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Tag: Frontiers

  • Persona 3, Silent Hill, And More Of The Week’s Hottest Takes

    Persona 3, Silent Hill, And More Of The Week’s Hottest Takes


    Image: Bandai Namco Entertainment

    Tekken 8 has been out since January 26 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. While you might be tempted to jump straight into its online matches, which you’re not prepared for—trust me—you should check out the game’s story mode first. Not only does it introduce you to many of Tekken 8‘s characters and themes, but it also sets up a bombastic, relentlessly over-the-top narrative about breaking the chains that hold us back. And it’s a great way to acclimate yourself to some of the game’s new mechanics. This is a story mode you shouldn’t miss. – Levi Winslow Read More



    Kotaku Staff

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  • Local lens, global impact: Mini park tackles big climate worries

    Local lens, global impact: Mini park tackles big climate worries

    Newswise — Palm Springs Downtown Park is an inviting 1.5-acre urban oasis for residents and visitors to Palm Springs, a design-forward desert destination nestled along the base of the San Jacinto Mountains along the southwestern boundary of the Coachella Valley in California’s Sonoran Desert of the USA. The site lies in the ancestral homeland of the Agua Caliente band of the Cahuilla people who seasonally migrated between the shady palm groves and meltwater creeks of mountain canyons in summer and the hot springs and temperate climate of the valley floor in winter. The park is also located on the historic site of the Desert Inn, Palm Springs’ first wellness resort. Nellie Coffman, the Desert Inn’s founder, famously promoted the “space, stillness, solitude, and simplicity” of Palm Springs, and the park is imbued with her spirit. Drawing inspiration from local natural features such as the oases of endemic California fan palms (Washingtonia filifera) in Palm Canyon and the striated geology of nearby Tahquitz Canyon, the park design creates hospitable, comfortable spaces for the community in the extreme heat of the desert. The park features dense palm grove planting with ample shaded areas for seating, two picnicking and event lawns, rock outcrop-like amphitheater seating for community events, shade structures inspired by palm fronds, and a grotto-like interactive water feature for play and cooling. Locally sourced stone, native desert plantings, and creature comforts create a common ground rooted in a hyperlocal use of materials to create a sense of place for the diverse, growing community of Palm Springs and its visitors

    Frontiers

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  • The Game Awards and ‘Fallout’ Trailer Reactions, ‘Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’ Impressions, and Top Five Movie Tie-in Games

    The Game Awards and ‘Fallout’ Trailer Reactions, ‘Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’ Impressions, and Top Five Movie Tie-in Games

    Join Ben and Matt James as they chat about whether the Game Awards should be about awards, the most exciting announcements from the show (0:00), and their anticipation for the Fallout TV adaptation (16:00). Then they take a spoiler-free journey through the immersive world of the Naʼvi as they delve into Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (20:45). Finally, they discuss the evolution of movie-based games and name their all-time top five movie tie-ins (47:00).

    Host: Ben Lindbergh
    Guest: Matt James
    Producer: Devon Renaldo
    Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts

    Ben Lindbergh

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  • The Week In Games: What’s Coming Out Beyond Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

    The Week In Games: What’s Coming Out Beyond Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

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    Eric Schulkin

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  • Diverse forests store 70% more carbon than monocultures

    Diverse forests store 70% more carbon than monocultures

    Newswise — To slow the effects of climate change, conserve biodiversity, and meet the sustainable development goals, replanting trees is vital. Restored forests store carbon within the forest’s soil, shrubs, and trees. Mixed forests are especially effective at carbon storage, as different species with complementary traits can increase overall carbon storage. Compared to single-species forests, mixed forests are also more resilient to pests, diseases, and climatic disturbances, which increases their long-term carbon storage potential. The delivery of other ecosystem services is also greater in mixed species forests, and they support higher levels of biodiversity.

    Although the benefits of diverse forest systems are well known, many countries’ restoration commitments are focused on establishing monoculture plantations. Given this practice, an international team of scientists has compared carbon stocks in mixed planted forests to carbon stocks in commercial and best-performing monocultures, as well as the average of monocultures.

    “Diverse planted forests store more carbon than monocultures – upwards of 70%,” said Dr Emily Warner, a postdoctoral researcher in ecology and biodiversity science at the Department of Biology, University of Oxford, and first author of the study published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. “We also found the greatest increase in carbon storage relative to monocultures in four-species mixtures.”

    Species richness increases carbon storage potential

    The researchers analyzed studies published since 1975 that directly compared carbon storage in mixed and single-species forests, and combined this with previously unpublished data from a global network of tree diversity experiments. “We wanted to pull together and assess the existing evidence to determine whether forest diversification provides carbon storage benefits,” Warner explained.

    The mixed planted forests assessed in the study ranged in species richness from two to six species. In the dataset the scientists worked with, four-species mixtures were the most effective carbon sinks. One such mix was made up from different broadleaf trees which can be found across Europe. Mixes with two species also had greater aboveground carbon stocks than monocultures and stored up to 35% more carbon. Forests made up of six species, however, showed no clear advantage to monocultures.

    Accordingly, the researchers were able to show that diversification of forests enhances carbon storage. Altogether, aboveground carbon stocks in mixed forests were 70% higher than in the average monoculture. The researchers also found that mixed forests had 77% higher carbon stocks than commercial monocultures, made up of species bred to be particularly high yielding.

    Forests for the future

    “As momentum for tree planting grows, our study highlights that mixed species plantations would increase carbon storage alongside other benefits of diversifying planted forests,” said Dr Susan Cook-Patton, a senior forest restoration scientist at The Nature Conservancy and collaborator on the study. The results are particularly relevant to forest managers, showing that there is a productivity incentive for diversifying new planted forests, the researchers pointed out.

    While showing the increased potential of mixed forests to store more carbon, the researchers cautioned that their study is not without limitations, including the overall limited availability of studies addressing mixed vs monoculture forests, particularly studies from older forests and with higher levels of tree diversity.

    “This study demonstrates the potential of diversification of planted forests, and also the need for long-term experimental data to explore the mechanisms behind our results,” Warner said. “There is an urgent need to explore further how the carbon storage benefits of diversification change depending on factors such as location, species used and forest age.”

     

    Frontiers

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  • Consuming added sugars may increase risk of kidney stones

    Consuming added sugars may increase risk of kidney stones

    Newswise — Between 7% and 15% of people in North America, between 5% and 9% of people in Europe, and between 1% and 5% of people in Asia suffer from kidney stones. Common symptoms are severe pain, nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, and bloody urine. But kidney stones don’t just reduce the quality of life: in the long run, they may lead to infections, swollen kidneys (hydronephrosis), renal insufficiency, and end-stage renal disease. Known risk factors for developing kidney stones include being an adult male, obesity, chronic diarrhea, dehydration, and having inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, or gout.

    Now, a study in Frontiers in Nutrition has shown for the first time that an elevated consumption of added sugars should probably be added to the list of risk factors for kidney stones. Added sugars occur in many processed foods, but are especially abundant in sugar-sweetened sodas, fruit drinks, candy, ice cream, cakes, and cookies.

    “Ours is the first study to report an association between added sugar consumption and kidney stones,” said lead author Dr Shan Yin, a researcher at the Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, China. “It suggests that limiting added sugar intake may help to prevent the formation of kidney stones.”

    National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

    Yin et al. analyzed epidemiological data on 28,303 adult women and men, collected between 2007 to 2018 within the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Participants self-reported if they had a history of kidney stones. Each participant’s daily intake of added sugars was estimated from their recall of their most recent consumption of food and drinks, given twice: once in a face-to-face interview, and once in a telephone interview between three and 10 days later. For example, participants were asked if they had eaten syrups, honey, dextrose, fructose, or pure sugar during the past 24 hours. 

