Culture

Well-adorned or well-endowed - but not both. Evolutionary biologists at the University of Zurich have for the first time demonstrated that male primates either have large testicles or showy ornaments. Developing both at the same time may simply take too much energy.

Male primates are highly competitive, especially about one thing: fathering offspring. To maximize their chances of passing on their genes, males of many primate species invest heavily in various sexual traits, such as a large body size, or long canines that can serve as weapons in direct contests over mates. What's more, showy sexual ornaments such as manes, beards, fleshy swellings, and colorful skin patches can help them intimidate rivals and woo females. And if males can't keep other males off their females, they will try to outcompete them at the level of sperm. By swamping the sperm of others, they can increase their chances of fertilization. But producing a lot of sperm requires large testicles.

Showy body ornamentation leads to small testes

All these male traits are energetically costly. So how do primates allocate their limited resources to the various sexual traits to maximize their reproductive success? This question is the focus of a new study by Stefan Lüpold, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich (UZH), and his colleagues Leigh Simmons and Cyril Grueter from the University of Western Australia. These biologists compared the sexual traits of over 100 primate species, including humans. Individually, the expression of these traits increases with the intensity of male competition - as expected. But considering all traits jointly reveals an important trade-off: "Ornament elaboration comes at the expense of testicle size and sperm production. In a nutshell, the showiest males have the smallest testes," says Lüpold.

Limited resources determine degree of expression

The new study is the first to examine all sexual traits simultaneously. It has brought to light the subtleties of how male primates invest in maximizing their reproductive success: "Big testicles come with large weapons but less ornamentation." The researchers offer various explanations for their findings. But one of the key points may be the energy required to develop and maintain multiple sexual traits throughout a male's sexual maturity. "It's hard to have it all," says Lüpold.

The oldest publicly-available strain of the cholera-causing bacterial species, Vibrio cholerae, has had its genetic code read for the first time by researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators. The bacterium was isolated from a British soldier during World War One (WWI) and stored for over 100 years before being revived and sequenced.

The results, published today (10 April) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, show that this strain is a unique, non-toxigenic strain of V. cholerae that is distantly related to the strains of bacteria causing cholera pandemics today and in the past.

Cholera is a severe diarrhoeal disease caused by ingesting food or water that is contaminated with toxigenic V. cholerae. The disease can spread rapidly in epidemics and in global pandemics.

WWI coincided with an historical global cholera pandemic, known as the sixth pandemic, which was caused by 'classical' V. cholerae. Surprisingly, very few soldiers in the British Expeditionary Forces contracted cholera during the war, despite the disease being considered as a threat.

In 1916, a strain of V. cholerae was extracted from the stool of a British soldier who was convalescing in Egypt. Reports indicate that the isolate was taken from 'choleraic diarrhoea'. The bacterium was stored and subsequently deposited in the National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC)* in 1920.

Researchers at the Sanger Institute revived the WWI soldier's bacteria - thought to be the oldest publicly-available V. cholerae sample - and sequenced its entire genome.

The team found this particular strain of V. cholerae was not the type capable of causing epidemic cholera, and was unrelated to the classical V. cholerae that caused the sixth pandemic at the time of WWI.

Professor Nick Thomson, lead author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "We have decoded the genome of what we believe to be the oldest archived 'live' sample of V. cholerae. It is a privilege to be able to look at the genome of this isolate. Studying strains from different points in time can give deep insights into the evolution of this species of bacteria and link that to historical reports of human disease. Even though this isolate did not cause an outbreak it is important to study those that do not cause disease as well as those that do. Hence this isolate represents a significant piece of the history of cholera, a disease that remains as important today as it was in past centuries."

Matthew Dorman, first author from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "Reports in the literature indicated that there was something unusual about the strain of bacteria from the WWI soldier. It's promising to see that our genomic information aligns with those historical records. We also made other observations - under the microscope, the bacterium looks broken; it lacks a flagellum - a thin tail that enables bacteria to swim. We discovered a mutation in a gene that's critical for growing flagella, which may be the reason for this characteristic."

The soldier was reported to have cholera-like diarrhoea, but researchers now know he was infected with a non-toxigenic strain of V. cholerae. The team discovered genes that may have been responsible for producing a toxin that caused diarrhoea, but are unsure whether such diarrhoea would be classified as choleraic.

Researchers also found that this strain of V. cholerae possessed a gene for ampicillin resistance. This adds to increasing evidence that genes for antibiotic resistance in bacteria existed before the introduction of antibiotic treatments, possibly because the bacteria needed them to protect against naturally-occurring antibiotics.

Julie Russell, Head of Culture Collections at NCTC, said: "The National Collection of Type Cultures grows and maintains over 5,000 strains of bacteria from the last hundred years or so. Studying these bacteria offers a window into the past and helps scientists to understand how bacteria evolve over time, and the roles they played in history."

UC San Francisco scientists have designed a large-scale screen that efficiently identifies drugs that are potent cancer-killers when combined, but only weakly effective when used alone. Using this technique, the researchers eradicated a devastating blood cancer and certain solid tumor cells by jointly administering drugs that are only partially effective when used as single-agent therapies. The effort, a cross-disciplinary collaboration between UCSF researchers, is described in a study published April 9 in the journal Cell Reports.

When scientists developed the first targeted cancer therapies -- drugs that interfere with specific biological circuits that cancer depends on for growth and survival -- many thought they had finally cornered cancer. But cancer is a devastatingly clever disease that can outwit these precision medicines by "rewiring" itself to sidestep the circuits switched off by these drugs.

