US nuclear regulators greatly underestimate potential for nuclear disaster

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) relied on faulty analysis to justify its refusal to adopt a critical measure for protecting Americans from the occurrence of a catastrophic nuclear-waste fire at any one of dozens of reactor sites around the country, according to an article in the May 26 issue of Science magazine. Fallout from such a fire could be considerably larger than the radioactive emissions from the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan.

Published by researchers from Princeton University and the Union of Concerned Scientists, the article argues that NRC inaction leaves the public at high risk from fires in spent-nuclear-fuel cooling pools at reactor sites. The pools -- water-filled basins that store and cool used radioactive fuel rods -- are so densely packed with nuclear waste that a fire could release enough radioactive material to contaminate an area twice the size of New Jersey. On average, radioactivity from such an accident could force approximately 8 million people to relocate and result in $2 trillion in damages.

These catastrophic consequences, which could be triggered by a large earthquake or a terrorist attack, could be largely avoided by regulatory measures that the NRC refuses to implement. Using a biased regulatory analysis, the agency excluded the possibility of an act of terrorism as well as the potential for damage from a fire beyond 50 miles of a plant. Failing to account for these and other factors led the NRC to significantly underestimate the destruction such a disaster could cause.

"The NRC has been pressured by the nuclear industry, directly and through Congress, to low-ball the potential consequences of a fire because of concerns that increased costs could result in shutting down more nuclear power plants," said paper co-author Frank von Hippel, a senior research physicist at Princeton's Program on Science and Global Security (SGS), based at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "Unfortunately, if there is no public outcry about this dangerous situation, the NRC will continue to bend to the industry's wishes."

Von Hippel's co-authors are Michael Schoeppner, a former postdoctoral researcher at Princeton's SGS, and Edwin Lyman, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Spent-fuel pools were brought into the spotlight following the March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. A 9.0-magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami that struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, disabling the electrical systems necessary for cooling the reactor cores. This led to core meltdowns at three of the six reactors at the facility, hydrogen explosions, and a release of radioactive material.

"The Fukushima accident could have been a hundred times worse had there been a loss of the water covering the spent fuel in pools associated with each reactor," von Hippel said. "That almost happened at Fukushima in Unit 4."

In the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, the NRC considered proposals for new safety requirements at U.S. plants. One was a measure prohibiting plant owners from densely packing spent-fuel pools, requiring them to expedite transfer of all spent fuel that has cooled in pools for at least five years to dry storage casks, which are inherently safer. Densely packed pools are highly vulnerable to catching fire and releasing huge amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

The NRC analysis found that a fire in a spent-fuel pool at an average nuclear reactor site would cause $125 billion in damages, while expedited transfer of spent fuel to dry casks could reduce radioactive releases from pool fires by 99 percent. However, the agency decided the possibility of such a fire is so unlikely that it could not justify requiring plant owners to pay the estimated cost of $50 million per pool.

The NRC cost-benefit analysis assumed there would be no consequences from radioactive contamination beyond 50 miles from a fire. It also assumed that all contaminated areas could be effectively cleaned up within a year. Both of these assumptions are inconsistent with experience after the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents.

In two previous articles, von Hippel and Schoeppner released figures that correct for these and other errors and omissions. They found that millions of residents in surrounding communities would have to relocate for years, resulting in total damages of $2 trillion -- nearly 20 times the NRC's result. Considering the nuclear industry is only legally liable for $13.6 billion, thanks to the Price Anderson Act of 1957, U.S. taxpayers would have to cover the remaining costs.

The authors point out that if the NRC does not take action to reduce this danger, Congress has the authority to fix the problem. Moreover, the authors suggest that states that provide subsidies to uneconomical nuclear reactors within their borders could also play a constructive role by making those subsidies available only for plants that agreed to carry out expedited transfer of spent fuel.

"In far too many instances, the NRC has used flawed analysis to justify inaction, leaving millions of Americans at risk of a radiological release that could contaminate their homes and destroy their livelihoods," said Lyman. "It is time for the NRC to employ sound science and common-sense policy judgments in its decision-making process."

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Why the Sumatra earthquake was so severe

An international team of scientists has found evidence suggesting the dehydration of minerals deep below the ocean floor influenced the severity of the Sumatra earthquake, which took place on December 26, 2004.

The earthquake, measuring magnitude 9.2, and the subsequent tsunami, devastated coastal communities of the Indian Ocean, killing over 250,000 people.

Research into the earthquake was conducted during a scientific ocean drilling expedition to the region in 2016, as part of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP), led by scientists from the University of Southampton and Colorado School of Mines.

During the expedition on board the research vessel JOIDES Resolution, the researchers sampled, for the first time, sediments and rocks from the oceanic tectonic plate which feeds the Sumatra subduction zone. A subduction zone is an area where two of the Earth's tectonic plates converge, one sliding beneath the other, generating the largest earthquakes on Earth, many with destructive tsunamis.

