Review evaluates the evidence for an intensifying Indian Ocean water cycle

Report calls for better integration of observations, models, and paleo proxies

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

Research News

IMAGE: RECOVERY OF THE SOUTH OMBAI MOORING, TOPPED WITH AN ACOUSTIC DOPPLER CURRENT METER (ADCP) TO MEASURES OCEAN CURRENTS, ABOARD THE INDONESIAN RESEARCH VESSEL BARUNA JAYA I. OBSERVATIONAL DATA IN THE... view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: JANET SPRINTALL

The Indian Ocean has been warming much more than other ocean basins over the last 50-60 years. While temperature changes basin-wide can be unequivocally attributed to human-induced climate change, it is difficult to assess whether contemporary heat and freshwater changes in the Indian Ocean since 1980 represent an anthropogenically-forced transformation of the hydrological cycle. What complicates the assessment is factoring in natural variations, regional-scale trends, a short observational record, climate model uncertainties, and the ocean basin's complex circulation.

A new review paper takes a broad look at whether heat and freshwater changes in the Indian Ocean are consistent with the increase in rainfall that is expected in response to anthropogenic global warming or whether these changes are due to natural variability on multi-decadal and other timescales along with other factors. That distinction has "big implications for climate risk assessment and for the densely populated regions around the Indian Ocean that are vulnerable to the effects of climate change," says Caroline Ummenhofer, lead author of the paper, Heat and freshwater changes in the Indian Ocean region, published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.

The paper brings together various scientific expertise, tools, and data sources to address key questions regarding climate change in the Indian Ocean, says Ummenhofer, associate scientist in the Physical Oceanography Department at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). "The different scientific communities need to come together and have very open discussions about what we can tell from our data, how we can compare apples and oranges, and how we can bring all of this information together to have a better understanding of the entire Indian Ocean system," she says.

"Rather than rely on climate models that struggle to accurately represent the complex circulation, we look at many different observational records including measurements of sea level, and the ocean surface and subsurface temperature and salinity," says co-author Janet Sprintall, a research oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego.

While some changes in the Indian Ocean appear to be a consistent response to anthropogenic global warming, "in general our ocean observational records are still far too short to distinguish the naturally driven variability from the man-made changes," says Sprintall. "This tells us that we need to continue measuring our oceans--particularly below the surface--so that we can better understand these long-term changes and their causes, and so that we can improve our prediction and response to them."

Quantifying the changes in the Indian Ocean heat and freshwater balance warrants a multi-pronged approach across temporal and spatial scales that integrates in situ observations (including Argo floats robotically programmed to measure ocean temperature, salinity, and other properties; moorings; and buoys), remote sensing by satellites to measure rainfall and sea surface salinity, improved numerical modelling simulations, and paleoclimate proxy networks, the authors note.

Corals are an important paleoclimate archive in the ocean because their calcium carbonate skeletons incorporate the chemical properties of past oceans and so reflect past climate and environmental conditions. "Corals are unique environmental archives that allow us to extend our understanding of Indian Ocean variability centuries farther back in time than the observational record," says co-author Sujata Murty, WHOI adjunct scientist and assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University at Albany, State University of New York. "Including the long-term perspective provided by corals alongside that of observations and remote sensing data enriches our understanding of complex climate and ocean systems and improves our ability to anticipate future changes in a warming world."

Maintaining and expanding current remote sensing, in situ observations, and a network of paleo proxies is "crucial" for "disentangling the effects of multi-decadal natural variability and anthropogenic change on heat and freshwater changes" in the Indian Ocean and the Maritime Continent region between the Indian and Pacific oceans, according to the paper.

The Indian Ocean, the paper notes, "is particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change," in part because the ocean is bounded to the north by the Asian continent. This means that heat from the Pacific Ocean that enters the Indian Ocean through the Indonesian Seas cannot easily exit the basin.

The basin "could be a kind of canary in a coal mine," says Ummenhofer, because those changes now being observed in the Indian Ocean also could happen in other oceans. "We can all benefit from having better observations and a better understanding of the ocean so that we can know whether the changes are a climate change signal or part of a natural cycle."

CAPTION

Co-author Sujata Murty retrieving a coral core piece during the underwater drilling process.

CREDIT

Photo credit: Justin Ossolinski.

This research was supported by the WHOI Postdoctoral Scholar Program, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Award for Innovative Research, and the James E. and Barbara V. Moltz Fellowship for Climate- Related Research.

About Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean's role in the changing global environment. WHOI's pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering--one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in basic and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation and operate the most extensive suite of data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide--both above and below the waves--pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility. For more information, please visit http://www.whoi.edu

Authors: Caroline C. Ummenhofer1,2 *, Sujata A. Murty1,3, Janet Sprintall4, Tong Lee5, and Nerilie J. Abram6,7

Affiliations:

1Department of Physical Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA
2ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia
3Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA
4Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
5Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
6Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
7ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
*Corresponding author

MUTUAL AID

Fish friends help in a crisis

New study sheds light on how relationships help survival

NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: FISH ON CORAL REEF view more 

CREDIT: AMY COX

FORT LAUDERDALE/DAVIE, Fla. - It's good to have friends.