    Each participants also received a healthy eating index score (HEI-2015), which summarizes their diet in terms of the adequacy of beneficial diet components such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and moderation of potentially harmful foods, for example refined grains, sodium, and saturated fats.

    The researchers adjusted the odds of developing kidney stones per year during the trial for a range of explanatory factors. These included gender, age, race or ethnicity, relative income, BMI, HEI-2015 score, smoking status, and whether the participants had a history of diabetes.

    At the start of the study, participants with a higher intake of added sugar tended to have a higher current prevalence of kidney stones, a lower HEI score, and a lower education level. The overall mean intake of added sugars was 272.1 calories per day, which corresponds to 13.2% of the total daily energy intake. 

    Positive association between added sugars and kidney stones

    The researchers showed that after adjusting for these factors, the percentage of energy intake from added sugars was positively and consistently correlated with kidney stones. For example, participants whose intake of added sugars was among the 25% highest in the population had 39% greater odds of developing kidney stones over the course of the study.

    Similarly, participants who derived more than 25% of their total energy from added sugars had a 88% greater odds than those who derived less than 5% of their total energy from added sugars.

    The results also indicated that participants from ‘Other’ ethnicities – for example Native American or Asian people – had higher odds of developing kidney stones when exposed to greater-than-average amounts of added sugars than Mexican American, other Hispanic, non-Hispanic White, and non-Hispanic Black people. People with a greater Poverty-Income Ratio (PIR; ie, the ratio between their income and the federal poverty level) had greater odds of developing kidney stones when exposed to more added sugars than people at or slightly above poverty level.

    Possibility of confounders 

    The mechanisms of the relation between consuming more added sugars and a greater risk of developing kidney stones is not yet known. Because this was an uncontrolled observational trial, it can’t yet be ruled out that unknown confounding factors might drive this association. 

    “Further studies are needed to explore the association between added sugar and various diseases or pathological conditions in detail,” cautioned Yin. “For example, what types of kidney stones are most associated with added sugar intake? How much should we reduce our consumption of added sugars to lower the risk of kidney stone formation? Nevertheless, our findings already offer valuable insights for decision-makers.”

    ###                                                                                                 

    For editors / news media: 

    Please link to the open access original research article “Association between added sugars and kidney stones in US adults: data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2018” in Frontiers in Nutrition in your reporting:

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1226082/full

     Expert contact 1’s affiliation: Department of Urology, Affiliated Hospital of North Sichuan Medical College, Nanchong, China 

    Frontiers is an award-winning open science platform and leading open access scholarly publisher. Our mission is to make research results openly available to the world, thereby accelerating scientific and technological innovation, societal progress and economic growth.

    We empower scientists with innovative open science solutions that radically improve how science is published, evaluated, and disseminated to researchers, innovators, and the public. Access to research results and data is open, free and customized online, thereby enabling rapid solutions to the critical challenges we face as humanity.

    For more information, visit http://www.frontiersin.org and follow @Frontiersin on Twitter 

    Please note the Frontiers press office business hours of Monday-Friday, 8:30 am-5.30 pm Central European Time, excluding Swiss and UK holidays. Queries received outside of these business hours will be answered the next business day.

    The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest 

    This work was supported by the Doctoral Fund Project of North Sichuan Medical College (grant number: CBY22-QDA26)

    Frontiers

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  • Fungal networks used to knit futuristic eco-building designs

    Fungal networks used to knit futuristic eco-building designs

    Newswise — Scientists hoping to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry have developed a way to grow building materials using knitted molds and the root network of fungi. Although researchers have experimented with similar composites before, the shape and growth constraints of the organic material have made it hard to develop diverse applications that fulfil its potential. Using the knitted molds as a flexible framework or ‘formwork’, the scientists created a composite called ‘mycocrete’ which is stronger and more versatile in terms of shape and form, allowing the scientists to grow lightweight and relatively eco-friendly construction materials.

    “Our ambition is to transform the look, feel and wellbeing of architectural spaces using mycelium in combination with biobased materials such as wool, sawdust and cellulose,” said Dr Jane Scott of Newcastle University, corresponding author of the paper in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. The research was carried out by a team of designers, engineers, and scientists in the Living Textiles Research Group, part of the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment at Newcastle University, which is funded by Research England.

    Root networks

    To make composites using mycelium, part of the root network of fungi, scientists mix mycelium spores with grains they can feed on and material that they can grow on. This mixture is packed into a mold and placed in a dark, humid, and warm environment so that the mycelium can grow, binding the substrate tightly together. Once it’s reached the right density, but before it starts to produce the fruiting bodies we call mushrooms, it is dried out. This process could provide a cheap, sustainable replacement for foam, timber, and plastic. But mycelium needs oxygen to grow, which constrains the size and shape of conventional rigid molds and limits current applications.

    Knitted textiles offer a possible solution: oxygen-permeable molds that could change from flexible to stiff with the growth of the mycelium. But textiles can be too yielding, and it is difficult to pack the molds consistently. Scott and her colleagues set out to design a mycelium mixture and a production system that could exploit the potential of knitted forms.

    “Knitting is an incredibly versatile 3D manufacturing system,” said Scott. “It is lightweight, flexible, and formable. The major advantage of knitting technology compared to other textile processes is the ability to knit 3D structures and forms with no seams and no waste.”

    Samples of conventional mycelium composite were prepared by the scientists as controls, and grown alongside samples of mycocrete, which also contained paper powder, paper fiber clumps, water, glycerin, and xanthan gum. This paste was designed to be delivered into the knitted formwork with an injection gun to improve packing consistency: the paste needed to be liquid enough for the delivery system, but not so liquid that it failed to hold its shape.

    Tubes for their planned test structure were knitted from merino yarn, sterilized, and fixed to a rigid structure while they were filled with the paste, so that changes in tension of the fabric would not affect the performance of the mycocrete.

    Building the future

    Once dried, samples were subjected to strength tests in tension, compression and flexion. The mycocrete samples proved to be stronger than the conventional mycelium composite samples and outperformed mycelium composites grown without knitted formwork. In addition, the porous knitted fabric of the formwork provided better oxygen availability, and the samples grown in it shrank less than most mycelium composite materials do when they are dried, suggesting more predictable and consistent manufacturing results could be achieved.

    The team were also able to build a larger proof-of-concept prototype structure called BioKnit – a complex freestanding dome constructed in a single piece without joins that could prove to be weak points, thanks to the flexible knitted form.

    “The mechanical performance of the mycocrete used in combination with permanent knitted formwork is a significant result, and a step towards the use of mycelium and textile biohybrids within construction,” said Scott. “In this paper we have specified particular yarns, substrates, and mycelium necessary to achieve a specific goal. However, there is extensive opportunity to adapt this formulation for different applications. Biofabricated architecture may require new machine technology to move textiles into the construction sector.”

    Frontiers

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  • ‘Red sea plume’ algae can slash cow manure emissions by almost 50%

    ‘Red sea plume’ algae can slash cow manure emissions by almost 50%

    Newswise — Approximately a third of all anthropogenic methane is emitted by ruminant livestock. These animals get nutrients through fermenting food in four-chambered stomachs found in cows, sheep, and goats. They produce methane in two ways: through belching and from the decomposition of their manure under certain conditions.

    Now, researchers in Sweden have examined if adding the tropical alga Asparagopsis taxiformis (AT), also known as red sea plume, to cow feces impacts greenhouse gas emissions from the manure of dairy cows. They have published their results in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

    “We showed that adding AT to the feces of dairy cows significantly reduced methane production from the feces by 44% compared to feces without AT,” said Dr Mohammad Ramin, an animal science researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. “It also turned out that methane production from feces of cows that had been supplemented with AT in their diet was not lower than from the feces of cows that had not been fed the alga.”

