How tadpoles provide insight into pandemics 

by Sara Putnam,  University of Connecticut

UConn MS student Nicole Dahrouge, who maintained wood frog tadpoles under detailed temperature and salinity conditions during the spring of 2020. Credit: University of Connecticut

A virus affecting wood frog tadpoles throughout the eastern United States is offering scientists a rare opportunity to investigate the role of environmental factors in the spread of infectious disease.

An important aspect of controlling the spread of any virus is understanding how the virus, or agent, is transmitted through the environment to the host. Scientists refer to the trio of agent, host, and environment as the epidemiological triangle or triad. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the agent is the SARS-CoV-2 virus, humans are the host species, and the environment now includes ecosystems throughout the planet. Scientists have made strides in understanding the nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the infection it causes in its human hosts, and they have identified variables in the host population that can cause some individuals to be more severely affected by the virus than others. As researchers continue to learn about environmental factors that facilitate the spread of COVID-19, we practice social distancing and wear masks to contain airborne droplets from our mouths and noses.

The interrelationships among agent, host, and environment are complex, and possible variables in each of the three are limitless, making it impossible, when studying them as a system, to tease out the differential effects of the individual players. While agent and host can be studied in isolation and in direct relationship to each other within the laboratory, environmental factors also play a role in disease dynamics, meaning that any conclusions reached will not fully reflect that happens in natural systems. However, Associate Professor Tracy Rittenhouse has developed an experimental model where the focus is the effects of the environment in epidemics rather than the details of the agent and host interaction.

Several years ago, Rittenhouse, a faculty member in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, learned of wood frog tadpole dieoffs in northeastern Connecticut that had been found to be caused by Ranavirus Frog virus 3 (FV3). To measure the prevalence of FV3 in the area, Rittenhouse harvested tadpoles from numerous wetlands over a two-year period and found that the frog virus was much more widespread than previously known. But, the population of wood frogs, a species known to be particularly susceptible to FV3, did not appear to be declining, and some live tadpoles harvested from wetlands were found to be infected with the virus, both of which indicated that the virus was not always lethal.

From her surveys, Rittenhouse learned that when tadpole dieoffs did occur, it was often at the same developmental stage, just before metamorphosis. The carcasses would remain visible in the water for only one to three days. The tadpole carcasses decomposed so quickly it was if they had disappeared. Determining whether tadpoles died and decomposed or metamorphosed into frogs and left the wetland would have required simultaneously monitoring all wetlands where the virus was known to be present, which was not feasible.

Says Rittenhouse, "We don't have a good explanation for why we could have found the virus so commonly and not have dieoff events. I think there's some middle ground. I believe there are more dieoff events happening than we're detecting, but we don't yet know what triggers them. We're concerned that changes occurring in environmental conditions, such as salinity levels or temperature, might be increasing the likelihood of dieoffs." An additional question is whether the tadpoles are particularly susceptible at the stage when dieoffs have occurred, or if something occurs in the environment at that time.

A fruitful collaboration

The study of interactions among agent, host, and environment is best done with a collaborative approach incorporating a range of expertise. Says Rittenhouse, "I study populations. I know a lot about wood frogs–I know where wood frogs live, what types of environments they live in, what causes high survival, and what causes low survival. But I'm not a disease expert." So, she teamed up with Jesse Brunner, a disease ecologist, and Erica Crespi, a physiologist, both at Washington State University, who have studied Ranavirus and its effects on individual tadpoles. Brunner specializes in the relationship between Ranavirus and its host, while Crespi is an expert on tadpole health.

Rittenhouse devised a set of experiments in which two environmental stress factors—salinity and temperature—are manipulated to identify what, if any role, they play in triggering dieoffs related to FV3. Says Rittenhouse, "Road salt and temperature are two environmental conditions that we're manipulating because they're common things in the environment, and they are both changing a lot, regionally and globally. Salinization of our fresh waters is a very hot topic because it's happening along our coastlines. As sea level rises, there's saltwater intrusion into freshwater systems and into terrestrial environments. But that's also happening in forests in terrestrial conditions when we add road salt to our roads, and it runs off into freshwater wetlands and streams."

During the spring of 2019, Rittenhouse built outdoor experimental systems called mesocosms, which simulate the natural environment but allow for the control of some factors. She set up 150 fifty-gallon tanks, each of which, when filled with water, leaf litter and tadpoles, represents a wetland. These wetlands received natural rainfall, nutrient inputs from the air (think oak tree pollen in the spring), and daily temperature fluctuations as the sun rose and set. She controlled for variables in the virus and host: Egg masses from different wetlands were mixed to create heterogeneous but similar populations for each tank, and Brunner isolated and extracted the virus from samples Rittenhouse collected in the wild. Finally, one tadpole infected with FV3 was added to each tank. In her experiments, Rittenhouse manipulated the temperature and salinity levels of some tanks and maintained some tanks as controls.

