Makenzie Lystrup named first female director of Goddard Space Flight Center

Makenzie Lystrup has been named the first female director of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, NASA announced Thursday. 

Photo courtesy of Keegan Barber/NASA

April 6 (UPI) -- Makenzie Lystrup has been named the first female director of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, NASA announced Thursday.

Lystrup will begin serving in the role immediately, succeeding Dave Mitchell, who has resumed his role as the chief program management officer at NASA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., NASA said in a news release.

"Goddard is an incredible center and true national asset with the best and brightest minds in science and engineering," Lystrup said in a statement.

"I'm humbled and honored to lead such an amazing and diverse world-renowned team."

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Lystrup added that she is focused on "growing the next generation of innovators" at NASA along with ensuring her team has access to tools that can lead to new discoveries.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson hailed Lystrup as a "natural leader" who will direct a "world-renowned team of scientists, engineers, and technologists focused on Earth and space science."

"Under her leadership, the Goddard workforce will continue to inspire, innovate, and explore the unknown for the benefit of all," Nelson said.

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"I'd also like to thank Dave Mitchell for serving as acting center director since January and ensuring a seamless transition. We look forward to Dave resuming his role at headquarters."

The announcement was praised by scientists on Twitter, including Keck Observatory Deputy Director John O'Meara.

"So happy to hear this. I was fortunate to work w/ Makenzie on a few things and know she's gonna rock this new role," O'Meara said in a tweet.

A.C. Charania, a chief technologist at NASA, said he is "looking forward to working together" with Lystrup.

Before joining NASA, Lystrup served as vice president and general manager of civil space at Ball Aerospace and led the company's contributions to NASA missions including the James Webb Space Telescope, Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), Landsat 9 and the Roman Space Telescope.

Four different autism subtypes identified in brain study

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE

 

IMAGE: MACHINE LEARNING OF BRAIN-BEHAVIOR DIMENSIONS REVEALS FOUR SUBTYPES OF AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER LINKED TO DISTINCT MOLECULAR PATHWAYS. HERE, THE 3D PRISM CUBE REPRESENTS THE MACHINE LEARNING OF THE THREE BRAIN-BEHAVIOR DIMENSIONS, ETCHED ONTO THE PRISM'S GLASS. WHITE LIGHT OR “DATA” PASSES INTO THE PRISM OR "MACHINE LEARNING ALGORITHM," SPLITTING INTO FOUR COLORED LIGHT PATHS THAT REPRESENT THE SPECTRUM OF AUTISTIC PEOPLE IN THE FOUR AUTISM SUBTYPES. THE PAINTED BACKGROUND OF A SEQUENCING ARRAY REPRESENTS THE MOLECULAR ASSOCIATIONS OF THE AUTISM SUBTYPES. view more 

CREDIT: WEILL CORNELL MEDICINE; DR. AMANDA BUCH

People with autism spectrum disorder can be classified into four distinct subtypes based on their brain activity and behavior, according to a study from Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.

The study, published March 9 in Nature Neuroscience, leveraged machine learning to analyze newly available neuroimaging data from 299 people with autism and 907 neurotypical people. They found patterns of brain connections linked with behavioral traits in people with autism, such as verbal ability, social affect, and repetitive or stereotypic behaviors. They confirmed that the four autism subgroups could also be replicated in a separate dataset and showed that differences in regional gene expression and protein-protein interactions explain the brain and behavioral differences.

“Like many neuropsychiatric diagnoses, individuals with autism spectrum disorder experience many different types of difficulties with social interaction, communication and repetitive behaviors. Scientists believe there are probably many different types of autism spectrum disorder that might require different treatments, but there is no consensus on how to define them,” said co-senior author Dr. Conor Liston, an associate professor of psychiatry and of neuroscience in the Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine. “Our work highlights a new approach to discovering subtypes of autism that might one day lead to new approaches for diagnosis and treatment.”

A previous study published by Dr. Liston and colleagues in Nature Medicine in 2017 used similar machine-learning methods to identify four biologically distinct subtypes of depression, and subsequent work has shown that those subgroups respond differently to various depression therapies.

