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)
A new species of sea anemone has been discovered off the coast of Japan by a research team led by Dr. Yoshikawa from the University of Tokyo. The sea anemone, newly named Stylobates calcifer, lives in a symbiotic relationship with the hermit crab Pagurodofleinia doederleini. The anemone occupies the entire top of the hermit crab’s shell, attaching itself by means of a hard shell-like secretion called a carcinoecium. This phenomenon isn’t new to science as approximately 35 species of anemones have mutually beneficial relationships with hermit crabs. However, in their study “Carcinoecium-forming sea anemone Sylobates calcifer sp. nov. (Cnidaria, Actiniaria, Actiniidae) from the Japanese deep-sea floor: a taxonomical description with its ecological observations,” published in the April 2022 issue of The Biological Bulletin, in addition to identifying and naming a new species, the scientists were also able to closely observe and describe the animals’ behavior when the hermit crab changes shells, thereby extending knowledge of their natural history and how symbiosis is maintained.
In a series of first ever live recordings of the living state, the crab can be observed attempting to urge the anemone, still attached to the old shell, to detach and move to occupy its new shell. It alternatively taps and pinches the anemone with its walking legs and chelipeds. Although no apparent reaction was initially observed by the sea anemone, its position was gradually moved and peeled off from the shell by the intense efforts of the hermit crab. After about 43 hours from the host’s shell change and 18 hours from detachment from the old shell, the sea anemone began to mount and completely cover the new shell. It was positioned on the shell with tentacles facing upward, to enable feeding on suspended particulate matter from the water column and detritus from the hermit crab’s feeding. The researchers suggest that the benefit to the hermit crab includes safety from parasites and predators that could affect its growth or shorten its life.
The species name calcifer assigned by the authors is derived from the novel Howl’s Moving Castle and the Japanese animated film of the same name. Calcifer is the name of a fire demon that helps the wizard Howl build his castle, attesting to the sea anemone’s ability to construct its own shell-like secretion.
The Biological Bulletin disseminates novel scientific results in broadly related fields of biology in keeping with more than 100 years of a tradition of excellence. The Bulletin publishes outstanding original research with an overarching goal of explaining how organisms develop, function, and evolve in their natural environments. To that end, the journal publishes papers in the fields of Neurobiology and Behavior, Physiology and Biomechanics, Ecology and Evolution, Development and Reproduction, Cell Biology, Symbiosis and Systematics. The Bulletin emphasizes basic research, including articles on marine model systems and those of an interdisciplinary nature.
Carcinoecium-Forming Sea Anemone Stylobates calcifer sp. nov. (Cnidaria, Actiniaria, Actiniidae) from the Japanese Deep-Sea Floor: A Taxonomical Description with Its Ecological Observations
Offshore wind farms expected to reduce clam fishery revenue, study finds
Projected annual revenue losses could approach 15 percent industry-wide
IMAGE: MAP OF THE MIDDLE ATLANTIC BIGHT SHOWING LOCATIONS OF THE MAJOR PORTS FOR THE ATLANTIC SURFCLAM FISHING FLEET (ORANGE CIRCLES). OVER MUCH OF THE MAB, ATLANTIC SURFCLAM HABITAT ON THE CONTINENTAL SHELF IS BOUNDED INSHORE BY THE 10-M ISOBATH AND OFFSHORE BY THE 50-M ISOBATH (BLACK LINE).view more
An important East Coast shellfish industry is projected to suffer revenue losses as offshore wind energy develops along the U.S. Northeast and Mid-Atlantic coasts, according to two Rutgers studies.
The studies, which appear in the ICES Journal of Marine Science (here and here), examined how offshore wind farms planned for the eastern United States could disrupt fishing of the Atlantic surfclam, a major economic driver from Virginia to Massachusetts that generates more than $30 million in direct annual revenue. Total fleet revenue declines measured by the studies ranged from 3 percent to 15 percent, depending on the scale of offshore wind development and response of the fishing fleet.
In New Jersey, losses could be as high as 25 percent for fishing vessels based in Atlantic City.