Rittenhouse, Brunner, and Crespi had developed hypotheses for expected mortality rates in response to the environmental manipulations. As the tadpoles matured, Rittenhouse and the students in her lab group monitored all the tadpoles in every tank, every day during May and June 2019. The result was more than twenty epidemiological curves for each temperature-salt combination.

"What our project brings is the ability to manipulate a population and see how changes to environmental conditions change how spiked or flat an epidemic curve is," Rittenhouse says. "And there really are not a lot of study systems where you can manipulate that epidemic curve. Much of what we know about disease epidemics is based on mathematical models. Our project uses a study system where we can manipulate a population and quantify an epidemic curve in a two-to-three-month period for 150 populations, but it's real data from real animals. It's a way to confirm that some of our mathematical models are correct."

Ironically, the studies Rittenhouse planned for continuing the FV3 research during the summer of 2020 had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The experiments would have required eight undergraduate student research assistants working together every day to monitor tadpole mortality. So, like everyone else, Rittenhouse pivoted. No frog virus was put into the tanks. Instead she and one graduate student focused their efforts on finely tuned manipulations of salt and temperature in the absence of the virus.

Next spring, when more is known about how people can work safely in a world with COVID, then Rittenhouse and her students will return to her NSF- funded research on Ranavirus epidemics.

Rittenhouse says, "Each spring in my population dynamics course, I teach students how to use data we collect in the wild, counting animals, to develop estimates of birth rates, death rates, survival rates. We take those estimates and build population-level models that predict if a population is going to increase or decrease over time and link that to trends we observe in the wild. But in this case, the cool thing is we can create all these experimental populations—150 different populations—and we can measure the population response. How peaked was the curve? How flat was the curve? What's the timespan between the beginning and end of the epidemic? How do changes in environmental conditions that might be stressful for individuals or populations change the shape of an epidemic curve?"

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Provided by University of Connecticut 

Probing the origin of the mantle's chemically distinct 'scars'

by Carnegie Institution for Science

Basalt, the most-common rock on Earth’s surface, encases green crystals--a geologic "nesting doll" phenomenon called a xenolith. Basalts such as this one derive from a section of the mantle that has been depleted in incompatible trace elements, which is usually attributed to continental crust formation. In their work, Tucker and his collaborators propose another mechanism that would impart this signature. Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science

The composition of Earth's mantle was more shaped by interactions with the oceanic crust than previously thought, according to work from Carnegie's Jonathan Tucker and Peter van Keken along with colleagues from Oxford that was recently published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.

During its evolution, our planet separated into distinct layers—core, mantle, and crust. Each has its own composition and the dynamic processes through which these layers interact with their neighbors can teach us about Earth's geologic history.

Plate tectonic processes allow for continuous evolution of the crust and play a key role in our planet's habitability. Earth has two kinds of tectonic plates: those that host continents, which have survived for billions of years, and those that are mostly covered by oceans. Oceanic plates are created by the upward motion of mantle material that occurs when plates spread apart. They are destroyed by sliding under continental plates and back into the mantle, a process that also forms new continental crust.

"The chemical composition of the mantle is influenced by continent formation and geoscientists can read chemical markers left behind by this process," Tucker explained.

For example, some of the elements found in crustal rocks don't play nicely with the mantle's minerals. When continental crust formation draws these elements out of the mantle, they leave behind a depleted residue, like sucking the juice out of a Sno-Cone and leaving just ice. This is referred to as crust extraction and is usually thought to create "scars" that are easy to spot and identify in rocks. It also leaves behind distinct zones in the mantle that are depleted of these particular elements.

"It's long been thought that these chemical scars are the product of crust formation," Tucker explained. "But mantle's inaccessibility means that it's difficult to know for sure using rock and mineral samples alone."

To probe the question of the origin of these depleted reservoirs in the mantle, Tucker, van Keken, and their Oxford colleagues Rosemary Jones and Chris Ballentine developed a new model, which showed that the "scar-forming" process of sequestering of incompatible elements from the rest of the mantle is occurring not just in the crust but independently in the deep mantle thanks to old oceanic plates that were drawn all the way down.

"Our work demonstrates that the processes determining the mantle's composition are more complicated than we previously thought," Tucker concluded.


Explore further Remixed mantle suggests early start of plate tectonics

More information: Jonathan M. Tucker et al. A Role for Subducted Oceanic Crust in Generating the Depleted Mid‐Ocean Ridge Basalt Mantle, Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems (2020). DOI: 10.1029/2020GC009148

Provided by Carnegie Institution for Science

Record-setting rain and heat? This is the new normal

by Kathie Dello, North Carolina State University

Credit: Rusty Clark, shared under a Creative Commons license.

