Deprived teens with poor learning skills at greatest risk from email scams, says expert

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Disadvantaged teenagers are at greater risk of email scams and need better protection, according to an international study published in the peer-reviewed British Journal of Educational Studies. 

 

Findings based on more than 170,000 students aged 15 show that one in five from low-income families or deprived areas could fall victim to phishing. This is much higher than the probability for the age group overall. Email scams leave people vulnerable to identity theft, putting young people at risk of financial fraud and having their savings stripped.  

 

The most vulnerable are those who also have poor learning skills according to the data from 38 countries including the UK, US and Japan.  

 

Furthermore, the study highlights that students who are taught about the dangers of digital fraud are just as likely to respond inappropriately to these emails as pupils who have received no specific education on the topic. 

 

Author Professor John Jerrim says this highlights a gap in education provision. He is now urging schools to provide more – and better quality – teaching on how to recognize online harms including phishing emails.  

 

“Socio-economically disadvantaged groups are – at least in some countries – at greater risk from phishing attacks than their more advantaged peers,” says Professor Jerrim from University College London in England. 

 

“This is largely driven by socio-economic differences in cognitive abilities. Unfortunately, current attempts by schools to address this issue do not seem to be particularly effective. 

 

“Teenagers taught in the classroom about the risks appear to be just as likely to take inappropriate action. More needs to be done to help young people navigate what is becoming an increasingly complex and dangerous online world.  

 

“This is particularly true for some of the most vulnerable groups who are most at risk of falling for attempts at digital fraud.” 

 

More than 3 billion spam emails are sent every day and phishing is one of the most common attempts at cyber fraud. 

 

Current research into who is most susceptible to this crime tends to focus on older people, not school-age children. Little is known about the efficacy of schools’ attempts to teach young people how to recognize and react appropriately.  

 

Data for this study was based on 176,186 children who took part in the 2018 Programme for International Assessment (PISA), a triennial survey run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  

 

PISA examines what students in OECD countries know in reading, science, and mathematics. Pupils must complete a two-hour ability test then a questionnaire.  

 

The 2018 PISA asked pupils how they would respond to a made-up scenario where a mobile-phone company told them via email they had won a smartphone. The sender asked them to click a link and fill out their data to claim the phone. 

 

Possible responses included answering the email to request more details, checking the sender’s email address, clicking on the link, and filling out the form as soon as possible.  

 

Professor Jerrim’s study focused on answers to the third response and asked pupils if they had been taught how to detect phishing or spam emails. 

 

Results showed that Japanese teens were least likely to respond (4%) to the email than anywhere else in the world.  

 

The proportion in Denmark, Sweden and Finland who responded was significantly lower (6-7%) than in other developed countries.  

 

Teenagers in Mexico (30%) and Chile (27%) were most at risk – almost a quarter were likely to respond. The figure for the UK was 9%.  

 

No gender difference was found – boys were just as likely to respond as girls. However, teenagers from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds were markedly more likely to click the link. 

 

The biggest gap was based on cognitive skill with a quarter of low achieving students saying they believed clicking was the appropriate response. This compared with only 5% of those in the top reading scores.  

 

The study also investigated whether students who receive instruction from their school about the dangers of phishing emails are at less risk of being fooled. 

 

In addition, results showed ‘no clear evidence’ that students who received instruction from their school on phishing email dangers were at less risk. 

 

Limitations of the study included the fact it is based on responses to survey questions. Professor Jerrim said this meant the research did not necessarily capture how teenagers would respond in real life. 

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JOURNAL

British Journal of Educational Studies

DOI

10.1080/00071005.2023.2234456 

ARTICLE TITLE

Who responds to phishing emails? An international investigation of 15-year-olds using PISA data

 

Worm aggregates leverage uneven terrain to collectively move through narrow spaces

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TOHOKU UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: A WORMBALL CONSISTING OF MANY TUBIFICINE WORMS view more 

CREDIT: TAISHI MIKAMI ET AL.

Tubificine worms are segmented worms that are capable of forming entangled blobs that behave as a single organism to adapt to extreme environmental conditions or migrate more efficiently. Individual worms are capable of elongating, entwining an uneven area of terrain and dragging the collective worm ball through a narrow passageway.

