Culture

When you pop a tray of water into the freezer, you get ice cubes. Now, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of Toronto have achieved a similar transition using clouds of ultracold atoms.

In a study that will appear August 2 in the journal Science Advances, the team discovered that it could nudge these quantum materials to undergo transitions between "dynamical phases"--essentially, jumping between two states in which the atoms behave in completely different ways.

"This happens abruptly, and it resembles the phase transitions we see in systems like water becoming ice," said study co-author Ana Maria Rey. "But unlike that tray of ice cubes in the freezer, these phases don't exist in equilibrium. Instead, atoms are constantly shifting and evolving over time."

The findings, she added, provide a new window into materials that are hard to investigate in the laboratory.

"If you want to, for example, design a quantum communications system to send signals from one place to another, everything will be out of equilibrium," said Rey, a fellow at JILA, a joint institute between CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). "Such dynamics will be the key problem to understand if we want to apply what we know to quantum technologies."

Scientists have observed similar transitions before in ultracold atoms, but only among a few dozen charged atoms, or ions.

Rey and her colleagues, in contrast, turned to clouds made up of tens of thousands of uncharged, or neutral, fermionic atoms. Fermionic atoms, she said, are the introverts of the periodic table of elements. They don't want to share their space with their fellow atoms, which can make them harder to control in cold atom laboratories.

"We were really wandering in a new territory not knowing what we would find," said study coauthor Joseph Thywissen, a professor of physics at the University of Toronto.

To navigate that new territory, the researchers took advantage of the weak interactions that do occur between neutral atoms--but only when those atoms bump into each other in a confined space.

First, Thywissen and his team in Canada cooled a gas made up of neutral potassium atoms to just a fraction of a degree below absolute zero. Next, they tuned the atoms so that their "spins" all pointed in the same direction.

Such spins are a natural property of all atoms, Thywissen explained, a bit like Earth's magnetic field, which currently points to the north.

Once the atoms were all standing in formation, the group then tweaked them to change how strongly they interacted with each other. And that's where the fun began.

"We ran the experiment using one kind of magnetic field, and the atoms danced in one way," Thywissen said. "Later, we ran the experiment again with a different magnetic field, and the atoms danced in a completely different way."

In the first dance--or when the atoms barely interacted at all--these particles fell into chaos. The atomic spins began to rotate at their own rates and quickly all pointed in different directions.

Think of it like standing in a room filled with thousands of clocks with second hands all ticking at different tempos.

But that was only part of the story. When the group increased the strength of the interactions between atoms, they stopped acting like disordered individuals and more like a collective. Their spins still ticked, in other words, but they ticked in sync.

In this synchronous phase, "the atoms are no longer independent," said Peiru He, a graduate student in physics at CU Boulder and one of the lead authors of the new paper. "They feel each other, and the interactions will drive them to align with each other."

With the right tweaks, the group also discovered that it could do something else: turn back time, causing both the synchronized and disordered phases to revert back to their initial state.

In the end, the researchers were only able to maintain those two different dynamical phases of matter for about 0.2 seconds. If they can increase that time, He said, they may be able to make even more interesting observations.

"In order to see richer physics, we probable have to wait longer," He said.

Wearable human-machine interfaces - devices that can collect and store important health information about the wearer, among other uses - have benefited from advances in electronics, materials and mechanical designs. But current models still can be bulky and uncomfortable, and they can't always handle multiple functions at one time.

Researchers reported Friday, Aug. 2, the discovery of a multifunctional ultra-thin wearable electronic device that is imperceptible to the wearer.

The device allows the wearer to move naturally and is less noticeable than wearing a Band-Aid, said Cunjiang Yu, Bill D. Cook Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston and lead author for the paper, published as the cover story in Science Advances.

"Everything is very thin, just a few microns thick," said Yu, who also is a principal investigator at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH. "You will not be able to feel it."

It has the potential to work as a prosthetic skin for a robotic hand or other robotic devices, with a robust human-machine interface that allows it to automatically collect information and relay it back to the wearer.

That has applications for health care - "What if when you shook hands with a robotic hand, it was able to instantly deduce physical condition?" Yu asked - as well as for situations such as chemical spills, which are risky for humans but require human decision-making based on physical inspection.

While current devices are gaining in popularity, the researchers said they can be bulky to wear, offer slow response times and suffer a drop in performance over time. More flexible versions are unable to provide multiple functions at once - sensing, switching, stimulation and data storage, for example - and are generally expensive and complicated to manufacture.

The device described in the paper, a metal oxide semiconductor on a polymer base, offers manufacturing advantages and can be processed at temperatures lower than 300 C.

"We report an ultrathin, mechanically imperceptible, and stretchable (human-machine interface) HMI device, which is worn on human skin to capture multiple physical data and also on a robot to offer intelligent feedback, forming a closed-loop HMI," the researchers wrote. "The multifunctional soft stretchy HMI device is based on a one-step formed, sol-gel-on-polymer-processed indium zinc oxide semiconductor nanomembrane electronics."