Most humans have experienced social anxiety on some level during their lives. We all know the feeling - we show up to a party thinking it is going to be chock full of friends, only to find nearly all total strangers. While we typically attribute the long-lasting bonds of social familiarity to complex thinkers like humans, growing evidence indicates that we underestimate the importance of friendship networks in seemingly "simple" animals, like fish, and its importance for survival in the wild. To better understand how familiarity impacts social fishes, a group of research scientists studied this idea using schooling coral reef fish.

"We studied how the presence of 'friends' versus 'strangers' affected how fish responded to a predator threat," said lead author Lauren Nadler, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Nova Southeastern University's (NSU) Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. "The presence of 'strangers' seemed to distract fish, making them react more slowly and greatly increasing the chance that they would become lunch for a hungry predator when in the wrong social scene."

You can find the study published online in the journal Communications Biology.

Nadler and her colleagues believe that their results come down to trust. In social animals living in the wild, individuals rely on their buddies to alert them if a predator is lurking, but they need to balance the risk of being eaten against the wasted energy of reacting to inaccurate information. So, individuals will alter their sensitivity to social information based on the level of familiarity in the group, and hence trust in the information's accuracy.

"Trust among individuals is critical. This is true for humans as well as many other species, including fishes," said co-author Jacob Johansen, Ph.D., assistant professor at University of Hawaii Manoa. "Our research in fishes show that when accurate information transfer breaks down, so too does the chance of survival for the individual and the group as a whole."

Further, the researchers' results seemed to be driven by a combination of greater vigilance by the first fish to detect the predator, as well as more effective information sharing among neighboring fish.

"Our work shows that readiness to react to a threat depends on who is around you, if you are a fish," said Dr. Paolo Domenici, Research Director with the Institute of Biophysics at the Italian National Research Council "If you are in an unfamiliar social environment, this is already something you need to pay attention to. If you are surrounded by familiar individuals, then you will be able to pay attention to any external threat more readily."

As escape performance underpins survival from predator attacks, these results help us to understand why animals have evolved to prefer associating with "friends" rather than "strangers", due to the implications for both individual and group-level survival in the wild.

"Friendship networks matter, both for humans and for less evolved taxa like fishes," said Mark McCormick, Ph.D., of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. "The more you can rely on your friends, the easier and more fulfilling your life will be."

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About Nova Southeastern University (NSU): At NSU, students don't just get an education, they get the competitive edge they need for real careers, real contributions and real life. A dynamic, private research university, NSU is providing high-quality educational and research programs at the undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree levels. Established in 1964, the university includes 15 colleges, the 215,000-square-foot Center for Collaborative Research, the private JK-12 grade University School, the world-class NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, and the Alvin Sherman Library, Research and Information Technology Center, one of Florida's largest public libraries. NSU students learn at our campuses in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, Miami, Miramar, Orlando, Palm Beach, and Tampa, Florida, as well as San Juan, Puerto Rico, and online globally. With nearly 200,000 alumni across the globe, the reach of the NSU community is worldwide. Classified as having "high research activity" by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, NSU is one of only 59 universities nationwide to also be awarded Carnegie's Community Engagement Classification, and is also the largest private institution in the United States that meets the U.S. Department of Education's criteria as a Hispanic-serving Institution. Please visit http://www.nova.edu for more information.

The environmental toll of disposable masks

A new study calculates the waste generated by N95 usage and suggests possible ways to reduce it

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Research News

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Since the Covid-19 pandemic began last year, face masks and other personal protective equipment have become essential for health care workers. Disposable N95 masks have been in especially high demand to help prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.

All of those masks carry both financial and environmental costs. The Covid-19 pandemic is estimated to generate up to 7,200 tons of medical waste every day, much of which is disposable masks. And even as the pandemic slows down in some parts of the world, health care workers are expected to continue wearing masks most of the time.

That toll could be dramatically cut by adopting reusable masks, according to a new study from MIT that has calculated the financial and environmental cost of several different mask usage scenarios. Decontaminating regular N95 masks so that health care workers can wear them for more than one day drops costs and environmental waste by at least 75 percent, compared to using a new mask for every encounter with a patient.

"Perhaps unsurprisingly, the approaches that incorporate reusable aspects stand to have not only the greatest cost savings, but also significant reduction in waste," says Giovanni Traverso, an MIT assistant professor of mechanical engineering, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the senior author of the study.

The study also found that fully reusable silicone N95 masks could offer an even greater reduction in waste. Traverso and his colleagues are now working on developing such masks, which are not yet commercially available.

Jacqueline Chu, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, is the lead author of the study, which appears in the British Medical Journal Open.

Reduce and reuse

In the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, N95 masks were in short supply. At many hospitals, health care workers were forced to wear one mask for a full day, instead of switching to a new one for each patient they saw. Later on, some hospitals, including MGH and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, began using decontamination systems that use hydrogen peroxide vapor to sterilize masks. This allows one mask to be worn for a few days.

