It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Missing for Decades: Researchers Identify Over 500 Species As “Lost”
BySIMON FRASER UNIVERSITYJUNE 19, 2022
Researchers have reviewed the data of over 32,000 species and identified 562 of those species as “lost.” 75 of these 562 lost species are categorized as “possibly extinct.”
A new study has identified 562 lost species
An international study provides the first worldwide assessment of all terrestrial vertebrate species that have not been declared extinct and finds more than 500 ‘lost’ species—those that have not been observed by anybody in more than 50 years.
Researchers examined data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Red List) of 32,802 species and identified 562 lost species. On May 16th, 2022, their results were published in the journal Animal Conservation.
Black-browed babbler, a songbird species endemic to Borneo that went unrecorded for 172 years before being rediscovered in 2020. Credit: Panji Akbar
Extinct is defined by the IUCN Red List as “when there is no reasonable doubt the last individual of a species has died,” which can be hard to prove. According to Arne Mooers, a biodiversity professor at Simon Fraser University and research co-author, the Red List classifies 75 of the 562 lost species as ‘probably extinct.’ The presence of numerous species with unknown conservation status may become more problematic if the extinction crisis worsens and more species disappear, according to the researchers.
Since 1500, 311 terrestrial vertebrate species have been declared extinct, indicating that 80% more species are deemed lost than are pronounced extinct
Reptiles led the way with 257 species considered lost, followed by 137 species of amphibians, 130 species of mammals, and 38 species of birds. Most of these lost animals were last seen in megadiverse countries such as Indonesia (69 species), Mexico (33 species), and Brazil (29 species).
Miles’ robber frog (Craugastor milesi), is endemic to Honduras and thought to be extinct but was rediscovered in 2008. Credit: Tom Brown
While not surprising, this concentration is important, according to researchers. “The fact most of these lost species are found in megadiverse tropical countries is worrying, given such countries are expected to experience the highest numbers of extinctions in the coming decades,” says study lead author Tom Martin from the UK’s Paignton Zoo.
Mooers, who anchored the study, says: “While theoretical estimates of ongoing ‘extinction rates’ are fine and good, looking hard for actual species seems better.”
Gareth Bennett, an SFU undergraduate student who did much of the data combing, adds: “We hope this simple study will help make these lost species a focus in future searches.”
The authors suggest that future survey efforts concentrate on the identified ‘hotspots’ where the existence of many particular species remains in question. More funding would be needed to support such hotspot-targeted fieldwork to either rediscover lost species or to remove the reasonable doubt that a particular lost species does, in fact, still exist.
Reference: “‘Lost’ taxa and their conservation implications” by T. E. Martin, G. C. Bennett, A. Fairbairn and A. O. Mooers, 16 May 2022, Animal Conservation. DOI: 10.1111/acv.12788
SwRI scientists identify a possible source for Charon’s red cap
Research combined spacecraft data with new lab experiments, models of Pluto’s largest moon
IMAGE: SOUTHWEST RESEARCH INSTITUTE SCIENTISTS COMBINED DATA FROM NASA’S NEW HORIZONS MISSION WITH NOVEL LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS AND EXOSPHERIC MODELING TO REVEAL THE LIKELY COMPOSITION OF THE RED CAP ON PLUTO’S MOON CHARON AND HOW IT MAY HAVE FORMED. NEW FINDINGS SUGGEST DRASTIC SEASONAL SURGES IN CHARON’S THIN ATMOSPHERE COMBINED WITH LIGHT BREAKING DOWN THE CONDENSING METHANE FROST MAY BE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE ORIGINS OF CHARON’S RED POLAR ZONES.view more
CREDIT: COURTESY NASA / JOHNS HOPKINS APL / SWRI
SAN ANTONIO — June 21, 2022 — Southwest Research Institute scientists combined data from NASA’s New Horizons mission with novel laboratory experiments and exospheric modeling to reveal the likely composition of the red cap on Pluto’s moon Charon and how it may have formed. This first-ever description of Charon’s dynamic methane atmosphere using new experimental data provides a fascinating glimpse into the origins of this moon’s red spot as described in two recent papers.