Findings of a study on sediment samples found far below the seabed are now detailed in a new paper led by Dr Andre Hüpers of the MARUM-Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at University of Bremen - published in the journal Science.

Expedition co-leader Professor Lisa McNeill, of the University of Southampton, says: "The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was triggered by an unusually strong earthquake with an extensive rupture area. We wanted to find out what caused such a large earthquake and tsunami and what this might mean for other regions with similar geological properties."

The scientists concentrated their research on a process of dehydration of sedimentary minerals deep below the ground, which usually occurs within the subduction zone. It is believed this dehydration process, which is influenced by the temperature and composition of the sediments, normally controls the location and extent of slip between the plates, and therefore the severity of an earthquake.

In Sumatra, the team used the latest advances in ocean drilling to extract samples from 1.5 km below the seabed. They then took measurements of sediment composition and chemical, thermal, and physical properties and ran simulations to calculate how the sediments and rock would behave once they had travelled 250 km to the east towards the subduction zone, and been buried significantly deeper, reaching higher temperatures.

The researchers found that the sediments on the ocean floor, eroded from the Himalayan mountain range and Tibetan Plateau and transported thousands of kilometres by rivers on land and in the ocean, are thick enough to reach high temperatures and to drive the dehydration process to completion before the sediments reach the subduction zone. This creates unusually strong material, allowing earthquake slip at the subduction fault surface to shallower depths and over a larger fault area - causing the exceptionally strong earthquake seen in 2004.

Dr Andre Hüpers of the University of Bremen says: "Our findings explain the extent of the large rupture area, which was a feature of the 2004 earthquake, and suggest that other subduction zones with thick and hotter sediment and rocks, could also experience this phenomenon.

"This will be particularly important for subduction zones with limited or no historic subduction earthquakes, where the hazard potential is not well known. Subduction zone earthquakes typically have a return time of a few hundred to a thousand years. Therefore our knowledge of previous earthquakes in some subduction zones can be very limited."

Similar subduction zones exist in the Caribbean (Lesser Antilles), off Iran and Pakistan (Makran), and off western USA and Canada (Cascadia). The team will continue research on the samples and data obtained from the Sumatra drilling expedition over the next few years, including laboratory experiments and further numerical simulations, and they will use their results to assess the potential future hazards both in Sumatra and at these comparable subduction zones.

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Magnetic switch turns strange quantum property on and off

When a ballerina pirouettes, twirling a full revolution, she looks just as she did when she started. But for electrons and other subatomic particles, which follow the rules of quantum theory, that's not necessarily so. When an electron moves around a closed path, ending up where it began, its physical state may or may not be the same as when it left.

Now, there is a way to control the outcome, thanks to an international research group led by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The team has developed the first switch that turns on and off this mysterious quantum behavior. The discovery promises to provide new insight into the fundamentals of quantum theory and may lead to new quantum electronic devices.

To study this quantum property, NIST physicist and fellow Joseph A. Stroscio and his colleagues studied electrons corralled in special orbits within a nanometer-sized region of graphene -- an ultrastrong, single layer of tightly packed carbon atoms. The corralled electrons orbit the center of the graphene sample just as electrons orbit the center of an atom. The orbiting electrons ordinarily retain the same exact physical properties after traveling a complete circuit in the graphene. But when an applied magnetic field reaches a critical value, it acts as a switch, altering the shape of the orbits and causing the electrons to possess different physical properties after completing a full circuit.

The researchers report their findings in the May 26, 2017, issue of Science.

The newly developed quantum switch relies on a geometric property called the Berry phase, named after English physicist Sir Michael Berry who developed the theory of this quantum phenomenon in 1983. The Berry phase is associated with the wave function of a particle, which in quantum theory describes a particle's physical state. The wave function -- think of an ocean wave -- has both an amplitude (the height of the wave) and a phase -- the location of a peak or trough relative to the start of the wave cycle.

When an electron makes a complete circuit around a closed loop so that it returns to its initial location, the phase of its wave function may shift instead of returning to its original value. This phase shift, the Berry phase, is a kind of memory of a quantum system's travel and does not depend on time, only on the geometry of the system -- the shape of the path. Moreover, the shift has observable consequences in a wide range of quantum systems.

Although the Berry phase is a purely quantum phenomenon, it has an analog in non-quantum systems. Consider the motion of a Foucault pendulum, which was used to demonstrate Earth's rotation in the 19th century. The suspended pendulum simply swings back and forth in the same vertical plane, but appears to slowly rotate during each swing -- a kind of phase shift -- due to the rotation of Earth beneath it.

Since the mid-1980s, experiments have shown that several types of quantum systems have a Berry phase associated with them. But until the current study, no one had constructed a switch that could turn the Berry phase on and off at will. The switch developed by the team, controlled by a tiny change in an applied magnetic field, gives electrons a sudden and large increase in energy.

