Wednesday, August 09, 2023

Booster shot being developed to avoid recapturing koalas to fight Chlamydia disease


QUT researchers are developing a booster vaccine to “let koalas be koalas” using implant technology in the fight against the deadly Chlamydia disease that’s decimated local colonies.


Grant and Award Announcement

QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

Booster shot being developed to avoid recapturing koalas to fight Chlamydia disease 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR KEN BEAGLEY, CENTRE, AND HIS TEAM ARE DEVELOPING A BOOSTER VACCINE USING IMPLANT TECHNOLOGY FOR KOALAS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST THE DEADLY CHLAMYDIA DISEASE. L/R- PROFESSOR TIM DARGAVILLE, HOLDING AN IMPLANT, PROFESSOR KEN BEAGLEY, DR EMILY BRYAN AND FREYA MCCARTHY (BACKGROUND). view more 

CREDIT: QUT MEDIA



A booster vaccine using implant technology for koalas is being developed by QUT researchers in the fight against the deadly Chlamydia disease.

The new technology is designed to avoid problems for wild koalas and wildlife handlers having to recapture or hold the animals for 30 days, to receive a second immunisation.

  • Koala chlamydia is a bacterial infection and is one of the leading causes of death for Australian koalas.
  • QUT researchers have been successfully testing a two-shot vaccine on an isolated wild koala colony in a five-year treat-and-track study.
  • The new booster vaccine will be like other drug-eluting implant devices used in humans, slightly larger than a pet microchip.

Professor Ken Beagley, from QUT’s School of Biomedical Science, is leading the research team after being awarded a health grant to develop the technology from the Saving Koalas Fund

“This technology will significantly increase our ability to vaccinate wild koalas to protect against chlamydial infections, a major cause of infertility and population decline,” Professor Beagley said.

Professor Beagley developed the first koala vaccine for Chlamydia in 2010. Since then, the leading immunologist spearheaded the first immunisations of a wild koala colony in the Gold Coast hinterland after 10 years developing the vaccine in the lab.

Working with Dr Michael Pyne OAM and the team at Currumbin Wildlife Hospital, the project has now resulted in up to 300 vaccinated koalas, with grand joeys being born to healthy females, using a two-shot vaccine approach.

Development of one-shot vaccine implants to further protect koalas against Chlamydia will allow in-the-field vaccination of wild koalas.

“It will also allow all koalas being treated at Currumbin Wildlife hospital and other koala care facilities, to be vaccinated prior to release, without the need to hold the animals for a further 30 days,” he said.

“We want a vaccine that reduces human interference, letting koalas be koalas.”

The implant device is being designed to release the booster at four to five weeks after the first vaccination.

Professor Beagley is working with QUT polymer chemist Professor Tim Dargaville and postdoctoral research fellow Dr Emily Bryan to develop the device.

The grant is worth $749, 687 with the research to be completed by April 2026.

A project partner involves the Currumbin Wildlife Hospital Foundation.

Koala chlamydia is a bacterial infection and one of the leading causes of death for Australian koalas

Does access to assisted suicide affect trends of conventional suicide among patients with cancer?


Peer-Reviewed Publication

WILEY




An analysis published in Cancer Medicine reveals the trends of self-initiated deaths—including assisted suicide (AS) and conventional suicide (CS)—in Switzerland over a 20-year period, focusing on people who suffered from cancer. Although supporters of assisted dying state that access to AS should lead to a reduction in violent CS, the study’s findings do not confirm this assumption. The situations and motivations for cancer-associated CS seem to be clearly different from those for cancer-related AS.

In Switzerland, assisting in a suicide is not punishable as long as it does not serve selfish motives. In this analysis of data from 1999–2018, investigators found that cancer was the most often listed principal disease for AS: 3,580 people with cancer died by AS, representing 41.0% of AS cases. Cancer was listed in only a small minority of CS cases (832 people, representing 3.8% of CS cases).

There was approximately a doubling of AS cases among patients with cancer every 5 years. Also, the percentage of cancer-associated AS in relationship with all cancer-associated deaths increased over time to 2.3% in 2014–2018. The numbers of cancer-associated CS showed a downward trend in 1999–2003 and were stable through 2009–2018.

“Obviously, the situations and motivations for cancer-associated CS seem to be clearly different from those for cancer-related AS,” said corresponding author Uwe Güth, MD, of the University of Basel.

