Inspired by barnacles, medical glue stops bleeding in seconds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MAYO CLINIC

Mayo Clinic researchers and colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a rapid-sealing paste that can stop bleeding organs independent of clotting. The details are published in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

The inspiration for this paste? Barnacles.

Barnacles are those sea animals that adhere to rocks, the bottom of ships and large fish with the aim of staying in place despite wet conditions and variable surfaces. They're successful because they exude a type of oil matrix that cleans the surface and repels moisture. Then they follow up with a protein that cross-links them with the molecules of the surface. That two-step process is what happens when the sealing paste is applied to organs or tissues.

Historically, surgeons would use a type of material that would speed up coagulation and form a clot to stop the bleeding. In the fastest cases, that would still take several minutes. In preclinical studies, this research team has shown the paste to stop bleeding in as little as 15 seconds, even before clotting has begun.

"Our data show how the paste achieves rapid hemostasis in a coagulation-independent fashion. The resulting tissue seal can withstand even high arterial pressures," says Christoph Nabzdyk, M.D., a Mayo Clinic cardiac anesthesiologist and critical care physician. "We think the paste may be useful in stemming severe bleeding, including in internal organs, and in patients with clotting disorders or on blood thinners. This might become useful for the care of military and civilian trauma victims." Dr. Nabzdyk is co-senior lead author of the study.

The paste consists of an injectable material that consists of a water-repelling oil matrix and bioadhesive microparticles. It's the microparticles that link to each other and the surface of the tissue after the oil has provided a clean place to connect. The biomaterial slowly resorbs over a period of weeks.

The research was supported by MIT's Deshpande Center, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Army Research Office, The Zoll Foundation, and the Samsung Scholarship. The technology is protected by a shared patent between MIT and Mayo Clinic.

Co-authors are Hyunwoo Yuk, Ph.D.; Jingjing Wu, Ph.D.; Xinyu Mao, Ph.D.; Claudia Varela; Ellen Roche, Ph.D.; and Xuanhe Zhao, Ph.D., of MIT, and Tiffany Sarrafian Griffiths, D.V.M., Ph.D., and Leigh Griffiths, Ph.D., of Mayo Clinic.

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About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news. For information on COVID-19, including Mayo Clinic's Coronavirus Map tracking tool, which has 14-day forecasting on COVID-19 trends, visit the Mayo Clinic COVID-19 Resource Center.

Media contact:

Bob Nellis, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, newsbureau@mayo.edu

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JOURNAL

Nature Biomedical Engineering

 

Undersea rocks yield earthquake clues

University of Delaware study of ocean rocks informs earthquake science

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE

 

IMAGE: JESSICA WARREN, UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES, ABOARD THE RESEARCH VESSEL ATLANTIS ON A SCIENTIFIC MISSION TO COLLECT GEOLOGICAL SAMPLES FROM THE EAST PACIFIC RISE, AN UNDERSEA OCEAN RIDGE WHERE HUGE SLABS OF EARTH’S CRUST ARE MOVING APART. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTOS BY THOMAS MORROW

Earthquakes shake and rattle the world every day. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has estimated the number of earthquakes at some half a million a year, with some 100,000 that can be felt, and about 100 that cause damage. Some of these powerful temblors have devastated nations, cutting short thousands of lives and costing billions of dollars for economic recovery.

When will the next big earthquake occur? Answering that question has teams of scientists monitoring areas such as California’s San Andreas Fault and Turkey’s North Anatolian Fault. But these seismically active areas on land, at the boundaries of tectonic plates, are not the only places of intense study. Jessica Warren, associate professor of geological sciences at the University of Delaware, is exploring the middle of the ocean where earthquakes with a magnitude 6 on the Richter scale routinely occur, and what she is finding may help scientists predict earthquakes on land.

UDaily connected with Warren to learn more about her most recent study, which published in Nature Geoscience on Aug. 5, 2021.

Q. How did you get started on this research?

Warren: This work grew out of a previous study with seafloor rocks and involved my colleagues Arjun Kohli, who is now a research scientist at Stanford University, Monica Wolfson-Schwehr, who is now a research assistant professor at the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, and Cécile Prigent, a former postdoc in my group who is now a professor at the University of Paris. This interesting group of people had all different areas of expertise to bring to the project. The National Science Foundation provided funding support.