Frailty is not simply an adjective associated with old age, it is a medical condition all on its own. And it has significant medical, social and economic implications.

A landmark study published today (August 2) in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network Open, led by researchers at Monash University in Australia, explored the incidence of frailty in 120,000 people over the age of 60 in 28 countries.

It is the first global study to estimate the likelihood of community-dwelling older adults developing frailty.

The study, led by Dr Richard Ofori-Asenso and Professor Danny Liew from the Monash School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, looked at 46 studies of more than 120,000 people across 28 countries to reveal that, in over 60s, 4.3 per cent will develop frailty per year.

According to Dr Ofori-Asenso, this is the first time that a global estimate of the incidence of frailty in the population has been quantified. The results also showed that women were more likely than men to develop frailty.

As yet, there is, no 'gold standard' definition of frailty, but researchers and clinicians tend to regard it as a condition that meets three out of the following five criteria:

low physical activity

weak grip strength

low energy

slow walking speed

non-deliberate weight loss

Frailty is associated with a lower quality of life and a higher risk of death, hospitalisation, and institutionalisation. The condition tends to occur among older adults, but even young people can be frail if they have one or more disabling chronic diseases.

As more than 20 per cent of the world's population will be aged over 60 years by 2050, the number of people diagnosed with frailty is projected to increase.

According to Dr Ofori-Asenso: "our results suggest that the risk of developing frailty in older people is high. This is a worldwide problem and highlights a major challenge facing countries with ageing populations."

However, the news is not all bad. Interventions such as muscle strength training and protein supplementation may help to prevent or delay the progression of frailty.

Thus, the study authors advocate for "regular screening to assess older people's vulnerability to developing frailty so that appropriate interventions can be implemented in a timely manner".

Furthermore, in a previous study, the authors found that frailty may even be reversed, suggesting that the condition is a dynamic one.

When Nina Simone belted out "Mississippi Goddam" in 1964, she gave voice to many who were fighting for equal rights during the Civil Rights Movement. The lyrics didn't shy away from the anger and frustration that many were feeling.

While this and other "freedom songs" were key in giving motivation and comfort to those fighting for equal rights, new research from Penn State suggests they could have also helped empower Black women to lead others when formal leadership positions were unavailable.

AnneMarie Mingo, assistant professor of African American studies and women's, gender, and sexuality studies, said that because women were often denied formal positions as preachers or other community leaders, they needed to find other ways to exert public influence.

"Leading others in song gave these women space where very often they were prohibited from positions of power and leadership," Mingo said. "But through song, they were able to give direction to the movement and sustenance to those who were fighting for equal rights. They were able to improvise and mold songs into what they wanted to say."

For the study, recently published in the journal Black Theology, Mingo interviewed more than 40 women who lived through and participated in the Civil Rights Movement. She recruited the women at four U.S. churches: Ebenezer Baptist Church and Big Bethel A.M.E. Church, both in Atlanta, Georgia, and Abyssinian Baptist Church and First A.M.E. Church Bethel, both in Harlem, New York.

Mingo said it was important for the women to volunteer for the study, because oftentimes, even the church pastors did not know the women had participated in the Civil Rights Movement. For example, one woman had been arrested multiple times in Atlanta with Martin Luther King, Jr., which no one from her church knew.

Learning these oral histories are important, Mingo said, for finding and documenting these pieces of history that may otherwise be forgotten.

"I wanted to learn what gave women the strength to keep going out and protesting day after day and risking all the things that they risked," Mingo said. "And one of the things was their understanding of God, and the way they articulated that understanding, or theology, wasn't by going to seminary and writing some long treatise, but by singing and strategically adding or changing the lyrics to songs."

After hearing the women's stories, Mingo noted the songs that came up repeatedly as having been influential during the time period. She then did further research with historical sources to verify information. For example, she used archival recordings of freedom songs sung in mass meetings and compared them to published song books to see how lyrics may have changed over time.

One of the songs that deeply resonated with study participants was "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round." A spiritual that originated in the 1920s or earlier, the song's lyrics were altered during the Civil Rights Movement to reflect the struggles of the time.

Various versions included such lyrics as "Ain't gonna let segregation turn me 'round," "Ain't gonna let racism turn me 'round," and "Ain't gonna let Bull Connor turn me 'round," among other renditions.

"I realized that what they were doing with music was transgressive," Mingo said. "They were allowing it to open up new spaces for them, especially as women and as young people. They could use music as a way of articulating their own pain, their own concerns, their own questions, their own political statements and critiques. Music democratized the Movement in ways that other things could not."

Other popular songs of the era were "We Shall Overcome," "God Be with You Till We Meet Again," "Walk with Me, Lord," and "Say It Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud."

