Culture

Korea Brain Research Institute (headed by Suh Pann-ghill) announced on July 24 the discovery that an increase in amyloid-beta in the brain alters cholesterol biosynthesis, which was found by Dr. Cheon Mookyung of KBRI through RNA-seq analysis data (omics) using AI.

* Omics: "Omics" combines the prefix omni-, meaning "all", and the suffix -ics, meaning "study". Omics refers to the study of important information related to vital phenomena such as the activities of proteins that make up the genetic materials of the human body.

The research results were published in PLOS Computational Biology, an international academic journal in the field of computational biology, and the title and authors of the paper are as follows.

*Title: A practical application of generative adversarial networks for RNA-seq analysis to predict the molecular process of Alzheimer's disease

*Author: Jinhee Park(1st Author), Hyerin Kim, Jaekwang Kim, Mookyung Cheon(Corresponding Author)

Amyloid-beta is known as a protein that causes Alzheimer's disease (AD). In a normal brain, if it accumulates excessively, it is removed by microglia*, etc. Cholesterol must also be kept at a certain level within the blood to compose the cell membrane, adjust fluidity in the membrane, and maintain homeostasis. If the abovementioned processes are not carried out properly, pathological abnormalities occur in the body.

* Microglia: A type of neuroglia located throughout the brain and responsible for active immune defense

The research team analyzed the cerebral cortex tissue data of AD mouse models using the cutting-edge deep learning technique of generative adversarial networks (GANs)*. A GAN is an algorithm that generates data through competition between a generator and discriminator, studies the generated data, and creates synthetic data close to real images. The GANs technique was used to create the fake speech video of President Barack Obama and can be applied to continuous face aging.

The research team performed an AD genetic expression simulation in mice using GANs and observed the changing process of gene expression from normal to AD state. As a result, it was discovered that Amyloid-beta increases and alters cholesterol biosynthesis in the early stages of the disease. This discovery was also confirmed by the RNA-seq analysis of postmortem brain tissue.

This means that the increase in Amyloid-beta triggers cholesterol biosynthesis and that the two processes in combination are likely to engage in synaptogenesis and synaptic plasticity by interacting with each other.

This study is based on the unique research technique of the convergence of bioinformatics and AI, and its significance lies in that it provides designs for more systematic interpretation and experimentation to researchers and proposes a new approach for projecting biological changes in the early stages of disease progression to the healthcare industry.

Dr. Cheon said, "GANs are a useful tool for analyzing the disease-induced differences in gene expression and for explaining the molecular progress by identifying the cause of the phenomenon. The continued expansion of this methodology and omics data accumulation are expected to help us overcome the largest limitation in analysis related to brain diseases and aging, which is the time-consuming process of acquiring samples."

This study was supported as an exclusive project by KBRI.

Like humans, cattle are social creatures with complex relationships that change as group dynamics evolve. A study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science offered new insights into the social networking behavior of dairy cows, building on a body of research that could someday help reshape farm management practices to create healthier living environments for the animals.

A team of Chilean and US scientists spent 30 days observing a small herd of dairy cows that had recently given birth to understand the web of bovine interactions based on social grooming behavior, also known as allogrooming.

In modern dairy production systems, cows are constantly shuffled into different groups depending on factors such as lactation stage, nutrition requirements and breeding. The animals must re-establish their social structure during each regrouping, which previous research has shown causes negative effects on behavior, health and productivity.

Allogrooming, which generally involves one cow licking another around the head and neck, is believed to serve a number of social purposes. For instance, social grooming is both a way to establish individual bonds between members of a group and also enhances overall social cohesion in the herd.

"Our aim was to understand how social networks are formed by cows after they are reunited at the beginning of the milking period, and what factors may influence these changes. This is important because cattle form strong bonds, which offer them social support and help them cope with the stressors that occur regularly in dairy cows' lives," says lead author Dr Gustavo E. Monti from the Institute of Veterinary Preventive Medicine at the Austral University of Chile.

The study took place at a pasture-based dairy farm at an agricultural research station in the south-central city of Valdivia. Researchers recorded a total of 1,329 allogrooming events from 38 cows during the month-long experiment.

Their observations uncovered a variety of patterns based on different attributes, such as each animal's age and social rank. For example, cows tended to groom individuals that had previously groomed them, implying mutual cooperation. They also tended to prefer individuals of similar age, suggesting a certain familiarity because they grew up together.

Meanwhile, the most active groomers that did not seem to prefer specific individuals actually received less attention from other group members over time. And older individuals groomed more cows than younger ones, suggesting that allogrooming could be related to seniority.

"Our results indicate that licking behavior is important to make friends and to maintain harmony in the herd. That older cows groom more individuals suggests that they take the role of "peacemakers" in the herd," says Monti.

The observational study used a modern sociological research method called social network analysis, which reconstructs social interactions graphically using nodes that represent individuals and links that refer to relationships that connect them. While such analyses have been used to understand animals social networks, this research is one of the first to employ a statistical modeling method known as stochastic actor-oriented modeling (SAOM) to mammals other than humans. The SAOM framework crunches data on individual attributes and group dynamics to understand how group members change their relationships over time.

"It is important for farmers to be mindful of the relevance of the social aspects of the lives of cows, animals that form complex emotional relationships within their group. Farmers should be aware that cows frequently grooming each other is a positive sign that means that those cows get along. On the contrary, if social grooming declines, it may be a sign of impaired welfare. This new knowledge should be translated into innovative practical strategies that will result in the continued integration of cattle emotional and social needs into management systems," says Monti.

Researchers from University of Hong Kong, Yonsei University, and Chinese University of Hong Kong published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the relationship between animated movement speed in video ads and consumers' assessment of the product size.