"Many cancers either fail to respond to a single targeted therapy or acquire resistance after initially responding. The notion that combining targeted therapies is a far more effective way to treat cancer than a single-drug approach has long existed. We wanted to perform screens with saturating coverage to understand exactly what combinations should be explored," said UCSF's Jeroen Roose, PhD, professor of anatomy and senior author of the new study.

Scientists have found that when they target two distinct circuits with two different drugs -- each of which is inadequate on its own -- the aggregate effect can be greater than sum of its parts. However, figuring out which drugs can synergize to kill cancer remains a challenge.

To demonstrate the power of their screening system, the scientists searched for targeted therapies that could join forces to kill an aggressive blood cancer called T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). Their hunt began with a drug that targets PI3K, an enzyme that promotes the growth of many cancers, including T-ALL. Though drugs that target PI3K already exist, the current crop of PI3K inhibitors can slow, but normally can't kill, this type of cancer.

"Nearly 65 percent of T-ALL patients have hyperactive PI3K, but most patients will likely not be cured by single-drug treatments. We wanted to find drugs that would kill T-ALL when combined with a PI3K inhibitor," said Roose, a member of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. To find those drugs, the researchers turned to RNA interference (RNAi) -- a technique that allows scientists to massively reduce the activity of specific genes. The discovery of RNAi, which occurs naturally in all animals and plants, and is now widely used in research, was a major breakthrough that was recognized with the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

"RNAi is sort of a magic bullet for targeting specific genes," said Michael T. McManus, PhD, professor at the UCSF Diabetes Center and study co-author, who designed the screen with Roose. "Although there is a great deal of fascinating underlying biology that relates to RNAi, most scientists use it as a tool to 'turn down the volume' of a specific gene in a cell."

The gene-editing tool CRISPR has made it possible to completely remove genes. But according to McManus, while eliminating a specific gene is the gold standard -- an essential first step in determining its function in cells -- at times, reducing a gene's activity level using RNAi activity may be more desirable. This is especially true, he says, when researchers are seeking to mimic the effects of drugs, which often reduce the activity associated with a particular gene without completely eliminating it.

"When searching for cancer drugs, for example, RNAi may do a better job of approximating precision therapies, both of which only partially inhibit their biological targets," McManus said. The researchers have also started exploring CRISPRi and CRISPRa -- modified forms of CRISPR that inhibit or amplify the activity of target genes, respectively, without making cuts to the DNA -- for these reasons.

Roose and McManus aren't the first scientists to use RNAi to search for these kinds of combinatorial therapies. But earlier efforts were error-prone because those screens used RNAi libraries that were too small, Roose said. What sets the new study apart is the ultra-complex collection of short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) that were used. These RNA fragments contain sequences that correspond to those found in messenger RNAs (mRNA) -- the molecular arbiters of gene activity in the cell. When an shRNA finds an mRNA that contains a matching sequence, the two molecules bind together to initiate a process that destroys the mRNA and inhibits the activity of that gene. In total, the researchers targeted some 1,800 cancer-associated genes with approximately 55,000 shRNAs, or about 30 shRNAs per gene, "more than enough to eliminate false positives and false negatives," Roose said.

The screen itself involved growing two different human T-ALL cell lines in the presence of PI3K inhibitors and then simultaneously administering shRNAs to find out which genes, when silenced in the presence of these drugs, killed the cancer. From this comprehensive screen, the researchers then focused on 10 genes whose activity, when curbed with precision medicines, was predicted to kill T-ALL cancer cells in combination with PI3K drugs. They tested these predictions and found that nine of the combined therapies could kill T-ALL -- a feat that none of the drugs could achieve on its own. The researchers then tested the most effective of these synergistic drug combinations on mouse models of T-ALL and found that it could extend survival by 150 percent.

The screen also yielded a digital tool that Roose says will be useful for other researchers: a user-friendly, searchable database based on results from the screen. The search engine -- developed by Marsilius Mues, PhD, a former Roose lab postdoc and lead author of the new study -- produces mansuscript-quality figures that help resarchers identify genes that emerged from the screen as potential targets for combination therapy with PI3K inhibitors.

Recognizing that discoveries made in blood cancers don't always translate to solid tumors, the researchers also tested the predicted drug combinations on 28 solid tumor cell lines derived from human breast, colorectal, pancreatic and brain cancers. They found that even in these solid tumor cells, the combination therapies synergized to reduce the number of cancer cells by up to 20 percent over the course of the experiment.

"An important message from our work is that scientists can use leukemia cells as a platform to find drug combinations that also work in solid tumors. Our screening platform is very generalizable," Roose said.

Among the most surprising and promising of the results was that the researchers were able to find pairs of drugs that impeded cancer growth, but which had no effect on normal cells.

"Finding therapies that specifically target cancer without harming healthy tissue is the holy grail of cancer research," Roose said. "This surprising result suggests that our method may aid in the discovery of this kind of cancer-specific precision medicine."

Kayak paddles, snowshoes, skateboards. Outdoor sporting goods used to be a tough market for 3D printing to break into, but fused particle fabrication (FPF) can change that.

A team led by engineers from Michigan Technological University and re:3D, Inc. developed and tested the Gigabot X, an open source industrial FPF 3D printer, which can use waste plastic particles and reform it into large, strong prints. Because of the unique challenges presented by sporting goods -- size, durability, specificity -- the team chose several Upper Peninsula-inspired items.