Q: What kinds of rocks did you study and how did you get them? 

Warren: The rocks came from big fault structures underwater that are on par with the San Andreas Fault. It’s costly to get them because they are so far out at sea and it takes specialized equipment. At the end of 2019, we were in a research vessel in the Pacific Ocean above one of these faults on the East Pacific Rise, pulling buckets along the seafloor to collect samples. Most of the samples, however, had been sitting around in various collections — some were collected over 40 years ago from the seafloor. 

Q: Could you describe the rocks a bit? 

Warren: Underwater ocean ridges are areas of volcanic activity where magma from deep within Earth’s crust erupts and then cools and solidifies. The faults that we look at cut across these ocean ridges, creating steps in the ridge system. The top layer of rock on these ridges is basalt, a black, fine-grained rock rich in magnesium and iron, which is underlain by coarser-grained gabbro, and below it is peridotite, which is often dark green due to the quantity of the mineral olivine — another name for the gemstone peridot — that it contains. 

As you go deeper, rocks in the crust actually flow, like glaciers flow. This occurs at 4 miles deep in the Pacific Ocean floor, and 10 miles deep in the seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean, which is colder. The rocks you see in the fault at that point are mylonites — they are dark gray, stretched-out, deformed rocks — some call them Silly Putty. They can flow much faster than the normal rocks because they are super fine-grained (atoms in the rock move around faster when the grains are smaller). They are absolutely beautiful rocks!

Q: What do the rocks tell you about earthquakes? 

Warren: The big finding we have made is that these faults, or cracks, have a lot of seawater going down into them very deep — more than 10 miles below the seafloor, which is very deep. When water gets into the rock, it reacts with it. This seawater infiltration is a weakening force, so the rock can flow almost as fast as it can slip.  

Earthquakes are run-away slip events that occur as rocks slide past each other. We found that seawater infiltration causes the crystallization of tiny grains of minerals and these allow the rock to creep along instead of having a run-away slip event.

Q. Could you draw on this finding to stop an earthquake from happening on land?

Warren: There’s no way to stop large earthquakes from occurring. But it would improve our ability to predict – by understanding the properties – what gives us rock creep vs. a sharp slip. There is also a creeping segment of the San Andreas fault. We can’t make the rest of the fault like that. But we could better predict how and when these various fault systems are going to fail. 

Q. What will happen to the information you’ve developed, and what’s up next?

Warren: You have to know the rock properties to understand what happens in fault zones and earthquakes. We have done modeling work that is more a way to test and extrapolate how rocks deform against each other. We have done a lot of straightforward calculations validating the strength of the rocks. We now need more direct observations of the faults on the seafloor itself. The submersible Alvin would be one of the ideal vehicles for doing this. That would contribute to our understanding of the seismicity of certain patches versus other patches that sort of stop it. 

Q. What led you into this work? 

Warren: I fell in love with geology through field work in college, and then I fell in love with going to sea to do field work in graduate school. I also love looking at samples in the lab, seeing the textures and uncovering the history of the rock and what it’s telling us about the Earth. 

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JOURNAL

Nature Geoscience

ARTICLE TITLE

Oceanic transform fault seismicity and slip mode influenced by seawater infiltration

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Aug-2021

Disclaimer: AAAS and

 

Scientists explore mineral-rich seafloor and DDT dump sites; discover new methane seep, whale fall

Business Announcement

SCHMIDT OCEAN INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: A BARREL THOUGHT TO CONTAIN DDT WASTE PRODUCTS RESTS ON THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN FLOOR OFF OF THE COAST OF LOS ANGELES. MANY OF THE BARRELS, WHICH WERE DUMPED BETWEEN 1947 AND 1982, ARE SURROUNDED BY LIGHT-COLORED BACTERIAL MATTE HALOS. THE HALOS INDICATE A CHANGE TO THE MICROBIAL COMMUNITY IN THE SEDIMENT AND THE SCIENTISTS HOPE TO LEARN WHAT BACTERIA ARE THERE AND WHAT CHEMICALS THEY ARE BREAKING DOWN. view more 

CREDIT: USE WITH CREDIT TO SCHMIDT OCEAN INSTITUTE

Marine scientists aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor have completed a 12-day expedition off the coast of Southern California to survey the biodiversity of deep sea areas rich in minerals that are of interest to deep sea mining developers around the world. 

