NASA satellites help plan future for Palau fish stocks

Business Announcement

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: WORKING WITH THE GOVERNMENT OF PALAU, AND USING NASA SATELLITE DATA AND IMAGERY, THE NATURE CONSERVANCY DESIGNED A MARINE AQUACULTURE PROJECT TO SUSTAINABLY LOCATE AND MANAGE CLIMATE-READY AQUACULTURE FARMS IN PALAU. THE PROJECT IS DESIGNED TO FURTHER THE UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS OF PROTECTING LIFE BELOW WATER AND ENSURING GOOD HEALTH AND WELLBEING. view more 

CREDIT: CREDITS: NASA'S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

It’s the weekend, and freshly caught fish sizzles on the grill. The view: an unforgettable beach and the cobalt blues of the Pacific Ocean in the backdrop.

 

This is not paradise. It’s a typical Sunday for many people in Palau, an archipelago nation in Micronesia.

 

“We would go to the Rock Islands, spend a couple of nights there, and we would go fishing,” recalled Fabio Siksei, a fisheries specialist with Palau’s Bureau of Marine Resources, about growing up near the country’s famed Rock Islands Southern Lagoon. “Most Palauan kids have almost the same experiences growing up.”

 

People in Palau, a small nation with a population of about 20,000, consume more wild fish per capita than nearly any other country in the world. But in recent years, populations of rabbit fish and other staples of their cultural diet began to dwindle because of a combination of factors, including increasing food demand and changing ocean conditions.

 

To meet the country’s need for food supplies and keep traditions alive for future generations, Siksei and others are working with international scientists to build sustainable aquaculture farms in the ocean. Their projects are using NASA’s satellites to help protect the nation’s pristine waters, coral reefs, and shorelines.

“We found that fish stocks were declining due to [our waters] being unable to produce enough to maintain the population of the fish, and that was reason enough for the fishermen to start thinking about management issues,” Siksei said. “We talked with fishermen about ensuring that our fish are there and our resources are there, also about ensuring that our culture continues to thrive for generations to come, because fish is a big part of our life.”

 

With more than 300 small islands amounting to a landmass about twice the size of Washington D.C., Palau is one of the tiniest nations in the world. Surrounded by a 200-mile radius of scenic ocean and coral reefs that make for a scuba diver’s paradise, the country’s economy relies primarily on tourism and fishing.

 

But even though tourism serves as an important driver for the economy, Palau’s islands are under pressure to provide the resources to sustain the hundreds of thousands of people who visit the country in normal, non-pandemic times, Siksei said.

 

For several years, Siksei and others in Palau have been working with scientists at The Nature Conservancy to manage the aquaculture sector and find the best locations within Palauan shores to build marine aquaculture farms necessary to meet future food production needs.

 

The idea, Siksei said, is to breed fish and shellfish without disrupting marine ecosystems and other aspects of the country’s nature, culture and economy. For that, the team is focusing on rabbit fish and giant clams, two types of seafood entrenched within the cultural history of the nation.

 

“We don't want to stop people from fishing or stop people from doing what they usually do,” Siksei explained. “We're trying to find a way where they can continue to make a living and enjoy these resources.”

 

The Potential of Marine Aquaculture

 

As part of a nation that cherishes its natural resources, the government and fishermen of Palau teamed up with scientists at the Nature Conservancy more than 30 years ago to establish marine protected areas, improve the management of fisheries, and meet other environmental and societal needs.

 

In its early stages, the collaboration included conversations with aquaculture farmers who needed to gain a better understanding about the circulation of the ocean, the ideal distance to farm from the shore, and other parameters that can make aquaculture economically and environmentally viable for the country.

 

The team is also integrating several layers of satellite data into maps that the people of Palau can use to assess their objectives when setting up aquaculture farms. In recent years, the team also secured support from NASA’s Earth Science Applied Sciences Program, and is now producing interactive mapping tools Palauans can use to identify areas that can serve as a better fit for sustainable aquaculture.

Marine aquaculture has much more potential to be sustainable than other forms of animal protein production, said Robert Jones, who leads The Nature Conservancy’s global aquaculture program. But when done the wrong way, farms situated in the ocean can put more stress on marine ecosystems. Preventing that problem is one of the key goals that the project seeks to address.

