Culture

Bats with skulls and teeth adapted to a wide range of diets are helping scientists understand how major groups of mammals first evolved.

***A video quiz of the bats is available to embed from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X42lf4Uk4c4 ***

By analysing the skulls of a group of bats that feed on everything from nectar to blood, researchers from the US and Imperial College London have identified how the bats have tweaked their development to adapt to different diets.

The insights, published in the journal Developmental Dynamics, could suggest how mammals as a whole evolved their diversity of diets and specialised skulls.

Many groups of bats hunt insects using echolocation, based on sound waves. But one group of bats in Central America and the Caribbean, known as New World leaf-nosed bats, have evolved a wide range of diets, and have the skulls and teeth to match.

For example, some species in the group have evolved very long snouts to feed on flower nectar, whereas others have evolved very flat faces to eat large fruit. Some species have evolved skulls and teeth that allow them to catch and eat small birds and rats, and others are able to drill into mammal skin and drink blood.

This diversity reflects the range of specialised diets (and skulls) seen across mammals as a whole - for example the fruit-eating bat faces resemble those of primates, and the bird- and rodent-eating bat faces resemble those of wolves and other carnivores.

However, Georges Cuvier, French naturalist and the founding father of palaeontology, already in the eighteenth century recognised that members of the same group of mammals (e.g. carnivores or rodents) tend to have very similar anatomical features, especially in their skulls and teeth. Across mammals each major group usually has one specialisation - for example all primates have flat faces - whereas all this diversity is contained within one group for the New World leaf-nosed bats.

This makes these bats an ideal model for studying the evolution of mammals as a whole. While the bats are still very closely related, having only evolved in the last 15-20 million years, mammals diversified into their different groups not long after they first evolved, 100-120 million years ago.

Senior author Dr Arkhat Abzhanov, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial and the Natural History Museum in London, said: "These bats can give us some idea how early mammalian diversity evolved without having to compare dogs, whales and monkeys, but instead by comparing relatively closely related species.

"Through our research, we found that differences observed during embryonic and juvenile development of bats can explain their adult specialised faces. This makes them an excellent group for further, more detailed study."

The research team led by Dr Abzhanov, which included members from Harvard University, Yale University and the American Museum of Natural History, investigated the skulls of adult, juvenile and embryonic bats.

Using high-resolution micro-CT scans to capture 3D skull shapes, they examined the differences between each of the components of the skulls of different species, such as relative sizes and shapes of jaws and teeth.

They found that for highly specialised skulls, such as those for feeding on nectar or blood, a process called heterochrony strongly influenced their development.
Heterochrony refers to changes in the pace of development, or timing and order of important steps in development, while the animal is still growing as an embryo and a juvenile.

For example, the long snout of nectar-feeding bats is formed late in development as the snout-forming phase is greatly extended when compared to the normal timing in the ancestral insect-feeding bats. Fruit-eating bats evolved their unique primate-like faces by accelerating through the same developmental stages.

Dr Abzhanov added: "Interestingly, their development as embryos and juveniles closely tracks predicted evolutionary changes from their common ancestor. This phenomenon, known as recapitulation, should allow us to uncover some of the underlying genetic mechanisms, for bats and potentially for mammals as a whole."

The periodic table has been a vital foundational tool for material research since it was first created 150 years ago. Now, Martin Rahm from Chalmers University of Technology presents a new article which adds an entirely new dimension to the table, offering a new set of principles for material research. The article is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The study maps how both the electronegativity and the electron configuration of elements change under pressure. These findings offer materials researchers an entirely new set of tools. Primarily, it means it is now possible to make quick predictions about how certain elements will behave at different pressures, without requiring experimental testing or computationally expensive quantum mechanical calculations.

"Currently, searching for those interesting compounds which appear at high pressure requires a large investment of time and resources, both computationally and experimentally. As a consequence, only a tiny fraction of all possible compounds has been investigated. The work we are presenting can act as a guide to help explain what to look for and which compounds to expect when materials are placed under high pressure," says Martin Rahm, Assistant Professor in Chemistry at Chalmers, who led the study.

At high pressures the properties of atoms can change radically. The new study shows how the electron configuration and electronegativity of atoms change as pressure increases. Electron configuration is fundamental to the structure of the periodic table. It determines which group in the system different elements belong to. Electronegativity is also a central concept to chemistry and can be viewed as a third dimension of the periodic table. It indicates how strongly different atoms attract electrons. Together, electron configuration and electronegativity are important for understanding how atoms react with one another to form different substances. At high pressure, atoms which normally do not combine can create new, never before seen compounds with unique properties. Such materials can inspire researchers to try other methods for creating them under more normal conditions, and give us new insight into how our world works.

