POSTMODERN PARACELSUS

Selenium reduces mixtures of environmental pollutants′ harmful effects on health

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CÓRDOBA

 

IMAGE: 

RESEARCHER WHO CARRIED OUT THE STUDY

view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF CORDOBA

A study in mice conducted by the University of Cordoba proves that exposure to contaminating mixtures of metals and drug residue increases damage to health, and evaluates the positive effects of a diet enriched in selenium to reduce this harm

---

People are exposed daily, through the environment and their diets, to external substances that can be harmful to their health. Metals and the residue of pharmaceuticals, for example, in high doses, contaminate water and food, creating mixtures where they can interact, with this increasing their individual toxicity.

Analyzing the effects of environmental pollution on organisms is essential to develop regulations establishing maximum doses of these pollutants for people. But, what about mixtures of pollutants? What happens when, even when faced with accepted doses, the different compounds interact with each other?

To understand the health effects of exposure to these "cocktails of contaminants," a team from the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at the University of Cordoba, comprised of Nieves Abril, Paula Huertas, María José Prieto and Juan Jurado, evaluated, in mice, the toxicity of a mixture of contaminants that is very common in the environment and that accumulates along the food chain: a combination of metals (arsenic, cadmium, mercury) and drugs (diclofenac, flumequine).

In order to determine how these compounds interacted with each other, "we studied the controlled exposure of mice to this mixture and analyzed how it affects the proteins in the liver; that is, how their liver proteostasis changes when ingesting these mixtures of contaminants for two weeks," explained Professor Nieves Abril.

Their conclusion is negative: the cocktail effect creates synergy between these compounds, doing increased damage to health increase when the compounds act together.

"We used a massive protein detection technique (shotgun proteomic), which allowed us to compare how the proteins of the group exposed to the mixture of contaminants were altered compared to the control group," April explained.

Of the proteins affected, they selected 275 as sentinels to verify what was changing and, after computer analysis, they were able to determine the metabolic pathways that were altered and their consequences for health. These analyses revealed a disproportionate defense response having a contrary and harmful effect on the system.

The researcher stressed that "although these pollutants generated oxidation in the cells separately too, when they acted together we found that the oxidation was so intense that all the antioxidant defense responses were activated continuously, without deactivating them, which ends up doing damage and causing many proteins to stop working." The analyses showed a sustained expression of the response mediated by NRF2, which is the regulator that sets in motion a good part of the antioxidant defenses, which caused a reducing stress.

Selenium as hope

The study also provides hope, as selenium could be a way to reduce the damage caused by exposure to these pollutants. A third group of mice were given doses of selenium, a mineral often found in vitamin supplements found in pharmacies, and proteomic analyses showed relief from the molecular damage done by the pollutants.

Selenium itself is an oxidant, but in low doses it activates responses in a controlled manner, predisposing the body to better defense. With the results of this experiment, which was made possible thanks to Research Support (SCAI) and Experimental Animals (SAEX) services, knowledge of the effects of the pollutants to which society is exposed on a daily basis has been expanded, and a way has been glimpsed to reduce the damage they producethrough the use of selenium.

Reference
Huertas-Abril PV, Jurado J, Prieto-Álamo MJ, García-Barrera T, Abril N. Proteomic analysis of the hepaticresponse to a pollutant mixture in mice. The protective action of selenium. Sci Total Environ. 2023 Aug 24;903:166558. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166558 

---

JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166558 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Proteomic analysis of the hepatic response to a pollutant mixture in mice. The protective action of selenium

 

Cat-ching criminals with DNA from pet hairs

Cat hair could be the purr-fect way to catch criminals, according to researchers from the University of Leicester

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

 

IMAGE: 

MR WIN, WHOSE HAIR DNA IDENTIFIED HIS MISSING MOTHER (COURTESY, JANE ELLIOT).

view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF JANE ELLIOT

Cat hair could be the purr-fect way to catch criminals, according to researchers from the University of Leicester.