 

 

 

“Almost every coastal country in the world has an aquaculture development plan, and all of them are saying we need to boost production to meet increased demand for animal protein and seafood,” Jones said. “But there's so few people who actually know how to do the right industry planning and siting work to ensure the environment is protected while achieving development goals.”

 

If done with inappropriate procedures, aquaculture can lead to poor water quality near Palau’s shores. That’s especially significant for fish farms, since fish also produce waste that can muddy the water and change ocean conditions, blocking some of the sunlight that organisms like coral need to survive.

 

“If you have fish in a pen, they poop,” Jones said about the cage or net system used in aquaculture farms. “If we have coral in the proximity of that plume coming out of the fish pen, that can really damage [the coral's] ability to survive. It puts further stresses on the coral that’s already experiencing [stress] from climate change.”

 

Fish Farms Seen From Space

 

Jones’s team integrates several layers of satellite data into maps that the people of Palau can use when setting up aquaculture farms—including maps that estimate the clarity of the water. That’s important for giant clam farms, which also need sunlight to penetrate the water to survive.

 

“We can look at the area and find out where you might have a better chance of sunlight reaching the giant clams to help produce their energy,” said Jonathan MacKay, a Marine Spatial Scientist with The Nature Conservancy and NOAA, who leads the team’s data and mapping efforts.

 

To create these maps, which analyze chlorophyll concentrations and the cloudiness of the water, MacKay uses satellite data from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. He also uses sea surface temperature data from the NASA Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments Program.

 

“Part of this project is also looking ahead at climate change, and how that might affect things like sea surface temperature,” MacKay said. “We can see where warm water sits in the lagoon and see if there's maybe not a lot of ocean circulation with water sitting still and warming up more than the surrounding waters.”

 

One of the highlights of the mapping tools relies on satellite images that estimate the bathymetry, or underwater depth, of shallow areas in the ocean. To do that, the project team uses data from Landsat 8, a joint mission of NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey that has been tracking changes on the surface of the planet since 1972, and generating the longest continuous record of its kind.

 

The maps also include nearly 30 layers that overlay vital environmental data, such as locations of dugongs and other marine animals protected by the government of Palau—as well as social data on World War II historic sites or scuba diving sites that play an important role for tourism.

 

A Promising Tool for a Global Challenge

 

Already, these mapping products are being shared with people in Palau through an online web map and hands-on training modules focusing on geographic information systems, remote sensing, and other key topics needed to establish new marine aquaculture farms.

 

Led by MacKay and hosted by The Nature Conservancy’s conservation training website, these courses are administered in partnership with the Palau Community College to students from various backgrounds of the government, such as the country’s Environmental Quality Protection Board.

 

Helping Palauans to continue using the maps with new data layers in the future is a top priority for Siksei, Jones, and MacKay. And it’s an aspect of their work that NASA values tremendously, according to Maurice Estes, who helps manage the NASA program that supports the project, because it can offer a promising toolset for coastal communities worldwide that depend on the ocean and fisheries for food supplies.

 

“They’ve developed a novel method in terms of using Landsat data to estimate the bathymetry in shallow areas,” Estes said. “The challenge of sustainable food supplies being addressed by this project is a global challenge.”

Facial recognition AI helps save multibillion dollar grape crop

Grant and Award Announcement

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – New technology, using robotics and AI, is supercharging efforts to protect grape crops and will soon be available to researchers nationwide working on a wide array of plant and animal research.

Biologist Lance Cadle-Davidson, an adjunct professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS) at Cornell University and a research plant pathologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), is working to develop grape varieties that are more resistant to powdery mildew, which can show up in infrared before they are visible to the naked eye. But his lab’s research has been bottlenecked by the need to manually assess thousands of grape leaf samples for evidence of infection.

So Cadle-Davidson’s team developed prototypes of imaging robots that could scan grape leaf samples automatically – a process called high-throughput phenotyping – through the USDA-ARS funded VitisGen2 grape breeding project and in partnership with the Light and Health Research Center. This partnership led to the creation of a robotic camera they named “BlackBird.”