Mingo said the use of songs as a form of resistance is still alive and well today, with tunes that were popular during the Civil Rights Movement being repurposed and molded to fit current struggles. For example, the song "Which Side Are You On?" originated during the union movement in the 1930s, was changed and adapted during the Civil Rights Movement, and has been updated again recently with new lyrics.

Additionally, Mingo said that as the popularity of the Black Church with young people seems to wane, artists like Beyoncé, Janelle Monáe and Kendrick Lamar, among others, "take on the role of the preacher and prophet by speaking truth to power from the stage or via social media."

Contemporary songs that Mingo cites include "Alright" by Kendrick Lamar, "Be Free" by J. Cole and "Freedom" by Beyoncé.

Mingo said she hopes her research can be an example of how theology can be revealed in the everyday lives of people as they use art to make sense of their world through God.

"Communicating through song gives broader access to these thoughts and beliefs than traditional theological or ethical texts because you have to put philosophies in accessible language in music or else it doesn't work," Mingo said. "It's about finding ways for all of us to creatively articulate what we're feeling, longing for, hoping for, and even criticizing. That can all happen through music It can bring people together the way other things can't."

BOZEMAN - On the surface, bighorn sheep migration is like that of many other large mammals, moving to higher elevations as snow melts in the springtime then returning to lower ground to forage as winter sets in.

But a study published this month by Montana State University researchers has delved deeper, finding diverse patterns of migration among different sheep populations. Understanding these patterns could one day help wildlife officials make more informed management decisions.

The paper, "Characterizing population and individual migration patterns among native and restored bighorn sheep (Ovis Canadensis)," was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution in July.

"This paper is the first to quantify migratory diversity in ungulates and start to ask questions about how our understanding of migratory diversity can influence sheep populations and their restoration," said lead author Blake Lowrey, who is now a postdoctoral researcher in MSU's Department of Ecology in the College of Letters and Science. Lowrey completed his Ph.D. in November.

The paper draws from an extensive data set compiled by the Greater Yellowstone Mountain Ungulate Project and the Montana Bighorn Initiative, both of which are led by MSU ecology professor and co-author Robert Garrott. Data was collected from 209 female bighorn sheep in the Rocky Mountains in collaboration with national parks, state wildlife agencies, land managers and researchers in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado. Rather than focus on a single herd, the partnership allows for comparative studies across 18 populations of bighorn sheep.

Between 2008 and 2017, researchers fit bighorn sheep with GPS collars to track their movements. Blood was drawn to obtain measures of health in each animal. Nasal and tonsil swabs provided insight for disease and pathogen work. According to Garrott, it's the largest coordinated research effort on bighorn sheep ever undertaken.

"Putting that all together provides a really rich data set to address a number of important topics related to bighorn sheep management," Garrott said.

Lowrey, a spatial ecologist who studies distribution of animal species over the landscape, used the locations collected from the GPS collars to investigate migration patterns in the bighorn sheep. He defined core summer and winter ranges for individuals and measured elevation and geographic distances between the ranges. These migration patterns were then compared between types of herds: native herds that have never been removed from their historic ranges and herds within the historic bighorn sheep range in the Rockies but had been restored or augmented through species translocation.

"Migratory patterns in ungulates are thought to be learned," Lowrey said. "If you remove animals from the landscape, you lose the herd memory needed to maintain a diversity of migratory patterns."

In his research, Lowrey found not only do the bighorn sheep in native populations tend to migrate more on average, they also exhibit longer migrations and have more diversity in how they migrate. Sheep within a single native herd may migrate upward of 25 miles, they may travel short distances between high and low elevations, or they may stay at high elevations year-round. Yet within the restored and augmented populations, there is less variety. Most individuals have the same relatively short migration or do not migrate at all.

"Blake's work is the first that has really demonstrated this contrast in migratory diversity between restored and native populations," Garrott said.

While researchers have yet to determine what effect these patterns may have on bighorn sheep populations, Lowrey notes that diversity has important benefits in migratory fish and bird populations.

"Practically, it's not putting all of your eggs in one basket," he said. "Without migratory diversity, an extreme winter event or other negative factor could negatively impact all of the population. Migratory diversity may buffer bighorn sheep and not expose all of the population to the same harmful conditions."

As part of his dissertation, Lowrey published papers on mountain goat habitat and range expansion, disease in mountain goats, and the niche overlap between native bighorn sheep and introduced mountain goats. And he said there's more coming. Lowrey also plans to look at the effect of landscape characteristics such as spring green-up, road density and other development as factors that may influence migratory patterns of bighorn sheep.

"The work that he's doing is giving us a stronger knowledge of how animals use the landscape and what they might need," Garrott said. "This knowledge should help inform restoration and management in the future."

