Short CBT program is also effective at reducing anxiety among school children

Researchers developed 20-minute-long (14 sessions) cognitive behavioral interventions to prevent anxiety problems in school-going children in Japan

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CHIBA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A STUDY CONDUCTED IN JAPAN INDICATED THAT CHILDREN WHO UNDERWENT 20-MINUTE -LONG COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY-BASED PROGRAMS EXHIBITED LOWER SYMPTOMS OF ANXIETY AS COMPARED TO CHILDREN WHO DID NOT view more 

CREDIT: YUKO URAO FROM CHIBA UNIVERSITY

Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent psychological disorders among children. Anxiety negatively affects a child’s sense of self-esteem, leading to under-achievement in school. Moreover, anxiety may exacerbate low self-esteem in children who already experience it. This increases their likelihood of avoiding socialization, indulging in negative interactions with their peers, and remaining absent from classes. If left untreated, anxiety can lead to severe psychological disorders over time. To remedy this, a preventive intervention based on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for children— ‘Journey of the Brave’— was developed and introduced in Japanese schools in 2014.

 

While the program was somewhat effective, each CBT session took 45 minutes to complete over a span of 10 weeks, during which the regular class time was lost. In Japan, school going children have busy schedules due to a packed school curriculum, and it is quite difficult to set time aside for a preventive program.

 

Recently a team of researchers led by Dr. Yuko Urao—a Specially Appointed Lecturer at the Research Centre for Child Mental Development, including Dr. Eiji Shimizu and Ms. Michiko Yoshida from the Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, and Dr. Yasunori Sato from Keio University School of Medicine, Japan developed a streamlined and shorter version of the Journey of the Brave CBT-program. Their findings were published online on October 25, 2022, in Volume 22 of BMC Psychiatry.

 

“The effectiveness of the CBT-based anxiety prevention program “Journey of the Brave”, aimed at Japanese higher-grade elementary school children has been confirmed by previous studies. But to implement and spread it on a large scale was problematic due to difficulties in securing extensive class time of ten 45-minute-long sessions,” said Dr. Urao while discussing the motivation behind the study.

 

The team spent 14 weeks and designed the sessions to only last for 20 minutes. They conducted them during the homeroom activity time in the morning instead of after school hours, for children aged 10–11 of a Japanese school. This age group was targeted since children of these ages experience class shuffle and tend to take on new responsibilities as school or class leaders.

Further, the children were divided into control and intervention groups, with the former not attending any CBT-based sessions. The team assessed the children at the pre-intervention and post-intervention stages, as well as during a 2-month follow-up period. Their anxiety-based symptoms were measured using the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS), and the behavioral problems were measured using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).

 

The findings suggested a statistically significant reduction in the SCAS scores during the 2-month follow-up period, as well as a reduction in the SDQ scores. These findings suggest that the children benefitted from the CBT-based program when it was delivered in a short and divided format.

 

“Since this version of the program is shorter, a greater number of schools will be able to implement it. In addition, the greater number of schools participate, the more teachers will be able to focus on children’s anxiety. Moreover, it will lead to an improved school environment where children will retain their peace of mind.” Dr. Urao said while discussing the findings.

 

Why is it important to prevent symptoms of anxiety of schoolchildren? Dr. Urao muses, “When CBT-based anxiety prevention programs prevail and help children learn self-control over their anxious feelings, their mental-health related problems will decrease, allowing them to grow to their full potential.”

 

CAPTION

Journey of the Brave is a behavioral intervention program that was developed with an aim to reduce anxiety among school-going children in Japan

CREDIT

Yuko Urao from Chiba University

---

JOURNAL

BMC Psychiatry

DOI

10.1186/s12888-022-04326-y 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

School-based cognitive behavioural intervention programme for addressing anxiety in 10- to 11-year-olds using short classroom activities in Japan: a quasi-experimental study

Study: Without more data, a black hole’s origins can be “spun” in any direction

Current measurements of black holes are not enough to nail down how the invisible giants form in the universe, researchers say

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Clues to a black hole’s origins can be found in the way it spins. This is especially true for binaries, in which two black holes circle close together before merging. The spin and tilt of the respective black holes just before they merge can reveal whether the invisible giants arose from a quiet galactic disk or a more dynamic cluster of stars.

