Culture

This week, we see the publication of the first papers in PLOS Medicine's special issue on nutrition in maternal and child health, advised by Guest Editors Dr. Lars Åke Persson of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and based at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, Addis Ababa; Dr. Kathleen M. Rasmussen of the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; and Dr. Huixia Yang of Peking University First Hospital and the Chinese Association of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

In many parts of the world maternal and child health outcomes are increasingly impacted by indirect causes, many of which are related to nutrition. Women with diabetes, anemia or who are overweight are at a higher risk of childbirth-related complications. Their newborns, in turn, are also at a higher risk of experiencing adverse health outcomes later in life. With nearly one in three persons in the world suffering from at least one form of malnutrition - from undernutrition to obesity via diet-related non-communicable diseases - and infant nutrition being crucial particularly in the first 1,000 days of life, this Special Issue will focus on these topics with impactful research content.

In a Research article, Jane L Tarry-Adkins and colleagues reveal that babies born to mothers with gestational diabetes who are treated with metformin are likely to be of a lower birthweight than babies whose mothers are treated with insulin. Significantly, the children exposed to metformin are heavier than the insulin-exposed children at 18-24 months. Knowing that there is an increased risk of CVD and diabetes for children who undergo 'catch up' growth, it will be important to understand if these risks apply to children exposed to metformin.

Sophie E Moore and colleagues present the results of their trial to test whether nutritional supplements for pregnant women in a rural region of The Gambia improve a child's immune response. 875 women were randomised to receive one of 4 supplements: standard care of iron and folic acid (FeFol); FeFol plus multiple micronutrients; FeFol plus protein-energy; or FeFol plus protein-energy and micronutrients. Infants were vaccinated at 8, 12 and 16 weeks of age with the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine and those whose mothers had received the combined FeFol, micronutrient and protein-energy supplement showed improved vaccine responses. This is a striking example of how a mother's nutritional status can impact a child beyond pregnancy and any immediate birth outcomes.

With much focus recently on complications occurring from obesity during pregnancy such as gestational diabetes - and the subsequent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes - as well as increased risk of adiposity in children, there is increased awareness of the need for a healthy BMI at the start of pregnancy. Zainab Akhter and colleagues, in their systematic review and meta-analysis, reveal the increased risk of having a smaller size for gestational age baby and increased risk of preterm birth for mothers who have bariatric surgery prior to pregnancy. These findings indicate the need for additional nutritional support before conception and during pregnancy, and increased monitoring throughout pregnancy.

The issue will continue over the coming weeks with further research papers - to view the papers, visit our Special Issue Collection.

Where there's a will to peddle soybeans in the global marketplace, there's a way, even if a trade war creates roadblocks.

In the recent issue of the international open-access journal Sustainability, Michigan State University (MSU) scholars apply a new, more holistic way to examine global agricultural trade to better understand what's going on when a country as enormous as China develops a big appetite for soybeans.

In 2017, China imported 95.5 million metric tons of soybeans, worth nearly $40 billion -- 67% of the world's soybean supply. That trade comes with cascading economic and environmental consequences as countries change the way they use their land and natural resources to meet the demand.

Anna Herzberger, a PhD candidate and fourth-generation farmer from central Illinois, and her colleagues applied the integrated framework of metacoupling to understand the true extent of global soybean trade. The framework, which examines socioeconomic and environmental interactions within as well as between distant and adjacent places, allow researchers to consider input from a variety of disciplines, and then model interactions and reactions that can be compared to reality.

In addition to being part of a farming family, Herzberger has studied soybean farming practices in China's primary agricultural region in the northeastern Heilongjiang Province. She comments on those two worlds in FromTheFarm.org, which includes a recent post putting today's farmer concerns over soybean trade in both a historical and pro boxing context.

"In a time when international trade is being targeted by increased tariffs, it's even more important to understand the true impact of these tariffs across the world," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and director of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. "We can't understand the full impact - both socioeconomically and environmentally - of trade and trade restrictions until we look at the cascading consequences of production that is driven by internal, adjacent, and distant demands."

The results, reported in "Telecoupled Food Trade Affects Pericoupled Trade and Intracoupled Production," show that the perception that Chinese swelling demand for foreign soybeans plays out only in Brazil is a limited view. Brazil has displaced the United States as China's top soybean importer. With that distinction comes more conversion of forestland to cropland or shifts from planting other crops in favor of soybeans.

But the MSU team shows the changes don't end there. A closer look at the policies and planting decisions of neighbors show that some soybeans exported from Brazil were not grown in Brazil. Neighboring South American countries like Paraguay and Argentina restrict trading with China, yet their soybeans flow into Brazil as Brazil is shipping record amounts of soybeans to China.

"We're masking the true extent of China's demands when we only consider Brazil," Herzberger said. "We need to consider that what Brazil export in fact in part comes from other countries, which in turn points us to greater impacts that extend to Brazil's neighbors, even though some of those neighbors put in policies to avoid their markets being driven by China's market."

When President Donald Trump signed an executive order in May banning US companies from trading information and communications technology with foreign businesses deemed a national security risk, it effectively prevented Chinese telecom giant Huawei from acquiring the American technology that it needs to market its products. On July 26th, China threatened to blacklist FedEx from the Chinese market. The same week, Europe began testing an alternative financial clearing system to circumvent US sanctions against Iran, and Russia has said that it wants to join. Japan and South Korea are drifting toward a low-level economic war, after Japan restricted key chemicals needed by the South Korean tech industry in retaliation for South Korean demands for reparations. And on August 5, the Dow plunged 3% in response to China's retaliatory devaluation of the yuan.