“Tools that can predict and manage these complex and interconnected challenges are essential for developing and evaluating strategies that allow for multiple users of the offshore environment.”
To measure the potential impacts of offshore wind farms on Atlantic surfclam catches, Munroe’s team created the Spatially-Explicit Fishery Economics Simulator (SEFES), a computer model to help paint a comprehensive picture of stock dynamics, the fishery and fishing fleet decision-making.
“SEFES is basically a virtual world that allows us to simulate the dynamics of the fishery – from how captains navigate their boats to how weather impacts the catch,” Munroe said. “But the model also has a layer of biology, which accounts for the clam populations and how they change over time and in space.” For instance, climate change is already pushing clam distribution northward; SEFES can account for this shift.
To fine tune SEFES, Munroe and colleagues worked closely with the industry, including fishermen who provided valuable feedback. “We showed them how the model was working, and they told us if our assessments were right or wrong.” Input from fisheries managers and data from landings were also used to ensure the model was working well.
With the model calibrated, Munroe’s team then sought to predict the impacts of future wind farms on Atlantic surfclam catches. As of 2021, some 1.7 million acres of ocean have been leased for offshore renewable energy projects on the outer continental shelf. Atlantic surfclam vessels that fish these areas must operate within restricted lanes or in ways that may be less efficient than in unrestricted areas.
These changes to fishing behavior will have costs that SEFES can calculate. “If fishermen can’t fish in wind-leased areas, they will fish elsewhere in locations that might be less than optimal, changes that will mean longer trips and potentially smaller hauls,” said Munroe.
The studies, funded by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, also determined the locations of the most vulnerable fleets and associated processors. Topping the list are fleets based in Atlantic City. The least affected port in the simulations was New Bedford, Mass.
MINNEAPOLIS – Acupuncture may reduce headaches for people who have chronic tension-type headaches, according to a study published in the June 22, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Tension-type headaches most often involve a pressing or tightening feeling on both sides of the head with mild to moderate intensity. These headaches are not worsened by physical activity, and do not include nausea. Tension-type headaches are considered chronic when they occur at least 15 days per month.
“Tension-type headaches are one of the most common types of headaches and people who have a lot of these headaches may be looking for alternatives to medication,” said study author Ying Li, MD, PhD, of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Chengdu, China. “Our study found that acupuncture reduces the average number of headache days per month for those struggling with these painful and disruptive headache attacks.”
The study involved 218 people who were diagnosed with chronic tension-type headaches. They had chronic tension-type headaches for an average of 11 years and had 22 days per month with headaches on average. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either true acupuncture or superficial acupuncture. True acupuncture treatments involved achieving a deqisensation, which involves placing and moving a needle in the body to reach a tingling, numbness, or heaviness feeling. The superficial treatments had a lesser depth in the body to avoid achieving the deqi sensation. Both groups received two or three sessions per week, for a total of 20 sessions, for two months and were followed for an additional six months.
The main result measured in the study was a reduction of at least 50% in the number of days with headaches. All participants had clinic visits every four weeks. They also used headache diaries to record their symptoms and use of acute medications.
At the end of the study, 68% of the people receiving true acupuncture reported at least a 50% reduction in the monthly number of headache days compared to 50% of the people who received superficial acupuncture.
Researchers found the number of monthly headache days gradually decreased after treatment, in both those who received true acupuncture treatments and superficial acupuncture treatments. For those who received true acupuncture, headache days decreased from 20 days per month at the beginning of the study to seven days per month by the end of the study. For those who received superficial acupuncture, headache days decreased from 23 days per month at the beginning of the study to 12 days per month at the end of the study.
The only side effects from the treatment were mild and did not require treatment.
“While this study showed that acupuncture can reduce headaches, more research is needed to determine the longer-term effectiveness of acupuncture and how it compares to other treatment options,” said Li. “In comparing treatment options, cost-effectiveness is another important factor to evaluate.”
A limitation of the study was that the research was conducted in one hospital, so the results may not apply to all populations.