In their new paper, published in Additive Manufacturing, the team lays out how fab labs, which are prototyping and technical workshops that allow personal digital fabrication, and other 3D printing hubs like makerspaces, public libraries or schools can economically sustain themselves while printing environmentally friendly products using FPF. In some cases, the return on investment for a Gigabot X reached above 1,000 percent for high-capacity use paired with recyclable feedstock. Listen to one of the students involved explain the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltA15GsUVF0&t=26s

"This isn't a gadget to make toys for your kids; this is an industrial machine meant to make real, large, high-performance products. With well over 1,000 Fab Labs worldwide spreading fast and morphing into environmentally friendly 'green fab labs', the Gigabot X could be a useful tool to add to their services as well as other makerspaces," said Joshua Pearce, Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Of course, for our testing we wanted to use recycled plastic."

That's a hallmark of the Gigabot X -- last year a Michigan Tech and re:3D collaborative study showed that it could be used with a wide range of plastics plucked from the waste stream to live on in a new productive life. The system is based on a previous design from the MOST Lab, the recyclebot, which makes waste plastic filament for 3D printers. Pearce's team has looked deep into better ways to sort, sift and classify plastic to improve its 3D printability. Melting and extruding, however, does weaken plastic, it can withstand five cycles before it's mechanically compromised. What's new with the Gigabot X is the process called fused particle fabrication (FPF) or fused granular fabrication (FGF) that skips the step of making filament before 3-D printing and saves on one melt cycle. Basically, it prints directly from shredded waste. The Gigabot X's size and versatility to use any material including waste is reflected in the machine's economics.

While not cheap by household standards -- the Gigabot X runs around $18,500 -- the upfront investment has greater potential return. The team used three case studies: a skateboard deck, double-bladed kayak paddle -- both child-sized and adult-sized fitted on an aluminum pipe -- and snowshoes.

Using their sporting goods prints, Pearce and his team compared costs of low-end and high-end options for commercially available products, prints with commercial filament, prints with commercial pellets and prints with recycled plastic. They ran these against four capacity scenarios: continuous printing, one new start per day, two new starts per day and printing once per week. The printed kayak paddle, which was the trickiest to produce and compare because of the metal pipe, was financially comparable to the least expensive off-the-shelf paddle. Skateboards and snowshoes were both easy to produce and significantly lower in cost than commercial products. FPF printing beat the economics of even the cheapest decks using commercial pellets and dropped in cost using waste plastic. Over their lifetime, if operated even only once a day, the Gigabot X could produce millions of dollars of sporting goods products.

"Once the capital costs are taken care of, which can often be less than a year, FPF or FGF machines have an enormous potential to make profit. Economically, they absolutely make sense," said Pearce. "The bottom line is that Gigabot Xs pay for themselves under a reasonable load and provide double or triple digit returns on investment under most scenarios. Essentially, if you're using it more than once a week then you're making money easily."

For green fab labs as well as the burgeoning makerspace scene around the world, the Gigabot X presents a customizable, open source, environmentally friendly and fun option to help sustain its 3D printing center.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The quest to keep plastic out of landfills and simultaneously satisfy the needs of the food industry is filled with obstacles.

A biodegradable replacement for petroleum-based products has to meet all sorts of standards and, so far, attempts at viable replacements from renewable sources have faced limited success due to processing and economic constraints. Among the obstacles, products to date have been too brittle for food packaging.

But new research from The Ohio State University has shown that combining natural rubber with bioplastic in a novel way results in a much stronger replacement for plastic, one that is already capturing the interest of companies looking to shrink their environmental footprints.

Almost all plastics - about 90 percent - are petroleum-based and are not biodegradable, a major environmental concern.

In a new study published in the journal Polymers, the research team reports success with a rubber-toughened product derived from microbial fermentation that they say could perform like conventional plastic. This new study highlights the greatest success in this area so far, according to the scientists.

"Previous attempts at this combination were unsuccessful because the softness of the rubber meant the product lost a lot of strength in the process," said lead author Xiaoying Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher in Ohio State's Department of Food Science and Technology.

The new study involved melting rubber into a plant-based thermoplastic called PHBV along with organic peroxide and another additive called trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA).

The end product was 75 percent tougher and 100 percent more flexible than PHBV on its own - meaning it is far easier to shape into food packaging.

Other research teams have combined rubber and PHBV, but the products have been too weak to withstand all the demands of a food package - from processing, to shipping, to handling in stores and homes, especially containers that are used for freezing and then microwaving, said the study's senior author, Yael Vodovotz, a professor of food science and technology at Ohio State.

Increased flexibility, without a significant loss of strength, is particularly important when it comes to plastic films commonly used to package everything from fresh produce to frozen foods, she said.

While other attempts at making this type of rubber-enhanced bioplastic have reduced the strength of the PHBV by as much as 80 percent, only 30 percent of the strength was lost in this study - a much more manageable amount, Zhao said.

Toughness, which was improved, is different from strength, explained study co-author Katrina Cornish, an expert in natural rubber and professor of horticulture and crop science at Ohio State.

"Imagine trying to pull a block of concrete apart with your hands. That's testing its strength. But karate chopping it with your hand or foot is testing its toughness - how easily it breaks," Cornish said.

"You can never pull it apart, but if you're strong enough you can break it."

Much of the researchers' current focus is on the potential use of various biodegradable - and otherwise environmentally conscious - materials they might use as fillers to further strengthen the mix. They've discussed using the "cake" left behind after a fellow researcher extracts oil from spent coffee grounds. Tomato skins are under consideration, as are eggshells.

"We want something that would otherwise go to waste that is sustainable and also relatively cheap," Vodovotz said.

They're even looking at the potential to attack two environmental problems at once, by seeing how invasive grasses that environmentalists are yanking out of waterways might play with the rubber-infused mix.

"We could dry them, grind them up and potentially use these grasses as a fibrous filler," Vodovotz said.

