Web search formulas offer a first step for protecting critical infrastructure

Page rankings and even the popular kids point the way

DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

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Critical systems are interconnected, posing a challenge for researchers who prioritize which systems to protect first. Here, a power substation provides power to a water treatment plant, which cools a nuclear plant and provides water to a hospital, which in turn provide power and emergency services to a town.

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Credit: Animation by Sara Levine | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

RICHLAND, Wash.—The technology behind web search engines is useful for more than tracking down your long-lost buddy or discovering a delicious new recipe. Technology based on search engine algorithms might also help keep the lights on, the water running and the trains moving during an emergency.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have shown that the algorithms that underlie web searches can help protect facilities like the grid, water treatment plants, food processing facilities and hospitals.

“This is a resource for people who are trying to protect an important network from a threat such as a cyberattack, and they need to prioritize which structures are most important to safeguard,” said mathematician Bill Kay, who led the work.

The new research, published recently in the journal Homeland Security Affairs, is built around Google’s PageRank algorithm, designed to recommend the most relevant websites for people searching for information on the internet. To rank search results, the formula considers factors like how many influential websites point to a given page and then how many influential sites the page itself points to.

Kay’s team applied the same principles to structures such as the electric grid to keep power flowing, treatment plants to keep our water clean and hospitals to treat the sick and injured. Researchers refer to this network of facilities as “critical infrastructure”—structures that if damaged or destroyed could threaten public safety or national security.

 

Stopping a cascade of failure

The task for researchers like Kay: Among the tangle of tens of thousands of important facilities in a nation like the United States, help planners prioritize which structures are most significant to protect. What might be the most likely targets of an adversary? Which facilities are most likely to cascade a failure to other structures, and how can defenders stop the cascade as quickly as possible?

“Not all infrastructure assets are the same,” said Kay. “If the failure is spreading, I want to know what will happen if a particular piece of equipment is taken out—how broad will the impact be?

“The key here is to identify systems where influence goes both ways,” said Kay, “identifying systems that are influenced by a lot of other systems but also influence many others. It’s like knowing who are the so-called popular kids in high school and especially those who are popular among the other popular kids.”

A lot can happen quickly. For example, if an errant squirrel takes out a power substation, the pumps at a water treatment plant might stop. That could threaten the water supply to a nearby hospital or to a nuclear plant that needs water for cooling. Of course, officials have robust backup systems, and part of their planning is knowing how to prevent such a cascade of failure as quickly as possible.

Kay’s team began by adapting the existing PageRank algorithm: Instead of looking at interactions among web pages, the scientists analyzed interactions among structures. Which facilities would be most likely to be targeted or to fail? And which facilities would have a serious impact on other facilities if they did fail? Structures that met both criteria were deemed critical by the team.

“As failure propagates through a network, there are two things I’d want to know: which things are likely to fail, and which things, if they fail, are likely to propagate the failure forward,” said Kay, who specializes in graph networks.

Layers of knowledge

The team didn’t simply apply the PageRank formula but made modifications to weigh many streams of information simultaneously—akin to performing dozens of related web searches at the same time and having all the searches communicate among themselves. The team refers to this as a multilayer approach.

“To think of a multilayer algorithm, think of a multilayer sandwich—a club sandwich,” said coauthor Patrick Mackey. “One layer might be the electric system. Another is transportation. Others might be oil pipelines or hospitals. Many people look at these aspects of infrastructure one at a time, in isolation; we’re looking at them all together and how they affect each other, which helps identify which are most critical.”

In several simulations, the team showed that its multilayer approach consistently stops failure faster, with fewer structures damaged, than other approaches, including a straight PageRank algorithm and another approach known as “outdegree.” The team did not quantify exactly how much it would limit an attack compared to the other methods, instead treating the study as evidence that the approach is worth exploring.

“A good algorithm for this type of work doesn’t always need to incorporate detailed dynamics of the various entities of interest. Oftentimes it’s sufficient, as a start, to adequately understand the relationships between those entities,” said Kay. “It provides a starting point and can become very useful once a human expert adds in knowledge about the domain in question.”

The work is part of a project portfolio led by PNNL researcher Sam Chatterjee, principal investigator and chief data scientist. It was funded by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to enable consistent, repeatable and defensible analysis across a broad spectrum of potential failures.

“This work represents an excellent example of how network science methods can be adapted to address critical infrastructure risk and resilience challenges,” said Chatterjee.