“If you put people with depression in the right group, you can assign them the best therapy,” said lead author Dr. Amanda Buch, a postdoctoral associate of neuroscience in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Building on that success, the team set out to determine if similar subgroups exist among individuals with autism, and whether different gene pathways underlie them. She explained that autism is a highly heritable condition associated with hundreds of genes that has diverse presentation and limited therapeutic options. To investigate this, Dr. Buch pioneered new analyses for integrating neuroimaging data with gene expression data and proteomics, introducing them to the lab and enabling testing and developing hypotheses about how risk variants interact in the autism subgroups.

“One of the barriers to developing therapies for autism is that the diagnostic criteria are broad, and thus apply to a large and phenotypically diverse group of people with different underlying biological mechanisms,” Dr. Buch said. “To personalize therapies for individuals with autism, it will be important to understand and target this biological diversity. It is hard to identify the optimal therapy when everyone is treated as being the same, when they are each unique.”

Until recently, there were not large enough collections of functional magnetic resonance imaging data of people with autism to conduct large-scale machine learning studies, Dr. Buch noted. But a large dataset created and shared by Dr. Adriana Di Martino, research director of the Autism Center at the Child Mind Institute, as well as other colleagues across the country, provided the large dataset needed for the study.

“New methods of machine learning that can deal with thousands of genes, brain activity differences and multiple behavioral variations made the study possible,” said co-senior author Dr. Logan Grosenick, an assistant professor of neuroscience in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine, who pioneered machine-learning techniques used for biological subtyping in the autism and depression studies.

Those advances allowed the team to identify four clinically distinct groups of people with autism. Two of the groups had above-average verbal intelligence. One group also had severe deficits in social communication but less repetitive behaviors, while the other had more repetitive behaviors and less social impairment. The connections between the parts of the brain that process visual information and help the brain identify the most salient incoming information were hyperactive in the subgroup with more social impairment. These same connections were weak in the group with more repetitive behaviors.

“It was interesting on a brain circuit level that there were similar brain networks implicated in both of these subtypes, but the connections in these same networks were atypical in opposite directions,” said Dr. Buch, who completed her doctorate from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in Dr. Liston’s lab and is now working in Dr. Grosenick’s lab. 

The other two groups had severe social impairments and repetitive behaviors but had verbal abilities at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Despite some behavioral similarities, the investigators discovered completely distinct brain connection patterns in these two subgroups.

The team analyzed gene expression that explained the atypical brain connections present in each subgroup to better understand what was causing the differences and found many were genes previously linked with autism. They also analyzed network interactions between proteins associated with the atypical brain connections, and looked for proteins that might serve as a hub. Oxytocin, a protein previously linked with positive social interactions, was a hub protein in the subgroup of individuals with more social impairment but relatively limited repetitive behaviors. Studies have looked at the use of intranasal oxytocin as a therapy for people with autism with mixed results, Dr. Buch said. She said it would be interesting to test whether oxytocin therapy is more effective in this subgroup.

“You could have treatment that is working in a subgroup of people with autism, but that benefit washes out in the larger trial because you are not paying attention to subgroups,” Dr. Grosenick said.

The team confirmed their results on a second human dataset, finding the same four subgroups. As a final verification of the team’s results, Dr. Buch conducted an unbiased text-mining analysis she developed of biomedical literature that showed other studies had independently connected the autism-linked genes with the same behavioral traits associated with the subgroups.

The team will next study these subgroups and potential subgroup-targeted treatments in mice. Collaborations with several other research teams that have large human datasets are also underway. The team is also working to refine their machine-learning techniques further.

“We are trying to make our machine learning more cluster-aware,” Dr. Grosenick said.

In the meantime, Dr. Buch said they’ve received encouraging feedback from individuals with autism about their work. One neuroscientist with autism spoke to Dr. Buch after a presentation and said his diagnosis was confusing because his autism was so different than others but that her data helped explain his experience.

“Being diagnosed with a subtype of autism could have been helpful for him,” Dr. Buch said.    

