Innovative researcher from University of Calgary receives the 2021 Turnbull-Tator Award in Spinal Cord Injury and Concussion Research

Grant and Award Announcement

BRAIN CANADA FOUNDATION

Since 2001, in honour of Barbara Turnbull, Brain Canada and the Barbara Turnbull Foundation have been partnering to support the need for exceptional research in the area of spinal cord and/or brain injury to improve the lives of those affected. Co-sponsored by the foundations, the Turnbull-Tator Award in Spinal Cord Injury and Concussion Research recognizes an outstanding publication by a Canadian researcher in the field.

"Barbara was an advocate devoted to bringing attention to the importance of recognizing and funding excellence in Canadian-based research in the areas of spinal cord injury,” says Gary Goldberg, a director of the Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research. “It is a privilege to continue her legacy through the Barbara Turnbull Foundation in her honour. "

This year, Dr. Aaron Phillips from the University of Calgary was selected to receive the 2021 Turnbull-Tator Award for his paper entitled “Neuroprosthetic baroreflex controls hemodynamics after spinal cord injury”, a paper published in Nature.

Selected based on the publication’s innovation and originality, impact of the research and its findings, and quality of the research, Dr. Phillips is being awarded a $50,000 grant to continue his research on the treatment of spinal cord and brain injury.

Spinal cord injury leads to blood pressure instability that threatens survival, impairs neurological recovery, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, and reduces quality of life. This occurs because the brain can no longer activate the sympathetic nervous system, preventing the blood pressure stabilizing

system, known as the baroreflex, from effectively functioning.

“In the published paper, we used epidural electrical stimulation to activate and control the sympathetic nervous system in a closed-loop. This system functions as a ‘neuroprosthetic baroreflex’,” explains Dr. Phillips. “With the new fundamental knowledge, we generated regarding how the nervous system functions, we developed clinical-grade epidural electrical stimulation hardware targeting a new region within the spinal cord that we discovered houses the key circuits responsible for blood pressure control. We then engineered hardware to recapitulate the natural dynamics of the sympathetic nervous system that are lost after spinal cord injury.”

In 2020, Dr. Phillips was awarded a Future Leader in Canadian Brain Research grant from Brain Canada– Future Leaders is an early-career program that provides seed funding to budding researchers with enormous potential.

“Dr. Phillips winning this prestigious award is a great example of why it’s so important to invest in the next generation of neuroscientists. It demonstrates how innovative Canadian researchers can be when given the resources,” says Dr. Viviane Poupon, President and CEO of Brain Canada. “We are proud to be funding Dr. Phillips and are excited to now be seeing the global impact of his research.”

Dr. Phillips and his team are now developing new complimentary devices, further understanding the basic biology of the sympathetic nervous system and completing a series of clinical trials to make the neuroprosthetic baroreflex a widely available therapy.

“This award is a terrific honour as it acknowledges my research program as being amongst the top spinal cord injury research groups. This work included a series of preclinical studies, and we successfully translated our findings to a human in only four years since starting my research program - and this is truly only the beginning!” says Dr. Phillips.  “We are poised to make a giant leap forward in terms of how spinal cord injury is understood and managed. The plan now is to work with cutting-edge companies to ensure our research findings don’t just stay in the lab, but in fact change the lives of people in the community living with spinal cord injury.”

To Learn more about Dr. Phillips’ research, watch this video.

This project has been made possible with the financial support of the Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research and the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), an innovative arrangement between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) and Brain Canada Foundation. To date, Health Canada has invested over $130 million through the CBRF which has been matched by Brain Canada Foundation and its donors and partners.

About the Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research

The initial purpose of the Foundation was to encourage the public to recognize and financially support internationally esteemed research being done in Canada in the field of neuroscience, particularly as it relates to the remediation of spinal cord injuries. More recently, the Foundation has expanded its area of interest to include both spinal cord and brain injuries, including concussions. Great advances have been made in neuroscience, and the driving force that encouraged Barbara Turnbull to write her autobiography Looking in the Mirror was the realization that these advances may make the goal of regaining function in the damaged nervous system attainable. Through continued research, there is the possibility of new discoveries which may result in repair or regeneration of the spinal cord and brain after injury. Successful remediation will improve the quality of life of those who have been affected by neurotrauma, as well as reduce the ongoing costs of providing associated care and support.

