnels and bridges; infrastructure for energy extraction (for example, oil and gas rigs, wind farms); shipping (ports and marinas); aquaculture infrastructure; and artificial reefs.

Dr Bugnot said that ocean development is nothing new, yet, in recent times, it has rapidly changed. "It has been ongoing since before 2000 BC," she said. "Then, it supported maritime traffic through the construction of commercial ports and protected low-lying coasts with the creation of structures similar to breakwaters.

"Since the mid-20th century, however, ocean development has ramped up, and produced both positive and negative results.

"For example, while artificial reefs have been used as 'sacrificial habitat' to drive tourism and deter fishing, this infrastructure can also impact sensitive natural habitats like seagrasses, mudflats and saltmarshes, consequently affecting water quality.

"Marine development mostly occurs in coastal areas - the most biodiverse and biologically productive ocean environments."

Future expansion 'alarming'

Dr Bugnot, joined by co-researchers from multiple local and international universities, also projected the rate of future ocean footprint expansion.

"The numbers are alarming," Dr Bugnot said. "For example, infrastructure for power and aquaculture, including cables and tunnels, is projected to increase by 50 to 70 percent by 2028.

"Yet this is an underestimate: there is a dearth of information on ocean development, due to poor regulation of this in many parts of the world.

"There is an urgent need for improved management of marine environments. We hope our study spurs national and international initiatives, such as the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive, to greater action."

The researchers attributed the projected expansion on people's increasing need for defences against coastal erosion and inundation due to sea level rise and climate change, as well as their transportation, energy extraction, and recreation needs.

Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica whose melting rates are rapidly increasing have raised the global sea level by 1.8cm since the 1990s, and are matching the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst-case climate warming scenarios.

According to a new study from the University of Leeds and the Danish Meteorological Institute, if these rates continue, the ice sheets are expected to raise sea levels by a further 17cm and expose an additional 16 million people to annual coastal flooding by the end of the century.

Since the ice sheets were first monitored by satellite in the 1990s, melting from Antarctica has pushed global sea levels up by 7.2mm, while Greenland has contributed 10.6mm. And the latest measurements show that the world's oceans are now rising by 4mm each year.

"Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have imagined," said Dr Tom Slater, lead author of the study and climate researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.

"The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise."

The results are published today in a study in the journal Nature Climate Change. It compares the latest results from satellite surveys from the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE) with calculations from climate models. The authors warn that the ice sheets are losing ice at a rate predicted by the worst-case climate warming scenarios in the last large IPCC report.

Dr Anna Hogg, study co-author and climate researcher in the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: "If ice sheet losses continue to track our worst-case climate warming scenarios we should expect an additional 17cm of sea level rise from the ice sheets alone. That's enough to double the frequency of storm-surge flooding in many of the world's largest coastal cities."

So far, global sea levels have increased in the most part through a mechanism called thermal expansion, which means that volume of seawater expands as it gets warmer. But in the last five years, ice melt from the ice sheets and mountain glaciers has overtaken global warming as the main cause of rising sea levels.

Dr Ruth Mottram, study co-author and climate researcher at the Danish Meteorological Institute, said: "It is not only Antarctica and Greenland that are causing the water to rise. In recent years, thousands of smaller glaciers have begun to melt or disappear altogether, as we saw with the glacier Ok in Iceland, which was declared "dead" in 2014. This means that melting of ice has now taken over as the main contributor of sea level rise. "

Radio astronomers have detected jets of hot gas blasted out by a black hole in the galaxy at the heart of the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster, located 5.9 billion light-years away in the constellation Phoenix. This is an important result for understanding the coevolution of galaxies, gas, and black holes in galaxy clusters.

Galaxies are not distributed randomly in space. Through mutual gravitational attraction, galaxies gather together to form collections known as clusters. The space between galaxies is not entirely empty. There is very dilute gas throughout a cluster which can be detected by X-ray observations.

If this intra-cluster gas cooled, it would condense under its own gravity to form stars at the center of the cluster. However, cooled gas and stars are not usually observed in the hearts of nearby clusters, indicating that some mechanism must be heating the intra-cluster gas and preventing star formation. One potential candidate for the heat source is jets of high-speed gas accelerated by a super-massive black hole in the central galaxy.