A group of scientists from Tohoku University and Hiroshima University recently created an uneven and confined terrain to study the collective movement of worm blobs. The artificial terrain resembled a dumbbell shape with three small posts on each side. The worm blob was confined to one side of the terrain by a narrow passageway that the blob couldn't move through without narrowing its spherical shape. The researchers successfully simulated the collective movements of the worms to facilitate the design of future swarm robotic systems, or systems of many individual components that must work collectively, using soft-bodied agents.

The team published their findings in the August 29 issue of Frontiers in Nanorobotics.

"Previous studies on the locomotion mechanisms of swarms of worm-shaped organisms have focused on locomotion in flat environments, but it was still unclear how they move in real-world environments, which have confined spaces and convex and concave environments, by exploiting interindividual physical interactions," said Takeshi Kano, principal investigator of the study and associate professor at the Research Institute of Electrical Communication at Tohoku University in Sendai.

"In contrast, we investigated the mechanism of the adaptive locomotor behavior of worm-shaped organisms in a confined environment," said Kano. "These behavioral experiments in environments with various boundary conditions helped us understand how the worms collectively move in complex environments... by exploiting physical connection-based interactions among the individual worms."

When worms form blobs, the worms on the outer edge of the blob keep their heads in the inside of the blob and their tails facing the outside. Based on preliminary experiments using only a few worms, the research team hypothesized that exposing worm blobs to a chemical repellent would cause some worms from the blob to move away from the repellent by moving their heads out of the blob and extending outwards.

The team further hypothesized that individual worms from the worm blobs would extend their heads from the blob in their confined, dumbbell-shaped terrain and join to form a growing appendage of sorts, or pseudopod, that could entwine with the pegs on the far side of the terrain. The pseudopod would then pull and deform the blob through the narrow terrain passageway while enlarging the pseudopod with more worms.

Subsequent experiments supported the team's hypothesis. "Our results suggest that the worm blobs maintained their hemispherical shape in the open arena. However, in a confined channel with several pegs, the blob could deform flexibly and move effectively using the pegs," said Kano.

Importantly, the team was able to accurately simulate the worm blob behaviors mathematically, providing a means to replicate the individual and collective movements of the worm blobs in artificial systems, such as swarm robotics, that require many individual components to move collectively.

While the formation of the worm blob provides some measure of protection to tubificine worms from negative environmental conditions and predators, maintaining a blob-like structure when moving through tight spaces is impractical, according to the researchers. The primary advantage of their spherical structure is likely the growth of pseudopod structures that allow the worms to explore their environment for features of the terrain they can exploit for movement away from poor environments.

The team expects their worm blob modeling to be used in the design of future swarm robotic systems. Further experiments will need to be conducted, however, to simulate worm blob movements in more complex environments and to create simulations that account for the bending ability of worms.

Results of behavioral (top left) and simulation (bottom left) experiments in (a) a case without pegs and (b) a case with pegs. The worm ball in (a) moved back and forth faster than that in (b). (c) Magnified view of the worms.

Schematic of worm ball movement. Protrusion first grows from the worm ball. When reaching the pegs, it drags the other worms.

CREDIT

Taishi Mikami et al.

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Neurorobotics

DOI

10.3389/fnbot.2023.1207374 

ARTICLE TITLE

Elongating, entwining, and dragging: mechanism for adaptive locomotion of tubificine worm blobs in a confined environment

 

Bielefeld researchers using European supercomputers

Researchers at Bielefeld University have landed computing time on European supercomputers LUMI-G and Leonardo.

Grant and Award Announcement

BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY

Supercomputers are often indispensable in modern scientific research: they are an essential tool for processing the ever-increasing volumes of data needed for statistics, forecasts, and other calculations across a wide range of disciplines.
The collaborative ‘European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking’ (https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu) project has invested a great deal of funding into the construction of new European flagship supercomputers over the past years. Since June 2023, the supercomputers ‘LUMI’ in Finland and ‘Leonardo’ in Italy came in third and fourth place in the global ranking of the 500 most powerful supercomputers around the globe. First place is currently held by the ‘Frontier’ supercomputer in the United States, and second by ‘Fugaku’ in Japan.

