"Resilience in dark times”: At-home yoga reduces anxiety, improves short-term memory

A virtual yoga program led to decreases in stress and anxiety in full-time working adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BECKMAN INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Sean Mullen wants more adults to go with the flow. The yoga flow, that is.

Mullen, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, collaborated with fellow Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology researchers Madhura Phansikar, Neha Gothe, and Rosalba Hernandez to design a virtual eight-week moderate-intensity yoga program geared specifically toward full-time working adults experiencing symptoms of stress.

The trial, which appeared in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, led participants through three self-paced remote workouts each week, assessed levels of stress and anxiety in addition to executive functioning. The results showed overall decreases in stress and anxiety.

“There is some literature that has directly compared yoga to aerobic exercise, and we’ve known for quite a long time that aerobic exercise has benefits for the brain,” Mullen said. “Our research investigates complex movements — not just riding a bicycle or walking in a straight line, but multi-planar movements that require navigating one’s space a little differently and being conscious of movement, technique, and breathing."

Enter the sun salutation, a progression of yoga poses which emulates the rising and setting of the sun.

Self-paced instructional videos guided participants through sun salutations in the comfort of their own homes. Gradually, participants were encouraged to become more self-sufficient by completing the exercises independently.

“Our philosophy is to improve everyone’s confidence about the exercise in which they’re engaging,” Mullen said. “We start slow and incrementally progress.”

Researchers wanted to know if learning new chains of yoga sequences could improve working memory, similar to the brain benefits of learning a new dance.

“Having to move through multiple active postures, as opposed to static holds, should theoretically improve attentional abilities or inhibition control,” Mullen said. “Going through the flow could potentially improve spatial memory.”

The benefits to executive functioning observed in the study are reinforced by the literature, according to the researchers.

The study also aimed to investigate individuals’ adherence to a virtual exercise program. While the study was initially designed for remote execution, its coincidental timing with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic provided additional insight.

“The reductions in anxiety and improvements in short-term working memory suggest that it is possible to practice moderate-intensity yoga at home and still reap the benefits of reducing stress and anxiety without compromising safety,” Mullen said. “[The study] really became about promoting resilience in dark times.”

Another encouraging outcome was participants’ overwhelmingly positive response.

“When participants are willing to recommend the program to friends and family, that’s great,” Mullen said. “To me, that suggests we were successful and that everyone involved had a good time.”

Mullen’s lab will continue to test mind-body interventions and promote adherence to exercise by developing more technologies to gamify activities like yoga, kickboxing, and other movements that are more cognitively challenging than standard aerobic exercise. Their interventions are influenced by Mullen’s personal experience with flow-based training in spinning poi and martial arts like Filipino Kali and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

“We always try to keep it fun, keep it interesting, incorporate variety, and ensure our programs are as inclusive as possible,” Mullen said. “We tailor our programming so more people can take advantage, such as older adults or those with mobility limitations.”

Phansikar, a doctoral student at the time of the research who participates in the aerial yoga sport of Mallakhamba at a national level, was especially encouraged by the results.

“Given my own personal background as a yoga practitioner and teacher, it was exciting to assess the efficacy of yoga interventions for promoting cognitive and psychological well-being,” she said.

Phansikar’s primary research interest lies in the neurological effects of mind-body interventions like yoga, and she will continue to develop scalable programs that can be deployed to large numbers of participants.

The benefits of wellness initiatives such as yoga have long been recognized and promoted by the Beckman Institute. Anyone interested in trying yoga is encouraged to attend Yoga at Beckman, a free series of instruction offered every Wednesday at noon in the fifth-floor tower room. All attendees are welcome and are asked to bring their own mat.

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Editor’s notes:

Additional contributors to the research included Neha Gothe, an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, and Rosalba Hernandez, an associate professor in the School of Social Work.