The Phoenix Cluster is unusual in that it does show signs of dense cooled gas and massive star formation around the central galaxy. This raises the question, "does the central galaxy have black hole jets as well?"

A team led by Takaya Akahori at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan used the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) to search for black hole jets in the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster with the highest resolution to date. They detected matching structures extending out from opposite sides of the central galaxy. Comparing with observations of the region taken from the Chandra X-ray Observatory archive data shows that the structures detected by ATCA correspond to cavities of less dense gas, indicating that they are a pair of bipolar jets emitted by a black hole in the galaxy. Therefore, the team discovered the first example, in which intra-cluster gas cooling and black hole jets coexist, in the distant Universe.

Further details of the galaxy and jets could be elucidated through higher-resolution observations with next generation observational facilities, such as the Square Kilometre Array scheduled to start observations in the late 2020s.

An international team of scientists has succeeded in using the signature whistles of individual bottlenose dolphins off the coast of Namibia to estimate the size of the population and track their movement.

The research, led by Stellenbosch University and the University of Plymouth, marks the first time that acoustic monitoring has been used in place of photographs to generate abundance estimates of dolphin populations.

Writing in the Journal of Mammalogy, researchers say they are excited by the positive results yielded by the method, as the number of dolphins estimated was almost exactly the same as estimated through the more traditional photographic mark-recapture method.

They are now working to refine the technique, in the hope it can be used to track other species - with a current focus on endangered species such as humpback dolphins.

Quicker information processing and advances in statistical analysis mean in the future that automated detection of individually distinctive calls could be possible. This can generate important information on individual animals and would be particularly useful for small, threatened populations where every individual counts.

"The capture-recapture of individually distinctive signature whistles has not been attempted before," says the paper's senior author Dr Tess Gridley, Co-Director of Sea Search and the Namibian Dolphin Project and a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Botany and Zoology at SU. "The dolphins use these sounds throughout life and each has its own unique whistle. Therefore, by recording signature whistles over time and in different places we can calculate where animals are moving to and how many animals there are in a population."

Working with Dr Simon Elwen of Stellenbosch University, the Namibian Dolphin Project has been researching Namibia's resident bottlenose dolphins for the past 12 years, and built up a catalogue of more than 55 signature whistles dating back to 2009.

This particular study was led by Emma Longden, who began the project during her BSc (Hons) Marine Biology degree at the University of Plymouth. As an undergraduate, Emma completed an internship with the Namibia Dolphin Project for a month in 2016, and returned again in 2018 to complete work on the mark-recapture project.

She analysed more than 4000 hours of acoustic data from four hydrophones positioned along the coast south and north of Walvis Bay, Namibia, during the first six months of 2016.

All in all, they identified 204 acoustic encounters, 50 of which contained signature whistle types. From these encounters, 53 signature whistle types were identified; 40 were in an existing catalogue developed in 2014 for the Walvis Bay bottlenose dolphin population, and 13 were newly identified.

Of the 53 signature whistle types identified, 43% were captured only once, whereas the majority (57%) were recaptured twice or more.

"One of the great things about bioacoustics is that you can leave a hydrophone in the water for weeks at a time and collect so much data without interfering with the lives of the animals you are studying," says Emma, whose work on the project was also supervised by Dr Clare Embling, Associate Professor of Marine Ecology at the University of Plymouth.

Future research includes the work undertaken by PhD student Sasha Dines from Stellenbosch University to further refine the technique to better understand the population of endangered humpback dolphins in South Africa. Another PhD student, Jack Fearey from the University of Cape Town, is continuing to conduct research along the Namibian Coast.

For editors

* The article was authored by Emma G. Longden, Simon H. Elwen, Barry McGovern, Bridget S. James, Clare B Embling and Tess Gridley and is available online at https://academic.oup.com/jmammal/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jmammal/gyaa081/5893454?guestAccessKey=af719cb6-c7ca-4463-9e1f-453768da4f6a

More about bottlenose dolphins' use of sound

From the day they are born, bottlenose dolphins produce high frequency whistles. During learning and practice in the first year of life, these whistles develop into individually distinct signature whistles and each animal has its own unique call throughout life. Once learned, signature whistles act like a name and are used to help animals stay in contact and to address each other when communicating under the water.