As responsible project leads for an international team of scientists, Bielefeld researchers Dr. Olaf Kaczmarek and Dr. Christian Schimdt-Sonntag were successful in the first round of a call for applications for computing time on these systems. The won out over myriad competitors from around the world in a rigorous application review process and have now been allocated 60 mil-lion core hours on LUMI-G and 22 million core hours on Leonardo – corresponding to the annual computing power of 20,000 and 6,000 laptops, respectively. This computing time will facilitate their research, which investigates the properties of matter under extreme conditions.

This research into extreme conditions of matter deals with temperatures and particle densities that are, for instance, believed to have been present in our universe shortly after the Big Bang, but also with temperatures and particle densities similar to those produced and measured in heavy ion experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the ‘CERN’ European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, and in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Accelerator (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Long Island, New York. These research projects are part of the Collaborative Research Centre TransRegio 211, ‘Strong-Interaction Matter under Extreme Conditions’ (https://crc-tr211.org/), which brings together researchers from the Goethe University Frankfurt, Bielefeld University, and the Technical University of Darmstadt.
As members of the North Rhine-Westphalian Competence Network for High-Performance Computing (HPC.NRW), a consortium that was recently extended through the end of 2025, Olaf Kaczmarek and Christian Schmidt-Sonntag provide support to Bielefeld researchers and their projects at the Bielefeld GPU Cluster, and also offer advice on how to apply for computing time at other supercomputers in the region, namely in Germany and Europe.  

For more information, please see:

•    SIMULATEeQCD: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7994982
•    BNL News zum Projekt über schwere Quarks: https://www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=121223
•    PUNCH4NFDI: https://www.punch2nfdi.de
•    HPC.NRW: https://hpc.dh.nrw/de/
 

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METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

Disclaimer: AAAS and Eure

 

COVID-19: Lessons from the Pandemic

Why Sweden got it right, but most countries did not

Book Announcement

WORLD SCIENTIFIC

 

IMAGE: COVER FOR "EVALUATING A PANDEMIC" view more 

CREDIT: WORLD SCIENTIFIC

 

‘Let us remember the lessons of the coronavirus to usher in a new era on a global scale with different personal and collective behaviour so that everyone, not just a few, enjoys the dignified life that is their due. We have to remember that we cannot go back to “pre-COVID”. We have to keep in mind that the circumstances before the pandemic most likely contributed in some way to the situation as have had to live it. A radical change of course is indispensable and urgent…”

~Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Former Director-General of UNESCO and Former Member of the European Parliament.

Where did COVID-19 originate? Prof Angus Dalgleish shows that the virus that emerged in Wuhan, China in 2019 had been modified in a laboratory to make it more infectious (for the construction of a more effective vaccine). Unfortunately the virus appears to have leaked out of the institute laboratory and so caused some seven million deaths worldwide. Professor Dalgleish’s conclusion has recently been vindicated by others, including science author Matt Ridley and public bodies like the US Senate, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the US Department of Energy.

A multi-author volume, the chapters in Evaluating a Pandemic

In this book, the COVID-19 outbreak is compared with previous epidemics that have occurred in the past. The aim of this book is to provide a review of the situation from 2020 to 2022, and to consider how to react in future epidemics. Readers will find the contrast between the economic consequences of lockdown in Sweden and the UK particularly illuminating.

This volume begins with the source of the SARS-COV-2 virus, before proceeding to analyse the high-speed development, manufacturing and distribution of ‘classical’ and novel vaccines against COVID-19. It also presents an assessment of the diagnostics used to identify infected patients and prevent the spread of the virus to those at risk of severe disease and death, and how lessons learned from them can help us confront future epidemic and endemic diseases. Evaluating a Pandemic includes scholarly analyses of various countries’ responses to the pandemic and their respective economic and sociological aftermaths, and discusses what we can learn from them.

This publication is a valuable resource for scientists, clinicians, psychologists, economists, bureaucrats, and politicians who deal with or write policies in preparation for future endemic and/or pandemic diseases. Historians and sociologists may benefit from the information collected and presented within.

Evaluating a Pandemic retails for US$78 / £60 (hardcover) and is also available in electronic formats. To order or know more about the book, visit http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/13039.