 

They have shown that a single cat hair contains DNA which could link a suspect and a crime-scene, or a victim.

 

Around 26 per cent of UK householders own a cat and with the average feline shedding thousands of hairs annually, it’s inevitable that once you leave, you’ll bear evidence of the furry resident. This is potentially useful in the forensic investigation of criminal activity.

 

While a human perpetrator may take pains not to leave their own DNA behind, transferred cat hair contains its own DNA that could provide a link between a suspect and a crime-scene, or a victim.

 

In a paper published in the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics earlier this month, researchers at the University of Leicester describe a sensitive method that can extract maximum DNA information from just one cat hair.

 

Emily Patterson, the lead author of the study and a Leicester PhD student, said: “Hair shed by your cat lacks the hair root, so it contains very little useable DNA. In practice we can only analyse mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mothers to their offspring, and is shared among maternally related cats.”

 

This means that hair DNA cannot individually identify a cat, making it essential to maximise information in a forensic test. 

 

However, a new method identified by the researchers enabled them to determine the sequence of the entire mitochondrial DNA, ensuring it is around ten times more discriminating than a previously used technique which looked at only a short fragment.

 

Dr Jon Wetton, from the University’s Department of Genetics & Genome Biology, co-led the study.

 

He said: “In a previous murder case we applied the earlier technique but were fortunate that the suspect’s cat had an uncommon mitochondrial variant, as most cat lineages couldn’t be distinguished from each other. But with our new approach virtually every cat has a rare DNA type and so the test will almost certainly be informative if hairs are found.”

 

The team tested the method in a lost cat case, where DNA from skeletal remains of a missing female cat could be matched with DNA from hair from her surviving male offspring.

 

Study co-lead, Professor of Genetics, Mark Jobling, added: “In criminal cases where there is no human DNA available to test, pet hair is a valuable source of linking evidence, and our method makes it much more powerful. The same approach could also be applied to other species - in particular, dogs.”

---

JOURNAL

Forensic Science

DOI

10.1016/j.fsigen.2023.102944 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Defining cat mitogenome variation and accounting for numts via multiplex amplification and Nanopore sequencing

 

Weekly insulin injections have the potential to be as effective in diabetes management as now-common daily injection regimes

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

Insulin icodec, a once-weekly basal injection to treat type 1 diabetes, has the potential to be as effective in managing the condition as daily basal insulin treatments, according to research from the University of Surrey. The results of the year-long phase 3 clinical trial could revolutionise the future of diabetes care and help millions of people better manage their condition. 

During this pioneering study, scientists across 12 countries at 99 sites, led by Professor David Russell-Jones from Surrey, tested the efficacy and safety of a weekly basal injection of icodec (a long-lasting type of insulin) and compared it to a daily basal injection of insulin degludec in adults with type 1 diabetes. Short acting insulin to cover meals was used in both groups. 

Professor David Russell-Jones, Professor of Diabetes and Endocrinology at the University of Surrey and a Consultant at the Royal Surrey Foundation Trust, said: 

"Many people find managing a long-term condition such as diabetes very difficult and report missing vital insulin injections. Missed injections can affect glycaemic control, and a lack of consistency in the treatment has been linked to increased rates of diabetic ketoacidosis, a serious complication of the condition that can be life-threatening. Reducing insulin injection frequency could lessen the burden of treatment for some people with the condition and improve their glycaemic control." 

Type 1 diabetes occurs when the body cannot produce enough of the hormone insulin, causing the level of glucose (sugar) in the blood to become too high, leading to an increased risk of developing heart, eye, and kidney disease. 

To learn more about the efficacy of icodec, scientists recruited 582 participants with type 1 diabetes. Participants were split into two groups; the first received once-weekly injections of icodec (700U/ml), and the second received daily injections of degludec (100 U/ml), both in combination with aspart, a short-acting insulin at mealtimes. 