The study forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing is titled "Speed Up, Size Down: How Animated Movement Speed in Product Videos Influences Size Assessment and Product Evaluation" and is authored by Michael Jia, B. Kyu Kim, and Lin Ge.

In video ads, products cannot be shown at their actual physical sizes. When no explicit size information or point of reference is provided, product size may be unclear to consumers. Given the potential ambiguity and the importance of size assessment in consumer preference formation, it is highly beneficial for marketers to know what visual cues consumers might use to infer the physical size of a product shown in video ads.

Video advertising often involves dynamic presentations of products that are displayed to move in a lively fashion, similar to how animals move. For instance, an audio speaker can be animated to flash in, bounce, turn around, or spin actively in video ads although it cannot move spontaneously in reality. In this case, the overall animated movement pattern may look similar to various movements insects or birds perform in the air, fishes perform in the water, dancers perform on the stage, or superheroes perform in movies. As another example, when a Swiss Army knife is animated to unfold its moveable parts (e.g., blade and corkscrew) or transform its shape, these movements may also to some extent resemble the way animals move their body parts. When creating video ads, graphic designers can animate products to move either faster or slower.

Jia explains that, "We conducted a series of experiments to examine whether and how the animated movement speed of a product displayed in video ads can influence consumers' size assessment of the product. We found a speed-based scaling effect, meaning that consumers estimate the size of a product to be smaller when the product is animated to move faster in video ads." Moreover, a product's animated movement speed is more likely to color product size assessment for consumers who perceive the product's animated movement pattern as more similar to animals' movement patterns.

The findings offer important implications for marketers, graphic designers, and online advertisers. For products for which a small size is preferred by consumers due to considerations of portability or storage constraint (e.g., mobile devices), practitioners can animate products' movements to be fast in video ads to communicate a small product size. In contrast, for edible products (e.g., food and drinks) and household products (e.g., detergents), consumers generally consider large product size desirable. To summarize the practical value of the research, Kim says, "Practitioners should avoid fast animated movements for these products in video ads if they adopt a value-based positioning such as a larger quantity for the same price. To leverage the speed-based scaling effect, practitioners can animate a product to move like animals' movement patterns."

In the contemporary digital era, consumers are constantly exposed to product videos. When creating video ads, practitioners should be aware of the general negative relationship between animated movement speed and size assessment. Guided by this principle, they can determine the ideal animated movement speeds for their products through speed calibration tests tailored to their products' natures and marketing communication objectives.

Emphysema is a progressive, debilitating lung disease in which the lung's breathing sacs, or alveoli, enlarge, get thinner, and eventually are destroyed as the cells die off. It can be fatal, and there is currently no cure. New research at Boston Children's Hospital, using lung cells and mouse models of emphysema, offers hope in the form of a small, engineered peptide molecule called PR1P. Findings were published July 14 in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology.

The peptide was developed by Avner Adini, PhD, Robert D'Amato, MD, PhD, Benjamin Matthews, MD, and other colleagues in Boston Children's Vascular Biology Program, based on previous research. That research had found that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), known to be key for blood vessel development, also helps to keep lung tissue healthy, and that VEGF signaling goes awry in emphysema, hastening cell death.

"VEGF is found at high levels in the normal lung -- more than 500 times the levels seen in blood plasma," says Adini. "VEGF levels tend to become dramatically disrupted during lung disease, but return to normal during recovery. It is not clear whether VEGF dysregulation is the root cause of lung disease, or the result of the lung pathology. In emphysema, VEGF activity is low."

Maintaining VEGF levels in the lung

The scientists' first thought was to try to give VEGF directly as a therapy, but VEGF has a very short half-life and can potentially produce serious side effects, including low blood pressure, in animal models.

"So we asked, could there be an alternative way to upregulate VEGF signaling to make it more potent, rather than directly boost VEGF concentrations in the lung?" says Adini.

Serendipitously, through previous research on melanoma, Adini discovered a protein called prominin-1 bound directly to VEGF. Using molecular biology and genetic engineering approaches, he and his colleagues fashioned PR1P, a small peptide comprised of the same 12 amino acids that prominin-1 uses to bind to VEGF.

Protecting the lungs in emphysema models

When the team tested PR1P in lung cells and mouse models of emphysema, they found that it protected VEGF from being degraded. In fact, mice that inhaled PR1P had significantly increased VEGF levels in their lungs as early as 30 minutes after treatment. VEGF levels remained twice as high as in control animals 24 hours later.

Importantly, the researchers further found that PR1P reduced apoptosis (programmed cell death, a key feature in emphysema) in both cell cultures and in live mice. Finally, they showed that PR1P reduced lung damage in mice with toxin-induced emphysema that were followed for 4 and 21 days. Although the study was not designed to assess toxicity, they did not observe any adverse effects.

In addition to emphysema, PR1P may have therapeutic potential for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a common and devastating disease which also has no cure and is also characterized by abnormalities in VEGF signaling. Adini and Matthews have funding from the Boston Biomedical Innovation Center (B-BIC) to support their ongoing work to develop PR1P as a therapeutic for both emphysema and ARDS.

"We are now also seeing dramatic lung-preserving and anti-inflammatory effects of inhaled PR1P in mice exposed to multiple diverse toxins that induce lung injury in ARDS models," says Adini.

Clean-up devices that collect waste from the ocean surface won't solve the plastic pollution problem, a new study shows.

Researchers compared estimates of current and future plastic waste with the ability of floating clean-up devices to collect it - and found the impact of such devices was "very modest".
However, river barriers could be more effective and - though they have no impact on plastic already in the oceans - they could reduce pollution "significantly" if used in tandem with surface clean-up technology.