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About the Editor

Professor Charles Pasternak is a British biochemist and founding Director of the Oxford International Biomedical Centre, of which he is currently President. He has published over 250 original papers and reviews, and is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Bioscience Reports, helming the journal for 28 years. He is also the editor of Biosciences 2000 (World Scientific, 1999), and author of eight other books.

Educated at Oxford University, Charles Pasternak spent 15 years on the staff of the Oxford Biochemistry Department, during which time he also held a teaching Fellowship at Worcester College, Oxford. He spent two years as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Pharmacology Department of Yale University Medical School, and subsequently held an Eleanor Roosevelt Fellowship of the International Union Against Cancer in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California San Diego Medical School in La Jolla. In 1976 he was invited to move to St. George's Hospital Medical School, University of London, in order to set up a new Department of Biochemistry, which he subsequently expanded into a larger Department of Cellular and Molecular Sciences as founder-Chairman. He is currently President of the Oxford International Biomedical Centre which he founded in 1992.

Charles Pasternak is a tireless promoter of international scientific collaboration. He has been a member of the Executive Committee for a UNESCO initiative on Molecular and Cellular Biology, a member of the Education Committee of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB), a member of the International Advisory Board for the Chulabhorn Research Institute, Bangkok and a member of the Scientific Board of Antenna Technologie, Geneva. In 1979 he founded the Cell Surface Research Fund in order to foster international research links and scientific meetings on various aspects of fundamental and clinical research on the cell surface. In 1993 he received the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa and Palade medal from the University of Bucharest, in 1995 the honour of Amigo de Venezuela from the Fundacion Venezuela Positiva, and in 2002 was elected Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences.

About World Scientific Publishing Co.

World Scientific Publishing is a leading international independent publisher of books and journals for the scholarly, research and professional communities. World Scientific collaborates with prestigious organisations like the Nobel Foundation and US National Academies Press to bring high quality academic and professional content to researchers and academics worldwide. The company publishes about 600 books and over 170 journals in various fields annually. To find out more about World Scientific, please visit www.worldscientific.com.

For more information, contact WSPC Communications at communications@wspc.com.

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DOI

10.1142/13039 

Breakthrough in atmospheric analysis: Chinese satellite delivers high spatial resolution ozone profiles

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ENGINEERING

 

IMAGE: TRENDS OF THE (A) OZONE PROFILE, (B) RH, (C) TIME SERIES OF 8-HOUR AVERAGE OZONE (BLUE) AND HOURLY MEAN CARBON MONOXIDE (RED) CONCENTRATIONS, AND (D) PV IN KAIFENG BETWEEN AUGUST 11 AND AUGUST 15, 2019. view more 

CREDIT: FEI ZHAO ET AL.

A breakthrough in satellite observations has allowed scientists to obtain high spatial resolution ozone profiles, enhancing our understanding of ozone distribution and its impact on the atmosphere. The research, conducted by the research team led by Cheng Liu and Fei Zhao at the University of Science and Technology of China, utilized data from the Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument (EMI) on the Gaofen-5 satellite, the first Chinese ultraviolet-visible hyperspectral spectrometer.

Ozone plays a crucial role in the atmosphere, and understanding its vertical distribution is key to comprehending its horizontal and vertical transport, as well as its physical and chemical properties. Satellite observations have emerged as one of the most effective methods for obtaining high-resolution ozone profiles. However, retrieving accurate ozone profiles using the EMI instrument poses unique challenges due to unavailable measurement errors and a low signal-to-noise ratio.

The team developed an algorithm specifically tailored to the characteristics of the EMI instrument, enabling them to retrieve ozone profiles that were in good agreement with ground-based ozonesonde measurements. The algorithm demonstrated an impressive fitting accuracy, with fitting residuals smaller than 0.3% in most regions. The retrieved ozone profiles showed maximum mean biases of 20% at five latitude bands. Moreover, when EMI averaging kernels were applied, the integrated stratospheric column ozone and tropospheric column ozone exhibited excellent agreement with ozonesonde data.

Remarkably, the research not only unveiled the seasonal variation of surface ozone in the lower layers (0-7.5 km) but also showcased distinct trends in the upper layers (9.7-16.7 km). In March, the ozone peak was found to occur at an altitude of 9.7-16.7 km, highlighting the intricate dynamics of ozone distribution.