The study was supported by the Department of Science and Technology of Sichuan Province and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Learn more about headaches at BrainandLife.org, home of the American Academy of Neurology’s free patient and caregiver magazine focused on the intersection of neurologic disease and brain health. Follow Brain & Life® on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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The American Academy of Neurology is the world’s largest association of neurologists and neuroscience professionals, with over 38,000 members. The AAN is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, concussion, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.
What did Megalodon eat? Anything it wanted — including other predators
New Princeton research shows that prehistoric megatooth sharks — the biggest sharks that ever lived — were also the greatest apex predators ever measured
IMAGE: A TEAM OF PRINCETON RESEARCHERS HAS NOW DISCOVERED CLEAR EVIDENCE THAT MEGALODON AND SOME OF ITS ANCESTORS WERE AT THE VERY HIGHEST RUNG OF THE PREHISTORIC FOOD CHAIN – THE HIGHEST “TROPHIC LEVEL.” INDEED, THEIR TROPHIC SIGNATURE IS SO HIGH THAT THEY MUST HAVE EATEN OTHER PREDATORS AND PREDATORS-OF-PREDATORS IN COMPLICATED FOOD WEB, SAY THE RESEARCHERS. HARRY MAISCH OF FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY, WHOSE HAND IS HOLDING THIS MEGALODON TOOTH, GATHERED MANY OF THE SAMPLES USED IN THIS ANALYSIS AND IS A CO-AUTHOR ON THE NEW PAPER IN SCIENCE ADVANCES.view more
CREDIT: PHOTO BY HARRY MAISCH
New Princeton research shows that prehistoric megatooth sharks — the biggest sharks that ever lived — were apex predators at the highest level ever measured.
Megatooth sharks get their name from their massive teeth, which can each be bigger than a human hand. The group includes Megalodon, the largest shark that ever lived, as well as several related species.
While sharks of one kind or another have existed since long before the dinosaurs — for more than 400 million years — these megatooth sharks evolved after the dinosaurs went extinct and ruled the seas until just 3 million years ago.
“We’re used to thinking of the largest species — blue whales, whale sharks, even elephants and diplodocuses — as filter feeders or herbivores, not predators,” said Emma Kast, a 2019 Ph.D. graduate in geosciences who is the first author on a new study in the current issue of Science Advances. “But Megalodon and the other megatooth sharks were genuinely enormous carnivores that ate other predators, and Meg went extinct only a few million years ago.”
Her adviser Danny Sigman, Princeton’s Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences, added, “If Megalodon existed in the modern ocean, it would thoroughly change humans’ interaction with the marine environment.”
A team of Princeton researchers has now discovered clear evidence that Megalodon and some of its ancestors were at the very highest rung of the prehistoric food chain – what scientists call the highest “trophic level.” Indeed, their trophic signature is so high that they must have eaten other predators and predators-of-predators in a complicated food web, say the researchers.
“Ocean food webs do tend to be longer than the grass-deer-wolf food chain of land animals, because you start with such small organisms,” said Kast, now at the University of Cambridge, who wrote the first iteration of this research as a chapter in her dissertation. “To reach the trophic levels we’re measuring in these megatooth sharks, we don’t just need to add one trophic level — one apex predator on top of the marine food chain — we need to add several onto the top the modern marine food web.”
Megalodon has been conservatively estimated at 15 meters long — 50 feet — while modern great white sharks typically top out around five meters (15 feet).
To reach their conclusions about the prehistoric marine food web, Kast, Sigman and their colleagues used a novel technique to measure the nitrogen isotopes in the sharks’ teeth. Ecologists have long known that the more nitrogen-15 an organism has, the higher its trophic level, but scientists have never before been able to measure the tiny amounts of nitrogen preserved in the enamel layer of these extinct predators’ teeth.
“We have a series of shark teeth from different time periods, and we were able to trace their trophic level versus their size,” said Zixuan (Crystal) Rao, a graduate student in Sigman’s research group and a co-author on the current paper.
One way to tuck in an extra trophic level or two is cannibalism, and several lines of evidence point to that in both megatooth sharks and other prehistoric marine predators.