Based on a synergistic approach that recognizes excellence in collaborative research in Canada in the field of neuroscience, the mission of the Foundation is to enhance public awareness of the need to financially support this vision, to develop strategic cooperative initiatives with other institutions and foundations with similar interest, such as Brain Canada, and to fund the highest quality research in spinal cord and brain injury being conducted in Canada.

About Brain Canada

Brain Canada is a national non-profit organization that enables and supports excellent, innovative, paradigm-changing brain research in Canada. It plays a unique and invaluable role as the national convener of the brain research community. Brain Canada understands that better insight into how the brain works contributes to the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and cure of disorders of the brain, thereby improving the health outcomes and quality of life of all Canadians. To learn more, please visit braincanada.ca.

About the Turnbull-Tator Award

In 2001, the Barbara Turnbull Foundation, Brain Canada, and CIHR’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction established a partnership to recognize and support excellent brain research in the area of spinal cord injury. In 2019, the Barbara Turnbull Foundation for Spinal Cord Research and Brain Canada expanded the scope of the Award to include traumatic brain injury and concussion research, and to reposition the award to recognize a recent publication that significantly impacts those fields. Accordingly, the name of the Award was changed to reflect the close relationship, sense of common purpose, and aligned missions of both Barbara Turnbull and her neurosurgeon, Dr. Charles Tator, to promote awareness of the impact of spinal cord injury and its prevention, research into its treatment, and a better understanding of the nature, diagnosis, and treatment of concussion and traumatic brain injury. To learn more about the history of the Turnbull-Tator Award, click here.

Applications for the Turnbull-Tator Award were reviewed by members of an international peer review panel chaired by Dr. Charles Tator and composed of experts with experience in the relevant field(s) of spinal cord and/or brain injury research. Based on the reviewers' scores and panel discussion, the review panel recommended to the Barbara Turnbull Foundation and Brain Canada the top-ranked publication to receive the Award.

AI can improve teacher training

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITÄT MÜNCHEN

Budding teachers can benefit from AI-assisted training: A study highlights the potential of adaptive feedback.

During their studies, pre-service teachers’ often lack the opportunity to gain sufficient practical experience. Combining simulations with artificial intelligence can be a promising way to give a more hands-on edge to the skills they learn. This is the conclusion reached by a study conducted by Professor Frank Fischer, Professor for Education and Educational Psychology at LMU Munich, and Dr. Michael Sailer. The study appears in the latest edition of the journal Learning and Instruction.

The two educational researchers worked with Iryna Gurevych, Professor of Computer Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt, to develop and train what is known as an artificial neural network that gives adaptive feedback tailored to pre-service teachers’ individual performances.

As part of an experiment, online simulations were used to train the diagnostic reasoning of pre-service teachers. The aim was for trainees to learn to recognize certain learning difficulties and provide written justification of why they suspected a given difficulty. In  these written justifications  composed by the pre-service teachers, the AI identified what the learners had done right and wrong and gave feedback accordingly. “Above all, using AI and providing individualized feedback improved the diagnostic reasoning of the trainee teachers,” says Michael Sailer, who believes that AI deployment adds value especially for the advancement of complex skills.

“The adaptive feedback is similar to the individual feedback that a human lecturer would give,” Frank Fischer says. “Especially in large courses of study such as teacher education but also medical education, where you have lots of students, this is a promising way to add a great deal of value.”

The study was published in collaboration with Professor Riikka Hofmann of the University of Cambridge under the aegis of the strategic partnership between LMU and Cambridge.