The study - by the University of Exeter, the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, Jacobs University and Making Oceans Plastic Free - focusses on floating plastic, as sunk waste is difficult or impossible to remove depending on size and location.

The authors estimate that the amount of plastic reaching the ocean will peak in 2029, and surface plastic will hit more than 860,000 metric tonnes - more than double the current estimated 399,000 - by 2052 (when previous research suggested the rate of plastic pollution may finally reach zero).

"The important message of this paper is that we can't keep polluting the oceans and hoping that technology will tidy up the mess," said Dr Jesse F. Abrams, of the Global Systems Institute and the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, both at the University of Exeter.

"Even if we could collect all the plastic in the oceans - which we can't - it's really difficult to recycle, especially if plastic fragments have floated for a long time and been degraded or bio-fouled.

"The other major solutions are to bury or burn it - but burying could contaminate the ground and burning leads to extra CO2 emissions to the atmosphere."

Private initiatives proposing to collect plastic from oceans and rivers have gained widespread attention recently.

One such scheme, called the Ocean Cleanup, aims to clean the "Pacific garbage patch" in the next 20 years using 600m floating barriers to collect plastic for recycling or incineration on land.

The new study analysed the impact of deploying 200 such devices, running without downtime for 130 years - from 2020 to 2150.

In this scenario, global floating plastic debris would be reduced by 44,900 metric tonnes - just over 5% of the estimated global total by the end of that period.

"The projected impact of both single and multiple clean up devices is very modest compared to the amount of plastic that is constantly entering the ocean," said Dr Sönke Hohn, of Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research.

"These devices are also relatively expensive to make and maintain per unit of plastic removed."

As most plastic enters the oceans via rivers, the authors say a "complete halt" of such pollution entering the ocean using river barriers - especially in key polluting rivers - could prevent most of the pollution they otherwise predict over the next three decades.

However, due to the importance of large rivers for global shipping, such barriers are unlikely to be installed on a large scale.

Given the difficulty of recycling and the negative impacts of burying or burning plastic, the study says reducing disposal and increasing recycling rates are essential to tackle ocean pollution.
"Plastic is an extremely versatile material with a wide range of consumer and industrial applications, but we need to look for more sustainable alternatives and rethink the way we produce, consume and dispose of plastic," said Professor Agostino Merico, of Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research and Jacobs University.

Dr Roger Spranz, an author of the study, is a co-founder of non-profit organisation Making Oceans Plastic Free.

"We have developed expertise in changing behaviour to break plastic habits and stop plastic pollution at its source," Dr Spranz said.

"We are registered in Germany but the focus of our activities and collaborations is in Indonesia, the second-largest source of marine plastic pollution.

"Working with local partners, the implementation of our Tasini campaign in Indonesia has to date helped to prevent an estimated 20 million plastic bags and 50,000 plastic bottles from ending up in coastal areas and the ocean."

The amount of micro plastic pollution in waters around the Maldives, a global tourist destination known for its beautiful coastline, is amongst the highest in the world and has the potential to severely impact marine life in shallow reefs and threaten the livelihoods of island communities.

Microplastics are pieces of plastic waste that measure less than 5 millimetres long, and due to their often microscopic size are considered invisible water pollutants. Small pieces of plastic can break down over time from plastic bottles, textiles and clothing, remain in the world's oceans.

Marine scientists from Flinders University in Australia recorded the levels of plastic pollution in sand across 22 sites off the coast of Naifaru, the most populous island in Lhaviyani Atoll, to determine how much microplastic is present around the island. Microplastic distribution was found to be ubiquitous in the marine environment, with the results published in Science of the Total Environment journal.

Flinders University Honours student and lead researcher Toby Patti says micro plastics are highly concentrated in waters around Naifaru.

"The concentration of microplastics found on Naifaru in the Maldives (55 -1127.5 microplastics/kg) was greater than those previously found on a highly populated site at Tamil Nadu, India (3 - 611 microplastics/kg), and was a similar concentration to that found on inhabited and uninhabited islands elsewhere in the Maldives (197 -822 particles/kg)."

"The majority of micro plastics found in our study were less than 0.4mm in width, so our results raise concerns about the potential for microplastic ingestion by marine organisms in the shallow coral reef system. The accumulation of microplastics is a serious concern for the ecosystem and the local community living off of these marine resources, and can have a negative impact on human health."

The high levels of microplastics could have been transported by ocean currents from neighbouring countries in the Indian Ocean like India, as well as from Maldivian land reclamation policies, poor sewerage & wastewater systems.

Professor Karen Burke Da Silva says notorious 'rubbish islands' used as landfill sites are also contributing to the high concentration of microplastic found around the island.

"Current waste management practices in the Maldives cannot keep up with population growth and the pace of development. The small island nation encounters several challenges regarding waste management systems and has seen a 58% increase of waste generated per capita on local islands in the last decade," says Professor Burke Da Silva.

"Without a significant increase in waste reduction and rapid improvements in waste management, small island communities will continue to generate high levels of microplastic pollution in marine environments, with potential to negatively impact the health of the ecosystem, marine organisms, and local island communities."

The researchers are now looking at the stomach content of coral reef fish to see if they have bellies full of microplastics in a follow up study.

In a paper published in NANO, a team of researchers from Chengdu Development Center of Science and Technology have significantly enhanced the performance of titanium niobium oxides for lithium-ion batteries. This has applications in electric vehicles and mobile electronics.