“Prior to New Horizons, the best Hubble images of Pluto revealed only a fuzzy blob of reflected light,” said SwRI’s Randy Gladstone, a member of the New Horizons science team. “In addition to all the fascinating features discovered on Pluto’s surface, the flyby revealed an unusual feature on Charon, a surprising red cap centered on its north pole.”
Soon after the 2015 encounter, New Horizons scientists proposed that a reddish “tholin-like” material at Charon’s pole could be synthesized by ultraviolet light breaking down methane molecules. These are captured after escaping from Pluto and then frozen onto the moon’s polar regions during their long winter nights. Tholins are sticky organic residues formed by chemical reactions powered by light, in this case the Lyman-alpha ultraviolet glow scattered by interplanetary hydrogen molecules.
“Our findings indicate that drastic seasonal surges in Charon’s thin atmosphere as well as light breaking down the condensing methane frost are key to understanding the origins of Charon’s red polar zone,” said SwRI’s Dr. Ujjwal Raut, lead author of a paper titled “Charon’s Refractory Factory” in the journal Science Advances. “This is one of the most illustrative and stark examples of surface-atmospheric interactions so far observed at a planetary body.”
The team realistically replicated Charon surface conditions at SwRI’s new Center for Laboratory Astrophysics and Space Science Experiments (CLASSE) to measure the composition and color of hydrocarbons produced on Charon’s winter hemisphere as methane freezes beneath the Lyman-alpha glow. The team fed the measurements into a new atmospheric model of Charon to show methane breaking down into residue on Charon’s north polar spot.
“Our team’s novel ‘dynamic photolysis’ experiments provided new limits on the contribution of interplanetary Lyman-alpha to the synthesis of Charon’s red material,” Raut said. “Our experiment condensed methane in an ultra-high vacuum chamber under exposure to Lyman-alpha photons to replicate with high fidelity the conditions at Charon’s poles.”
SwRI scientists also developed a new computer simulation to model Charon’s thin methane atmosphere.
“The model points to ‘explosive’ seasonal pulsations in Charon’s atmosphere due to extreme shifts in conditions over Pluto’s long journey around the Sun,” said Dr. Ben Teolis, lead author of a related paper titled “Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot” in Geophysical Research Letters.
The team input the results from SwRI’s ultra-realistic experiments into the atmospheric model to estimate the distribution of complex hydrocarbons emerging from methane decomposition under the influence of ultraviolet light. The model has polar zones primarily generating ethane, a colorless material that does not contribute to a reddish color.
“We think ionizing radiation from the solar wind decomposes the Lyman-alpha-cooked polar frost to synthesize increasingly complex, redder materials responsible for the unique albedo on this enigmatic moon,” Raut said. “Ethane is less volatile than methane and stays frozen to Charon’s surface long after spring sunrise. Exposure to the solar wind may convert ethane into persistent reddish surface deposits contributing to Charon’s red cap.”
“The team is set to investigate the role of solar wind in the formation of the red pole,” said SwRI’s Dr. Josh Kammer, who secured continued support from NASA’s New Frontier Data Analysis Program.
“Extreme Exospheric Dynamics at Charon: Implications for the Red Spot” in Geophysical Research Letters can be found at https://doi.org/10.1029/2021GL097580.
The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Southwest Research Institute directs the mission via Principal Investigator Alan Stern, and leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Three out of every four teens aren’t getting enough exercise, and this lack is even more pronounced among female students.
But new research from the University of Georgia suggests improving a school’s climate can increase physical activity among adolescents.
School environments play a critical role in helping children develop healthy behaviors, like creating healthy eating habits, said lead study author Janani R. Thapa. And the same goes for physical activity.