After 26 weeks, scientists identified HbA1C (a protein within red blood cells with glucose attached to it and the universal marker for overall diabetes control) levels in those who had taken icodec had decreased from a mean of 7.59 percent at baseline to an estimated mean of 7.15 percent, and for degludec, the mean had decreased from 7.63 percent to 7.10 percent. The estimated treatment difference between them being 0.05 percent, confirming the non-inferiority of icodec to degludec, but with a significantly reduced injection frequency for patients to manage. 

Scientists did also identify higher rates of hypoglycaemic episodes (abnormally low levels of glucose in the blood) in the icodec group compared to degludec. However, despite the higher levels in the icodec group, scientists noted that incidences were low in both groups, with most episodes only requiring oral carbohydrate administration. For icodec, time below 3.0 mmol/L was at the threshold of the internationally recommended targets during weeks 22-26 and below recommended targets during weeks 48-52.  

 Professor Russell-Jones added: 

"What we have found is that once-weekly icodec injections showed non inferiority to once-daily injections of degludec in reducing HbA1C after 26 weeks. Although there is a slightly higher rate of hypoglycaemia under this regime, we found this could be easily managed. We’ve concluded this new insulin may have a role in reducing the burden of daily basal injections for patients managing type 1 diabetes. 

"Our findings are very promising, but further analysis of continuous glucose monitoring data and real-world studies are needed." 

This study was published in the journal The Lancet. 

 Funding for this trial was provided by Novo Nordisk. 

 Notes to editors: 

 Professor David Russell-Jones is available for interview upon request. 

For further information, please contact mediarelations@surrey.ac.uk. 

---

JOURNAL

The Lancet

DOI

10.1016/S0140-6736(23)02179-7 

ARTICLE TITLE

Once-weekly insulin icodec versus once-daily insulin degludec as part of a basal-bolus regimen in individuals with type 1 diabetes (ONWARDS 6): a phase 3a, randomised, open-label, treat-to-target trial

Drawing a tube of blood could assess ALS risk from environmental toxin exposure

The risk score included 36 pollutants persistently found in the environment

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MICHIGAN MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Over the last decade, research at Michigan Medicine has shown how exposure to toxins in the environment, such as pesticides and carcinogenic PCBs, affect the risk of developing and dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. 

Now, investigators have developed an environmental risk score that assesses a person’s risk for developing ALS, as well as for survival after diagnosis, using a blood sample.

The results are published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

“For the first time, we have a means collecting a tube of blood and looking at a person’s risk for ALS based on being exposed to scores of toxins in the environment,” said first author Stephen Goutman, M.D., M.S., director of the Pranger ALS Clinic and associate director of the ALS Center of Excellence at University of Michigan.

Researchers obtained over 250 blood samples from participants in Michigan both with and without ALS. They calculated individual risk and survival models using 36 persistent organic pollutants.

Several individual pollutants were significantly associated with ALS risk. However, the risk for developing the disease was most strongly represented by a mixture of pesticides in the blood.

When considering the mixture of these pollutants, a person who was in the highest group of exposure had twice the risk of developing ALS compared to someone in the lowest group of exposure.

“Our results emphasize the importance of understanding the breadth of environmental pollution and its effects on ALS and other diseases,” said senior author Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., James W. Albers Distinguished Professor at U-M, the Russell N. DeJong Professor of Neurology at U-M Medical School and director of the NeuroNetwork for Emerging Therapies at Michigan Medicine.

The research team’s first understanding of the environment’s impact on ALS came in 2016 when investigators found elevated levels of pesticides in the blood of patients with the disease.

They later uncovered that exposure to organic pollutants advances ALS progression and contributes to worse outcomes.

“When we can assess environmental pollutants using available blood samples, that moves us toward a future where we can assess disease risk and shape prevention strategies,” Feldman said.

“Environmental risk scores have been robustly associated with other diseases, including cancers, especially when coupled with genetic risk. This is a burgeoning application that should be further studied as we deal with the consequences of pollutants being detected throughout the globe.”