These incidents make clear that we are in a new era in which one nation's economic interdependence on another can be wielded as a political weapon--a phenomenon described as "weaponized interdependence" by Henry Farrell (George Washington University) and Abraham L. Newman (Georgetown University) in a new article in International Security. (Read "Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion": https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/isec_a_00351)

This pathbreaking research illuminates how powerful states exert leverage over key products, services, or materials, and use their influence for coercive ends in the globalized economy. Weaponized interdependence flips the script on the typical globalization story popularized by Thomas Friedman ("...the world is flat...") of decentralized, flat business networks that neutralize state power and make global business king. What Farrell and Newman's research shows is that in many cases, economic networks rely on central points of exchange. While businesses created these network hubs for efficiency, powerful states now realize that they can turn these hubs into pressure points.

"The very networks of globalization that were supposed to liberate business and bring peace have become a yoke on business and a source of coercion," says Newman. "The practice of weaponized interdependence has important implications for international relations because it requires researchers and policymakers to take the geostrategic consequences of economic interdependence more seriously."

"We live in an interdependent world, but one where the dependencies are asymmetric," adds Farrell. "Some countries--most prominently the US--are able to cut businesses or even entire countries out of these global networks, with profound economic impact. If states overuse their control of central economic networks, however, they run the risk that other actors will start to push back or even create their own alternatives."

The practice of weaponized interdependence has a profound impact on a number of hot-button issues, including the future of secondary sanctions against Iran, the 5G debate concerning Huawei and China, the possible unraveling of global supply chains, and the future of US economic power more generally.

For Morgan Kaplan, executive editor of International Security, agenda-setting scholarship like this is imperative for understanding US national security and economic policy. "'Weaponized Interdependence' encourages us to reinvestigate the important role of economics in understanding traditional security issues of global importance," explains Kaplan. "International Security is proud to provide a venue for key works highlighting the intersection of business, globalization, and security politics."

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- We now know the DNA of guacamole.

Scientists have sequenced the avocado genome, shedding light on the ancient origins of this buttery fruit and laying the groundwork for future improvements to farming.

With regard to modern affairs, the study reveals for the first time that the popular Hass avocado inherited about 61 percent of its DNA from Mexican varieties and about 39 percent from Guatemalan ones. (Avocados come in many types, but Hass -- first planted in the 1920s -- comprises the bulk of avocados grown around the world.)

The research also provides vital reference material for learning about the function of individual avocado genes, and for using genetic engineering to boost productivity of avocado trees, improve disease resistance and create fruit with new tastes and textures.

The study is important for agriculture. The growing global market for avocados was worth about $13 billion in 2017, with Mexico, the largest producer, exporting some $2.5 billion worth of the fruit that year, according to Statista, a provider of market and consumer data. Around the world, avocados are spread on tortillas, mashed up to flavor toast, rolled into sushi and blended into milkshakes (a popular treat in parts of Southeast Asia).

Scientists sequenced not only the Hass avocado, but also avocados from Mexico, Guatemala and the West Indies, which are each home to genetically distinct, native cultivars of the fruit.

The project was led by the National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity (LANGEBIO) in Mexico, Texas Tech University, and the University at Buffalo. The research was published on Aug. 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Avocado is a crop of enormous importance globally, but particularly to Mexico. Although most people will have only tasted Hass or a couple of other types, there are a huge number of great avocado varieties in the species' Mexican center of diversity, but few people will have tried them unless they travel south of the U.S. border. These varieties are genetic resources for avocado's future. We needed to sequence the avocado genome to make the species accessible to modern genomic-assisted breeding efforts," says Luis Herrera-Estrella, PhD, President's Distinguished Professor of Plant Genomics at Texas Tech University, who conceived of the study and completed much of the work at LANGEBIO, where he is Emeritus Professor, prior to joining Texas Tech University.

"Our study sets the stage for understanding disease resistance for all avocados," says Victor Albert, PhD, Empire Innovation Professor of Biological Sciences in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and a Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore). Albert was another leader of the study with Herrera-Estrella. "If you have an interesting tree that looks like it's good at resisting fungus, you can go in and look for genes that are particularly active in this avocado. If you can identify the genes that control resistance, and if you know where they are in the genome, you can try to change their regulation. There's major interest in developing disease-resistant rootstock on which elite cultivars are grafted."

The family history of an eccentric, big-pitted fruit

While the avocado rose to international popularity only in the 20th century, it has a storied history as a source of sustenance in Central America and South America, where it has long been a feature of local cuisines. Hundreds of years ago, for example, Aztecs mashed up avocados to make a sauce called āhuacamolli.

Before that, in prehistoric times, avocados, with their megapits, may have been eaten by megafauna like giant sloths. (It's thought that these animals could have helped to disperse avocados by pooping out the seeds in distant locations, Albert says.)

The new study peers even further back into time. It uses genomics to investigate the family history of the avocado, known to scientists as Persea americana. "We study the genomic past of avocado to design the future of this strategic crop for Mexico," Herrera-Estrella said. "The long life cycle of avocado makes breeding programs difficult, so genomic tools will make it possible to create faster and more effective breeding programs for the improvement of this increasingly popular fruit."

The avocado belongs to a relatively small group of plants called magnoliids, which diverged from other flowering plant species about 150 million years ago. The new research supports -- but does not prove -- the hypothesis that magnoliids, as a group, predate the two dominant lineages of flowering plants alive today, the eudicots and monocots. (If this is right, it would not mean that avocados themselves are older than eudicots and monocots, but that avocados belong to a hereditary line that split off from other flowering plants before the eudicots and monocots did.)

"One of the things that we did in the paper was try to solve the issue of what is the relationship of avocados to other major flowering plants? And this turned out to be a tough question," Albert says. "Because magnoliids diverged from other major flowering plant groups so rapidly and so early on, at a time when other major groups were also diverging, the whole thing is totally damn mysterious. We made contributions toward finding an answer by comparing the avocado genome to the genomes of other plant species, but we did not arrive at a firm conclusion."