Astronomers are hoping to tease out which of these origin stories is more likely by analyzing the 69 confirmed binaries detected to date. But a new study finds that for now, the current catalog of binaries is not enough to reveal anything fundamental about how black holes form.

In a study appearing in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters, MIT physicists show that when all the known binaries and their spins are worked into models of black hole formation, the conclusions can look very different, depending on the particular model used to interpret the data. 

A black hole’s origins can therefore be “spun” in different ways, depending on a model’s assumptions of how the universe works.

“When you change the model and make it more flexible or make different assumptions, you get a different answer about how black holes formed in the universe,” says study co-author Sylvia Biscoveanu, an MIT graduate student working in the LIGO Laboratory. “We show that people need to be careful because we are not yet at the stage with our data where we can believe what the model tells us.”

The study’s co-authors include Colm Talbot, an MIT postdoc; and Salvatore Vitale, an associate professor of physics and a member of the Kavli Institute of Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT.

A tale of two origins

Black holes in binary systems are thought to arise via one of two paths. The first is through “field binary evolution,” in which two stars evolve together and eventually explode in supernovae, leaving behind two black holes that continue circling in a binary system. In this scenario, the black holes should have relatively aligned spins, as they would have had time — first as stars, then black holes — to pull and tug each other into similar orientations. If a binary’s black holes have roughly the same spin, scientists believe they must have evolved in a relatively quiet environment, such as a galactic disk.

Black hole binaries can also form through “dynamical assembly,” where two black holes evolve separately, each with its own distinct tilt and spin. By some extreme astrophysical processes, the black holes are eventually brought together, close enough to form a binary system. Such a dynamical pairing would likely occur not in a quiet galactic disk, but in a more dense environment, such as a globular cluster, where the interaction of thousands of stars can knock two black holes together. If a binary’s black holes have randomly oriented spins, they likely formed in a globular cluster.

But what fraction of binaries form through one channel versus the other? The answer, astronomers believe, should lie in data, and particularly, measurements of black hole spins.

To date, astronomers have derived the spins of black holes in 69 binaries, which have been discovered by a network of gravitational-wave detectors including LIGO in the U.S., and its Italian counterpart Virgo. Each detector listens for signs of gravitational waves — very subtle reverberations through space-time that are left over from extreme, astrophysical events such as the merging of massive black holes.

With each binary detection, astronomers have estimated the respective black hole’s properties, including their mass and spin. They have worked the spin measurements into a generally accepted model of black hole formation, and found signs that binaries could have both a preferred, aligned spin, as well as random spins. That is, the universe could produce binaries in both galactic disks and globular clusters.

“But we wanted to know, do we have enough data to make this distinction?” Biscoveanu says. “And it turns out, things are messy and uncertain, and it’s harder than it looks.”

Spinning the data

In their new study, the MIT team tested whether the same data would yield the same conclusions when worked into slightly different theoretical models of how black holes form.

The team first reproduced LIGO’s spin measurements in a widely used model of black hole formation. This model assumes that a fraction of binaries in the universe prefer to produce black holes with aligned spins, where the rest of the binaries have random spins. They found that the data appeared to agree with this model’s assumptions and showed a peak where the model predicted there should be more black holes with similar spins.

They then tweaked the model slightly, altering its assumptions such that it predicted a slightly different orientation of preferred black hole spins. When they worked the same data into this tweaked model, they found the data shifted to line up with the new predictions. The data also made similar shifts in 10 other models, each with a different assumption of how black holes prefer to spin.

“Our paper shows that your result depends entirely on how you model your astrophysics, rather than the data itself,” Biscoveanu says.

“We need more data than we thought, if we want to make a claim that is independent of the astrophysical assumptions we make,” Vitale adds.

Just how much more data will astronomers need? Vitale estimates that once the LIGO network starts back up in early 2023, the instruments will detect one new black hole binary every few days. Over the next year, that could add up to hundreds more measurements to add to the data.

“The measurements of the spins we have now are very uncertain,” Vitale says. “But as we build up a lot of them, we can gain better information. Then we can say, no matter the detail of my model, the data always tells me the same story — a story that we could then believe.”