Due to its high security and capacity, titanium niobium oxide (TNO) has gained much attention as anode material for lithium-ion batteries. Yet, its electronic conductivity is too low to have high capability at high rates. In order to improve the high-rate performance of TNO effectively, a team of researchers from Chengdu Development Center of Science and Technology, China Academy of Engineering Physics, has combined utilized crystal structure modification, particle size reduction, porous structure, and conductive-phase compositing to solve this problem. The electrochemical performance, especially high-rate performance, of the material was significantly enhanced.

Ti2Nb10O29-x/HRGO hybrid was successfully fabricated by introducing vacancies into Ti2Nb10O29 (TNO) and hybridizing TNO with holey reduced graphene oxide. The structure of TNOx/HRGO is TNOx microspheres with oxygen vacancies wrapped by gossamer-like HRGO. Electrochemical measurements confirmed that TNOx/HRGO hybrid exhibited excellent reversible capacity of 316 mAh/g, 278 mAh/g, 242 mAh/g, 225 mAh/g, and 173 mAh/g at 1 C, 5 C, 10 C, 20 C, and 40 C, respectively. After 300 cycles at 10 C, it still has a high capacity of 238 mAh/g with a high capacity retention of 98%, revealing excellent cycling stability.

The oxygen vacancies of TNOx and the high conductivity of HRGO can effectively enhance the electronic conductivity of the TNOx/HRGO hybrid, and the HRGO holes are beneficial for the transmission of lithium-ion (Li+). The synergy effect of above features improves the rate performance of the TNOx/HRGO hybrid. In addition, the existence of HRGO can buffer volume expansion during the insertion processes of Li+, which can improve cyclic stability of the TNOx/HRGO hybrid.

In this paper, combined utilization of several methods is proved to be an effective way to improve the electrochemical performance of TNO. Ti2Nb10O29-x/HRGO hybrid can be a potential anode material for lithium-ion storage with high security and high capacity, as well as excellent high-rate and cycle performance.

All the chemical elements in the universe, except for hydrogen and most of the helium, were produced inside stars. But among them there are a few (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur and phosphorus) which are particularly interesting because they are basic to life as we know it on Earth. Phosphorus is of special interest because it forms part of the DNA and RNA molecules and is a necessary element in the energetic interchange within cells, and for the development of their membranes.

The study published in Nature, based on an analysis of a large number of infrared spectra (in the H band, with APOGEE) from the public data base of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, could offer a clear set of promising stellar candidates to clarify the origin and the quantity observed of phosphorus in the Galaxy, and specifically, in our Solar System, which until now none of the current models of Galactic chemical evolution have been able to explain.

However, the peculiar chemistry which these stars show is still disconcerting. In fact, not only are they rich in phosphorus, but also in certain other elements, such as magnesium, silicon, oxygen, aluminium and even of heavier elements such as cerium. Suprisingly, after an extensive analysis of all the possible stellar sources and processes known to form chemical elements in the interiors of stars, this chemical pattern is not predicted by the current theories of stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis.

"These results show that not only are we dealing with a new type of objects, but that their discovery opens the way for the exploration of new physical mechanisms and nuclear reactions which occur in stellar interiors" explains IAC researcher Thomas Masseron, the leader of the project and the first author of the article.

"It could be an important clue about the origin of the phosphorus, which is a fundamental component of life", says Aníbal García-Hernández, another IAC researcher, who is the second author of the article.

In addition, thanks to Spanish service time, they could obtain the optical spectrum of the most brilliant of the phosphorus stars with the Echelle spectrograph (FIES) on the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, (Garafía, La Palma).

"This spectrum allowed us to obtain the chemical abundances of further elements in these stars which are peculiar and rich in phosphorus, and to rule out definitively any known stellar candidate which could explain the stars which are rich in this elements", indicates Olga Zamora, a co-author of the article, and an IAC support astronomer.

"A discovery which is so unexpected and extraordinary could not have been made without a close interdisciplinary collaboration between astronomers and experts in computation", points out Arturo Manchado, an IAC research and a co-author of the article.

A hallmark of summer, monarch butterflies are a familiar sight in the Midwest, and many butterfly enthusiasts are eager to do what they can to support the declining monarch population. A new study at the University of Chicago provides new insight into the effects that raising monarchs in captivity might have on their ability to migrate south at the end of the summer, and cautions that some methods could have a detrimental impact on the population.

Recognizable by their lacy orange and black wings, monarch butterflies are famous for their seasonal migration. Each fall, millions of monarchs fly from Canada and the northern U.S. south to California and Mexico, where they overwinter before returning north in the spring.

UChicago's Ay?e Tenger-Trolander and Marcus Kronforst, PhD, have been looking into how environmental triggers and genetic variation affect migration behavior. In a 2019 study, they, along with other members of the Kronforst lab, found that a group of commercially bred monarch butterflies seemed to be worse at orienting south than their wild-bred counterparts, spelling trouble for their ability to migrate correctly. What's more, they found that these commercial monarchs had a completely different genetic profile than the wild ones -- likely because commercial-bred monarchs don't have to face the selective pressure of that annual migration.

But that led to more questions. "We published the paper, and other people pointed out that when they tagged commercially bred monarchs before releasing them into the wild, some of them would show up in the overwintering grounds in Mexico," said Kronforst, a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. "We wanted to know what that meant, and at the same time, we wanted to see if we could figure out what environmental cues were necessary to tell monarchs that it's time to start flying south."

The new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on August 5, 2020, had two components: one looked more closely at the flight behaviors of individual commercially bred monarchs by tracking their flights repeatedly, and the other at the effects of natural sunlight exposure on the migration behavior of wild-bred monarch butterflies.