The nitrogen time machine
Without a time machine, there’s no easy way to recreate the food webs of extinct creatures; very few bones have survived with teeth marks that say, “I was chewed on by a massive shark.”
Fortunately, Sigman and his team have spent decades developing other methods, based on the knowledge that the nitrogen isotope levels in a creature’s cells reveal whether it is at the top, middle or bottom of a food chain.
“The whole direction of my research team is to look for chemically fresh, but physically protected, organic matter — including nitrogen — in organisms from the distant geologic past,” said Sigman.
A few plants, algae and other species at the bottom of the food web have mastered the knack of turning nitrogen from the air or water into nitrogen in their tissues. Organisms that eat them then incorporate that nitrogen into their own bodies, and critically, they preferentially excrete (sometimes via urine) more of nitrogen’s lighter isotope, N-14, than its heavier cousin, N-15.
In other words, N-15 builds up, relative to N-14, as you climb up the food chain.
Other researchers have used this approach on creatures from the recent past — the most recent 10-15 thousand years — but there hasn’t been enough nitrogen left in older animals to measure, until now.
Why? Soft tissue like muscles and skin are hardly ever preserved. To complicate matters, sharks don’t have bones — their skeletons are made of cartilage.
But sharks do have one golden ticket into the fossil record: teeth. Teeth are more easily preserved than bones because they are encased in enamel, a rock-hard material that is virtually immune to most decomposing bacteria.
“Teeth are designed to be chemically and physically resistant so they can survive in the very chemically reactive environment of the mouth and break apart food that can have hard parts,” Sigman explained. And in addition, sharks aren’t limited to the 30 or so pearly whites that humans have. They are constantly growing and losing teeth — modern sand sharks lose a tooth every day of their decades-long lives, on average — which means that every shark produces thousands of teeth over its lifetime.
“When you look in the geologic record, one of the most abundant fossil types are shark teeth,” said Sigman. “And within the teeth, there is a tiny amount of organic matter that was used to build the enamel of the teeth — and is now trapped within that enamel.”
Since shark teeth are so abundant and are preserved so well, the nitrogen signatures in enamel provide a way to measure status in the food web, whether the tooth fell from a shark’s mouth millions of years ago or yesterday.
Even the largest tooth has only a thin casing of enamel, of which the nitrogen component is only a tiny trace. But Sigman’s team has been developing more and more refined techniques for extracting and measuring these nitrogen isotope ratios, and with a little help from dentist drills, cleaning chemicals and microbes that ultimately convert the nitrogen from within the enamel into nitrous oxide, they’re now able to precisely measure the N15-N14 ratio in these ancient teeth.
“We’re a little bit like a brewery,” he said. “We grow microbes and feed our samples to them. They produce nitrous oxide for us, and then we analyze the nitrous oxide they produced.”
The analysis requires a custom-built, automated nitrous oxide preparation system that extracts, purifies, concentrates and delivers the gas to a specialized stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer.
“This has been a multiple-decades-long quest that I’ve been on, to develop a core method to measure these trace amounts of nitrogen,” Sigman said. From microfossils in sediments, they moved on to other types of fossils, like corals, fish ear bones and shark teeth. “Next, we and our collaborators are applying this to mammalian teeth and dinosaur teeth.”
A deep dive into the literature during lockdown
Early in the pandemic, while her friends were making sourdough starters and bingeing Netflix, Kast pored through the ecologic literature to look for nitrogen isotope measurements of modern marine animals.
“One of the cool things that Emma did was really dig into the literature — all the data that’s been published over decades — and relate that to the fossil record,” said Michael (Mick) Griffiths, a paleoclimatologist and geochemist at William Patterson University and a co-author on the paper.
As Kast quarantined at home, she painstakingly built up a record with more than 20,000 marine mammal individuals and more than 5,000 sharks. She wants to take things much further. “Our tool has the potential to decode ancient food webs; what we need now is samples,” said Kast. “I’d love to find a museum or other archive with a snapshot of an ecosystem — a collection of different kinds of fossils from one time and place, from forams near the very base of the food web, to otoliths — inner ear bones — from different kinds of fish, to teeth from marine mammals, plus shark teeth. We could do the same nitrogen isotope analysis and put together the whole story of an ancient ecosystem.”