Beyond packaged foods, a bioplastic could potentially be used in other food-related applications such as utensils and cutting boards.

And the researchers are looking to collaborate with colleagues outside of food science to consider other applications for their product, such as to create building materials, gloves for those working in food service, or parts for cars and airplanes.

As the team works to move its technology out of the lab and into the food industry, there will be many details to work out depending on a company's individual priorities and concerns, Vodovotz said, and that may mean tinkering with the mix.

"As we get closer and closer to working with food manufacturers, there are specific questions our potential partners are asking," Vodovotz said. "We have to be very careful about what we use in this process in order to meet their needs, and they have very specific parameters."

Researchers from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania analyzed the largest cohort to date of pediatric patients with high-risk neuroblastoma treated with proton radiation therapy (PRT), finding both that proton therapy was effective at reducing tumors and demonstrated minimal toxicity to surrounding organs.

The study is published online in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology.

"These data are extremely encouraging and could be a game-changer for a number of reasons," said lead author Christine Hill-Kayser, MD, Chief of the Pediatric Radiation Oncology Service at Penn Medicine and an attending physician at CHOP. "Not only did we observe excellent outcomes and minimal side effects that validate the use of PRT in high-risk neuroblastoma patients, we answered a lingering question about proton therapy--the concern that because it is so targeted, tumors may come back. Tumors mostly did not come back - suggesting PRT is effective, less toxic and a superior choice for our young patients who must endure intense treatment modalities in an effort to cure this high-risk cancer."

Neuroblastoma is the most common cancer in infants, accounting for more than 10 percent of all childhood cancer deaths. Primary neuroblastoma tumors are commonly adrenal tumors, which are very close to the kidney, liver, pancreas and bowel in children, making them hard to treat without harming vital organs in tiny bodies. Treatment usually involves a combination of therapies including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery.

Researchers studied 45 patients with high-risk neuroblastoma who received PRT at both institutions between 2010 and 2015. CHOP cancer patients who need radiation therapy are treated at Penn Medicine, including PRT through the Roberts Proton Therapy Center.

Unlike traditional photon radiation using x-rays, PRT is a non-invasive, precise cancer treatment that uses a beam of protons moving at very high speeds to destroy the DNA of cancer cells, killing them and preventing them from multiplying. Highly targeted, PRT has significant promise for treating tumors in very young children and may reduce radiation exposure to healthy, developing tissue that may result in lifelong impacts.

Five years after treatment, the longest recorded period of study in the largest cohort of patients to date, researchers observed excellent outcomes, with 82 percent of patients still alive, and 97 percent free of a primary site tumor reoccurrence.

Toxicities, or side effects, are measured on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most severe. No patient observed in the study experienced grade 3 or 4 long-term acute liver or kidney toxicity, with the majority of patients experiencing grade 1 side effects from PRT.
"We've showed PRT is not only effective in the treatment of high-risk neuroblastoma, but it also spared damage to the developing liver, kidneys and bowel that may occur in pediatric patients exposed to traditional radiation," said Hill-Kayser. "While we look forward to longer-range data on these patients 10 years down the road, the excellent outcomes we see here, coupled with the fact the precision proton approach did not increase recurrence rates, support the expanded use of proton therapy in neuroblastoma and other high-risk childhood cancers."
Additional studies with extended follow-up and larger patient numbers are planned.
The Cancer Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia offers one of the most established and experienced pediatric proton radiation therapy programs, in collaboration with Penn Medicine at the Roberts Proton Therapy Center. For more information, please click here: Pediatric Proton Therapy Center.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., April 9, 2019-- A new, first-of-its-kind space weather model reliably predicts space storms of high-energy particles that are harmful to many satellites and spacecraft orbiting in the Earth's outer radiation belt. A paper recently published in the journal Space Weather details how the model can accurately give a one-day warning prior to a space storm of ultra-high-speed electrons, often referred to as "killer" electrons because of the damage they can do to spacecraft such as navigation, communications, and weather monitoring satellites. This is the first time researchers have successfully predicted those killer electrons across the whole outer belt region.

"Society's growing reliance on modern-technology infrastructures makes us especially vulnerable to space weather threats," said Yue Chen, a space scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the study. "If our GPS or communications satellites fail, it could have wide-reaching, negative impacts on everything from air travel to bank transactions. So being able to accurately predict space weather has been a goal for a long time. This model is a firm step towards being able to do that."

At the Earth's equator, the outer radiation belt--also called the outer Van Allen belt--begins approximately 8,000 miles above the Earth and ends beyond 30,000 miles. High-speed high-energy electrons inside this belt are known for their high variability, especially during solar storms, when new particles from the sun enter the Earth's space environment--making them extremely difficult to predict.

This model takes the unique approach of connecting the dots between the killer electron population and the measurements made by a Los Alamos National Laboratory geosynchronous equatorial orbiting satellite, as well as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite in low-Earth orbit within a 3.5-year period. By establishing a correlation between the electrons and satellite measurements in low-Earth orbit, Chen and his colleagues were able to identify the informational triggers needed for predictions and develop a reliable model to forecast changes of high-energy electrons within the outer belt.

"We're very excited about the potential for future enhancements to this model," said Chen. "The more research and refinements we do, the increased potential for us to have more reliable forecasts with longer warning time before the arrival of new killer electrons."

The enhanced power of the new measuring technique to characterize materials at scales much smaller than any current technologies will accelerate the discovery and investigation of 2D, micro- and nanoscale materials.

Being able to accurately measure semiconductor properties of materials in small volumes helps engineers determine the range of applications for which these materials may be suitable in the future, particularly as the size of electronic and optical devices continues to shrink.