These signature whistles help animals keep in contact if they become separated, they are exchanged before groups meet (as a kind of greeting) and they can copy each other's whistles to address each other (in the same way humans use names). They are therefore friendly sounds and used between animals that are well acquainted - such as group members and mothers to their calves.

"The high level of approval of the measures indicates that the population is still aware of the risks posed by the virus," comments BfR President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel on the current results.

https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/200818-bfr-corona-monitor-en.pdf

The most common protective measures seem to have already become a matter of routine to many people. At least 90 percent of respondents said they wear masks, wash their hands more thoroughly and keep their distance from others. As in the weeks before, in the current survey about one third of the participants state that they use the app of the German government.

In contrast, there is a clear change in the perceived informedness of the respondents. Since June, just over 60 percent of the respondents had stated that they felt well informed about what is happening around the new coronavirus. In the current survey, this figure fell to 52 percent. The information channels used and the evaluation of media coverage remained relatively unchanged: around two-thirds still consider the media coverage to be appropriate, while 29 percent consider the reporting to be exaggerated.

Throughout the summer months, public concern about the impact of the novel coronavirus on different areas of life developed in different patterns: While worries about social relationships as well as physical and mental health have increased slightly, concerns about one' s own economic situation remained comparatively stable.

The BfR continually adapts its FAQs on the topic of coronavirus to the current state of science:

https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/can_the_new_type_of_coronavirus_be_transmitted_via_food_and_objects_-244090.html

A team with the participation of researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has designed new hydrogels that allow the culture of T-cells or T-lymphocytes, cells of the immune system that are used in cancer immunotherapy since they have the capacity to destroy tumor cells. These hydrogels can mimic lymph nodes, where T-cells reproduce and, therefore, provide high rates of cell proliferation. Scientists hope to be able to bring this new technology, for which a patent has already been filed at the European Patent Office, to hospitals soon, and whose first details are published in the journal Biomaterials. Scientists have started a project that aims to print these new hydrogels in 3D and thus accelerate their transfer to the market.

The 3D hydrogels are made of polyethylene glycol (PEG), a biocompatible polymer widely used in biomedicine, and heparin, an anticoagulant agent. In this case, the polymer provides the structure and mechanical properties necessary for T-cells to grow, while heparin is used to anchor different biomolecules of interest, such as cytokine CCL21, a protein present in the lymph nodes and which has a major role in cell migration and proliferation.

Adoptive Cell Therapy

Cancer immunotherapy is based on using and strengthening the patients' immune system so that it recognizes and fights tumor cells, without damaging healthy tissues. One of the possible treatments, the so-called adoptive cell therapy, consists of extracting the T-cells from the patients, modifying them to make them more active, making numerous copies of them and injecting them back into patients.

"This personalized therapy, although still very novel, seems to have more lasting effects than current oncological therapies, thanks to some T-lymphocytes that are capable of conferring immunity over time," points out one of the creators of this technology, researcher Judith Guasch, from the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC). "Its application is limited by the current cell culture media, since they are not effective enough for the proliferation and growth of a relevant amount of therapeutic T-cells in a short time and in an economically viable way", adds Guasch.

Transfer to the market

To continue the study and encourage the transfer of this technology to the market, researchers Judith Guasch, from the ICMAB, and Elisabeth Engel, professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) at the Institute of Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), have recently been awarded a project from the Call for Transfer and Valorization Projects of the Biomedical Research Networking Center - Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN) 2020, aimed at carrying out projects for CIBER-BBN groups with the interest and support of companies.

The aim of the project is to print large 3D hydrogels compatible with clinical bioreactors, in order to expand T-cells in a more efficient way. The researchers will develop the prototype in the laboratory and make the first experiments for the validation in the clinical phase. Currently, the project is looking for industrial partners, mainly biomedical and pharmaceutical companies, and investors interested in creating a spin-off company to transfer this technology and make it available in hospitals.

The project led by Guasch and Engel has the collaboration of Joaquín Arribas, from the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), and Miguel A. Mateos, from the International University of Catalonia (UIC).

INDIANAPOLIS -- With global food demands rising at an alarming rate, a study led by IUPUI scientists has found new evidence that a previously overlooked insect shows promise as alternative protein source: the yellow mealworm.