In addition to the literature search, their database includes their own samples of shark teeth. Co-author Kenshu Shimada of DePaul University connected with aquariums and museums, while co-authors Martin Becker of William Patterson University and Harry Maisch of Florida Gulf Coast University gathered megatooth specimens on the sea floor.
“It’s really dangerous; Harry’s a dive master, and you really need to be an expert to get these,” said Griffiths. “You can find little shark teeth on the beach, but to get the best-preserved samples, you need to go down to the bottom of the ocean. Marty and Harry have collected teeth from all over the place.”
He added: “It’s been a really collaborative effort to obtain the samples to pull this together. In general, collaborating with Princeton and other regional universities is really exciting because the students are amazing and my colleagues there have been really great to work with.”
Alliya Akhtar, a 2021 Ph.D. graduate from Princeton, is now a postdoctoral researcher in Griffiths' lab.
“The work I did for my dissertation (looking at isotopic composition of seawater) posed as many questions as it answered, and I was incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to continue working on some of these with a collaborator/mentor I respect,” Akhtar wrote in an email. “I’m most excited about all the work that is still to be done, all the mysteries yet to be solved!”
“Cenozoic megatooth sharks occupied extremely high trophic positions,” by Emma R. Kast, Michael L. Griffiths, Sora L. Kim, Zixuan C. Rao, Kenshu Shimada, Martin A. Becker, Harry M. Maisch, Robert A. Eagle, Chelesia A. Clarke, Allison N. Neumann, Molly E. Karnes, Tina Lüdecke, Jennifer N. Leichliter, Alfredo MartÃnez-GarcÃa, Alliya A. Akhtar, Xingchen T. Wang, Gerald H. Haug and Daniel M. Sigman appears in the June 22 issue of Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl6529). This study was supported by the Scott Fund of the Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, by grants from the National Science Foundation Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology (1830581 to M.L.G. and M.A.B.; 1830638 to R.A.E.; 1830480 to S.L.K.; and 1830858 to K.S.), the European Research Council Consolidator Grant Agreement 681450 (to J.N.L., awarded to T. Tütken), the Max Planck Society (to A.M-G. and G.H.H.), and the American Chemical Society Award, Petroleum Research Fund Undergraduate New Investigator Grant, PRF #54852-UNI2 (to M.L.G.).
New study led by researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by the “la Caixa” Foundation, has evaluated the link between air pollution and lung function of young adults who had recently attained their expected maximum lung function. The study, published in Environment International, found that participants with higher exposure to ambient and household air pollution had worse results in lung function tests.
Ambient (outdoor) air pollution comprising fine particulate matter like PM2.5 and household air pollution (HAP) caused by inefficient cooking methods using fuels like biomass, kerosene or coal, together cause up to 7 million premature deaths every year. Yet, there is limited data on the health effects of ambient air pollution from lower-middle-income countries, specifically on young adults following their lung peak growth. According to Otavio Ranzani, ISGlobal researcher and first author of the study: "There has been a lot of research on air pollution and its effects on the lung function of children. But this is one of the first studies looking at the population group of young adults in a low- and middle-income country setting."
Data on 1,044 participants (within the age group of 20-26 years) were collected from the Andhra Pradesh Children and Parent Study (APCAPS) cohort (2010–2012), situated in 28 villages in the peri-urban area of Hyderabad city. The researchers measured lung function with: i) FEV1 (forced expiratory volume in the first second), an indicator for resistance of airflow through the respiratory tract while forced breathing; and ii) FVC (forced vital capacity), an indicator of lung capacity. Factors like sex, health behaviours, and socioeconomic factors were identified and adjusted during the analysis.
Results showed that household air pollution (measured by use of biomass fuel) was consistently associated with decreased lung function. This effect on lung function was especially prominent in participants who lived in households that used unvented biomass stoves. The average decrease of 142 ml in lung capacity due to household air pollution was magnified to 211 ml for those who used unvented biomass stoves. The analysis also revealed a link between ambient PM2.5 with decreased lung function, but these results were less conclusive. Overall, these findings suggest that reducing levels of exposure to ambient PM2.5 and household air pollution might be effective in improving lung function in adulthood.