URL upon publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cam4.6323

 

Additional Information
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About the Journal
Cancer Medicine is a peer-reviewed, open access, interdisciplinary journal providing rapid publication of research from global biomedical researchers across the cancer sciences. 

About Wiley
Wiley is a knowledge company and a global leader in research, publishing, and knowledge solutions. Dedicated to the creation and application of knowledge, Wiley serves the world’s researchers, learners, innovators, and leaders, helping them achieve their goals and solve the world's most important challenges. For more than two centuries, Wiley has been delivering on its timeless mission to unlock human potential. Visit us at Wiley.com. Follow us on FacebookTwitterLinkedIn and Instagram.

 

New survey confirms need for more menopause education in residency programs


Lack of standardized menopause curriculum and access to menopause-specific educational materials leaves many healthcare professionals ill-equipped to manage needs of record numbers of menopausal women


Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE MENOPAUSE SOCIETY




CLEVELAND, Ohio (August 9, 2023)—Despite the fact that nearly 90 million women in the United States are projected to be postmenopausal by 2060, menopause remains low on the priority list of many residency programs. A new survey reveals the lack of a standardized menopause curriculum and limited access to menopause educational resources for residents. Results of the survey are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The Menopause Society.  

Because women today are living longer, it is not surprising that there are a record number of postmenopausal women. And, that number is only expected to grow, with women spending roughly onethird of their lifetimes in menopause. Despite the increased demand for menopause care and education, many obstetrics and gynecology trainees graduate from their residency programs with gaps in their education regarding the management of menopause symptoms and related conditions.  

When the last needs assessment was published for menopause education in 2013, it confirmed that most residents felt that they had limited knowledge and needed to learn more about the various areas of menopause medicine, including hormone therapy and bone health and related conditions such as cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. At the time, only 20.8% of residents stated that their program had a formal menopause curriculum. Based on the results of this newest survey, it appears that the situation has not improved much, with only 31.3% of the obstetrics and gynecology residency program directors who responded reporting they had any type of menopause curriculum as part of their residents’ training. Nearly 20% claimed they had a curriculum confined to a rotation block.  

Of the programs with a menopause curriculum, 96.8% used lectures and 77.4% used assigned readings. All programs with a menopause curriculum included five or fewer menopause lectures per year for trainees, with 71.0% reporting two or fewer lectures per year. Of the respondents, 83.8% agreed or strongly agreed that their program needs more menopause educational resources.  

Based on the results, researchers concluded that, nationally, most obstetrics and gynecology training programs lack the curriculum necessary to effectively prepare residents to manage menopausal women. Moreover, there is a lack of consistency in the menopause curriculums that do exist such that there is no true level of standardized care.  

Survey results are published in the article “Needs assessment of menopause education in United States obstetrics and gynecology residency training programs.”

“This study highlights the ongoing problem of the lack of education of medical trainees in menopause management. An easily accessible, standardized menopause curriculum would benefit trainees across  multiple residency training programs, including obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, and family medicine, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all women have access to competent menopause care,” says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director for The Menopause Society.  

For more information about menopause and healthy aging, visit www.menopause.org.  

The Menopause Society (formerly The North American Menopause Society) is dedicated to empowering healthcare professionals and providing them with the tools and resources to improve the health of women during the menopause transition and beyond. As the leading authority on menopause since 1989, the nonprofit, multidisciplinary organization serves as the independent, evidence-based resource for healthcare professionals, researchers, the media, and the public and leads the conversation about improving women’s health and healthcare experiences. To learn more, visit menopause.org. 

The voices of indigenous peoples and local communities as an important part of the climate fight

Coinciding with the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, an ICTA-UAB study calls for indigenous peoples' in-depth knowledge of climate change to be considered.

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA

Swahili people in Kenya 

IMAGE: OCTOPUS HUNTER IN WASINI ISLAND, KENYA SWAHILI PEOPLE IN KENYA_ view more 

CREDIT: AUTHOR MOUNA CHAMBON




Coinciding with the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, an ICTA-UAB study calls for indigenous peoples' in-depth knowledge of climate change to be considered.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities around the world have a rich and extensive general knowledge of climate change impacts and possible ways to adapt. This knowledge should be recognised by both science and climate policy.

This is the main conclusion of an international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) which has spent five years analysing and providing detailed data on how Indigenous Peoples and local communities perceive and respond to the impacts of climate change in their territories. 

Led by Victoria Reyes-García, ICREA researcher at ICTA-UAB, the Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts (LICCI) project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), has analysed 52 case studies in indigenous and local communities around the world. The project has benefited from the invaluable collaboration of a network of researchers.