“The length of recess, physical facilities and social environments at schools have been found to affect physical activity among students,” said Thapa, an associate professor of health policy and management at UGA’s College of Public Health.
The state of Georgia has implemented policies and programs to boost physical activity in K-12 schools. Thapa has been one of the lead evaluators of these programs.
“Over time, the state has observed declining levels of physical activity among all adolescents, but the rate is higher among female middle and high school students,” she said.
Thapa suspected that school climate could play an important role in determining how comfortable students feel participating in school sports or other physical activity. School climate includes factors such as social support, safety and bullying.
“We do not know much about the role of school climate on physical activity,” said Thapa. “There must have been barriers that were faced by certain groups of students. Hence, we wanted to investigate the difference by gender.”
Using data from a statewide survey of over 360,000 Georgia high school students that included questions about physical activity levels and school climate, Thapa and her co-authors were able to test that relationship.
The data included eight characteristics of climate: school connectedness, peer social support, adult social support, cultural acceptance, physical environment, school safety, peer victimization (bullying) and school support environment.
Overall, female students reported less physical activity than their male counterparts, only 35% were active compared to 57% of males. And physical activity declined steadily from ninth grade to 12th grade for both genders.
However, students of both genders were more physically active when school climate was perceived to be positive across most measures.
One thing that stood out was the influence of bullying. Female students who reported being bullied were more likely to be physically active, while male students who reported being bullied were less likely to be physically active.
Bullying was the only measure of school climate that differed for male and female students. This disparity could be explained, said the authors, by the different norms about exercise and masculine versus feminine ideals.
“For example, female students who are active in sports and physically active may not fit the gender norm and hence may face bullying,” said Thapa.
These findings suggest that K-12 schools that want to promote participation in physical activity should consider how to improve students’ sense of safety at school and bolster peer and adult support of exercise.
New guidelines say ‘insufficient’ evidence to support use of multivitamins or dietary supplements to prevent cardiovascular disease or cancer in healthy, non-pregnant adults
Pregnant people, those becoming pregnant still need essential vitamins (iron, folic acid)
More than half of U.S. adults take dietary supplements, a multi-billion-dollar industry
CHICAGO --- Drawn to the allure of multivitamins and dietary supplements filling nutritional gaps in their diet, people in the U.S. in 2021 spent close to $50 billion on vitamins and dietary supplements.
But Northwestern Medicine scientists say for non-pregnant, otherwise healthy Americans, vitamins are a waste of money because there isn’t enough evidence they help prevent cardiovascular disease or cancer.
“Patients ask all the time, ‘What supplements should I be taking?’ They’re wasting money and focus thinking there has to be a magic set of pills that will keep them healthy when we should all be following the evidence-based practices of eating healthy and exercising,” said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine in the department of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Linder and fellow Northwestern Medicine scientists wrote an editorial that will be published June 21 in JAMA that supports new recommendations from the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent panel of national experts that frequently makes evidence-based recommendations about clinical preventive services.
Based on a systematic review of 84 studies, the USPSTF’s new guidelines state there was “insufficient evidence” that taking multivitamins, paired supplements or single supplements can help prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer in otherwise healthy, non-pregnant adults.
“The task force is not saying ‘don’t take multivitamins,’ but there’s this idea that if these were really good for you, we’d know by now,” Linder said.
The task force is specifically recommending against taking beta-carotene supplements because of a possible increased risk of lung cancer, and is recommending against taking vitamin E supplements because it has no net benefit in reducing mortality, cardiovascular disease or cancer.
“The harm is that talking with patients about supplements during the very limited time we get to see them, we’re missing out on counseling about how to really reduce cardiovascular risks, like through exercise or smoking cessation,” Linder said.
More than half of Americans take vitamins. Why?
More than half of U.S. adults take dietary supplements, and use of supplements is projected to increase, Linder and his colleagues wrote in the JAMA editorial.