The paper titled "Feasibility and impact of a remote moderate-intensity yoga intervention on stress and executive functioning in working adults: a randomized controlled trial" can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-022-00385-4

The authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Media contact: Jenna Kurtzweil at kurtzwe2@illinois.edu

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JOURNAL

Journal of Behavioral Medicine

DOI

10.1007/s10865-022-00385-4 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Feasibility and impact of a remote moderate-intensity yoga intervention on stress and executive functioning in working adults: a randomized controlled trial

Machine learning can support urban planning for energy use

Drexel researchers present a machine learning approach for predicting Philadelphia’s future energy use

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DREXEL UNIVERSITY

As Philadelphia strives to meet greenhouse gas emissions goals established in its 2050 Plan, a better understanding of how zoning can play a role in managing building energy use could set the city up for success. Researchers in Drexel University’s College of Engineering are hoping a machine learning model they’ve developed can support these efforts by helping to predict how energy consumption will change as neighborhoods evolve.

In 2017, the city set a goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, led in large part by a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from building energy use – which accounted for nearly three-quarters of Philadelphia’s carbon footprint at the time. But the key to meeting this mark lies not just in establishing sustainable energy use practices for current buildings, but also incorporating energy use projections into zoning decisions that will direct future development.

And the challenge for Philadelphia, one of the oldest cities in the country, is that building types vary widely — as does their energy use. So planning for more efficient energy use at the City level is not a problem with a one-size-fits-all solution.

“For Philadelphia in particular, neighborhoods vary so much from place to place in prevalence of certain housing features and zoning types that it’s important to customize energy programs for each neighborhood, rather than trying to enact blanket policies for carbon reduction across the entire city or county,” said Simi Hoque, PhD, a professor in the College of Engineering who led research into using machine learning for granular energy-use modeling recently published in the journal Energy & Buildings.

Hoque’s team believes existing machine learning programs, properly deployed, can provide some clarity on how zoning decisions could affect future greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.

“Right now there is a huge volume of energy use data, but it’s often just too inconsistent and messy to be reasonably put to use. For example, one dataset corresponding to certain housing characteristics may have usable energy estimates, but another dataset corresponding to socioeconomic features is missing too many values to be usable,” she said. “Machine learning is well equipped to handle this challenge because they can iteratively learn and improve through the training process to reduce bias and variance despite these data limitations.”

To glean information from the disjointed data, the team developed a process using two machine learning programs — one that can tease out patterns from massive tranches of data and use them to make projections about future energy and a second that can pinpoint the details in the model that likely had the greatest effect on changing the projections.

First they trained a deep-learning program, called Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), with volumes of commercial and residential energy-use data for Philadelphia from the U.S. Energy Information’s Residential Energy Consumption Survey and Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey for 2015, as well as the city’s demographic and socioeconomic data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey for that time period.

The program learned enough from the data that it could draw correlations between a laundry list of variables, such as density of buildings, population of a given area, building square footage, number of occupants, how many days heating or air conditioning was used, and energy use for each house or building.

While deep learning models like XGBoost are very useful for making informed forecasts, given a large and inconsistent set of data, their methods can be obscured by the complexity of the operations they perform. But to be a useful tool for guiding planners, the team needed to unpack the so-called “black box” program enough to turn its projections into recommendations.

To do it, they employed a Shapley additive explanations analysis, an assessment used in game theory to distribute credit among factors that contributed to an outcome. This allowed them to suss out how much a change in building density or square footage, for example, factored into the program’s projection.

“Machine learning models like XGBoost learn how to chug through datasets to fulfill a specific task — like generating a reliable forecast of a system — but they do not claim to really understand or represent the on-the-ground relationships that underlie a phenomenon,” Hoque said. “And while a Shapley analysis cannot tell us which features have the greatest impact on energy use, it can explain which features had the greatest impact on the model’s energy use prediction, which is still quite a useful piece of information.”

Then the team put the model to the test by providing input data from a hypothetical scenario proposed by the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission that estimated continuing economic development in Philadelphia through the year 2045. The scenario suggested a 17% population increase with a commensurate increase in households, and it presents a number of different possibilities for employment and income by region throughout the city.

For each scenario, the model projected how new residential and commercial development would change greenhouse gas emissions from building energy use throughout 11 different parts of the city and which variables played prominent roles in making the projections.