Last year, Traverso and his colleagues began developing a reusable N95 mask that is made of silicone rubber and contains an N95 filter that can be either discarded or sterilized after use. The masks are designed so they can be sterilized with heat or bleach and reused many times.

"Our vision was that if we had a reusable system, we could reduce the cost," Traverso says. "The majority of disposable masks also have a significant environmental impact, and they take a very long time to degrade. During a pandemic, there's a priority to protect people from the virus, and certainly that remains a priority, but for the longer term, we have to catch up and do the right thing, and strongly consider and minimize the potential negative impact on the environment."

Throughout the pandemic, hospitals in the United States have been using different mask strategies, based on availability of N95 masks and access to decontamination systems. The MIT team decided to model the impacts of several different scenarios, which encompassed usage patterns before and during the pandemic, including: one N95 mask per patient encounter; one N95 mask per day; reuse of N95 masks using ultraviolet decontamination; reuse of N95 masks using hydrogen peroxide sterilization; and one surgical mask per day.

They also modeled the potential cost and waste generated by the reusable silicone mask that they are now developing, which could be used with either disposable or reusable N95 filters.

According to their analysis, if every health care worker in the United States used a new N95 mask for each patient they encountered during the first six months of the pandemic, the total number of masks required would be about 7.4 billion, at a cost of $6.4 billion. This would lead to 84 million kilograms of waste (the equivalent of 252 Boeing 747 airplanes).

They also found that any of the reusable mask strategies would lead to a significant reduction in cost and in waste generated. If each health care worker were able to reuse N95 masks that were decontaminated with hydrogen peroxide or ultraviolet light, costs would drop to $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion over six months, and 13 million to 18 million kilograms of waste would result (the equivalent of 39 to 56 747s).

Those numbers could potentially be reduced even further with a reusable, silicone N95 mask, especially if the filters were also reusable. The researchers estimated that over six months, this type of mask could reduce costs to $18 million and waste to 1.6 million kilograms (about 2.5 747s).

"Masks are here to stay for the foreseeable future, so it's critical that we incorporate sustainability into their use, as well as the use of other disposable personal protective equipment that contribute to medical waste," Chu says.

Environmental burden

The data the researchers used for this study were gathered during the first six months of the pandemic in the United States (late March 2020 to late September 2020). Their calculations are based on the total number of health care workers in the United States, the number of Covid-19 patients at the time, and the length of hospital stay per patient, among other factors. Their calculations do not include any data on mask usage by the general public.

"Our focus here was on health care workers, so it's likely an underrepresentation of the total cost and environmental burden," Traverso notes.

While vaccination has helped to reduce the spread of Covid-19, Traverso believes health care workers will likely continue to wear masks for the foreseeable future, to protect against not only Covid-19 but also other respiratory diseases such as influenza.

He and others have started a company called Teal Bio that is now working on further refining and testing their reusable silicone mask and developing methods for mass manufacturing it. They plan to seek regulatory approval for the mask later this year. While cost and environmental impact are important factors to consider, the effectiveness of the masks also needs to be a priority, Traverso says.

"Ultimately, we want the systems to protect us, so it's important to appreciate whether the decontamination system is compromising the filtering capacity or not," he says. "Whatever you're using, you want to make sure you're using something that's going to protect you and others."

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The research was funded by the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, the National Institutes of Health, and MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. Other authors of the paper include Omkar Ghenand, an MIT undergraduate; Joy Collins, a former MIT technical associate; James Byrne, a radiation oncologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and research affiliate at MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; Adam Wentworth, a research engineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital and a research affiliate at the Koch Institute; Peter Chai, an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital; Farah Dadabhoy, an MIT research affiliate; and Chin Hur, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University.

Enzyme-based plastics recycling is more energy efficient, better for environment

BOTTLE Consortium effort develops model that finds sizeable energy and carbon-saving benefits for recycling PET, a common plastic used in bottles, clothing, carpet

DOE/NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY

Research News

Researchers in the BOTTLE Consortium, including from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Portsmouth, have identified using enzymes as a more sustainable approach for recycling polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a common plastic in single-use beverage bottles, clothing, and food packaging that are becoming increasingly relevant in addressing the environmental challenge of plastic pollution. An analysis shows enzyme-recycled PET has potential improvement over conventional, fossil-based methods of PET production across a broad spectrum of energy, carbon, and socioeconomic impacts.

The concept, if further developed and implemented at scale, could lead to new opportunities for PET recycling and create a mechanism for recycling textiles and other materials also made from PET that are traditionally not recycled today. PET ranks among the most abundantly produced synthetic polymers in the world, with 82 million metric tons produced annually; roughly 54% of PET is used in the manufacture of textiles for clothing and fibers for carpet.

"From all the plastics that were produced since the 1950s, less than 10% of it has ever been recycled," said Avantika Singh, a chemical engineer at NREL and first author of a new paper outlining the path toward enzyme-based recycling. "Most waste plastics end up in landfills."