Eating fruits and vegetables is associated with decreased cardiovascular disease and cancer risk, they said, so it is reasonable to think key vitamins and minerals could be extracted from fruits and vegetables, packaged into a pill, and save people the trouble and expense of maintaining a balanced diet. But, they explain, whole fruits and vegetables contain a mixture of vitamins, phytochemicals, fiber and other nutrients that probably act synergistically to deliver health benefits. Micronutrients in isolation may act differently in the body than when naturally packaged with a host of other dietary components.
Linder noted individuals who have a vitamin deficiency can still benefit from taking dietary supplements, such as calcium and vitamin D, which have been shown to prevent fractures and maybe falls in older adults.
New guidelines do not apply to pregnant people
The new USPSTF guidelines do not apply to people who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, said JAMA editorial co-author Dr. Natalie Cameron, an instructor of general internal medicine at Feinberg.
“Pregnant individuals should keep in mind that these guidelines don’t apply to them,” said Cameron, who also is a Northwestern Medicine physician. “Certain vitamins, such as folic acid, are essential for pregnant women to support healthy fetal development. The most common way to meet these needs is to take a prenatal vitamin. More data is needed to understand how specific vitamin supplementation may modify risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes and cardiovascular complications during pregnancy.”
Additionally, recent research from Northwestern has found most women in the U.S. have poor heart health prior to becoming pregnant. Cameron said that, in addition to discussing vitamin supplementation, working with patients to optimize cardiovascular health prior to pregnancy is an important component of prenatal care.
Eating healthy, exercising is ‘easier said than done’
Dr. Jenny Jia, a co-author of the JAMA editorial who studies the prevention of chronic diseases in low-income families through lifestyle interventions, said healthy eating can be a challenge when the U.S. industrialized food system does not prioritize health.
“To adopt a healthy diet and exercise more, that’s easier said than done, especially among lower-income Americans,” said Jia, an instructor of general internal medicine at Feinberg and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “Healthy food is expensive, and people don’t always have the means to find environments to exercise—maybe it’s unsafe outdoors or they can’t afford a facility. So, what can we do to try to make it easier and help support healthier decisions?”
Over the past few years, Jia has been working with charitable food pantries and banks that supply free groceries to people who are in need to try to help clients pick healthier choices from the food pantries as well as educate those who donate to provide healthier options or money.
JOURNAL
JAMA
ARTICLE TITLE
Multivitamins and Supplements—Benign Preventionor Potentially Harmful Distraction?
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
21-Jun-2022
1,700-year-old Korean genomes show genetic heterogeneity in Three Kingdoms period Gaya
An international team led by The University of Vienna and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in collaboration with the National Museum of Korea has successfully sequenced and studied the whole genome of eight 1,700-year-old individuals dated to the Three Kingdoms period of Korea (approx. 57 BC-668 AD). The first published genomes from this period in Korea and bring key information for the understanding of Korean population history. The Team has been led by Pere Gelabert and Prof. Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna together with Prof. Jong Bhak and Asta Blazyte from the UNIST and Prof. Kidong Bae from the National Museum of Korea.
The study, published in Current Biology, showed that ancient Koreans from Gaya confederacy were more diverse than the present-day Korean population. The eight ancient skeletal remains used for DNA extraction and bioinformatic analyses came from the Daesung-dong tumuli, the iconic funerary complex of the Gaya confederacy, and from Yuha-ri shell mound; both archeological sites located in Gimhae, South Korea. Some of the eight studied individuals were identified as tomb owners, others as human sacrifices, and one, a child, was buried in a shell mound, a typical funerary monument of Southeast Asia that is not related to privileged individuals. All burial sites are typical for the Gaya region funerary practices in AD 300-500. “The individual genetic differences are not correlated to the grave typology, indicating that the social status in the Three Kingdoms Korea would not be related to genetic ancestry. We have observed that there is no clear genetic difference between the grave owners and the human sacrifices” explains Anthropologist Pere Gelabert.