---

JOURNAL

Learning and Instruction

DOI

10.1016/j.learninstruc.2022.101620 

ARTICLE TITLE

Adaptive Feedback from Artificial Neural Networks Facilitates Pre-Service Teachers’ Diagnostic Reasoning in Simulation-based Learning

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Apr-2022

UK invests to modernize polar science

The UK is investing in modernising its research facilities in Antarctica and the Arctic, with total investment to date of £670 million, including £290 million announced today

Grant and Award Announcement

UK RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

 

IMAGE: ANTARCTICA view more 

CREDIT: BAS/PETE BUCKTROUT

The UK is investing in modernising its research facilities in Antarctica and the Arctic, with total investment to date of £670 million, including £290 million announced today.  

As a world leader in polar science, UK research conducted in the regions are of global importance. Investing in research is crucial in helping us understand the drivers and rates of changes to polar ice, oceans and atmosphere and the regional and global impacts of climate change. 

The importance of research in both Antarctic and Arctic regions has been underpinned by an investment by the UK of £670m for infrastructure improvement in addition to existing science funding activity. This is transforming how British Antarctic Survey (BAS) facilitates and supports frontier science.

The latest £290 million funding, announced today, will provide up-to-date aircraft facilities to ensure cargo and scientists can be transported easily to Antarctic research stations.

Commissioned by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) part of UK Research and Innovation, and funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), this ambitious group of projects will confirm Britain’s continued position as a world leader in the field of polar environmental science.

The Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation programme (AIMP) has so far delivered a new polar research ship, RRS Sir David Attenborough, plus the upgrade of the wharf at Rothera Research Station, and King Edward Point and Bird Island in South Georgia, and modernisation of the Signy research station. 

Along with enhanced aircraft facilities, BAS is building a new science support facility at the Rothera Research Station for scientists, alongside new modern collaboration spaces. This will secure polar science over the next 25 years. 

The programme will contribute to the UK’s key priorities and will ensure the delivery of cutting-edge  science and innovation in Antarctica. Research undertaken on these continents answers globally significant questions, improving our understanding of our planet, climate change and polar science.

Over the coming decades, UK polar scientists will address some of the most important questions facing our changing planet, particularly the impact of melting ice sheets on global sea levels.

The modernisation programme will enable collaboration with international partners, influencing the global climate change debate, and builds on the UK’s environmental leadership beyond COP26.

Professor Sir Duncan Wingham, Executive Chair of the Natural Environment Research Council, part of UKRI, said:

“This new investment is part of a wider, long-term programme of renewal of the UK’s polar infrastructure that includes the new polar vessel, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, and the replacement of the UK’s Rothera buildings with modern, low-energy accommodation and laboratories. It will future proof the air-bridge with South America and the Falkland Islands.

“The renewal programme recognises the central role of the Antarctic in future climate change and the commitment of the UK to maintain its leadership of polar science.”

Professor Dame Jane Francis, Director of British Antarctic Survey, said:

“Investing in Antarctic infrastructure means we can secure the future for the next generation of polar scientists. It means BAS can continue to be a world leader for polar science, addressing issues of global importance and helping society adapt to a changing world.

“The British Antarctic Survey has provided a permanent British scientific presence in Antarctica for the past 60 years, undertaking a vast range of science, which includes discovery of the ozone hole and an ongoing major project to study the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

The AIM programme project includes:

• A new polar research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough, providing a next-generation marine science platform, with increased endurance ability of up to 60 days unsupported at sea so it can undertake longer voyages and open up new remote locations for science.  
• The modernisation of the Rothera Research Station, our main base on the Antarctic peninsula. This includes a new Discovery Building,  rebuild and update of the wharf, and the introduction of carbon-reducing technology..
• Updating the King Edward Point wharf and slipway on South Georgia to ensure the new ship can moor safely and resupply the station.
• Modernising  Bird Island Research Station on South Georgia to increase storage and improve energy use.
• Modernising the summer-only  Signy Research Station, to include a longer, more robust jetty, better storage and handling facilities and improved living spaces.
• Relocation of the Halley research station, to prevent an ice chasm separating the station from the rest of the Halley research site on the Brunt ice shelf.