The paper, "Techno-economic, life-cycle, and socioeconomic impact analysis of enzymatic recycling of poly(ethylene terephthalate)," appears in the journal Joule. Her coauthors are Nicholas Rorrer, Scott Nicholson, Erika Erickson, Jason DesVeaux, Andre Avelino, Patrick Lamers, Arpit Bhatt, Yi Min Zhang, Greg Avery, Ling Tao, Alberta Carpenter, and Gregg Beckham, all from NREL; and John McGeehan and Andrew Pickford of the University of Portsmouth's Centre for Enzyme Innovation in the United Kingdom, who are also members of BOTTLE.

BOTTLE is striving to address the problem of plastic pollution with two innovative approaches, namely to: (1) develop energy-efficient, cost-effective, and scalable recycling and upcycling technologies and (2) design modern plastics to be recyclable by design.

The new research paper addresses the challenge of plastic recyclability. While images of discarded bottles floating in oceans and other waterways provide a visual reminder of the problems posed by plastic waste, the lesser-seen issue remains of what to do with the PET used to manufacture textiles for clothing and fibers for carpet.

The researchers modeled a conceptual recycling facility that would take in a fraction of the 3 million metric tons of PET consumed annually in the United States. The enzymatic recycling process breaks down PET into its two building blocks, terephthalic acid (TPA) and ethylene glycol. Compared to conventional fossil-based production routes, the research team determined the enzymatic recycling process can reduce total supply-chain energy use by 69%-83% and greenhouse gas emissions by 17%-43% per kilogram of TPA. Additionally, an economy-wide comparison of virgin TPA and recycled TPA in the United States shows that the environmental and socioeconomic effects of the two processes are not distributed equally across their supply chain. The proposed recycling process can reduce environmental impacts by up to 95%, while generating up to 45% more socioeconomic benefits, including local jobs at the material recovery facilities.

The study also predicts that enzymatic PET recycling can achieve cost parity with the production of virgin PET, thus highlighting the potential for this enzyme technology to decarbonize PET manufacturing, in addition to enabling the recycling of waste PET-rich feedstocks, such as clothing and carpets.

"That's one of the biggest opportunities," Singh said. "If we can capture that space--textiles, carpet fibers, and other PET waste plastics that are not currently recycled--that could be a true game-changer."

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This research is funded by DOE's Advanced Manufacturing Office and the Bioenergy Technologies Office. The work was done as part of the Bio-Optimized Technologies to keep Thermoplastics out of Landfills and the Environment (BOTTLE) Consortium.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.

How green is your plastic?

Economical synthesis of polyacrylates and polymethacrylates from biobased materials

WILEY

Research News

Despite the best efforts of industry to work towards sustainability, most plastics (or polymers) are still made using non-renewable fossil fuels. However, researchers have now found an economical method for producing biobased acrylate resins. The study, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, shows how all the synthesis steps, from initial building blocks right up to polymerization, can be carried out in a single reactor (one pot), minimizing environmental impact.

Most varnishes, adhesives and paints are made from acrylate resins, which are polymers of acrylic acid esters and methacrylic acid esters. The raw materials that form these esters are acrylic or methacrylic acid, and alcohols. The alcohols give the plastics properties, such as softness or hardness, and water absorption or repulsion.

To make these polyacrylates and polymethacrylates more sustainable, Christophe Thomas and his team from the Institut de Recherche de Chimie in Paris, France, used alcohols from biobased or natural sources, rather than fossil sources. These included plant-based lauryl alcohol, menthol, tetrahydrogeraniol (a pheromone-like substance), vanillin, and ethyl lactate.

In addition to sustainability through renewable resources, the team also targeted synthesis in as few steps as possible, in other words a one-pot process. This meant they had to find catalysts that were suitable for several steps of the process, and also to finely tune all the other synthesis conditions, such as solvents, concentrations, and temperatures.

The first step in this kind of synthesis is the activation of acrylic or methacrylic acid. The researchers were able to identify catalysts from simple salts. These substances were also suitable for the next step, reacting the biobased alcohols with acrylic or methacrylic anhydride (a condensed form of the acids) to give the corresponding esters, which are the building blocks of the subsequent polymer.

"This monomer preparation step is highly efficient and allowed us to perform the polymerization in the same reactor," says Thomas. Thus, without purifying the intermediate products, the team was ultimately able to produce block copolymers, which are widely used in plastics production, from two or three different individual polymers produced separately.

The team's biobased plastics had a number of beneficial properties, depending on the monomers making them up. For example, the resin produced with a lactic acid side chain (poly(ELMA)) was hard and brittle, while the one produced with the more flexible tetrahydrogeraniol side chain (poly(THGA)) was pliable at room temperature. The authors emphasize the numerous available possibilities thanks to the wide variety of biobased alcohols at their disposal.

Aside from the versatility of the team's approach, their one-pot synthesis also helps reduce the environmental footprint. Since work-up solvents account for a large proportion of the E-factor, or environmental impact, of plastics synthesis, one-pot processes without work-up obviously greatly reduce this factor. Their most successful synthesis reduced the E-factor by three quarters, demonstrating the significance of this research.