Additional authors include Jonathan Boss, Dae-Gyu Jang, Ph.D., Bhramar Mukherjee, Ph.D., Rudy J. Richardson, Ph.D., and Stuart Batterman, Ph.D., all of University of Michigan.

This research was supported by the National ALS Registry/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the CDC (grants 1R01TS000289, CDC/ATSDR 200-2013-56856).

This research was also supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes (grants K23ES027221, R01ES030049, R01NS127188, UL1TR002240). Additional support from the NeuroNetwork for Emerging Therapies, the NeuroNetwork Therapeutic Discovery Fund, the Peter R. Clark Fund for ALS Research, the Sinai Medical Staff Foundation, and Scott L. Pranger, University of Michigan.

Paper cited: “Environmental risk scores of persistent organic pollutants associate with higher ALS risk and shorter survival in a new Michigan case/control cohort,” Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1136/jnnp-2023-332121

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry

DOI

10.1136/jnnp-2023-332121 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Environmental risk scores of persistent organic pollutants associate with higher ALS risk and shorter survival in a new Michigan case/control cohort,

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

27-Sep-2023

COI STATEMENT

This research was supported by the National ALS Registry/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry at the CDC (grants 1R01TS000289, CDC/ATSDR 200-2013-56856). This research was also supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes (grants K23ES027221, R01ES030049, R01NS127188, UL1TR002240). Additional support from the NeuroNetwork for Emerging Therapies, the NeuroNetwork Therapeutic Discovery Fund, the Peter R. Clark Fund for ALS Research, the Sinai Medical Staff Foundation, and Scott L. Pranger, University of Michigan.

 

Helping robots assess risk

New ONR-funded project led by Lehigh University mechanical engineering professor Nader Motee tackles the problem of ambiguity in robot perception

Grant and Award Announcement

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

NADER MOTEE IS A PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING AND MECHANICS IN THE P.C. ROSSIN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE AT LEHIGH UNIVERSITY. 

view more 

CREDIT: DOUGLAS BENEDICT/ACADEMIC IMAGE

“For robots to achieve true autonomy in the future, they must be able to assess risks before making decisions,” says Nader Motee (pictured below), a professor of mechanical engineering and mechanics in Lehigh University's P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. 

Motee recently received a nearly $680,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research to develop a novel, multi-stage, perception-based control paradigm that will essentially help robots assess risk, and ultimately make autonomous systems safer and more efficient.

We humans conduct risk analysis all the time—from how we drive to what we say and how we say it. That analysis allows us to make a decision—slow down, say “I’m sorry,” maybe not use all caps in that text message. At this moment, robots can’t do this kind of analysis, which means they can’t make decisions on their own (a relief to most of us, no doubt). But a world with autonomous robots could be a world in which we humans get a lot of meaningful assistance from machines—more help with disaster recovery, for instance. 

However, to do risk analysis, robots first require quantifying the ambiguity of perception. “In humans, our perception is based on what we’ve learned in the past,” says Motee. “But the number of samples that a robot, or a human, can be fed of any given object is limited. So there’s always ambiguity and uncertainty about what the robot is seeing. Is it a stop sign? On top of that, if there’s noise in the environment, like rain or fog or darkness, there’s uncertainty about the object itself. Is it even a sign at all? So there is uncertainty about not only the object, but also the identity of that object inside that class. So the ambiguity is the uncertainty of the uncertainty.” 

Ambiguous perception in a robot is dangerous—consider, for example, the consequences of a self-driving car perceiving a stop sign as a speed limit sign.

It’s a real problem to solve, and Motee and his team are tackling it by quantifying the sources of uncertainty. Essentially, they want to go inside the black box of a range of perception modules—machine learning models that use visual sensing—to better understand how the models are perceiving the environment.