Smallest earthquakes ever detected in micron-scale metals

On the micrometer scale deformation properties of metals change profoundly: the smooth and continuous behaviour of bulk materials often becomes jerky due to random strain bursts of various sizes.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY (ELTE), FACULTY OF SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: ON THE MICROMETER SCALE DEFORMATION PROPERTIES OF METALS CHANGE PROFOUNDLY: THE SMOOTH AND CONTINUOUS BEHAVIOUR OF BULK MATERIALS OFTEN BECOMES JERKY DUE TO RANDOM STRAIN BURSTS OF VARIOUS SIZES. view more 

CREDIT: CREDIT: PÉTER DUSÁN ISPÁNOVITY AND DÁVID UGI

On the micrometer scale deformation properties of metals change profoundly: the smooth and continuous behaviour of bulk materials often becomes jerky due to random strain bursts of various sizes. The reason for this phenomenon is the complex intermittent redistribution of lattice dislocations (which are line-like ctystal defects responsible for the irreversible deformation of crystalline materials) due to external loading, which is also the cause of the formation of the uneven step-like surface upon deformation.

To study this phenomenon in more detail, research groups of the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Charles University of Prague and École des Mines de Saint-Étienne have developed a highly sensitive micromechanical platform, where weak elastic waves emitted by the specimen can be detected during the deformation of micron-scale pillars. Compression experiments performed on such zinc single crystalline micropillars in a scanning electron microscope confirmed that these so-called acoustic signals indeed occur during strain bursts, so, this experiment allowed us, for the first time, to practically hear the `sound of dislocations’.

The acoustic signals are sampled with a rate of 2.5 MHz, therefore, they provide extremely detailed information on the dynamics of dislocations. The in-depth statistical analyses performed by the researchers revealed that strain bursts exhibit a two-level structure: what has so far been seen as a single plastic slip is, in fact, a result of several correlated events on a μs-ms timescale.

The most surprising outcome of the experiments is that this process,

despite the fundamental differences between deformation mechanisms of metals and that of tectonic plates, was found to be completely analogous to earthquakes.

Acoustic signals emitted from the testpieces followed fundamental empirical laws established for main shocks and aftershocks in seismology, such as the Gutenberg-Richter and Omori laws.

 

VIDEOABSTRACT: https://youtu.be/kAf4iP8PnkU Compression of a zinc micropillar. The otherwise ultrasonic acoustic signals were transformed into the audible domain to better illustrate the correlation between acoustic events and strain bursts.

 

`These results are expected to bear high technological impact since, for the first time, we were able to observe direct connection between acoustic signals and the plastic events that emitted them’ said Péter Dusán Ispánovity, assistant professor at Eövös Loránd University and head of the Micromechanics and Multiscale Modelling Research Group. `Since the measurement of acoustic emission is a frequent method for monitoring and locating material failure in technological applications, by providing fundamentally new information about the underlying physics our results are expected to contribure to the further development of this technique.’

Dávid Ugi, PhD student in the group of Ispánovity and corresponding author of the publication added: `These experiments are rather complex, since one has to couple the nanometer precision manipulation tool with the extremely sensitive acoustic sensor, all in the vacuum chamber of a scanning electron microscope.

Such measurements, to our knowledge, at the moment can only be performed at our laboratory’ added the young researcher.

The methodology can also be used to investigate other types of deformation mechanisms, such as twinning or fracture, so the results, which were published in Nature Communications, are expected to open up new vistas in the research of micromechanical propeties of materials.

CAPTION

The reason for this phenomenon is the complex intermittent redistribution of lattice dislocations (which are line-like ctystal defects responsible for the irreversible deformation of crystalline materials) due to external loading, which is also the cause of the formation of the uneven step-like surface upon deformation.