The BlackBird robot can gather information at a scale of 1.2 micrometers per pixel – equivalent to a regular optical microscope. For each 1-centimeter leaf sample being examined, the robot provides 8,000 by 5,000 pixels of information.

Extracting useful information from such a large, high-resolution image was the challenge for engineer and computer scientist Yu Jiang, an assistant research professor in SIPS’ Horticulture Section at Cornell AgriTech – and his team used AI to solve it.

Using breakthroughs in deep neural networks developed for computer vision tasks like face recognition, Jiang applied this knowledge to the analysis of microscopic images of grape leaves. In addition, Jiang and his team implemented the visualization of the network inferential processes, which help biologists better understand the analysis process and build confidence with AI models.

Working together, Cadle-Davidson’s team tests and validates what the robots see, enabling Jiang’s team to teach them how to identify biological traits more effectively. The results are astounding, Cadle-Davison said. Research experiments that used to take his entire lab team six months to complete now take the BlackBird robots just one day.

“It has revolutionized our science,” Cadle-Davidson said. “And we’re finding that Yu’s AI tools actually do a better job of explaining the genetics of these grapes than we can do sitting at a microscope for months at a time doing backbreaking work.”

In July the team was awarded a two-year, $150,000 grant from the Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture Research Innovation Fund to begin upgrading the BlackBird robot to see beyond the red-green-blue color spectrum and into infrared.

If the researchers can develop tools to help farmers detect disease early, it would enable farmers to target fungicide sprays before infection spreads, meaning less fungicide and fewer lost crops. They’re also working to integrate AI more effectively with scientists in data analysis.

They were also awarded a $100,000 grant from the USDA-ARS to disseminate BlackBird to ARS field offices working on other crops that do the same kind of high-throughput phenotyping work.

“We hope to find collaborative labs who can join us in taking advantage of this tool,” Jiang said. “We see potential applications for this research in plant studies, animal fields or medical purposes.”

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

Low-cost 3D method rapidly measures disease impacts on Florida’s coral reefs

FAU Harbor Branch technique can be used for widespread coral disease intervention, mitigation and management strategies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE ANIMATION DEPICTS AN SFM 3D ROTATING MODEL, WHICH CAN PROVIDE GREATER INSIGHTS INTO THE SPATIOTEMPORAL DYNAMICS AND IMPACTS OF CORAL DISEASES ON INDIVIDUAL COLONIES AND CORAL COMMUNITIES THAN SURVEYS OR VISUAL ESTIMATES OF DISEASE PROGRESSION ALONE. view more 

CREDIT: FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY, HARBOR BRANCH OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE

Stony coral tissue loss disease manifests as lesions of necrotic tissue that spread across coral colonies, leaving behind dead coral skeletons. Since 2014, this highly virulent disease has contributed to substantial declines of reef-building coral in Florida, impacting more than 20 coral species. The need for widespread reef monitoring and novel surveys are imperative for disease mitigation strategies. However, the various techniques currently used all require individual evaluation and often rely on visual estimates by divers in the field. 

A low-cost and rapid 3D technique is helping scientists to gain insight into the colony- and community-level dynamics of the poorly understood stony coral tissue loss disease. Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute adapted Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry to generate 3D models for tracking lesion progression and impacts on diseased coral colonies. By combining traditional diver surveys and with 3D colony fate-tracking, the team determined the impacts of disease on coral colonies at study sites throughout Southeast Florida in St. Lucie Reef, Jupiter, Palm Beach and Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.  

Results of the study, published in PLOS One, demonstrated that the prevalence of stony coral tissue loss disease varied significantly across location, but not through time. St. Lucie Reef and Lauderdale-by-the-Sea sites were highly impacted by coral disease, while study sites in Jupiter and Palm Beach had lower disease prevalence. The highest disease values observed in this study were between 21 to 43 percent at St. Lucie Reef. However, no site reached the highest reported disease prevalence values of 60 percent observed near Miami in 2014.