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JOURNAL

Nature Neuroscience

ARTICLE TITLE

Molecular and network-level mechanisms explaining individual differences in autism spectrum disorder

Fully recyclable printed electronics ditch toxic chemicals for water

First-of-its-kind demonstration suggests a more environmentally friendly future for the electronics industry is possible

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY

 

VIDEO: AN INKJET PRINTER PUTS DOWN LAYERS OF CARBON-BASED ELECTRONIC INKS TO CREATE TRANSISTORS THAT CAN BE FULLY RECYCLED USING ONLY WATER, RATHER THAN REQUIRING HARSH, TOXIC CHEMICALS. view more 

CREDIT: JASON ARTHURS PHOTOGRAPHY

DURHAM, N.C. – Engineers at Duke University have produced the world’s first fully recyclable printed electronics that replace the use of chemicals with water in the fabrication process. By bypassing the need for hazardous chemicals, the demonstration points down a path industry could follow to reduce its environmental footprint and human health risks.

The research appeared online Feb. 28 in the journal Nano Letters.

One of the dominant challenges facing any electronics manufacturer is successfully securing several layers of components on top of each other, which is crucial to making complex devices. Getting these layers to stick together can be a frustrating process, particularly for printed electronics.

“If you’re making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, one layer on either slice of bread is easy,” explained Aaron Franklin, the Addy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke, who led the study. “But if you put the jelly down first and then try to spread peanut butter on top of it, forget it, the jelly won’t stay put and will intermix with the peanut butter. Putting layers on top of each other is not as easy as putting them down on their own — but that’s what you have to do if you want to build electronic devices with printing.”

In previous work, Franklin and his group demonstrated the first fully recyclable printed electronics. The devices used three carbon-based inks: semiconducting carbon nanotubes, conductive graphene and insulating nanocellulose. In trying to adapt the original process to only use water, the carbon nanotubes presented the largest challenge.

To make a water-based ink in which the carbon nanotubes don’t clump together and spread evenly on a surface, a surfactant similar to detergent is added. The resulting ink, however, does not create a layer of carbon nanotubes dense enough for a high current of electrons to travel across.

“You want the carbon nanotubes to look like al dente spaghetti strewn down on a flat surface,” said Franklin. “But with a water-based ink, they look more like they’ve been taken one-by-one and tossed on a wall to check for doneness. If we were using chemicals, we could just print multiple passes again and again until there were enough nanotubes. But water doesn’t work that way. We could do it 100 times and there’d still be the same density as the first time.”

This is because the surfactant used to keep the carbon nanotubes from clumping also prevents additional layers from adhering to the first. In a traditional manufacturing process, these surfactants would be removed using either very high temperatures, which takes a lot of energy, or harsh chemicals, which can pose human and environmental health risks. Franklin and his group wanted to avoid both.

In the paper, Franklin and his group develop a cyclical process in which the device is rinsed with water, dried in relatively low heat and printed on again. When the amount of surfactant used in the ink is also tuned down, the researchers show that their inks and processes can create fully functional, fully recyclable, fully water-based transistors.

Compared to a resistor or capacitor, a transistor is a relatively complex computer component used in devices such as power control or logic circuits and sensors. Franklin explains that, by demonstrating a transistor first, he hopes to signal to the rest of the field that there is a viable path toward making some electronics manufacturing processes much more environmentally friendly.

Franklin has already proven that nearly 100% of the carbon nanotubes and graphene used in printing can be recovered and reused in the same process, losing very little of the substances or their performance viability. Because nanocellulose is made from wood, it can simply be recycled or biodegraded like paper. And while the process does use a lot of water, it’s not nearly as much as what is required to deal with the toxic chemicals used in traditional fabrication methods.

According to a United Nations estimate, less than a quarter of the millions of pounds of electronics thrown away each year is recycled. And the problem is only going to get worse as the world eventually upgrades to 6G devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to expand. So any dent that could be made in this growing mountain of electronic trash is important to pursue.

While more work needs to be done, Franklin says the approach could be used in the manufacturing of other electronic components like the screens and displays that are now ubiquitous to society. Every electronic display has a backplane of thin-film transistors similar to what is demonstrated in the paper. The current fabrication technology is high-energy and relies on hazardous chemicals as well as toxic gasses. The entire industry has been flagged for immediate attention by the US Environmental Protection Agency. [https://www.epa.gov/climateleadership/sector-spotlight-electronics]

“The performance of our thin-film transistors doesn’t match the best currently being manufactured, but they’re competitive enough to show the research community that we should all be doing more work to make these processes more environmentally friendly,” Franklin said.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (1R01HL146849), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-22-1-0466), and the National Science Foundation (ECCS-1542015, Graduate Research Fellowship 2139754).