Furthermore, the EMI ozone profiles, alongside potential vorticity and relative humidity data, accurately captured a significant stratospheric intrusion event that occurred in central China from August 11 to 15, 2019. This event shed light on the downward transport mechanism that intensifies surface ozone pollution, as evidenced by an increase in ozone concentration observed by the China National Environmental Monitoring Center (CNEMC).

The Gaofen-5 satellite, launched on May 9, 2018, has played a pivotal role in facilitating these groundbreaking findings. Equipped with the EMI instrument, the satellite has provided invaluable data for monitoring environmental trace gases, as well as housing the directional polarization camera (DPC) and the greenhouse gases monitoring instrument (GMI).

The study utilized an innovative retrieval algorithm, known as OEM, previously employed for TROPOMI ozone profile retrievals, to successfully retrieve ozone profiles from the backscattered radiance observed by the EMI instrument. This methodology has proven to be a game-changer in satellite-based ozone profile measurements.

The researchers open up new avenues in understanding ozone distribution and its impact on Earth's atmosphere. Further advancements in satellite observations and retrieval algorithms will undoubtedly contribute to our knowledge of ozone dynamics, facilitating effective strategies for monitoring and mitigating the impacts of ozone pollution.

The paper “High Spatial Resolution Ozone Profiles Retrieved from the First Chinese Ultraviolet–Visible Hyperspectral Satellite Instrument” has been published in Engineering, authored by Fei Zhao, Cheng Liu, Qihou Hu, Congzi Xia, Chengxin Zhang, Wenjing Su. Full text of the open access paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2023.02.020. For more information about the Engineering, follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/EngineeringJrnl) & Like us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/EngineeringPortfolio).

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JOURNAL

Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.eng.2023.02.020 

ARTICLE TITLE

High Spatial Resolution Ozone Profiles Retrieved from the First Chinese Ultraviolet–Visible Hyperspectral Satellite Instrument

 

 

UMC Utrecht investigates the link between RSV infection and chronic respiratory tract disease

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER UTRECHT

 

IMAGE: COORDINATOR OF THE CLARITY STUDY, MARIANNE BOES PHD view more 

CREDIT: UMC UTRECHT

UMC Utrecht will lead an international consortium that will try to answer a key question that’s in the mind of many pediatricians, infectiologists, pulmonologists and other health professionals: “Why are children that had an RSV infection in early childhood at increased risk of developing asthma later in life?” The project - which will run for five years - is funded by a HORIZON HLTH 2023 grant from the European Commission of € 7 million.

Chronic respiratory tract diseases such as asthma and COPD are non-communicable diseases for which infections by several respiratory viruses and genetics constitute major risk factors. The molecular and physiological mechanisms of how these viral infections cause and contribute to non-communicable disease development are unknown. The Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a virus that infects nearly all infants before the age of 2 years and is linked to asthma development. However, it is not clear what changes in the immature lungs of susceptible infants that causes later asthma development. It’s also not yet clear how to revert possible damage done by RSV infection to immature lungs.

Interdisciplinary approach

In the CLARITY (Causative Link between respirAtory syncytial viRus and chronic lung diseases: Identifying Targets for therapY) research consortium, the investigators will use an integrative approach to identify genetic risk factors and mechanisms underlying virus-induced asthma. Specifically, using two national cohorts (Estonian and Spanish), they will try to identify human genetic risk factors and RSV strains that contribute to severe bronchiolitis. They will also analyze how RSV perturbs intracellular networks to change cellular properties that trigger asthma development. In addition, researchers will use artificial intelligence-based techniques to integrate generated data with the current biological knowledge, to generate RSV-induced perturbation signatures and to identify druglike compounds that are able to revert the effects of the RSV-induced perturbations. Finally they will validate both mechanisms and candidate compounds in patient derived airway organoid models and, if promising, in a controlled human infection model trial.