Several members of the current research team -- based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University -- developed the theory for the Berry phase switch.

To study the Berry phase and create the switch, NIST team member Fereshte Ghahari built a high-quality graphene device to study the energy levels and the Berry phase of electrons corralled within the graphene.

First, the team confined the electrons to occupy certain orbits and energy levels. To keep the electrons penned in, team member Daniel Walkup created a quantum version of an electric fence by using ionized impurities in the insulating layer beneath the graphene. This enabled a scanning tunneling microscope at NIST's nanotechnology user facility, the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, to probe the quantum energy levels and Berry phase of the confined electrons.

The team then applied a weak magnetic field directed into the graphene sheet. For electrons moving in the clockwise direction, the magnetic field created tighter, more compact orbits. But for electrons moving in counterclockwise orbits, the magnetic field had the opposite effect, pulling the electrons into wider orbits. At a critical magnetic field strength, the field acted as a Berry phase switch. It twisted the counterclockwise orbits of the electrons, causing the charged particles to execute clockwise pirouettes near the boundary of the electric fence.

Ordinarily, these pirouettes would have little consequence. However, says team member Christopher Gutiérrez, "the electrons in graphene possess a special Berry phase, which switches on when these magneticallyinduced pirouettes are triggered."

When the Berry phase is switched on, orbiting electrons abruptly jump to a higher energy level. The quantum switch provides a rich scientific tool box that will help scientists exploit ideas for new quantum devices, which have no analog in conventional semiconductor systems, says Stroscio.

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Juno mission to Jupiter delivers first science results

NASA's Juno mission, led by Southwest Research Institute's Dr. Scott Bolton, is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about Jupiter specifically, and gas giants in general, according to a pair of Science papers released today. The Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter since July 2016, passing within 3,000 miles of the equatorial cloudtops.

"What we've learned so far is earth-shattering. Or should I say, Jupiter-shattering," said Bolton, Juno's principal investigator. "Discoveries about its core, composition, magnetosphere, and poles are as stunning as the photographs the mission is generating."

The solar-powered spacecraft's eight scientific instruments are designed to study Jupiter's interior structure, atmosphere, and magnetosphere. Two instruments developed and led by SwRI are working in concert to study Jupiter's auroras, the greatest light show in the solar system. The Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) is a set of sensors detecting the electrons and ions associated with Jupiter's auroras. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVS) examines the auroras in UV light to study Jupiter's upper atmosphere and the particles that collide with it. Scientists expected to find similarities to Earth's auroras, but Jovian auroral processes are proving puzzling.

"Although many of the observations have terrestrial analogs, it appears that different processes are at work creating the auroras," said SwRI's Dr. Phil Valek, JADE instrument lead. "With JADE we've observed plasmas upwelling from the upper atmosphere to help populate Jupiter's magnetosphere. However, the energetic particles associated with Jovian auroras are very different from those that power the most intense auroral emissions at Earth."

Also surprising, Jupiter's signature bands disappear near its poles. JunoCam images show a chaotic scene of swirling storms up to the size of Mars towering above a bluish backdrop. Since the first observations of these belts and zones many decades ago, scientists have wondered how far beneath the gas giant's swirling façade these features persist. Juno's microwave sounding instrument reveals that topical weather phenomena extend deep below the cloudtops, to pressures of 100 bars, 100 times Earth's air pressure at sea level.

"However, there's a north-south asymmetry. The depths of the bands are distributed unequally," Bolton said. "We've observed a narrow ammonia-rich plume at the equator. It resembles a deeper, wider version of the air currents that rise from Earth's equator and generate the trade winds."

Juno is mapping Jupiter's gravitational and magnetic fields to better understand the planet's interior structure and measure the mass of the core. Scientists think a dynamo -- a rotating, convecting, electrically conducting fluid in a planet's outer core -- is the mechanism for generating the planetary magnetic fields.

"Juno's gravity field measurements differ significantly from what we expected, which has implications for the distribution of heavy elements in the interior, including the existence and mass of Jupiter's core," Bolton said. The magnitude of the observed magnetic field was 7.766 Gauss, significantly stronger than expected. But the real surprise was the dramatic spatial variation in the field, which was significantly higher than expected in some locations, and markedly lower in others. "We characterized the field to estimate the depth of the dynamo region, suggesting that it may occur in a molecular hydrogen layer above the pressure-induced transition to the metallic state."

These preliminary science results were published in two papers in a special edition of Science. Bolton is lead author of "Jupiter's interior and deep atmosphere: The initial pole-to-pole passes with the Juno spacecraft." SwRI's Dr. Frederic Allegrini, Dr. Randy Gladstone, and Valek are co-authors of "Jupiter's magnetosphere and aurorae observed by the Juno spacecraft during its first polar orbits"; lead author is Dr. John Connerney of the Space Research Corporation.