“The relationship between the input, which are the images, and the output, which are the labels (like traffic sign) is very complex,” he says. “But to quantify the ambiguity and the output of perception, I have to analyze these models and the relationships between these two quantities. Then I can compute if I have some uncertainty on the output, how that would be transferred to the output.”

That’s the first step. 

“Once we quantify the ambiguity,” he says, “we could use risk measures for decision-making purposes.”

A robot capable of assessing risk could, in theory, make a safe decision on its next course of action. A team of robots could communicate effectively. They could also perceive the actions of the humans around them and infer how they could best assist them.

“But they have to assess risk first to determine if their next course of action is actually going to help the humans, or make their work even harder. They’ll have to do a lot of analysis.”

And so will Motee and his team. But he finds the prospect of a future where perception modules work as a connected network exciting. They could perceive information about our health, our transportation system, and our security.

“These modules would collaborate with each other,” he says, “and hopefully create a smart society that could improve our health and our lifestyles.”

Research reported in this story is supported by the United States Navy/Office of Naval Research under award number N000142312779.

 

About Nader Motee

Nader Motee is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics at Lehigh University. He directs the Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics (AIR) Lab and the Distributed Control and Dynamical Systems (DCDS) Laboratory in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science. He received a PhD in electrical and systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Control and Dynamical Systems Department at Caltech and a visiting scholar at UCSB. Motee's research interests include distributed control systems and real-time robot perception. He is a Senior Member of IEEE. His recent recognitions include the 2019 Best SICON Paper Prize, ONR Young Investigator Award (2016), NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (2015), and AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2013).

 

Want to achieve your goals? Get angry

Anger can be useful when facing a challenge, study says

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

WASHINGTON -- While often perceived as a negative emotion, anger can also be a powerful motivator for people to achieve challenging goals in their lives, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

“People often believe that a state of happiness is ideal, and the majority of people consider the pursuit of happiness a major life goal,” said lead author Heather Lench, PhD, a professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Texas A&M University. “The view that positive emotion is ideal for mental health and well-being has been prominent in lay and psychological accounts of emotion, but previous research suggests that a mix of emotions, including negative emotions like anger, result in the best outcomes.”

The functionalist theory of emotion, which has been studied for decades, suggests that all emotions, good or bad, are reactions to events within a person’s environment and serve the purpose of alerting that person to important situations that require actions, according to Lench. Each emotion may call for a different response. For example, sadness may indicate that a person needs to seek help or emotional support, while anger may suggest they need to take action to overcome an obstacle.

To better understand the role of anger in achieving goals, researchers conducted a series of experiments involving more than 1,000 participants and analyzed survey data from more than 1,400 respondents. In each experiment, researchers elicited either an emotional response (such as anger, amusement, desire or sadness) or a neutral emotional state, and then presented participants with a challenging goal.

The research was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In one experiment, participants were shown visuals designed to elicit specific emotional or neutral responses and then asked to solve a series of word puzzles. In another, the goal was to attain high scores on a skiing video game, with one game that involved challenging play (avoiding flags on a slalom course) and one easier game that involved only a jump. 

Across all the experiments, anger improved people’s ability to reach their goals compared with a neutral condition in a variety of challenging situations. In some cases, it was associated with increased scores or shorter response times. In one experiment, it also increased cheating to achieve a better outcome.

The researchers also analyzed data from a series of surveys collected during the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Before the elections, people were asked to rate how angry they would be if their favorite candidate did not win. After the elections, they reported whether they voted and whom they voted for. Survey participants who indicated they would be angry if their candidate did not win were more likely to vote in the election, but anger had no effect on which candidate they voted for.

“These findings demonstrate that anger increases effort toward attaining a desired goal, frequently resulting in greater success,” said Lench. 

The effects of anger in spurring people to reach for and frequently achieve their goals were specific to situations where the goals were more challenging, according to Lench. Anger did not appear to be associated with reaching goals when the goals were easier, such as in the ski-jump video game.