“We observed an increase in disease prevalence during the spring of 2018, which was honestly unexpected. Prevalence values for other described coral diseases such as white syndrome, white band, black band, and white pox often increase during the summer months as water temperatures increase,” said Joshua D. Voss, Ph.D., senior author, an associate research professor at FAU Harbor Branch and executive director of the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology. “Stony coral tissue loss disease prevalence does not appear to have a strong positive correlation with temperature as has been observed for other coral diseases, but potential environmental cofactors that may drive disease prevalence need to be examined further.” 

Findings from the study also indicated that total colony area and healthy tissue area on fate-tracked colonies decreased significantly over time, capturing the amount of coral tissue lost to disease. However, disease lesions themselves did not change in size over time and were not correlated with total colony area. These results suggest that targeting intervention efforts on larger colonies may maximize preservation of coral cover.

“Since stony coral tissue loss disease is a progressive and necrotic infection, the area of tissue loss, or proportion of tissue loss, may represent more impactful metrics for quantifying the severity of infection as opposed to disease lesion area or percent affected tissue,” said Ian Combs, the study’s lead author and recent M.S. graduate from Voss’ lab at FAU Harbor Branch. “Traditional coral surveys combined with 3D photogrammetry can provide greater insights into the spatiotemporal dynamics and impacts of coral diseases on individual colonies and coral communities than surveys or visual estimates of disease progression alone.”

CAPTION

The composite of photographs show stony coral tissue loss disease lesions on a colony of Montastraea cavernosa. (a) a photograph of fate-tracked, stony coral tissue loss disease-infected coral colony, (b) rendered SfM 3D model, (c) characteristic of stony coral tissue loss disease lesion, and, (d) necrotic tissue.

CREDIT

Florida Atlantic University, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

Since 2014, Florida’s Coral Reef has experienced an ongoing outbreak of the newly-described coral disease responsible for widespread coral death throughout the Tropical Western Atlantic. The disease first appeared in the summer of 2014 following the dredging of Government Cut in Miami-Dade County. In subsequent years, reports of stony coral tissue loss disease infections have increased and spread from Miami-Dade County along the Florida Reef Tract and into the wider Tropical Western Atlantic. To date, the disease has spread north to the northern terminus of the Florida’s Coral Reef in Martin County and south to the Dry Tortugas in Monroe County, with additional outbreaks observed in at least twelve territories throughout the Tropical Western Atlantic.

The ultimate goal of this work is to increase widespread application of this and similar techniques to improve the design, implementation, and success of coral disease intervention, mitigation, and management strategies.

“Quantitative 3D approaches such as the method we used can improve our understanding of the ecology and impacts of coral diseases on coral reef ecosystems, and may guide colony selection in future disease intervention strategies,” said Voss. “We’ll use this information to optimize our efforts to slow disease outbreaks in Southeast Florida and the Dry Tortugas.”

Combs is now a coral reef ecosystem biologist at Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium. Additional co-authors on the study include Michael Studivan, Ph.D., a graduate of FAU’s integrative biology doctoral program and an assistant scientist at the University of Miami CIMAS/NOAA AOML; and Ryan Eckert, an FAU integrative biology Ph.D. student in the Voss Lab. 

This research was supported by awards to Voss from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (B430E1 and B55008), the Environmental Protection Agency (South Florida Geographic Initiative award X7 00D667-17), and the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (award NA16NOS4820052). Additional funding was awarded to Combs by the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute Foundation through the Indian River Lagoon Graduate Research Fellowship.

- FAU -

About Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute:
Founded in 1971, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University is a research community of marine scientists, engineers, educators and other professionals focused on Ocean Science for a Better World. The institute drives innovation in ocean engineering, at-sea operations, drug discovery and biotechnology from the oceans, coastal ecology and conservation, marine mammal research and conservation, aquaculture, ocean observing systems and marine education. For more information, visit www.fau.edu/hboi.