    Red sea plume fighting green(house) gas

    AT is a red algae species, with cosmopolitan distribution in tropical to warm waters. Its main compound is bromoform, which mitigates methane by blocking the process through which the gas is generated. To date it is the most promising natural methane inhibitor.

    “There have been many studies using AT in dairy cows’ diets to reduce enteric methane production. However, no studies have reported on the decrease of methane emissions from manure,” Ramin pointed out.

    Adding AT to cows’ feed, however, is not entirely without side effects since AT contains high levels of iodine. Research has shown that if cow feed is supplemented with AT, iodine levels in milk, which is also consumed by humans, increase. Iodine is an essential nutrient but can be toxic in high concentrations. Heightened iodine levels can cause health issues such as thyroid problems. Researchers are currently working on growing AT containing less iodine in labs.

    However, AT can also be used to reduce methane emissions from manure, not only from cows’ enteric fermentation. This is the approach which Ramin et al. took.

    Naturally less methane

    The contribution of manure to greenhouse gas emissions depends on several factors, including storage conditions. Manure stored in the cool-temperate European climate is estimated to be responsible for approximately 12% of total methane emissions from the dairy system.

    “Manure methane production does contribute to global greenhouse gas emission and needs to be reduced,” Ramin said. “Our study showed a potential way how methane inhibitors could be utilized to do that.”

    Despite their promising results the researchers pointed out that they did a pilot study in which they used feces form just four cows. They recommended that future studies should increase the number of cows from which manure is collected. Further, more studies are necessary to investigate the interactions between the halogenated compounds of the alga and the fecal microbiome, they said.

    Frontiers

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  • Rattlesnakes find calm with nearby ‘friend’ amid stress

    Rattlesnakes find calm with nearby ‘friend’ amid stress

    Newswise — When animals suffer from acute or chronic stress, they produce more hormones causing shifts in the nervous system, immune response, and behavior. Some animals, if they are in the presence of a conspecific, can modulate their response to buffer stress. This is known as social buffering.

    There is some research suggesting that snakes can exhibit complex social behavior. Nevertheless, social buffering in reptiles, as well as in other asocial organisms and solitary foragers, hasn’t been studied extensively. Now, researchers in the US have examined if rattlesnakes inhabiting Southern California use social buffering to alleviate acute stress.

    “We showed that when two snakes were together and experienced a stressful situation, they could buffer each other’s stress response, much like what happens to humans when they endure a stressful event together,” said Chelsea Martin, a PhD student at Loma Linda University and first author of a new Frontiers in Ethology study. “This dampening of the stress response has not been reported previously in any reptile species.”

    Snakes that rattle buffer

    When exposed to stress, the presence of a snake companion reduced the change in heart rate of snakes significantly. Because the researchers worked with wild-caught rattlesnakes, they could show that social buffering likely exists in nature and can persist in captivity.

    “Our test snakes came from populations that overwinter individually and communally. We found no differences in snake populations who did or didn’t overwinter in groups,” Martin explained. “We also did not observe a difference in social buffering between the sexes.”

    Montane rattlesnakes hibernate communally, which could have been an indicator of stronger social networks than in lowland rattlesnakes, which usually overwinter alone. It is also known that female rattlesnakes aggregate during pregnancy and remain with newborn offspring. Testing for these variables helped the researchers establish that proclivity to buffer was equally pronounced in both populations as well as female and male snakes.

    Snakes in a bucket

    For their study, the researchers assessed social buffering in 25 wild-caught southern Pacific rattlesnakes in three scenarios: when the snakes were alone, in the presence of a rope that served as inanimate control object, and while the snakes were in the presence of a same-sex companion.

    Measuring rattlesnakes’ heart rates should be a reliable indicator of acute stress levels and social buffering. To obtain data, the researchers outfitted the snakes with electrodes near their hearts and attached the sensors to a heart rate monitor. They then placed the snakes in a bucket – a dark, enclosed testing environment.

    After an adjustment period of 20 minutes, the snakes were artificially disturbed. Then Martin et al. measured the snakes’ heart rate increase from baseline, the time it took for their heart rate to return to normal, and the time they spent rattling.

    An image boost for rattlesnakes

    “Our results provide insights into social behavior patterns of snakes,” said Martin. “But it might also improve rattlesnakes’ image. In the public eye they are often maligned. Our findings could help to change that,” she added.

    The scientists also pointed to some limitations they worked with. During the experiment’s duration, the snake pairs were kept in very confined spaces. Accordingly, they did not examine whether a stress buffering response occurs when snakes are close, but not in physical contact with each other. Another unknown variable, which the researchers hope to test in the future, is if familiarity between two snakes impacts their social buffering response.

    Frontiers

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  • Advanced helmets aim to prevent football concussions

    Advanced helmets aim to prevent football concussions

    Newswise — Frontiers in Bioengineering and BiotechnologyMillions of people in the US are concussed every year playing sports. Players of games like American football are at particularly high risk for injuries that can have devastating long-term consequences. Stanford University scientists working with the company Savior Brain have now designed one potential way of protecting players: a helmet containing liquid shock absorbers that could reduce the impact of blows to the head by a third.

    “Most of the members of our team have a personal connection to traumatic brain injury and we care deeply about ensuring long-term athlete brain health,” said Nicholas Cecchi, a PhD candidate at Stanford University and lead author of the study in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology. “Concussion and repeated head impacts are still a major problem in contact sports, and we believe that improved helmet technology can play an important role in reducing the risk of brain injury.”

    HARM reduction

    Previous research by the Camarillo Lab at Stanford University had suggested that liquid shock absorbers could provide improved protection in sports helmets. To investigate this, the team built a finite element model, used by engineers to simulate performance before manufacturing, of an American football helmet incorporating 21 liquid shock absorbers. This helmet was tested against simulations of the helmet performance evaluation protocol used by the National Football League (NFL), its performance compared to that of four existing helmets. Due to the mounting evidence that the cumulative effect of impacts which don’t cause diagnosed concussions can also have serious health consequences, the team added lower velocity impacts to the evaluation protocol. They measured the head kinematics for each impact to produce a Head Accelerate Response Metric (HARM) score, which is used to evaluate helmet performance under impact. The kinematics were also fed into a model of the head and brain to gauge the resulting strain on the brain.

    Reducing impact by 33%

    The results showed that the helmet with liquid shock absorbers could dramatically reduce impact severity and strain on the brain caused by head impacts, potentially significantly cutting injuries. The helmet with liquid shock absorbers performed better than the existing helmet models, producing the lowest HARM value in 33 out of 36 different impact conditions tested, with an average reduction in score of a third. The liquid helmet also had the best ‘Helmet Performance Score’, a measure used in the NFL’s annual helmet safety rankings, which includes a weighting for how well a helmet protects against blows in different areas of the head. The highest-weighted location is the ‘side upper’ portion of the helmet because impacts here are most likely to cause concussions: the helmet with liquid shock absorbers reduced the HARM score in this area by 39-50% across all impact velocities without compromising protection in other areas of the helmet.

    “The liquid technology offered an average improvement of over 30% for both low and high velocities,” said Dr Yuzhe Liu, corresponding author, who completed the work as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. “It can dramatically reduce the loading on the brain that is experienced during all kinds of American football impacts.”

    The team intends to develop the model significantly to protect players better – for instance by incorporating improvements to the facemask and chinstrap. They also plan to develop the model into a physical helmet that could be tested in real-life conditions, and in the future to produce similar helmets for other sports. However, different levels of play or different sports may need assessment by different metrics and design redevelopment.

    “The next step for our team is to translate the computer model to a physical prototype,” said Cecchi. “After successfully completing that, we would also be interested in conducting human studies that could demonstrate either a reduction in concussion incidence or an attenuation of impact severity for sub-concussive impacts. We have plans to expand our implementation of liquid shock absorbers to more areas of the helmet, and more helmeted applications, to further improve brain safety for a wide variety of populations.”