I'm the director of the North Carolina Climate Office, which is the go-to source for expertise in North Carolina's climate. But if you call me to ask if there's a downpour on the way, I probably won't know the answer off the top of my head. That may seem odd, but it's because I'm mostly thinking about the climate—and weather is something a little different.

We climate experts all have our favorite analogies for the difference between weather and climate. Weather—or the short-term events a place experiences—is equivalent to your mood. Climate—or average conditions over a longer time period—is your personality. Here in North Carolina, we know our climate is marked by mild winters and hot summers, with no distinct wet season. We can see days swing from 74°F on one day to 45°F the next.

However, that analogy about moods and personalities is somewhat imperfect in a rapidly changing world. With climate change, we're supercharging our atmosphere, like a baseball player on steroids. And even small shifts in our overall climate lead to huge changes in our extremes. As our personality shifts slightly, we see more of those bad mood days—and those moods can be worse than what we're used to.

We've seen some of those personality shifts in the past couple years.

2019 was officially North Carolina's warmest year in recorded history, per our neighbors in Asheville at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). We are seeing more daily maximum temperature records than minimum temperature records, while our nights have been warming significantly for the past few decades.

And it's not just the temperature here in North Carolina.

In 2018, North Carolina set an all-time state record for the most precipitation in a year at a single station. The official weather station at Mt. Mitchell—also the highest point east of the Mississippi—measured almost 12 feet of precipitation during the calendar year.

The location's 139.94" of precipitation was declared the new official record by NCEI in early July. It broke the previous record for Mt. Mitchell by more than three feet.

In other words, North Carolina is changing rapidly.

Climate change isn't just a polar bear floating on a lonely piece of ice. It's changing the conditions that are ideal for growing things like our prized sweet potatoes. It's threatening the health of our residents, and hurting the people who suffer the most—low-income communities who may not have sufficient access to cooling, or who live in flood prone areas. It's a social issue.

We can point to the aftermath of Matthew, Florence, and Dorian. Flooding in Asheville. Longer, more intense heat waves in Raleigh. Sunny day flooding in Wilmington. Coastal erosion on the Outer Banks. We no longer get the luxury of talking about climate change as a future problem. It's a now problem.

The bad news is that this is the new normal for only a short time. We will continue to warm. Our weather will continue to become more extreme. Those heat waves and floods from 2019 may seem insignificant in 2050.

North Carolina is among a few states that is actively preparing for a changing climate. Two recently-released reports—the North Carolina Climate Science Report and the North Carolina Risk and Resilience Plan—tackle pieces of our climate problem. We are looking at a different North Carolina in the coming decades. And we'll need a global strategy to ultimately change the trajectory that we're on if we ever want to get back to a "normal" climate that is less extreme.

Red fox displaces Arctic fox thanks to littering

by Svein Inge Meland, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
The density of red foxes is increasing in Norway’s mountainous areas. The more trash and food waste red foxes have access to, the greater their numbers. This photo was taken with a game camera and shows a red fox that has found food. Credit: NINA, game camera

Animal species that are at home in the high mountains are finding their habitats reduced and fragmented by roads. In addition, they face competition from scavengers from lower boreal areas that find their way to the mountains.


"More cabins, more tourism and increased car traffic means more litter and more roadkill. For the red fox, the crow and other scavengers, it means more tempting food," says Lars Rød-Eriksen, who is employed as a researcher in terrestrial ecology at NINA, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.

In his doctoral work at NTNU, Rød-Eriksen surveyed road segments at Dovre, Saltfjellet and Hardangervidda to learn how wildlife is affected by the highways.

Roads = food

"We found that the red fox uses the road both to find food and to move from place to place. Especially in the winter, using the roadways is easier than traveling across the snowy terrain," he says.

"Using tracks in the snow and game cameras, we were able to document that the density of red foxes increases the closer to the road one gets. The more litter and food waste they have access to, the greater the number of red foxes that find their way to the area."

The researcher notes that the pattern is the opposite for Arctic foxes. "A lot of trash means few Arctic foxes. We found that the Arctic fox doesn't tend to stay close to the road. This is probably not because the they aren't attracted to the road, but because the presence of the red fox makes them keep their distance."
Food waste left along the road at Dovre – just the kind of items that attract scavengers. Credit: Lars Rød-Eriksen

Weaker species displaced

Small rodents are the Arctic fox's specialty fare, but it isn't "too fussy" to eat trash. In competing with the red fox, however, it falls short.

"The Arctic fox is also attracted to roads, but the red fox is bigger and dominates in the competition between the species. There are also examples of red foxes that have killed Arctic foxes. Increased access to food enables the red fox to establish itself in the high alpine zone. The search for food is especially intense in late winter," Rød-Eriksen says.

The crow is both a competitor and a useful helper for the fox. Often crows are the first to discover a treat, but foxes are observant and use the crows to guide them to where the food is.