Magnoliids were estimated by a 2016 research paper to encompass about 11,000 known living species on Earth, including avocados, magnolias and cinnamon. In comparison, some 285,000 known species were counted as eudicots and monocots.

The avocado as a chemist, and the heritage of the hybrid Hass

Scientists don't know how old the avocado is, and the new study doesn't address this question. But the research does explore how the avocado has changed -- genetically -- since it became its own species, branching off from other magnoliids.

The paper shows that the avocado experienced two ancient "polyploidy" events, in which the organism's entire genome got copied. Many of the duplicated genes were eventually deleted. But some went on to develop new and useful functions, and these genes are still found in the avocado today. Among them, genes involved in regulating DNA transcription, a process critical to regulating other genes, are overrepresented.

The research also finds that avocados have leveraged a second class of copied genes -- tandem duplicates -- for purposes that may include manufacturing chemicals to ward off fungal attacks. (Tandem duplicates are the product of isolated events in which an individual gene gets replicated by mistake during reproduction.)

"In the avocado, we see a common story: Two methods of gene duplication resulting in very different functional results over deep time," Albert says.

"In plants, genes retained from polyploidy events often have to do with big regulatory things. And genes kept from the more limited one-off duplication events often have to do with biosynthetic pathways where you're making these chemicals -- flavors, chemicals that attract insects, chemicals that fight off fungi. Plants are excellent chemists," Herrera-Estrella says.

Having addressed some ancient mysteries of the avocado, the new study also moves forward in time to explore a modern chapter in the story of this beloved fruit: how humans have altered the species' DNA.

Because commercial growers typically cultivate avocados by grafting branches of existing trees onto new rootstocks, today's Hass avocados are genetically the same as the first Hass avocado planted in the 1920s. These modern-day Hass avocados are grown on Hass branches grafted onto various rootstock that are well adapted for particular geographic regions.

While the Hass avocado was long thought to be a hybrid, the details of its provenance -- 61 percent Mexican, 39 percent Guatemalan -- were not previously known. The scientists' new map of the Hass avocado genome reveals huge chunks of contiguous DNA from each parental type, reflecting the cultivar's recent origin.

"Immediately after hybridization, you get these giant blocks of DNA from the parent plants," Herrera-Estrella says. "These blocks break up over many generations as you have more reproductive events that scramble the chromosomes. But we don't see this scrambling in the Hass avocado. On chromosome 4, one whole arm appears to be Guatemalan, while the other is Mexican. We see big chunks of DNA in the Hass avocado that reflect its heritage."

"We hope that the Mexican Government keeps supporting these types of ambitious projects that use state-of-the-art technology to provide a deep understanding of the genetics and genomics of native Mexican plants," Herrera-Estrella said.

When it comes to challenging young minds to grow language, asking how and why during shared book reading to preschoolers can be more beneficial, according to new research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

An analysis of the questions preschool teachers asked during shared reading to their classes revealed that only 1 in 6 questions would be considered challenging. Researchers would like that number to be closer to 2 in 5, the report said. Findings appear in Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

"A teachable moment is the zone when learning takes place because the child is being challenged," said Tricia Zucker, PhD, a study coauthor and associate professor at the Children's Learning Institute at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth. "We'd like to see more challenging, open-ended questions and fewer that can answered with a yes or no."

When students listen to a book being read to them, they pick up new words, learn the basics of grammar and build knowledge. Teachers can enhance the learning experience by asking more complex questions that offer students a challenge.

"It is important to study what types of questions teachers are asking during shared book reading because children's responses are driven by the kinds of questions that are asked. Questions that begin with why or how provide children with opportunities to use longer sentences, and more complex language," said Richa Deshmukh, PhD, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral fellow with the Children's Learning Institute.

Ninety-six teachers in the South Central and Midwest United States agreed to participate in the study and were videotaped as they read a 25-page book titled "Kingdom of Friends" to their prekindergarten and kindergarten classes. Written by Zucker and Jill Pentimonti, PhD, the book is about two friends who argue at playtime but learn how to resolve their problems.

Afterwards, questions from teachers were sorted into seven categories based on a new measure the researchers developed that is available at CLIEngage.org.

"Sixty-three percent of the questions involved a single word response. Yet, we know that preschoolers can talk with more complex sentences," said Zucker, the Harriet and Joe Foster Distinguished Professor at UTHealth.

For example, rather than ask the students whether the children in the book become friends again, which can be answered with a simple "yes," the researchers favor questions such as "How did these friends solve their problems?" which can elicit a longer response, Zucker said.

According to the scientists, why and how questions are about 12 times more likely to prompt a multiword response than a single word response from children.

On the flip side, asking more complex questions means that students might get them wrong, but teachers can welcome this as an opportunity to provide support or hints that draw out more accurate thinking. "We know from other research that these sorts of back-and-forth conversations are what enhance learning," Zucker said.

"When teachers or parents provide complex questions, the chance for an error is greater, but it shows the child that you value deeply thinking through a situation," Zucker said.

The number of teacher questions ranged from one per class to 165 per class with an average of 55 questions per teacher. "We plan to do a follow-up study to determine the optimum number of questions to ask and the best ways to respond when children give an inaccurate response," Zucker said.

A new drug, known as IP1867B, could be used for future treatments of brain tumours.

Dr Richard Hill led the research team at the Brain Tumour Research Centre at University of Portsmouth, working with the University of Algarve (Portugal), the University of Liverpool (UK) and Innovate Pharmaceuticals to examine IP1867B.

The research team showed that IP1867B worked with existing cancer treatments boosting their effectiveness and, in some cases, restored sensitivity to some treatments.