Juno is the second mission developed under NASA's New Frontiers Program. The first was the SwRI-led New Horizons mission, which provided the first historic look at the Pluto system in July 2015 and is now on its way to a new target in the Kuiper Belt. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, SwRI's Bolton. Lockheed Martin of Denver built the spacecraft. The Italian Space Agency contributed an infrared spectrometer instrument and a portion of the radio science experiment.

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New species of bus-sized fossil marine reptile unearthed in Russia

A new species of a fossil pliosaur (large predatory marine reptile from the 'age of dinosaur') has been found in Russia and profoundly change how we understand the evolution of the group, says an international team of scientists.

Spanning more than 135 Ma during the 'Age of Dinosaurs', plesiosaur marine reptiles represent one of longest-lived radiations of aquatic tetrapods and certainly the most diverse one. Plesiosaurs possess an unusual body shape not seen in other marine vertebrates with four large flippers, a stiff trunk, and a highly varying neck length. Pliosaurs are a special kind of plesiosaur that are characterized by a large, 2m long skull, enormous teeth and extremely powerful jaws, making them the top predators of oceans during the 'Age of Dinosaurs'.

In a new study to be published today in the journal Current Biology, the team reports a new, exceptionally well-preserved and highly unusual pliosaur from the Cretaceous of Russia (about 130 million years ago). It has been found in Autumn 2002 on right bank of the Volga River, close to the city of Ulyanovsk, by Gleb N. Uspensky (Ulyanovsk State University), one of the co-authors of the paper. The skull of the new species, dubbed "Luskhan itilensis," meaning the Master Spirit from the Volga river, is 1.5m in length, indicating a large animal. But its rostrum is extremely slender, resembling that of fish-eating aquatic animals such as gharials or some species of river dolphins. "This is the most striking feature, as it suggests that pliosaurs colonized a much wider range of ecological niches than previously assumed" said Valentin Fischer, lecturer at the Université de Liège (Belgium) and lead author of the study.

By analysing two new and comprehensive datasets that describe the anatomy and ecomorphology of plesiosaurs with cutting edge techniques, the team revealed that several evolutionary convergences (a biological phenomenon where distantly related species evolve and resemble one another because they occupy similar roles, for example similar feeding strategies and prey types in an ecosystem) took place during the evolution of plesiosaurs, notably after an important extinction event at the end of the Jurassic (145 million years ago). The new findings have also ramifications in the final extinction of pliosaurs, which took place several tens of million years before that of all dinosaurs (except some bird lineages). Indeed, the new results suggest that pliosaurs were able to bounce back after the latest Jurassic extinction, but then faced another extinction that would -- this time -- wipe them off the depths of ancient oceans, forever.

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Landscape-scale erosion instabilities in the northern Gabilan Mesa, California

If you ever fly from L.A. to San Francisco, California, you may notice the Gabilan Mesa off to the east as you begin your descent into San Francisco International Airport. If you look carefully, you might notice two strange things: a series of bleach-white scars, where rock outcrops disrupt the smooth, grassy hillslopes, and a strong asymmetry in the orientation of tributaries, with many flowing south and few flowing north.

What you can't see is the few feet of soil that would lie beneath your feet if you were standing on the surface -- but it turns out that soil column may have a lot to do with shaping your 10,000-foot view.

Over long time scales, the transition from hillslopes to channels is controlled by the relative efficiencies of soil transport and channel erosion. This transition usually remains stable when erosion rates change, because increases in erosion rate would typically expose rocks that are stronger than the overlying weathered soils, thereby slowing any further increase in erosion rate. But what would happen if the opposite were true, if increases in erosion rates exposed highly vulnerable rocks, causing an unstable increase in erosion rate?

In this scenario, the shape of the landscape would be fragile -- susceptible to major reconfigurations in the face of small changes in erosion rate. In their paper for the Geological Society of America Bulletin, Samuel Johnstone and colleagues demonstrate that this may be the case in landscapes developed in rock types that are susceptible to slaking, a process that pervasively fractures these rocks when they are exposed to wetting and drying cycles.

Using laboratory measures of rock strength, Johnstone and colleagues demonstrate that soils in the Gabilan Mesa, California, are actually stronger than the rocks from which they were derived, once those parent rocks have been exposed to a single wetting and drying cycle.

Within the Gabilan Mesa, these rocks are typically covered in soil, but can be exposed in dramatic erosional channel features called arroyos. The morphology of arroyos and their position in the landscape suggests that they form by aggressively cutting uphill into the soil mantled hillslopes. Theory predicts that this behavior would be expected in an unstable erosion scenario.