Daniel Wasserman, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering, led the team that built the physical system, developed the measurement technique capable of achieving this level of sensitivity and successfully demonstrated its improved performance. Their work was reported today in Nature Communications.

The team's design approach was focused on developing the capability to provide quantitative feedback on material quality, with particular applications for the development and manufacturing of optoelectronic devices. The method demonstrated is capable of measuring many of the materials that engineers believe will one day be ubiquitous to next-generation optoelectronic devices.

Optoelectronics is the study and application of electronic devices that can source, detect and control light. Optoelectronic devices that detect light, known as photodetectors, use materials that generate electrical signals from light. Photodetectors are found in smartphone cameras, solar cells and in the fiber optic communication systems that make up our broadband networks. In an optoelectronic material, the amount of time that the electrons remain "photoexcited," or capable of producing an electrical signal, is a reliable indicator of the potential quality of that material for photodetection applications.

The current method used for measuring the carrier dynamics, or lifetimes, of photoexcited electrons is costly and complex and only measures large-scale material samples with limited accuracy. The UT team decided to try using a different method for quantifying these lifetimes by placing small volumes of the materials in specially designed microwave resonator circuits. Samples are exposed to concentrated microwave fields while inside the resonator. When the sample is hit with light, the microwave circuit signal changes, and the change in the circuit can be read out on a standard oscilloscope. The decay of the microwave signal indicates the lifetimes of photoexcited charge carriers in small volumes of the material placed in the circuit.

"Measuring the decay of the electrical (microwave) signal allows us to measure the materials' carrier lifetime with far greater accuracy," Wasserman said. "We have discovered it to be a simpler, cheaper and more effective method than current approaches."

Carrier lifetime is a critical material parameter that provides insight into the overall optical quality of a material while also determining the range of applications for which a material could be used when it's integrated into a photodetector device structure. For example, materials that have a very long carrier lifetime may be of high optical quality and therefore very sensitive, but may not be useful for applications that require high-speed.

"Despite the importance of carrier lifetime, there are not many, if any, contact-free options for characterizing small-area materials such as infrared pixels or 2D materials, which have gained popularity and technological importance in recent years," Wasserman said.

One area certain to benefit from the real-world applications of this technology is infrared detection, a vital component in molecular sensing, thermal imaging and certain defense and security systems.

"A better understanding of infrared materials could lead to innovations in night-vision goggles or infrared spectroscopy and sensing systems," Wasserman said.

High-speed detectors operating at these frequencies could even enable the development of free-space communication in the long wavelength infrared - a technology allowing for wireless communication in difficult conditions, in space or between buildings in urban environments.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The biggest source of global energy consumption is the industrial manufacturing of products such as plastics, iron, and steel. Not only does manufacturing these materials require huge amounts of energy, but many of the reactions also directly emit carbon dioxide as a byproduct.

In an effort to help reduce this energy use and the related emissions, MIT chemical engineers have devised an alternative approach to synthesizing epoxides, a type of chemical that is used to manufacture diverse products, including plastics, pharmaceuticals, and textiles. Their new approach, which uses electricity to run the reaction, can be done at room temperature and atmospheric pressure while eliminating carbon dioxide as a byproduct.

"What isn't often realized is that industrial energy usage is far greater than transportation or residential usage. This is the elephant in the room, and there has been very little technical progress in terms of being able to reduce industrial energy consumption," says Karthish Manthiram, an assistant professor chemical engineering and the senior author of the new study.

The researchers have filed for a patent on their technique, and they are now working on improving the efficiency of the synthesis so that it could be adapted for large-scale, industrial use.

MIT postdoc Kyoungsuk Jin is the lead author of the paper, which appears online April 9 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Other authors include graduate students Joseph Maalouf, Nikifar Lazouski, and Nathan Corbin, and postdoc Dengtao Yang.

Ubiquitous chemicals

Epoxides, whose key chemical feature is a three-member ring consisting of an oxygen atom bound to two carbon atoms, are used to manufacture products as varied as antifreeze, detergents, and polyester.

"It's impossible to go for even a short period of one's life without touching or feeling or wearing something that has at some point in its history involved an epoxide. They're ubiquitous," Manthiram says. "They're in so many different places, but we tend not to think about the embedded energy and carbon dioxide footprint."

Several epoxides are among the chemicals with the top carbon footprints. The production of one common epoxide, ethylene oxide, generates the fifth-largest carbon dioxide emissions of any chemical product.

Manufacturing epoxides requires many chemical steps, and most of them are very energy-intensive. For example, the reaction used to attach an atom of oxygen to ethylene, producing ethylene oxide, must be done at nearly 300 degrees Celsius and under pressures 20 times greater than atmospheric pressure. Furthermore, most of the energy used to power this kind of manufacturing comes from fossil fuels.

Adding to the carbon footprint, the reaction used to produce ethylene oxide also generates carbon dioxide as a side product, which is released into the atmosphere. Other epoxides are made using a more complicated approach involving hazardous peroxides, which can be explosive, and calcium hydroxide, which can cause skin irritation.

To come up with a more sustainable approach, the MIT team took inspiration from a reaction known as water oxidation, which uses electricity to split water into oxygen, protons, and electrons. They decided to try performing the water oxidation and then attaching the oxygen atom to an organic compound called an olefin, which is a precursor to epoxides.

This was a counterintuitive approach, Manthiram says, because olefins and water normally cannot react with each other. However, they can react with each other when an electric voltage is applied.