Using a new strategy of testing the flight behavior of commercially derived butterflies repeatedly, Tenger-Trolander noticed something interesting. "We discovered that it's not that all individuals in the population have completely lost the ability to orient south," said the graduate student. "We found that if you repeatedly test the same individuals over and over again, a proportion of the population do repeatedly fly south. What this means is that while the population on average doesn't seem to show the same drive to fly south, some individuals do still have that response."

The researchers say that these results should provoke caution from the monarch-rearing community when it comes to raising and releasing commercially derived butterflies. "These results indicate that mass-rearing butterflies as a response to the declining monarch population may not be the best approach," Tenger-Trolander said. "Breeding monarchs in large facilities could be having unintended effects on their genetics that makes it harder for the butterflies to fly south, and we should be careful about introducing that trait into the wild population."

But what about wild-bred monarch butterflies? Could eggs and caterpillars taken from a wild environment, as opposed to a commercial producer, be better for the population?

Previous research had found that simply raising monarchs in an environmental chamber that mimicked early fall weather wasn't enough to trigger proper migratory behavior; even monarchs that were sourced from the wild population had a hard time orienting south.

To further pick apart the cues that trigger migration, the researchers opted to raise the wild monarchs in a greenhouse, where the butterflies were exposed to true sunlight throughout the day, as well as raising the insects in the lab near a south-facing window and in a large outdoor cage.

To their surprise, the natural light wasn't enough to trigger the appropriate orienting behavior. Compared to the monarch butterflies raised in the outdoor cages, the ones raised in the greenhouse were worse at flying south.

"This isn't what we expected to happen," Tenger-Trolander said. "This shows us that even if you're working with wild-derived butterflies and providing them with the same environmental and sunlight conditions they would be exposed to outdoors, they still require some unknown cues that we haven't been able to replicate indoors."

While the researchers are stumped for the moment, they have plans to continue working on this question to see if they can determine what environmental conditions are necessary to tell monarch butterflies when to migrate.

"In the fall, you have a lot of potential cues telling the butterflies it's time to go," said Tenger-Trolander. "Is it the sunlight, is it the location of the sun in the sky, is it a change in the plants or in the temperature? Is one of those cues the most critical, or is it a combination? Is there a critical period during the monarch's life cycle for these cues to have the right effect? We just don't know."

Kronforst said they're still trying to figure out what cues are necessary for this behavior and to see if they can dissect which genes are controlling it. "And then the next big question will be, can we rewire a monarch that doesn't want to migrate so that it will orient south properly?"

The researchers say that these results can help inform best practices for those at-home monarch enthusiasts who want to raise the butterflies themselves.

"Raising monarchs can be so educational," said Tenger-Trolander. "Kids get to see this weird, magical process happening right in front of their eyes. It creates a lot of people who are interested in conservation and science, who then go on to become activists for maintaining important habitats for many different species. But the big unanswered question is whether breeding monarchs in captivity or rearing wild caterpillars at home bad for the wild population."

"There are a lot of pros to having people raise monarchs, and it's something a lot of people like to do," Kronforst said. "These results lend support to the idea that if people are interested in raising these butterflies, they should try and keep those conditions as natural as possible, because it's going to lead to healthier insects that are more likely to become migratory, and to make the migration successfully."

Renowned journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B has a new front cover fish: the marine angelfish. It commands star power due to a new study highlighting the remarkably high incidence of and tendency for hybridisation in this family (even between divergent species), more so than in any other group of coral reef fishes.

Hybridisation refers to the process by which two different species mate and produce hybrid offspring.

The research was led by Yi-Kai (Kai) Tea, PhD candidate at the University of Sydney's School of Life and Environmental Sciences.

He and his colleagues, Professors Nathan Lo and Simon Ho, Dr Joseph DiBattista from the Australian Museum, Jean-Paul Hobbs from the University of Queensland, and Federico Vitelli from Edith Cowan University, sought to explore why only some fishes create hybrids, and the factors that facilitate this.

After deciding to focus on "one of the most charismatic and iconic groups of coral reef fishes", the marine angelfish, they found that 42 species - nearly half of all known species of marine angelfishes - create hybrids.

"This is among the highest incidences of hybridisation in coral reef fishes," Mr Tea said.

Near-opposites attract

"We also found that hybrids are frequently produced even between angelfish species that are distantly related to each other; some separated by over 10 million years in evolutionary time."

Other hybrids were found between species with over 12 percent pairwise distance in mitochondrial DNA. Pairwise distance is a measurement of differences in pairs of DNA sequences.

"This genetic separation is quite astounding, considering that hybrids are rarely reported between species that share more than 2 percent in genetic distance," Mr Tea said. "Though coral reef fish hybrids are common; they are usually formed by closely-related species."

Boundless hybridisation

A third key finding was that angelfish hybridise wherever different species exist. This contrasts with other coral reef fishes, which tend to only hybridise within certain zones of their shared habitats.

"In terms of coral reef fish hybridisation, much remains unanswered, particularly in the context of why, and how hybrids are formed. We still don't know why some species hybridise and others don't. For example, the regal angelfish, Pygoplites diacanthus, is found throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans, yet no hybrids have ever been reported for this species," Mr Tea said.
"In terms of cracking the secrets to hybridisation in coral reefs, we've only just scratched the surface."

Smart home technologies are marketed to enhance your home and make life easier. However, UK consumers are not convinced that they can trust the privacy and security of these technologies, a study by WMG, University of Warwick has shown.Smart Home technology

The 'smart home' can be defined as the integration of Internet-enabled, digital devices with sensors and machine learning in the home. The aim of smart home devices is to provide enhanced entertainment services, easier management of the home, domestic chores and protection from domestic risks. They can be found in devices such as smart speakers and hubs, lighting, sensors, door locks and cameras, central heating thermostats and domestic appliances.