Forty percent of female doctors in a new study stopped working or moved to working part time within a few years of finishing their medical training. In contrast, all of the male doctors kept working full time. The findings were published online today in JAMA Network Open.

The researchers, including senior author and psychiatrist Constance Guille at the Medical University of South Carolina, say this is important for a few reasons. First, there's a growing shortage of doctors in the U.S. Losing doctors early in their careers is making it worse. And losing female doctors may be particularly problematic, Guille said.

"We know that patients of female physicians have lower hospital readmission rates and lower mortality in comparison to patients of male physicians. Further, when we lose women in medicine, we lose the potential for them as leaders in health care. This is really important given that gender diversity in leadership is highly associated with better profits and decision making."

Elena Frank, director of the Intern Health Study at the University of Michigan, was the lead author of the gender differences study released today. She and Guille wanted to know why there was such a clear difference when it came to male and female doctors' schedules. So they asked what factors played a role in their decisions about working full or part-time. The researchers created word clouds based on their answers.

Frank said the difference was clear. "For men, the big words that jump out are financial - need money, loans. I don't think you could even find the word child on the male one."

Guille said for women, "the major factor was child care responsibilities, balancing work and family and children."

The researchers said women and men should be free to choose how much they work or whether they stay home for family reasons. But it should be a genuine choice, not something forced on them by circumstances, Frank said. "It's very common for people to see this and say some women are just choosing to put family first. Which is wonderful and a great choice for anyone who wants to make that. But in reality, what we're seeing is that often there isn't choice."

Guille said that if the differences weren't so striking, they wouldn't be speaking out so strongly. "But the major gap between these two groups is suggesting that we don't have systems in place to support physicians as parents. That is a major conclusion from the study."

Frank agreed. She said the U.S. as a whole lags behind much of the world when it comes to supporting work/family balance. "Medicine has a big opportunity and, really, an obligation to set an example for how to support women and families."

Guille said hospitals and other places where doctors work need to create programs that support people who are juggling work with child care and other family responsibilities. "Having resources that can help you take care of your family while you're taking care of your work, such as on-site day care, flexibility in work hours and paid maternity leave, would be helpful."

Frank said it's not just policies that need to be changed but also the culture. "Federal law guarantees 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but it doesn't mean that people are able to actually take them. Similarly, men often have access to leave, but the institutional culture often pushes against them actually taking it. It's part of the leadership's role to actually set an example that makes it OK to use these policies once they're actually in place."

The research is an offshoot of the Intern Health Study, which is exploring the causes of stress and depression among young doctors. It's based in the Sen Lab at the University of Michigan. The research team includes Srijan Sen, who leads the lab, and statistician Joan Zhao.

The study released today included 344 doctors. About half are women, half are men. They work in a range of specialties.

Frank said it's important to see the gender difference in medical work hours as something that can stack the deck against women. "There is a reticence to identify this as a disparity, and this even came up in our review process for the journal article. Wanting to conceptualize this as a difference, and not a disparity. But it's really important to label it as a disparity so we understand that this has to do with power and underlying structures and history.

"We're not going to see the kind of changes we need without first acknowledging that. We're hoping that providing some scientific data will give people some fodder to start that conversation."

Visible satellite imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed the clouds from Tropical Storm Wipha blanketing the Gulf of Tonkin.
The Gulf of Tonkin is a body of water located in the northern part of the South China Sea. It is located off the coast of northern Vietnam and southern China.

On Aug. 2, 2019, a Tropical Storm Warning was in effect for coastal areas in northeastern Vietnam. The Vietnam National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting (NCHF) expects Wipha to track along the southern China coast and move into Vietnam tracking to the southwest. NCHF expects Wipha's center to pass just south of Hanoi.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Aug. 2, Wipha had maximum sustained winds near 35 knots (40 mph/64 kph). It was centered near 21.6 degrees north latitude and 108.5 degrees east longitude, about 150 nautical miles east-northeast of Hanoi, Vietnam. Wipha was moving to the west.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard Aqua captured a visible image of Wipha on August 2. The MODIS image showed that clouds associated with Wipha filled up the Gulf of Tonkin. Satellite data showed that bands of thunderstorms were wrapping into a defined low-level circulation center.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center said that Wipha is expected to make landfall by 11 p.m. EDT on Aug. 2 (0300 UTC on Aug. 3) in northern Vietnam. Then it will weaken as it moves to the west-southwest and over north Vietnam, where it will dissipate.

In the wake of the U.S. government ordering the Chinese artificial intelligence company iCarbonX to divest its majority ownership stake in the Cambridge, Mass.-based company PatientsLikeMe, Eric Topol, M.D., of Scripps Research, argues for more, not less, collaboration between China and the U.S. on artificial intelligence development.