To take advantage of this, the MIT team designed a reactor with an anode where water is broken down into oxygen, hydrogen ions (protons), and electrons. Manganese oxide nanoparticles act as a catalyst to help this reaction along, and to incorporate the oxygen into an olefin to make an epoxide. Protons and electrons flow to the cathode, where they are converted into hydrogen gas.

Thermodynamically, this reaction only requires about 1 volt of electricity, less than the voltage of a standard AA battery. The reaction does not generate any carbon dioxide, and the researchers anticipate that they could further reduce the carbon footprint by using electricity from renewable sources such as solar or wind to power the epoxide conversion.

Scaling up

So far, the researchers have shown that they can use this process to create an epoxide called cyclooctene oxide, and they are now working on adapting it to other epoxides. They are also trying to make the conversion of olefins into epoxides more efficient -- in this study, about 30 percent of the electrical current went into the conversion reaction, but they hope to double that.

They estimate that their process, if scaled up, could produce ethylene oxide at a cost of $900 per ton, compared to $1,500 per ton using current methods. That cost could be lowered further as the process becomes more efficient. Another factor that could contribute to the economic viability of this approach is that it also generates hydrogen as a byproduct, which is valuable in its own right to power fuel cells.

The researchers plan to continue developing the technology in hopes of eventually commercializing it for industrial use, and they are also working on using electricity to synthesize other kinds of chemicals.

"There are many processes that have enormous carbon dioxide footprints, and decarbonization can be driven by electrification," Manthiram says. "One can eliminate temperature, eliminate pressure, and use voltage instead."

A study of pregnant women with systemic lupus erythematosus has identified early changes in the RNA molecules present in the blood that could be used to determine the likelihood of them developing preeclampsia. The study, which will be published April 8 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, may also help researchers develop treatments to prevent other pregnancy complications associated with lupus, including miscarriage and premature birth.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body’s own healthy tissues. The disease predominantly affects women and carries an increased risk of developing complications during pregnancy; approximately one fifth of pregnant lupus patients develop problems ranging from preeclampsia to fetal death and preterm delivery.

“Early biomarkers are needed to help predict pregnancy outcome and inform treatments to decrease morbidity and mortality in lupus pregnancies,” says co-senior author Virginia Pascual, the Drukier Director of the Drukier Institute for Children’s Health at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York. To address this problem, Dr. Pascual teamed up with Dr. Jane E. Salmon, a Professor of Medicine and of Medicine in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and the Collette Kean Research Professor at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. Dr. Salmon and her team recruited healthy and lupus pregnant women as part of the PROMISSE study, a longitudinal NIH-funded study aimed at identifying biomarkers of lupus pregnancy complications.

To identify potential biomarkers, Pascual, Salmon, and colleagues compared blood samples taken at regular intervals from either pregnant lupus patients or healthy pregnant women. The researchers counted the different types of immune cells present in these samples and, as a measure of which genes were active in these cells, analyzed the RNA molecules they produced over the course of pregnancy and in the postpartum period.

In a healthy pregnancy, the immune system is prevented from attacking the developing fetus. Accordingly, Pascual, Salmon, and colleagues found that several components of the immune system, including antibody-producing plasma cells and the proinflammatory interferon response, were suppressed in healthy pregnant women. An additional analysis of women undergoing assisted reproductive therapy suggested that the interferon response, in particular, is downregulated within days of embryo implantation. At later stages of pregnancy, however, some components of the immune system, such as the number of neutrophil cells, were elevated in healthy pregnant women.

Pascual, Salmon, and colleagues found that lupus patients with uncomplicated pregnancies showed similar changes in their immune systems. However, neutrophil levels increased earlier than normal in patients that developed preeclampsia. By analyzing the RNAs present in the blood of these patients during early pregnancy, the researchers were able to identify a unique immune signature that could predict the development of preeclampsia more accurately than existing clinical factors.

“Our results need to be independently validated, but they suggest that early changes in gene expression in maternal blood could help predict preeclampsia in lupus patients,” Salmon, co-senior author, says.

In addition, the researchers found that patients who developed other complications failed to properly suppress their interferon response and plasma cell activity.

“Overall, we have identified significant changes in immune pathways during healthy pregnancy and found that failure to modulate them properly is associated with complications in pregnant lupus patients,” Pascual says. “Our findings provide a framework for future studies aimed at developing therapeutic strategies to improve health outcomes for mothers with lupus and their offspring.”

Dr. Pascual has received a research grant and consulting honorarium from Sanofi-Pasteur. Dr. Salmon has received an investigator-initiated grant from UCB Pharmaceuticals.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have produced hard data that demonstrates collaborating with Indigenous peoples changed the outcome of a scientific research project. It is the first empirical evidence that culturally diverse teams produce improved results in conservation research.

Dr Georgia Ward-Fear, a conservation biologist and herpetologist (amphibians and reptiles), said this was the first published study to measure the scientific contribution that Indigenous peoples bring to a research project, beyond the moral or ethical value.

"This is of major importance for Indigenous peoples around the world," Dr Ward-Fear said. "Traditional owners often don't have a voice in science. This is a case study for Indigenous groups globally to hold up and say 'we deserve a voice' and 'we deserve input into research'."

James 'Birdy' Birch, a leading ranger from the Balanggarra Aboriginal Corporation in the Kimberley said: "The university-educated scientists have research tools, data and methods that work for them. But we have every-day lived experience. We have knowledge of the land and the animals passed down over thousands of years. If we put these skills together, it paints a clearer picture."

Working with traditional owners of the land

Dr Ward-Fear, from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, and her team have been working in the Kimberley, a remote area of northern Western Australian. Her conservation work involves protecting large goannas from the devastating impacts of invasive, poisonous cane toads.