To better understand consumers perceptions of the desirability of the smart home, researchers from WMG and Computer Science, University of Warwick have carried out a nationally representative survey of UK consumers designed to measure adoption and acceptability, focusing on awareness, ownership, experience, trust, satisfaction and intention to use.

The article 'Trust in the smart home: Findings from a nationally representative survey in the UK' published in the top journal PLOS ONE reveals their results, with the main finding that the businesses proposal of added meaning and value when adopting the smart home have not yet achieved closure from consumers, as they have highlighted concern for risks to privacy and security.

Researchers sent 2101 participants a survey, with questions to assess:

- Awareness of the Internet of Things (IoT)

- Current ownership of smart home devices

- Experiences of their use of smart home devices

- Trust in the reliability and competence of the devices

- Trust in privacy

- Trust in security

- Satisfaction and intention to use the devices in the future, and intention to recommend it to others

The findings suggest consumers had anxiety about the likelihood of a security incident, as overall people tend to mildlySmart home tehnology agree that they are likely to risk privacy as well as security breach when using smart home devices, in other words they are unconvinced that their privacy and security will not be at risk when they use smart home devices.

It also emerged that when asked to evaluate the impact of a privacy breach people tend to disagree that its impact will be low, suggesting they expect the impact of a privacy breach to be significant. This emerges as a prominent factor influencing whether or not they would adopt smart home technology, furthermore making it less likely.

Other interesting results highlight:

- More females than males have adopted smart home devices over the last year, possibly as they tend to run the house and find the technology helpful

- Young people ages 18-24) were the earliest adopters of smart home technology, however older people (ages 65+) also adopted it early, possibly as they have more disposable income and less responsibilities - e.g. no mortgage, no dependent children

- People aged 65 and over are less willing to use smart home devices in case of unauthorised data collection compared to younger people, indicating younger people are less aware of privacy breaches

- Less well-educated people are the least interested in using smart home devices in the future, and that these might constitute market segments that will be lost to smart home adoption, unless their concerns are specifically addressed and targeted by policymakers and businesses.

Dr Sara Cannizzaro, from WMG, University of Warwick comments:Dr Sara Cannizzaro, WMG, University of Warwick

"Our study underlines how businesses and policymakers will need to work together to act on the sociotechnical affordances of smart home technology in order to increase consumers' trust. This intervention is necessary if barriers to adoption and acceptability of the smart home are to be addressed now and in the future.

"Proof of cybersecurity and low risk to privacy breaches will be key in smart home technology companies persuading a number of consumers to invest in their technology."

Professor Rob Procter, from the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, adds:Professor Rob Procter, Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick

"Businesses are still actively promoting positive visions of what the smart home means for consumers (e.g., convenience, economy, home security)... However, at the same time, as we see from our survey results, consumers are actively comparing their interactional experiences against these visions and are coming up with different interpretations and meanings from those that business is trying to promote."

A new theory from psychologists at the University of Bath argues that how we communicate online, including via email and social media, reveals much about our personality and character types.

In an open letter for the journal Molecular Autism, the researchers at Bath and Cardiff highlight clear differences in electronic communication styles between autistic and non-autistic people. And they say these findings have wider relevance about how we communicate online and for being respectful of others’ communication styles.

By looking at the ways in which email style differed between two groups, the researchers observed fewer social niceties and less preamble in emails from autistic people (e.g. ‘I hope you are well’), yet a stronger and polite observance of formal address, (e.g. ‘Dear Dr…’).

In autistic people, they noticed considerable attention to detail, often demonstrated by participants correcting the researcher, by highlighting grammatical errors or broken hyperlinks. But autistic people were also more open to correcting themselves, for example if they found spelling mistakes in their previous emails. Non-autistic people rarely seemed to make these corrections, likely fearing they would appear rude or silly.

They also noted that many autistic people communicated in precise, though socially unconventional ways (for example referring to their arrival time for a meeting as 14:08 or describing a meeting point with map coordinates). Such interactions almost never occurred when emails were exchanged with non-autistic people.

The analysis, say the researchers, is important for all of us – not just those with autism - in thinking about how we might better adapt our own styles and be more respectful of others. The researchers say that the autistic email style is far from a weakness and that we could benefit from adopting a more direct, efficient, and precise autistic-like style in our emails.

Dr Punit Shah from the Department of Psychology at Bath explained: “There is no right or wrong way to email, but there are definitely different email styles and that can be revealing of a whole host of characteristics. Our work only looked at the differences between non-autistic and autistic people, but this topic has much wider relevance and application. In a world where we are increasingly reliant on email communication, how we communicate online really matters.

“Some people may bash off emails in seconds, with little care for polite preamble, formalities, or spelling. But we must try not to read too much into how something is said and focus more on its function. We should also be more willing to give people ‘the benefit of the doubt’ if they seem rude as we don’t know about their social-communication differences, potentially related to autism, or other contextual factors that might have influenced their electronic communication, for example managing child care while emailing remotely from home.

“On the other hand, for some people with autism and many others in society more generally, writing emails to friends and colleagues, or posting to social media can be challenging. For some people, this can create a block where, for fear of an ‘email faux pas’, they become unresponsive online. This can be problematic, potentially leading to feelings of stress and anxiety.

“In our fast-paced online world we will hopefully become as tolerant and respectful of different electronic communication styles as we are of social differences in face-to-face communications.”

To read the open letter ‘Electronic communication in autism spectrum conditions’ see https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-020-00329-2.