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About the Author

Prof. Dr. Christophe Thomas leads the Organometallic Chemistry and Polymerization Catalysis team of the Institut de Recherche de Chimie Paris, CNRS/Chimie ParisTech/PSL University, France. The team's focus is on the development of new synthetic strategies for producing small molecules and polymers obtained from bioresources, with a special emphasis on low waste and energy consumption pathways.

https://www.ircp.cnrs.fr/la-recherche/equipe-cocp/

Research shows microbes play critical role boosting vigor of hybrid corn

UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS

Research News

IMAGE: PETER BALINT-KURTI COLLECTS A SAMPLE FROM A MAIZE PLANT GROWN IN FUMIGATED FARM SOIL IN CLAYTON, NORTH CAROLINA. view more 

CREDIT: SHANNON SERMONS.

LAWRENCE -- A new paper appearing the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences gives new detail and understanding to the cultivation of corn, one of the United States' biggest cash crops.

The research by a team at the University of Kansas centers on "hybrid vigor," also known as "heterosis," a well-known phenomenon where crosses between inbred lines of corn and other crops produce offspring that outperform their parents in yield, drought resistance and other desirable qualities. Yet, the mechanisms underpinning heterosis are little understood despite over a century of intensive research.

The new PNAS research examines the relationship between heterosis and soil microbes, showing, in most cases, heterosis is facilitated by a microbial community.

"Hybrid vigor is super important in agriculture because one of the reasons for the great increases in crop productivity over the last several decades has been the use of hybrid cultivars, which tend to be much more productive and stronger and healthier than inbred cultivars," said lead author Maggie Wagner, assistant scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and assistant professor with the KU Department of Ecology & Evolutionary biology. "Despite how important this is we still don't fully understand why hybrids are so superior to inbreds. A lot of focus has been on the genetics of hybrid vigor, which makes sense because hybridization is a genetic process -- but there's been some evidence the environment is important as well for affecting the strength of hybrid vigor. In this paper, we showed microbes living in the soil are one of the environmental factors that have a really important effect on hybrid vigor."

In a series of experiments, Wagner and her co-authors found in most cases inbred parent lines and hybrid crosses perform similarly under sterile conditions, without the presence of microbes -- but heterosis "can be restored by inoculation with a simple community of seven bacterial strains." The researchers saw the same results for seedlings inoculated with "autoclaved versus live soil slurries in a growth chamber and for plants grown in steamed or fumigated versus untreated soil in the field."

Wagner's co-authors at KU were Kayla Clouse and Laura Phillips. Other co-authors were Clara Tang, Fernanda Salvato, Alexandria Bartlett, Simina Vintila, Manuel Kleiner, Mark Hoffmann, Shannon Sermons and Peter Balint-Kurti at North Carolina State University. Sermons and Balint-Kurti also work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

CAPTION

Young maize plants growing in sterile laboratory conditions.

CREDIT

Fernanda Salvato.

"In lab experiments, we essentially grew the plants inside plastic bags in order to provide a completely sterile environment for them," Wagner said. "That allowed us to completely control which microbes, if any, were interacting with the plants. So, it's just some basic microbiology, along with a new kind of growth environment. But then in the field, we tried several different approaches to sterilize the soil, including just steam fumigation, which is used often, especially in fruit and vegetable production. It's not really generally used for corn growth, but for this experiment it made sense for us to do that. And we tried some chemical fumigants as well, and got similar results with all those methods."

In the soil-steaming experiment at the KU Field Station -- which temporarily eliminates or reduces microbes -- the researchers found the steaming "increased rather than decreased heterosis, indicating that the direction of the effect depends on community composition, environment or both."

"It's complicated, and we don't fully understand what's going on yet," Wagner said. "The first three experiments all showed the exact same direction of the effect. But then for the fourth experiment, we again found that microbes influenced heterosis but it was in the opposite direction, where the hybrid had a more positive reaction to sterile conditions. We think that this could just be due to some something particular to the microbial community in the soil for this one experiment, but we're not sure yet."

The new paper is to be followed by research in the same vein supported by a $900,000 new grant from the National Science Foundation involving many of the same personnel, with Wagner acting as one of the principal investigators.

The grant work will follow three lines of investigation: testing a range of microbes for their ability to boost hybrid vigor in corn; finding genetic variants and regions of the corn genome that respond to soil microbes; and researching how microbes behave within the roots of inbred and hybrid corn at the molecular level. The investigators hope their work could lead to better techniques in agriculture and conservation.

CAPTION

A team member measures the height of a maize seedling grown in fumigated farm soil.