"At high pressure, extremely fascinating chemical structures with unusual qualities can arise, and reactions that are impossible under normal conditions can occur. A lot of what we as chemists know about elements' properties under ambient conditions simply doesn't hold true any longer. You can basically take a lot of your chemistry education and throw it out the window! In the dimension of pressure there is an unbelievable number of new combinations of atoms to investigate" says Martin Rahm.

A well-known example of what can happen at high pressure is how diamonds can be formed from graphite. Another example is polymerisation of nitrogen gas, where nitrogen atoms are forced together to bond in a three-dimensional network. These two high-pressure materials are very unlike one another. Whereas carbon retains its diamond structure, polymerised nitrogen is unstable and reverts back to gas form when the pressure is released. If the polymer structure of nitrogen could be maintained at normal pressures, it would without doubt be the most energy dense chemical compound on Earth.

Currently, several research groups use high pressures to create superconductors - materials which can conduct electricity without resistance. Some of these high-pressure superconductors function close to room temperature. If such a material could be made to work at normal pressure, it would be revolutionary, enabling, for example, lossless power transfer and cheaper magnetic levitation.

"First and foremost, our study offers exciting possibilities for suggesting new experiments that can improve our understanding of the elements. Even if many materials resulting from such experiments prove unstable at normal pressure, they can give us insights into which properties and phenomena are possible. The steps thereafter will be to find other ways to reach the same results," says Martin Rahm.

Read the article 'Squeezing All Elements in the Periodic Table: Electron Configuration and Electronegativity of the Atoms under Compression' in the Journal of the American Chemistry Society.

High pressure research:

The research has theoretically predicted how the nature of 93 of the 118 elements of the periodic table changes as pressure increases from 0 pascals up to 300 gigapascals (GPa). 1 GPa is about 10,000 times the pressure of the Earth's surface. 360 GPa corresponds to the extremely high pressure found near the Earth's core. Technology to recreate this pressure exists in different laboratories, for example, using diamond anvil cells or shock experiments.

"The pressure that we are used to on Earth's surface is actually rather uncommon, seen from a larger perspective. In addition to facilitating for high pressure material synthesis on Earth, our work can also enable a better understanding of processes occurring on other planets and moons. For example, in the largest sea in the solar system, many miles under the surface of Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Or inside the giant planets, where the pressure is enormous," says Martin Rahm.

The work was done using a mathematical model, in which each atom was placed in the middle of a spherical cavity. The effect of increased pressure was simulated through gradual reduction of the volume of the sphere. The physical properties of the atoms in different stages of compression could then be calculated using quantum mechanics.

KAIST medical scientists have developed an advanced method for perfectly detecting low-level somatic mutation in patients with intractable epilepsy. Their study showed that deep sequencing replicates of major focal epilepsy genes accurately and efficiently identified low-level somatic mutations in intractable epilepsy.

According to the study, their diagnostic method could increase the accuracy up to 100%, unlike the conventional sequencing analysis, which stands at about 30% accuracy. This work was published in Acta Neuropathologica.

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder common in children. Approximately one third of child patients are diagnosed with intractable epilepsy despite adequate anti-epileptic medication treatment.

Somatic mutations in mTOR pathway genes, SLC35A2, and BRAF are the major genetic causes of intractable epilepsies. A clinical trial to target Focal Cortical Dysplasia type II (FCDII), the mTOR inhibitor is underway at Severance Hospital, their collaborator in Seoul, Korea. However, it is difficult to detect such somatic mutations causing intractable epilepsy because their mutational burden is less than 5%, which is similar to the level of sequencing artifacts. In the clinical field, this has remained a standing challenge for the genetic diagnosis of somatic mutations in intractable epilepsy.

Professor Jeong Ho Lee's team at the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering analyzed paired brain and peripheral tissues from 232 intractable epilepsy patients with various brain pathologies at Severance Hospital using deep sequencing and extracted the major focal epilepsy genes.

They narrowed down target genes to eight major focal epilepsy genes, eliminating almost all of the false positive calls using deep targeted sequencing. As a result, the advanced method robustly increased the accuracy and enabled them to detect low-level somatic mutations in unmatched Formalin Fixed Paraffin Embedded (FFPE) brain samples, the most clinically relevant samples.

Professor Lee conducted this study in collaboration with Professor Dong Suk Kim and Hoon-Chul Kang at Severance Hospital of Yonsei University. He said, "This advanced method of genetic analysis will improve overall patient care by providing more comprehensive genetic counseling and informing decisions on alternative treatments."

Professor Lee has investigated low-level somatic mutations arising in the brain for a decade. He is developing innovative diagnostics and therapeutics for untreatable brain disorders including intractable epilepsy and glioblastoma at a tech-startup called SoVarGen. "All of the technologies we used during the research were transferred to the company. This research gave us very good momentum to reach the next phase of our startup," he remarked.