In addition to Chatterjee, Kay and Mackey, former intern Jacob Miller also contributed to the project.

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Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Multi-Layer Network PageRank for Critical Infrastructure Analysis

 

Unique dove species is the dodo of the Caribbean and in similar danger of dying out

Florida Museum of Natural History

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There are roughly 1,000 mature blue-headed quail doves left in the wild, and according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, that number is still decreasing.

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Credit: Florida Museum photo by Kristen Grace

On first inspection, the Cuban blue-headed quail dove doesn’t look like much: drab brown feathers, a slender beak, a pronounced strut in their walk typical of most other doves. You’d be forgiven for overlooking it in favor of Cuba’s prismatic parrots. But looks aren’t everything. For decades, this unassuming bird has perplexed biologists, who have no idea where it came from, how it got to the island or what it’s related to.

Now, for the first time, scientists have sequenced DNA from the blue-headed quail dove with the goal of finally getting to the bottom of things. Instead, they’re even more perplexed now than when they started.

“This species has been an ornithological enigma for a very long time,” said Jessica Oswald, a Florida Museum of Natural History consultant staff affiliate and lead author of a study describing the results of the DNA analysis. “We focused on this dove species because we were anticipating an odd result that may help us understand the complex biogeography of the Caribbean. We did not anticipate it being so unique from an evolutionary perspective relative to anything else.”

Blue-headed quail doves were once assumed to be most closely related to the doves and pigeons of Central and South America. But keen biologists began noticing it had several unusual features that are more similar to the doves and pigeons of Australasia.

The study, published in the journal Biology Letters, shows that neither of these assumptions are accurate. Blue-headed quail doves aren’t closely related to species in Australia, but they don’t share a close relationship with American doves either. 

“This species is even more evolutionarily distinct than the dodo was,” Oswald said. The dodo was surprisingly also a type of dove, and it had at least one close relative that we know of, the Rodrigues solitaire, which is now also extinct.

No one knows how old the dove family is, but an analysis of DNA combined with the age of several pigeon fossils in this study suggests that the blue-headed quail may have originated as far back as 50 million years ago. Even for evolutionary biologists, whose concept of time is better measured by the formation of mountains than by a 12-hour clock, this is old. The lineages that gave rise to humans and chimpanzees parted ways just a short 5 to 6 million years ago.

Ancient DNA illuminates the murky history of Caribbean extinctions

Oswald conducted the research while working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Florida Museum.  The study was part of a broader initiative funded by the National Science Foundation to discover the causes of bird extinction in the Caribbean over the last several thousand years.

An estimated 12% of all Caribbean birds have gone extinct since the arrival of humans on the islands, among them a giant owl that stood nearly four feet tall, more than a dozen parrots, a raptor up to 30% larger than bald eagles, a flightless ibis that used its stubby wings like clubs to bludgeon animals during combat, and a condor with a tangled mass of sinew and muscle wrapped around its skull that gave it a stronger bite than the condors around today. 

With only the fossils to go on, scientists have often found it difficult to determine how the Caribbean’s extinct species are related to modern ones.

So Oswald developed techniques to extract and sequence ancient DNA from Caribbean bird fossils. In an early proof of concept using the fossils of an extinct Caribbean cave rail, she and her colleagues discovered the first — albeit extinct — Caribbean bird whose closest relatives are in Africa, New Guinea and New Zealand. In a follow-up study, they used the same techniques to show that a parrot that is now restricted to the island of Hispaniola once had a much broader distribution in the Caribbean before humans showed up.

The blue-headed quail dove isn’t extinct yet but may be on its way there.

“There are 1,000 mature individuals of this species left in Cuba. It is threatened by overhunting by people, habitat loss and invasive species like cats. It’s very much on the brink,” Oswald said.

No one had ever successfully sequenced DNA from this species to figure out what it was, primarily because the bird is so rare. The few specimens that exist in North American museums were collected several decades ago, making it difficult to extract DNA from them with the typical methods used for fresh tissue.

Oswald tried her newly devised technique for sequencing ancient DNA on a toe pad clipped from a blue-headed quail dove specimen collected in 1958 and curated at the Florida Museum. It was unclear whether the method she’d originally designed with fossils in mind would work with preserved tissue, and she spent a tense few days awaiting the results. When they came, she contacted her colleague and former doctoral adviser to give him the news.