Looking specifically at residential energy use for the 2045 scenario, the program suggested that six of the 11 areas would decrease their energy use – mostly lower-income regions. While mixed-income regions, like the northernmost part of the city, including Oak Lane, would likely see an increase in energy use.

According to the Shapley analysis, the presence of single-family attached (lower energy use) versus detached (higher energy use) dwellings played an important role in the projections, with high monthly electricity cost, lot sizes of less than one acre, and lower number of rooms per building all contributing to lower energy use projections.

“Overall, the residential energy prediction model finds that features related to lower building intensity relate to lower energy consumption estimates in the model, for example lower lot acreage, lower number of rooms per unit,” they wrote. “These results give reason to reinvestigate the effects of upzoning policies, commonly present as an affordable housing solution in Philadelphia and other cities across the U.S., and subsequent changes in energy use for these areas.”

On the commercial side of the scenario, the machine learning model did not project much change in energy use under the 2045 conditions — energy use for the largest commercial buildings remained high. And while it was limited to looking at just six variables — square footage, number of employees, number of floors, heating degree days, cooling degree days, and the principal activity of the building — due to the available data in the training set, the Shapley analysis pointed to building square footage and number of employees as the most important predictors of energy use for most types of commercial buildings.

“With respect to the commercial sector, the study suggests that commercial buildings in the top quantiles of square footage and employee count should be the primary targets for energy reduction programs,” the authors wrote. “The research posits an approximate threshold of 10,000 square feet of total building area, with buildings over that marker being prioritized due to their disproportionate influence on the energy prediction of the model.”

While the researchers caution against assuming a direct link between variables and energy use changes in the model, they suggest that it is still quite useful because of its ability to give planners both a high-level and granular look at the interplay of zoning decisions and development and their effect on energy use.

“I see a lot of potential in using machine learning models like XGBoost to forecast energy use increases or decreases due to new construction projects or policy changes,” Hoque said. “For example, building a new rail line in a neighborhood may change the demographics and employment of a neighborhood, and our methods would be ideal for incorporating that information in the context of an energy prediction model.”

The team acknowledges that more testing is necessary and the program will only improve as it is provided with additional data. They suggest that a next step for the research would be to focus on areas of the city with known high energy use and perform a Shapely analysis to discern some of the factors that could be contributing to it.

“We hope this will provide a resource for future researchers and policy makers so they don’t have to scope through the entire city of Philadelphia, but can hone in on neighborhoods and variables which we have flagged as areas of potential importance,” Hoque said. “Ideally, future studies would use more interpretable methods to test whether these features really correspond to higher or lower energy estimates in a given area.”

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JOURNAL

Energy and Buildings

DOI

10.1016/j.enbuild.2023.112965 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Investigating the application of a commercial and residential energy consumption prediction model for urban Planning scenarios with Machine Learning and Shapley Additive explanation methods

Study presents new clues about the rise of earth’s continents

One popular explanation for properties that result in dry land is unlikely according to new experiments

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SMITHSONIAN

 

IMAGE: APOLLO 8 PILOT BILL ANDERS TOOK THIS ICONIC PHOTO OF EARTH FROM LUNAR ORBIT ON CHRISTMAS EVE, DEC. 24, 1968. EARTH’S CONTINENTS—UNIQUE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM—ARE VISIBLE, RISING ABOVE THE OCEAN. A STUDY, PUBLISHED TODAY IN SCIENCE, USES LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS TO SHOW THAT THE IRON-DEPLETED, OXIDIZED CHEMISTRY TYPICAL OF EARTH’S CONTINENTAL CRUST LIKELY DID NOT COME FROM CRYSTALLIZATION OF THE MINERAL GARNET, AS A POPULAR EXPLANATION PROPOSED IN 2018. ONE OF THE KEY CONSEQUENCES OF EARTH’S CONTINENTAL CRUST’S LOW IRON CONTENT RELATIVE TO OCEANIC CRUST IS THAT IT MAKES THE CONTINENTS LESS DENSE AND MORE BUOYANT, CAUSING THE CONTINENTAL PLATES TO SIT HIGHER ATOP THE PLANET’S MANTLE THAN OCEANIC PLATES. THIS DISCREPANCY IN DENSITY AND BUOYANCY IS A MAJOR REASON THAT THE CONTINENTS FEATURE DRY LAND WHILE OCEANIC CRUSTS ARE UNDERWATER, AS WELL AS WHY CONTINENTAL PLATES ALWAYS COME OUT ON TOP WHEN THEY MEET OCEANIC PLATES AT SUBDUCTION ZONES. view more 