 

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the University serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, FAU embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. FAU is designated a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report and a High Research Activity institution by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

 

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0252593

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Quantifying impacts of stony coral tissue loss disease on corals in Southeast Florida through surveys and 3D photogrammetry

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

25-Jun-2021

COI STATEMENT

None

PREPARING FOR GRADUATING TO JAIL

Black students disproportionately disciplined with suspensions and detentions in elementary school

Even after accounting for socioeconomic differences, elementary school-age Black children are 3.5 times more likely to receive detention or suspension compared to their white peers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ELSEVIER

Washington, DC, August 12, 2021 – A study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports that among elementary school-aged children, Black children and multiracial children who were at least partly Black, are at a much higher risk of receiving detention or suspension in school even when accounting for typical predictors of school discipline.  

“Disciplinary practices such as detention and suspension can lead to a number of academic, social and psychological issues,” said Matthew Fadus, MD, a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA, USA. “There is extensive evidence in the United States to indicate that Black children and children from lower-income families are disproportionally affected by these practices.

“We wanted to know if these disciplinary disparities could be better explained by predictors of school discipline such as caregiver income and education, family conflict and caregiver reports of misbehavior. This study was unique in that it allowed us to control for these variables among more than 11,000 students.”

The study consisted of 11,875 elementary school students aged 9 and 10-years-old, who were part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study—a 10-year longitudinal study of brain development. Children were recruited across 21 sites in the US, with participants closely resembling the country’s geographic, demographic and socioeconomic makeup.

Caregivers of students provided information such as household education and income, the presence of a secondary caregiver at home (e.g., primary caregiver’s spouse, partner, or other family members), utilization of special education services at school, and ratings of their child’s behavior and levels of family conflict at home. Caregivers additionally provided details about whether the child received a suspension or detention in the last year and the reason(s) for these disciplinary actions. The study accounted for these predictors of school discipline while comparing the rates of suspension and detention among Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, and Multiracial students (with sub-categories of race within this category).

The results revealed that, with all other things being equal, Black children and multiracial children who were at least partly Black were over three times more likely to receive detention or suspension compared to their white peers.

Co-author, Brittany Bryant, DSW, LISW-CP, Assistant Professor at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, SC, USA said: “What we have found suggests there must be other factors influencing disciplinary actions among these children. Given that we were able to control for so many variables in this study, it is likely that individual biases and a long history of systemic racism in the US may be contributing to our findings.”

Earlier studies have indicated that suspensions and detentions are not only ineffective disciplinary measures but are also stronger predictors of school drop-out than GPA or socioeconomic status and are significant risk factors for future involvement in the juvenile justice system. Detentions and suspensions disproportionately affect children of lower-income families and families with single caregivers and can further perpetuate a cycle of poverty and limited academic achievement.

“A major concern is that the children in the study are so young, just 9- and 10-years-old, and they are receiving detentions and suspensions during a particularly vulnerable and foundational time when they are beginning to develop their attitudes towards school and authority figures more broadly,” said senior author Lindsay Squeglia, PhD, an Associate Professor at Medical University of South Carolina.

The researchers hope this study helps provoke healthy discussion of race and discipline in American schools and influences educators and school administrators to examine their own potential biases in disciplinary practices.

“We believe the results as a whole are not reflective of any one child’s individual behavior or moral shortcomings, but instead are the result of a long history of societal inequities and systemic racism in the US,” concluded Emilio Valadez, PhD, co-author and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.

 

###

 

Notes for editors
The article is "Racial Disparities in Elementary School Disciplinary Actions: Findings From the ABCD Study.” Matthew C. Fadus, MD, Emilio A. Valadez, PhD, Brittany E. Bryant, DSW, Alexis M. Garcia, PhD,

Brian Neelon, PhD, Rachel L. Tomko, PhD, Lindsay M. Squeglia, PhD (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.11.017). It appears in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, volume 60, issue 8 (August 2021), published by Elsevier.

Copies of this paper are available to credentialed journalists upon request; please contact the JAACAP Editorial Office at support@jaacap.org or +1 202 587 9674. Journalists wishing to interview the authors may contact Matthew Fadus, MD, at mfadus@mgh.harvard.edu.

About JAACAP
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) is the official publication of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. JAACAP is the leading journal focusing exclusively on today's psychiatric research and treatment of the child and adolescent. Published twelve times per year, each issue is committed to its mission of advancing the science of pediatric mental health and promoting the care of youth and their families.