Unwelcome in the mountains

"The red fox has existed in the mountains before. But it's an invasive species and can disrupt the natural alpine ecosystem if it establishes itself there permanently, like it seems to be doing now. The Arctic fox is already an endangered species, and it seems likely that the red fox is impacting other alpine species as well, such as ptarmigan that are ground nesters. We call it a cascade effect when several species are affected," says Rød-Eriksen.


The graph shows that the number of red fox tracks per kilometre (y-axis) increases with the amount of edible waste (x-axis).
A lot of trash means few Arctic foxes. We found that the Arctic fox doesn’t tend to stay close to the road – probably not because it isn’t attracted to the road, but because the red fox’s presence makes it stay away, the researcher says. The photo was taken in Lesja municipality. Credit: NINA, game camera

How about a litter law?

More roads and increased traffic also mean more roadkill. Rød-Eriksen believes it's easier to tackle the littering problem than the roadkill.

"Information campaigns can inform people about the consequences of throwing out and leaving trash and food scraps behind. A lot of people probably don't give any thought to how littering can negatively impact wildlife. Other countries have stricter legislation against littering. Maybe Norway should also consider it. Personally, I think it would be effective," says Rød-Eriksen.

Crow created research trouble

To record the movements of red foxes and Arctic foxes during the winter, Rød-Eriksen used tracking, supplemented by a game camera with bait at different distances from the road. These methods yielded good and reliable findings.

Summertime proved more difficult. The crows found the prey before the fox and often managed to eat it before the fox could get to it. Rød-Eriksen also placed artificial bird nests containing a real quail egg and a fake egg made from modeling clay along the transects.

The idea was that bite marks in the fake, soft egg would reveal whether a fox or a crow had tried to eat it. Here too, the crow created problems that made the results less reliable during the summer. Rød-Eriksen plans to take a closer look at seasonal variations and more comparable methods in future studies.
Foxes have been eating humans' leftovers for 42,000 years
More information: Lars Rød‐Eriksen et al. Highways associated with expansion of boreal scavengers into the alpine tundra of Fennoscandia, Journal of Applied Ecology (2020). DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.13668
Journal information: Journal of Applied Ecology


Provided by Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Researchers track groundwater discharges into salt ponds

by Todd McLeish, University of Rhode Island

URI’s groundwater research team – (l-r) Janelle Kmetz, Jeeban Panthi, Associate Professor Soni Pradhanang and Kyle Young – prepares for a test flight. Credit: Todd McLeish

The movement of groundwater in aquifers deep beneath the surface often carries with it a variety of contaminants that can be traced to leaking septic systems, damaged underground infrastructure, excessive fertilizer use and other land uses. But where that groundwater and those contaminants end up is often unknown.

Using a drone with an infrared thermal imaging camera, a team of University of Rhode Island researchers led by doctoral student Kyle Young has tracked some of it to the Ocean State's coastal ponds.

"We're looking to quantify the amount of nutrients being brought into our estuaries and what's happening to those nutrients," said Young, a Coast Guard helicopter pilot and physics teacher at the Coast Guard Academy on leave to earn his doctorate. "The key nutrient is nitrate. In small amounts, nitrate is a good thing, but in larger amounts it can be degrading to the ecosystem."

Young and his advisor, URI Associate Professor Soni Pradhanang, seek to quantify the discharge of groundwater into the salt ponds as part of an analysis of what they call a "water budget" or an accounting of all of the water that flows into and out of the area.

"We know the amount of precipitation that comes down, we can quantify how much runoff goes into stream water, but one thing that's not easy to directly quantify is groundwater flow," said Pradhanang. "We don't know how much water is going from the aquifers into other water bodies."

Since the temperature of groundwater is cooler than the salt ponds in late summer, a drone equipped with an infrared thermal imaging camera can detect a plume of cool water in the ponds that is likely a discharge of groundwater. And that's exactly what Young and Pradhanang Lab graduate student Jeeban Panthi and undergraduate Janelle Kmetz have found at Green Hill and Ninigret ponds.

They flew their $10,000 drone at 400 feet over miles of salt pond coastline and captured several infrared images showing significant cool zones suggesting that groundwater is entering the pond from the bottom. Because groundwater is freshwater and less dense than the saltwater in the ponds, it rises to the surface, delivering a clear signal to the infrared camera.

"Just because we don't see plumes in some areas doesn't mean there isn't groundwater discharge there, too," noted Young. "There could be too small of a freshwater component for it to show up in the thermal signature, or it might not be cool enough compared to the surrounding water. But one thing we can say about the plumes we found is that they have ample freshwater, signifying waters that came from the terrestrial zone."

What that means for the health of the coastal ponds is uncertain. Discharges such as those the researchers found have likely been going on for many years, and groundwater doesn't always contain contaminants. But identifying their locations may be useful in tracking the movement of terrestrial pollutants into the ponds in the future.