Lench also noted that while anger was associated with increased success across the board, in some cases, amusement or desire were also associated with increased goal attainment.

The results suggest that emotions that are often considered negative – such as anger, boredom or sadness – can be useful, according to Lench.  

“People often prefer to use positive emotions as tools more than negative and tend to see negative emotions as undesirable and maladaptive,” she said. “Our research adds to the growing evidence that a mix of positive and negative emotions promotes well-being, and that using negative emotions as tools can be particularly effective in some situations.”

Article: “Anger has Benefits for Attaining Goals,” by Heather Lench, PhD, Noah Reed, BA, Tiffany George, PhD, Kaitlyn Kaiser, BA, and Sophie North, BS, Texas A&M University. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published online Oct. 30, 2023.

Contact: Heather Lench, PhD, can be reached by email at hlench@tamu.edu. 

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA’s membership includes over 146,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives.

---

JOURNAL

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

DOI

10.1037/pspa0000350 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Anger Has Benefits for Attaining Goals

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

A sustainable alternative to air conditioning

Researchers set out to achieve passive cooling inside naturally conditioned buildings in hot, arid climates

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

As the planet gets hotter, the need for cool living environments is becoming more urgent. But air conditioning is a major contributor to global warming since units use potent greenhouse gases and lots of energy.

Now, researchers from McGill University, UCLA and Princeton have found in a new study an inexpensive, sustainable alternative to mechanical cooling with refrigerants in hot and arid climates, and a way to mitigate dangerous heat waves during electricity blackouts.

The researchers set out to answer how to achieve a new benchmark in passive cooling inside naturally conditioned buildings in hot climates such as Southern California. They examined the use of roof materials that radiate heat into the cold universe, even under direct sunlight, and how to combine them with temperature-driven ventilation. These cool radiator materials and coatings are often used to stop roofs overheating. Researchers have also used them to improve heat rejection from chillers. But there is untapped potential for integrating them into architectural design more fully, so they can not only reject indoor heat to outer space in a passive way, but also drive regular and healthy air changes.

“We found we could maintain air temperatures several degrees below the prevailing ambient temperature, and several degrees more below a reference 'gold standard' for passive cooling,” said Remy Fortin, lead author and PhD candidate at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture "We did this without sacrificing healthy ventilation air changes.” This was a considerable challenge, considering air exchanges are a source of heating when the aim is to keep a room cooler than the exterior.

The researchers hope the findings will be used to positively impact communities suffering from dangerous climate heating and heat waves. “We hope that materials scientists, architects, and engineers will be interested in these results, and that our work will inspire more holistic thinking for how to integrate breakthroughs in radiative cooling materials with simple but effective architectural solutions,” said Salmaan Craig, Principal Investigator for the project and Assistant Professor at the Peter Guo-hua Fu School of Architecture.

---

JOURNAL

Cell Reports Physical Science

DOI

10.1016/j.xcrp.2023.101570 

ARTICLE TITLE

Passive radiative cooling to sub-ambient temperatures inside naturally ventilated buildings

 

Killer whales’ diet more important than location for pollutant exposure, study says

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

Both elegant and fierce, killer whales are some of the oceans’ top predators, but even they can be exposed to environmental pollution. Now, in the largest study to date on North Atlantic killer whales, researchers in the American Chemical Society’ Environmental Science & Technology report the levels of legacy and emerging pollutants in 162 individuals’ blubber. The animals’ diet, rather than location, greatly impacted contaminant levels and potential health risks — information that’s helpful to conservation efforts.

As the largest member of the dolphin family, killer whales, also known as orcas, are found worldwide. Marine vessel traffic can disturb the hunting and communication of these black-and-white marine mammals. But they face another type of human threat — legacy and emerging persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in their environments. POPs include chlorinated hydrocarbons and flame retardants, and can accumulate in animals’ fat stores as the contaminants move up the food chain though a process called biomagnification.