A new study provides the most accurate estimate of the frequency that planets that are similar to Earth in size and in distance from their host star occur around stars similar to our Sun. Knowing the rate that these potentially habitable planets occur will be important for designing future astronomical missions to characterize nearby rocky planets around sun-like stars that could support life. A paper describing the model appears August 14, 2019 in The Astronomical Journal.

Thousands of planets have been discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Kepler, which was launched in 2009 and retired by NASA in 2018 when it exhausted its fuel supply, observed hundreds of thousands of stars and identified planets outside of our solar system--exoplanets--by documenting transit events. Transits events occur when a planet's orbit passes between its star and the telescope, blocking some of the star's light so that it appears to dim. By measuring the amount of dimming and the duration between transits and using information about the star's properties astronomers characterize the size of the planet and the distance between the planet and its host star.

"Kepler discovered planets with a wide variety of sizes, compositions and orbits," said Eric B. Ford, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and one of the leaders of the research team. "We want to use those discoveries to improve our understanding of planet formation and to plan future missions to search for planets that might be habitable. However, simply counting exoplanets of a given size or orbital distance is misleading, since it's much harder to find small planets far from their star than to find large planets close to their star."

To overcome that hurdle, the researchers designed a new method to infer the occurrence rate of planets across a wide range of sizes and orbital distances. The new model simulates 'universes' of stars and planets and then 'observes' these simulated universes to determine how many of the planets would have been discovered by Kepler in each `universe.'

"We used the final catalog of planets identified by Kepler and improved star properties from the European Space Agency's Gaia spacecraft to build our simulations," said Danley Hsu, a graduate student at Penn State and the first author of the paper. "By comparing the results to the planets cataloged by Kepler, we characterized the rate of planets per star and how that depends on planet size and orbital distance. Our novel approach allowed the team to account for several effects that have not been included in previous studies."

The results of this study are particularly relevant for planning future space missions to characterize potentially Earth-like planets. While the Kepler mission discovered thousands of small planets, most are so far away that it is difficult for astronomers to learn details about their composition and atmospheres.

"Scientists are particularly interested in searching for biomarkers--molecules indicative of life--in the atmospheres of roughly Earth-size planets that orbit in the 'habitable-zone' of Sun-like stars," said Ford. "The habitable zone is a range of orbital distances at which the planets could support liquid water on their surfaces. Searching for evidence of life on Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars will require a large new space mission."

How large that mission needs to be will depend on the abundance of Earth-size planets. NASA and the National Academies of Science are currently exploring mission concepts that differ substantially in size and their capabilities. If Earth-size planets are rare, then the nearest Earth-like planets are farther away and a large, ambitious mission will be required to search for evidence of life on potentially Earth-like planets. On the other hand, if Earth-size planets are common, then there will be Earth-size exoplanets orbiting stars that are close to the sun and a relatively small observatory may be able to study their atmospheres.

"While most of the stars that Kepler observed are typically thousands of light years away from the Sun, Kepler observed a large enough sample of stars that we can perform a rigorous statistical analysis to estimate of the rate of Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of nearby sun-like stars." said Hsu.

Based on their simulations, the researchers estimate that planets very close to Earth in size, from three-quarters to one-and-a-half times the size of earth, with orbital periods ranging from 237 to 500 days, occur around approximately one in four stars. Importantly, their model quantifies the uncertainty in that estimate. They recommend that future planet-finding missions plan for a true rate that ranges from as low about one planet for every 33 stars to as high as nearly one planet for every two stars.

"Knowing how often we should expect to find planets of a given size and orbital period is extremely helpful for optimize surveys for exoplanets and the design of upcoming space missions to maximize their chance of success," said Ford. "Penn State is a leader in brining state-of-the-art statistical and computational methods to the analysis of astronomical observations to address these sorts of questions. Our Institute for CyberScience (ICS) and Center for Astrostatistics (CASt) provide infrastructure and support that makes these types of projects possible."

A new paper in The Economic Journal, published by Oxford University Press, finds that female executives decrease the wage-gap for women at the top of a firm while widening it at the bottom.

This study also finds that the lack of women at the executive level has a negative impact on firm performance, especially in conditions with a greater share of female workers. The researchers suggest that if all firms with at least 20% of female workers were led by female CEO's, they could see their sales per worker increase by 14%.

The reason is that female executives are better able to assess the qualities of female workers and assign them to tasks more in line with their ability, thus boosting firm's performance and reversing the statistical discrimination they endure under male executives.

Researchers studied three sources of data from Italian manufacturing firms from 1980-1997, with a focus on the period between, 1988 and 1997. This overall data set includes information on about a million workers per year.