This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

###

Written by Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office

Additional background

Paper: “Spin it as you like: the (lack of a) measurement of the spin tilt
distribution with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA binary black holes”

https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2022/12/aa45084-22/aa45084-22.html

---

ARTICLE TITLE

“Spin it as you like: the (lack of a) measurement of the spin tilt distribution with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA binary black holes”

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekA

Curved spacetime in the lab

Researchers simulate an entire family of universes with curvature in ultracold quantum gases

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY

According to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, space and time are inextricably connected. In our Universe, whose curvature is barely measurable, the structure of this spacetime is fixed. In a laboratory experiment, researchers from Heidelberg University have succeeded in realising an effective spacetime that can be manipulated. In their research on ultracold quantum gases, they were able to simulate an entire family of curved universes to investigate different cosmological scenarios and compare them with the predictions of a quantum field theoretical model. The research results were published in Nature.

The emergence of space and time on cosmic time scales from the Big Bang to the present is the subject of current research that can only be based on the observation of our single Universe. The expansion and curvature of space are essential to cosmological models. In a flat space like our current Universe, the shortest distance between two points is always a straight line. “It is conceivable, however, that our Universe was curved in its early phase. Studying the consequences of a curved spacetime is therefore a pressing question in research,” states Prof. Dr Markus Oberthaler, a researcher at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics at Heidelberg University. With his “Synthetic Quantum Systems” research group, he developed a quantum field simulator for this purpose.

The quantum field simulator created in the lab consists of a cloud of potassium atoms cooled to just a few nanokelvins above absolute zero. This produces a Bose-Einstein condensate – a special quantum mechanical state of the atomic gas that is reached at very cold temperatures. Prof. Oberthaler explains that the Bose-Einstein condensate is a perfect background against which the smallest excitations, i.e. changes in the energy state of the atoms, become visible. The form of the atomic cloud determines the dimensionality and the properties of spacetime on which these excitations ride like waves. In our Universe, there are three dimensions of space as well as a fourth: time.

In the experiment conducted by the Heidelberg physicists, the atoms are trapped in a thin layer. The excitations can therefore only propagate in two spatial directions – the space is two-dimensional. At the same time, the atomic cloud in the remaining two dimensions can be shaped in almost any way, whereby it is also possible to realise curved spacetimes. The interaction between the atoms can be precisely adjusted by a magnetic field, changing the propagation speed of the wavelike excitations on the Bose-Einstein condensate.

“For the waves on the condensate, the propagation speed depends on the density and the interaction of the atoms. This gives us the opportunity to create conditions like those in an expanding universe,” explains Prof. Dr Stefan Flörchinger. The researcher, who previously worked at Heidelberg University and joined the University of Jena at the beginning of this year, developed the quantum field theoretical model used to quantitatively compare the experimental results.

Using the quantum field simulator, cosmic phenomena, such as the production of particles based on the expansion of space, and even the spacetime curvature can be made measurable. “Cosmological problems normally take place on unimaginably large scales. To be able to specifically study them in the lab opens up entirely new possibilities in research by enabling us to experimentally test new theoretical models,” states Celia Viermann, the primary author of the “Nature” article. “Studying the interplay of curved spacetime and quantum mechanical states in the lab will occupy us for some time to come,” says Markus Oberthaler, whose research group is also part of the STRUCTURES Cluster of Excellence at Ruperto Carola.

The work was conducted as part of Collaborative Research Centre 1225, “Isolated Quantum Systems and Universality in Extreme Conditions” (ISOQUANT), of Heidelberg University.

---

JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-05313-9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Quantum field simulator for dynamics in curved spacetime

Tobacco use, incidence of adverse oral health outcomes

JAMA Network Open

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JAMA NETWORK

About The Study: This nationally representative cohort study found associations of current combustible tobacco use with the incidence of adverse oral health outcomes and also found an association between current electronic nicotine delivery systems use and the incidence of bleeding after brushing or flossing. These findings highlight the importance of longitudinal studies and emphasize the continued importance of tobacco cessation counseling and resources in clinical practice. 

Authors: Marushka L. Silveira, B.D.S., M.P.H., Ph.D., of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is the corresponding author. 