In the latest edition of Nature Biotechnology, Topol co-authors the commentary article, titled "It Takes a Planet," with venture capitalist and artificial intelligence expert, Kai-Fu Li, Ph.D., CEO of the China-based tech investment firm Sinovation Ventures. They argue that the "global health benefits of international collaboration, although challenging to actualize, outweigh those of confrontation and competition."

They critique the forced divestiture of iCarbonX as misguided and harmful to the U.S. artificial intelligence sector. "Chinese academics and companies already have unfettered access to personal health data," they write. "To compete in AI health, U.S. companies will need access to clinical data on a similar scale. How will that be possible if the current isolationist policy continues?"

Topol and Li note that big data has irrevocably changed the landscape of medicine, with every individual representing vast amounts of medical information--genomic and otherwise--that no human can adequately process. This is occurring at a time when there are unacceptable levels of medical errors, inefficiency, waste, burnout and depression among clinicians, and high costs for medical care. In addition, they note that poor access to medical care among people living in rural areas increases inequities in healthcare.

"These problems mandate big thinking on how we can pool our resources to promote better health everywhere and for everyone," they write. "We have at our fingertips technology capable of analyzing petabytes of data. The difference now is that it is potentially achievable by capitalizing on the ability to analyze the data rather than capitulating to the challenge. Let us embrace this opportunity by working together collaboratively across the planet for the greater good of all."

Arlington, VA - July 25, 2019 - A large majority of Iowans (74 percent) say it is important for the presidential candidates to talk about how science and scientific research will affect their policymaking decisions, but only 22 percent recall them discussing science issues during the past two months. The Iowa Science Survey, jointly conducted by Research!America and Science Debate, surveyed 802 Iowans on their attitudes to science policy issues during the 2020 presidential election.

"Science policies related to our health, environment, economy, and national security impact every American, and these results suggest candidates running for president should be prepared to develop and discuss their policies well before Election Day," said Sheril Kirshenbaum, executive director of Science Debate. "We'd love to see some science-focused questions in the upcoming debates."

Eighty-seven percent of Iowans say they agree the presidential candidates should participate in a debate to discuss key science-based challenges facing the United States, such as health care, climate change, energy, education, innovation, and the economy. This represents a majority of Americans from both major parties, including 97 percent of Democrats and 84 percent of Republicans.

"These results reveal a real opportunity that candidates have to connect with potential Iowa voters," said Mike Coburn, Research!America's Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. "Iowa is the home of world-class scientific research institutions that fuel local economic growth and drive life-saving progress."

Other key findings from the Iowa survey include:

Seventy-nine percent of Iowans would like candidates to have a plan that addresses climate change specifically.

Ninety percent believe it is important for the U.S. to be a leader in science and technology research.

More than half (54 percent) are more likely to vote for a pro-science candidate.

Seventy-one percent believe that federal investment in mental health research has been inadequate.

Seventy-five percent say it is important that candidates for president have a science advisor.

Iowans value state leadership in many areas including agriculture, education, medical and health research, manufacturing, and science and technology.

Reintroducing airships into the world's transportation-mix could contribute to lowering the transport sector's carbon emissions and can play a role in establishing a sustainable hydrogen based economy. According to the authors of an IIASA-led study, these lighter-than-air aircraft could ultimately increase the feasibility of a 100% sustainable world.

Airships were introduced in the first half of the 20th century before conventional aircraft were used for the long-range transport of cargo and passengers. Their use in cargo and passenger transport was however quickly discontinued for a number of reasons, including the risk of a hydrogen explosion - for which the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 served as a stark case in point; their lower speed compared to that of airplanes; and the lack of reliable weather forecasts. Since then, considerable advances in material sciences, our ability to forecast the weather, and the urgent need to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions, have steadily been bringing airships back into political, business, and scientific conversations as a possible transportation alternative.

The transport sector is responsible for around 25% of global CO2 emissions caused by humans. Of these emissions, 3% come from cargo ships, but this figure is expected to increase by between 50% and 250% until 2050. These projections necessitate finding new approaches to transporting cargo with a lower demand for energy and lower CO2 emissions. In their study published in the Springer journal Energy Conversion and Management, researchers from IIASA, Brazil, Germany, and Malaysia looked into how an airship-based industry could be developed using the jet stream as the energy medium to transport cargo around the world.

The jet stream is a core of strong winds that flows from west to east, around 8 to 12 kilometers above the Earth's surface. According to the researchers, airships flying in the jet stream could reduce CO2 emissions and fuel consumption, as the jet stream itself would contribute most of the energy required to move the airship between destinations, resulting in a round trip of 16 days in the northern hemisphere, and 14 days in the southern hemisphere. This is considerably less time compared to current maritime shipping routes, particularly in the southern hemisphere.