CREDIT

Shannon Sermons

"We have this very basic observation of microbes affecting hybrid vigor, but we weren't able to follow up on it without some funding -- this grant is going to push the same line of research forward," Wagner said. "My collaborators are Manuel Kleiner at N.C. State who is an expert in metaproteomics, which is a way to measure the protein expression of microbes inside plant roots. We're hoping to learn more about how hybrids and inbreds are interacting with microbes differently, possibly by influencing the microbes' behavior. Our other collaborator is Peter Balint-Kurti with the USDA. He's an expert in the maize immune system and the genetic basis of disease resistance, so he's going to map some genes related to hybrids' responses to microbes. Here at Kansas, a graduate student in my lab, Kayla Clouse, will look at some of the broader patterns of this phenomenon -- for example, we don't know yet if all maize hybrids will react to microbes in the same way. So far, we've only confirmed this in one hybrid, so we need to figure out how generalizable it is -- and we're also hoping to figure out what is it about the microbial community that that can affect this response in either direction. A lot of her future dissertation work will be related to this project."

Work under the NSF grant will continue through 2024.

"Springing forward" affects early birds less than night owls, study finds

Genetic predisposition plays a role in individuals' reaction to abrupt change in sleep schedule; findings could have implications for other situations

MICHIGAN MEDICINE - UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Research News

Every spring, the Daylight Saving Time shift robs people of an hour of sleep - and a new study shows that DNA plays a role in how much the "spring forward" time change affects individuals.

People whose genetic profile makes them more likely to be "early birds" the rest of the year can adjust to the time change in a few days, the study shows. But those who tend to be "night owls" could take more than a week to get back on track with sleep schedule, according to new data published in Scientific Reports by a team from the University of Michigan.

The study uses data from continuous sleep tracking of 831 doctors in the first year of post-medical school training when the time shift occurred in spring 2019. All were first-year residents or "interns" in medical parlance, and taking part in the Intern Health Study based at the Michigan Neuroscience Institute.

From the large UK Biobank dataset, the researchers calculated genomic "chronotype" predisposition information, also known as the Objective Sleep Midpoint polygenic score. People with low scores were genomically predisposed to be "early birds" and those with high scores were genomically "night owls."

The team then applied these genomic scores in the intern sample and focused on the two groups of about 130 physicians each that had the strongest tendencies to be "early birds" and "night owls" based on their scores. The researchers looked at how their sleep patterns changed from the week before DST to the weekend after it.

In general, the difference in post-DST weekday wakeup times between the two groups was not large - probably because first-year medical residents have very strict work schedules.

In fact, the stressful duties and demanding schedules that interns endure is what made this population such an interesting one to study, and the larger Intern Health Study that the data come from has yielded important findings about the relationship between stress, sleep, genetics, mood and mental health.

But the time they got to sleep on the nights before workdays, and both sleep and wake times on the weekend, varied significantly between the two groups. The DST change made the differences even more pronounced.

Early birds had adjusted their sleep times by Tuesday, but night owls were still off track on the following Saturday.

Margit Burmeister, Ph.D., the U-M neuroscientist and geneticist who is the paper's senior and corresponding author, says the study gives one more strong reason for abolishing Daylight Saving Time.

"It's already known that DST has effects on rates of heart attacks, motor vehicle accidents, and other incidents, but what we know about these impacts mostly comes from looking for associations in large data pools after the fact," she says. "These data from direct monitoring and genetic testing allows us to directly see the effect, and to see the differences between people with different circadian rhythm tendencies that are influenced by both genes and environment. To put it plainly, DST makes everything worse for no good reason."

The study's first author is Jonathan Tyler, Ph.D., a postdoctoral assistant professor of mathematics at U-M.

Sleep schedules depend on a combination of many factors - but the fact that people can react so differently to the same abrupt change in time makes it important to study further. The researchers also looked at the "fall back" time change in autumn and found no significant differences between early birds and night owls in how they reacted to the abrupt addition of an hour of sleep.

The findings have implications not just for the annual spring time change, but also for shift workers, travelers across time zones and even people deciding which profession to choose, the researchers note. Burmeister says she hopes to look further at differences between people in different professions in future studies.

Co-author Srijan Sen, M.D., Ph.D. who leads the Intern Health Study and directs the Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg and Family Depression Center at U-M, continues to lead other studies of how each year's crop of interns at over 100 hospitals react to the stresses of their training. The interns in the newly published study, like all interns, are in general chronically sleep-deprived because of the number of hours they need to be on duty or preparing for duty.

"This study is a demonstration of how we much we vary in our response to even relatively minor challenges to our daily routines, like DST," he said. "Discovering the mechanisms underlying this variation can help us understand our individual strengths and vulnerabilities better."

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In addition to Burmeister, Tyler and Sen, the study's authors are Yu Fang, M.S.E., Cathy Goldstein, M.D., M.S. and Daniel Forger, Ph.D. Burmeister, Sen, and Goldstein are faculty at the U-M Medical School, where Fang is a research specialist. Forger is a professor of mathematics in the U-M College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and of computational medicine and bioinformatics at the Medical School.

Funding for the study and the Intern Health Study came from the National Institutes of Health (HL007622, MH101459).

Health care providers missing opportunities to talk about sexual health with young people

Less than one-third of adolescents report conversations about sexual health during annual visits

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Research News

Routine adolescent preventive visits provide important opportunities for promoting sexual and reproductive health and for preventing unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.