CITATION: “All-Carbon Thin-Film Transistors Using Water-Only Printing,” Shiheng Lu, Brittany N. Smith, Hope Meikle, Michael J. Therien, and Aaron D. Franklin. Nano Letters, Feb. 28, 2023. DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04196

An artistic depiction of the new process that allows printers to create fully functioning, fully recyclable transistors using only water instead of harsh chemicals.

CREDIT

Ella Maru Studios

JOURNAL

Nano Letters

DOI

10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04196 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

All-Carbon Thin-Film Transistors Using Water-Only Printing

Broccoli consumption protects gut lining, reduces disease, in mice

Researchers discover that a certain molecule in broccoli interacts with a receptor in mice to promote gut health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Broccoli is known to be beneficial to our health. For example, research has shown that increased consumption of the cruciferous vegetable decreases incidences of cancer and type 2 diabetes. In a recent study, researchers at Penn State found that broccoli contains certain molecules that bind to a receptor within mice and help to protect the lining of the small intestine, thereby inhibiting the development of disease. The findings lend support to the idea that broccoli truly is a ‘superfood.’ 

“We all know that broccoli is good for us, but why? What happens in the body when we eat broccoli?” said Gary Perdew, H. Thomas and Dorothy Willits Hallowell Chair in Agricultural Sciences, Penn State. “Our research is helping to uncover the mechanisms for how broccoli and other foods benefit health in mice and likely humans, as well. It provides strong evidence that cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts should be part of a normal healthy diet.”

According to Perdew, the wall of the small intestine allows beneficial water and nutrients to pass into the body but prevents food particles and bacteria that could cause harm. Certain cells that line the intestine — including enterocytes, which absorb water and nutrients; goblet cells, which secrete a protective layer of mucus on the intestinal wall; and Paneth cells, which secrete lysosomes that contain digestive enzymes — help to modulate this activity and keep a healthy balance.

In their study, which published in the journal Laboratory Investigation, Perdew and his colleagues found that molecules in broccoli, called aryl hydrocarbon receptor ligands, bind to aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR), which is a type of protein called a transcription factor. This binding, they found, initiates a variety of activities that affect the functions of intestinal cells.

To conduct their study, the researchers fed an experimental group of mice a diet containing 15% broccoli — equivalent to about 3.5 cups per day for humans — and fed a control group of mice a typical lab diet that did not contain broccoli. They then analyzed the animals’ tissues to determine the extent to which AHR was activated, as well as the quantities of various cell types and mucus concentrations, among other factors, in the two groups.

The team found that mice that were not fed broccoli lacked AHR activity, which resulted in altered intestinal barrier function, reduced transit time of food in the small intestine, decreased number of goblet cells and protective mucus, decreased Paneth cells and lysosome production, and decreased number of enterocyte cells.

“The gut health of the mice that were not fed broccoli was compromised in a variety of ways that are known to be associated with disease,” said Perdew. “Our research suggests that broccoli and likely other foods can be used as natural sources of AHR ligands, and that diets rich in these ligands contribute to resilience of the small intestine.”

More broadly, added Andrew Patterson, John T. and Paige S. Smith Professor of Molecular Toxicology and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, “these data suggest that dietary cues, relayed through the activity of AHR, can reshape the cellular and metabolic repertoire of the gastrointestinal tract.”

Other authors on the paper include Xiaoliang Zhou, Debopriya Chakraborty, Iain A. Murray, Denise Coslo, Zoe Kehs, Anitha Vijay, Carolyn Ton, Dhimant Desai and Shantu G. Amin.

The National Institutes of Health Grants, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Penn State Cancer Institute supported this research.