The success rate for cancer therapies has been limited due to a combination of factors, such as the tumour's ability to hide from and develop resistance to the treatment; excessive side effects; the treatment not being clinically effective; and the lack of penetration through the blood brain barrier - IP1867B was shown to be effective at avoiding all of these limiting factors.

In a new study, published in the journal Cancer Letters, IP1867B (which is a combination of three common ingredients - aspirin, triacetin and saccharin) was shown to reduce the size of adult high-grade glioma brain tumours in a mouse model, while reducing the gastrointestinal tract problems experienced when conventional aspirin tablets are taken. This research suggests that IP1867B could be effective against glioblastoma (GBM), one of the most aggressive forms of human brain cancer, which kills thousands of patients within a year.

Dr Hill said: "To produce a completely new drug takes many years and is very expensive. By focusing our efforts on testing novel formulation techniques, we can move closer to a treatment more quickly than would otherwise be possible.

"We will continue to urgently investigate which drugs will combine most effectively and safely with IP1867B, to improve these results even further and reduce the need for long-term use. There is still much work to be done, but many reasons to be excited for future studies."

The breakthrough came in laboratory tests in mice using cancer cells from adults with brain tumours. In all the variations of drugs tested, including separating out the three key components of IP1867B, it was considerably more effective than any combination of other components and some currently used chemotherapeutics. All three ingredients, which are already approved for use in the clinic, have been shown to kill tumour cells without having an effect on normal brain cells.

IP1867B was shown to reduce the action of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR), and block the Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 pathway thereby reducing the tumour's ability to acquire resistance to these EGFR inhibitors. Tumours acquiring resistance to EGFR inhibitors via this pathway is a significant problem for these treatments.
IP1867B effects multiple targets, helping to 'light up' the tumour and reverse acquired resistance.

Katie Sheen, Research Manager at Brain Tumour Research, which funds the University of Portsmouth Research Group, added: "Our work on combining drugs is a vital and key part of our ongoing developments in the fight against brain tumours, which are an incredibly complex form of cancer. Being able to take existing drugs that have already been approved for use in humans, developing them in novel ways and applying them in the treatment of brain tumours offers much hope for the future."

Dr James Stuart, Medical Director at Innovate Pharmaceuticals, commented: "Our work on multiple disease areas in the cancer field has shown that hitting a number of targets with IP1867B allows us to not only shrink tumours but unmask them allowing other therapies to attack them. This action of 'turning cold tumours hot' alongside the reversal of acquired resistance, boosting combination efficacy and a possible lowering of side effect burden makes IP1867B a true breakthrough in cancer treatment.

"The next step is to take IP1867B into 'first in human' trial. Innovate are actively driving this next stage of development."

Jeff Bezos and Arianna Huffington came up with brilliant ideas that turned into companies that are now household names -- Amazon and HuffPost. The secret ingredient for coming up with these ideas may be something we can all tap into -- a good night's sleep.

According to a new study, sleep plays an especially important role in not only identifying a good business idea, but in evaluating it and believing it is viable.

"Entrepreneurs who consistently choose hustle over sleep, thinking that sleep comes after success, may be subverting their efforts to succeed," says lead author Jeff Gish, an assistant business professor at the University of Central Florida. "Everyone needs a good night of sleep, but it is especially important for entrepreneurs."

The study was published in Journal of Business Venturing in late July.

Several studies have found a connection between sleep and job performance. Bezos and Huffington have both indicated they get plenty of sleep in various media interviews. But the new study found a link between sleep and the cognitive skills needed to identify and evaluate an idea. Entrepreneurs use experience and business knowledge to evaluate ideas that could turn into successful business ventures. But sleep appears to be an important factor as well.

The study surveyed more than 700 entrepreneurs from around the world. The surveys asked about sleep patterns, hours of sleep and types of sleep.

Business pitches were drafted and an independent panel of business experts reviewed and ranked the pitches as having the most potential, medium potential and least potential for success. Then the participants in the study reviewed the three pitches in the same day. Those leaders who had less sleep did not consistently pick the best pitches.

In the second part of the study, a smaller group of participants evaluated the pitches over several weeks while charting their sleep patterns. Those participants who had at least seven hours of sleep each night consistently selected the best pitches identified by the expert panel. Those who had less sleep or restless sleep did not consistently pick the best pitches.

"The evidence suggests that less sleep leads to less accurate beliefs about the commercial potential of a new venture idea," Gish says. "Since we compared individual performance over multiple days, we can say that these results are consistent even for entrepreneurs who don't sleep as much on average as the general population."

Researchers in Japan and the Netherlands jointly developed an originative radio receiver DESHIMA (Deep Spectroscopic High-redshift Mapper) and successfully obtained the first spectra and images with it. Combining the ability to detect a wide frequency range of cosmic radio waves and to disperse them into different frequencies, DESHIMA demonstrated its unique power to efficiently measure the distances to the remotest objects as well as to map the distributions of various molecules in nearby cosmic clouds.

"Deshima" (or, Dejima) was a Dutch trading post in Japan built in the mid-17th century. For 200 years, Deshima was Japan's precious window to the world. Now, the two friendly nations open up another window to a new world, the vast Universe, with innovative nanotechnology.

"DESHIMA is a completely new type of astronomical instrument with which a 3D map of the early Universe can be constructed," said Akira Endo, a researcher at the Delft University of Technology and the leader of the DESHIMA project.

The uniqueness of DESHIMA is that it can disperse the wide frequency range of radio waves into different frequencies. DESHIMA's instantaneous frequency width (332 - 377 GHz) is more than five times wider than that of the receivers used in the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA).