What is perhaps most interesting is how climate influences the fragile landscape response recorded by arroyos. Arroyos are exclusively found within south-flowing catchments, and Johnstone and colleagues reason that this is the consequence of the thinner layer of soil that forms on these sunnier, drier, more poorly vegetated slopes. These thin soils allow highly erodible bedrock to be more readily accessed by erosive processes, and arroyos to be triggered more easily. This asymmetric triggering of headward (upslope) channel growth appears to drive profound topographic asymmetry, in which drainages are densely packed on south-facing slopes and nearly absent on north-facing slopes. This pattern is observable at the scale of entire drainage basins. The team's observations suggest that this large-scale reorganization of the Gabilan Mesa landscape starts with the soils, and the unusual combination of relatively strong soils forming from easily weakened rocks.

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Marmoset monkeys learn to call the same way human infants learn to babble

A baby's babbles start to sound like speech more quickly if they get frequent vocal feedback from adults. Princeton University researchers have found the same type of feedback speeds the vocal development of infant marmoset monkeys, in the first evidence of such learning in nonhuman primates, researchers report in Current Biology on May 25.

"We wanted to find out whether the idea that monkeys don't do any learning during their vocal development is actually true," says the study's senior co-author Asif Ghazanfar, a professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. "So we picked a species that we know really relies on vocalizations as its primary social signals. What we found in marmoset vocal development very closely parallels pre-linguistic vocal development in humans."

Although marmoset vocal calls do not approach the complexity of human language systems, vocal development in both species begins with infants making more or less random sounds.

"When an infant blurts out something and the parent responds, that's a contingent response. And the more often a parent provides that contingent response, the faster the human infant will develop its vocalizations," Ghazanfar says.

To find out whether the same principle held true for marmosets, Ghazanfar and his colleagues set up an experiment using pairs of fraternal twin marmosets, small, highly social monkeys from South America. Starting from the day after the marmosets were born, the researchers would separate the infants from the adult marmosets for 40 minutes each day. In the first 10 minutes, they recorded the noises that the infant marmosets made while sitting alone. Then, for the next half hour, the researchers gave the young marmosets contingent feedback in the form of audio playbacks of the parent's calls.

One twin in each pair got consistent feedback, mirroring what a young marmoset would receive from an especially attentive parent; the other twin got less consistent feedback on their vocalizations. They repeated these experiments up until the infants were 2 months old, roughly the equivalent of 2 years old in marmoset years.

Even though these sessions lasted less than an hour each day, infant marmosets that received lots of contingent feedback developed adult-sounding calls more rapidly than their siblings.

"When they're infants, this call is really noisy," Ghazanfar says. "It sounds kind of coarse, and then gradually it becomes very clean and tonal like an adult call."

Previous studies had found a correlation between the amount of feedback marmosets get from parents and the rate of vocal development, but the experimental design in this study more firmly establishes the causality between parental responses and vocal development, the researchers say.

"This system of vocal learning production may be linked to the idea that an infant that more quickly produces adult-sounding calls is more likely to get care from a caregiver in a cooperative breeding environment where multiple individuals could be that caregiver in addition to the parents," Ghazanfar says. "So it's not only this process of learning that's similar to humans; the whole reproductive strategy is similar to humans."

The researchers' next steps will include collecting more detailed data on marmosets' neural activity when they are chattering or calling to neighbors, he says.

Even though marmosets can't "talk" in the same way humans do, understanding marmoset communication may help us understand the evolution and development of speech.

"Vocal production learning isn't just about imitation," Ghazanfar saus. "And you can no longer say that nonhuman primates shows no evidence of vocal learning."

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Ancient DNA evidence shows hunter-gatherers and farmers were intimately linked

In human history, the transition from hunting and gathering to farming is a significant one. As such, hunter-gatherers and farmers are usually thought about as two entirely different sets of people. But researchers reporting new ancient DNA evidence in Current Biology on May 25 show that in the area we now recognize as Romania, at least, hunter-gatherers and farmers were living side by side, intermixing with each other, and having children.

"We expected some level of mixing between farmers and hunter-gatherers, given the archaeological evidence for contact among these communities," says Michael Hofreiter of University of Potsdam in Germany. "However, we were fascinated by the high levels of integration between the two communities as reconstructed from our ancient DNA data."

The findings add evidence to a longstanding debate about how the Neolithic transition, when people gave up hunting and gathering for farming, actually occurred, the researchers say. In those debates, the question has often been about whether the movement of people or the movement of ideas drove the transition.

Earlier evidence suggested that the Neolithic transition in Western Europe occurred mostly through the movement of people, whereas cultural diffusion played a larger role to the east, in Latvia and Ukraine. The researchers in the new study were interested in Romania because it lies between these two areas, presenting some of the most compelling archaeological evidence for contact between incoming farmers and local hunter-gatherers.