CREDIT: NASA

Continents are part of what makes Earth uniquely habitable for life among the planets of the solar system, yet surprisingly little is understood about what gave rise to these huge pieces of the planet’s crust and their special properties. New research from Elizabeth Cottrell, research geologist and curator of rocks at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and lead study author Megan Holycross, formerly a Peter Buck Fellow and National Science Foundation Fellow at the museum and now an assistant professor at Cornell University, deepens the understanding of Earth’s crust by testing and ultimately eliminating one popular hypothesis about why continental crust is lower in iron and more oxidized compared to oceanic crust. The iron-poor composition of continental crust is a major reason why vast portions of the Earth’s surface stand above sea level as dry land, making terrestrial life possible today.

The study, published today in Science, uses laboratory experiments to show that the iron-depleted, oxidized chemistry typical of Earth’s continental crust likely did not come from crystallization of the mineral garnet, as a popular explanation proposed in 2018.

The building blocks of new continental crust issue forth from the depths of the Earth at what are known as continental arc volcanoes, which are found at subduction zones where an oceanic plate dives beneath a continental plate. In the garnet explanation for continental crust’s iron-depleted and oxidized state, the crystallization of garnet in the magmas beneath these continental arc volcanoes removes non-oxidized (reduced or ferrous, as it is known among scientists) iron from the terrestrial plates, simultaneously depleting the molten magma of iron and leaving it more oxidized.

One of the key consequences of Earth’s continental crust’s low iron content relative to oceanic crust is that it makes the continents less dense and more buoyant, causing the continental plates to sit higher atop the planet’s mantle than oceanic plates. This discrepancy in density and buoyancy is a major reason that the continents feature dry land while oceanic crusts are underwater, as well as why continental plates always come out on top when they meet oceanic plates at subduction zones.

The garnet explanation for the iron depletion and oxidation in continental arc magmas was compelling, but Cottrell said one aspect of it did not sit right with her.

“You need high pressures to make garnet stable, and you find this low-iron magma at places where crust isn’t that thick and so the pressure isn’t super high,” she said.

In 2018, Cottrell and her colleagues set about finding a way to test whether the crystallization of garnet deep beneath these arc volcanoes is indeed essential to the process of creating continental crust as is understood. To accomplish this, Cottrell and Holycross had to find ways to replicate the intense heat and pressure of the Earth’s crust in the lab, and then develop techniques sensitive enough to measure not just how much iron was present, but to differentiate whether that iron was oxidized.

To recreate the massive pressure and heat found beneath continental arc volcanoes, the team used what are called piston-cylinder presses in the museum’s High-Pressure Laboratory and at Cornell. A hydraulic piston-cylinder press is about the size of a mini fridge and is mostly made of incredibly thick and strong steel and tungsten carbide. Force applied by a large hydraulic ram results in very high pressures on tiny rock samples, about a cubic millimeter in size. The assembly consists of electrical and thermal insulators surrounding the rock sample, as well as a cylindrical furnace. The combination of the piston-cylinder press and heating assembly allows for experiments that can attain the very high pressures and temperatures found under volcanoes.

In 13 different experiments, Cottrell and Holycross grew samples of garnet from molten rock inside the piston-cylinder press under pressures and temperatures designed to simulate conditions inside magma chambers deep in Earth’s crust. The pressures used in the experiments ranged from 1.5 to 3 gigapascals—that is roughly 15,000 to 30,000 Earth atmospheres of pressure or 8,000 times more pressure than inside a can of soda. Temperatures ranged from 950 to 1,230 degrees Celsius, which is hot enough to melt rock.