CREDIT

Credit: Péter Dusán Ispánovity and Dávid Ugi

JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-022-29044-7 

ARTICLE TITLE

Dislocation avalanches are like earthquakes on the micron scale

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Apr-2022

Management researchers prescribe possible remedy in opioid misuse

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

 

IMAGE: DR. METIN CAKANYILDIRIM view more 

CREDIT: UT DALLAS

A decision-support framework developed by management science researchers from The University of Texas at Dallas could help clinicians objectively identify and estimate harms and benefits of opioid use for pain management.

In a study published online Feb. 3 in the INFORMS journal Decision Analysis, Naveen Jindal School of Management researchers explored how clinicians make decisions when prescribing opioids and developed a quantitative model of the process that incorporates multiple factors.

“The ongoing opioid epidemic has been a serious public health problem, and prescription opioids play a role in this problem,” said Dr. Metin Cakanyildirim, professor of operations management and one of the study’s authors. “Opioid drugs are initially prescribed to treat pain, but their use can potentially lead to adverse effects of drug tolerance, increased sensitivity to pain, dependence, addiction and overdose.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 14,000 people died in 2019 from overdoses involving prescription opioids.

Cakanyildirim and first author Abdullah Gokcinar, a doctoral student in operations management, were motivated by the opportunity to use management science tools to manage a nonmonetary process — pain — occurring outside business contexts.

To provide an analytical framework for evidence-based opioid prescribing, they collaborated with pain researchers Dr. Ted Price BS’97, Ashbel Smith Professor of neuroscience in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and director of the Center for Advanced Pain Studies, and Dr. Meredith Adams, assistant professor of anesthesiology at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Opioid decision-making incorporates recovery time and pain intensity, as well as gender, age and drug-use history, Gokcinar said. When prescribing opioids, a clinician faces several uncertainties, including opioid tolerance and hypersensitivity.

CDC guidelines direct clinicians to prescribe the lowest effective dose of opioids. The agency emphasizes evaluation of trade-offs in opioid use and directs clinicians to assess pain, check patient opioid history, discuss adverse effects and observe patient cues for drug abuse.

Although recent guidelines loosely limit prescription amounts, the exact prescription decision is left to the clinician, who typically mentally accounts for the trade-offs of beneficial versus adverse effects.

By quantifying this mental process, the researchers built a framework that could lead to prescription decision-support tools. The framework incorporates several parameters related to pain and recovery time, as well as adverse effects such as discomfort, dependence, tolerance and hypersensitivity.

The analysis found that over- and under-prescribing occur due to clinical uncertainties and lack of estimation and evaluation methods. Accurately incorporating adverse effects into the decision-support framework yields pain-management models for chronic, acute and persistent pain types.

The models provide optimal prescriptions to minimize the total pain, discomfort and suffering, and can reduce overprescribing, Gokcinar said.

“The clinician can measure the patient’s pain, approximate its trajectory and estimate the discomfort during opioid use along with the risk of addiction or overdose,” he said. “Inputting these and other factors into a decision-support framework that balances benefits and adverse effects of opioids yields an optimal prescription.”

Additional Framework Applications

Gokcinar said that such a framework could also be adapted to host patient data, including administered dosages, and to facilitate the review of a patient’s pain treatment, transfer of information back and forth between clinicians during and after a patient handover, and benchmarking of these treatments across clinics.

The study found that clinicians who initially prescribe opioids before handing over their patients to another provider are prone to underestimating the adverse effects. A framework could draw a clinician’s attention to the adverse effects or limit their prescription until the handover, he said.

“Using this model could pave the road toward frequently prescribing reduced amounts of opioids and hence adjusting prescriptions — known as adaptive treatment — according to patient statuses,” Gokcinar said. “Without such decision support, clinicians are forced to quickly come up with good prescriptions by combining their patient observations with their experiences. This is not an easy task to perform well repetitively in stressful settings.”

For patients, having a framework in place could help them understand that reduced amounts of opioids will maintain the long-term health of their nervous system.