The expedition, which covered 5,310 square miles, explored nine deep sea sites, including the offshore site where possibly hundreds of thousands of barrels of toxic waste from the production of the insecticide DDT were dumped from 1947 to 1982.

With an underwater robot, the team of scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the United States Geological Survey collected sediment and biological samples around six barrels to understand potential ecological effects of the dump site and to determine the levels of DDT present in the ecosystem after more than 50 years. The site had been surveyed previously by scientists from UC Santa Barbara and Scripps on previous expeditions.

The goal of the Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition was to establish mineral and biological baselines in the area known as the southern California Borderland, which has  the potential for deep sea mining. The area contains rare earth marine minerals such as ferromanganese and phosphorite that are used in the manufacture of electronics, electric car batteries, solar panels, and other green technologies.

Scientists collected more than 300 samples of seafloor rocks, sediment, seawater, and marine invertebrates to better understand the ecology, mineral and microbial makeup of the relatively unexplored deep-sea system. In collecting samples, researchers also hope to evaluate the therapeutic or drug discovery potential of deep-sea microbes found in mineral-rich areas. 

“We are just beginning to understand the valuable resources of our ocean ecosystem,” said Wendy Schmidt, co-founder of Schmidt Ocean Institute. “We can’t protect what we don’t know and understand, and the human impact on our ocean over the past 75 years has had a detrimental  effect on its health and on the many ocean systems that support life on land. We expect the knowledge gained from this expedition will inform policy, management and stewardship of the deep sea, so that episodes of dumping toxic waste, such as this one, will not happen again”

The 12 expedition dives were broadcast live to the public on Schmidt Ocean Institute’s social media channels. During one of the dives to explore the DDT site, scientists discovered a whale fall--the seafloor location where the remains of a whale come to rest. Scientists also identified a new area of methane seepage. Marine biologists consider both areas a focus of specialized research because of the unique habitat they create.

“Establishing ecological baselines in the deep sea allows us to track changes over time  and better understand  the consequences of human actions,” said Chief Scientist Dr. Lisa Levin, a professor of biological oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “The  DDT dump site provides evidence of a large human footprint in the deep ocean, but we are just starting to identify the effects on local marine communities.”

The information the team collected at the DDT barrel disposal site will be compared to animals and microbes at more distant sites in order to assess the current concentrations and effects of DDT in the region. The samples will return to Scripps Institution of Oceanography where scientists will conduct further analysis and DNA sequencing.

CAPTION

A brittle star and coral are picked up by ROV Subastian’s manipulator arm, along with the piece of deep-sea rock they are inhabiting. Taking the rock along with the accompanying organisms allows the scientists to study whether certain organisms prefer certain substrates.

CAPTION

A barrel thought to contain DDT waste products rests on the bottom of the ocean floor off of the coast of Los Angeles. Many of the barrels, which were dumped between 1947 and 1982, are surrounded by light-colored bacterial matte halos. The halos indicate a change to the microbial community in the sediment and the scientists hope to learn what bacteria are there and what chemicals they are breaking down.

CAPTION

Principal Investigator Dr. Lisa Levin (of Scripps Institution of Oceanography) sorts through organisms that have grown on a piece of wood. The wood was placed at depth well before the expedition to test what creatures would colonize it.

CREDIT

Schmidt Ocean Institute

 

Chiari & Glaberman to receive funding for study of endangered sea turtles

Grant and Award Announcement

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

Ylenia Chiari, Assistant Professor, Biology, and Scott Glaberman, Assistant Professor/Associate Chair for Research, Environmental Science and Policy, Faculty Fellow, Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center (PEREC), are set to receive funding to study the Kemp's ridley—the most endangered sea turtle in the world.  