Previous studies have shown that some Pacific orca populations can carry POP loads in their blubber that pose potential health risks, including reduced immunity, hormonal imbalances and reproductive issues. But information on orcas living in the North Atlantic are lacking. So, Anaïs Remili, Melissa McKinney and colleagues wanted to assess the contaminants present in animals spanning from Eastern Canada to Norway.

The researchers collected skin and blubber biopsies from over a hundred free-ranging killer whales, across the North Atlantic Ocean from Canada, Greenland, Iceland to Norway. They analyzed half of each tissue sample for five classes of POPs, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The other portion was used to evaluate the animals’ diets. Multiple features stood out in the data:

• Specimens from orcas in the western North Atlantic contained substantially higher contaminant loads than ones from orcas on the eastern side — a pattern that contrasts with previously reported POP levels in other Arctic marine organisms.
• The pattern could be attributed to individuals’ diet rather than location. Specifically, killer whales foraging on fish had the lowest POP levels, and animals consuming marine mammals, such as seals or other whales, had the highest.
• PCB-associated health risks were highest for killer whales that ate primarily marine mammals, with most animals’ levels exceeding the threshold for a higher risk of female reproductive failure.
• The levels of one POP, known as α-HBCDD, were the highest reported for any marine mammal to date, despite the fact that this brominated flame retardant was banned a decade ago.

The researchers say the findings support the need for proper waste disposal to prevent contaminants from entering the oceans’ food chains and reaching the top predators. They explain that the findings of their study underscore the need for action to protect North Atlantic killer whales and their ecosystems.

---

JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.3c05516 

ARTICLE TITLE

Varying Diet Composition Causes Striking Differences in Legacy and Emerging Contaminant Concentrations in Killer Whales across the North Atlantic

PYTHAGORAS WOULD AGREE

Complex data becomes easier to interpret when transformed into music

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TAMPERE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

SONIFICATION OF CLOUDS DATA COLLECTED FROM FINNISH WEATHER RECORDS.

view more 

CREDIT: JONATHAN MIDDLETON

The five-year research was carried out by group of researchers at TAUCHI, the Tampere Unit for Computer-Human Interaction at Tampere University, Finland and Eastern Washington University, the United States. The research was funded by Business Finland.

The group recently released a research paper that provides reasons for using musical sounds in the transformation of data as a means to provide a new dimension for interpretation.

The lead author of the article is Jonathan Middleton, DMA, a professor of music theory and composition at Eastern Washington University, and a visiting researcher at Tampere University.  Middleton and his co-investigators were primarily concerned with showing how a custom-built “data-to-music” algorithms could enhance engagement with complex data points. In their research they used data collected from Finnish weather records.

“In a digital world where data gathering and interpretation have become embedded in our daily lives, researchers propose new perspectives for the experience of interpretation,” says Middleton.

According to him, the study validated what he calls a ‘fourth’ dimension in data interpretation through musical characteristics.

“Musical sounds can be a highly engaging art form in terms of pure listening entertainment and, as such, a powerful complement to theater, film, video games, sports, and ballet. Since musical sounds can be highly engaging, this research offers new opportunities to understand and interpret data as well as through our aural senses,” Middleton explains.

For instance, imagine a simple one-dimensional view of your heart rate data on graph. Then imagine a three-dimensional view of your heart rate data reflected in numbers, colors, and lines. Now, imagine a fourth dimension in which you can actually listen to that data. The key question in Middleton’s research is, which of those displays or dimensions help you understand the data best?

For many people, in particular businesses that rely on data to meet consumer needs, this rigorous validation study shows which musical characteristics contribute the most to engagement with data. As Middleton sees it, the research sets the foundation for using that fourth dimension in data analysis.

The scientific article Data-to-music sonification and user engagement was published in the journal Frontiers in Big Data on 10 August 2023. (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2023.1206081/full)

---

JOURNAL

Frontiers

DOI

10.3389/fdata.2023.1206081 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Data-to-music sonification and user engagement