Six out of eight ancient individuals were genetically closer to modern Koreans, modern Japanese, Kofun Japanese (Kofun genomes are contemporaneous with individuals from our study), and Neolithic Koreans. The genomes of the remaining two were slightly closer to modern Japanese and ancient Japanese Jomons. “This means that in the past, the Korean peninsula showed more genetic diversity than in our times” says Gelabert.
Modern Koreans, on the other hand, appear to have lost this Jomon-related genetic component owing to a relative genetic isolation that followed the Three Kingdoms period. These results support a well-documented post- Three Kingdoms period Korean history, suggesting that Koreans of that time were intermixing within the peninsula, and their genetic differences were diminishing until the Korean population became homogeneous as we know it today.
A detailed DNA-based facial feature prediction for the eight genomes showed that the Three Kingdoms period Koreans resembled modern Koreans. This is the first instance of publishing an ancient individuals’ face prediction using DNA-only in a scientific journal. This approach may create a precedent for other ancient genome studies to predict facial features when the skulls are extremely degraded.
LAWRENCE — Colleges and universities across the U.S. have seen a decades-long push for scholars to carry out “multidisciplinary” research — academic work that combines experts from different fields who mix know-how to work on a certain topic.
Using network science, the pair examined articles for the years 2008-18 listed in the Social Sciences Citation Index database of the Web of Science, under the subject category of “Psychology, Multidisciplinary.” They found just 25% of citations from articles in these journals referenced research published in fields outside Psychology.
“We were a little surprised to find out even though there are these calls to become more and more multidisciplinary, we're still really not,” Vitevitch said. “When you look at psychology journals identified as multidisciplinary — so they should be reaching out the most to other fields — only about 25 percent of their citations are to journals from other fields. Half were to other psychology journals, and 25 percent were to other multidisciplinary psychology journals.”
Fujita, now a graduate student at Indiana University-Bloomington, and Vitevitch found some topics in psychology attracted multidisciplinary work steadily throughout the decade — such as those relating to physical and mental health — while the percentage of multidisciplinary research for other topics would rise and fall.
“We looked at topics people were investigating to identify potential gaps,” Vitevitch said. “What are themes people are studying in this multidisciplinary fashion, and are there areas that are really hot and areas that have sort of died off?”
The authors think their analysis could help individual researchers identify promising areas of multidisciplinary research.
“If you're wanting to become more multidisciplinary, where might you want to look for topics to investigate?” Vitevitch said. “Maybe there's work being done, but nobody's really bridged those two fields — becoming that bridge might be good if you're looking for a new research topic. So, the approach we use in this paper might help you identify something of interest. For instance, our keyword analysis showing, ‘Hey, these are the topics that people are studying — but there's a gap there.’ That may be something you can do at the level of the individual researcher to become more multidisciplinary.’”
Further, the KU study makes recommendation for administrators at academic institutions who want to boost multidisciplinary scholarship.
“If multidisciplinary work is so good, how do you get it to occur?” Vitevitch said. “A research administrator can create programs to bring people together to talk and share ideas — like the Red Hot Research Talks at KU. One researcher might have this statistical technique that's great for a problem — a technique another researcher didn't even know existed. You’re a sociologist and the other one is an economist, but one has techniques that could solve the other’s problem. Sometimes getting people together helps find interesting theoretical differences as well, when the theory from one field predicts one thing should happen, and a theory from another field predicts exactly the opposite — so OK, let's test this out.”
Vitevitch also said that multidisciplinary research tends to be more influential as measured by peer citations.
The KU team’s work contributes to the growing field of study known as “the science of science,” which often relies on quantitative data — like the citation networks analyzed in this new paper — to answer questions about the nature of academic research.
“It's looking at all of science itself to try to understand how it works and are there things you can do to make it work better,” he said.
The authors said their approach should be valid for measuring multidisciplinary research in other fields besides psychology.