“That might mean suffering more today to suffer less later,” Cakanyildirim said. “Pain management can be a long-term process and requires patients to be less myopic and more forward-looking.”

Using real-life data of daily reported pain levels and opioid use from Flaredown, a mobile app that helps users track their diseases and medication, the researchers inferred the timing and severity of adverse effects. Also, using data from surgery patients in a clinical setting, the researchers compared the suggestions of their models to clinical practice.

Once the models are validated in a clinical setting, they could potentially support balanced opioid prescribing. They also could aid policymakers in evaluating prescription policies.

Cakanyildirim said the researchers plan to further their work by collaborating with medical professionals and pain clinics to study information conveyed by patient questionnaires, assessments via telemedicine and adaptive treatment approaches.

---

JOURNAL

Decision Analysis

DOI

10.1287/deca.2021.0447 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Balanced Opioid Prescribing via a Clinical Trade-Off: Pain Relief vs. Adverse Effects of Discomfort, Dependence, and Tolerance/Hypersensitivity

New research sheds fresh light on the ‘800-pound gorilla’ of presenteeism

Employees only engage in presenteeism, working when sick, when they have not met their daily work goals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

Employees who are unwell only engage in presenteeism when they have not met their daily work goals, according to new research from Trinity College Dublin.

The study, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology recently, also found that working on a day when you feel ill drains mental energy which cannot be recovered the next day.

The study seeks to shed further light on the phenomenon of ‘presenteeism’ — defined by the researchers as continuing to work when experiencing ill-health. The practice has been labelled an ‘800-pound gorilla’ by researchers in occupational health psychology because of the tremendous costs it inflicts on employees and organisations alike. These costs include burnout, impaired workability, and productivity loss.

This study led by Dr Wladislaw Rivkin, Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour, Trinity, deepens our understanding of the harmful impact of presenteeism on employee effectiveness by demonstrating that depletion of mental resources is a key mechanism responsible for these harmful effects.

The research involved 126 employees logging their daily productivity across 12 workdays, resulting in 995 daily work observations. It was conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 when all participants were working from home.

Dr Rivkin commented:

It is crucial to tackle daily presenteeism, especially for remote workers. Managers should openly discourage presenteeism by reassuring team members that if they feel unwell it is acceptable to reduce their daily work goals and instead tend to their health. In light of the energy-depleting nature of presenteeism if employees engage in presenteeism they should work on tasks that are inherently pleasant rather than tedious tasks that further drain their energy.

So, while it may seem a good idea to work despite ill health to deliver on work goals our research shows that this has a knock-on effect for remote workers’ performance on the next day as presenteeism drains employees’ psychological energy, which cannot be fully recovered after work.

The full paper was entitled ‘Should I stay or should I go? The role of daily presenteeism as an adaptive response to perform at work despite somatic complaints for employee effectiveness’.

Wlad Rivkin is an Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour and Work Psychology whose research focuses on burnout, stress and other demands that people experience at work as well as what organisations can do to protect employee wellbeing and maintain their effectiveness. Other recent research projects include studies on the impact of commuting on employee wellbeing, the role of willpower in overcoming the negative effects of a bad night’s sleep and how smartphone use during non-work time impacts on sleep quality.

---

DOI

10.1037/ocp0000322 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Case study

ARTICLE TITLE

Should I stay or should I go? The role of daily presenteeism as an adaptive response to perform at work despite somatic complaints for employee effectiveness.

Research reveals human-driven changes to distinctive foraging patterns in North Pacific Ocean

The first large-scale study of its kind has uncovered more than 4,000 years’ worth of distinctive foraging behaviour in a species once driven to the brink of extinction.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

 

IMAGE: THIS MAP SHOWS KNOWN BREEDING ISLANDS ALONGSIDE THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL SAMPLING SITES IN THE CONTEXT OF THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN AND THE SHORT-TAILED ALBATROSS’ FORAGING RANGE. RANGE DATA FROM BIRDLIFE INTERNATIONAL. CREDIT: ERIC GUIRY/UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER view more 

CREDIT: ERIC GUIRY/UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER

The first large-scale study of its kind has uncovered more than 4,000 years’ worth of distinctive foraging behaviour in a species once driven to the brink of extinction.