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  • Reviving Underwater Forest Inspires Global Marine Restoration

    Reviving Underwater Forest Inspires Global Marine Restoration

    Newswise — Human actions have caused significant harm to ecosystems and biodiversity worldwide, but there is a glimmer of hope for the future through ecosystem restoration. Researchers investigating the rejuvenation of underwater seaweed forests, crucial for nourishing and sheltering various species, have discovered that a decade of restoration endeavors has enabled a damaged forest to recover to a level of abundance and vitality similar to undisturbed forests.

    Dr. Emma Cebrian, the lead author of the study published in Frontiers in Marine Science and affiliated with the Centre d’Estudis Avançats de Blanes, emphasized the significance of macroalgal forests, which are present on more than a third of the world’s coastlines and serve as the foundation for entire ecosystems. The study focused on the restoration efforts carried out in the Bay of Maó, Menorca, in 2011, where a species of macroalgae was reintroduced to its former thriving habitat. The researchers observed that after a decade, the associated algal species returned to the area, accompanied by the reestablishment of ecosystem functions they provide.

    Under the sea

    In their study, Dr. Cebrian and her team employed a trait-based methodology to examine the functional restoration of seaweed forests. They aimed to establish a connection between the restoration efforts and the forest’s ability to function similarly to its pre-damaged state. Specifically, the researchers focused on Gongolaria barbata, a critical “canopy-forming” species that plays a crucial role in sustaining seaweed forests. By investigating five different locations of this species, the team aimed to gain insights into how the restoration of such key species can contribute to the revitalization of the entire ecosystem.

    Cristina Galobart, the study’s first author, who is also affiliated with the Centre d’Estudis Avançats de Blanes, highlighted the significance of canopy-forming macroalgae among all seaweeds. She likened their role to that of trees in a terrestrial forest, as they provide essential structure to the ecosystem. By altering factors such as light and water flow, these macroalgae have a profound influence on the local environment. This, in turn, leads to the creation of ecological niches that can be exploited by other species, allowing them to thrive and benefit from these modifications.

    In the assessment of restoration projects, particularly in marine ecosystems where such initiatives are less established, there is a tendency to focus on short timescales. However, projects involving slowly maturing species require longer durations for comprehensive evaluation. While we have gained understanding regarding the restoration of vegetation structure and species diversity, lingering questions remain regarding how an ecosystem regains its functional capabilities over time.

    In order to assess the functioning of the ecosystem, it is crucial to examine quantifiable traits in the target species that reflect the overall health of the ecosystem. The research team opted to investigate a comprehensive set of 14 traits, including characteristics such as specimen size and the growth rate of species with longer lifespans or slower growth patterns. The presence of species that require more time to mature or grow larger can serve as an indicator of a healthier ecosystem, as it suggests that the environment is better equipped to support their needs.

    The research team examined several distinct locations to gather data for their study. These included an actively restored locality, where restoration activities had been taking place for a decade, a nearby locality where the restored macroalgae had expanded beyond the initial restoration area, a neighboring locality that had not undergone restoration, and two reference localities that had remained undisturbed. Samples were collected from each location for further identification and analysis. Subsequently, the samples were dried and weighed to quantify the abundance of each species present.

    Growing strong

    The team’s findings revealed that the restored locality exhibited a greater diversity of species compared to the untouched locality and the area where restoration efforts had spread beyond the initial boundaries. Interestingly, the restored locality showcased a similar species composition to the reference samples, indicating a successful restoration outcome. Furthermore, the restored locality exhibited a higher level of functional richness compared to one of the reference forests, even though it did not consist of the exact species that the scientists had initially anticipated.

    The study highlighted that restored ecosystems may comprise different species compared to their original counterparts while still fulfilling similar ecological niches and supporting local biodiversity. The restored locality displayed enhanced structural complexity and encompassed species with longer lifespans, indicating a crucial sign of long-term recovery. This aspect is significant as it increases the potential for the seaweed forest to provide shelter and support to other organisms. Moreover, the increased diversity in the restored locality holds promising implications for the future. A more diverse seaweed forest has the potential to better respond to environmental challenges, ensuring its resilience and sustainability.

    “We demonstrated that a single restoration action, plus the removal of the cause of degradation, can lead to the recovery of not only a single species but also the associated ecosystem functions,” said Cebrian. “Adding information from other restoration initiatives will help to completely understand how functionality is recovered in different habitats, species, or environmental conditions.”

     

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  • Termite mounds inspire energy-efficient buildings

    Termite mounds inspire energy-efficient buildings

    Newswise — Among the approximately 2,000 known species of termites, some are ecosystem engineers. The mounds built by some genera, for example Amitermes, Macrotermes, Nasutitermes, and Odontotermes, reach up to eight meters high, making them some of the world’s largest biological structures. Natural selection has been at work improving the ‘design’ of their mounds over tens of millions of years. What might human architects and engineers learn if they go to the termites and consider their ways?

    In a new study in Frontiers in Materials, researchers showed how termite mounds can teach us to create comfortable interior climates for our buildings that don’t have the carbon footprint of air conditioning.

    “Here we show that the ‘egress complex’, an intricate network of interconnected tunnels found in termite mounds, can be used to promote flows of air, heat, and moisture in novel ways in human architecture,” said Dr David Andréen, a senior lecturer at the bioDigital Matter research group of Lund University, and the study’s first author.

    Termites from Namibia

    Andréen and co-author Dr Rupert Soar, an associate professor at the School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University, studied mounds of Macrotermes michaelseni termites from Namibia. Colonies of this species can consist of more than a million individuals. At the heart of the mounds lie the symbiotic fungus gardens, farmed by the termites for food.

    The researchers focused on the egress complex: a dense, lattice-like network of tunnels, between 3mm and 5mm wide, which connects wider conduits inside with the exterior. During the rainy season (November through April) when the mound is growing, this extends over its north-facing surface, directly exposed to the midday sun. Outside this season, termite workers keep the egress tunnels blocked. The complex is thought to allow evaporation of excess moisture, while maintaining adequate ventilation. But how does it work?

    Andréen and Soar explored how the layout of the egress complex enables oscillating or pulse-like flows. They based their experiments on the scanned and 3D-printed copy of an egress complex fragment collected in February 2005 from the wild. This fragment was 4cm thick with a volume of 1.4 liters, 16% of which were tunnels.

    They simulated wind with a speaker that drove oscillations of a CO2-air mixture through the fragment, while tracking the mass transfer with a sensor. They found that air flow was greatest at oscillation frequencies between 30Hz and 40 Hz; moderate at frequencies between 10Hz and 20 Hz; and least at frequencies between 50Hz and 120 Hz.

    Turbulence helps ventilation

    The researchers concluded that tunnels in the complex interact with wind blowing on the mound in ways that enhance mass transfer of air for ventilation. Wind oscillations at certain frequencies generate turbulence inside, whose effect is to carry respiratory gases and excess moisture away from the mound’s heart.

    “When ventilating a building, you want to preserve the delicate balance of temperature and humidity created inside, without impeding the movement of stale air outwards and fresh air inwards. Most HVAC systems struggle with this. Here we have a structured interface that allows the exchange of respiratory gasses, simply driven by differences in concentration between one side and the other. Conditions inside are thus maintained,” explained Soar.

    The authors then simulated the egress complex with a series of 2D models, which increased in complexity from straight tunnels to a lattice. They used an electromotor to drive an oscillating body of water (made visible with a dye) through the tunnels, and filmed the mass flow. They found, to their surprise, that the motor needed to move air back and forth only a few millimeters (corresponding to weak wind oscillations) for the ebb and flow to penetrate the entire complex. Importantly, the necessary turbulence only arose if the layout was sufficiently lattice-like.