The researchers postulate that the reintroduction of airships into the transport sector could also offer an alternative for the transport of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a good energy carrier and a valuable energy storage alternative. Given that renewable electricity, for example, excess wind power, can be transformed into hydrogen, there is optimism that the hydrogen economy will form a fundamental part of a clean and sustainable future. One of the challenges to implementing a hydrogen-based economy is cooling the hydrogen to below -253°C to liquefy it. The process consumes almost 30% of the embodied energy, with further energy of around 3% required to transport the liquefied hydrogen. In their study, the authors however propose that instead of using energy in liquefaction, hydrogen in gaseous form could be carried inside the airship or balloon and transported by the jet stream with a lower fuel requirement. Once the airship or balloon reaches its destination, the cargo can be unloaded removing around 60% or 80% of the hydrogen used for lift, and leaving 40% or 20%, of the hydrogen inside the airship or balloon to provide enough buoyancy for the return trip without cargo. To address the risk of combustion of the hydrogen in the airship, the authors suggest automating the operation, loading, and unloading of hydrogen airships and designing flightpaths that avoid cities to reduce the risk of fatalities in the event of an accident.

According to study lead-author Julian Hunt, an IIASA post-doctoral fellow, a further interesting aspect unveiled in this study is the possibility that airships and balloons can also be used to improve the efficiency of liquefying hydrogen. As the temperature of the stratosphere (where the airships will be flying to utilize the jet stream) varies between -50°C to -80°C, it means that less energy will be required to meet the -253°C mark if the process happens onboard the airship. The energy required for the additional cooling needed can be generated using the hydrogen in the airship.

Hunt says that this process also presents a number of additional possibilities: The process of generating energy from hydrogen produces water - one ton of hydrogen produces nine tons of water. This water could be used to increase the weight of the airship and further save energy in its descending trajectory. Another possible application for the water produced is rainmaking, which involves releasing the water produced from the stratosphere at a height where it will freeze before entering the troposphere where it would then melt again. This reduces the temperature and increases the relative humidity of the troposphere until it saturates and starts raining. The rain will in turn initiate a convection rain pattern, thus feeding even more humidity and rain into the system. This process could be used to alleviate water stress in regions suffering from shortages.

"Airships have been used in the past and provided great services to society. Due to current needs, airships should be reconsidered and returned to the skies. Our paper presents results and arguments in favor of this. The development of an airship industry will reduce the costs of fast delivery cargo shipping, particularly in regions far from the coast. The possibility to transport hydrogen without the need to liquefy it would reduce the costs for the development of a sustainable and hydrogen based economy, ultimately increasing the feasibility of a 100% renewable world," concludes Hunt.

A group of Japanese scientists has discovered a new orchid species on Japan's subtropical islands of Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima that bears fruit without once opening its flowers. They named the new species Gastrodia amamiana, and the findings were published in the online edition of Phytotaxa on August 2.

The research team was led by Associate Professor Kenji Suetsugu of the Kobe University Graduate School of Science, in collaboration with Amami-Oshima residents and independent scientists Hidekazu Morita, Yohei Tashiro, Chiyoko Hara and Kazuki Yamamuro.

Some plants have abandoned photosynthesis and evolved to be parasites, feeding off the hyphae of host fungi. These are known as mycoheterotrophs. They don't photosynthesize, which means they only show themselves above ground for brief periods when fruiting or in flower. This makes it hard to find and classify them, and the true identities of many species remain a mystery. Professor Suetsugu and his colleagues are working to document these mysterious mycoheterotrophs in Japan.

This time the research team discovered a species of Gastrodia elata on Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima islands that bears fruit without opening its flowers - they remain hard buds. After dissecting the flower, they discovered that although it resembles Gastrodia uraiensis there are differences in the structure of its petals and column. Because it does not open its flowers, the possibility of cross-fertilizing with close relatives such as G. uraiensis is extremely low, further evidence that it is a new species based on the biological species concept.

Interestingly, G. amamiana self-fertilizes in bud form without opening its flowers. Non-photosynthesizing plants often grow on the dark forest floor, an environment rarely visited by pollinators like bees and butterflies. So G. amamiana may have evolved to stop opening its flowers because the action of flower opening used up too many of the plant's resources. We can see similar evolutionary patterns in other mycoheterotrophic plants. This suggests that when plants give up photosynthesis, it changes their relationships with other organisms such as insect pollinators.

Mycoheterotrophs are parasitic lifeforms, so only stable ecosystems with resources to spare can support multiple mycoheterotrophic species. The discovery of different mycoheterotrophic species in these forests is evidence of a rich habitat beneath the forest floor, including a fungal network hidden from human view. This year Amami-Oshima has already been the location of two new mycoheterophs' discoveries: the new species Lecanorchis moritae amamiana and the new variety Didymoplexis siamensis var. amamiana. The habitats where these plants were found are also home to many endangered species, and these discoveries are evidence of the rich ecosystems in Amami-Oshima's forests.