The findings show that Indigenous Peoples and local communities are disproportionately affected by climate change, as they often live in climate hotspots and depend on nature-based livelihoods. Societies often marginalised due to historical and ongoing inequalities, climate change is only one among several challenges they face within a wider context of environmental degradation.

The results show that these communities have a rich and nuanced knowledge of climate change impact adaptation methods. "Connected with their natural environment across generations, they have a holistic understanding of the cascading effects of climate change impacts, from changes in atmospheric, physical and biological systems to impacts on their livelihoods," explains Victoria Reyes-García. 

The case studies cover a range of topics, such as how weather instability makes farming increasingly difficult in Peru or Mexico and sea-ice hunting extremely risky in the Arctic regions, or how changing tides and temperatures on shallow reefs make it difficult to catch octopi in Wasini Island in Kenya. The research covers communities ranging from Koryak reindeer herders in Siberia, Russia, to those in northern Kenya or Puna Seca in Argentina, fishermen on the Juruá River in Brazil, Inuit in Nunavut, Canada, Quechua farmers in Peru, Mapuche-Pehuenche in southern Chile, and indigenous people in Fiji.

Results stress that the adaptive responses of indigenous peoples and local communities to the impacts of climate change are varied and can inspire effective adaptation pathways for other vulnerable communities. Yet, despite their valuable expertise, their knowledge is not taken into account enough in climate change reporting and policies, even in regions where data is scarce due to their difficult access or when the adaptation measures are applied in their territories.

Therefore, researchers claim that "as legitimate custodians of knowledge regarding climate change and its impacts on the local environment, Indigenous Peoples and local communities should have a more central role in the scientific and political processes of understanding and adapting to climate change” and call for institutions involved in assessing impacts and designing adaptation policies and plans at local, national, and international levels to incorporate them into decision-making. 

They also call for special attention to be paid to the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including respect for their sovereignty as well as to the rights of other nature-dependent communities, ensuring that they genuinely participate in assessment, decision-making and redress mechanisms.

 

New Antarctic extremes ‘virtually certain’ as world warms


Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

Penguins and a seal on the Antarctic Peninsula 

IMAGE: PENGUINS AND A SEAL ON THE ANTARCTIC PENINSULA view more 

CREDIT: PROF ANNA E. HOGG, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS




Extreme events in Antarctica such as ocean heatwaves and ice loss will almost certainly become more common and more severe, researchers say.

With drastic action now needed to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C, the scientists warn that recent extremes in Antarctica may be the tip of the iceberg. 

The study reviews evidence of extreme events in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, including weather, sea ice, ocean temperatures, glacier and ice shelf systems, and biodiversity on land and sea.

It concludes that Antarctica’s fragile environments “may well be subject to considerable stress and damage in future years and decades” – and calls for urgent policy action to protect it.

“Antarctic change has global implications,” said lead author Professor Martin Siegert, from the University of Exeter.
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero is our best hope of preserving Antarctica, and this must matter to every country – and individual – on the planet.”

Professor Siegert said the rapid changes now happening in Antarctica could place many countries in breach of an international treaty.

“Signatories to the Antarctic Treaty (including the UK, USA, India and China) pledge to preserve the environment of this remote and fragile place,” he said.

“Nations must understand that by continuing to explore, extract and burn fossil fuels anywhere in the world, the environment of Antarctica will become ever more affected in ways inconsistent with their pledge.”

The researchers considered the vulnerability of Antarctica to a range of extreme events, to understand the causes and likely future changes – following a series of recent extremes. 

For example, the world’s largest recorded heatwave (38.5°C above the mean) occurred in East Antarctica in 2022 and, at present, winter sea ice formation is the lowest on record. 

Extreme events can also affect biodiversity. For example, high temperatures have been linked to years with lower krill numbers, leading to breeding failures of krill-reliant predators – evidenced by many dead fur seal pups on beaches.

Co-author Professor Anna Hogg, from the University of Leeds, said: “Our results show that while extreme events are known to impact the globe through heavy rainfall and flooding, heatwaves and wildfires, such as those seen in Europe this summer, they also impact the remote polar regions.

“Antarctic glaciers, sea ice and natural ecosystems are all impacted by extreme events. Therefore, it is essential that international treaties and policy are implemented in order to protect these beautiful but delicate regions.”