“She called me up and said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ I thought she was going to tell me they didn’t get any good sequencing and had no data, but it was just the opposite,” said study co-author David Steadman, who worked as curator of ornithology at the Florida Museum from 1995 to 2021. During his tenure, Steadman witnessed the ongoing technological explosion that furnished the sciences with advanced tools for studying natural history.

“It’s another instance of the importance of museums and the long-term maintenance of specimens. As ancient DNA techniques have improved, we find that fossils, historical and modern specimens are even more useful than before.”

Oswald and Steadman were both surprised by what the DNA had to tell them. There are other doves from the Caribbean. This includes an extinct species that scientists know about only because they have found their bones in archaeological sites where people once discarded their trash, a sure sign it was a staple of Indigenous diets before it died out. But there’s little doubt that all other doves in the Caribbean flew there from North, Central or South America, where their closest relatives are living today.

The blue-headed quail dove could have come from anywhere.

“It’s a relictual species and has probably been in the Caribbean for a long time. Cuba is an old island,” Steadman said.

Where it came from before that is anyone’s guess. Either it represents the last remaining scion of a once diverse and widespread dynasty of birds — as the genetics seem to suggest — or it’s a strange offshoot of other living doves that just happened to get stranded on Cuba when the world was a little younger.

Though the blue-headed quail dove prefers to spend most of its time on the ground, its ancestors almost certainly possessed the powerful flying ability of most other doves and pigeons, which they’ve used to spread out far and wide.

“There are some groups of birds that are spectacular dispersers, one being pigeons and doves. They just get up and go,” Oswald said. “Many are particularly good dispersers because they eat a lot of fruit and sometimes have to move large distances to look for fruiting trees.”

Bret Boyd of the Virginia Commonwealth University, Avery Szewczak and Julie Allen of Virginia Tech, Michelle LeFebvre and Rob Guralnick of the Florida Museum of Natural History and Brian Stucky of the University of Florida are also co-authors of the study.

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Journal

Biology Letters

DOI

10.1098/rsbl.2024.0464 

Article Title

Genomic data reveal that the Cuban blue-headed quail-dove (Starnoenas cyanocephala) is a biogeographic relict

 

Free University Brussels (VUB) opens its doors to censored American researchers

University allocates funding and contact point for U.S. scholars looking to relocate to Brussels

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

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The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) is opening 12 postdoctoral positions for international researchers, with a specific focus on American scholars working in socially significant fields. These prestigious fellowships come with substantial funding (€2.5 million) as part of the European Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) program. Additionally, as part of the Brains for Brussels initiative, VUB aims to actively attract American professors looking to relocate. In collaboration with its Francophone sister university ULB, VUB is also providing 18 apartments for international researchers seeking temporary residence at the Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies.

VUB's initiative is a response to the alarming political interference in academic research by the Trump administration in the U.S. The university is taking a firm stand against these developments. "Our university is freeing up funds and establishing a dedicated contact point for American researchers who want to continue their work in Brussels," says VUB Rector Jan Danckaert. "U.S. universities and their scholars are the biggest victims of this political and ideological interference. They are seeing millions in research funding disappear for ideological reasons. European universities are also being affected. The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has already experienced this firsthand, becoming one of the first Flemish institutions impacted by the Trump administration. Recently, two research projects we had approved in collaboration with U.S. partners were canceled due to 'changed policy priorities.' One project focused on Youth and Disinformation, while the other explored the Transatlantic Dialogue between the U.S. and Europe."

"As a European pioneer in climate research, in-vitro fertilization (IVF), artificial intelligence (AI), and geopolitical security, VUB offers an excellent environment where top American researchers can work freely," Rector Danckaert emphasizes. "Our university is committed to actively supporting free academic inquiry. VUB was founded in 1834 precisely to safeguard academic freedom, free from interference by church or state. We see it as our duty to assist our American colleagues."

Following the terrorist attacks of March 22, 2016, in Brussels, then-President Trump famously referred to the Belgian capital, specifically the Brussels district of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, as a "hellhole," a remark that sparked strong emotional reactions across Europe. This makes VUB's initiative even more symbolically significant.

To assist American researchers, VUB is launching a revamped website featuring its academic job openings (academicpositions.com/employer/vrije-universiteit-brussel). Additionally, VUB has set up a dedicated contact point (research.welcome@vub.be) where U.S. researchers can find information about research programs, visa applications, and life and work in Brussels.

 

Neuroanatomy that sets humans apart from other primates

In a study comparing human brains to macaque and chimpanzee brains, researchers discovered uniquely human neuroanatomical features.