Indeed, the new findings show that the relationship between hunter-gatherers and farmers in the Danube basin can be more nuanced and complex. The movement of people and the spread of culture aren't mutually exclusive ideas, the researchers say, "but merely the ends of a continuum."

The researchers came to this conclusion after recovering four ancient human genomes from Romania spanning a time transect between 8.8 thousand and 5.4 thousand years ago. The researchers also analyzed two Mesolithic (hunter-gatherer) genomes from Spain to provide further context.

The DNA revealed that the Romanian genomes from thousands of years ago had significant ancestry from Western hunter-gatherers. However, they also had a lesser but still sizeable contribution from Anatolian farmers, suggesting multiple admixture events between hunter-gatherers and farmers. An analysis of the bones also showed they ate a varied diet, with a combination of terrestrial and aquatic sources.

"Our study shows that such contacts between hunter-gatherers and farmers went beyond the exchange of food and artefacts," Hofreiter says. "As data from different regions accumulate, we see a gradient across Europe, with increasing mixing of hunter-gatherers and farmers as we go east and north. Whilst we still do not know the drivers of this gradient, we can speculate that, as farmers encountered more challenging climatic conditions, they started interacting more with local hunter-gatherers. These increased contacts, which are also evident in the archaeological record, led to genetic mixing, implying a high level of integration between very different people."

The findings are a reminder that the relationships within and among people in different places and at different times aren't simple. It's often said that farmers moved in and outcompeted hunter-gatherers with little interaction between the two. But the truth is surely much richer and more varied than that. In some places, as the new evidence shows, incoming farmers and local hunter-gatherers interacted and mixed to a great extent. They lived together, despite large cultural differences.

Understanding the reasons for why the interactions between these different people led to such varied outcomes, Hofreiter says, is the next big step. The researchers say they now hope to use ancient DNA evidence to add more chapters to the story as they explore the Neolithic transition as it occurred in other parts of the world, outside of Europe.

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Size-sensing protein controls glucose uptake and storage in fat cells

Researchers at the University of Iowa have discovered that a molecule which can sense the swelling of fat cells also controls a signaling pathway that allows fat cells to take up and store excess glucose. Mice missing this protein, known as SWELL1, gain less weight (fat) than normal mice on a high-fat diet, but also develop diabetes.

"Although we have created a mouse that is resistant to weight gain by removing the SWELL1 protein, the mouse is not healthy; it has insulin resistance and glucose intolerance," says Rajan Sah, MD, PhD, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and senior author of the study.

Type 2 diabetes is one of the more serious health problems associated with obesity. The disease makes cells less sensitive to insulin and causes blood sugar levels to become abnormally high. It is healthier for the body to store excess glucose as fat rather than have it circulating in the blood where it can damage blood vessels and nerves.

In healthy people, insulin released in response to high glucose levels acts on many different tissues to coordinate use or storage of the glucose. It triggers fat cells to take up excess glucose and store it as fat.

Sah's study, which was published recently in Nature Cell Biology, found that removing SWELL1 from fat cells in mice disrupts this insulin signaling pathway and prevents fat cells from taking up glucose.

Sah and his team homed in on SWELL1 because of several pieces of converging evidence. Fat cells have a tremendous capacity to expand -- up to 30 times their normal volume in the context of obesity. It's also long been known that changes in fat cell size alters fat cell signaling.

Through exploratory experiments investigating cell swelling in fat cells from lean and obese mice as well as fat cells obtained from bariatric surgery patients, Sah and his team serendipitously identified SWELL1 protein as an essential component of fat cells' volume-sensing mechanism. From unrelated work by other researchers, they also knew that this protein was involved in a signaling pathway common to all cells. In fat cells this pathway regulates glucose uptake in response to insulin.

"We thought maybe this SWELL1 protein is what links the two pieces together -- the size-sensing mechanism and the signaling pathway that responds to size changes by altering insulin sensitivity," explains Sah, who also is a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center, and the Abboud Cardiovascular Research Center at the UI.

The team's study showed that swelling of mouse or human fat cells, either artificially in a petri dish, or because the cells have expanded due to obesity, activates SWELL1 signaling. Removing SWELL1 from mouse fat cells knocks out this volume-sensing signal and disrupts the insulin signaling pathway used by fat cells to take up and store excess glucose. Mice missing SWELL1 have smaller fat cells, but also develop insulin resistance and glucose intolerance.

Interestingly, on a regular diet, mice missing SWELL1 had body weights, fat composition, and metabolism that were all essentially the same as a normal mouse. The only difference was they had no SWELL1 activity in their fat cells, as well as reduced ability to clear glucose from the blood and impaired insulin sensitivity (insulin resistance).

When the mice were put on a high-fat diet, the mice missing SWELL1 did not gain weight as fast as the normal mice but the insulin resistance and glucose intolerance became worse.