The researchers have two objectives for their study. 

The first is to determine whether repeated cycles of severe population decline have drastically reduced genetic variation of Kemp's ridley sea turtles. Genetic variation is one of the key predictors of whether a species will go extinct. 

The second is to determine how genetic data can inform conservation strategies and head start breeding programs. 

The unique approach of this project is that it uses turtle museum samples from the last 150 years to better understand how the history of population fluctuations in Kemp’s ridley sea turtles can be used to predict the future of this species amidst the threats of climate change, poaching, and habitat loss. 

The researchers hold that their project will transform scientific understanding of the most endangered sea turtle in the world and will represent the most comprehensive conservation genetics study of Kemp's ridley turtles to date. 

The researchers will receive $26,094 from The Eppley Foundation for Research, Inc., for this project. Funding will begin in September 2021 and will end in September 2022.  

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About George Mason University

George Mason University is Virginia's largest public research university. Located near Washington, D.C., Mason enrolls 38,000 students from 130 countries and all 50 states. Mason has grown rapidly over the last half-century and is recognized for its innovation and entrepreneurship, remarkable diversity and commitment to accessibility. Learn more at http://www.gmu.edu.

 

Salt marsh resilience compromised by crabs along tidal creek edges

A long-term study in California's Elkhorn Slough revealed the impact of superabundant crabs on salt marsh vegetation and the vulnerability of tidal creek banks to erosion

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SANTA CRUZ

 

IMAGE: THE STRIPED SHORE CRAB (PACHYGRAPSUS CRASSIPES) IS A SMALL CRAB FOUND ALL ALONG THE WEST COAST OF NORTH AMERICA, AND IT IS EXTREMELY ABUNDANT IN ELKHORN SLOUGH. view more 

CREDIT: K. BEHESHTI

Coastal marshes are vulnerable to erosion caused by rising seas, pounding waves, and tidal flows. In Elkhorn Slough on the Central Coast of California, these vulnerabilities are made worse by superabundant crabs found at their highest densities along the estuary’s tidal creeks, according to a new study published August 8 in Ecosphere.

The striped shore crab (Pachygrapsus crassipes) is a small crab found all along the West Coast of North America, and it is extremely abundant in Elkhorn Slough. The study demonstrated the dual role of these crabs as both consumers of salt marsh vegetation and as ecosystem engineers.

“Their burrowing weakens the creekbank edges, so that whole chunks of marsh will sometimes calve off, and by lowering biomass they are reducing the ability of marsh plants to prevent erosion,” said lead author Kathryn Beheshti, who earned her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz in 2021 and is currently a California Sea Grant State Fellow at the Ocean Protection Council’s Climate Change Program.

Beheshti and her coauthors conducted a five-year field experiment to assess the effects of crabs on the vegetation and sediments along eroding creekbank edges. Using fencing and traps made of empty tennis-ball cans to exclude crabs from experimental enclosures, they found that reducing crab abundance led to increased growth of salt marsh vegetation and enhanced sediment density.

The researchers also found that the number of burrows did not change over the study period, even with researchers experimentally removing crabs. The unexpected persistence of the burrows highlights the value of long-term field experiments. The experiment was maintained for five years thanks in large part to the efforts of a team of over 50 UC Santa Cruz undergraduate students and high school interns.

“Field experiments that span multiple seasons and years are rare,” said coauthor Kerstin Wasson, research coordinator of the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve and an adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz. “This work demonstrates the value of long-term studies by showing that burrows, which weaken the stability of tidal creek banks, persist despite the near absence of the crabs that build them.”

Coauthor Brent Hughes, assistant professor at Sonoma State University, noted that the crabs were most abundant in spring and summer, when the pickleweed marshes are at peak production. “This synchrony suggests that the effect of crabs as consumers is more punctuated than their more chronic effect as engineers,” he said.

Elkhorn Slough is one of the largest estuaries in California, with the largest tract of tidal salt marsh in the state outside of San Francisco Bay. It has been highly altered by human activities, however, and erosion along the edges of the tidal creeks and main channel is steadily eating away at the marsh.