    Living and breathing buildings

    The authors conclude that the egress complex can enable wind-powered ventilation of termite mounds at weak winds.

    “We imagine that building walls in the future, made with emerging technologies like powder bed printers, will contain networks similar to the egress complex. These will make it possible to move air around, through embedded sensors and actuators that require only tiny amounts of energy,” said Andréen.

    Soar concluded: “Construction-scale 3D printing will only be possible when we can design structures as complex as in nature. The egress complex is an example of a complicated structure that could solve multiple problems simultaneously: keeping comfort inside our homes, while regulating the flow of respiratory gasses and moisture through the building envelope.”

    “We are on the brink of the transition towards nature-like construction: for the first time, it may be possible to design a true living, breathing building.”

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  • Can robots boost team creativity with charisma?

    Can robots boost team creativity with charisma?

    Newswise — Increasingly, social robots are being used for support in educational contexts. But does the sound of a social robot affect how well they perform, especially when dealing with teams of humans? Teamwork is a key factor in human creativity, boosting collaboration and new ideas. Danish scientists set out to understand whether robots using a voice designed to sound charismatic would be more successful as team creativity facilitators.

    “We had a robot instruct teams of students in a creativity task. The robot either used a confident, passionate — ie charismatic — tone of voice or a normal, matter-of-fact tone of voice,” said Dr Kerstin Fischer of the University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author of the study in Frontiers in Communication. “We found that when the robot spoke in a charismatic speaking style, students’ ideas were more original and more elaborate.”

    Can a robot be charismatic?

    We know that social robots acting as facilitators can boost creativity, and that the success of facilitators is at least partly dependent on charisma: people respond to charismatic speech by becoming more confident and engaged. Fischer and her colleagues aimed to see if this effect could be reproduced with the voices of social robots by using a text-to-speech function engineered for characteristics associated with charismatic speaking, such as a specific pitch range and way of stressing words. Two voices were developed, one charismatic and one less expressive, based on a range of parameters which correlate with perceived speaker charisma.

    The scientists recruited five classes of university students, all taking courses which included an element of team creativity. The students were told that they were testing a creativity workshop, which involved brainstorming ideas based on images and then using those ideas to come up with a new chocolate product. The workshop was led by videos of a robot speaking: introducing the task, reassuring the teams of students that there were no bad ideas, and then congratulating them for completing the task and asking them to fill out a self-evaluation questionnaire. The questionnaire evaluated the robot’s performance, the students’ own views on how their teamwork went, and the success of the session. The creativity of each session, as measured by the number of original ideas produced and how elaborate they were, was also measured by the researchers.

    Powering creativity with charisma

    The group that heard the charismatic voice rated the robot more positively, finding it more charismatic and interactive. Their perception of their teamwork was more positive, and they produced more original and elaborate ideas. They rated their teamwork more highly. However, the group that heard the non-charismatic voice perceived themselves as more resilient and efficient, possibly because a less charismatic leader led to better organization by the team members themselves, even though they produced fewer ideas.

    “I had suspected that charismatic speech has very important effects, but our study provides clear evidence for the effect of charismatic speech on listener creativity,” said Dr Oliver Niebuhr of the University of Southern Denmark, co-author of the study. “This is the first time that such a link between charismatic voices, artificial speakers, and creativity outputs has been found.”

    The scientists pointed out that although the sessions with the charismatic voice were generally more successful, not all the teams responded identically to the different voices: previous experiences in their different classes may have affected their response. Larger studies will be needed to understand how these external factors affected team performance.

    “The robot was present only in videos, but one could suspect that more exposure or repeated exposure to the charismatic speaking style would have even stronger effects,” said Fischer. “Moreover, we have only varied a few features between the two robot conditions. We don’t know how the effect size would change if other or more features were varied. Finally, since charismatic speaking patterns differ between cultures, we would expect that the same stimuli will not yield the same results in all languages and cultures.”

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  • Left sounds = Brain’s preferred positive vocals

    Left sounds = Brain’s preferred positive vocals

    Newswise — Sounds that we hear around us are defined physically by their frequency and amplitude. But for us, sounds have a meaning beyond those parameters: we may perceive them as pleasant or unpleasant, ominous or reassuring, and interesting and rich in information, or just noise.

    One aspect that affects the emotional ‘valence’ of sounds – that is, whether we perceive them as positive, neutral, or negative – is where they come from. Most people rate looming sounds, which move towards them, as more unpleasant, potent, arousing, and intense than receding sounds, and especially if they come from behind rather than from the front. This bias might have a plausible evolutionary advantage: to our ancestors on the African savannah, a sound approaching from behind their vulnerable back might have signaled a predator stalking them.

    Now, neuroscientists from Switzerland have shown another effect of direction on emotional valence: we respond more strongly to positive human sounds, like laughter or pleasant vocalizations, when these come from the left.

    “Here we show that human vocalizations that elicit positive emotional experiences, yield strong activity in the brain’s auditory cortex when they come from the listener’s left side. This does not occur when positive vocalizations come from the front or right,” said first author Dr Sandra da Costa, a research staff scientist at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland.

    “We also show that vocalizations with neutral or negative emotional valence, for example meaningles vowels or frightened screams, and sounds other than human vocalizations do not have this association with the left side.”

     

    From erotic vocalizations to a ticking bomb

    Da Costa and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare how strongly the brain of 13 volunteers responded to sounds coming from the left, front, or right. These were women and men in their mid-twenties, all right-handed, and none were trained in music. The researchers compared the brain’s response between six categories of sounds: besides positive human vocalizations like erotic sounds, they played back neutral and negative vocalizations, like meaningless vowels and a frightened scream; and positive, neutral, and negative non-vocalizations, like applause, wind, and a ticking bomb.

    Da Costa et al. focused on brain regions known to be important for the early stages of sound processing, the primary auditory areas A1 and R, the surrounding other early-stage auditory areas, and the ‘voice area’ (VA). Each of these areas occurs in the left and right hemisphere of the brain.

    The results showed that A1 and R in both hemispheres became maximally active when listening to positive vocalizations coming from the left, and much less when listening to positive vocalizations coming from the front or right, to neutral or negative vocalizations, or to non-vocalizations.

     

    Auditory cortex discriminates in favor of positive vocalizations from left

    “The strong activation by vocalizations with positive emotional valence coming from the left takes place in the primary auditory cortex of either hemisphere: the first areas in the brain cortex to receive auditory information. Our findings suggest that the nature of a sound, its emotional valence, and its spatial origin are first identified and processed there,” said co-author Dr Tiffany Grisendi.

    In addition, area L3 in the right hemisphere, but not its twin in the left hemisphere, also responded more strongly to positive vocalizations coming from the left or right compared to those coming from the front. In contrast, the spatial origin of the sound didn’t impact the response to non-vocalizations.

    The evolutionary significance of our brain’s bias in favor of positive vocalizations coming from the left is still unclear.

    Senior author Prof Stephanie Clarke, at the Neuropsychology and Neurorehabilitation Clinic at the Lausanne University Hospital said: “It is currently unknown when the preference of the primary auditory cortex for positive human vocalizations from the left appears during human development, and whether this is a uniquely human characteristic. Once we understand this, we may speculate whether it is linked to hand preference or the asymmetric arrangements of the internal organs.”

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  • Scientists find that people use emojis to hide, as well as show, their feelings

    Scientists find that people use emojis to hide, as well as show, their feelings

    Newswise — Have you ever received an unwanted gift and still said ‘thank you’? This choice to hide a negative emotion is a display rule — one of many which define socially appropriate responses to emotions. Although display rules can promote interpersonal harmony, they can also have negative consequences for the person choosing to change how they express emotions. As more social interaction goes online, scientists are investigating how emojis are used to reflect our emotions in different contexts. Are there display rules that apply to emojis, and how do those affect people’s wellbeing?