"The idea that fat is bad is not necessarily true," Sah says. "Too much fat is bad, and fat in the wrong places is bad, but fat in the right place and allowed to expand normally may be somewhat protective against diabetes.

"If fat cells can sense their own expansion, then SWELL1 protein might be the mechanism for that," he continues. "What we see here is what the cell does with the information that it is getting bigger. It turns on a signaling pathway that modulates glucose uptake and insulin sensitivity. From this discovery, we can start to look at whether we can target this modulation of insulin sensitivity in a therapeutic way."

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Tai chi significantly reduces depression symptoms in Chinese-Americans

A 12-week program of instruction and practice of the Chinese martial art tai chi led to significantly reduced symptoms of depression in Chinese Americans not receiving any other treatments. The pilot study conducted by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry enrolled members of Boston's Chinese community who had mild to moderate depression.

"While some previous studies have suggested that tai chi may be useful in treating anxiety and depression, most have used it as a supplement to treatment for others medical conditions, rather than patients with depression," explains Albert Yeung, MD, ScD, of the Depression Clinical and Research Program in the MGH Department of Psychiatry, lead and corresponding author of the report. "Finding that tai chi can be effective is particularly significant because it is culturally accepted by this group of patients who tend to avoid conventional psychiatric treatment."

Participants were recruited through advertisements offering tai chi for stress reduction, and their eligibility for the study was determined based on in-person interviews and assessments of overall health and depression symptoms. Eligible participants were Chinese-American adults fluent in either Cantonese or Mandarin, with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder in the mild to moderate range, no history of other psychiatric disorders, no recent practice of tai chi or other mind-body interventions, and no current use of other psychiatric treatments.

Participants were randomized into three groups -- one that received the tai chi intervention; an active control group that participated in educational sessions that included discussions on stress, mental health and depression; and a passive control, "waitlist" group that returned for repeat assessments during and after the study period. The tai chi intervention involved twice weekly sessions for 12 weeks, in which participants were taught and practiced basic traditional tai chi movements. They were asked to practice at home three times a week and to document their practice. The education group also met twice weekly for 12 weeks, and sessions for both groups were offered in Cantonese or Mandarin. Members of both the education and waitlist groups were able to join free tai chi classes after the initial study period, something they were informed of at the study's outset.

Of the 50 participants who completed the 12-week intervention period, 17 were in the tai chi group, 14 in the education group and 19 in the waitlist group. The 12-week assessments showed that the tai chi group had significantly greater improvement in depression symptoms than did members of either control group. Follow-up assessment at 24 weeks showed sustained improvement among the tai chi group, with statistically significant differences remaining compared with the waitlist group.

"If these findings are confirmed in larger studies at other sites, that would indicate that tai chi could be a primary depression treatment for Chinese and Chinese American patients, who rarely take advantage of mental health services, and may also help address the shortage of mental health practitioners," says Yeung, who is an associate professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "We also should investigate whether tai chi can have similar results for individuals from other racial and ethnic groups and determine which of the many components of tai chi might be responsible for these beneficial effects."

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Solving the riddle of the snow globe

If you've shaken a snow globe, you've enjoyed watching its tiny particles slowly sink to the bottom. But do all small objects drift the same way and at the same pace?

A new Tel Aviv University study finds the sedimentation of asymmetric objects in liquid is very different from that of symmetrical objects like spheres. The research solves a long-standing puzzle concerning the cause and the extent of "storminess" in sedimentation, and may be useful in improving water treatment and industrial processes that rely on suspensions, which are liquids that contain small solid particles. The research may also have use in the study of geological deposits, because variations in the concentration of particles from place to place affect the progress of sedimentation.

The research was led by Prof. Haim Diamant of TAU's School of Chemistry in collaboration with Prof. Thomas Witten of the University of Chicago, and conducted by TAU doctoral student Tomer Goldfriend. It was sponsored by the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF) and published in Physical Review Letters.

The calm and the storm

"Our research clarifies a common, complex phenomenon and offers ways of controlling it," Prof. Diamant said. "We have demonstrated that the 'storminess' of sedimentation is specific to symmetrical objects such as spheres and ellipsoids. It disappears in the more general case of asymmetric objects, which can have arbitrary shapes. Asymmetric objects render the sedimentation process more uniform and less chaotic."

Certain chemical reactors and water-treatment facilities rely on processes closely related to sedimentation, Prof. Diamant explained. "These are called 'fluidized beds,' where settling particles are made to hover in the liquid by an opposing upward flow of liquid, which facilitates their chemical activity. Fluidized beds are used in the production of polymers such as rubber and polyethylene. They are also used to improve the efficiency of water and waste treatment facilities. Our work might lead to improvements of such processes by controlling the uniformity of particles distributed in the liquid."