Over 18 months, teams made up of a Western scientist and an Indigenous ranger would set out at daybreak to find and capture the goannas - which can grow up to 1.7 metres in length and weigh more than six kilograms. They fitted the lizards with radio transmitters and then released them and trained them to avoid eating the large toads. They did this by approaching the animal in the field, and feeding the goanna a small toad, large enough to make them sick but not kill them. This put the lizards off eating the toads once the invasion arrived.

The aversion training, developed with Emeritus Professor Rick Shine, has been hugely successful and is now being rolled out on a large scale via the Cane Toad Coalition, a consortium of scientists, government authorities, conservation groups and the Australian Research Council.

But Dr Ward-Fear said the success of the initial project would not have been possible without the input of the Balanggarra Rangers, who are traditional owners of the land.

"Working with Indigenous rangers, you get to see their unique skillsets. Once we showed that the trial worked, I was curious to see whether this contributed to the success of the study in a way we could quantify," Dr Ward-Fear said.

"Even though we worked in teams and had the same opportunity to spot the lizards, there were significant differences in the animals that the rangers spotted," Dr Ward-Fear said. "The rangers have amazing observation skills and ability to see animals in a landscape. They could see the shape of a goanna when they were not moving, were in the shade or dappled light or from much further away. The Western scientists tended to see animals that were closer, out in the open or moving."

Published today in Conservation Letters, the study found the Indigenous rangers were able to find and collect a subset of large varanid lizards (goannas) that Western scientists were unable to spot. Importantly, these lizards displayed different behavioural profiles throughout the study: they were more 'shy' than the bolder lizards foraging in broad daylight; and they also learned the aversion technique better than the braver lizards.

"These ranger-spotted animals responded better to the conservation technique and they actually drove the significant result of the study," Dr Ward-Fear said. "If we hadn't worked with rangers and we hadn't collected that subsample of animals then our results wouldn't have been significant."

Local knowledge

James 'Birdy' Birch is the head ranger with the Balanggarra Rangers. He said the rangers had unique skills to offer the scientists.

"We had access to country for a start," Mr Birch said. "We knew where the goannas were and we caught over 100 of them. We just had a keen eye. We could see them miles away.

"My rangers all grew up on this country hunting for goanna with their parents. It is knowledge passed down for thousands of years."

Mr Birch believes science can benefit from combining the two "ways of looking".

"You've got the Western way of looking with all the tools and the data, and you've got the Indigenous way of looking at things. Together, Western science and Indigenous knowledge, they complement each other. We've got our skills and you guys have got your skills, we can put them together and find out so much, we were amazed by the results."

Dr Ward-Fear said the scientific community already knows it is ethical to work with the traditional owners of the land. "But now we know there is ethical and scientific value in working together in meaningful collaborations," she said.

Orlando, Fla. (April 8, 2019) - The Dusky Arion slug produces a defensive glue that fouls the mouthparts of any would-be predator. Two new studies reveal more about how this glue achieves its strong sticking power and flexibility, insights that could be used to create better medical adhesives.

"Typical sutures like staples and stitches often lead to scarring and create holes in the skin that could increase the chance of infection after surgery," said Rebecca Falconer, who conducted one of the studies. "Understanding the roles of adhesive proteins in the slug glue would aid in the creation of a medical adhesive that can move and stretch yet still retain its strength and adhesiveness."

Falconer and Christopher Gallego-Lazo, undergraduate researchers in the lab of Andrew Smith, PhD, at Ithaca College, will present their research at the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology annual meeting during the 2019 Experimental Biology meeting to be held April 6-9 in Orlando, Fla.

Falconer analyzed 11 proteins unique to the slug glue that were previously identified by Smith's research team. Using recombinant DNA technology, she produced abundant amounts of each protein for analysis. The techniques she developed could also be used to reproduce the proteins for a manmade glue.

The analysis revealed that some of the proteins tend to bind to themselves or with other proteins to form a three-dimensional network. These findings suggest that this oligomerization may be required for some of the proteins to be most functional.

Gallego-Lazo's study focused on understanding the double network structure that makes the slug glue highly deformable but able to withstand large amounts of force. The glue has a stiff protein network that uses sacrificial bonds to absorb energy, protecting an intertwined deformable network of carbohydrates.

Gallego-Lazo discovered that changing specific chemical bonds within the slug glue's protein network modified the glue's strength. These bonds can be reformed naturally, enabling the glue to deform while maintaining its strength.

"Few studies on biological adhesives have identified the exact nature of the bonds holding the glue together," said Gallego-Lazo. "This knowledge can guide the development of an organic synthetic adhesive that would reduce the risk of infection and scarring compared to stitches and staples and could be applied rapidly and simply."

Rebecca Falconer and Christopher Gallego-Lazo will present the findings from 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday, April 8, in Exhibit Hall-West Hall, Orange County Convention Center (E148 631.15 poster) (abstract) (E149 631.16 poster) (abstract). Contact the media team for more information or to obtain a free press pass to attend the meeting.

Shark and ray species commonly caught in the Mediterranean and Black seas are not being reported in official statistics, new research from the Sea Around Us initiative at the University of British Columbia shows.

A new study published in Marine Policy reveals that 97 per cent of the sharks and rays caught and brought to market domestically by fleets from the European, North African and Middle Eastern countries that surround these seas are not reported by species.

"The Mediterranean and Black Seas have historically harboured a high diversity and abundance of sharks and rays, but now between between 53 per cent and 71 per cent of them face an elevated risk of extinction," said Madeline Cashion, lead author of the study, who carried out the research at the Sea Around Us initiative at UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.