    “As online socializing becomes more prevalent, people have become accustomed to embellishing their expressions and scrutinizing the appropriateness of their communication,” said Moyu Liu of the University of Tokyo, who investigated this question in a study published in Frontiers in Psychology. “However, I realized that this may lead us to lose touch with our authentic emotions.”

    Emojis and emotions

    Liu recruited 1,289 participants, all users of the most-downloaded emoji keyboard in Japan, Simeji, to investigate how emojis were used to express or mask emotions. Previous research had established that people use emojis as functional equivalents of facial expressions, but not the relationships between emotions expressed and experienced. This is when display rules can prove problematic: if the dissonance between the emotions that you experience and the emotions that you can express is too great, emotional exhaustion can develop, although members of different cultures experience this differently.

    Display rules impact more on negative emotions, which it is usually considered less appropriate to express. It is also often more acceptable to express emotions to someone who is closer to you, and it can be more acceptable for a particular gender to express particular emotions. It can also be considered more acceptable to express negative emotions in more individualist societies.

    Wearing your heart on your screen

    The participants in Liu’s study provided demographic data, answered questions about their subjective wellbeing, and rated how often they use emojis. They were given messages with varying social contexts, responded to them as they would normally, and rated the intensity of the expression of their emotions.

    Liu found that people chose to express more emotions with emojis in private contexts or with close friends. Respondents expressed least emotion towards higher-status individuals. Intense expressions of emotion came with matching emojis, unless people felt the need to mask their true emotions: for instance, using smiling emojis to mask negative emotions. Negative emojis were used only where negative feelings were very strongly felt. Expressing emotions with emojis was associated with higher subjective wellbeing compared to masking emotions.

    “With online socializing becoming ever more prevalent, it is important to consider whether it is causing us to become more detached from our true emotions,” said Liu. “Do people require a ‘shelter’ to express their genuine emotions, and is it possible to break free from pretense and share our true selves in online settings?”

    Liu emphasized that the study should be expanded in the future. The Simeji keyboard is extremely popular among young women, which skewed the sample towards women and generation Z. However, this also reflected the gender imbalance in use of emojis in general and the Simeji keyboard in particular. A broader pool of participants would provide a fuller picture of the display rules around emojis.

    “First, the highly gender-imbalanced sample may have led to stronger results. Future research should explore potential gender differences in emoji display rules and examine the structural issues surrounding the formation of these emotion cultures,” cautioned Liu. “Second, Japanese culture’s emphasis on interpersonal harmony and concealment of negative emotions may have influenced the results.”

    “I would welcome the opportunity to expand this study and investigate the display rules for emojis across different genders and cultures,” added Liu. “Collaboration with scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds would be invaluable in this endeavor, and I am open to any contact.”

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  • 12 exotic bacteria found to passively collect rare earth elements from wastewater

    12 exotic bacteria found to passively collect rare earth elements from wastewater

    Newswise — Rare earth elements (REEs) are a group of 17 chemically similar metals, which got their name because they typically occur at low concentrations (between 0.5 and 67 parts per million) within the Earth’s crust. Because they are indispensable in modern technology such as light emitting diodes, mobile phones, electromotors, wind turbines, hard disks, cameras, magnets, and low-energy lightbulbs, the demand for them has increased steadily over the past few decades, and is predicted to rise further by 2030.

    As a result of their rarity and the demand they are expensive: for example, a kilo of neodymium oxide currently costs approximately €200, while the same amount of terbium oxide costs approximately €3,800. Today, China has a near-monopoly on the mining of REEs, although the discovery of promising new finds (more than one million metric tons) in Kiruna, Sweden was announced with great fanfare in January 2023.

    Circular economy

    The advantages of moving from a wasteful ‘linear’ economy to a ‘circular’ economy, where all resources are recycled and reused, are obvious. So could we recycle REEs more efficiently, too?

    In Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, German scientists showed that the answer is yes: the biomass of some exotic photosynthetic cyanobacteria can efficiently absorb REEs from wastewater, for example derived from mining, metallurgy, or the recycling of e-waste. The absorbed REEs can afterwards be washed from the biomass and collected for reuse.

    “Here we optimized the conditions of REE uptake by the cyanobacterial biomass, and characterized the most important chemical mechanisms for binding them. These cyanobacteria could be used in future eco-friendly processes for simultaneous REE recovery and treatment of industrial wastewater,” said Dr Thomas Brück, a professor at the Technical University of Munich and the study’s last author.

    Highly specialist strains of cyanobacteria

    Biosorption is a metabolically passive process for the fast, reversible binding of ions from aqueous solutions to biomass. Brück and colleagues measured the potential for biosorption of the REEs lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and terbium by 12 strains of cyanobacteria in laboratory culture. Most of these strains had never been assessed for their biotechnological potential before. They were sampled from highly specialized habitats such as arid soils in Namibian deserts, the surface of lichens around the world, natron lakes in Chad, crevices in rocks in South Africa, or polluted brooks in Switzerland.

    The authors found that an uncharacterized new species of Nostoc had the highest capacity for biosorption of ions of these four REEs from aqueous solutions, with efficiencies between 84.2 and 91.5 mg per g biomass, while Scytonema hyalinum had the lowest efficiency at 15.5 to 21.2 mg per g. Also efficient were Synechococcus elongates, Desmonostoc muscorum, Calothrix brevissima, and an uncharacterized new species of Komarekiella. Biosorption was found to depend strongly on acidity: it was highest at a pH of between five and six, and decreased steadily in more acid solutions. The process was most efficient when there was no ‘competition’ for the biosorption surface on the cyanobacteria biomass from positive ions of other, non-REE metals such as zinc, lead, nickel, or aluminium.

    The authors used a technique called infrared spectroscopy to determine which functional chemical groups in the biomass were mostly responsible for biosorption of REEs.

    “We found that biomass derived from cyanobacteria has excellent adsorption characteristics due to their high concentration of negatively charged sugar moieties, which carry carbonyl and carboxyl groups. These negatively charged components attract positively charged metal ions such as REEs, and support their attachment to the biomass,” said first author Michael Paper, a scientist at the Technical University of Munich.

    Fast and efficient, with great potential for future applications

    The authors conclude that biosorption of REEs by cyanobacteria is possible even at low concentrations of the metals. The process is also fast: for example, most cerium in solution was biosorbed within five minutes of starting the reaction.

    “The cyanobacteria described here can adsorb amounts of REEs corresponding to up to 10% of their dry matter. Biosorption thus presents an economically and ecologically optimized process for the circular recovery and reuse of rare earth metals from diluted industrial wastewater from the mining, electronic, and chemical-catalyst producing sectors,” said Brück.

    “This system is expected to become economically feasible in the near future, as the demand and market prizes for REEs are likely to rise significantly in the coming years,” he predicted.

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    For editors / news media:

    Please link to the open access original research article “Rare earths stick to rare cyanobacteria: future potential for bioremediation and recovery of rare earth elements” in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology in your reporting: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2023.1130939/full

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  • Screening a puppy’s DNA methylome may help predict how energetic or fearful they will be

    Screening a puppy’s DNA methylome may help predict how energetic or fearful they will be

    Newswise — Anyone who’s ever had a dog knows how different one can be from another. For example, they can be reserved or friendly, playful or calm, fearful or bold, and prone to bark or fetch or not. Research has shown that some of these differences are genetically determined. But even within dog breeds, where line breeding and artificial selection have led to the loss of much of the original genetic variation, the behavior of individuals can differ widely.