The discovery also has implications in the context of climate change. According to Pradhanang, the groundwater affects the salinity and pH of the pond water, which is critical to many water activities like aquaculture, as well as to the plants and animals that live in the ponds.

If storm surges happen more frequently, as is predicted with climate change, they might affect the amount of groundwater entering the water bodies, changing the environmental conditions and negatively affecting the wildlife that lives there. "It could have implications at an ecosystem level," Pradhanang said.

Now that the plume locations have been identified, Young is continuing his drone flights to see how the weather and tides affect the plumes.

"Flying highly sensitive equipment on an aircraft is high stakes research," he said. "Quantifying how the discharge changes over time is the next step. But so far it's nice that we've been able to identify the sites of possible pollution contribution to the ponds."

Once Young returns to the Coast Guard Academy next year, Pradhanang hopes future students will take up the project to identify groundwater discharge locations and quantities into other salt ponds, coastal and freshwater bodies, Narragansett Bay, and elsewhere around the region.

Sea-level rise linked to higher water tables along California coast

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Provided by University of Rhode Island 

Pandemic accelerated remote work, a trend likely to remain

by University of Arkansas

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

As with the previous pandemics and other major events, such as the Great Depression and World War II, the coronavirus pandemic will profoundly change workplaces and the nature of work itself.

In fact, it already has, according to a new article published by an international panel of management experts, including Michael Wilmot, a new assistant professor in the Sam M. Walton College of Business. Many of these changes, especially the massive shift toward remote work—what most people refer to as "working from home"—are probably here to stay.

"We know that previous major world events had a profound impact on workplaces and the kind of work people do," Wilmot said. "In fact, these events led to the demise of some markets and businesses and the creation of others. This pandemic is no different. It will change work in fundamental ways, and this will challenge people to learn to work in ways dramatically different than previous generations."

Wilmot, who studies the role of personality at work, was one of several researchers who contributed to "COVID-19 and the Workplace: Implications, Issues, and Insights for Future Research and Action," published in the August issue of American Psychologist. As the title suggests, the article emerged as an overview of previous research related to work and workplaces, studies that apply in the context of a pandemic. Lead authors—Kevin Kniffin at Cornell University, Jayanth Narayanan at the National University of Singapore, and Frederik Anseel at the University of New South Wales in Australia—describe the article as a generative overview, a framework for identifying work and workplace issues for producing future research.

The authors and contributors cited several previous studies pertinent to the context of the pandemic, especially those related to remote work, which communications technologies and faster internet connectivity have facilitated over the past several years. In this sense, COVID-19 merely accelerated an already growing trend. The authors pointed to a survey of 229 human resources departments showing that roughly half of the companies had more than 80% of their employees working from home during early stages of the pandemic. The companies expect substantial long-term increases for remote work after the pandemic.

The above trend, suddenly mandatory for almost all individuals who do their work from an internet-connected computer, creates or complicates a host of issues, including "presentism"—people working at home when ill—and the inability of some people to set boundaries between work and home.

As one who studies the role of personality at work, Wilmot contributed insights pertaining to disparate impacts on employees with regard to certain individual differences and personality traits. For example, how will these issues affect extroverts versus introverts?

The authors identified several other issues, including:

• A loss of social connectedness and loneliness for many employees, which can negatively affect performance and commitment to organizational goals.
• Increased risk among employees for substance abuse and addiction.
• Related to above issues, companies might need to create or augment employee assistance programs and hire staff trained to recognize mental health issues.
• The possibility that virtual work arrangements will foster more participatory relationships, given that physical cues of dominance are less salient in virtual environments.
• The need for human resource departments to develop new performance management and appraisal systems for remote-working populations.
• The expectation that some companies will institute new modes of surveillance due to perceived lack of control, now that employees are "out of sight."

"Considering all these issues and more, I think it's important to examine how workers will adapt," Wilmot said. "I'd like to think some of the insights we provide will make positive contributions in the face of these changes."

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More information: Kevin M. Kniffin et al. COVID-19 and the workplace: Implications, issues, and insights for future research and action, American Psychologist (2020). DOI: 10.1037/amp0000716

Provided by University of Arkansas 

New feline vaccination guidelines

by SAGE Publications

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) and the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) convened a panel of experts to update the 2013 AAFP Feline Vaccination Advisory Panel Report. The release of the 2020 AAHA/AAFP Feline Vaccination Guidelines provides updated recommendations and the most current information for feline vaccinations.

The Task Force approached the update with evidence-based recommendations and peer-reviewed literature on feline vaccinations. "Working together with these two organizations affords our veterinary community exposure to the wisdom of colleagues who are dedicated to increasing the standard of care for cats," said Amy ES Stone, DVM, Ph.D., Chair of the 2020 AAHA/AAFP Feline Vaccination Guidelines Task Force.