A new study published in Pediatrics -- led by the University of Minnesota -- found that a majority of adolescents and their parents considered health care provider discussions about puberty, sexually transmitted infections, HIV and birth control important. However, less than one-third of these young people reported discussions about such topics, other than puberty, at their most recent preventive visit.

"Our findings suggest clear gaps between parent and adolescent perceived importance of discussing sexual and reproductive health topics and adolescents' experiences during preventive visits," said Renee Sieving, a professor in the School of Nursing and the study's lead author. "While most parents and many youth that were surveyed noted the importance of providers discussing these topics, it does not routinely occur during preventive visits."

Based on data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adolescents ages 11-to-17 years old and their parents, the study's key findings were that during recent preventive visits:

• 14% of younger adolescents (ages 11-14 years old) and 38.7% of older adolescents (ages 15-17 years) reported that providers asked about their sexual activity;
• of potential sexual and reproductive health topics, provider-adolescent discussions about puberty were most common;
• less than one-third of adolescents reported a provider discussing any other sexual and reproductive health topic; and
• conversations about confidentiality and time alone between providers and adolescents were infrequent, with 20% of younger adolescents and 44% of older adolescents reporting time alone with their provider at their most recent check-up.

The researchers noted that their work indicates that primary care providers frequently miss opportunities for critical conversations about sexual and reproductive health, particularly with younger adolescents.

"These findings dispel potential concerns that parents may object to providers having these discussions: both parents and adolescents want discussions on a range of sexual and reproductive health topics to start in early adolescence," said Sieving. "Discussions about sexual and reproductive health and other sensitive topics are most likely to happen as a part of confidential conversations between adolescents and their providers, a practice that was infrequent among adolescents in this study."

Further efforts are needed to identify strategies that enhance providers' capacities to engage adolescents in these discussions. It will also be important for research and interventions to address structural barriers and facilitators to provider-adolescent conversations about sexual and reproductive health within primary care settings.

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Improving access to mental health services in low-income communities

UH researcher: Communication, coordination, collaboration are key

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

Research News

IMAGE: QUENETTE L. WALTON, LEAD AUTHOR AND PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR, IS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON GRADUATE COLLEGE OF SOCIAL WORK. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

When it comes to improving access to mental health services for children and families in low-income communities, a University of Houston researcher found having a warm handoff, which is a transfer of care between a primary care physician and mental health provider, will help build trust with the patient and lead to successful outcomes.

"Underserved populations face certain obstacles such as shortage of providers, family beliefs that cause stigma around mental health care, language barriers, lack of transportation and lack of insurance. A warm handoff, someone who serves as a go-between for experts and patients, can ensure connections are made," said Quenette L. Walton, assistant professor at the UH Graduate College of Social Work.

In the United States, as much as 14% of children experience emotional problems from birth to five years of age, and 75% of children with diagnosed mental health disorders are seen by pediatric primary care physicians. But in many under-resourced communities, integrated behavioral health interventions are not readily available.

Walton, principal investigator and lead author of a study published in Child & Youth Care Forum, identified and evaluated strategies used by pediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed medical health counselors, program managers and coordinators to improve the referral system and access to pediatric mental health care for low-income, minority families in Los Angeles County, where the research was conducted.

"This group developed a patient-centered, telehealth-based intervention to streamline the process from referral to actual treatment," Walton explained. "That included updating their systems to give specialty mental health providers access to information they need - basically closing the loophole so services can be consistent."

Three major themes emerged from the research to inform how pediatric primary care physicians and mental health providers assist their low-income children and families with accessing mental health care: communication, coordination and collaboration.

• Effective communication including phone calls, emails or written reports improved access to mental health services for this population.

• Coordination of services required knowing how to make the referral process more efficient and effective so providers, working together, could more quickly discuss a shared treatment plan and implementation.

• Collaboration of services entailed a warm handoff between pediatric primary care physicians and mental health providers. This person helped with navigating the system and worked with providers to develop a shared and agreed-upon plan of care.

"It takes several times for people to really buy into the need for mental health care. So, if we can be more intentional in our efforts to get people access to resources they need, despite their challenges, then they will feel valued and more likely to come in for services," Walton added. "Just an additional five or 10 minutes makes a difference for a patient."

Co-authors of the study include Elizabeth Bromley, University of California, Los Angeles Geffen School of Medicine; Lorena Porras-Javier, UCLA Children's Discovery & Innovation Institute; and Tumaini R. Coker, University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children's Hospital.

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‘Like Uber for snake emergencies’: tech takes the sting out of bites in rural India

Venomous snakebites cause tens of thousands of deaths each year. 

But homegrown apps are coming to the rescue – and protecting reptiles from reprisals

A large-scaled pit viper, one of 62 venomous or semi-venomous snakes in India, where an estimated 58,000 people a year die from snakebites. Photograph: Sandeep Das

The age of extinction 
About this content
Neeta Lal in Delhi
Tue 20 Jul 2021 06.30 BST


When 12-year-old Anay Sujith felt a sharp sting in his leg while asleep in his hut in a village in Kerala, “I started yelling and woke up my parents,” he recalls. They immediately sought help – not with a phone call, but through an app.