Journal

Molecular Autism

DOI

10.1186/s13229-020-00329-2

Both in the periphery and the center of lung tumors, characteristic accumulations of certain white blood cells, known as macrophages, are often found. In this case they are called tumor-associated macrophages. There are two populations with opposite effects on the tumor: while one is tumor-promoting, the second macrophage population inhibits cancer growth. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research and the Justus Liebig University in Giessen have now been able to show that identifying the position and density of the two cell populations in the tumor tissue make it possible to predict the course of the disease. This discovery may lead to new therapeutic possibilities.

Immune cells significantly influence the course of tumors. Depending on the cell type, they can both promote and inhibit tumor growth. This is particularly true for a group of macrophages, which accumulate in the tumor center or the peripheral areas in sometimes large numbers. Depending on their activation state, these so-called tumor-associated macrophages can have a positive or negative influence on the course of the disease.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research and the Justus Liebig University in Giessen discovered that the accumulation of a subpopulation of tumor-associated macrophages in a certain area can lead to conclusions about the further course of the tumor disease. Rajkumar Savai, project leader in the department "Development and Remodelling of the Lung" and member of the Centre for Internal Medicine at Justus Liebig University explains: "With lung tumors, it is usually possible to distinguish the center of the tumor from the peripheral area. Because a particularly large number of immune cells migrate to the latter, we refer to this area as the invasive tumor margin".

For their study, the researchers used an elaborated microscopy technique known as multiplex immunofluorescence microscopy. By this technique, macrophages could be safely identified. Furthermore their distance from neighbouring tumour cells was analysed. In addition, the Max Planck researchers divided these cells into tumor-promoting and tumor-inhibiting tumor-associated macrophages based on certain properties. "We found that more tumor-promoting cells were found in the invasive border area of the tumor than tumor-inhibiting cells. Moreover, they were located more adjacent to the tumor cells," said Savai. "Based on tissue samples from more than a hundred patients, we were then able to identify a pattern."

According to this study, the survival rate in lung cancer patients was lower, in particular when the tumor-promoting macrophages in the invasive marginal areas were particularly close to the tumor cells and at the same time tumor-inhibiting macrophages were further away. The cell number also had an influence on the prognosis of the patients: "If there were fewer tumor-inhibiting macrophages in the tumor center, patients had a lower probability for surviving. Overall, we found more tumor-promoting macrophages than tumor-inhibiting macrophages," Savai said.

The fact that tumor-promoting and tumor-inhibiting macrophages actually have different activity patterns was shown when the Bad Nauheim scientists sequenced the cells' RNA. "We found that the two cell variants had very different gene expression profiles, even when compared with macrophages from outside the tumor tissue," said Savai. The researchers identified five candidates for biomarkers that could be used to predict survival in lung cancer. "These biomarkers could prove to be very helpful for the individual treatment strategy of lung cancer patients," emphasizes Friedrich Grimminger, head of the Giessen Lung Tumor Center and director of the Medical Clinic IV/V at Justus Liebig University. "Based on characteristic gene expression profiles of the tumor-associated macrophages, we have also identified factors in this study that offer themselves as new target structures for specific therapeutic approaches," adds Werner Seeger, Director of the Department "Development and Reconstruction of the Lung" at the Max Planck Institute and the Medical Clinic II of Justus Liebig University.

The glacial history of the Antarctic is currently one of the most important topics in climate research. Why? Because worsening climate change raises a key question: How did the ice masses of the southern continent react to changes between cold and warm phases in the past, and how will they do so in the future? A team of international experts, led by geophysicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), has now shed new light on nine pivotal intervals in the climate history of the Antarctic, spread over 34 million years, by reconstructing the depth of the Southern Ocean in each one. These new maps offer insights into e.g. the past courses of ocean currents, and show that, in past warm phases, the large ice sheets of East Antarctica reacted to climate change in a similar way to how ice sheets in West Antarctica are doing so today. The maps and the freely available article have just been released in the online journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, a publication of the American Geological Union.

The Southern Ocean is one of the most important pillars of the Earth's climate system. Its Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the most powerful current on the planet, links the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and has effectively isolated the Antarctic continent and its ice masses from the rest of the world for over 30 million years. Then and now, ocean currents can only flow where the water is sufficiently deep and there are no obstacles like land bridges, islands, underwater ridges and plateaus blocking their way. Accordingly, anyone seeking to understand the climate history and glacial history of the Antarctic needs to know exactly what the depth and surface structures of the Southern Ocean's floor looked like in the distant past.

Researchers around the globe can now find this information in new, high-resolution grid maps of the ocean floor and data-modelling approaches prepared by a team of international experts led by geoscientists from the AWI, which cover nine pivotal intervals in the climate history of the Antarctic. "In the course of the Earth's history, the geography of the Southern Ocean has constantly changed, as continental plates collided or drifted apart, ridges and seamounts formed, ice masses shoved deposited sediments across the continental shelves like bulldozers, and meltwater transported sediment from land to sea," says AWI geophysicist and co-author Dr Karsten Gohl. Each process changed the ocean's depth and, in some cases, the currents. The new grid maps clearly show how the surface structure of the ocean floor evolved over 34 million years - at a resolution of ca. 5 x 5 kilometres per pixel, making them 15 times more precise than previous models.

Dataset reflects the outcomes of 40 years of geoscientific research in the Antarctic

In order to reconstruct the past water depths, the experts gathered geoscientific field data from 40 years of Antarctic research, which they then combined in a computer model of the Southern Ocean's seafloor. The basis consisted of seismic profiles gathered during over 150 geoscientific expeditions and which, when put end-to-end, cover half a million kilometres. In seismic reflection, sound waves are emitted, penetrating the seafloor to a depth of several kilometres. The reflected signal is used to produce an image of the stratified sediment layers below the surface - a bit like cutting a piece of cake, which reveals the individual layers. The experts then compared the identified layers with sediment cores from the corresponding regions, which allowed them to determine the ages of most layers. In a final step, they used a computer model to 'turn back time' and calculate which sediment deposits were already present in the Southern Ocean at specific intervals, and to what depths in the seafloor they extended in the respective epochs.