2.6 billion people continue to use biomass for cooking and there is little research on how this affects lung function trajectories during childhood. This study provides a glimpse of the cumulative impact on respiratory health by focusing on young adults who recently attained their maximum lung function. "This cross-sectional study opens the doors for further longitudinal research on the effect of air pollution on lung development, especially in low- and middle-income country settings where individuals are commonly exposed to both high levels of ambient and household air pollution”, concludes Cathryn Tonne, ISGlobal researcher and senior author of the study.
During their production, use, and disposal, pharmaceutical ingredients in prescription and over-the-counter drugs are released into the environment, especially in surface waters. Results from a recent study published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry indicate that pharmaceutical pollution is a global problem that is likely negatively affecting the health of the world’s rivers.
Approximately 43.5% of the 1,052 locations that were assessed in the study across 104 countries had concerning concentrations of pharmaceutical ingredients. Twenty-three pharmaceutical ingredients occurred at concentrations exceeding ‘safe’ concentrations, including substances from the antidepressant, antimicrobial, antihistamine, benzodiazepine, painkiller, and other classes.
“This is the first truly global assessment of the impacts of single pharmaceuticals and mixtures of pharmaceuticals in riverine systems,” said corresponding author Alejandra Bouzas-Monroy, a PhD student at the University of York. “Our findings show that a very high proportion of rivers around the world are at threat from pharmaceutical pollution. We should therefore be doing much more to reduce the emissions of these substances into the environment.”
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A research team at MedUni Vienna has discovered key mechanisms of allergy to pollen from the common weed mugwort, thereby also laying the foundation for the development of the world's first vaccine. Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) poses a serious problem for allergic individuals in our latitudes from July through to September. Currently, the symptoms, which often lead to asthma, can only be treated symptomatically. The recent findings are an essential first step toward causal therapy and prevention of mugwort pollen allergy. The landmark study has now been published in the prestigious Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
In their preclinical research, the scientists started at the point of origin of mugwort pollen allergy. They discovered where and how the immunoglobulin E (IgE) type antibodies detect the major mugwort pollen allergen (Art v 1) and trigger the exaggerated immune response. They also found that distinct protein building blocks of the main mugwort pollen allergen are in such a configuration that they can be blocked by IgG (immunoglobulin G) antibodies.
These findings by the research team led by Maja Zabel and Winfried Pickl, in collaboration with Rudolf Valenta's research team (all from MedUni Vienna's Center for Pathophysiology, Infectiology and Immunology), created the basis for the development of a vaccine against mugwort allergy: "Our study shows how fragments of the major mugwort pollen allergen can be used for effective and safe therapy," says study leader Winfried Pickl. "Our observations of the mode of action of the vaccine show that one of the ends of the main mugwort pollen allergen provides important docking sites for the pathogenic IgE antibodies of allergic individuals, which can be used for creating a novel vaccine," Winfried Pickl elaborates. The first author of the study is Maja Zabel, who conducted the work during her PhD studies at the MedUni Vienna as part of the FWF-funded doctoral programme "Molecular, Cellular and Clinical Allergology, MCCA". This programme is now part of the Danube Allergy Research Cluster (Danube ARC), which is funded by the State of Lower Austria.
Widespread in the northern hemisphere Mugwort is widespread in the northern hemisphere, where its pollen causes discomfort and even asthma in sensitized individuals from July through to September. The only treatments available to the approximately 10% of the population who are sensitive to mugwort are limited to symptomatic relief. The current MedUni Vienna study is an internationally acclaimed first step towards causal therapy and prevention. "Next, we will use our research results to produce a synthetic vaccine that can be evaluated in a clinical trial," explains Rudolf Valenta, outlining the next step on the path to developing an effective vaccine.
A new study finds that having a portable air cleaner in the home can reduce the negative impacts of air pollution on brain development in children.