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.45909)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.45909?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=120922

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

---

JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert

Wildlife disease ecologist launches project to help DoD monitor quality of bird habitats on military installations

Metabarcoding and bioinformatics expertise key to technology transfer

Grant and Award Announcement

NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JEFF FOSTER (RIGHT) OF NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY’S DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND THE PATHOGEN AND MICROBIOME INSTITUTE (PMI) WAS RECENTLY AWARDED A GRANT BY THE DOD FOR A NEW STUDY, “DEMONSTRATION OF METABARCODING FOR MONITORING BIRD SPECIES HABITAT QUALITY ON DOD INSTALLATIONS.” view more 

CREDIT: NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) owns military installations on nearly 27 million acres all over the country—roughly equivalent in size to the State of Virginia—and oversees these lands through a network of natural resource managers. According to the DoD, the program supports “the military's testing and training mission by protecting its biological resources… and working to ensure the long-term sustainability of our nation’s priceless natural heritage.” One of the program’s top priorities is monitoring and maintaining populations of threatened and endangered species (TES) of birds—especially those that eat insects and other arthropods like spiders, which have been particularly hard hit.

Monitoring the quality of the birds’ habitats, which includes their typical diets of insects, is one of the most important ways scientists investigate declining bird populations. The tools the military land managers use to assess diets and habitats are critical, but the current methods of measuring habitat quality related to the birds’ food resources are time consuming, expensive and require specific biological expertise.

To this end, associate professor Jeff Foster of Northern Arizona University’s Department of Biological Sciences and the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute (PMI) was recently awarded a grant by the DoD for a new study, “Demonstration of Metabarcoding for Monitoring Bird Species Habitat Quality on DoD Installations.” This three-year, $900,000 project will focus on five insectivorous species on four military sites:

• Golden-cheeked Warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia) and Black-capped Vireo (Vireo atricapilla) at Fort Hood, Texas
• Least Bell’s Vireo (Vireo bellii pusillus) at Camp Pendleton, California
• Golden-winged Warbler (Vermivora chrysoptera) at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin
• Oahu Elepaio (Chasiempis ibidis) at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii

Advanced approach focuses on bioinformatics, metabarcoding

Metabarcoding is a technique that enables scientists to identify multiple species of plants or animals on a large scale based on rapid, high-throughput environmental DNA sequencing, which represents a huge technological step forward.

“We’ll assess habitat quality by using advanced genetic approaches to measure arthropod food resources in bird diets and from the vegetation on which these birds forage,” Foster said. “Our three primary objectives are to demonstrate the effectiveness of metabarcoding of bird diets and food resources; compare this genetic approach to conventional approaches that employ visual identification of arthropods using microscopes; and provide user-friendly guidance to military land managers so they can understand the process and use this approach for monitoring in the future.”

“The bioinformatics can be challenging and daunting if you're first getting into DNA metabarcoding, so we’ll provide an established workflow that we can share with the land managers,” he said. The team will collect fecal samples from the birds (bird poop) as well as arthropod samples, perform bioinformatic and chemical composition analyses, validate the technology by comparing it to conventional methods and develop guidance documents and lead hands-on technical workshops for the military land managers. “We’ll be conducting the most in-depth diet analysis of birds on military installations done to date.”

Foster brings his expertise as well as that of PMI to the project. “There’s much more to metabarcoding work than simply sequencing a gene. And here’s where our team excels. We use tools developed over the past 13 years for analyzing the human microbiome. Many of these tools have been developed by NAU professor Greg Caporaso and his team at PMI, so we have considerable technical expertise in analyses including understanding reference libraries of sequences and developing the analytical software.”

Collaborators include military scientists and undergraduate researcher

Foster will work closely with co-principal investigators Jinelle Sperry and Aron Katz from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center’s Construction Engineer Research Laboratory as well as with collaborators at each of the installations.

NAU undergraduate researcher Hannah Brosius is working on the project with Foster and PMI researcher Alexandra Gibson. Brosius, who will be assisting with the lab work and analyses, said, "I'm excited about this project because the analysis of bird diets from feces will help us figure out why these endangered birds might be at risk. It’s fun to be able to take a fecal sample from a species; you can learn a lot using DNA to understand how an animal lives."

She is looking forward to her future as a veterinarian. "I’m interested in lab work, which allows me to focus on a project and have results quickly. This research experience will be important for veterinary school and will expand my understanding of biology."

Project to benefit TES monitoring across DoD sites

The project’s outcomes will have multiple benefits that will help DoD land managers monitor threatened and endangered species. “It’s an effective and cost-efficient way to measure habitat quality,” Foster said, “particularly as it relates to a key factor regulating insectivorous bird abundance—arthropod food resources. The technology can be deployed at any DoD site where understanding diet or habitat quality is necessary for TES monitoring of vertebrate taxa. Population surveys can assess the current abundance and distribution of TES but determining the specific factors limiting their populations adds additional complexity. This method will not only give DoD natural resource managers the ability to distinguish poor versus high quality habitat, but will provide critical information about restoration, habitat recovery from disturbance and a baseline of prey availability should arthropod populations decline regionally in the future.”