“If we were to have done this with economics, for instance, we probably would still see the same sort of percentage of citations in versus out of the field,” Vitevitch said. “But we need more diversity of perspectives, theories and methodologies to solve the problems we're seeing in society — the problems aren’t getting any simpler. They're getting more and more complex.”
IMAGE: INSPIRED BY FIREFLIES, MIT RESEARCHERS HAVE CREATED SOFT ACTUATORS THAT CAN EMIT LIGHT IN DIFFERENT COLORS OR PATTERNS.view more
CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF KEVIN CHEN, SUHAN KIM,ET AL
Fireflies that light up dusky backyards on warm summer evenings use their luminescence for communication — to attract a mate, ward off predators, or lure prey.
These glimmering bugs also sparked the inspiration of scientists at MIT. Taking a cue from nature, they built electroluminescent soft artificial muscles for flying, insect-scale robots. The tiny artificial muscles that control the robots’ wings emit colored light during flight.
This electroluminescence could enable the robots to communicate with each other. If sent on a search-and-rescue mission into a collapsed building, for instance, a robot that finds survivors could use lights to signal others and call for help.
The ability to emit light also brings these microscale robots, which weigh barely more than a paper clip, one step closer to flying on their own outside the lab. These robots are so lightweight that they can’t carry sensors, so researchers must track them using bulky infrared cameras that don’t work well outdoors. Now, they’ve shown that they can track the robots precisely using the light they emit and just three smartphone cameras.
“If you think of large-scale robots, they can communicate using a lot of different tools — Bluetooth, wireless, all those sorts of things. But for a tiny, power-constrained robot, we are forced to think about new modes of communication. This is a major step toward flying these robots in outdoor environments where we don’t have a well-tuned, state-of-the-art motion tracking system,” says Kevin Chen, who is the D. Reid Weedon, Jr. Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and the senior author of the paper.
He and his collaborators accomplished this by embedding miniscule electroluminescent particles into the artificial muscles. The process adds just 2.5 percent more weight without impacting the flight performance of the robot.
Joining Chen on the paper are EECS graduate students Suhan Kim, the lead author, and Yi-Hsuan Hsiao; Yu Fan Chen SM ’14, PhD ’17; and Jie Mao, an associate professor at Ningxia University. The research was published this month in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.
A light-up actuator
These researchers previously demonstrated a new fabrication technique to build soft actuators, or artificial muscles, that flap the wings of the robot. These durable actuators are made by alternating ultrathin layers of elastomer and carbon nanotube electrode in a stack and then rolling it into a squishy cylinder. When a voltage is applied to that cylinder, the electrodes squeeze the elastomer, and the mechanical strain flaps the wing.
To fabricate a glowing actuator, the team incorporated electroluminescent zinc sulphate particles into the elastomer but had to overcome several challenges along the way.
First, the researchers had to create an electrode that would not block light. They built it using highly transparent carbon nanotubes, which are only a few nanometers thick and enable light to pass through.
However, the zinc particles only light up in the presence of a very strong and high-frequency electric field. This electric field excites the electrons in the zinc particles, which then emit subatomic particles of light known as photons. The researchers use high voltage to create a strong electric field in the soft actuator, and then drive the robot at a high frequency, which enables the particles to light up brightly.
“Traditionally, electroluminescent materials are very energetically costly, but in a sense, we get that electroluminescence for free because we just use the electric field at the frequency we need for flying. We don’t need new actuation, new wires, or anything. It only takes about 3 percent more energy to shine out light,” Kevin Chen says.
As they prototyped the actuator, they found that adding zinc particles reduced its quality, causing it to break down more easily. To get around this, Kim mixed zinc particles into the top elastomer layer only. He made that layer a few micrometers thicker to accommodate for any reduction in output power.
While this made the actuator 2.5 percent heavier, it emitted light without impacting flight performance.
“We put a lot of care into maintaining the quality of the elastomer layers between the electrodes. Adding these particles was almost like adding dust to our elastomer layer. It took many different approaches and a lot of testing, but we came up with a way to ensure the quality of the actuator,” Kim says.