Dr Caroline Holmes, a sea ice expert at British Antarctic Survey, said: "Antarctic sea ice has been grabbing headlines in recent weeks, and this paper shows how sea ice records – first record highs but, since 2017, record lows – have been tumbling in Antarctica for several years. 

“On top of that, there are deep interconnections between extreme events in different aspects of the Antarctic physical and biological system, almost all of them vulnerable to human influence in some way."

The retreat of Antarctic sea ice will make new areas accessible by ships, and the researchers say careful management will be required to protect vulnerable sites.

The European Space Agency and European Commission Copernicus Sentinel satellites are an essential tool for regular monitoring of the whole Antarctic region and Southern Ocean. 

This data can be used to measure ice speed, sea ice thickness and ice loss at exceptionally fine resolution. 

The paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science, is entitled, Antarctic Extreme Events.
 

Huge tipping events dominated the evolution of the climate system


For the last 66 million years, the climate system was dominated by two significant climate events, dividing the period into two distinct climate eras


Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN - FACULTY OF SCIENCE

A brief overview of the findings. 

IMAGE: TWO MAJOR CLIMATE EVENTS DOMINATED THE LAST 66 MILLION YEARS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. view more 

CREDIT: TIPES/HP



 

An analysis of the hierarchy of tipping points suggests that during the last 66 million years two events set the scene for further climate tipping and for the evolution of the climate system in particular. If the anthropogenic climate change of today leads to complete deglaciation, the evolution of Earth's climate will be influenced on a geological time scale, the authors suggest. The work by Denis-Didier Rousseau, Université Montpellier, France, Witold Bagniewski, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, and Valerio Lucarini, University of Reading, UK is published in Scientific Reports and is part of the European TiPES project on tipping points in the Earth System.
 
Inspired by a theory of evolution
 
The new insight into the history of climate change was inspired by the theory of punctuated equilibrium which ranks evolutionary changes into hierarchies.
 
The idea was introduced in the 70'ies by Eldredge and Gould as an alternative to classic evolution theory. Punctuated equilibrium proposes that some evolutionary changes determine the evolution of a species more than others. And it explains why species have a tendency to adapt in short evolutionary spurts, rather than gradually over time.
 
Rousseau et al. speculated that a similar approach of ranking the importance of historical climate changes through tipping events might prove equally beneficial. For that, they applied advanced statistical methods to two series of climate data with clear signs of critical transitions.
 
The results indeed suggest that the idea of hierarchies in the evolution of the climate system can lead to new insights. The analysis reveals that two major events out of the ten dominated the evolution of the Earth's climate system over the last 66 million years.
 
A hierarchy of climate tipping events
 
The first event was the Chicxulub meteor impact in Mexico which killed off the large dinosaurs approximately 65,5 million years ago. This catastrophe marked the beginning of a very warm period with high levels of CO2. For the following 30 million years this regime dictated which climatic changes were possible and kept it within the regime of hot and warm climates.
 
The second crucial event was the tipping point associated with the glaciation of the Southern hemisphere 34 million years ago when the Antarctic continent was isolated at the South Pole due to plate tectonics. The forming of the large ice sheet led to the glaciation of the North as well and marked the beginning of a considerably colder type of climate on Earth, again dictating the scope of future climate changes.
 
The analysis additionally suggests that our current global climate system still belongs to the latter climate regime and still depends on the existence of the gigantic ice bodies built within the Coolhouse/Icehouse era.
 
Serious repercussions
 
In the event that the ice sheets should not withstand anthropogenic global warming, the deglaciation will therefore represent a landmark tipping point similar to the two that have dominated Earth's history leading to a new unknown climate landscape.
 
”The ice sheets are key components in the present climate system. But they are very sensitive. They presently experience a negative mass balance, and there are numerous reports of evidence of melting under the impact of the current climate warming, translating a trend towards a potential tipping point that could accelerate the disappearance at least of Greenland and West Antarctica, with serious repercussions for our societies” says Denis-Didier Rousseau.
 
“Crossing tipping points has been a recurrent feature in climate evolution. Our study reveals a better understanding now of the mathematics of such events. As a consequence, strategies of adaptation to and mitigation of climate change should now take into account the possible destabilization of tipping elements,” adds Valerio Lucarini.
 
The TiPES project is an EU Horizon 2020 interdisciplinary climate science project on tipping points in the Earth system. 18 partner institutions work together in more than 10 countries. TiPES is coordinated and led by The Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany. The TiPES project has received funding from the European Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, grant agreement number 820970.