Dispersing the cosmic radio waves in different frequencies, or spectroscopy, is an important technique to extract various information about the Universe. Since different molecules emit radio waves in different frequencies, spectroscopic observations tell us the composition of the celestial objects. Also, the cosmic expansion decreases the measured frequencies, and measuring the frequency shift from the native frequency provides us the distances to remote objects.

"There are many existing radio receivers with spectroscopic capability, however, the covered frequency range in one observation is quite limited," says Yoichi Tamura, an associate professor at Nagoya University. "On the other hand, DESHIMA achieves an ideal balance between the width of frequency range and spectroscopic performance."

Behind this unique capability is the innovative nanotechnology. The research team developed a special superconducting electric circuit, a filterbank, in which radio waves are dispersed into different frequencies, like a sorting conveyor in a fulfillment center. At the end of the "signal conveyors," sensitive Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKID) are located and detect the dispersed signals. DESHIMA is the world's first instrument to combine these two technologies on a chip to detect radio waves from the Universe.

As its first test observation, DESHIMA was installed on a 10-m submillimeter telescope, the Atacama Submillimeter Telescope Experiment (ASTE) operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Northern Chile. The first target was the active galaxy VV 114. The distance to the galaxy has been already measured to be 290 million light-years. DESHIMA successfully detected the signal from the carbon monoxide (CO) molecules in the galaxy at the right frequency expected from the expansion of the Universe.

When astronomers try to detect radio emission from a remote object with unknown distance, usually they sweep a certain range of frequency. Using conventional radio receivers with narrow bandwidth, they need to repeat observations while slightly shifting the frequency. By contrast, the wide-band DESHIMA greatly improves the efficiency of the emission search and helps researchers to produce maps of distant galaxies.

DESHIMA's high performance has also been proven for observations of nearby molecular clouds. DESHIMA simultaneously captured and imaged the distribution of the emission signals from three molecules, CO, formyl ion (HCO+), and hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in the Orion nebula.

The research team is aiming to further improve the capability of DESHIMA. "Our goal is to expand the frequency width, improve sensitivity, and develop a radio camera with 16 pixels," said Kotaro Kohno, a professor of The University of Tokyo. "The future DESHIMA will be an important point of departure in various astronomy fields."

Note 1. ASTE is located at an altitude of 4860 m above sea level in the Atacama Desert, close to the site of ALMA. Atacama's clear sky is a great fit for submillimeter wave observations.

CABI's expert scientists in the field of ecosystems management and invasion ecology have presented new guidance on ways to help protect the world's trees and forests from harmful pests and diseases such as the box tree moth and ash dieback.

Dr René Eschen led an international team of researchers who suggest that a number of important factors should be considered when monitoring for non-native pests that can pose a serious threat to forest resources and have significant negative economic, biodiversity and livelihood impacts.

The team, which includes scientists from the Slovenian Forestry Research Institute, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, UK, the University of Belgrade, Serbia and the Croatian Forest Research Institute, say more information about organisms associated with imported woody plant is needed to support authorities to be better prepared for the arrival and spread of new pests.

They stress that the increase in intercontinental trade is coinciding with an increase in the number of potentially serious pests in all parts of the world, and stronger border biosecurity is needed to minimise the risk of additional pests being introduced.

Dr Eschen and PhD student Iva Frani?, in the new research published in the Journal of Biogeography, conducted a literature review and analysed case studies in Serbia, Croatia and Switzerland. They set out to determine inter and intra annual and spatial patterns in insect diversity, spatial patterns in diversity of seed-borne fungi, as well as spatial and temporal patterns across and within regions, locations and years.

Dr Eschen said, "The detection and identification of potential pests of woody plants before their introduction is an important component of successful biosecurity, because it allows Pest Risk Analysis to be carried out and phytosanitary measures to be developed and implemented.

"However, it is unclear where the monitored plants can best be located, how many samples are required and when and how often sampling optimally should take place for the adequate assessment of the biodiversity associated with the target plant species.

"Our study illustrates the factors that should be considered when deciding on the location and timing of sampling. This is important because of the trade-off between the number of samples and sampling locations needed to detect many of the species which may be potential pests, and the cost of (repeated) sampling in many locations."

Dr Eschen says the assessment of the biodiversity associated with a single tree species requires careful planning and significant resources. The review and case studies indicate that the sampling design (where, when, how often and how much to sample) may differ depending on the targeted taxa (e.g. fungi vs. insects), sampled part of the tree (e.g. perennial vs. annual parts) or identification method (e.g. isolation or rearing vs. high throughput sequencing).

"In order to decide on the appropriate sampling for insects and fungi in the same locations it is necessary to understand the ecology of the sampled trees and targeted pests, as well as the purpose of the sampling," he added. "But, to save travel costs, it would be meaningful to, whenever possible, combine sampling insects and fungi at one or two occasions per year."

As part of a 'decision support scheme' developed by the scientists they highlight a number of recommendations including the first step of designing a sampling study by deciding on the target tree species and the purpose of the sampling and taxa of interest.

The researchers say that by following their recommendations, more accurate Pest Risk Analysis can be carried out which will enable the relative risks of different host plants or commodities - as sources of invasive pests and pathogens - to be ranked and prioritised as part of the inspection process.

One of the most exciting discoveries in genome research was that the last common ancestor of all multicellular animals - which lived about 600 million years ago - already possessed an extremely complex genome. Many of the ancestral genes can still be found in modern day species (e.g., human). However, it has long been unclear whether the arrangement of these genes in the genome also had a certain function. In a recent study in Nature Ecology and Evolution, the biologists led by Oleg Simakov and Ulrich Technau show that not only individual genes but also these gene arrangements in the genome have played a key role in the course of animal evolution.

Genomes store the instructions for how to build an organism. Often only individual genes are associated with certain functions. However, the genome not only defines single genes but also tells us about their arrangement on the DNA. Remarkably, many of these arrangements have been preserved from the genome of the common ancestor of sponges and humans, over 600 million years ago. Despite this, their potential function has long eluded scientists.