Adjusting the chemical combination of the zinc particles changes the light color. The researchers made green, orange, and blue particles for the actuators they built; each actuator shines one solid color.
They also tweaked the fabrication process so the actuators could emit multicolored and patterned light. The researchers placed a tiny mask over the top layer, added zinc particles, then cured the actuator. They repeated this process three times with different masks and colored particles to create a light pattern that spelled M-I-T.
Following the fireflies
Once they had finetuned the fabrication process, they tested the mechanical properties of the actuators and used a luminescence meter to measure the intensity of the light.
From there, they ran flight tests using a specially designed motion-tracking system. Each electroluminescent actuator served as an active marker that could be tracked using iPhone cameras. The cameras detect each light color, and a computer program they developed tracks the position and attitude of the robots to within 2 millimeters of state-of-the-art infrared motion capture systems.
“We are very proud of how good the tracking result is, compared to the state-of-the-art. We were using cheap hardware, compared to the tens of thousands of dollars these large motion-tracking systems cost, and the tracking results were very close,” Kevin Chen says.
In the future, they plan to enhance that motion tracking system so it can track robots in real-time. The team is working to incorporate control signals so the robots could turn their light on and off during flight and communicate more like real fireflies. They are also studying how electroluminescence could even improve some properties of these soft artificial muscles, Kevin Chen says.
This work was supported by the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT.
###
Written by Adam Zewe, MIT News Office
Additional background
Paper: “Firefly: An Insect-scale Aerial Robot Powered by Electroluminescent Soft Artificial Muscles”
IMAGE: BASKET FULL OF PACIFIC HAKE (MERLUCCIUS PRODUCTUS) ON THE NOAA SHIP MILLER FREEMAN DURING THE HAKE ACOUSTIC SURVEY.view more
CREDIT: VANESSA TUTTLE, NOAA FISHERIES
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The gelatin in the skin of Pacific whiting, an abundant fish on the Pacific Coast of North America, may help prevent skin wrinkling caused by ultraviolet radiation, a new Oregon State University study found.
By studying Pacific whiting. Jung Kwon, an assistant professor at Oregon State’s Seafood Research & Education Center in Astoria, Oregon, is looking to change that and alleviate pressure on stocks of those 10 species, which include salmon and tuna.
She studies marine organisms and their potential to improve human health and is particularly interested in the benefits from parts of marine organisms such as fish skin, which many U.S. consumers choose to discard rather than eat.
“Fish skins are an abundant resource that we already know have valuable nutritional properties,” Kwon said. “But we wanted to find out what additional potential value might be found in something traditionally considered a byproduct.”
In a paper recently published in the journal Marine Drugs, Kwon and a team of researchers looked at molecular pathways that contribute on a cellular level to the wrinkling of skin. That wrinkling is promoted by chronic exposure to ultraviolet light, which breaks down collagen in the skin.
The researchers extracted gelatin from Pacific whiting fish and then looked at what impact it had on anti-oxidant and inflammatory responses and pathways known to degrade collagen and promote synthesis of collagen.
They found that the Pacific whiting skin:
Reactivated to a certain level the collagen synthesis pathway that had been suppressed by UV radiation.
Prevented activation to a certain level of the collagen degradation pathway that had been accelerated by UV radiation.
Promoted additional anti-oxidant activity. Antioxidants are substances that can prevent or slow damage to cells.
Promoted additional anti-inflammatory effects.
Kwon cautioned that these are initial results obtained in her lab through a human cell model system. Further research is needed using animal models.
“We saw some potential with a positive response in the cell model system,” she said. “This gives us good evidence to take those next steps.”
Co-authors of the paper are Elaine Ballinger of Oregon State and Seok Hee Han and Se-Young Choung of Kyung Hee University in South Korea.
The research was funded by Pacific Seafood, a harvester, processer, and distributor of seafood.