However, apart from designated national parks and a few other exceptions, many of these natural habitats are becoming potential locations for logging. Tree-thinning was taking place near the discovery location of G. amamiana, and the resulting dry soil may negatively impact the habitat by drying out the fungi.

"These field surveys rely on cooperation from independent scientists, and our resources are limited, meaning that some species may reach extinction without ever being discovered by humans," Professor Suetsugu comments. "The discovery of G. amamiana highlights the importance of the forests of Amami-Oshima. We hope that revealing these new species will draw more attention to the environmental threat faced by these regions."

Many patients with functional dizziness look back on a long odyssey to numerous doctors, because no organic causes could be found. Now for the first time, an experiment at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has identified possible causes of the disorder: problems with the processing of sensory-motor signals in the brain that resemble those associated with dizziness due to organic causes.

The Munich researchers had already postulated several years ago that functional disorders may be caused by faulty processing of sensory stimuli. The team, headed by Prof. Nadine Lehnen, senior physician for psychosomatic medicine at the TUM University Hospital rechts der Isar, was able to bolster this hypothesis with the results of an experimental pilot study.

Eight patients with functional dizziness and eleven healthy subjects who served as a comparison group participated in the study. The researchers also used data from dizziness patients with organic defects who had previously taken part in the same experiment. Those patients had either a cerebellar disorder or a complete loss of functioning vestibular (equilibrium) nerves.

Dizziness patients show marked deficits

During the experiment, the participants sat in a dark room in which points of light were flashed in rapid succession on the wall left and right of gaze straight ahead. They were asked to look in the direction of the light points. Their eye and head movements during the gaze shifts were recorded. They were then fitted with a weighted helmet to alter the inertia of their head. This resulted in significant head wobbling. The experiment was performed with and without the helmet.

Whereas the healthy subjects quickly adapted their movements to the new circumstances and managed to stop their head from wobbling, all the subjects with functional dizziness found the task difficult to perform. What surprised the research team was the fact that the latter behaved in exactly the same way as subjects with dizziness due to massive organic defects.

"Our results clearly show that functional dizziness is manifested exactly like severe physical disorders, for example after complete functional loss of the vestibular nerves. This reflects how severely impaired these people are," Nadine Lehnen says.

Experiment provides possible explanation of functional dizziness

Based on previous experience, which is stored in the brain in the form of learned models, people have a certain expectation about the sensory impressions evoked by a movement. This expectation is compared with information from the vestibular organs. If the head behaves differently than normal, the two sets of information no longer match. This creates an imbalance between expectation and reality, a state known as prediction error.

"Healthy people can easily perceive this error, process it and adapt their movements accordingly. Patients with functional dizziness, by contrast, do not appear to process sensory-motor impressions correctly. They rely primarily on their stored model, but it no longer matches the new reality," Nadine Lehnen explains, and adds: "We were excited to observe that they are still able to learn - albeit only to a limited degree." It would therefore be important to treat such patients using therapeutic approaches that take into account this processing deficit. A large-scale study is planned to corroborate the recent findings.

Limonoids are a class of plant natural products whose complex chemistry has been intensively investigated for over 50 years.

The best known limonoid, azadirachtin, is famous for being bee-friendly yet having a strong anti-insect effect; others are well known for contributing bitterness to citrus fruits, while further examples such as nimbolide, are being investigated for potential pharmaceutical anti-cancer uses.

Yet, despite this wealth of research, how plants even begin to make these useful chemicals has remained a mystery - until now.

Researchers from the John Innes Centre and Stanford University have uncovered new genes that encode this high-value chemistry.

The team used genome mining resources to identify three new enzymes which can make the limonoid precursor melianol and therefore represent the initial steps of limonoid biosynthesis.

Due to the complex chemical structure of limonoids, it is difficult to chemically synthesise these natural products. As a result, their use is currently limited to what can be extracted from plant materials.

Understanding how melianol is made opens the door to metabolic engineering of limonoids in which the newly discovered genes can be expressed in plants or microbial hosts. It is a step towards large-scale production of limonoid pharmaceuticals and possible development of insect-resistant crops.

"If this engineering could be achieved, then crops could be developed with an inherent resistance to insects, which could reduce reliance on chemical application for crop protection. Additionally, larger amounts of useful limonoids could be made available to pharmaceutical industries, which could accelerate research into potential medicinal uses of limonoids," explains lead author Hannah Hodgson.

"Our next step is to find and characterise the remaining enzymes required to convert melianol to limonoids. This will be a challenge, but we believe that identifying the enzymes required to produce melianol represents a strong starting point," she adds.

Limonoids are made by plants belonging to the Mahogany (Meliaceae) and Citrus (Rutaceae) families.

Here the John Innes Centre team characterised enzymes from Melia azedarach, a tropical tree from the Meliaceae family. Collaborators at Stanford University found and tested similar genes from Citrus sinensis (Sweet Orange) which is in a different family of plants (Rutaceae). The three genes found by the Stanford team also produce melianol, which suggests the start of limonoid biosynthesis is shared between these two distinct families of plants.