What gene arrangements reveal

In their current study, the team from the Department of Molecular Evolution and Development at the University of Vienna has now uncovered the first insights into this question. Using comparative genomic analyses, the researchers reconstructed evolutionarily conserved gene arrangements in animals and investigated their activity in different cell types. They could show that genes that are always present together in the genome in several species, also tend to be active in the same cells. For example, three genes that have been adjacent in several species (e.g., in sponges or cnidarians) for 600 million years are primarily active in a digestive cell type. "Cell types in animals can thus be characterized not only by individual genes but also by specific gene arrangements, and different cell types are also capable of accessing different regions in the genome," explains Oleg Simakov, evolutionary biologist at the University of Vienna. In addition, the team noted that certain cell types seem to utilize such conserved regions more than others, and thus may represent very ancestral functions.

The results show that not only gene loss or the emergence of new genes have played an important role in evolution, but also the changes in the arrangement of genes in the genome have made a significant contribution. "The study thus opens up a far-reaching perspective on investigating the functions of these regions in the respective cell types," concludes Simakov.

The journal Physics of Life Reviews, which has one of the highest impact factors in the categories "Biology" and "Biophysics", has published an article entitled "Symphony of high-dimensional brain".

The authors of the article, world-famous scientists of Russian origin, including the chief researcher at the laboratory for advanced methods of multidimensional data analysis at Lobachevsky University, professor at the University of Leicester (UK) Alexander Gorban, the leading researcher at the laboratory for advanced methods of multidimensional data analysis at Lobachevsky University, professor at University of Leicester (UK) Ivan Tyukin, and the senior researcher at the laboratory of neural network technologies at Lobachevsky University, professor at the Complutense University (Madrid, Spain) Valery Makarov, sum up a broad discussion in the journal Physics of Life Reviews.

The discussion was focused on two problems:

1) How to quickly and effectively correct the errors of artificial intelligence (AI)?

2) What is the reason why small neural ensembles in the multidimensional brain are so effective?

A unified approach to these problems was proposed in the article by the same authors, "The unreasonable effectiveness of small neural ensembles in high-dimensional brain", which was published earlier in the same journal and triggered a wide discussion. According to the authors, the heart of the matter is in the geometry of multidimensional spaces. One of the discussion participants, the famous expert in neuroscience R. Quian Quiroga, proposed to call the new approach using the authors' initials: the GMT approach.

As Alexander Gorban notes, data clouds acquire unexpectedly simple properties in multdimensional systems. Even in large random data sets, each point can be separated with a high degree of probability from all other points by a plane, which is constructed using explicit formulas.

"This phenomenon of stochastic separation serves at the same time as the basis for the correction of artificial intelligence errors and for such neurophysiological phenomena as "grandmother or concept cells", individual neurons that selectively respond to the presentation of any image ("grandmother"). Artificial intelligence systems make mistakes and will continue to make mistakes. We must develop an effective technology for processing artificial intelligence errors or abandon the use of artificial intelligence in important projects," Professor Gorban emphasized.

According to the GMT approach, if an artificial intelligence error is detected, it can be corrected for the future by separating the situation with an error from other situations where there were no errors using a simple rule (a plane). It is easy to build cascades of such simple correction tools. They allow the errors of artificial intelligence to be corrected without retraining the original system, which would require incomparably more time and more resources of all types.

Also, "grandmothers or concept cells" can easily separate a specific multidimensional signal from all others signals without creating complex and essentially non-linear rules. New models of neural memory in the multidimensional brain were also proposed by professors Gorban, Makarov and Tyukin (GMT models).

The idea of the "curse of dimensionality", formulated by R.E. Bellman in 1957, is quite well known. In the framework of the GMT approach, the curse of dimensionality turns into a blessing of dimensionality. One should not be afraid of or avoid multiple dimensions: the trick is to use them properly.

The discussion of the new GMT approaches involved ten world-renowned experts. V. K?rková, President of the European Neural Network Society, focused on the need to revise the modern theory of machine learning, since data in the real world are not independent and are not equally distributed.

A. Tozzi and J.F. Peters propose their own approach to deal with the curse of dimensionality. It is based on a multidimensional topology, that is, on the most general geometric properties that are invariant with respect to any continuous transformations. R. Quian Quiroga compares the GMT approach with modern neuroscience concepts on sparse coding in the brain.

The problem of effective information exchange between modern neuroscience and artificial intelligence technology is discussed by several experts with varying degrees of optimism.

P. Varona notes that researchers may face similar problems in these areas, but artificial intelligence is still far from mastering the heterogeneous, robust and effective correction mechanisms that exist in the real brain.

On the other hand, C. van Leeuwen believes that the modern cybernetic approach to the brain is misleading, artificial intelligence models are ineffective in neuroscience, and a change of basic paradigms is required to achieve some success.

To describe the transition between low-dimensional models and the real brain, R. Barrio introduces two worlds, "brainland" and "flatland", and discusses the problem of the rational travel between them. The point of view of L. Fortuna, who studies the influence of non-linear processes of small dimension on the multidimensional brain, is close to the one of R. Barrio. G. Kreiman emphasizes that modern multidimensional geometry allows us to reduce multidimensionality to low-dimensional systems.

V. Kreinovich uses the famous lines from Boris Pasternak's poem to evaluate the GMT approach, which reveals the unexpected simplicity of very complex things:

Assured of kinship with all things
And with the future closely knit
We can't but fall - a heresy! -
To unbelievable simplicity.
But to be spared we can't expect
If we do not conceal it closely.
Men need it more than anything,
But complex things are easier for them...