The researchers focused on 795 firms where women represented about 21% of the workforce and accounted for 2.5% of executives. They found that the impact of female leadership reduced the pay gap for women at the top of the wage distribution but widened it at the bottom. Specifically, female executives increased wages for women in the top 25% by about 10% and decreased wages for women in the bottom 25% by about 3%. There is an opposite impact on men, with wages decreasing for the top 25% and increasing for the bottom 25%.

"We explain our results with a model where executives learn about the skills of their workers and they are better at assessing workers of their same gender." said the paper's lead Luca Flabbi. "In a world dominated by male executives, female workers prove it hard to show their skills, and therefore to climb the firm's hierarchy. In firms with many women, therefore there is a lot of unexploited talent. When a woman becomes the CEO, she is better able to assess the qualities of the female workers and assign them to tasks more in line with their ability, thus boosting firm performance."

New research led by scientists at The Rockefeller University in New York may help explain why Zika virus infection causes birth defects in some children but not others. The study, which will be published August 14 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that the risk of developing an abnormally small head (microcephaly) depends on the types of antibody produced by pregnant mothers in response to Zika infection.

The Zika virus is spread by mosquitoes in tropical and subtropical regions, and, in most adults, the symptoms of infection are fairly mild. But the widespread Zika outbreak in Brazil in 2015–2016 revealed that infection during pregnancy can cause a wide range of fetal abnormalities, with microcephaly occurring in around 5% of live births by Zika-infected mothers. “Why some Zika virus–infected pregnant women deliver apparently healthy newborns while others have babies with microcephaly is unknown,” says Davide F. Robbiani, a Research Associate Professor at The Rockefeller University, who co-led the study with Professor Michel C. Nussenzweig.

Various factors have been proposed to increase the risk of microcephaly, including previous exposure to viruses that are similar to Zika, such as dengue virus or West Nile virus. Antibodies generated by the body’s immune system to combat these viruses may recognize the Zika virus but, instead of neutralizing it, help it to enter the mother’s cells and possibly cross the placenta to infect the unborn fetus.

With the help of researchers and physicians in Brazil, Robbiani and colleagues analyzed blood samples collected during the 2015–2016 outbreak from Zika-infected mothers who had given birth to either healthy or microcephalic children.

Through a series of laboratory tests, the researchers saw no significant differences in the activity of antibodies produced against dengue or other Zika-related viruses, suggesting that prior exposure to these viruses does not increase the risk of Zika-associated birth defects.

However, when Robbiani and colleagues analyzed the activity of antibodies produced against the Zika virus itself, they saw several differences in the antibodies produced by the mothers of babies with microcephaly. Antibodies from these mothers were actually more effective at neutralizing the Zika virus than the antibodies produced by mothers of healthy newborns. Surprisingly, however, these antibodies also showed an enhanced ability to boost the entry of Zika virus into human cells grown in the laboratory.

The researchers confirmed their findings in macaques infected with the Zika virus. Pregnant monkeys that produced antibodies capable of enhancing the entry of Zika virus into cells were more at risk of giving birth to babies suffering from Zika-induced brain damage.

“Though our results only show a correlation at this point, they suggest that antibodies may be implicated in Zika fetal disease,” Robbiani says. “Antibodies may exist that, instead of protecting, enhance the risk of Zika microcephaly, so the next step will be to figure out which antibodies are responsible for this, and how they promote fetal damage. This has significant implications for vaccine development; a safe Zika vaccine would have to selectively elicit antibodies that are protective, while avoiding those that potentially enhance the risk of microcephaly.”

Beachgoers are becoming increasingly aware of the potentially harmful effects UV filters from sunscreens can have on coral and other marine organisms when the protective lotions wash off their bodies into the ocean. Now, researchers have studied how sunscreens release different compounds -- trace metals and inorganic nutrients -- into Mediterranean seawater, with unknown effects on marine ecology. They report their results in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Millions of people are hitting the beach slathered in sunscreen this summer. Some might choose "coral-safe" sunscreens that lack oxybenzone and octinoxate, the two substances most widely linked to coral reef damage. However, scientists don't yet know what effects other trace compounds in sunscreens might have on marine ecosystems. As a first step, researcher Araceli Rodríguez-Romero and colleagues wanted to determine how quickly sunscreen releases trace metals and nutrients into seawater, and how sunscreen from beachgoers' bodies could impact the overall levels of the compounds in coastal waters.

The researchers added a commercial, titanium-dioxide-containing sunscreen to samples of Mediterranean seawater and observed how droplets of the lotions released various metals and nutrients into the water. Some compounds entered the seawater more quickly after UV treatment, which simulated sun exposure. Aluminum, silica and phosphorous had the highest release rates under both light and dark conditions. The team used these data to develop a model that predicts the release of compounds from sunscreen under different conditions. Then, they used the model to estimate that, on a typical summer day at the beach, beachgoers could increase the concentration of aluminum in coastal waters by 4% and of titanium by almost 20%. More research is needed to determine how these metals and nutrients, which are normally present at very low amounts in seawater, could be affecting marine ecosystems, the researchers say.