Virus-triggered asthma

Immunologist Marianne Boes PhD (Center for Translational Immunology and Department of Pediatrics, UMC Utrecht) is CLARITY project coordinator and principal investigator. She explains: “CLARITY is expected to impact the understanding, prevention and possibly treatment of virus-triggered asthma. The results will enable the development of a genetic risk score for long-term asthma development that enables personalized prevention campaigns, which will be developed jointly with patient groups. The molecular mechanisms discovered, and the drug-like compounds that revert the perturbation signatures, will enable development of mechanism-targeted drugs. Fundamentally, the mechanisms identified in this specific model for a strong viral contribution to non-communicable disease will likely represent general mechanisms of how viral infections cause onset and development of other non-communicable diseases.”

Impact

The expected outcomes of the project are of considerable socio-economic value, since they ultimately aim at reducing disease burden and promoting well-being and empowering patients, their caregivers and the public. The impact of the outcomes will be delivered at multiple levels and may contribute to advancing the management of respiratory diseases, providing to a certain extent real clinical utility, and improving public awareness of RSV and its link with chronic respiratory tract diseases such as asthma and COPD.

CLARITY consortium

In the CLARITY consortium – which will be coordinated by UMC Utrecht – nine partners from four EU countries will collaborate: one university, three clinical centers, one public health organization, three research institutions and one patient organization. The project – which will run for 5 years - is funded by a HORIZON HEALTH 2023 grant of € 7 million from the European Commission, of which close to € 2 million has been allocated to UMC Utrecht.

 

Di-isononyl phthalate disrupts pregnancy in mice, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CARL R. WOESE INSTITUTE FOR GENOMIC BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

 

IMAGE: FROM LEFT, JODI FLAWS, ARPITA BHURKE, AND INDRANI BAGCHI ARE STUDYING HOW DI-ISONONYL PHTHALATE AFFECTS THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM OF WOMEN. view more 

CREDIT: ISAAC MITCHELL

We are constantly exposed to phthalates in our environment through plastic products such as storage containers, medical devices, packages, fabrics, and toys. Specifically, di-isononyl phthalate is inevitably becoming a part of our lives. Unfortunately, the impact of DiNP on the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy is largely unknown. In a new study, researchers used mice to understand how DiNP affects pregnancy.

“Although we finally recognize that environmental chemicals impact women's health, most studies have focused on men’s reproductive health and very few studies have looked at how these chemicals affect women,” said Jodi Flaws (EIRH co-leader/MME), a professor of comparative biosciences. “Our paper is novel because we are the first to look at this aspect of reproduction.”

For their study, the researchers chose a DiNP dose that humans are exposed to on a daily basis. They exposed pregnant female mice to DiNP orally for their first week of pregnancy, which is analogous to the first trimester in humans.

“I chose this window because most women don’t know from day one that they are pregnant. As a result, they maintain their general lifestyle for a while and may become more careful once they know that they are pregnant. During that time, however, they will continue to be exposed to DiNP,” said Arpita Bhurke, a postdoctoral fellow in the Bagchi lab and the first author of the paper.

In the early stages of pregnancy, the embryo attaches to the uterus and embeds in the maternal tissue, which supports the growth and development of the embryo. The process also stimulates the formation of new blood vessels, ensuring that the embryo has an adequate supply of oxygen and nutrients from the mother. Using tissue-staining techniques, the researchers found that DiNP exposure impairs the formation of blood vessels in both the maternal tissue and the placenta.

“In mice, these maternal blood vessels are formed after the first week of pregnancy and they have been exposed to DiNP before this development happens,” said Indrani Bagchi (EIRH co-leader), a Billie Field Professor of Reproductive Biology. “As a result, the tissue formation is effected and it creates a ripple effect, impairing embryo growth.”

The impact of DiNP on the placenta had several consequences later on in the pregnancy. The researchers found that pregnant mice that had been exposed to DiNP had smaller litter sizes and shorter gestation periods. Mice that were fed corn oil instead of DiNP produced an average of 16 pups per litter, whereas DiNP-fed mice produced 11 pups, and on average the pups weighed less. Additionally, instead of delivering their litter in 20 days, DiNP-fed mice were giving birth 18-24 hours earlier.

“We know that DiNP causes defects in the formation of the placenta. However, it is unclear whether this is due to the effect of DiNP on the embryo or on the maternal tissue or both. We want to address this question in our future work,” Bagchi said.