By not keeping track of the different species of sharks and rays that they are bringing to port, countries may be further threatening those already at risk.

"Part of the problem is that many sharks and rays in the region are caught as bycatch in fisheries targeting other species and are brought to port either because there is a small market for them or because, by law, they cannot be thrown back at sea," Cashion said. "If neither fishers nor authorities keep detailed records of what is being caught, then it's very difficult to detect declines and design effective measures to protect threatened species."

Despite the lack of reporting, Cashion found in her research that sharks and rays have become increasingly rare following centuries of exploitation and the more recent expansion and intensification of fisheries in the Mediterranean, in particular of the non-European ones. In many cases, catch data is the only source of information to know if species still exist where they were historically found.

"The problem is that detailed catch data is hard to come by because species identification can be very tricky," Cashion said. "Good reporting relies on the financial and logistical support of governments and fisheries management organizations. Fishers can't be expected to take it on alone."

Given the threats posed by the fishing industry to at-risk sharks and rays due to the lack of specific information, the researchers call for a better implementation of existing data collection and reporting policies.

They also call for official statistics to start accounting for fish that are caught and thrown back into the ocean and those that are caught incidentally.

"To understand the real trends of shark and ray exploitation and abundance, we need to know what is discarded at sea because not all species survive after being pulled up by a net," said Daniel Pauly, co-author of the study and the Sea Around Us Principal Investigator. "For example, 98 per cent of scalloped hammerheads die but when it comes to thornback rays, only 2 per cent of them perish. We just need to know what is being caught."

WASHINGTON -- When people feel that their own good impressions of themselves are at risk, they may try to increase their savings, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

"People who are insecure about their lives and the broader world save as a means of securing their future in anticipation of a possible emergency," said Yael Steinhart, PhD, of Tel-Aviv University and lead author of the study.

The findings were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Personal savings in the United States have decreased, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. As of January 2018, the average annual personal savings rate was 3.2 percent, down from an average of 8.26 percent during the prior 60 years.

Steinhart and her co-author, Yuwei Jiang, PhD, of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, conducted a series of experiments involving 2,410 U.S. and Israeli citizens and analyzed data from a nationally representative survey of 1,200 people in the Netherlands. While specifics differed slightly, the experiments were all designed to examine the relationship between self-image threats, or something that challenged the positive perceptions that people have about themselves (e.g., that they are smart), and the tendency to save money.

In all cases, the researchers found that people who experienced self-image threats had a greater intent to save money. This may be because participants preferred to save money to reduce their worries and anxiety and to gain assurance about the future, according to Steinhart.

"Saving constitutes an important measure of economic well-being," said Steinhart. "A person's welfare should increase as they save more, because saving offers a sense of security about the future."

In one experiment, participants played a Sudoku computer game. They were then randomly told that their score put them in the top, middle or bottom third of all the players. They were also asked to rate their saving tendencies by completing a questionnaire and reporting the amount they would save if they received $1,250. People who were told their scores were in the bottom third, and thus experienced a high self-image threat, reported more savings than those who were told they scored in the middle or upper third.

Another experiment looked at the influence of social connections. Participants described an event in which they felt bad or good about themselves and indicated the number of friends they met with and talked to on the phone in an average week. The researchers also asked them to quantify their number of friends based on whether they had a few or many.

Participants then imagined they received $500 and indicated how much of that they would deposit in a savings account. Those who had more social connections, and felt better about those connections, tended to save less money.

"Friends may substitute for money as a psychological resource and buffer individuals from anxiety about the future," said Steinhart.

Orlando, Fla. (April 7, 2019)--A new study suggests that sunscreen protects the skin's blood vessel function from harmful ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure by protecting dilation of the blood vessels. Perspiration on the skin may also provide protection to the skin's blood vessels from sun damage. The findings will be presented today at the American Physiological Society's (APS) annual meeting at Experimental Biology 2019 in Orlando, Fla.

UVR from the sun has been well-documented as a contributing factor to skin cancer and premature skin aging. UVR has also been found to reduce nitric oxide-associated dilation of skin blood vessels (vasodilation) by reducing the amount of nitric oxide available in the skin. Nitric oxide is a compound essential for blood vessel health. Vasodilation of the skin's blood vessels plays an important role in regulating body temperature and responding to heat stress, both locally in the skin and throughout the body.

Researchers from Pennsylvania State University studied the effect of UVR exposure with sunscreen or sweat on nitric oxide's ability to promote vasodilation of skin blood vessels. Healthy young adults with light-to-medium skin tone were exposed to UVR on one arm while the other arm served as a control and did not receive UVR treatment. The dosage of UVR was roughly equivalent of spending an hour outside on a sunny day, but without the reddening of sunburn. Three sites on the UVR-exposed arm of each participant were randomly assigned one of three treatments:

one site received UVR only,

a second site received UVR with a chemical sunscreen on the skin, and

a third site received UVR with simulated sweat on the skin.

The UVR-only site was found to have less nitric oxide-associated vasodilation than in the control arm. However, the sunscreen- and sweat-treated sites did not show these reductions in nitric oxide-associated vasodilation. "Further, when sunscreen was applied prior to UVR, UVR exposure actually augmented [nitric oxide-associated vasodilation] compared to [the control arm], or when sweat was on the skin," the research team wrote. "The presence of sunscreen or sweat on the skin may play a protective role against this effect [of UVR]."

"For those who spend a lot of time working, exercising or participating in other various activities outdoors, using sunscreen may protect not only against skin cancer, but also against reductions in skin vascular function," wrote S. Tony Wolf, MA, first author of the study.