“It’s a big issue, because when the marsh erodes away along the tidal creeks it’s a permanent loss,” Beheshti said.

The impacts of crabs on marsh biomass and soil structure near tidal creek banks are likely to make the marsh less resilient to erosion and sea-level rise, presenting a unique challenge to managers. Restoring populations of crab predators, such as herons, racoons, and sea otters, may be one way to mitigate these negative effects.

“In this system, top-predator recovery is key,” said coauthor Brian Silliman, distinguished professor at Duke University.

This collaborative study brought together marsh ecologists from both the East and West Coasts who have led the field in exploring how animals affect the marshes they inhabit. Over the past few decades, the U.S. East Coast has been the epicenter of studies exploring top-down effects in salt marshes, and this study is one of the few to explore such effects in a West Coast salt marsh.

“Southeastern U.S. marshes appear to be a harbinger of what’s to come for marshes along the Pacific coast, with sea-level rise amplifying the effects of what would otherwise be considered an innocuous crab,” said coauthor Christine Angelini, associate professor at University of Florida.

The authors called for similar long-term studies to be conducted in other West Coast marsh systems to determine how widespread these crab effects are. “It’d be great for contextualizing our findings,” Beheshti said. “We’d like to know if Elkhorn Slough is the canary in the coal mine, signaling yet another pathway for accelerated marsh edge loss for one of California's rarest coastal habitats.”

This work was supported in part by grants from the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship, the Myers Ocean Trust, and Friends of Long Marine Laboratory.

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JOURNAL

Ecosphere

DOI

10.1002/ecs2.3703

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

ARTICLE TITLE

Long-term study reveals top-down effect of crabs on a California salt marsh

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Aug-2021

Ross earns NSF CAREER award to study fresh, saltwater mixing in estuaries

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF MAINE

The way fresh and seawater mix in an estuary influences its water circulation, physics and quality, which affect ecosystems and aquaculture. Scientists understand the dynamics of the process in estuaries with simple topographies, but Lauren Ross seeks to better understand them in more complex ones, like the Penobscot River Estuary in eastern Maine. 

The National Science Foundation awarded Ross, an assistant professor of hydraulics and water resources engineering at the University of Maine, a more than $600,000 CAREER Award to improve scientists’ understanding of how estuary shape, river discharge and tides influence fresh and saltwater mixing. The award is the organization’s most prestigious for early career faculty.

Salt water from the sea blends with fresh water from rivers at the mouths of estuaries, which forms a brackish water that flows back into the sea. Ross says the extent of the mixing process can influence how long particles, such as contaminants, excess nutrients and larvae, remain in an estuary, as well whether it experiences hypoxia — or low oxygen levels. Tides can increase the amount of mixing, further affecting the movement of waterborne materials.  

Previous studies into the dynamics of fresh and saltwater blending focus primarily on partially-mixed estuaries, meaning they experience moderate freshwater inflow from rivers, and estuaries with basic dimensions, Ross says. As a result, current research provides less insight into estuaries with complicated topographies like irregular and fluctuating depth and width, headlands and constructions, and estuaries that have relatively large or small freshwater inputs from rivers, all of which can create more or less mixing.

Ross, therefore, will use on-site data and numerical model simulations to quantify the mixing processes in more complex estuaries from across the world. Her research will encompass the Penobscot River Estuary, which experiences moderate river input and tides; the Reloncavi Fjord in the Chilean Patagonia, which has large river input and small tides, and the Gironde Estuary in southwest France, which has large river input and tides. Exploring a variety of estuaries can provide insight into how tides, freshwater input and topography affect the mixing process.

“The interface and exchange of ocean and river water in estuaries greatly influences the hydrodynamics, circulation patterns and transport of material, but we don’t yet fully understand the exchange process,” she says. “I aim to better understand this process and in turn use it to help negotiate and implement pollution and seafood management strategies in estuaries in complicated topographic settings, partly by refining approaches for determining timescales for transport of water borne materials like pollutants, larvae, and harmful algal blooms.” 

Ross has dedicated much of her scientific career toward investigating the physics of estuaries, particularly its flow and the mechanisms that influence it. 