In addition, “numerous other bird species are on the list of DoD Priority Species that could benefit from this technology as well as other taxa such as amphibians, reptiles and small mammals,” he said.

About Northern Arizona University

Founded in 1899, Northern Arizona University is a community-engaged, high-research university that delivers an exceptional student-centered experience to its nearly 28,000 students in Flagstaff, at 22 statewide campuses and online. Building on a 123-year history of distinctive excellence, NAU aims to be the nation’s preeminent engine of opportunity, vehicle of economic mobility and driver of social impact by delivering equitable postsecondary value in Arizona and beyond. NAU is committed to meeting talent with access and excellence through its impactful academic programs and enriching experiences, paving the way to a better future for the diverse students it serves and the communities they represent. 

# # #

21ST CENTURY ALCHEMY

Microbial miners could help humans colonize the moon and Mars

UCI and Johns Hopkins researchers uncover mineral modification through biology

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE

Irvine, Calif., Dec. 8, 2022 – The biochemical process by which cyanobacteria acquire nutrients from rocks in Chile’s Atacama Desert has inspired engineers at the University of California, Irvine to think of new ways microbes might help humans build colonies on the moon and Mars.

Researchers in UCI’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Biology used high-resolution electron microscopy and advanced spectroscopic imaging techniques to gain a precise understanding of how microorganisms modify both naturally occurring minerals and synthetically made nanoceramics. A key factor, according to the scientists, is that cyanobacteria produce biofilms that dissolve magnetic iron oxide particles within gypsum rocks, subsequently transforming the magnetite into oxidized hematite.

The team’s findings, which are the subject of a paper published recently in the journal Materials Today Bio, could provide a pathway for new biomimetic mining methods. The authors also said they see the results as a step toward using microorganisms in large-scale 3D printing or additive manufacturing at a scale that’s useful in civil engineering in harsh environments, like those on the moon and Mars.

“Through a biological process that has evolved over millions of years, these tiny miners excavate rocks, extracting the minerals that are essential to the physiological functions, such as photosynthesis, that enable their survival,” said corresponding author David Kisailus, UCI professor of materials science and engineering. “Could humans use a similar biochemical approach to obtain and manipulate the minerals that we find valuable? This project has led us down that pathway.”

The Atacama Desert is one of the driest and most inhospitable places on Earth, but Chroococcidiopsis, a cyanobacterium found in gypsum samples collected there by the Johns Hopkins team, has developed “the most amazing adaptations to survive its rocky habitat,” said co-author Jocelyne DiRuggiero, associate professor of biology at the Baltimore university.

“Some of those traits include producing chlorophyll that absorbs far-red photons and the ability to extract water and iron from surrounding minerals,” she added.

Using advanced electron microscopes and spectroscopic instruments, the researchers found evidence of the microbes in the gypsum by observing how the very minerals contained within were transformed.

“Cyanobacteria cells promoted magnetite dissolution and iron solubilization by producing abundant extracellular polymeric substances, leading to the dissolution and oxidation of magnetite to hematite,” DiRuggiero said. “Production of siderophores [iron-binding compounds generated by bacteria and fungi] was enhanced in the presence of magnetite nanoparticles, suggesting their use by the cyanobacteria to acquire iron from magnetite.”

Kisailus said the way the microorganisms process metals in their desolate home made him think about our own mining and manufacturing practices.

“When we mine for minerals, we often wind up with ores that may present challenges for extraction of valuable metals,” he said. “We frequently need to put these ores through extreme processing to transform it into something of value. That practice can be monetarily and environmentally costly.”

Kisailus said he is now pondering a biochemical approach using natural or synthetic analogs to siderophores, enzymes and other secretions to manipulate minerals where only a large mechanical crusher currently works. And taking a leap from here, he said there could also be a way to get microorganisms to employ similar biochemical capabilities to produce an engineered material on demand in less-than-convenient locations.