The guidelines stress the need for an expanded understanding by veterinary professionals of individualized feline risk factors to determine a proper preventive healthcare plan. Practitioners are encouraged to gain better insight into feline patients' risk factors, which may include life stage, environment, and lifestyle.

Veterinarians should use these guidelines in conjunction with their own clinical experience and expert opinion, while considering the needs of the individual patient. "Cats used to be vaccinated for certain diseases based solely on whether they went outside or not. Those times have changed," said AAHA Senior Veterinary Officer Heather Loenser, DVM. "We need to tailor vaccine protocols for individual pets, rather than basing vaccination decisions on a single factor."

"We no longer can simply ask a client if the cat is 'indoors' or 'outdoors,'" said Kelly St. Denis, MSc, DVM, DABVP (Feline Practice), and 2020 AAFP President. "A client may not correctly interpret what they might consider brief or low-risk outdoor access, which may contain information that contributes to your risk assessment. We need to ask if the cat has free access to outdoors; do they ever sit on a patio or in a cateo; do they have access to a balcony or open window; do they go anywhere outside of the home such as a friend's house or boarding facility; are they ever walked on a leash? A risk assessment of the other cats living in the home is also critical as these risks extend to all other cats in the house. By asking these questions you can better review the cat's risk for safety, nutrition, behavior, and zoonotic disease."

The guidelines provide resources for the entire veterinary practice team to utilize including:

• A lifestyle-based feline vaccine calculator
• FAQs and tips for client and staff education
• Recommendations for core and noncore vaccines for pet and shelter-housed cats
• A webinar summarizing the must-see and clinically important sections of the guidelines (available in October)

With these new guidelines, the team can educate pet owners about vaccination protocols and the overall importance to feline wellbeing, provide proper vaccine recommendations for pet and shelter cats, and have open conversations to address clients' questions or concerns.AAFP releases updated Feline Zoonoses Guidelines

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More information: Amy ES Stone et al, 2020 AAHA/AAFP Feline Vaccination Guidelines, Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (2020). DOI: 10.1177/1098612X20941784

New bacteria and algae process could help decarbonize UK military

by Sean Barton, University of Sheffield

A new biological engineering process that could help to decarbonise the UK military is set to be developed by researchers at the University of Sheffield.

The cutting-edge research, led by academics in the University of Sheffield's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, is developing a novel bioprocess that uses a mixture of microbes to remediate waste.

The Ministry of Defense (MOD) generates large volumes of waste oils, fuels, lubricants and other liquid hydrocarbon waste each year. The University of Sheffield researchers will investigate how to break down complex hydrocarbon waste products using bacteria, turn them to carbon dioxide and then use algae to capture the CO2.

The team then plans to extract the fatty acids from the algal biomass and develop polymer chemistry methods for making biodegradable foams. These foams can be used in a variety of ways, including as synthetic soils to grow nutritional plants in water scarce environments.

This new research offers the opportunity to protect the environment, save money for the Ministry of Defense and the taxpayer, while allowing the MOD to manage and reduce its own waste.

The team not only aims to recover clean water but also make new by-products, while minimizing CO2 emissions.

Dr. Jagroop Pandhal, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, said: "The MOD has got a mixture of different types of hydrocarbon waste. We want to effectively break these down into simple components which are less harmful to the environment, and then build them up again into useful resources. These steps will be undertaken by selected microbial strains working together as a team. What we want to do is resource recovery, so it's not just about cleaning up the waste, it's trying to get resources out of it."

Although there are many applications for converting algae into useful products, here researchers will investigate conversion of the oils into biodegradable plastics with unique properties, replacing unsustainable sources currently used.

Dr. Pandhal said: "Algae are able to absorb CO2 for growth, similar to any other plant, and therefore are able to capture this gas when it's released during bacterial degradation of the hydrocarbon waste. And it's this algal biomass that provides a treasure trove of bio-based products."

As well as being used in military bases, it is intended the technology can be further developed into portable bioprocessing systems for overseas bases and operational deployments.

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Provided by University of Sheffield 

Q&A: Researchers set out to clear the seabed of plastic

by Claudia Bosse, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

The technologies researched in the SeaClear project are being tested in the port of Hamburg, among others. Credit: HPA

Eighty-six million metric tons of plastics end up in the oceans every year, with devastating consequences for marine life, nature and, ultimately, for us humans. The vast floating patches of plastic carpeting the water's surface, some as large as entire countries, are only the tip of the iceberg. Around 90 percent of this garbage ends up on the seabed. The Fraunhofer Center for Maritime Logistics and Services CML and an international network of partners want to be the first to tidy up this mess with a project called SeaClear. An interview with project managers Johannes Oeffner and Cosmin Delea follows.

You aim to collect litter on the seabed in the SeaClear project. Why?