    Now, researchers show that part of the differences in temperament – in particular  their ‘energy’ level and fear-related behaviors – depend on acquired differences in the epigenome. The epigenome, an individual’s unique set of chemical tags on DNA and its associated histone complexes (nucleosomes), can dial the expression of local genes up or down. Because the epigenome is known to depend on age, diet, exercise, training, socialization, and other environmental factors, it can impact the activity and wiring of nerve cells and thus alter behavior.

    Corresponding author Dr Matteo Pellegrini, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, said: “Here we show that the behavior of dogs is associated with their epigenome, in particular DNA methylation. Our results open the door to using epigenetics to screen and select for desired behavioral traits in companion or service dogs.”

    Behavioral questionnaire 

    Pellegrini and his colleagues quantified the epigenetic, genetic, and behavioral differences between 46 female and male dogs from 31 different breeds, with an age between one and 16 years. Behavioral differences were quantified based on how the owners rated their dog in the Canine Behavioral and Research Assessment Questionnaire (C-BARQ) questionnaire, a widely used standardized tool that consists of 101 questions. The researchers used a form of machine learning, Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression, to identify significant associations between genetic or epigenetic variants and behavioral traits.

    The epigenome is known to differ strongly between tissues. In principle, nervous tissue would be the best place to look for associations between behavior and the epigenome. But for ease of collection, the researchers studied the epigenome of epithelial and immune cells obtained from swabs inside the dogs’ cheeks. For this proof-of-concept study, they focused on DNA methylation at 3,059 CG sites, as this is easier to quantify than other types of epigenetic marks, for example methylation or acetylation of histones. 

    Epigenetics are more informative than genetics for behavior

    The results showed that the epigenome was a better predictor of behavior than the genotype at the sites they measured. Even within the most represented breed – Australian shepherds with 12 dogs in the sample – only two of the 930 selected Single-Locus Polymorphisms (SNP) examined were strongly associated with behavioral traits. Two SNPs on chromosome 12 could partly predict a dog’s degree of stranger-directed fear (ie, fear of unfamiliar people).

    But when the authors corrected for the potential confounding effect of differences in age, differences in DNA methylation between dogs explained a far greater proportion of observed variation in energy, attention seeking, nonsocial fear, and stranger-directed fear than genetic differences did. These results imply that the epigenome helps to shape behavioral differences in dogs, even in tissues that aren’t part of the nervous system. 

    Surprising results

    “These associations between the DNA methylation of cells in the mouth and dog behaviors were surprising, and suggests that future studies that examine DNA methylation in nerve tissues may identify similar patterns,” said Pellegrini.

    “We plan to conduct much larger studies in the future, with the goal of developing biomarkers that allow us to better identify dogs with specific behavioral predispositions.”

    He concluded: “Ultimately, we would be very interested in examining the epigenomes of highly specialized dogs such as guide dogs or sled dogs, to be able to assist in the selection of dogs that might be more likely to successfully complete their training.”

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    For editors / news media:

    Please link to the open access original research article “Association of DNA methylation with energy and fear-related behaviors in canines” in Frontiers in Psychology in your reporting: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1025494/full

    Corresponding author 1: Prof Matteo Pellegrini

    Corresponding author 1’s institution: Professor, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

     

     

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  • Having good friendships may make for a healthier gut microbiome

    Having good friendships may make for a healthier gut microbiome

    Newswise — Social connections are essential for good health and wellbeing in social animals, such as ourselves and other primates. There is also increasing evidence that the gut microbiome – through the so-called ‘gut-brain axis’ – plays a key role in our physical and mental health and that bacteria can be transmitted socially, for example through touch. So how does social connectedness translate into the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome? That’s the topic of a new study in Frontiers in Microbiology on rhesus macaques, Macaca mulatta.

    Lead author Dr Katerina Johnson, a research associate at the Department of Experimental Psychology and the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Oxford, said: “Here we show that more sociable monkeys have a higher abundance of beneficial gut bacteria, and a lower abundance of potentially disease-causing bacteria.”

    Monkey island

    The scientists focused on a single social group (with 22 males and 16 females between the ages of six and 20 years) of rhesus macaques on the island of Cayo Santiago, off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. Macaques originally only lived in North Africa and Asia. But in 1938, a founder population of 409 rhesus macaques was moved from India to Cayo Santiago. Today, more than 1,000 macaques live on the 15.2 hectare island, divided into several social groups. They range and forage freely, although their diet gets supplemented daily with monkey chow. Researchers do behavioral observations on the monkeys each year.

    Between 2012 and 2013, the authors collected a total of 50 uncontaminated stool samples from this social group. As a measure of social connectedness, they used the time each monkey spent grooming or being groomed in 2012 and 2013, and his or her number of grooming partners.

    Social grooming

    Co-author Dr Karli Watson, from the Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, explained: “Macaques are highly social animals and grooming is their main way of making and maintaining relationships, so grooming provides a good indicator of social interactions.”

    Johnson, Watson et al. analyzed DNA sequence data from the stool samples to measure the composition and diversity of the gut microbial community, and looked at the relationship with social connectivity. They also took into account sex, age, season, and rank within the group’s hierarchy. They focused on microbes that have been repeatedly shown in to be either more or less abundant in people or rodents with autism-like symptoms (commonly accompanied by social disconnection) or which are socially deprived.

    Sociable monkeys have more ‘good’ microbes

    “Engagement in social interactions was positively related to the abundance of certain gut microbes with beneficial immunological functions, and negatively related to the abundance of potentially pathogenic members of the microbiota,” said co-author Dr Philip Burnet, a professor from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford.

    For example, genera more abundant in the most sociable monkeys included Faecalibacterium and Prevotella. Conversely, the genus Streptococcus, which in humans can cause diseases such as strep throat and, pneumonia, was most abundant in less sociable monkeys.

    “It is particularly striking that we find a strong positive relationship between the abundance of the gut microbe Faecalibacterium and how sociable the animals are. Faecalibacterium is well known for its potent anti-inflammatory properties and is associated with good health,” said Johnson.

    Cause and effect?

    But what drives the relationship between social connectedness and gut microbiome composition? Distinguishing between cause and effect isn’t easy.

    “The relationship between social behavior and microbial abundances may be the direct result of social transmission of microbes, for example through grooming. It could also be an indirect effect, as monkeys with fewer friends may be more stressed, which then affects the abundance of these microbes. As well as behavior influencing the microbiome, we also know it is a reciprocal relationship, whereby the microbiome can in turn affect the brain and behavior,” said Johnson.

    Co-author Dr Robin Dunbar, a professor from the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, said: “As our society is increasingly substituting online interactions for real-life ones, these important research findings underline the fact that as primates, we evolved not only in a social world but a microbial one as well.”

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  • Real-time space readings of ‘super emitter’ power plants leaves nowhere to hide for big polluters

    Real-time space readings of ‘super emitter’ power plants leaves nowhere to hide for big polluters

    Summary: Under the Paris Agreement, countries will need to track greenhouse gas emissions at the level of individual ‘super-emitters’, such as power plants, in close-to real time. Researchers show for the first time that this is already possible with data from existing satellites and instruments like NASA’s OCO-2 and OCO-3 (attached to the International Space Station), both designed to measure emissions at much larger spatial scales. This proof-of-principle indicates that the EU’s ‘CO2M’ pair of satellites, planned for 2025 or 2026, with a joint coverage a hundred times greater than OCO-2 and OCO-3, should be able to deliver on future needs.  

    Newswise — Countries signed up to the 2015 Paris Agreement have committed themselves to keep the rise in average global temperature ‘well below’ 2 °C. Every five years, they are to issue so-called ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs), describing their actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. 

    Countries will thus need to track their carbon emissions, not only at a national level, but also at the scale of individual ‘super-emitters’ such as power plants, megacities, refineries, and giant factories — together responsible for nearly half of humanity’s total output of GHGs.