The researchers are also interested in deciphering how the chemicals impact the uterine tissue and litter birth. “I will focus on cell culture systems because we want to distinguish between the embryo and the maternal tissue effects. By using just the cells, we can better understand how DiNP is impacting the placenta in both early and late stages of pregnancy,” Bhurke said.  

The study “Exposure to di-isononyl phthalate during early pregnancy disrupts decidual angiogenesis and placental development in mice” was published in Reproductive Toxicology and can be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reprotox.2023.108446. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

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JOURNAL

Reproductive Toxicology

DOI

10.1016/j.reprotox.2023.108446 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Exposure to di-isononyl phthalate during early pregnancy disrupts decidual angiogenesis and placental development in mice

 

Alaska scientists heading to Greenland for glacier research, museum project

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS

University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists will make several trips to Greenland over two years to study how meltwater and the ocean affect glacial ice loss. 

The four-year research project, funded by a $565,000 National Science Foundation grant, will create a traveling museum exhibit about the drivers of Arctic climate change. The exhibit will appear first at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, likely in 2026.

Ice loss from the polar ice sheets is the largest anticipated contributor to global mean-sea-level rise in the coming century. Scientists need to better understand glacier behavior to improve predictions of sea-level rise.

At the study’s conclusion, the researchers will create software that others can use to analyze the effect of runoff and ocean interaction on any of Earth’s glaciers.

Glacier flow is dictated by three main conditions: geometry, ocean conditions and surface melt.

“We don't quite understand why some glaciers react to some things and other glaciers react to other things,” said physics professor Martin Truffer, who specializes in glacier dynamics at the UAF Geophysical Institute and is helping lead the research. 

Truffer, who has made several Greenland research trips, and Ph.D. student Amy Jenson, one of last year’s recipients of a Geophysical Institute Schaible Fellowship, will go to Greenland to study Jakobshavn Glacier. The glacier, whose Greenlandic name is Sermeq Kujalleq, is a well-studied ocean outlet glacier in west Greenland.

Also involved in the research is geophysics professor Jason Amundson of the University of Alaska Southeast. Amundson was Truffer’s first doctoral student and studied Jakobshavn Glacier for his Ph.D. The research project’s principal investigator is Lizz Ultee, assistant professor of Earth and climate science at Middlebury College in Vermont.

The team will investigate the short- and long-term effect of runoff on outlet glacier flow, how a glacier’s geometry affects its response to runoff, and how variations in runoff speed and speed of movement of the glacier’s terminal area influence each other.

“When water gets to the base of a glacier, at bedrock, it lubricates the base and the glacier moves faster,” Truffer said. “But you can actually have a situation where more water means slower flow. That’s because the glacier’s plumbing system actually adjusts if you keep putting in more water. Water melts the ice, widening the channels and making the glacier more efficient at draining the water — and that slows the glacier’s speed.”

“If you want to predict the future of a place like Greenland, then you have to know how fast the ice is moving, and that is why we need to know more about the effects of runoff and geometry on a glacier’s speed,” he said.

Jakobshavn Glacier, which is about 40 miles long and a mile thick, has lost more ice than any other part of Greenland’s ice sheet. It had been in general retreat for a number of decades but was relatively stable in the 1980s and 1990s. In the late 1990s it underwent a massive retreat accompanied by much faster flow of the ice into the ocean. 

The glacier’s advance slowed beginning in 2013. Although the glacier was still advancing, the European Space Agency reported in 2019 that the glacier’s drainage basin was still losing more ice to the ocean than it gains as snowfall, “therefore still contributing to global sea-level rise, albeit at a slower rate.”

As for the museum component, details have not yet been confirmed. Truffer will work with Roger Topp, director of exhibits, design and digital media at the UA Museum of the North.

The exhibit will be a partnership with Ilulissat Museum in Ilulissat, Greenland. The community sits at the entrance to Disko Bay, which Jakobshavn Glacier feeds into.

Topp said the exhibit will concentrate on Greenland, since that’s the focus of Truffer’s research, but that it will include some information about Alaska.

Topp, who has also been to Greenland, said the exhibit could include a three-dimensional model of a glacier to illustrate the loss of mass.