The Journal's purpose is to advance research, clinical practice, and theory in child and adolescent psychiatry. It is interested in manuscripts from diverse viewpoints, including genetic, epidemiological, neurobiological, cognitive, behavioral, psychodynamic, social, cultural, and economic. Studies of diagnostic reliability and validity, psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacological treatment efficacy, and mental health services effectiveness are encouraged. The Journal also seeks to promote the well-being of children and families by publishing scholarly papers on such subjects as health policy, legislation, advocacy, culture and society, and service provision as they pertain to the mental health of children and families.

About Elsevier
As a global leader in information and analytics, Elsevier helps researchers and healthcare professionals advance science and improve health outcomes for the benefit of society. We do this by facilitating insights and critical decision-making for customers across the global research and health ecosystems.

In everything we publish, we uphold the highest standards of quality and integrity. We bring that same rigor to our information analytics solutions for researchers, health professionals, institutions and funders.

Elsevier employs 8,100 people worldwide. We have supported the work of our research and health partners for more than 140 years. Growing from our roots in publishing, we offer knowledge and valuable analytics that help our users make breakthroughs and drive societal progress. Digital solutions such as ScienceDirect, Scopus, SciVal, ClinicalKey and Sherpath support strategic research management, R&D performance, clinical decision support, and health education. Researchers and healthcare professionals rely on our 2,500+ digitized journals, including The Lancet and Cell; our 40,000 eBook titles; and our iconic reference works, such as Gray's Anatomy. With the Elsevier Foundation and our external Inclusion & Diversity Advisory Board, we work in partnership with diverse stakeholders to advance inclusion and diversity in science, research and healthcare in developing countries and around the world.

Elsevier is part of RELX, a global provider of information-based analytics and decision tools for professional and business customers. www.elsevier.com

Media contact
JAACAP Editorial Office
+1 202 587 9674
support@jaacap.org

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JOURNAL

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

DOI

10.1016/j.jaac.2020.11.017

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Racial Disparities in Elementary School Disciplinary Actions: Findings From the ABCD Study

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

23-Dec-2020

IT TAKES A VILLAGE OF AUNTIES

“Experienced” mouse mothers tutor other females to parent, helped by hormone oxytocin

The study provides scientific evidence for the benefits of parenting classes in humans, Rutgers researcher says

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

The best way to become a good mother just might be learning from an experienced one, if new research on female mice is any indication, according to a Rutgers researcher who filmed thousands of hours of interaction between female mice and found that mouse mothers are outstanding tutors.

“We discovered never-before-seen behavior in which new mouse mothers would, without prompting, shepherd virgin female mice into the family’s nest with pups inside. Mothers also demonstrate to virgins how to take care of pups” said study co-author Ioana Carcea, an assistant professor in the department of pharmacology, physiology, and neuroscience at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School who led the study published in the journal Nature. “Essentially what mothers do is to train virgins how to become good pup caretakers. Initially virgins might be uninterested in pups, but after watching experienced mothers they willingly start behaving as parents would. The same might be true in human mothers. This provides scientific evidence for the benefits observed from parenting classes in humans or, intriguingly, from multigenerational households.”

In the study researchers at Rutgers and New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine filmed thousands of hours of female mice interacting with their newborns as well as with virgin mice. They analyzed simultaneous electrical recordings in a brain region known to produce oxytocin, a hormone that plays a role in female reproduction and parental behavior in both mice and humans. Oxytocin can shape maternal behaviors even before mice have pups of their own.

The researchers watched a mother mouse gather her pups into the family’s nest and train other female mice without pups to perform the same parenting task. This happened even when the mice viewed the interaction through a clear plastic window.

The research team built on its earlier studies of the so-called pleasure hormone showing that the release of oxytocin is essential not only for the onset of nursing but also the initiation of other maternal behaviors.

They also measured brain electrical activity in virgin mice during shepherding and later when they became mothers on their own. They found that both the sight and sound of crying pups moved outside of their nest stimulated oxytocin production in a specific region of the brain, the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus. When scientists block the same oxytocin-producing pathways, the virgin mice failed to learn how to take care of pups. 