Next, the team collected garnets from Smithsonian’s National Rock Collection and from other researchers around the world. Crucially, this group of garnets had already been analyzed so their concentrations of oxidized and unoxidized iron were known.

Finally, the study authors took the materials from their experiments and those gathered from collections to the Advanced Photon Source at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. There the team used high-energy X-ray beams to conduct X-ray absorption spectroscopy, a technique that can tell scientists about the structure and composition of materials based on how they absorb X-rays. In this case, the researchers were looking into the concentrations of oxidized and unoxidized iron.

The samples with known ratios of oxidized and unoxidized iron provided a way to check and calibrate the team’s X-ray absorption spectroscopy measurements and facilitated a comparison with the materials from their experiments.

The results of these tests revealed that the garnets had not incorporated enough unoxidized iron from the rock samples to account for the levels of iron-depletion and oxidation present in the magmas that are the building blocks of Earth’s continental crust.

“These results make the garnet crystallization model an extremely unlikely explanation for why magmas from continental arc volcanoes are oxidized and iron depleted,” Cottrell said. “It’s more likely that conditions in Earth’s mantle below continental crust are setting these oxidized conditions.”

 Like so many results in science, the findings lead to more questions: “What is doing the oxidizing or iron depleting?” Cottrell asked. “If it’s not garnet crystallization in the crust and it’s something about how the magmas arrive from the mantle, then what is happening in the mantle? How did their compositions get modified?”

Cottrell said that these questions are hard to answer but that now the leading theory is that oxidized sulfur could be oxidizing the iron, something a current Peter Buck Fellow is investigating under her mentorship at the museum.

This study is an example of the kind of research that museum scientists will tackle under the museum’s new Our Unique Planet initiative, a public–private partnership, which supports research into some of the most enduring and significant questions about what makes Earth special. Other research will investigate the source of Earth’s liquid oceans and how minerals may have served as templates for life.

This research was supported by funding from the Smithsonian, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the Lyda Hill Foundation.

A microscope image from an experiment conducted for this study. The image contains glass (brown), large garnets (pink) and other small mineral crystals. The field of view is 410 microns wide, about size of a sugar crystal. A study, published today in Science, uses laboratory experiments to show that the iron-depleted, oxidized chemistry typical of Earth’s continental crust likely did not come from crystallization of the mineral garnet, as a popular explanation proposed in 2018. The iron-poor composition of continental crust is a major reason why vast portions of the Earth’s surface stand above sea level as dry land, making terrestrial life possible today. In 13 different experiments, the research team grew samples of garnet from molten rock inside a piston-cylinder press, a device designed to simulate pressure and temperature conditions inside magma chambers deep in Earth’s crust. The pressures used in the experiments ranged from 1.5 to 3 gigapascals—that is roughly 15,000 to 30,000 Earth atmospheres of pressure or 8,000 times more pressure than inside a can of soda. Temperatures ranged from 950 to 1,230 degrees Celsius, which is hot enough to melt rock.

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: Elizabeth Cottrell, research geologist and curator of rocks at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, loads an experiment in her lab at the museum. A study, published today in Science, uses laboratory experiments to show that the iron-depleted, oxidized chemistry typical of Earth’s continental crust likely did not come from crystallization of the mineral garnet, as a popular explanation proposed in 2018. The iron-poor composition of the continental crust is a major reason why vast portions of the Earth’s surface stand above sea level as dry land, making terrestrial life possible today. In 2018, Cottrell and her colleagues set about finding a way to test whether the crystallization of garnet deep beneath arc volcanoes—found at subduction zones where an oceanic plate dives beneath a continental plate—is indeed essential to the process of creating continental crust as is understood. To accomplish this, the research team had to find ways to replicate the intense heat and pressure of the Earth’s crust in the lab, and then develop techniques sensitive enough to measure not just how much iron was present, but to differentiate whether that iron was oxidized. To recreate the massive pressure and heat found beneath continental arc volcanoes, the team used what are called piston-cylinder presses in the museum’s High-Pressure Laboratory and at Cornell University. A hydraulic piston-cylinder press is about the size of a mini fridge and is mostly made of incredibly thick and strong steel and tungsten carbide. Force applied by a large hydraulic ram results in very high pressures on tiny rock samples, about a cubic millimeter in size. The assembly consists of electrical and thermal insulators surrounding the rock sample, as well as a cylindrical furnace. The combination of the piston-cylinder press and heating assembly allows for experiments that can attain the very high pressures and temperatures found under volcanoes.