Her recently published research includes quantifying the dynamics of the Jordan River in Down East Maine to understand how they affect particle movement, and creating a framework for reviewing tidal turbine placement in estuaries. Ross also is working on developing a tool to predict how biotoxins from algal blooms travel through estuarine and coastal waters. She has conducted previous studies in the Penobscot River Estuary, Reloncavi Fjord and Gironde Estuary, and plans to use data from them for her CAREER Award project. 

Ross has already created models for the three estuaries, which will produce simulations for her and two graduate students to analyze for their results. 

The ones for the Reloncavi Fjord and Penobscot River Estuary, however, need validation using on-site data. 

One graduate student will help verify the accuracy of the Penobscot model by tasking high school students from Maine Ocean School in Searsport with collecting data from 12 spots in the estuary continually over the course of the five-year-long project. The other graduate student will use publicly available data for the Reloncavi Fjord to validate their model. 

After completing her study, Ross will create and share lesson plans about her findings for high school math and science classes, which she says should teach students about “the differences among the three estuaries, explain simple tidal and volume conservation theory and introduce data visualization tools.” 

Ross also plans on sharing the findings from her research on the Penobscot River Estuary in a yearly Summer Lecture Series at the UMaine Hutchinson Center in Belfast, Maine starting in 2022.

“Estuarine ecosystems are important to us commercially and recreationally, but they are also very delicate ecosystems,” Ross says. “I believe it is important to educate our community and the next generation of scientists and coastal managers on these vital coastal environments as early as possible.”

 

What to call seafood made from fish cells

Rutgers study confirms “cell-based” and “cell-cultured” work best

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: FOOD COMPANIES, REGULATORS, MARKETERS, JOURNALISTS AND OTHERS SHOULD USE THE TERMS “CELL-BASED” OR “CELL-CULTURED” WHEN LABELING AND TALKING ABOUT SEAFOOD PRODUCTS MADE FROM THE CELLS OF FISH OR SHELLFISH, ACCORDING TO A NEW RUTGERS STUDY IN THE JOURNAL OF FOOD SCIENCE. view more 

CREDIT: RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

New Brunswick, N.J. (Aug. 9, 2021) – Food companies, regulators, marketers, journalists and others should use the terms “cell-based” or “cell-cultured” when labeling and talking about seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish, according to a new Rutgers study in the Journal of Food Science.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture require food products to have a “common or usual name” on their labels, so consumers can make informed choices.

With more than 70 companies around the world developing cell-cultured protein products and more than $360 million invested in their development in 2020 alone, the adoption of one common name is crucial as products move closer to commercialization. 

The study by William Hallman, a professor who chairs the Department of Human Ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, confirmed the results from his earlier study comparing seven potential names for these products.

In the new study, a representative sample of 1,200 consumers evaluated packages of Atlantic salmon designed to mimic those found in grocery stores, labeled with “cell-based seafood” or “cell-cultured seafood”.

The names were evaluated using five criteria to test their ability to meet FDA labeling regulations and producers’ needs to sell their products. These criteria included each term's ability to help consumers distinguish cell-cultured seafood from wild and farmed fish; to signal its potential as an allergen; to be seen as an appropriate term for the product; to not disparage cell-cultured or conventional products; and to not evoke thoughts, images or emotions that the products aren’t safe, healthy, and nutritious.

“The results suggest that both ‘cell-based seafood’ and ‘cell-cultured seafood’ meet FDA regulations,” Hallman said. “They help the majority of consumers understand that the new products are produced in a different way from the ‘wild-caught’ and ‘farm-raised’ fish they may already be buying. At the same time, consumers also recognized that if they are allergic to seafood, they shouldn’t eat the product.”

The study’s participants reported slightly more positive overall impressions, slightly greater interest in tasting and slightly greater likelihood of purchasing the products labeled as “cell-based seafood” than those labeled as “cell-cultured seafood.”

Citing Hallman’s research, the National Fisheries Institute (representing the fisheries industry), the Environmental Defense Fund, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Alliance for Meat, Poultry and Seafood Innovation (representing the cell-cultured protein industry) have begun to coalesce around use of the term “cell-cultured.”