The result of this discussion is as follows: the GMT approach has proven its value. Proposed models have already been confirmed by real applications. The new error correction technology really works: it corrects artificial intelligence errors on the fly and allows artificial intelligence systems to train each other. New GMT memory models allow for experimental verification and already give some unexpected predictions. In the experts' discussion, new issues arise and horizons for further work open up.

Using quantum dots as a tool to trace the pollen of the long-tubed iris, Lapeirousia anceps, evolutionary ecologists from Stellenbosch University have succeeded in capturing a snapshot of a plant in the process of speciation.

Professor Bruce Anderson, an evolutionary ecologist in the Department of Botany and Zoology at SU, says this is only the third time in his research career where he has found a contact zone where speciation appears to be happening right in front of our eyes.
"Contact zones of entities in the process of diverging may actually be quite common, but they are hard to find because you really need to know what to look for," he postulates.

For the past 15 years Anderson and his associates have been visiting a patch of West Coast sand-plain fynbos just outside the small town of Mamre on South Africa's West Coast, a 45 minute drive from Cape Time along the N7 highway.

This is one of the prime spots where the long-tubed iris, Lapeirousia anceps can be found, as well as its pollinator, the long-tongue fly, Moegistorhynchus longirostris.

"Think of the famous example of the Madagascar star orchid with its 30cm nectar tube and Darwin's moth with an almost equally long tongue," Anderson explains, "where the orchid and moth have coevolved in an escalating race scenario."

The same evolutionary mechanism behind matching of pollinator tongues and floral tubes is true for Lapeirousia.

In 2009 a fellow researcher, Professor Anton Pauw, found that Lapeirousia has tube lengths which have coevolved with the tongue lengths of its fly pollinator, Moegistorhynchus longirostris, where tongues and tubes can vary from 43-86mm, depending on the study site. In other words, the tube-lengths of the plants match perfectly with the tongue-length of the pollinators, depending on the geographical location of the different populations.

But in 2003 Anderson stumbled upon a strange population of Lapeirousia anceps in the Mamre area: "Some plants had short floral tubes and others had long tubes, and very few plants had tubes of intermediate length. Yet this population of plants was visited by only a single species of the long-tongued fly, Moegistorhynchus longirostris."

For the next 15 years, Anderson and his colleagues studied this population and found that there was little gene flow between the two plants forms, which explained why they had remained as two separate entities for so long.

"In other countries with fewer plant species, biologists would have been sorely tempted to call these forms different species, but we have so many species already that we can afford to be a little more circumspect!" he laughs.

Anderson was much more interested in finding the mechanisms that prevented the two forms from mixing in the first place.

On one of the many photographs from his field work, he noticed a long-tongued fly from that area with pollen on the top of its head and then another clump of pollen halfway down its tongue. But because these plants are so recently diverged, they couldn't tell the pollen apart.

"I was sure that the pollen on the head was from the long-tubed flowers and the other pollen from the short-tubed flowers, but I had no way of showing this."

Quantum physics to the rescue

When Corneile Minnaar joined the group as a PhD student in 2015, he decided to try and find a reliable method to label and track pollen in order to answer this question. By the end of his first year, he succeeded in using quantum dots to label pollen grains, thereby breaking new ground in a field of research that has been hampered by the lack of a universal method to track pollen for over a century.

During November 2015 and 2016, the team set off to Mamre to test the newly-designed method in the field, and, more importantly, to test Anderson's hypothesis.

In the case of Lapeirousia and the long-tongued fly, Minnaar and Anderson were now able to show conclusively that long- and short-tubed flowers place and receive pollen on different parts of the fly's long tongue: short tubed flowers mostly midway and long-tubed flowers on or near the head.

Consequently, pollen seldom moves between long and short tubed individuals, indicating a barrier to the flow of genes.

Professor Andersons says it looks as if they have captured these plants in the very act of speciation: "This is quite unusual, because normally when you see plants they have diverged long ago and it is very difficult to tell the processes by which they diverged. This is different. We've managed to capture these plants in the act of speciation and we were able to identify the process and mechanisms by which it is taking place."

He says it is hard to predict whether these two forms of Lapeirousia will remain separate forever or eventually unify. But what he does know is that this patch of land needs to be protected.

"It is severely threatened, heavily grazed and invaded by acacias and grasses," he warns. "There is a very real possibility for this unique patch of sand-plain fynbos to disappear in the not too distant future."

Inspired by the flashing Brownian ratchet, Parrondo's paradox is a counter-intuitive phenomenon in which two losing games, when played in a specific order, can surprisingly end up winning. For example, slot machines are designed to ensure that players lose in the long run. "What the paradox says is that there might be slot machines which are subtly linked in such a way that playing either slot machine independently will lead to financial disaster, but switching in between them will eventually leave the player richer than before," said senior author, Assistant Professor Kang Hao Cheong of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).

To explore the plethora of exciting applications in biology, researchers from SUTD have examined a large range of recent developments of Parrondo's paradox in biology, across ecology and evolution, genetics, social and behavioral systems, cellular processes, and disease.

Their study, appearing in a recent issue of BioEssays, has identified key connections between numerous seemingly disjointed works, culminating in an emergent pattern of nested recurrent mechanics that appear to span the entire biological gamut, from the smallest of spatial and temporal scales to the largest. The authors explained that the pivotal role the paradox plays in the shaping of living systems has become increasingly apparent, which points strongly towards its potential identity as a universal principle underlying biological diversity and persistence.

"Developments in Parrondo's paradox to date have revealed a potential unifying fundamental characteristic of life itself, more valuable to our understanding of nature than its individual components," said co-author Jin Ming Koh.