Oeffner: Marine pollution is one of the most important global problems. It affects the environment, the economy, security, health and culture. Plastics do not degrade easily, so they are likely to remain in the sea for hundreds of years. Considering that forecasts expect plastic production to quadruple by 2050, we will have a huge problem if we fail to take action. According to the World Economic Forum WEF, the ratio of plastic to fish in 2014 was one to five—by 2050 there could be as much plastic waste as there are fish.

Many approaches to skimming plastic debris from the surface of seas have been put forward. What is your concept?

Oeffner: We're concentrating on cleaning up the seabed first, especially in coastal areas where pollution is particularly heavy. In the SeaClear concept, we are making use of various robotic vehicles that are connected to each other. An autonomous or remote-controlled mothership (unmanned surface vehicle, USV) is supported by two underwater robots (remotely operated vehicle, ROV) and an aerial vehicle or drone (unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV). We deploy the drone and a robot to chart the litter on the surface and in the water column. The second ROV makes use of this information and uses a custom-designed gripper and a suction device to collect the mapped garbage on the seabed and discard it to collective bin.

Thanks to the SeaClear project, the coast of Dubrovnik is to be freed from underwater waste in the future. Credit: DUNEA

What technologies are behind all this?

Delea: We use multi-agent control methods for heterogeneous robots to synchronously steer all autonomous vehicles. This means that one robot's change of position is acknowledged by the other robots. Each robot has the built-in capability toadapt to these changes without human intervention. Although we do issue a command, it is specifically addressed to one robot, while the other robots will notice the change in pose and react if necessary. We use deep-learning algorithms to detect and distinguish waste from marine fauna and flora. Specifically, we combine different sensory systems such as conventional and multi-spectral cameras or acoustic sensors to obtain relevant data about the waters and, after several training sessions, to online detect and classify marine waste.

How do you train the autonomous robots?

Delea: Detection and classification require intensive training. The first steps for both are to use information from publicly available sources, such as large online databases that provide footage of marine life. Then we conduct further training with dummy targets. Before the final demonstrations takes place, preliminary trials are held to assess their performance.

Coastal areas are very different. Where do these trials take place?

Oeffner: We are currently testing the technologies in two different scenarios at two locations at depths of 20 to 30 meters. We want to demonstrate the process while port operations are underway with the existing infrastructure and fixed procedures in Hamburg's port. This is why this scenario focuses on the industrial area of the port. The coastal scenario in Dubrovnik, Croatia, addresses the tourism sector and is aimed specifically to clean the waters at tourist hot-spots. The first trials took place at both locations in spring. Further tests are slated for Dubrovnik in late summer after the trials were suspended because of corona.

Various robot vehicles are networked with one another in the SeaClear system. An autonomous or remote-controlled mother ship (UPS) on the surface is supported by two underwater robots (ROV) and a flight drone (UAV). Credit: TUM

What are the biggest challenges in this project?

Delea: The challenges at the two test sites are different: The waters at Hamburg are very hard to analyze because of their turbidity and the low visibility. Moreover, currently there are no clear statistics on the type and amount of underwater waste in the port area. This is where we want to further develop the robustness and individual features of the SeaClear system and get it market-ready. To this end, we have brought stakeholders from the port of Hamburg on board to look into SeaClear as a future port service. The great difficulty in Dubrovnik is that public access cannot be restricted. On the other hand, this means a number of additional safety measures will be necessary, which will have to be taken when the system is tested on-site. But the visibility in these waters is close to ideal, so the main objective is to validate the overall system and show its complete set of features.

How are you tackling these problems?

Delea: In Hamburg, we are trying to fuse data from different sensors when mapping the marine litter in order to assess what kind of subsea litter is to be found in these waters. We are using mainly acoustic sensors because of the limited visibility. In Dubrovnik, we are going to install additional safety mechanisms on the flying drone, with some assistance from the sensors on the mothership. The object here is tominimize safety issues and prevent collisions.

And how are you going to ensure that fragile ecosystems like coral reefs are not damaged?

Delea: This issue is not present in Hamburg, while the Croatian test site also has few coral reefs. But when the final SeaClear system will be deployed, it will use optical sensors and AI to distinguish the coral reefs, avoid difficult/hazardous procedures to collect just the litter.

Which part of the project is the Fraunhofer CML's responsibility and who are the other partners in this venture?

Oeffner: CML is the project's technical coordinator and is responsible for integrating the overall system as well as designing and developing the underwater basket to hold the collected waste. What's more, we are developing a virtual monitoring center that sends commands to the robots and disseminates their data. The project also includes setting up the communication network and the server infrastructure needed to provide SeaClear services to the various clients via web interfaces. The consortium is composed of the Technical Universities of Munich, Delft, Dubrovnik and Cluj-Napoca as well as SubSea Tech Marseille, the Hamburg Port Authority and the DUNEA Regional Development Agency Dubrovnik. The goal is for the latter two organizations to alsooperate and use the developed system after the project is wrapped up.