A team from Kannur Wildlife Rescuers (KWR) reached the boy’s home, in Ramatheru village in the coastal city of Kannur, within minutes and he was admitted to hospital 20 minutes later. He had been bitten four times by a venomous Russell’s viper, one of the “big four” snakes in India responsible for the greatest number of venomous snakebites.



Sarpa (Snake Awareness, Rescue and Protection app), which saved Anay’s life, is one of a growing number of life-saving homegrown snake apps in India that provide information about the ophidians, get people treatment for bites and help doctors to develop antivenoms.

A screengrab of Sarpa, which, as well as helping bite victims, has led to the rescue of nearly 2,000 snakes. Photograph: Courtesy of SARPA

Sarpa, SnakeHub, Snake Lens, Snakepedia, Serpent and the Big Four Mapping Project are among those proving increasingly popular with the public, conservationists and rescuers.

Snakepedia, which launched in February, is an android mobile app that provides information on various snake species, with images, infographics, podcasts and first aid advice for snakebites.

Serpent includes a guide to all of India’s snakes and a search facility to find the nearest hospital that treats bites. It can also connect users in real-time to an expert to help tackle snakebite emergencies. The Big Four Mapping Project, meanwhile, shows reported snake sightings and bites across the country.

“Snake apps are like the Ola and Uber for snake emergencies,” says Jose Louies, head of wildlife crime control at the Wildlife Trust of India, a non-profit conservation group. Louies helped launch Indiansnakes.org, and subsequently the Serpent app. He says apps provide a speedy response to snakebite incidents through a network of volunteers managed by local wildlife departments – which can mean saving both human and snake lives. “This innovative technology helps minimise human-snake conflict and save the lives of both,” he adds.


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According to Louies, snakes are at the heart of human-wildlife conflict in India. “India has the highest snake mortality. Just through Sarpa, for instance, we have rescued nearly 2,000 snakes, including 800 cobras, in the first six months of this year. The app gives real-time reports about how many rescuers are out in the field, the number of snakes rescued and other critical data.”
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An estimated 1.2 million people died from snakebites in India between 2000 and 2019, the equivalent of more than 58,000 a year, according to a recent paper.

A Russell’s viper – one of four species that cause 95% of snakebite deaths in India. Photograph: Biosphoto/Alamy

Snakebites are a global health priority, according to the World Health Organization. Between 81,000 and 138,000 people around the world die from snakebites each year, and about three times that number are left with permanent disabilities.

There are about 3,600 known species of snakes in the world, of which more than 300 are found in India, says herpetologist Sandeep Das. “Out of these 300, only 62 are venomous or semi-venomous and only four, or the ‘big four’ – Indian cobra, common krait, Russell’s viper and saw-scaled viper – cause 95% of all snakebite deaths in the country,” he says.

A screengrab of Sarpa showing some of India’s 300 snake species. Photograph: Courtesy of SARPA

Many snake attacks prove fatal, Das says, because they happen in areas without quick access to medical care. Villagers in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are particularly vulnerable, especially during monsoons when snakes and humans are more likely to come into contact, he says.

“Poor farmers, cattle grazers and shepherds moving around barefoot in rodent-infested fields are easy victims. Limited availability of anti-snake venom and expensive treatment put an enormous financial burden on the poor,” he says. “Despite this, snake bites are one of the most neglected diseases.”

Being a rescuer is not without risks, and the Kerala Forest Department has launched a committee to form a set of guidelines. More than 900 rescuers have been trained in identifying snakes and treating bites.

“All rescues are currently happening through Sarpa, which has had 35,000 downloads since its launch last year,” says Louies. “Earlier, there was no record of rescues from snakebites. But now, users can simply download the app and get access to a rescuer available in their vicinity.”

A villager's first instinct is to kill the snake immediately but we're educating them that killing snakes is illegal 

Vijay Neelakantan

Snake apps are also making it easier for the public and conservationists to work together. Kerala-based conservationist Vijay Neelakantan, who launched KWR, says the collective’s rescuers have been trained in how to respond if a hostile situation arises.

 “We have 37 certified rescuers who are also conducting sensitisation campaigns among villages about conservation, snake types and what to do in emergencies.

Herpetologist Sandeep Das rescues a Russell’s viper. He says people in rural areas who can’t get to hospital quickly are at greatest risk from bites. Photograph: Sandeep Das

“Currently, a villager’s first instinct is to kill the snake the moment they see it. But we’re educating them that killing snakes is illegal, that they should instead get in touch with certified rescuers who can save the lives of both man and animal. We’re also incentivising the rescuers with a cash reward whenever they catch a snake.”

Snakebites have been traditionally underreported and inadequately treated in India, with poor literacy and a lack of information on how to deal with them aggravating the problem, says Neelakantan. But the apps are helping to change that.

“A snakebite victim can survive for five hours but the golden (first) hour is critical. If the victim gets treatment within this time frame, chances of his survival go up significantly.”

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