The picture that the authors paint of biological reality is a striking one. Their work suggests that the biosphere might be supported by countless layers of Parrondo-paradoxical effects, each ingesting inevitably losing strategies and producing enhanced outcomes at a slightly larger temporal or spatial scale for the layer above, in what may be visualized as a fractal-like recurrent pattern. Such an imagery offers a fresh perspective on our view of nature and of ourselves.

The trio is now attempting to analyze the detailed structure of these mechanisms, which might span from hugely macroscopic spatial scales of entire ecosystems to the molecular inner workings of cells, and from the million-year timescales of evolution to sub-microsecond genetic and molecular processes. "Every cell, organism and species, and species assemblage and ecosystem, is necessarily mortal, yet the biosphere persists," said Assistant Professor Cheong.

It is in industrialised countries and regions of the world where one can find the highest concentrations of lead, the world's most widespread neurotoxical accumulative metal. Thus, it was presumed that the Amazon, the world's largest expanse of tropical rainforest containing the highest levels of biocultural and cultural diversity, would contain a low amount of urban or industrial contaminants due to its remoteness and low human impact.

A group of researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology and the Department of Animal Health and Anatomy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), and the Central University of Catalonia/Vic University, for the first time have evaluated lead concentrations and isotopic fingerprints in free-ranging wildlife in remote areas of the Peruvian Amazon.

For the study, liver samples were collected from 315 animals from 18 different species, hunted for food by local indigenous peoples (Quechua, Achuar and Yagua). These areas under study are very remote and only accessible after a 4-5 day boat trip along the local rivers. Some of these areas are also located within the second most productive oil concession of the country, operating since the 1970s.

High concentrations of lead were found in the livers of Amazon wild mammals and birds, animals which are consumed daily by the local indigenous population. These values are higher than those observed among wild animals found in industrialised countries. The presence of this unexpectedly high level of lead in Amazonian wildlife poses a health risk for the local population, which relies on subsistence hunting.

Half of all samples analysed contained more than the 0.5 miligrams per kilo which European regulation considers to be the limit for human consumption of animal entrails, and 91% contained more than the 0.1 miligrams considered a suitable level for human consumption of meat in general. A very high risk for the population, taking into account that almost thirty of the samples analysed contained far higher levels of lead.

The researchers also demonstrated that the main sources of lead are the extended use of lead-based ammunition, as well as pollution related to oil extraction. In fact, lead-based ammunition could be an underestimated problem throughout the continent of South America. These results suggest that lead has entered the trophic chain in areas where human population depends on subsistence hunting. Thus, it is not likely a unique problem, but one that affects indigenous people around the world who use lead-based ammunition.

In addition, the fact of having found oil-related lead in wildlife suggests that other toxic compounds related to oil activities may have also entered the trophic chain. Indeed, in the northern Peruvian Amazon, oil extraction activities have generated an important environmental impact through the daily spillage of lead-rich wastewater into the environment.

Due to the high dependence of indigenous people globally on subsistence hunting and the extended use of lead-based ammunition, jointly with the advance of oil activities in tropical rainforests (oil and gas reserves overlap with 30% of the world's rainforests), these results uncover an important health risk for tropical wildlife conservation and for local human communities depending on these animals as their main source of protein.

Finally, the study further illustrates how remote natural areas also contain yet another ubiquitous anthropogenic footprint. This might be extended throughout the Amazonian ecosystem and other rainforests around the world, illustrating how human impact reaches further than usually envisaged, and the expansion of anthropogenic contaminants from industrial centres to the most remote areas of the planet.

Eating rye comes with a variety of health benefits. A new study from the University of Eastern Finland now shows that both lactic acid bacteria and gut bacteria contribute to the health benefits of rye. Published in Microbiome, the study used a metabolomics approach to analyse metabolites found in food and the human body.

Rye sourdough used for the baking of rye bread is rich in lactic acid bacteria. In addition to fermenting the dough, these bacteria also modify bioactive compounds found in rye. They produce branched-chain amino acids and amino acid-containing small peptides, which are known to have an impact on insulin metabolism, among other things.

Many of the compounds found in rye are processed by gut bacteria before getting absorbed into the body. The study found that gut microbes and microbes found in sourdough produce compounds that are partially the same. However, gut microbes also produce derivatives of trimethylglycine, also known as betaine, contained in rye. An earlier study by the research group has shown that at least one of these derivatives reduces the need for oxygen in heart muscle cells, which may protect the heart from ischemia or possibly even enhance its performance. The findings can explain some of the health benefits of rye, including better blood sugar levels and a lower risk of cardiovascular diseases.

The study used metabolomics as the primary method to carry out an extensive analysis of metabolites found in food and the human body. The effects of gut microbes were studied in mice and in an in vitro gastrointestinal model, mimicking the function of the human gut. Using these two models, the researchers were able to eliminate naturally occurring differences in the gut microbiome between different individuals, making it easier to detect metabolites actually originating from rye.

Rye can be traced back to what is now known as present-day eastern Turkey, from where it has spread to many cuisines across the world. In Finland, for example, rye has been consumed for thousands of years, and it was recently selected as the country's national food.

Although the health benefits of rye are long known, the underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. For instance, the so-called Rye Factor refers to the lower insulin response caused by rye than, for example, wheat bread. Eating rye makes blood sugar levels fall slower, which leads to beneficial effects on the health - for a reason that remains unknown.

A significant factor contributing to the health benefits of rye are its bioactive compounds, or phytochemicals, which serve as antioxidants. In addition, gut microbes seem to play an important role in turning these compounds into a format that can be easily absorbed by the body, making it possible for them to have a greater effect.

"The major role played by gut microbes in human health has become more and more evident over the past decades, and this is why gut microbes should be taken very good care of. It's a good idea to avoid unnecessary antibiotics and feed gut microbes with optimal food - such as rye," Researcher Ville Koistinen from the University of Eastern Finland notes.