A team of computer scientists at UC San Diego and the University of Illinois has developed an app that allows state and federal inspectors to detect devices that steal consumer credit and debit card data at gas pumps. The devices, known as skimmers, use Bluetooth to transmit the data they steal.

"All criminals have to do is download the data from the comfort of their vehicle," said Nishant Bhaskar, a Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of California San Diego and the study's first author.

The app, called Bluetana, detects the Bluetooth signature of the skimmers, and allows inspectors to find the devices without needing to open up the gas pumps.

Bluetana was developed with technical input from the United States Secret Service and is only available to law enforcement officials and gas pump inspectors. It will not be available to the general public. It is now used by agencies in several states.

"Our goal is to give field agents the best tools for the job available today," said Kirill Levchenko, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois who earned his Ph.D. at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. "We've found that Bluetana helps agents find more gas stations with skimmers--and to find more skimmers at those gas stations."

The researchers found that, compared to similar apps currently available for smartphones, Bluetana is likely to discover more skimmers and results in a much lower false positive rate. "Bluetooth technology used in these skimmers are also used for legitimate products commonly seen at and near gas stations such as speed-limit signs, weather sensors and fleet tracking systems," said Bhaskar. "These products can be mistaken for skimmers by existing detection apps."

Bluetana uses an algorithm developed by the researchers to distinguish skimmers from legitimate Bluetooth devices. The researchers designed the algorithm based on the results of a field study during which the researchers analyzed scans of Bluetooth devices taken by officials at 1,185 gas stations in six U.S. states.

"Bluetana extracts more meaningful data from the Bluetooth protocol, such as signal strength, than existing skimmer detection applications. In a few cases, our app was able to find devices missed by visual inspection," said Maxwell Bland, a Ph.D. student in computer science at UC San Diego and study coauthor.

In one year of operation, Bluetana has led to the discovery of 42 Bluetooth-based skimmers across three U.S. states, all of which were recovered by law enforcement agents. "We were surprised that there were so many skimmers in the field that had not been discovered by other detection methods such as regular manual inspections," said Aaron Schulman, a UC San Diego assistant professor in computer science. "We even found two skimmers that were installed in gas pumps and had evaded detection for six months."

Researchers will present their work on Bluetana at the USENIX Security 2019 conference Aug. 14, 2019 in the San Francisco Bay Area.

What do skimmers do and how much are they worth to criminals?

Skimmers have a high return on investment for criminals: skimmed debit card numbers can be used to withdraw cash and skimmed credit card numbers to make expensive purchases. A skimming device costs $20 or less to manufacture and can bring in more than $4,000 per day, depending on how many people use the gas pump and how the criminal converts the stolen numbers to cash.

Criminals break into the pumps, many of which can be opened using a universal master key, to install the skimmers. Skimmers are connected to both the keypad and the magnetic stripe reader inside the gas pump. This allows the devices to collect not only customers' card numbers, but also their billing ZIP code and PIN, in the case of a debit card transaction.

It takes Bluetana, on average, three seconds to detect a skimmer. By contrast, law enforcement officials can take 30 minutes on average to find skimmers during manual inspections.

"UC San Diego is an important and active partner on our Southern California Electronic Crimes Task Force, and has been able to provide technological solutions to current investigative needs," said Special Agent in Charge James Anderson of the Secret Service. "Our office looks forward to presenting them with other investigative challenges."

Next steps

As more gas stations adopt payment systems exclusively for credit and debit cards with chips, criminals will use technologies to capture information from these types of cards. Researchers will have to follow suit. Visa and MasterCard are mandating that all gas stations in the United States use the chip-based systems by October 2020.

"Bluetana is not the last word," Levchenko said. "As criminals evolve, our techniques will need to evolve also."

CLEVELAND, Ohio (August 14, 2019)--Hormone changes are known to alter insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism, as well as interfere with women's sleep patterns. But little was known about the association between diabetes and sleep disturbances during the menopause transition until now, as a new study concludes that women with diabetes are at greater risk for sleep disturbances. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

Estrogen and progesterone are known to influence cell response to insulin. As a result, it has been suspected that the hormone changes of the menopause transition could cause fluctuations in a woman's blood sugar levels, putting her at greater risk of diabetes. Statistically, midlife women have a higher prevalence rate of type 2 diabetes during the menopause transition.