The research is based upon a new analysis of the genome of the mealworm species Tenebrio molitor led by Christine Picard, associate professor of biology and director in Forensic and Investigative Sciences program at the School of Science at IUPUI.

The work was published in the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed on Aug. 31.

"Human populations are continuing to increase and the stress on protein production is increasing at an unsustainable rate, not even considering climate change," said Picard, whose lab focuses on the use of insects to address global food demand.

The research, conducted in partnership with Beta Hatch Inc., has found the yellow mealworm -- historically a pest -- can provide benefit in a wide range of agriculture applications. Not only can it can be used as an alternative source of protein for animals including fish, but its waste is also ideal as organic fertilizer.

Picard and her team sequenced the yellow mealworm's genome using 10X Chromium linked-read technology. The results will help those who now wish to utilize the DNA and optimize the yellow mealworm for mass production and consumption. This new technology integrates the best of two sequencing methods to produce a reliable genome sequence.

"Insect genomes are challenging, and the longer sequence of DNA you can generate, the better genome you can assemble," said Picard.

Picard added the mealworm has -- and will have -- a wide variety uses.

"Mealworms, being insects, are a part of the natural diet of many organisms," said Picard. "Fish enjoy mealworms, for example. They could also be really useful in the pet food industry as an alternative protein source, chickens like insects -- and maybe one day humans, too, because it's an alternative source of protein."

Next, Picard said the researchers plan to look at what governs some of the biological processes of yellow mealworms in order to harness information useful for the commercialization of these insects.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Elephant trails may lead the way to better conservation approaches.

"Think of elephants as engineers of the forests," said Melissa J. Remis, professor and head of anthropology at Purdue University, who is best known for her work in ecology and behavior of western gorillas and their ecosystems. "Elephants shape the landscape in many ways that benefit humans. We're talking thousands of miles of trails. If we think about the loss of elephants over time, then we will see the forest structure change and human activities also would shift."

These massive creatures trample thick vegetation through dense forests in the Central African Republic's Congo Basin as they move from the forests' fruit trees to more open water sources where they hydrate, bathe and socialize. African forest elephants, highly sociable animals, travel in small family groups to meet others at these muddy water sources, which are full of rich minerals that they can't find in the forests. By clearing routes to these destinations, elephants have created a very complex network of roads that residents, tourists, scientists and loggers still use today. If elephant populations decline, the forest grows over the trails.

"The fabric and way of life of local communities, and even for the industries and conservation organizations that exist in African forests, have largely been shaped by elephant landscape design," said Carolyn A. Jost Robinson, a former Purdue doctoral student and current visiting scholar who also is director of sociocultural research and engagement at the nonprofit Chengeta Wildlife. "People rely on these elephant highways, and they also are invaluable at understanding and explaining the networks."

Remis and Jost Robinson focus on these massive trail networks and the ecosystem and local foraging community, called the BaAka, as they evaluate how biological anthropology plays a role in conservation. Their research is specific to the elephant trails leading to Dzanga Saline, a famous forest clearing with a large water source in the Congo area. Their findings are published online in American Anthropologist.

"Anthropologists are very famous for critiquing conservation but not always for coming up with effective solutions," Remis said. "The area of conservation is dominated by biological sciences, and you can't make change just tending to ecosystems. Conservation messages focus on flagship species, like elephants, and rarely do they consider the knowledge or needs of people relying on or living with those species. Attention on both could help further conservation and human rights issues."

Framing the big picture

More than 30 years ago, Purdue University's Melissa Remis visited the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas for the first time as a biological anthropologist to study gorillas. She became known as the gorilla lady as she visited the site dozens of times. Her fieldwork showed her that to know and study the gorillas, she had to learn about the forest and other wildlife from the local residents who share the land for food, shelter and medicines. Now Remis' work focuses on the big picture - how the effects of conservation affect people, and what role biological anthropology can play.

"We're broadening the conversation about conservation," said Jost Robinson, who became known as the child of the gorilla lady by local residents at their African research site. "When you see a picture in a magazine story about ivory trafficking and elephant hunting, it is unlikely that the article will capture the entire experience of the community, as well as tourists, researchers and companies with local interests. As part of this change - whether you want to talk about climate change, forest access or wildlife protection - these relationships have evolved and taken on new shapes. We looked back on years of data and stories and realized there was a story to tell."