Researchers say that they will continue their study by examining if the same tutoring relationship exists among father mice and virgin males.

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JOURNAL

Nature

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

Disclaimer: 

The progress and promise of plant-made vaccines and therapeutics, including edible drugs

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

Recent progress in developing and testing plant-made vaccines has revived interest in plant-produced pharmaceuticals, including edible drugs, for human use. Advances in technology and manufacturing could boost the uptake of therapeutics made in this way, say Hugues Fausther-Bovendo and Gary Kobinger in this Perspective. Therapeutic proteins such as antibodies, hormones, cytokines, and proteins in vaccines are generally produced in bacteria or eukaryotic systems, including chicken eggs and mammalian or insect cell cultures. In 1986, scientists proposed the use of plants for the production of these proteins; called “molecular farming,” this process can be less resource-intensive, less costly, and less likely to be a source of contaminants. So far, one plant-derived therapeutic protein for human use has been approved (in 2012, for Gaucher disease). In 2019, a plant-produced influenza virus vaccine completed phase 3 clinical trials with promising results, and in spring 2021, phase 3 trials for a plant-made vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 began. Fausther-Bovendo and Kobinger highlight several advantages that plant-produced proteins hold for vaccine development, in particular, citing the strong immune response the plant components of virus-like particles in vaccines can generate, which may reduce the need for adjuvants. Given orally, plant-made therapeutics are also interesting to consider, say Fausther-Bovendo and Kobinger; they might require minimal processing, thus possibly skipping expensive and time-consuming steps in the manufacturing process. Edible vaccines – still predominantly in the preclinical stage of development – are also currently under development, the authors note. Compared to proof-of-concept edible vaccines tested decades ago, which generated weak immune responses, new edible plant-made vaccines could now generate more powerful immune responses, thanks to improved technology. Because doses for therapeutics are much higher than for vaccines, investment in manufacturing infrastructure must increase to achieve large-scale manufacturing of plant therapeutic products, Fausther-Bovendo and Kobinger say. 

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abf5375

ARTICLE TITLE

Plant-made vaccines and therapeutics

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Aug-2021

Palaeontology: Three fossils shed light on dinosaurs in China

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENTIFIC REPORTS

Map showing the fossil site where the new sauropod dinosaur specimens were collected (A,B), and the relative positions of these three specimens (C).

Three dinosaurs from Northwest China represent two new species and are some of the first vertebrates uncovered in the region, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. The findings shed light on sauropods in China.   

Dr. Xiaolin Wang and colleagues analysed fossil fragments (spinal vertebrae and rib cage) previously discovered in the Turpan-Hami Basin (Xinjiang, China) and dated to the Early Cretaceous (around 130 to 120 million years ago). They compared specific features of the remains (vertebrae and rib structure) to other sauropod dinosaurs from China and other localities. 

The authors identified the first specimen as a new species and named it Silutitan sinensis. The authors found that some characteristics of the neck vertebrae indicate that it belonged to a family of sauropods known as Euhelopodidae, which so far have been found only in East Asia. They compared the specimen with what they believe was a closely related group of dinosaurs, or genus, (Euhelopus) and estimated that the specimen was originally over 20 metres long.   

The authors named the second specimen, which they also identify as a new species, Hamititan xinjiangensis. The specimen consists of seven vertebrae from the tail, which the authors believe are the fourth to tenth in the spine. The authors conclude the shape and ridges along vertebrae suggest that it belonged to a family of sauropods known as Titanosaurs, abundant in both Asia and South America. They estimate the full specimen was 17 meters long by comparing it to what they believe to be closely related genera (Rapetosaurus and Opisthocoelicaudia).

The third specimen was limited to four vertebrae and rib fragments. The authors’ analysis suggests it may be a somphospondylan sauropod, a group of dinosaurs who lived from the late Jurassic, 160.3 million years ago to the late Cretaceous, 66 million years ago.

These samples are some of the first dinosaurs reported in the Turpan-Hami Basin, increasing the known diversity of the Mesozoic reptiles found in the area. The findings also shed light on which sauropods were present in China.  