Similarly, hormone changes have been shown to affect a woman's quality of sleep. Mainly because of night sweats and hot flashes caused by hormone changes, about 42% of premenopausal and 60% of postmenopausal women reportedly have sleep disturbances. For those with diabetes, sleep difficulties could be worsened by various diabetes symptoms and related medications that cause, among other problems, more frequent urination that could wake women up multiple times during the night. At the same time, sleep is identified as a key factor in trying to prevent and manage diabetes.

Despite all these acknowledged associations, few studies to date have evaluated the possible association between diabetes and sleep disturbances during the menopause transition. However, a new study based on data from two larger Internet survey studies showed that the mean total number of sleep-related symptoms was significantly higher in those with type 2 diabetes than those without the disease. The severity of the sleep problems was also greater for women with diabetes. Although this association was demonstrated in four major racial/ethnic groups in the United States it was particularly pronounced in Asian women.

Study results appear in the article "Sleep-related symptoms of midlife women with and without type 2 diabetes mellitus."

"This study suggests worse sleep-related symptoms in postmenopausal Asian women with type 2 diabetes compared with those without diabetes," says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director. "Further study is needed, given the limitations of the analysis, but this report highlights the fact that sleep problems are common in midlife women. Sleep is an important determinant of health, and women with poor sleep should be seen and evaluated for common and treatable sleep disorders such as insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea, and restless legs syndrome.

Research published this Wednesday (August 14th) in Scientific Reports describes Clevosaurus hadroprodon, a new reptile species from Rio Grande do Sul state in southern Brazil. Its fossils remains--jaws and associated skull bones--were collected from Triassic rocks (c. 237-228 million-years old) making it the oldest known fossil of its kind in Gondwana, the southern supercontinent that would eventually become Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India, and South America.

Clevosaurus hadroprodon was a small animal, similar in size with common house geckos. It belongs to the Sphenodontia, a group of lepidosaurs (which also includes snakes, lizards and amphisbaenians), that was very diverse and widespread during the Mesozoic era (the "Age of Dinosaurs"), but today has only one remaining living species in New Zealand. Clevosaurus hadroprodon is the oldest member of the Clevosauridae, a group of small sphenodonts that were the first globally distributed lepidosaurs with fossils from the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic of North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.

The dentition of Clevosaurus hadroprodon is an unexpected mix of primitive and derived teeth. It is the oldest occurrence of the typical fully acrodont dentition (teeth fused to the top of the jaw bones) of sphenodontians, but most of its teeth are relatively simple and blade-like, which differs from other, only slightly younger Clevosaurus species that possess well-developed medial-posteromedial (side-to-side) expansions of the teeth for complex grinding. "However, Clevosaurus hadroprodon also possess a large, blunt, tusk-like tooth in the first tooth position of the both premaxilla (upper jaw) and of dentary (lower jaw). This feature is typically observed only in later sphenodontian lineages" says Annie Schmaltz Hsiou, Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo and head of the study. The name "hadroprodon" is Greek for "larger first tooth" in reference to these tusk-like teeth.

"Clevosaurus hadroprodon is an important discovery because it combines a relatively primitive sphenodontian-type tooth row with the presence of massive tusk-like teeth that were possibly not for feeding, but rather used for mate competition or defense. If correct, this means that non-feeding dental specializations predated changes in the sphenodontian dentition related to feeding strategies. This is a very exciting discovery." says co-author Randall Nydam, Professor at Midwestern University (US).

In addition to its unique dentition, the authors stress that Clevosaurus hadroprodon also adds to the growing evidence that the early diversification of sphenodontians occurred in the widely separated regions of Gondwana destined to become South American and India. This illustrates the importance of the role of the Gondwanan lepidosaur fauna in our growing understanding of the earliest stages of sphenodontian evolution and the global biogeographic distribution of lepidosaurs.

Termites are unwelcome in your home. They can cause structural damage to the wood in frames, floors and other materials. It's nothing personal, though. They are really just looking for food sources.

But, outside, in the natural environment, termites are part of an entire ecological system. Their role is to help turn dead trees into valuable organic matter.

And, a recent study showed that termite activity in the soils of wetlands can help improve soil structure and nutrient content.

To study this question, Deborah S. Page-Dumroese and her colleagues researched various types of bedding systems in eastern South Carolina. "Microorganisms and termites are the primary wood decay agents in forests of southeastern United States," says Page-Dumroese. Previous research showed that raised planting beds on poorly-drained soils greatly improve the survival and growth of planted seedlings. Page-Dumroese's research team showed that bedding in wetlands could be a good management practice, too.

Page-Dumroese is a scientist with the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, in Idaho. She worked with team members in Michigan and South Carolina. The wetlands are part of the forest service. "There are many forested wetlands within national forests - particularly in the north and southeast" says Page-Dumroese. "But, there are some in the mountainous west as well."