By focusing on the local BaAka community, especially the hunters known as tuma, the scientists capture information from local residents about interaction and living with elephants that is usually not a part of conservation plans.

"We want this to be a model for showing how to get additional insights when addressing how to conserve forests in better collaboration with those people who rely on them for cultural and material sustenance," Remis said. "Being able to tell their stories and share their deep knowledge about the area, and what closing off an elephant trail or part of the forest can due to cut off access to food, medicines or social networks, is usually not part of the conservation approach. We need to hear the BaAka in their own words."

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology together with their international collaborators developed a novel quantitative method to quantify the effects of plastic on marine animals. This method successfully shows that plastic ingestion by sea turtles might be causing population declines, despite a lack of strong effects on individual turtles.

Plastic debris in marine ecosystems is a serious global issue and is the research focus of leading scientists across the globe. Annually, around 10 million tons of waste, mostly plastic, finds its way into the world's oceans. Plastic debris in the open and coastal seas can jeopardize the health of marine wildlife, affecting human health and economy both directly and indirectly.

Almost 700 marine species have been documented to interact with plastic, most commonly by ingesting smaller pieces and becoming entangled in larger pieces. Among the most affected species are sea turtles. All seven known species of sea turtles have been seriously impacted by the presence of plastic waste in marine ecosystems. Ingestion of plastic waste is often not lethal for sea turtles, but it does reduce their ability to feed and can cause negative toxic effects. Scientists have been warning for over a decade about the negative non-lethal effects of ingested plastics, noting that these effects are "particularly difficult to quantify."

Now, in a new study, an international research group, comprising Asst. Prof. Marko Jusup (Tokyo Institute of Technology [Tokyo Tech], Japan), Dr. Nina Marn and Dr. Tin Klanjšček (Ruder Boškovic Institute, Croatia), and Prof. S.A.L.M. Kooijman (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands), presented the first mechanistic model for quantifying the effects of ingested plastics on individuals and populations of sea turtles. Their findings are published in the high-ranking scientific journal Ecology Letters .

The study achieved exactly what previous research has struggled to accomplish: a new method to assess and quantify the effects of plastics ingestion on growth, reproduction, and survival of individuals and consequently populations.

Asst. Prof. Jusup, who co-led the study with Dr. Marn, explains, "In this research, we focused on a well-known and globally distributed protected species of sea turtles--the loggerhead. Our aim was to quantify the effects of ingested plastics on individual animals and subsequently on whole populations. Differentiating between the individual and population breaking points is important because individuals can look healthy and even reproduce, but this may not be sufficient to offset the loss of individuals due to mortality. More extreme cases of plastics ingestion reported in the scientific literature cause the population ecological breaking point to be reached. This is why it is crucial to decisively act now, before it is too late."

Dr. Marn, co-leading author of this study, spent several months at Tokyo Tech working with Asst. Prof. Jusup. She explains her motivation, "Over the past few years, there have been frequent discussions about a large amount of plastic ending up in the oceans, but gathering reliable data on the direct effects of plastic on animal health is still a challenge for the scientific community. One of the main motivations of my doctoral research was therefore to link plastic in the oceans to effects on marine wildlife, particularly on the already endangered sea turtles."

Understanding the link between the amount of ingested plastic waste and reduction in feeding of marine wildlife is crucial to mitigate the negative effects of plastic on marine organisms.

An added value of this model is its wide applicability--not only to other sea turtles but also any of the over 2,000 animal species characterized in the online database called "Add-my-Pet." The database is a brainchild of Prof. Kooijman, another co-author of the study, and is maintained and updated by a collaborative scientific effort in which Dr. Marn participates.

Dr. Klanjšček, a corresponding author of this study, concludes, "The effects of plastics ingestion that we are focusing on are not the only non-lethal effects of ingested plastics; for example, there is also a toxicological aspect of (micro)plastics, which is something we do not characterize at this point. However, our model is a crucial step that brings us closer to a more complete understanding of the effects of plastics on marine organisms. A general approach such as this, combined with an extensive database, enables straightforward applications of our model to other organisms such as sea birds and sea mammals."

Indeed, this new model represents an important step towards conservation of the marine ecosystem, which is--no doubt--the need of the hour.