An international team of researchers, led by the University of Leicester, identified long-term patterns in the behaviour of the short-tailed albatross (Phoebastria albatrus) in the North Pacific Ocean by studying isotopes found in archaeological and museum-archived samples of the bird, dating as far back as 2300 BCE.

Their findings, published today (Thursday) in Communications Biology, show long-term patterns in foraging behaviour for the short-tailed albatross for the first time – and demonstrate how individual birds foraged the same hyper-localised sites for thousands of years in spite of the species’ huge potential foraging range across thousands of miles of Pacific coastline and open ocean.

But this behaviour, a demonstration of long-term individual foraging site fidelity (LT-IFSF), can pose significant risks for animals who specialise in areas which may be impacted by human activity.

The short-tailed albatross was brought to the brink of extinction by feather hunters between the 1880s and 1930s and though careful conservation has resulted in exponential population growth in recent decades, this trend of LT-IFSF has not been observed in the last century.

Dr Eric Guiry is Lecturer in Biomolecular Archaeology at the University of Leicester and corresponding author for the study, which focused on two locations close to Yuquot, Canada, and compared findings to sites in the USA, Russia and Japan. He said:

“Understanding migratory behaviour is critical for global biodiversity restoration because it helps identify vulnerable regions for environmental protection.

“Although evidence for the extent and depth of LT-IFSF across other species is still emerging, the extreme distances and time scale of the behaviour seen here indicates that this foraging strategy may be a fundamental, density-driven adaptation that could become widespread again as recovering animal populations reach pre-industrial levels.”

The research team from Leicester, the Land of Maquinna Cultural Society (Canada), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and Simon Fraser University (Canada) were able to track this foraging behaviour by examining stable carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions in samples of bone collagen.

In contrast to most other tissues such as muscle or feather, which turn over on a scale of days, weeks, or months), isotopic compositions from bone collagen, which remodels slowly over the entire lifespan on an individual, reflect an average of foods consumed over the last several years of an individual’s life.

This provides a unique perspective for exploring lifetime trends in animal diet and migration behaviour.

By mapping these biological markers against known isotopic baselines across the species’ foraging range, linked to factors such as sea surface temperature and CO2 concentrations, the researchers were able to build up a picture of the short-tailed albatross’ migratory and foraging behaviour over hundreds of generations.

But, crucially, as this behaviour is no longer observed among these birds, their findings show this hyper-specialised foraging in specific locations disappeared after the birds were hunted to near extinction in the 1880s, when only a handful of birds remained. Dr Guiry continued:

“We think this behaviour could be driven by competition among birds, meaning that, as the population recovers, we could see it re-emerge. This kind information is important because it provides advanced warning that monitoring for this remarkable behaviour, which can make the birds more vulnerable to human impacts, may need close attention.

“One of the most exciting findings, however, is actually quite a positive note. Our data also indicate that Indigenous communities at Yuquot were harvesting these birds with little impact on their population for thousands of years.

“Not only does this tell us something about the long-term sustainability of Indigenous marine resource use at Yuquot, it provides a clear example of how people and the short-tailed albatross can co-exist.”

‘Four millennia of long-term individual foraging site fidelity in a highly migratory marine predator’ is published in Communications Biology.

---

JOURNAL

Communications Biology

DOI

10.1038/s42003-022-03310-2 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animal tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Four millennia of long-term individual foraging site fidelity in a highly migratory marine predator

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Apr-2022

Photocatalysts with built-in electric field helps to remove pollutants from water

Peer-Reviewed Publication

HEFEI INSTITUTES OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: FIGURE 1. THE PREPARED CDTEQDS/2DBWO PHOTOCATALYST WITH DIFFERENT PROPORTIONS. view more 

CREDIT: YANG PENGQI

A team led by Prof. WU Zhengyan from Institute of Intelligent Machines, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science recently introduced a high-efficiency Z-scheme photocatalyst to deal with contaminants in water.