The decay of dead trees (and any plant product) produces organic matter. And, this organic matter can increase crucial soil carbon content. All living things are made of carbon, and it is important to keep carbon in the soil (carbon sequestration) because it helps hold and filter water, reduces nutrient leaching, and improves forest health.

Researchers created beds in the study area using tractors. This mixed surface organic debris from the wetland floor with the mineral soil. They created beds of various height for study. Raised planting beds improve soil aeration, raise soil temperature, and increase nutrient availability.

To measure the activity of microbes and termites, the team placed wooden stakes into various sized beds. They chose stakes made of aspen as well as loblolly pine, both prevalent trees in eastern South Carolina. They compared the decomposition of the stakes over 23 months, in beds that ranged from flat to about 30 cm (12 inches).

Indeed, the team found many differences in decomposition between stake species and bedding height. Termites damaged or consumed 45% of aspen stakes in double height beds. This is compared to only 11% of the loblolly pine stakes. Microbial decay of both types of stakes increased with greater bedding heights.

They also determined that microbial decomposition of both aspen and pine stakes was greatest near the soil surface. This was independent of bed height.

Interestingly, the study site, which had poorly drained soils, had no termite activity at the beginning of the study. Termites were able to thrive when the researchers created the beds - as evidenced by their activity. Studies by other researchers have shown that termites may not be able to survive well during spring flood.

"While bedding wetland soils is clearly beneficial to tree growth and other factors, the possible long-term impacts are unknown," says Page-Dumroese. "Information on how soil bedding and other forest management practices affect organic matter decomposition rates and carbon sequestration would be helpful for managers and climate change modelers."

When recommending vitamin D supplements, doctors should look at each individual patient as having different requirements and not rely on "one-size-fits-all" guidelines, according to a study by researchers at Rutgers and the University of California, San Francisco.

The study, published in the journal Metabolism, Clinical and Experimental, highlights the need to gain consensus through improved tests for vitamin D levels that are currently available.

According to the Institute of Medicine, people with less than 20 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood are deficient. The Endocrine Society set a higher threshold of 30 nanograms. Neither guideline is more definitive than the other at this time.

"Recommendations based on earlier studies using a number of different tests for vitamin D levels persist and, not surprisingly, current guidelines vary," said author Sylvia Christakos, a professor at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. "For example, it is not clear that the most optimal levels for vitamin D are the same for Caucasians, blacks or Asians alike. More laboratories are now implementing improved tests and efforts are being made to standardize results from different laboratories."

Vitamin D's main function is to help the body absorb calcium. Deficiency can cause delayed skeletal development and rickets in children and may contribute to osteoporosis and increased risk of fracture in adults.

Vitamin D supplements work best when taken with calcium for rickets and bone loss that occurs with aging. Elderly people who are vitamin D deficient benefit from supplementation as protection against fracture. However, studies did not show supplements to be beneficial as protection against fracture if the elderly person was already sufficient in the vitamin.

The researchers also noted that more vitamin D supplementation is not better. Previous studies have shown that very high doses of vitamin D (300,000-500,00 iu taken over a year) seem to increase fracture risk. (The National Academy of Medicine recommends 400 iu/day for infants, 600 iu/day for people age 1 to 70 and 800 iu/day for people over 70; the Endocrine Society suggests doses up to 2,000 iu/day for adults.)

Although vitamin D supplementation has been shown to reduce overall mortality and some studies suggest that vitamin D might be beneficial for immune function, cancer and cardiovascular health, Christakos said a consistent benefit of vitamin D supplementation has yet to be shown. However, she noted, most studies have not discriminated between participants who are vitamin D sufficient or deficient.

Nanotechnology developed at Rutgers University-New Brunswick could boost research on stem cell transplantation, which may help people with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, other neurodegenerative diseases and central nervous system injuries.

The nanotechnology platform, which uses special tiny rods for sensing, allows researchers to confirm the identity of human stem cell fates and their biomarkers, or biological molecules, without destroying them, according to a study in the journal ACS Nano. That's been a major issue during pre-clinical research on stem cells because it limits further analyses and biomedical applications.

"One of the major hurdles in the current cell-based therapies is the destructive nature of the standard cell characterization step. With our technology, we can sensitively and accurately characterize the cells without compromising their viabilities," said senior author KiBum Lee, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the School of Arts and Sciences.

Stem cells can develop into many different types of cells, including neurons that transmit information in the brain. Adult human-induced pluripotent stem cells, which resemble embryonic stem cells, can be used to develop drugs and model diseases, according to the National Institutes of Health. Scientists hope to use them in transplantation medicine.

While stem cells hold great potential for treating neurodegenerative diseases and central nervous system injuries, controlling and characterizing their fate are critical issues that need to be addressed before their potential use as treatments can be fully realized. Current methods for characterizing stem cell biomarkers destroy cellular activities and functions, which makes it difficult to conduct more definitive research that could lead to biomedical applications.