The discovery of an unusual hepatitis B virus from shrews offers new opportunities of better understanding the chronic progression of the disease. International research teams were able to demonstrate that an important protein which is essential for the development of a chronic course of infection is not present in this virus. DZIF scientists at the Charite - Universitaetsmedizin Berlin and the University of Giessen are leading the research.

Infection with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) is one of the major global health problems. The high number of chronic cases is particularly problematic: More than 240 million people around the world are chronically infected with this virus and over 887,000 of those infected die each year of the long-term consequences such as liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. The chronification of HBV infection that often goes undetected for decades is one of the fundamental characteristics of this virus. "Discovering this unusual HBV in shrews gives us an opportunity to better understand the pathogenesis of this chronic illness," explains lead author of the study Andrea Rasche, scientist at the Charite - University Medicine Berlin and DZIF scholarship holder of the "Maternity Leave" programme.

An important protein that is required for the chronification of the infection is not present in the virus in shrews. "Without this immunomodulator, HBeAg, the disease could not become chronic," emphasises Prof. Dr. Jan Felix Drexler, DZIF scientist at the Charite - University Medicine Berlin and DZIF researcher in the research field "Emerging Infections". And this applies to all known HBVs in mammals. They form this protein during the infection. This immunomodulator suppresses the body's specific immune response to HBV so that the infection cannot heal and becomes chronic - often with very high viral concentrations in the blood. When this viral protein is not present, the body's immune system can successfully fight the infection.

This is not the case with the newly discovered HBV in shrews. The researchers examined almost 700 shrew samples from Europe and Africa and despite the absence of HBeAg, those animals that were infected still showed high concentrations of HBV in the blood. "This indicates a very successful but unusual characteristic of the infection and the transmission of shrew HBV in its host," explains Prof. Dr. Dieter Glebe, head of the National Reference Centre for Hepatitis B and D viruses at the Justus Liebig University of Giessen (JLU) and DZIF scientist in the research field "Hepatitis". "Since the virus cannot infect human liver cells, it is highly unlikely that the virus can infect people." Therefore, it can be reasonably concluded that there is no risk for humans if they come into contact with shrews infected with HBV.

Another characteristic of the newly discovered virus is that it does not use the liver bile acid transporter to enter the liver cells as is the case with HBV in humans and apes, but takes an unknown path into the cell. "This shows that we still do not know all HBV receptor molecules," explains Prof. Drexler. In addition to these important findings about the HBV infection, the shrew virus gives us new insight into the genealogy of HBV. "Our evolutionary studies show that HBV exists in mammals for millions of years, probably around 80 million years," says Prof. Drexler.

The scientists now want to further examine the unusual infection pattern of shrew HBV that develops without the central immunomodulator HBeAg. Despite intensive international efforts, an effective treatment for chronic hepatitis B has yet to be developed. One reason for this is that there are no suitable animal models that can be used to examine the complex interactions of the virus infection with the host's immune system. "Shrews could be a promising animal model for HBV research. The virus discovered here is particularly suitable for examining the mechanisms of chronic HBV infections," says Prof. Drexler.

The genes that first enabled plants to grow shoots and conquer the land have been identified by University of Bristol researchers. The findings, published in Current Biology [1 August], explain how a 450-million years ago a switch enabled plants to delay reproduction and grow shoots, leaves and buds.

Over the course of half a billion years of evolution, plants have evolved from tiny and simple ground-hugging forms into diverse and complex varieties that abound the Earth today, from the garden rose to the 100-metre tall redwood tree. An international research team from the Universities of Bristol (UK), Lyon (France) and Palacký (Czech Republic) has now discovered the secrets of shoot evolution.

The team discovered that around 450-million years ago a switch enabled plants to delay reproduction and displace new cells downwards from the shoot tips, paving the way to plant diversification. Using cutting-edge developmental and genetic techniques, the team studied the swollen reproductive structures at the tips of the small stems of mosses. These plants, which represent a starting point for plant evolution, are raised upwards by new cells generated in the middle of the stem. Despite their different patterns of growth, similar genes are responsible for elongating the stems of mosses and plants with more elaborate shoots.

Contrary to prior work, the results demonstrate a nascent mechanism for shoot development as plants first emerged on land and suggest that a change in the timing and location of gene activity triggered the radiation of shooting forms.

Dr Jill Harrison, the study's lead author and Senior Lecturer from Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, explains: "By comparing our new findings from a moss with previous findings, we can see that a pre-existing genetic network was remodelled to allow shoot systems to arise in plant evolution."

This discovery furthers our basic understanding of how genes regulate plant shape, which could inform efforts to engineer shape and improve the yield of future crops.