This new solution has been published in ACS Applied Nano Materials.

In recent years, the rapid industrialisation has caused increasingly severe environmental pollution. Therein, kinds of organic pollutants in water have become major threats for human health and the ecosystem security worldwide. Therefore, an effective treatment approach has become an urgent task for elimination of organic pollutants at present.

In this research, the Bi2WO6(CdTeQDs/2DBWO) photocatalyst with a giant built-in electric field (BEF) was proved to extremely promote the dissociation of exciton and generation of reactive oxygen species. Scientists demonstrated BEF played a positive role during photocatalytic process, which exhibited much higher photodegradation efficiency for phenol, rhodamine B, and tetracycline compared to the pure Bi2WO6 under the visible light.

Compared to the commercial TiO2 photocatalyst, self-prepared CdTeQDs/2DBWO photocatalyst exhibited a slight advantage in photocatalytic efficiency for contaminants. However, due to a complicated synthesis process and a high cost, self-prepared photocatalyst is difficult to be applied in practical application, at present.

This study opened up a new route to design a high-efficiency photocatalysts.

CAPTION

Figure 2. Schematic illustration of photocatalytic degradation mechanism.

CREDIT

YANG Pengqi

---

JOURNAL

ACS Applied Nano Materials

DOI

10.1021/acsanm.2c00155 

ARTICLE TITLE

CdTe Quantum Dot/Bi2WO6 Nanosheet Photocatalysts with a Giant Built-In Electric Field for Enhanced Removal of Persistent Organic Pollutants

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

8-Apr-2022

Missing-link black hole found lurking in plain sight

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF NATURAL SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: ARTISTIC IMPRESSION OF A YOUNG GROWING BLACK HOLE EMERGING FROM THE CENTER OF A DUSTY STARBURST GALAXY. view more 

CREDIT: ESA/HUBBLE N. BARTMANN

An international research team has discovered a supermassive black hole in the early Universe that could provide the missing link in the evolution of quasars, some of the brightest objects in space. This new object was discovered in the most unlikely place: already archived observations of one of the most intensively studied regions of the sky. This result is important for understanding the evolution of supermassive black holes, like the one hiding at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy. And the method of discovery suggests that there are more surprises waiting to be discovered in the archive data.

Quasars, extremely bright objects powered by matter falling into a supermassive black hole, formed early in the history of the Universe, only 700-800 million years after the Big Bang. It is believed that quasars evolved from supermassive black holes in dusty starburst galaxies, a class of galaxies that has also been confirmed to have appeared early on. But there has been no direct evidence linking the two.

Researchers found evidence for the missing link while analyzing archived Hubble Space Telescope data for a region of the sky known as the “Hubble GOODS North field” in the constellation Ursa Major. This field has been studied extensively by Hubble and other world-leading telescopes. The team noticed an object, nicknamed GNz7q, that appears to be a black hole just starting to overpower its host galaxy in the process of becoming a quasar. Additional archive data including the Subaru Telescope, which can see farther into infrared wavelengths than Hubble, allowed astronomers to distinguish the black hole from its host galaxy.

Seiji Fujimoto, lead author of the paper describing the discovery, explains his vision for future research, “Subaru Telescope’s Hyper Suprime-Cam has also discovered a large number of quasars in the early universe, and further observations with the ALMA radio telescope and the James Webb [Space Telescope] have been scheduled. Detailed analysis at multiple wavelengths with a combination of these telescopes may find even more objects like GNz7q in the future.”

These results appeared as Fujimoto et al. “A dusty compact object bridging galaxies and quasars at cosmic dawn” in Nature on April 13, 2022.

---

JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-04454-1 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A dusty compact object bridging galaxies and quasars at cosmic dawn

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

13-Apr-2022