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JOURNAL

Laboratory Investigation

DOI

10.1016/j.labinv.2022.100012 

Sierra squirrels find their niche amid a changing climate

Climate change not the only important thing for a species’ niche

 NEWS RELEASE 6-APR-2023

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

 

IMAGE: A YELLOW-BELLIED MARMOT LOOKS ACROSS A SIERRA NEVADA LANDSCAPE. view more 

CREDIT: AVIVA ROSSI/UC DAVIS

As the climate changes, many species are expected to adjust where and how they live. Some are expected to seek cooler elevations as it warms, but what happens to species already at the top of a mountain? A study of squirrels living in California’s high-elevation Sierra Nevada indicates that climate is only one factor to consider when trying to predict where an animal will make its home in a changing world.  

The study, led by the University of California, Davis, is published in the journal Ecology and Evolution and was conducted in alpine regions stretching nearly 200 miles from Alpine County just south of Lake Tahoe, along the spine of the Sierra and south to Tulare and Inyo counties.  

The study characterizes the niche space of three species of squirrel: the yellow-bellied marmot, Belding’s ground squirrel and the golden-mantled ground squirrel. The authors analyzed nearly 6,000 observations of individual squirrels, collected from field survey data conducted over four years.  

For this study, the “niche” describes all the conditions in the environment that are important for an animal to live in an area. Understanding the niche of animals helps scientists learn which changes are expected to most impact a species and, therefore, which animals may be most vulnerable to climate change.

“We’re trying from a conservation perspective to understand what will happen to these species as the world changes,” said lead author Aviva Rossi, who conducted the study while a UC Davis graduate student in the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. “A quantitative analysis of what makes a species able to live where it lives allows us to bring that information forward, and better understand differences between species.”

What doesn’t change

Niche was defined not only by climate, but also by topography (like how steep an area was) and land cover (such as meadows or forests). Some of these nonclimate environmental conditions, like slope or the presence of rocks, rarely change.

Although all three squirrel species occur in the same region, they each use that space a little differently because their niche is different.

Grassland meadows were particularly important for yellow-bellied marmots and the Belding’s ground squirrel. Yet, within a meadow, marmots preferred drier conditions, while Belding’s ground squirrels favored wet vegetation.

Golden-mantled squirrels — a common sight at area campgrounds — preferred forested areas and do well with more snow-free days. Belding’s ground squirrels preferred having snow on the ground longer. 

Even with these overall selection patterns, there can still be too much of a good thing in extreme years, Rossi said.    

Mammals in high-elevation mountains are often perceived as vulnerable to climate shifts, the study notes. Yet, the results underscore the importance of including factors that go beyond climate when defining their niche.

Making better decisions

Rossi notes that climate change is often viewed through a lens of hope or despair, but the study illustrated how its impacts are more complex. 

“There’s hope in some areas and not in others,” Rossi said. “If one species is there because of a meadow and another is there because of an outcropping of rocks, as the world changes, it may change where one species lives but not the other. We just want to better understand what’s likely to happen so we can make better conservation decisions.”

The study’s co-authors include Robert Klinger of the U.S. Geological Survey, and Elise Hellwig and Dirk Van Vuren of the UC Davis Department of Wildlife Fish and Conservation Biology.

The study was funded through the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, Yosemite National Park, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, with support from the Gulch Environmental Foundation.

  

Belding’s ground squirrels favor wet vegetation in the mountains.

CREDIT

Toni Lyn Morelli

  

A golden-mantled ground squirrel pup in California’s Sierra Nevada.

CREDIT

Aviva Rossi/UC Davis+

Yellow-bellied marmots prefer grasslands and meadows within the Sierra Nevada.

CREDIT

Aviva Rossi/UC Davis

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JOURNAL

Ecology and Evolution

DOI

10.1002/ece3.9949 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

ARTICLE TITLE

Niches of three sympatric montane ground-dwelling squirrels: Relative importance of climate, topography, and landcover

The social framework

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

On January 6, 2021, the public watched in disbelief as the Capitol building was stormed by hundreds of protestors. Most spectators at home didn't know violence at the Capitol building was already circulating through far-right social media channels for months. 

Social media, for better or worse, play a large role in how we consume information – as well as spreading misinformation and conspiratorial propaganda.  

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh received $100,000 as part of the Meta Foundational Integrity Research Award to create a population-level sampling and modeling framework to trace and measure the influence of online conspiratorial content. 