“I call it ‘lunar forming’ instead of terraforming,” Kisailus said. “If you want to build something on the moon, instead of going through the expense of having people do it, we could have robotic systems 3D-print media and then have the microbes reconfigure it into something of value. This could be done without endangering human lives.”

He added that humans don’t always need to use Edisonian approaches to figure out how to do things.

“This is the main theme of my Biomimetics and Nanostructured Materials Lab. Why try to reinvent the wheel when nature’s perfected it over hundreds of millions of years?” Kisailus said. “We just have to extract the secrets and blueprints for what nature does and apply or adapt them to what we need.”

This project was funded by the Army Research Office and was aided by instruments made available by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The research team also included Wei Huang, a postdoctoral scholar in Kisailus’ lab group; Taifeng Wang, Ph.D., who recently graduated from UCI and is now employed at Intel; and Cesar Perez-Fernandez in Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Biology.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.

---

JOURNAL

Materials Today Bio

ARTICLE TITLE

Iron acquisition and mineral transformation by cyanobacteria living in extreme environments

Researchers identify elusive carbon dioxide sensor in plants that controls water loss

Surprised biologists discover how two proteins work together to form long-sought plant water loss-regulating sensor, carrying implications for trees, crops and wildfires

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

 

IMAGE: WORKING WITH COLLEAGUES IN THE DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY AND BIOCHEMISTRY, UC SAN DIEGO BIOLOGISTS UNRAVELED THE PREDICTED STRUCTURE OF THE NEWLY DISCOVERED PLANT CARBON DIOXIDE SENSOR. THE LEFT SECTION (A) DEPICTS THE MPK4 – HT1 COMPLEX (MPK HIGHLIGHTED IN RED; HT1 IN BLUE) AND THE RIGHT (B) SECTION REVEALS THE MPK12 – HT1 COMPLEX. THE HIGHLIGHTED AMINO ACID RESIDUES (YELLOW, GREY, LIGHT BLUE AND GREEN) SHOW MUTATIONS THAT DISRUPT THE SENSOR FUNCTION. view more 

CREDIT: MCCAMMON LAB, UC SAN DIEGO

More than 50 years, ago researchers discovered that plants can sense carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. As CO2  levels change, “breathing” pores in leaves called stomata open and close, thus controlling evaporation of water, photosynthesis and plant growth. Plants lose more than 90% of their water by evaporation through stomata. The regulation of stomatal pore openings by CO2 is crucial for determining how much water plants lose, and is critical due to increased carbon dioxide effects on climate and water resources in a warming world.

But identifying the carbon dioxide sensor and explaining how it operates within plants has remained a longstanding puzzle.

Using a mix of tools and research approaches, scientists at the University of California San Diego recently achieved a breakthrough in identifying the long-sought CO2 sensor in Arabidopsis plants and unraveled its functioning parts. UC San Diego project scientist Yohei Takahashi, School of Biological Sciences Distinguished Professor Julian Schroeder and their colleagues identified the CO2 sensor mechanism and detailed its genetic, biochemical, physiological and predicted structural properties. Their results are published December 7 in Science Advances.

Since the stomatal pores control plant water loss, the sensor is vital for water management and holds implications for climate-induced drought, wildfires and agricultural crop management.

“For each carbon dioxide molecule taken in, a typical plant loses some 200 to 500 water molecules to evaporation through the stomatal pores,” said Schroeder, Novartis Chair and faculty member in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology. “The sensor is extremely relevant because it recognizes when CO2 concentrations go up and determines how much water a plant loses as carbon dioxide is taken in.”

One critical surprise from the new research was the composition of the sensor. Rather than tracing it to a single source or protein, the researchers found that the sensor operates through two plant proteins working together. These were identified as 1) a “high leaf temperature1” protein kinase known as HT1 and 2) specific members of a mitogen-activated protein kinase family, or “MAP” kinase enzyme, known as MPK4 and MPK12.

“Our findings reveal that plants sense changes in CO2 concentration by the reversible interaction of two proteins to regulate stomatal movements,” said Takahashi, who is now based at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules, Japan. “This could provide us a new plant engineering and chemical target towards efficient plant water use and CO2 uptake from the atmosphere.”

The team’s findings, which have been filed in a UC San Diego patent, could lead to innovations in efficient water use by plants as CO2 levels rise.