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Article details

The first dinosaurs from the Early Cretaceous Hami Pterosaur Fauna, China

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-94273-7

Corresponding Author:

Xiaolin Wang
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Email: wangxiaolin@ivpp.ac.cn

Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-94273-7

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-021-94273-7

Early land plants evolved from freshwater algae, fossils reveal

The findings close a 25-million year gap between the “molecular clock” and the fossil record of plants

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BOSTON COLLEGE

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (08/12/2021) -- The world may need to start thinking differently about plants, according to a new report in the journal Science by researchers who took a fresh look at spore-like microfossils with characteristics that challenge our conventional understanding about the evolution of land plants.

Found in rock samples retrieved in Australia more than 60 years ago, the microfossils dating to the Lower Ordovician Period, approximately 480 million years ago, fill an approximately 25-million-year gap in knowledge by reconciling the molecular clock - or pace of evolution - with the fossil spore record - the physical evidence of early plant life gathered by scientists over the years.

This reconciliation supports an evolutionary-developmental model connecting plant origins to freshwater green algae, or charophyte algae, said Boston College paleobotanist Paul Strother, a co-author of the new report. The “evo-devo” model posits a more nuanced understanding of plant evolution over time, from simple cell division to initial embryonic stages, rather than large jumps from one species to another.

“We found a mix of fossils linking older, more problematic spore-like microfossils with younger spores that are clearly derived from land plants,” said Strother. “This helps to bring the fossil spore record into alignment with molecular clock dates if we consider the origin of land plants as a long-term process involving the evolution of embryonic development.”

The fossil record preserves direct evidence of the evolutionary assembly of the plant regulatory and developmental genome, Strother added. This process starts with the evolution of the plant spore and leads to the origin of plant tissues, organs, and eventually macroscopic, complete plants – perhaps somewhat akin to mosses living today.

“When we consider spores as an important component of the evolution of land plants, there is no longer a gap in the fossil record between molecular dating and fossil recovery,” Strother said. Absent that gap, “we have a much clearer picture of a whole new evolutionary step: from simple cellularity to complex multicellularity.”

As a result, researchers and the public may need to re-think how they view the origin of terrestrial plants -- that pivotal advance of life from water to land, said Strother.

“We need to move away from thinking of the origin of land plants as a singularity in time, and instead integrate the fossil record into an evo-devo model of genome assembly across millions of years during the Paleozoic Era - specifically between the Cambrian and Devonian divisions within that era,” Strother said. “This requires serious re-interpretation of problematic fossils that have previously been interpreted as fungi, not plants.”

Strother and co-author Clinton Foster, of the Australian National University,  set out to simply describe an assemblage of spore-like microfossils from a deposit dating to the Early Ordovician age - approximately 480 million years ago. This material fills in a gap of approximately 25 million years in the fossil spore record, linking well-accepted younger plant spores to older more problematic forms, said Strother.

Strother and Foster examined populations of fossil spores extracted from a rock core drilled in 1958 in northern Western Australia. These microfossils are composed of highly resistant organic compounds in their cell walls that can structurally survive burial and lithification. They were studied at Boston College, and at the ANU’s Research School of Earth Sciences, with standard optical light microscopy.

“We use fossil spores extracted from rock drill cores to construct an evolutionary history of plants going back in time to the very origin of plants from their algal ancestors,” said Strother. “We have independent age control on these rock samples, so we study evolution by looking at changes in the kinds of spores that occur over time.”

Molecular biologists also look at evolutionary history through time by using genes from living plants to estimate the timing of plant origins using “molecular clocks” -- a measurement of evolutionary divergence based on the average rate during which mutations accumulate in a species’ genome.

However, there are huge discrepancies, up to tens of millions of years, between direct fossil data and molecular clock dates, said Strother. In addition, there are similar time gaps between the oldest spores and when actual whole plants first occur.

These gaps resulted in hypotheses about a “missing fossil record” of the earliest land plants,” said Strother.

“Our work seeks to resolve some of these questions by integrating the fossil spore record into an evolutionary developmental model of plant origins from algal ancestors,” Strother said.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.abj2927

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A fossil record of land plant origins from charophyte algae

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Aug-2021

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