“One of the key challenges in stopping the influence of cyber conspiratorial propaganda is the lack of a coherent and generalizable framework to understand the relationship between individuals’ characteristics and spread of this propaganda,” said Amin Rahimian, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering and co-investigator on the project. 

The project, which is led by Associate Professor at Pitt’s School of Computing and Information Yu-Ru Lin, will pilot a survey to collect representative population and network characteristics across the United States and employ mechanism discovery methods to understand the relationship between conspiratorial propaganda on social media and its users. 

Researchers are mostly interested in conspiratorial cascades – the phenomenon in which a large portion of people interact with the same conspiratorial content. Using their sampling methods, they want to determine who is likely to be a believer in or spreader of conspiratorial content and under what conditions do these individuals create a large cascade online. 

“Ultimately, this is a social cyber security concern,” Rahimian said. “We’re looking to stop violence at the source.” 

Lin added that this study is about understanding social fabrics. 

“We need to look at which communities are more vulnerable to the spread of conspiratorial messages and how we can best safeguard those communities,” she explained. 

Outcomes of this study, “A Multi-Resolution, Population-Scale Framework to Identify Sociodemogrpahic and Psychometric Factors for Network Influence of Online Conspiratorial Content,” will inform the design of large-scale, population statistics to examine other information integrity issues both nationally and globally and create mathematical tools to discover the causal and social structures of such diffusions. 

CONSPIRACY THEORY ORIGINS

Illuminatus! Trilogy

The Anarchist Library

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by R Shea · Cited by 74 — The Illuminatus! Trilogy. Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson .

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The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels by American writers Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, first published in 1975. The trilogy is a ...

Authors: Robert Shea; ‎Robert Anton Wilson‎

Publication date: 1975 (individual volumes); 1...

Pages: 805 pages (paperback collected edition)

Cover artist: Carlos Victor Ochagavia (1975 pa...

The hidden role of food in urban conflicts in Central America

Peer-Reviewed Publication

POLITECNICO DI MILANO

Extreme water events have been shown to affect human security in many ways. In a research article published today in the new journal Nature Water researchers from Politecnico di Milano and University of California at Berkeley delve deeper into the complex nexus between droughts and conflicts in Central America. For the decades from 1996 to 2016 explore how water availability affects agricultural production and food security, and investigate the nexus between drought-induced food insecurity and the emergence of conflict in the region. Cities in Central America are known for their high rates of homicides and urban violence linked to the proliferation of young street gangs known as maras. Moreover, the rural communities are threatened by the canícula, a dry season occurring in July and August, and its severe impacts on agriculture, which constitutes the main source of food supply and income.

“For the first time, in our study we explicitly consider food security as a central mechanism in the chain linking drought-induced water shortage and conflict. We also analyze how the internal food trade can influence the level of food security from food-producing areas to food-consuming areas, such as cities”, Martina Sardo, Ph. D. Student at Politecnico di Milano and lead author of the study said.

Professor Maria Cristina Rulli, the senior author of the article and coordinator of Glob3ScienCE (Global Studies on Sustainable Security in a Changing Environment), commented that “by coupling a physically based spatially distributed hydro-agrological model with  a complex statistical model that correlates water and food availability and access; socio-economic indicators to conflict, we find decreases in availability and access to water and food play a major role in conflict insurgences, while the stable conditions of peace are more influenced by favorable socio-economic conditions. Furthermore, conflicts in a given place can also be influenced by water scarcity conditions in distant places, which explains how the internal food trade can strengthen and spatially expand the water-food-conflict nexus.”

The study offers insight into how climate and water availability can interact with human well-being and social unrest through food security. It also shows the importance of strengthening the resilience of rural communities in the developing world to prevent the rise of social tension.

Exploring the water–food nexus reveals the interlinkages with urban human conflicts in Central America by Martina Sardo, Ilenia Epifani, Paolo D’Odorico, Nikolas Galli, Maria Cristina Rulli

It has been scheduled for publication in Nature Water on 06 April 2023 

 It will be available at the following URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-023-00053-0 

JOURNAL

Nature Water

DOI

10.1038/s44221-023-00053-0 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Exploring the water–food nexus reveals the interlinkages with urban human conflicts in Central America

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

6-Apr-2023