Turning points in the climate history of the Antarctic

They applied this approach to nine key intervals in the Antarctic's climate history, including e.g. the warm phase of the early Pliocene, five million years ago, which is widely considered to be a potential template for our future climate. Back then the world was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer on average than today, partly because the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was as high as 450 ppm (parts per million). The IPCC (IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, 2019) has cited this concentration as the best-case scenario for the year 2100; in June 2019 the level was 415 ppm. Back then, the Antarctic ice shelves now floating on the ocean had most likely completely collapsed. "Based on the sediment deposits we can tell, for example, that in extremely warm epochs like the Pliocene, the large ice sheets in East Antarctica reacted in a very similar way to what we're currently seeing in ice sheets in West Antarctica," reports Dr Katharina Hochmuth, the study's first author and a former AWI geophysicist, who is now conducting research at the University of Leicester, UK.

Accordingly, the new maps provide data on important climatic conditions that researchers around the world need in order to accurately simulate the development of ice masses in their ice-sheet and climate models, and to produce more reliable forecasts. Researchers can also download the corresponding datasets from the AWI's Earth system database PANGAEA.

In addition to researchers from the AWI, experts from the following institutions took part in the study: (1) All Russia Scientific Research Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the Ocean, St. Petersburg, Russia; (2) St. Petersburg State University, Russia; (3) University of Tasmania, Australia; (4) GNS Science, Lower Hutt, New Zealand; and (5) the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics, Italy.

The grid maps depict the geography of the Southern Ocean in the following key intervals in the climate history and glacial history of the Antarctic:

(1) 34 million years ago - transition from the Eocene to the early Oligocene; the first continental-size ice sheet on Antarctic continent

(2) 27 million years ago - the early Oligocene;

(3) 24 million years ago - transition from the Oligocene to the Miocene;

(4) 21 million years ago - the early Miocene;

(5) 14 million years ago - the mid-Miocene, Miocene Climatic Optimum (mean global temperature ca. 4 degrees Celsius warmer than today; high carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere);

(6) 10.5 million years ago - the late Miocene, major continental-scale glaciation;

(7) 5 million years ago - the early Pliocene (mean global temperature ca. 2 - 3 degrees Celsius warmer than today; high carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere);

(8) 2.65 million years ago - transition from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene;

(9) 0.65 million years ago - the Pleistocene.

The data on sediment cores was gathered in geoscientific research projects conducted in connection with the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, and International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP).

Banks with powerful CEO's and smaller, less independent, boards are more likely to take risks and be susceptible to money laundering, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

The study tested for a link between bank risk and enforcements issued by US regulators for money laundering in a sample of 960 publicly listed US banks during the period 2004-2015.

The results, published in the International Journal of Finance and Economics, show that money laundering enforcements are associated with an increase in bank risk on several measures of risk. In addition, the impact of money laundering is heightened by the presence of powerful CEOs and only partly mitigated by large and independent executive boards.

Researchers Dr Yurtsev Uymaz and Prof John Thornton at UEA, and Dr Yener Altunbas of Bangor University, conclude that banks with powerful CEOs warrant the particular attention of regulators engaged in anti-money laundering efforts, especially when boards of directors are small and not independent.

The study is believed to be the first to show that money laundering is also a significant driver of bank risk, alongside banks' business models and ownership structures, the regulatory and supervisory framework, and market competition.

Previously banking research on the determinants of risk-taking has largely ignored the potential role of money laundering, which the authors say is surprising given combatting money laundering is a major focus of US, and other, bank regulators concerned with the stability of the financial system.

For example, the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency views it as posing risks to the safety and soundness of the financial industry and the safety of the nation more generally as terrorists employ money laundering to fund their operations.

The Financial Action Task Force, the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, also cites changes in money demand and increased volatility of international capital flows and exchange rates due to unanticipated cross-border asset transfers as being among the potential adverse economic consequences of money laundering.

Lead author Dr Uymaz, of UEA's Norwich Business School, said: "It is important to understand all possible risks, given those from money laundering have been increased by the growth in volume of cross-border transactions that have made banks inherently more vulnerable.

"They are also impacted by the fact that regulators are continually revising rules as their focus expands from organized crime to terrorism, while governments have expanded their use of economic sanctions to target individual countries, entities, and even specific individuals as part of their foreign policies.

"Money laundering exposes banks to serious reputational, operational, and compliance risks that could result in significant financial costs, for example through fines and sanctions by regulators, claims against the bank, investigation costs, asset seizures and freezes, and loan losses. It also results in the diversion of valuable management time and operational resources to resolve money laundering-related problems.

"We show that board size and independence can mitigate but not fully offset the impact of money laundering on bank risk, and that powerful CEOs impact adversely on bank risk taking and accentuate the negative impact of money laundering on risk."

The authors use three measures of bank risk. The first is default risk, the assumption being that money laundering enforcements could lead to the failure of an individual bank because of reputational damage and/or the impact of severe financial penalties on bank capital.

The second measure is systematic risk, where, for example, money laundering in the banking sector could be so widespread so as not to be diversifiable against within the sector.

The final one is a measure of systemic risk, which captures the reaction of individual banks to systemic events, for example if financial penalties and other costs associated with enforcements because of money laundering have debilitated the bank.