Using their nanotechnology platform, the scientists successfully monitored the generation of neurons from human stem cells by characterizing next generation biomarkers called exosomes - tiny particles released by cells that play a critical role in cell-to-cell communication. The scientists will further investigate their technology's versatility in other applications, such as detecting neurons in clinical settings.

In a study that spanned two and a half decades and looked at data from more than 4,700 participants, Johns Hopkins researchers have added to evidence that abnormal blood pressure in midlife persisting into late life increases the likelihood of developing dementia. Although not designed to show cause and effect, the study suggests that maintaining a healthy blood pressure throughout life may be one way to help decrease one's risk of losing brain function.

"Our results suggest that one's blood pressure during midlife may influence how blood pressure later in life relates to dementia risk," says Keenan Walker, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "We found that individuals with high blood pressure in midlife may benefit from targeting their blood pressure to normal levels in later life, as having blood pressure that is too high or too low in late life may further increase dementia risk."

In their study, they found that those people with the high blood pressure condition hypertension during middle age and during late life were 49% more likely to develop dementia than those with normal blood pressure at both times. But, putting one at even greater risk was having hypertension in middle age and then having low blood pressure in late life, which increased one's dementia risk by 62%. The findings were published Aug. 13 in JAMA.

High blood pressure was considered any measurement more than 140/90 millimeters of mercury, whereas low blood pressure was defined as less than 90/60 millimeters of mercury. A cognitive exam, caregiver reports, hospitalization discharge codes and death certificates were used to classify participant brain function and determine cognitive impairment.

High blood pressure can be genetic, but can also be the result of not enough exercise and poor diet. As people age, the top blood pressure number (systolic) oftentimes increases while the bottom number (diastolic) can decrease due to structural changes in the blood vessels. Walker says dementia itself may lead to a lowering of blood pressure, as it may disrupt the brain's autonomic nervous system. Stiffening of the arteries from disease and physical frailty can also lead to low blood pressure in late life.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 75 million people in the U.S. have high blood pressure, and high blood pressure can raise the risk for heart disease, as well as other health conditions.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Recent primate research has had a heavy focus on a few charismatic species and nationally protected parks and forests, leaving some lesser known primates and their habitats at risk, according researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Santa Clara University.

The study, which appeared in Evolutionary Anthropology, examined more than 29,000 research articles published between 2011 and 2015 to determine which primate species and locations were most studied and how that focus affects both conservation efforts and risk for species extinction.

"With nearly a third of primate species listed as critically endangered and 60% of all primate species classified as threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the window of opportunity for conserving these mammals is quickly closing," said the study's co-author, Allison McNamara, a Ph.D. student in anthropology at UT Austin. "To protect these species, we have to understand their biology, ecology, life history, behavior and evolutionary flexibility."

The researchers found that more than half of the 504 primate species were left out of the research literature. Of the 240 species studied, 13% of the research was on chimpanzees, compared to 3% of research that focused on the next most prevalent species, the Japanese Macaque. Furthermore, 18% of published research concerned species considered critically endangered, data deficient or non-evaluated by the IUNC.

"There are a large number of primate species and populations that are being ignored, which has the potential to misrepresent primate patterns and influence primatological and anthropological theoretical frameworks," said the study's lead author, Michelle Bezanson, an anthropologist at Santa Clara University. "Additionally, not studying certain species makes it impossible to know what risks they face in their habitat, so that scientists can help inform conservation efforts."

In examining the published works, McNamara and Bezanson were most surprised to find that there were 31 primate habitat countries where no research was being conducted, including Guatemala, Trinidad, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Afghanistan and Singapore. Most of the field work was conducted in national parks and protected areas of mainland Africa (35.6%), followed by the North and South Americas (29.2%), Asia (25.1%) and Madagascar (9.9%).

"The far-reaching benefits of scientific research are missing in some countries," McNamara said. "Active research can benefit communities in more ways than primate and environmental conservation, including increasing financial support for local and national economies, raising awareness of the region's natural history, sparking community involvement in scientific projects, and creating opportunities for educational programs in the region."

The researchers also noted that most published primate research focused on topics other than conservation. However, 17.6% of publications were conservation focused, addressing anthropogenic influences on habitat, population status/density, population health, genetic diversity and enthnoprimatological approaches to human/wildlife interactions.

"The findings in our paper can help researchers identify the holes in our knowledge about primates so that we may begin to fill in the gaps and frame research questions appropriately, especially in the context of the current extinction crisis of primates," McNamara said. "It is imperative that field researchers pay careful attention to the conservation and ethical implications of their research from conception to publication, and that these implications be included in their published work so that our scientific community can track the progress of such efforts."