Society for Neuroscience

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This image highlights (red) behavioral domains in left and right brain hemispheres that show high divergence following comparisons. Top shows domains that differ the most between human and chimpanzee. Bottom shows domains that differ the most between human and macaque.

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Credit: Bryant et al., JNeurosci 2025

Researchers have widely accepted that what sets humans apart from nonhuman primates are prefrontal cortex–driven behaviors such as decision-making, reasoning, planning, and attention. In a new JNeurosci paper, research led by Rogier Mars, at University of Oxford, and Katherine Bryant, at Aix-Marseille University, provides a better picture of the cortical evolution that distinguishes human brains from other primates.  

The researchers compared cortical organization not only between humans and macaques, which is a standard for human and nonhuman primate comparisons in research, but also between humans and chimpanzees, humans’ closest living relative. Notably, the chimpanzee brain scans used in this study were obtained from a publicly accessible research archive prior to the 2015 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Institutes of Health regulations governing research with chimpanzees. In addition to unique prefrontal cortex organization, connections between brain regions associated with emotional regulation, social cognition, and language processing seem distinctly human. The researchers found that this was especially true for chimpanzee comparisons. According to the authors, their study suggests that emotional and social behaviors may distinguish human abilities from other species in addition to behaviors driven by prefrontal cortex.  

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Please contact media@sfn.org for full-text PDF.

About JNeurosci

JNeurosci was launched in 1981 as a means to communicate the findings of the highest quality neuroscience research to the growing field. Today, the journal remains committed to publishing cutting-edge neuroscience that will have an immediate and lasting scientific impact, while responding to authors' changing publishing needs, representing breadth of the field and diversity in authorship.

About The Society for Neuroscience

The Society for Neuroscience is the world's largest organization of scientists and physicians devoted to understanding the brain and nervous system. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1969, now has nearly 35,000 members in more than 95 countries.

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Journal

JNeurosci

DOI

10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2017-24.2025 

Article Title

Connectivity profile and function of uniquely human cortical areas

Article Publication Date

17-Mar-2025

 

You could soon grow your own Ozempic-like medication

uOttawa students launch award-winning sustainable biomanufacturing platform to address pharmaceutical inequalities

University of Ottawa

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To tackle the inequity in medication access, a societal issue especially in developing nations, a team of undergraduate student-researchers at the University of Ottawa has developed a new biomanufacturing platform called Phytogene. It offers a sustainable - and affordable – alternative to synthesizing important peptide-based pharmaceuticals, thanks to a plant-based production system known as biopharming.   

The project, led by fourth-year biotechnology and biomedical science students Victor Boddy and Teagan Thomas, aims to address medication shortages and inflated costs, improving treatment access, worldwide.

Gold medal student ingenuity

Phytogene utilizes Nicotiana benthamiana plants to produce medications such as Glucagon-like Peptide-1 (GLP-1) Receptor Agonists, a class of drugs that include the popular type-II diabetes, turned weight loss drug, Ozempic. This innovative approach could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and chemical waste associated with traditional pharmaceutical manufacturing methods.

Victor Boddy, team leader, explains: "Inspired by the recent Ozempic shortage, we built a proof-of-concept model system that expresses functional GLP-1 agonists in plants. We aim to create a future where people can reliably grow their own treatments at home, free from concerns about insurance, cost, or availability."

The team recently showcased their work at the iGEM Grand Jamboree in Paris, where they competed against over 430 international teams. Their exceptional performance earned them a gold medal and placed them among the top 5 teams within the biomanufacturing stream.

Teagan Thomas, co-leader of the project, highlights the potential impact: "Phytogene offers a unique, sustainable approach to biotechnology by providing an environmentally friendly solution to the critical crisis of medication access. We're excited to further develop this concept into a commercially viable project with support from venture capitalists and scientific advisors."

Social entrepreneurship in action

The research team has also published an open-source biopharming toolkit on the iGEM Parts Registry, enabling other researchers to build upon their work. This toolkit includes genetic tools for rapid screening of subcellular localizations in plants and various constructs for expression in multiple cell types.

The project, which began in late 2023, involved a collaborative effort from 23 uOttawa undergraduate students across various faculties, with guidance from Adam Damry, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Sciences, and Allyson Maclean, Associate Professor, Department of Biology. The team conducted their research in the bioGARAGE laboratory space and in collaboration with other university labs.