“What can make it a spatial experience, where people walking around an object matters to how they understand it?” Topp said. “Sometimes it’s a harpoon head, sometimes it’s a painting, sometimes it’s a model built for the express purpose of showing a theory or the result of research.”

Museums in recent decades have de-emphasized their role as a source of information from experts only, Topp said.

“Museums have come away from that and moved toward presenting stories about objects,” he said. “An object has stories, and the museum collects those stories from many perspectives.”

Truffer hopes the exhibit tells a story.

“What I would like people to realize from the exhibit is that landscapes are dynamic,” he said. “We tend to think of these landscapes as pretty fixed in time, but they’re changing all the time.’’

 

New research explains “Atlantification” of the Arctic Ocean

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS

New research by an international team of scientists explains what’s behind a stalled trend in Arctic Ocean sea ice loss since 2007. The findings indicate that stronger declines in sea ice will occur when an atmospheric feature known as the Arctic dipole reverses itself in its recurring cycle.

The many environmental responses to the Arctic dipole are described in a paper published online today in the journal Science. This analysis helps explain how North Atlantic water influences Arctic Ocean climate. Scientists call it Atlantification.

The research is led by professor Igor Polyakov of the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Natural Science and Mathematics. He is also affiliated with the International Arctic Research Center at UAF.

Co-authors include Andrey V. Pnyushkov, research assistant professor at the International Arctic Research Center; Uma S. Bhatt, atmospheric sciences professor at the UAF Geophysical Institute and UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics; and researchers from Massachusetts, Washington state, Norway, and Germany.

“This is a multidisciplinary view on what's going on in the Arctic and beyond,” Polyakov said of the new research. “Our analysis covered the atmosphere, ocean, ice, changing continents and changing biology in response to climate change.”

A wealth of data, including direct instrumental observations, reanalysis products and satellite information going back several decades, shows that the Arctic dipole alternates in an approximately 15-year cycle and that the system is probably at the end of the present regime.

In the Arctic dipole’s present “positive” regime, which scientists say has been in place since 2007, high pressure is centered over the Canadian sector of the Arctic and produces clockwise winds. Low pressure is centered over the Siberian Arctic and features counterclockwise winds.

This wind pattern drives upper ocean currents, with year-round effects on regional air temperatures, atmosphere-ice-ocean heat exchanges, sea-ice drift and exports, and ecological consequences.

The authors write that, “Water exchanges between the Nordic seas and the Arctic Ocean are critically important for the state of the Arctic climate system” and that sea ice decline is “a true indicator of climate change.”

In analyzing oceanic responses to the wind pattern since 2007, the researchers found decreased flow from the Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean through the Fram Strait east of Greenland, along with increased Atlantic flow into the Barents Sea, located north of Norway and western Russia.

The new research refers to these alternating changes in the Fram Strait and the Barents Sea as a “switchgear mechanism” caused by the Arctic dipole regimes.

The researchers also found that counterclockwise winds from the low-pressure region under the current positive Arctic dipole regime drive freshwater from Siberian rivers into the Canadian sector of the Arctic Ocean. 

This westward movement of freshwater from 2007 to 2021 helped slow the overall loss of sea ice in the Arctic compared to 1992 through 2006. The freshwater layer’s depth increased, making it too thick and stable to mix with the heavier saltwater below. The thick layer of freshwater prevents the warmer saltwater from melting sea ice from the bottom.

The authors write that the switchgear mechanism regulating inflows of sub-Arctic waters has “profound” impacts on marine life. It can lead to potentially more suitable living conditions for sub-Arctic boreal species near the eastern part of the Eurasian Basin, relative to its western part.

“We are beyond the peak of the currently positive Arctic dipole regime, and at any moment it could switch back again,” Polyakov said. "This could have significant climatological repercussions, including a potentially faster pace of sea-ice loss across the entire Arctic and sub-Arctic climate systems.”

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

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CONTACTS:

• Igor Polyakov, International Arctic Research Center, 907-474-2686, ivpolyakov@alaska.edu

• Rod Boyce, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, 907-474-7185, rcboyce@alaska.edu

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adh515 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

ARTICLE TITLE

Fluctuating Atlantic inflows modulate Arctic atlantification