CREDIT

Jennifer Renteria, Smithsonian.

JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.ade3418 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Garnet crystallization does not drive oxidation at arcs

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-May-2023

Genetic sequencing of sea turtles can help understand disease that threatens species

The most comprehensive sequencing to date of the genomes of the Leatherback and Green sea turtles shows they are mostly identical. It helps understand how the group has evolved and provides ideas for conservation strategies.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FUNDAÇÃO DE AMPARO À PESQUISA DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO

As if pollution, fishery bycatch (incidental capture of non-targeted species hooked or entangled in fishing gear) and poaching were not enough, sea turtles suffer from a type of cancer that limits their survival. In recent decades, some of the damage done by human activity has been mitigated by conservation actions. New perspectives in understanding the disease and possibly finding treatment are now opening up, thanks to the work done by an international consortium of scientists in achieving the most comprehensive sequencing to date of the genomes of two of the seven species of sea turtle: the Leatherback turtle (Dermochelys coriacea) and the Green turtle (Chelonia mydas). This research extends knowledge of their immune system and evolution.

Preliminary results are published in the journal PNAS. The authors of the article include Brazilian researchers supported by FAPESP.

“Sea turtles are vulnerable to this form of cancer, which is called fibropapillomatosis, caused by a herpes virus specific to these animals. Most research has focused on cases in C. mydas, but it’s also been found in other species,” said one of the authors, Elisa Karen da Silva Ramos, a PhD candidate at the State University of Campinas’s Institute of Biology (IB-UNICAMP) in São Paulo state, Brazil. 

Her doctoral research was supported by FAPESP. She conducted some of the analysis while on a research internship in Germany at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin, also with support from FAPESP. 

“C. mydas appears to have more genes associated with the immune system in specific chromosomes, and this may offer clues as to how it combats the virus,” she said.

More detailed analysis of this region of the genome is in progress, and the researchers expect confirmation soon of what exactly is happening to these genes in this species.

The research is part of the Vertebrate Genomes Project, which aims to generate high-quality, complete reference genomes of all 66,000 known vertebrate species.

The genomes of the other five species of sea turtle are currently being mapped. The new data will enable scientists to advance their understanding of these reptiles’ defenses against disease, as well as other aspects of their evolution.

“Our analysis of D. coriacea and C. mydas identified differences between the two species in the number of genes associated with immunity. It also enabled us to locate the main histocompatibility complex [MHC], which contains crucial genes for the response to pathogens,” said Blair Bentley, first author of the article and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts (UMass Amherst) in the United States.

The genomic data can be used to investigate this and other diseases, he added, as well as furnishing directions for future treatment and conservation actions.

Second thoughts

“Sea turtles evolve very slowly and are vulnerable to extinction, so it’s important to understand which genes enable them to succeed in the marine environment. This is reflected in mutations and the number of gene copies,” said Mariana Freitas Nery, a professor at IB-UNICAMP and also one of the co-authors of the article.

Nery is principal investigator for a project supported by FAPESP to investigate the genomes of species whose ancestors abandoned the aquatic environment and adapted to life on land, only to return to a watery existence. “We imagine them having second thoughts,” she quipped (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/35827).

Sea turtles diverged from terrestrial ancestors that returned to the sea some 100 million years ago. D. coriacea and C. mydas separated about 60 million years ago, but their genomes are still mostly identical owing to the group’s slow evolution. 

Among the differences detected are genes associated with olfactory sensors. Although they live in the oceans, marine turtles breathe air and have a terrestrial ancestor. They therefore have sensors that detect molecules in the air and sensors that perceive molecules dissolved in water. Such perceptions are essential for migration and reproduction, as well as for identifying prey, predators, and other members of the same species.