“This finding is relevant for crops but also for trees and their deep roots that can dry out soils if there’s no rain for long periods, which can lead to wildfires,” said Schroeder. “If we can use this new information to help trees respond better to increases in CO2 in the atmosphere, it’s possible they would more slowly dry out the soil. Similarly, the water use efficiency of crops could be improved—more crop per drop.”

To further explore their sensor discovery, the researchers collaborated with graduate student Christian Seitz and Professor Andrew McCammon in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Using cutting-edge techniques, Seitz and McCammon created a detailed model of the intricate structure of the sensor. The model implicated areas where genetic mutations have been known to restrict the ability of plants to regulate transpiration in response to carbon dioxide. The new imagery showed that the mutants cluster in an area where the two sensor proteins, HT1 and MPK, come together.

“This work is a wonderful example of curiosity-driven research that brings together several disciplines—from genetics to modeling to systems biology—and results in new knowledge with the ability to aid society, in this case by making more robust crops,” said Matthew Buechner, a program director in the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Biological Sciences, which supported the research.

The paper’s full author list: Yohei Takahashi, Krystal Bosmans, Po-Kai Hsu, Karnelia Paul, Christian Seitz, Chung-Yueh Yeh, Yuh-Shuh Wang, Dmitry Yarmolinsky, Maija Sierla, Triin Vahisalu, J. Andrew McCammon, Jaakko Kangasjarvi, Li Zhang, Hannes Kollist, Thien Trac and Julian I. Schroeder.

---

JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abq6161 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Stomatal CO2/bicarbonate Sensor Consists of Two Interacting Protein Kinases, Raf-like HT1 and non-kinase-activity requiring MPK12/MPK4

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

7-Dec-2022

HOLD THAT TIGER

Assessing El Niño ‘flavors’ to unravel past variability, future impact

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA

 

IMAGE: SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURE (SST; SHADING) AND PRECIPITATION (PRCP; CONTOURS) ANOMALIES DURING THE THREE PEAK MONTHS OF (A) EASTERN PACIFIC (EP), (B) CENTRAL PACIFIC (CP) AND (C) COASTAL (COA) EL NIÑO EVENTS. COLORED CIRCLES INDICATE CHARACTERISTIC LOCATIONS OF PROXY RECORDS, WITH DEEPER COLORS INDICATING STRONGER PRECIPITATION RESPONSE TO EACH ENSO FLAVOR (BROWN FOR DRIER, BLUE FOR WETTER). view more 

CREDIT: KARAMPERIDOU AND DINEZIO (2022)

As with many natural phenomena, scientists look to past climate to understand what may lie ahead as Earth warms. By assessing so-called ‘flavors’ of El Niño events in past climate records and model simulations, researchers have a clearer picture of El Niño patterns over the past 12,000 years and are able to more accurately project future changes and impacts of this powerful force. The study, by scientists at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and University of Colorado Boulder, was published recently in Nature Communications.

“We used a unique set of climate model simulations that span the Holocene, the past 12,000  years, and accounted for changes in the frequency of El Niño flavors, the three preferred locations in which the peak of warming during different El Niño events occur—eastern Pacific, central Pacific, and coastal,” said Christina Karamperidou, lead author of the study and associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “Doing this allowed us to reconcile conflicting records of past El Niño behavior.”

El Niño is the primary factor affecting variability in water temperature and trade wind strength in the Pacific. Typically, researchers look for indicators of El Niño events in ancient, preserved material such as coral skeletons, Peruvian mollusk shells or lake sediment from the tropical Andes because locked within are indicators of past temperature and rainfall across Pacific.

“However, depending on where the samples are taken from—eastern Pacific, central Pacific, or near the South American coast—the frequency of El Niño events appears to exhibit different patterns,” said Karamperidou. “Records from the eastern Pacific show an intensification of El Niño activity from early to late Holocene, while records from the central Pacific show highly variable El Niño throughout the Holocene.”

The new set of climate model simulations developed by Karamperidou and co-author Pedro DiNezio, associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, are the first to allow the study of changes in the frequency of El Niño flavors during the past 12,000 years. This enabled the researchers to test a hypothesis that Karamperidou and colleagues posed in 2015—that paleoclimate records across the Pacific could be explained by changes in El Niño flavors.

“Indeed, we showed that Eastern Pacific events have increased in frequency from early to late Holocene, while Central Pacific and Coastal events have decreased in frequency, resulting in changes in the hydroclimate in the tropical Pacific,” said Karamperidou. “Importantly, we showed that it is not only their frequency, but also the strength of their impact that changes, which is important for interpreting records of past climate.”