Simon Fraser University researchers collaborated with U.S. and Mongolian scientists to study the benefits of using air filters to reduce exposure to air pollution during pregnancy, and assessed the impact on children’s intelligence.
The researchers note that their randomized controlled trial is the first study of its kind to document the impacts of air pollution reduction on cognition in children.
Beginning in 2014, the team recruited 540 pregnant women in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia to participate in the Ulaanbaatar Gestation and Air Pollution Research (UGAAR) study. Ulaanbaatar has some of the worst air quality in the world, well exceeding guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The women were less than 18 weeks into their pregnancies and non-smokers who had not previously used air filtering devices in their homes. They were randomly assigned to either the control or intervention group. The intervention group was provided with one or two HEPA filter air cleaners and encouraged to run the air cleaners continuously for the duration of their pregnancies. The air cleaners were removed from the home once the child was born.
The researchers later measured the children’s full-scale intelligence quotient (FSIQ) at four years of age using the Weschler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence.
They found that the children born to mothers who had used the air cleaners had an average FSIQ that was 2.8-points higher than the group that did not use an air cleaner during pregnancy.
“These results, combined with evidence from previous studies, strongly implicate air pollution as a threat to brain development,” says Ryan Allen, professor of environmental health in SFU’s Faculty of Health Sciences. “But the good news is that reducing exposure had clear benefits.”
Children in the intervention group also had significantly greater average verbal comprehension index scores, which is consistent with results from previous observational studies. The research suggests that a child’s verbal skills may be particularly sensitive to air pollution exposure.
More than 90 per cent of the world’s population breathes air with particulate matter concentrations above the WHO guidelines. The researchers suggest the population-level impact of air pollution on brain development could be substantive even if the individual-level effects are modest.
Their study results indicate that reducing exposure to air pollution during pregnancy could improve children’s cognitive development around the world.
“Air pollution is everywhere, and it is preventing children from reaching their full potential,” adds Allen. “Air cleaners may provide some protection, but ultimately the only way to protect all children is to reduce emissions.”
Wooden ‘castles’ that house families of endangered Western Spiny-tailed Skinks attract feral and native predators, as Curtin researchers use light-detection technology to re-create their habitat in a potential game-changer for global animal conservation.
Researchers used light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology – commonly used in mine sites - to create high-resolution scans of numerous log ‘castles’ to identify exactly what the lizards liked about particular log ‘castles,’ in order to replicate them and help with future habitat restoration.
Lead researcher PhD student Holly Bradley from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences said this study showed that LiDAR was an accurate, effective tool that could be applied world-wide to help with animal conservation efforts.
“The Western Spiny-tailed Skink is an unusual reptile as it has a large spiny tail for defence and they live together in family groups in wooden ‘castles’ made up of the remains of fallen trees, but they don’t seem to like all ‘castles’ and only live in some,” Ms Bradley said.
“LiDAR is a device that uses lasers to create a highly accurate 3D model and is most commonly attached to small planes or drones for the mining industry to map landform structures.
“This is the first time that LiDAR technology has been used in this way - to help characterise the microhabitat requirements of a particular threatened species. This will help us to identify areas and habitat structures that are important for protection, as well as showing us how to recreate the optimal wooden ‘castles’ during landscape restoration to help safeguard the future for the Western Spiny-tailed Skink.”
Research supervisor Associate Professor Bill Bateman said these skinks live in the arid Mid West of Western Australia, a region that presents numerous threats, including active mining operations.
“We identified that crows and ravens target these log castles and even though they are native birds, they can become very abundant around mining landfill sites,” Associate Professor Bateman said.
“The skinks are also susceptible to harm from feral cats who hunt baby and adult skinks.
“For the ongoing survival of the endangered Western Spiny-tailed Skink, introduced predators must be managed and resources such as landfill sites around mining operations need to be managed to prevent native predators becoming too frequent.”
Both papers, titled 'Revealing microhabitat requirements of an endangered specialist lizard with LiDAR' and 'Predators in a mining landscape: targeting of a behaviourally unique, endangered lizard', are available online here and here.