“Both names work well,” Hallman said. “The key is to choose a single term and to get everyone to adopt it. That will reduce confusion and ultimately help consumers understand what they are buying.”

The new products are produced using the same muscle cells, fat cells and connective tissue cells from fish species and are expected to look, taste and have the same nutritional qualities and health benefits as conventional seafood. These new products will be produced in sterile environments, so they will not contain mercury, pesticides, microplastics, antibiotics and other contaminants. Additionally, companies will only produce the parts of the fish that consumers eat, resulting in less food waste, while providing year-round availability, consistent quality and sustainable production practices.

The study was supported by BlueNalu, a San Diego company led by Lou Cooperhouse, former director of Rutgers Food Innovation Center. Hallman has served as director of Rutgers Food Policy Institute and chaired the FDA’s Risk Communication Advisory Committee. He serves on the Standing Committee on Advancing Science Communication of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

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Broadcast interviews: Rutgers University has broadcast-quality TV and radio studios available for remote live or taped interviews with Rutgers experts. For more information, contact John Cramer at john.cramer@rutgers.edu

ABOUT RUTGERS—NEW BRUNSWICK
Rutgers University–New Brunswick is where Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, began more than 250 years ago. Ranked among the world’s top 60 universities, Rutgers’s flagship is a leading public research institution and a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. It has an internationally acclaimed faculty, 12 degree-granting schools and the Big Ten Conference’s most diverse student body.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Food Science

DOI

10.1111/1750-3841.15860

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

A comparison of cell-based and cell-cultured as appropriate common or usual names to label products made from the cells of fish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Aug-2021

 

Climate change ‘double whammy’ could kill off fish species

Warming waters rob fish of ability to both move and adapt to cope

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF READING

Many commonly-eaten fish could face extinction as warming oceans due to climate change increases pressure on their survival while also hampering their ability to adapt.

New research suggests that fish like sardines, pilchards and herring will struggle to keep pace with accelerating climate change as warmer waters reduce their size, and therefore their ability to relocate to more suitable environments.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, also provides the first evidence to counter the scientific theory that decreased movement will result in more species, by suggesting the opposite is true. This means many species will also be less able to evolve to cope with warmer temperatures, increasing their risk of dying out.

Professor Chris Venditti, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, and co-author of the study, said: “Warming waters are a double whammy for fish, as they not only cause them to evolve to a smaller size, but also reduce their ability to move to more suitable environments.

“Our research supports the theory that fish will get smaller as oceans warm under climate change, but reveals the worrying news that they will also not be able to evolve to cope as efficiently as first thought. With sea temperatures rising faster than ever, fish will very quickly get left behind in evolutionary terms and struggle to survive.

“This has serious implications for all fish and our food security, as many of the species we eat could become increasingly scarce or even non-existent in decades to come.”

The study, led by the Center for Advanced Studies in Arid Zones (CEAZA) in Chile and the University of Reading in the UK, used statistical analyses of a large dataset of globally distributed fish species to study their evolution over the past 150 million years. The study provides first solid evidence of how historical global temperature fluctuations have affected the evolution of these species.

It focused on Clupeiforms - a highly diverse group of fish found all over the world, which includes important species for fisheries, such as anchovies, Atlantic herring, Japanese pilchard, Pacific herring, and South American pilchard. However, the findings have implications for all fish.

Fish have thus far only had to deal with a maximum average ocean temperature rise of around 0.8°C per millennium. This is far lower than current warming rates reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of 0.18°C per decade since 1981.

The findings support the long-held expectation among scientists that fish will generally get smaller and move less as world warms, due to having to increase their metabolism and therefore needing more oxygen to sustain their body functions. This will impact fish species because larger fish are able to travel longer distances owing to their greater energy reserves, whereas smaller fish are less able to seek out new environments with favourable conditions as the climate changes.

However, the research contradicts the assumption that an increase in smaller fish will mean more new species emerging because of concentrating genetic variations within local areas.