Surprising impact of coastal El Niño

Additionally, this is the first study into the response of coastal El Niño events to climate changes. During these events the sea surface warming is confined off the coast of South America while the conditions in the rest of the Pacific basin are normal or colder than normal.

“These coastal events have supersized impacts with severe flooding and disasters in countries like Peru and Ecuador,” said Karamperidou. “In fact, we showed in another recent paper that even though these events are not felt around the globe like the more widely known Eastern and Central Pacific events, a better understanding of the mechanisms that drive them is essential for understanding the drivers of the other two flavors, as well.”

Freshwater stream in Hilo, Hawai‘i.

CREDIT

Pascal Debrunner via Unsplash.

Connections to Hawai‘i’s rainfall, hazards  

El Niño events have significant impacts on Hawai‘i’s rainfall, trade wind strength, the probability of hurricane formation and drought, and the type of El Niño event matters for these impacts.

“This information is important for water resource managers among others to better prepare for Hawai‘i regional climate,” said Karamperidou. “So, it is imperative that we gain a better understanding of the mechanisms of these flavors, and also improve their representation in climate models and assess their projected changes under future climate conditions.”

This work offers new knowledge on how El Niño may respond to climate change and thus can help reduce these uncertainties in global climate models and therefore, predictions of El Niño impacts.

---

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-34880-8 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

ARTICLE TITLE

Holocene hydroclimatic variability in the tropical Pacific explained by changing ENSO diversity

Strategic reserves in Oregon’s forests to prevent biodiversity losses, protect water, and mitigate climate change

Research provides fine scale maps to guide action towards stated goals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CONSERVATION BIOLOGY INSTITUTE

Contacts: Dr. Beverly Law, bev.law@oregonstate.edu, Ralph Bloemers, ralph@greenoregon.org

(Corvallis, Oregon) Without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions and removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by forests and oceans (natural climate solutions), the nation is put at significant risk of abrupt and severe biodiversity losses and transformative impacts to natural systems. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the next 10 to 30 years are a critical window for climate action, when severe ecological disruption is expected to accelerate.

A new paper in the scientific journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change identifies which forests in Oregon are poised to provide significant benefits to the nation as strategic forest reserves that help prevent biodiversity loss, mitigate climate change, and protect drinking water. Oregon has forests that are among the highest carbon density forests in the world and protecting mature and older forests found here can increase carbon storage and accumulation while protecting wildlife and clean water.

In the eleven western United States, Oregon has the most total forest area and carbon in live tree biomass but the lowest proportion (10%) that is protected at the highest levels, as wilderness areas or strict nature reserves. The study shows that the Coast Range ecoregion has the lowest percentage of its forest lands protected compared to other ecoregions.

The team of experts led by Dr. Beverly Law at Oregon State University developed a framework for identifying the highest priority areas for protection in Oregon and produced detailed maps that can guide immediate action on biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. The framework uses fine resolution spatial data to map high priority forestlands, including a new forest carbon map (30 m resolution). Compared with prior work, this new scientific research provides a finer scale analysis and includes a resilience metric that represents landscape connectivity and topography for wildlife movement and habitat suitability, and identifies areas within each ecoregion that are ranked high priority for carbon density, biodiversity and surface drinking water. Using an ecoregion-based conservation approach ensures there is enough un-fragmented habitat to maintain viable populations of native wildlife.

National and international targets identify how much needs to be protected. Many countries have already pledged to protect 30% of their land and water areas by 2030 for biodiversity conservation, carbon and water. Protecting 50% of land and water by 2050 is widely viewed as critical to protecting global biodiversity.

The authors found that Oregon’s surface drinking water sources and forest habitat for birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles could increase to 50 to 70% protection at the highest levels by 2050. Protected aboveground biomass carbon could increase to 4 to 6 times current protected areas by 2050. Most of high preservation priority areas are on federal lands (67%) followed by private lands (28%). Public lands can more readily ensure permanence of protection through time. Doing so would provide clean drinking water and habitat for wildlife.

---

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Forests and Global Change

DOI

10.3389/ffgc.2022.1028401 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Strategic reserves in Oregon's forests for biodiversity, water, and carbon to mitigate and adapt to climate change

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

5-Dec-2022