“C. mydas lives nearer the coast and has more contact with pollution and other adverse conditions than D. coriacea, which spends most of its life in deep water. Furthermore, C. mydas has a varied diet whereas D. coriacea migrates great distances to feed on jellyfish,” Ramos said.

The researchers fear slow evolution makes sea turtles unfit for adaptation to rapid environmental changes, including those caused by the climate crisis. “In the case of D. coriacea, for example, we show that diversity is low in the functional regions of the genome, suggesting these populations may not be able to adapt to the rapid rise in temperature due to human activity,” Bentley said.

About São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)

The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) is a public institution with the mission of supporting scientific research in all fields of knowledge by awarding scholarships, fellowships and grants to investigators linked with higher education and research institutions in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. FAPESP is aware that the very best research can only be done by working with the best researchers internationally. Therefore, it has established partnerships with funding agencies, higher education, private companies, and research organizations in other countries known for the quality of their research and has been encouraging scientists funded by its grants to further develop their international collaboration. You can learn more about FAPESP at www.fapesp.br/en and visit FAPESP news agency at www.agencia.fapesp.br/en to keep updated with the latest scientific breakthroughs FAPESP helps achieve through its many programs, awards and research centers. You may also subscribe to FAPESP news agency at http://agencia.fapesp.br/subscribe.

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2201076120 

ARTICLE TITLE

Divergent sensory and immune gene evolution in sea turtles with contrasting demographic and life histories

Study finds elevated levels of toxic metals in some mixed-fruit juices and soft drinks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TULANE UNIVERSITY

A new study has found that some commonly consumed beverages contained levels of toxic metals that exceed federal drinking water standards.  

Five of the 60 beverages tested contained levels of a toxic metal above federal drinking water standards, according to the study from Tulane University. Two mixed juices had levels of arsenic above the 10 microgram/liter standard. A cranberry juice, a mixed carrot and fruit juice and an oat milk each had levels of cadmium exceeding the 3 parts per billion standard.

The sampled beverages, which included those commonly found in grocery stores – single and mixed fruit juices, plant-based milks, sodas, and teas – were measured for 25 different toxic metals and trace elements. Mixed-fruit juices and plant-based milks (such as oat and almond) contained elevated concentrations of toxic metals more often than other drinks, according to the findings published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis.

All told, seven of the 25 elements exceeded drinking water standards in some of the drinks, including nickel, manganese, boron, cadmium, strontium, arsenic, and selenium. While lead was detected in more than 93% of the 60 samples, most contained very low levels, below 1 part per billion. The highest level (6.3 micrograms/kg ) was found in a lime sports drink, though that’s below both EPA and WHO standards for drinking water.

Tewodros Godebo, lead author and assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said the study was important because there are few peer-reviewed studies examining the contents of American beverages.

"It was surprising that there aren’t a lot of studies out there concerning toxic and essential elements in soft drinks in the United States," Godebo said. "This creates awareness that there needs to be more study."

These soft drinks are often consumed in smaller quantities than water, meaning the health risks for adults are most likely low. But Godebo said parents should be cautious about what drinks they offer their children.

“People should avoid giving infants and young children mixed-fruit juices or plant-based milks at high volume,” Godebo said. “Arsenic, lead, and cadmium are known carcinogens and well established to cause internal organ damage and cognitive harm in children especially during early brain development."

Godebo said most of these elements found in beverages presumably come from contaminated soil.

“These metals are naturally occurring so it’s hard to get rid of completely,” Godebo said.

Hannah Stoner and Julia Ashmead, Tulane University students who participated in the study, said they hope the findings encourage people to think more about what they consume.

“I don’t think there needs to be fear,” Stoner said. “In toxicity, it’s the dosage that often makes the difference so everything in moderation. But this creates awareness that there needs to be more study.” 

Godebo said the next step is to conduct a risk assessment based on the data collected to see the impacts of consuming toxic metals in children and adults.

“We are curious to keep exploring what’s in our drinks and foods commercially sold to the consumers,” Godebo said.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Food Composition and Analysis

DOI

10.1016/j.jfca.2023.105230 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Toxic metals and essential elements contents in commercially available fruit juices and other non-alcoholic beverages from the United States