Carbon dioxide – not water – triggers explosive basaltic volcanoes


Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY




ITHACA, N.Y. – Geoscientists have long thought that water – along with shallow magma stored in Earth’s crust – drives volcanoes to erupt. Now, thanks to newly developed research tools at Cornell, scientists have learned that gaseous carbon dioxide can trigger explosive eruptions.

A new model suggests that basaltic volcanoes, typically located on the interior of tectonic plates, are fed by a deep magma within the mantle, stored about 20 to 30 kilometers below Earth’s surface.

The research, which offers a clearer picture of our planet’s deep internal dynamics and composition, with implications for improving volcanic-hazards planning, published August 7, 2023 at 3:00pm ET in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We used to think all the action happened in the crust,” said senior author Esteban Gazel, the Charles N. Mellowes Professor in Engineering in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, in Cornell Engineering. “Our data implies the magma comes directly from the mantle – passing fast through the crust ­– driven by the exsolution (the process phase of separating gas from liquid) of carbon dioxide.

“This completely changes the paradigm of how these eruptions happen,” Gazel said. “All volcanic models had been dominated by water as the main eruption driver, but water has little to do with these volcanoes. It’s carbon dioxide that brings this magma from the deep Earth.”

About four years ago, Gazel and Charlotte DeVitre, Ph.D. ’22, now a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Berkeley, developed a high-precision carbon dioxide densimeter (which measures density in a tiny vessel) for Raman spectroscopy (a device that examines scattered photons through a microscope).

The natural samples – microscopic-sized carbon dioxide rich bubbles trapped in crystals emanating from the volcanic eruption – are then measured via Raman and quantified applying the newly developed densimeter. Essentially, the scientists are examining a microscopic time capsule to provide a history of the magma. This new technique is critical for near real-time precise estimations of magma storage, tested during the 2021 eruption in Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands by Gazel’s group.

Further, the scientists developed methods to assess the effect of laser heating on carbon-dioxide rich inclusions (found swathed in the crystals), and to accurately assess melt inclusion and bubble volumes. They also developed an experimental reheating method to increase accuracy and properly account for carbon dioxide trapped as carbonate crystals inside the bubbles.

“The method of development and instrument design were challenging, especially during the height of the pandemic,” Gazel said.

Using these new tools, the scientists scrutinized volcanic deposits from the Fogo volcano in Cabo Verde, west of Senegal in the Atlantic Ocean. They found a high concentration of volatiles in the micro-sized melt inclusions encased within the magnesium-iron silicate crystals. The higher amount of carbon dioxide enclosed in the crystals suggested that the magma was stored tens of kilometers below the surface – within the Earth’s mantle.

The group also discovered that this process is connected to the deep mantle source that supply these volcanoes.

This implies that eruptions such as Fogo’s volcanic flareups start and are fed from the mantle, effectively bypassing storage in the Earth’s crust and driven by deep carbon dioxide, according to the paper.

“These magmas have extremely low viscosities and come directly from the mantle,” DeVitre said. “So here, viscosity and water cannot play the common roles that they do in shallower and/or more silicic (rich in silica) volcanic systems. Rather at Fogo volcano the magma must be driven up fast by the carbon dioxide and this likely plays a significant role in its explosive behavior. This is a major step in our understanding of the controls on basaltic explosivity.”

Comprehending magma storage helps best prepare society for future eruptions, said Gazel, who is also a faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.

“As deep magma storage will not be detected by ground deformation until the melt is close to surface,” he said, “this has important repercussions to our understanding of volcanic hazards. We need to understand the drivers of these eruptions. The only way to see these processes now is by observing earthquakes, but earthquakes don’t tell you exactly what’s happening.”

Said Gazel: “With precise measurements that tell us where eruptions start, where magmas melt and where they are stored – and what triggers the eruption – we can develop a much better plan for future eruptions.”

In addition to Gazel and DeVitre, the other authors of “Oceanic Intraplate Explosive Eruptions Fed Directly from the Mantle” are Ricardo S. Ramalho, Cardiff University, Wales, U.K.; Swetha Venugopal, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Universities Space Research Association, Houston; Matthew Steele-MacInnis, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta; Junlin Hua, University of Texas, Austin; Chelsea M. Allison, Baylor University, Waco, Texas; Lowell R. Moore, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia; Juan Carlos Carracedo, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain; and Brian Monteleone, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts.

Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation. Data was also collected in the Biotechnology Resource Center at Cornell University; and by the Cornell Institute of Biotechnology's Imaging Facility, which is funded through National Institutes of Health.

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