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Provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft 

The best of both worlds for economic predictions

by Ng Yi-Di, Singapore Managment University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Danish physicist Neils Bohr once quipped that prediction is hard, especially when it is about the future. But this is precisely what financial regulators need to do—forecasting the likely state of the economy in the future is crucial when deciding on policy levers like whether to slash or raise interest rates.

However, as the world continues to become more unpredictable, forecasting has become increasingly difficult. This challenge was poignantly illustrated after the start of the 2008 Financial Crisis, when Queen Elizabeth asked a seemingly simple but pointed question to a room of researchers and economists at the London School of Economics: Why did no one see it coming?

In the face of great complexity, perhaps econometrics could do with more help. Take machine learning for example. With its ability to parse big data, it could improve on existing econometric methods and lead to better forecasts. This is the research that Professor Yu Jun of the Singapore Management University (SMU) presented along with Associate Professor Xie Tian of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, at a webinar organized by SMU and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on 26 June 2020.

In their talk titled "Econometric Methods and Data Science Techniques," Professors Yu and Xie reviewed existing econometric methods and machine learning techniques before discussing a hybrid of both methods. Using real data and examples, they showed that the hybrid method may herald better economic and financial variable forecasting.

"We all know that we are in the era of big data and machine learning data science techniques," said Professor Yu. "Some people may think that machine learning poses a threat to conventional econometric methods. Is that really the case?"

A mix of tradition and change

Speaking first, Professor Yu introduced a selection of traditional econometric methods. Blending economics with statistics, econometrics takes a structured quantitative statistical approach to economic analyses. With econometrics, Professor Yu explained, the method is to use past data to establish statistical relationships which in turn can be used to forecast possible futures.

"Most econometric methods hope to facilitate interpretation and statistical inference," he said, explaining that conventional econometric methods rely on assumptions and linear relationships, like the famous linearity assumption. "You want to map out from the past to the future."

This approach works well in certain cases, Professor Yu said, but also proves to be a limitation: most conventional econometric models cannot handle big data or complicated relationships. "If you have many predictors or a complicated relationship, econometric methods will fail. And that's a serious limitation in the big data era and in many important cases," he said.

On the other hand, Professor Xie, who is also an Adjunct Professor at SMU, explained that machine learning algorithms are data-driven. "Instead of relying on assumptions, many machine learning algorithms just let the data talk: they don't impose very strong assumptions or restrictions on the data-generating process," he said.

That's what makes machine learning techniques so flexible, Professor Xie pointed out. However, he also added that many machine learning methods are not truly tailored for economic and financial data in the first place.

So when it comes to trying to predict the future, is one approach better than the other? Like many things in this world, it's not so straightforward.

Weighing their strengths and weaknesses

Professors Yu and Xie used two real-world examples to illustrate how the two different approaches can outperform each other in accuracy depending on the data and case at hand.

In the forecasting of the Volatility Index, or VIX—an index of financial market volatility created by the Chicago Board Options Exchange—they showed that more traditional linear econometric modeling produced a more accurate forecast than more complex machine learning methods.

However, in the second case of forecasting the consumer price inflation of the eurozone, machine learning methods outperformed traditional econometric methods.

"Machine learning methods are very popular, but they do not always outperform conventional econometric methods. The question is, can we modify machine learning algorithms to adopt advanced econometric techniques and use economic data better?"

In this vein, Professors Yu and Xie discuss the idea that applying machine learning methods to existing econometrics approaches, instead of using either approach separately, could improve econometrics modeling. They suggest a hybrid algorithm, a model averaging regression tree (MART), which was first proposed by Professor Xie and Professor Steven F. Lehrer of Queen's University in a 2018 NBER Working Paper.

Putting MART to the test

To test the effectiveness of this hybrid method, they used it to forecast real economic and financial variables by applying it to the same examples of VIX and eurozone inflation rates discussed earlier.

Econometric models still had the best forecasting accuracy in forecasting VIX, performing better than their hybrid MART approach. Professors Yu and Xie suggest that this is because the VIX data exhibits very strong linearity and therefore is best suited for an econometric approach.

But when it came to forecasting the eurozone inflation rates, the results showed that the duo's hybrid approach performed best, generating superior forecast accuracy compared to either econometrics or machine learning methods alone.

So while a hybrid model isn't always the best in all cases, elements of machine learning may still improve on forecasting by picking up on trends that the traditional econometric models might miss. As for now, they say the key is to understand the fundamentals of each method and apply them in the most appropriate circumstances.

"The hybrid strategy combines econometric measures with machine learning strategies to lead to significant gains in forecasting accuracy," said Professor Xie. "Of course, this is just an idea. Future work is definitely needed to understand the properties of this proposed hybrid strategy in order to help guide practitioners."


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Provided by Singapore Management University