Instead, the scientists found warmer waters would lead to fewer new species developing, robbing fish of another of their key weapons to cope with climate change.

Overfishing has also been found to make fish smaller in size, so the new study adds to the list of pressures they face as a consequence of human actions.

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-021-01123-5

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Historic warming consistently decreased size, dispersal and speciation rate of fish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Aug-2021

 

Why  WHITE middle-class residents want to stay put after floodwaters recede

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

Flood disasters like Hurricane Harvey lead some people to move far from the places they had called home. But a new study from Rice University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that middle-class people who made long-term plans to stay in their neighborhoods before they flooded are less likely to relocate even if they suffered significant damage.

The study’s findings are outlined in “Best Laid Plans: How the Middle Class Make Residential Decisions Post-Disaster,” which will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Social Problems. The paper is now available online.

Researchers Anna Rhodes, an assistant professor of sociology at Rice, and Max Besbris, an assistant professor of sociology at Wisconsin-Madison, examined how Harvey affected the housing decisions made by middle-class residents of Friendswood, Texas, a suburb of Houston. Over the course of two years after the storm, the researchers conducted a series of interviews with residents in 59 households that flooded.

Rhodes, the study’s lead author, said flood victims who stayed put did so because of plans they made before the storm. Most of the people who were interviewed stayed in their homes, even though they not only had the financial means to move, they also faced pressure from friends and family to relocate to less vulnerable places with similar amenities.

“What we found is that massive damage, social pressure and the revealed risk of living near a creek that severely overran its banks during Harvey were not enough to get most residents to consider leaving Friendswood,” Besbris said. “Instead, most people thought they would stay in their homes for many years to come and these plans were very durable.”

On the other hand, most of the households who decided to move after the storm indicated they left because they had already made well-defined plans to a move before the hurricane hit.

“In the face of an unexpected residential decision after Hurricane Harvey, it was residents who were already thinking about moving that were most likely to decide not to return to their flood-damaged homes,” Rhodes said.

She also noted that none of the families who chose to stay or leave were offered buyouts. In order to help people living in vulnerable areas consider moving, Rhodes said it’s important to understand how they ultimately make the decision to stay or leave.

“Future work dealing with post-disaster policies should be designed with mobility in mind,” Rhodes said.

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JOURNAL

Social Problems

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Best Laid Plans: How the Middle Class Make Residential Decisions Post-Disaster

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jul-2021

Floods in China's southwest impacts hundreds of thousands, state media says

Parts of China’s southwestern Sichuan Province, including Ganzi, have reported heavy rains that began Friday, according to Chinese state media. 

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Chinese authorities said that more than 440,000 people in southwestern Sichuan Province have been affected in the aftermath of torrential rains and floods.

Heavy rains of up to nearly 9 inches that began Friday caused rivers to swell and flooded six cities or regions in the province, including Luzhou, Mianyang, Nanchong, Dazhou, Bazhong and Ganzi, state media reported.

In Nanchong, a monitoring station reported 17 inches of rain in a 24-hour time period, Xinhua said Monday.

According to China Central Television, 45 houses had collapsed in the province by Saturday and 118 other homes were severely damaged. Cost of damage at the time was estimated at $38.5 million.

Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said that it has deployed relief workers to five cities and 12 counties.

Evacuations are ongoing, according to state media. On Sunday, authorities said more than 7,000 people were forced to leave their homes, Xinhua reported.

The natural disaster response in China's southwest comes less than a week after China said more than 300 people had died in the aftermath of flooding in Henan Province.

The floods in central China affected 14.5 million people and forced more than 933,000 people to evacuate, according to Henan's provincial authorities last week.

Liu Junyan, Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaigner, said that climate change has made "extreme weather like heat waves and floods more frequent and more deadly in the past 20 years," according to Bloomberg last month.

China has attempted to address flooding with the construction of dams, dikes and levees since the 1950s, but the policy may not be entirely effective.

Kirk Barlow, an analyst with International Rivers in Oakland, Calif., said that as "dams get larger, they tend to complicate flooding controls due to the unpredictability of climate change," according to Christian Science Monitor last month.

Dams in China collapsed this year, according to Barlow.