While the project shows great promise, it's important to note that it is still in the testing phase. "The extract has not been tested on humans," adds Boddy. The team is now working on optimizing protocols to be able to test the activity of these compounds. "We are currently analyzing blood glucose and insulin levels to assess response. We also plan to conduct bioactivity assays to test the drug's effectiveness on human cells", adds Thomas.

As the world grapples with medication shortages and the environmental impact of pharmaceutical production, the Phytogene platform offers a promising solution. By harnessing the power of transgenic plants, this innovative approach could revolutionize the biopharmaceutical industry, making medications more accessible and sustainable for people around the globe.

For more information about Phytogene, please visit iGEM uOttawa.

DEI

Democracies boost women’s participation in the labor market

UCR study finds that freer societies compel more women to pursue careers

University of California - Riverside

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Ugo Antonio Troiano

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Credit: UC Riverside

The benefits of democratic societies go beyond greater personal freedoms and liberties. A new study by a UC Riverside economics professor has found that democratic systems of government also lead to higher participation by women in the labor market.

By examining world labor and political data spanning back to the 19th century, UC Riverside Associate Professor Ugo Antonio Troiano found that women who lived in democracies during their adolescence years were more like to join the workforce than women who had lived under autocracies or dictatorships. 

Troiano analyzed data from the Polity IV Project, which measures the degree of democracy or autocracy in countries over time, assigning each country a numerical score ranging from -10 (full autocracy) to +10 (full democracy). 

He also analyzed data from the World Values Survey, which tracks social attitudes over time. By combining these sources, Troiano was able to isolate the effect of political institutions on women’s workforce participation while controlling for factors such as education, cultural norms, and economic conditions.

The political environment during adolescence has a lasting impact on women’s economic participation, Troiano found. His work builds on research in social psychology that suggests that people between the ages of 16 and 25 are particularly susceptible to experiences that shape their long-term beliefs.

“The more democratic a country was when a woman was 18, the more likely she would join the labor force,” Troiano said. 

Statistically, Troiano found that for every standard deviation increase (a uniform measure of how far a value moves from the average) in a country’s democracy score during a woman’s adolescence, her likelihood of joining the workforce increased by at least 2.6%.

To understand this phenomenon, Troiano found evidence that democratic rule reduces discriminatory attitudes toward women in the workplace.

One of the most telling findings comes from survey responses to the statement: “When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women.” Women who grew up in democratic societies were significantly more likely to reject this idea compared to those raised under autocratic rule.

Troiano also tested alternative explanations—such as the possibility that younger generations are simply more likely to work regardless of political system—but found weaker support for such reasons.

The study also suggests that democracies create more female role models, further encouraging women to enter the labor force.

Troiano said his findings align with what we know from political economy and development economics: people are inspired by leaders who resemble them. If all political figures are men, young boys are more likely to aspire to leadership positions, while girls are not. Democracies help correct such imbalances.

“The role model hypothesis suggests that when young women see other women in professional roles during their impressionable years, they are more likely to pursue careers themselves,” he said. “Male dictators may serve as role models only for boys, while female politicians, who are more common in democracies, are more likely to inspire girls as well.”

Historical data supports this idea. Over the past 50 years, democracies have had significantly higher rates of female political representation than autocratic regimes. Meanwhile, nearly 99% of all dictators in history have been male.

Troiano’s findings carry important implications for policymakers. Policies that protect democracy are not just about protecting political rights—they also have tangible economic benefits, particularly for women. Free and fair elections, gender-inclusive governance, and legal protections for women may also be effective tools for increasing female labor market participation and the resulting economic benefits, Troiano said.

Previous research shows that greater female participation in the workforce can lead to reduced poverty, higher GDP growth, and increased innovation.

Troiano’s research builds on the work of Harvard University economist Claudia Goldin, who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics for research that documented the historical barriers women face in the workforce and the economic factors influencing gender disparities. While Goldin provided a historical and economic analysis of gender disparities, Troiano demonstrated how political and institutional structures around the globe influence these disparities over time.

The study’s title is “Women in the Labor Market and Experienced Political Institutions.” It was published in Economics & Politics, edited by Wiley.

“Democratic institutions are by definition inclusive, including in terms of gender. So I think there is definitely a connection,” Troiano said. “This connection is what inspired me to work on this—to understand how to foster greater labor force participation among women.”

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Journal

Economics and Politics

DOI

10.1111/ecpo.12328 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Women in the Labor Market and Experienced Political Institutions