    In late 2025 or 2026, the EU plans to launch its ‘CO2M’ (Copernicus Anthropogenic CO2 Monitoring Mission) pair of satellites, whose job will be to help with this. 

    Important proof-of-principle for CO2M

    But now, scientists have shown that such tracking-at-the-source is already possible, even with existing satellites, for ‘super-emitters’ like the Bełchatów power plant in Poland. For this proof-of-principle, they used five years of measurements from NASA’s satellite ‘Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2’ (OCO-2; launched in 2014) and the instrument OCO-3, attached since 2019 to the International Space Station (ISS).

    This success is an important achievement, as the OCO missions were designed to measure carbon emissions at much larger spatial scales.

    “Here we show for the first time that it’s already possible to measure changes in CO2 emissions from a large power plant, with observations from existing CO2-tracking satellites,” said Dr Ray Nassar, an atmospheric scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Toronto, and the study’s first author, published in Frontiers in Remote Sensing.

    Largest power plant in Europe 

    The Bełchatów lignite-fired (brown coal) power plant is the largest thermal power station in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. Here, units are sometimes decommissioned and new ones put in service, while more often, units shut down temporarily for maintenance. To be of use, satellites and instruments like OCO-2 and OCO-3 should immediately detect changes in CO2 emissions due to these changes in operation — and here, Nassar and colleagues show for the first time that they can.

    CO2 is emitted by the 300 meter-high stacks at Bełchatów and carried by the wind in the form of an invisible plume, approximately 10-50 km long and 550 meters above Earth. OCO-2, which orbits the Earth at an altitude of 705 km, passes every 16 days close by or directly over Bełchatów. OCO-3 orbits at an altitude of 420 km and passes over or near Bełchatów more frequently. OCO-3 has the added capability to scan back and forth across a region, giving better local coverage or a wider view.

    Not every flyby or overpass is suitable

    Satellites can assess the CO2 ‘enhancement’ — extra CO2 emitted by a source — only in the absence of clouds and when the plume doesn’t pass over large water bodies or mountains. They measure ‘XCO2’, the average CO2 concentration across a column directly below, subtracting the current background value (locally, on average 415 ppm) around the plume. 

    Together, OCO-2 and OCO-3 yielded 10 suitable datasets about the CO2 plume above Bełchatów between 2017 and 2022.

    Excellent agreement between observed and predicted data 

    The researchers compared the measurements from space to estimates for Bełchatów’s emissions, based on its known daily power generation output. The measurements turned out to closely track the daily predictions. This proves that even today, existing satellites can track emissions in close-to-real time for installations like Bełchatów. For example, OCO-2 detected a pronounced but transient dip in emissions from Bełchatów between June and September 2021, due to shutdowns for maintenance.

    All clear for CO2M 

    The results are promising: they indicate that CO2M, with a joint spatial coverage about a hundred times greater than OCO-2 and OCO-3, will be able to deliver on future needs. 

    “The capacity to get the most precise information about CO2 emissions from ‘super-emitters’, such as the Bełchatów power plant, across the globe will boost transparency in carbon accounting and hopefully, it will ultimately help to reduce these emissions,” said Nassar.

    “This future capacity will lead to improved CO2 emission information at the scale of countries, cities or individual facilities, enhancing transparency under the Paris Agreement and supporting efforts to reduce emissions causing climate change.”

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    For editors / news media:

    Please link to the open access original research article “Tracking CO2 emission reductions from space: A case study at Europe’s largest fossil fuel power plant” in Frontiers in Remote Sensing in your reporting:

    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsen.2022.1028240/full

     

     

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  • Scientists peel back ancient layers of banana DNA to reveal ‘mystery ancestors’

    Scientists peel back ancient layers of banana DNA to reveal ‘mystery ancestors’

    Newswise — Bananas are thought to have been first domesticated by people 7,000 years ago on the island of New Guinea. But the domestication history of bananas is complicated, while their classification is hotly debated, as boundaries between species and subspecies are often unclear.

    Now, a study in Frontiers in Plant Science shows that this history is even more complex than previously thought. The results confirm that the genome of today’s domesticated varieties contains traces of three extra, as yet unknown, ancestors.

    “Here we show that most of today’s diploid cultivated bananas that descend from the wild banana M. acuminata are hybrids between different subspecies. At least three extra wild ‘mystery ancestors’ must have contributed to this mixed genome thousands of years ago, but haven’t been identified yet,” said Dr Julie Sardos, a scientist at The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT in Montpellier, France, and the study’s first author. 

    Complex domestication history

    Domesticated bananas (except for the Fei bananas in the Pacific) are thought to be descended from a cluster of four ancestors  ̶  either subspecies of the wild banana Musa acuminata, or distinct but closely related species. M. acuminata seems to have evolved in the northern borderlands between India and Myanmar, and to have existed across Australasia approximately 10m years before it was first domesticated. A further complication is that domesticated varieties can have two (‘diploid’), three (‘triploid’), or four (‘tetraploid’) copies of every chromosome, and that many are also descended from the wild species M. balbisiana.

    Recent smaller-scale studies suggested that even this already complex scenario might not be the whole story, and that further ancestors related to M. acuminata could have been involved in the domestication. The new results not only confirm that this is indeed the case, they also show for the first time that that these gene pools are common in domesticated banana genomes.

    Banana collecting missions

    The authors sequenced the DNA in 226 extracts leaf extracts from the world’s largest collection of banana samples at The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT’s ‘Musa Germplasm Transit Centre’ in Belgium. Among these samples, 68 belonged to nine wild subspecies of M. acuminata, 154 to diploid domesticated varieties descended from M. acuminata, and four more distantly related wild species and hybrids as comparisons. Many had previously been gathered in dedicated ‘banana collecting missions’ to Indonesia, the island of New Guinea, and the autonomous region of Bougainville.

    The researchers first measured the levels of relatedness between cultivars and wild bananas and made ´family trees´ based on the diversity at 39,031 Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). They used a subset of these – evenly spread across the genome, with each pair demarcating a block of approximately 100,000 ‘DNA letters’ – to statistically analyze the ancestry of each block. For the first time they detected traces of three further ancestors in the genome of all domesticated samples, for which no matches are yet known from the wild.

    Mystery ancestors might survive somewhere

    The mystery ancestors might be long since extinct. “But our personal conviction is that they are still living somewhere in the wild, either poorly described by science or not described at all, in which case they are probably threatened,” said Sardos.

    Sardos et al. have a good idea where to look for them: “Our genetic comparisons show that the first of these mystery ancestors must have come from the region between the Gulf of Thailand and west of the South China Sea. The second, from the region between north Borneo and the Philippines. The third, from the island of New Guinea.”

    Could help breed better bananas

    Which useful traits these mystery ancestors might have contributed to domesticated bananas is not yet known. For example, the crucial trait of parthenocarpy, fruit setting without the need for pollination, is thought to have been inherited from M. acuminata, while cooking bananas owe a large chunk of their DNA to the subspecies (or perhaps separate species) M. acuminata banksii.

    Second corresponding author Dr Mathieu Rouard, likewise at Bioversity International, said: “Identifying the ancestors of cultivated bananas is important, as it will help us understand the processes and the paths that shaped the banana diversity observed today, a crucial step to breed bananas of the future.”

    “Breeders need to understand the genetic make-up of today’s domesticated diploid bananas for their crosses between cultivars, and this study is a major first step toward the characterization in great detail of many of these cultivars.”

    Sardos said: “Based on these results, we will work with partners to explore and genotype wild banana diversity in the three geographic regions that our study pinpointed, with the hope to identify these unidentified contributors to cultivated bananas. It will also be important to investigate the different advantages and traits that each of these contributors provided to cultivated bananas.”

    Frontiers

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