The team is currently studying the organizational properties of other kinds of materials. "We now intend to look for physical scenarios other than sedimentation that may show a similar kind of 'self-taming' -- that is, a tendency of the material's constituents to self-organize into extremely uniform configurations," Prof. Diamant said. "The basic question is whether the behavior that we have found is unique to the process of sedimentation or can be found in a much broader class of materials. We think -- we hope -- that the latter is true."

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Medical News Today: Low physical activity increases risk of bladder, kidney cancer

A new study investigates the link between chronic physical inactivity and the risk of developing bladder cancer and kidney cancer. Medical News Today: Low physical activity increases risk of bladder, kidney cancer

Ineffective antibiotics form strong teams against deadly super bacteria

In the fight against super bacteria, University at Buffalo scientists are relying on strength in numbers to win the battle against drug resistance.

A team of researchers found that combinations of three antibiotics -- that are each ineffective against superbugs when used alone -- are capable of eradicating two of the six ESKAPE pathogens when delivered together.

ESKAPE pathogens are a group of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria that pose a grave threat, causing more than 2 million infections and nearly 23,000 deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The six super bacteria are also responsible for a substantial number of infections in hospitals.

The new, triple combination treatments provide a new weapon in the evolutionary arms race between modern medicine and harmful bacteria.

"These bacteria are extremely problematic and have become resistant to nearly all available antibiotics. We needed to think differently to attack this problem," says Brian Tsuji, PharmD, an author on two recent studies and associate professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

One study, "Polymyxin-resistant, carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii is eradicated by a triple combination of agents that lack individual activity," was published in the May issue of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, while another study, "Polymyxin B-Based Triple Combinations Wage War Against KPC-2-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae: New Dosing Strategies for Old Allies," was published in the April issue of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

Non-traditional combinations of medication are frequently used to fight against superbug infections, however, questions remain over proper dosage and which combinations are most effective.

The UB researchers tested combinations of the antibiotics polymyxin B, meropenem and ampicillin-sulbactam against the pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii. The bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae was treated with polymyxin B, meropenem, and rifampin.

"Each antibiotic was chosen to complement the other drugs' mechanisms of bacterial killing," says Justin Lenhard, PharmD, first author on the investigation of Acinetobacter baumannii and former postdoctoral researcher in Tsuji's lab. Lenhard is now an assistant professor at California Northstate University College of Pharmacy.

"By combining antimicrobials that exert their bacterial killing in different ways, it is possible to outmaneuver the ESKAPE pathogens and completely overwhelm the bacteria's defensive countermeasures," he said.

The medications were applied to the bacterial samples individually, in pairs and in triple combinations. Both the time needed for the antibiotics to kill the bacteria and the time it took for the pathogens to repopulate were measured.

For the tests on Acinetobacter baumannii, none of the antibiotics were able to kill the bacteria when used alone. Of the pairs of antibiotics, only the grouping of polymyxin B and meropenem was able to effectively kill the pathogen, but the bacteria gradually regrew over three days.

The triple combination achieved a similar kill rate to the pair of polymyxin B and meropenem, but the addition of ampicillin-sulbactam prevented regrowth of the pathogen. Within 96 hours, no viable bacteria cells were detected after exposure to all three antibiotics.

The tests against Klebsiella pneumoniae were led by Zackery Bulman, PharmD, a postdoctoral researcher in Tsuji's lab. Individual antibiotics were unable to sustain the killing of bacteria over a 24-hour period. The most effective double combination was polymyxin B and rifampin, which killed bacteria for up to 30 hours before the population regrew to initial levels.

The triple combination of polymyxin B, meropenem, and rifampin produced the highest kill rates and tripled the time it took for bacteria to regrow to 72 hours. Rifampin, the researchers suspect, temporarily suppresses the antibiotic resistance of Klebsiella pneumoniae, allowing the trio to destroy the bacteria.

Additional research is required to validate the treatments against other clinically relevant strains of bacteria, but the results of both studies are promising.

"These new antibiotic combinations may help to guide therapy in infections where no treatments appear to exist," says Tsuji.

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Medical News Today: Is it menopause? Tests and diagnosis

In this article, learn about the symptoms of menopause and how a doctor may test for and diagnose it. What is 'early menopause' and why might it occur? Medical News Today: Is it menopause? Tests and diagnosis

Scientists borrow from electronics to build circuits in living cells

Living cells must constantly process information to keep track of the changing world around them and arrive at an appropriate response.

Through billions of years of trial and error, evolution has arrived at a mode of information processing at the cellular level. In the microchips that run our computers, information processing capabilities reduce data to unambiguous zeros and ones. In cells, it's not that simple. DNA, proteins, lipids and sugars are arranged in complex and compartmentalized structures.

But scientists -- who want to harness the potential of cells as living computers that can respond to disease, efficiently produce biofuels or develop plant-based chemicals -- don't want to wait for evolution to craft their desired cellular system.

In a new paper published May 25 in Nature Communications, a team of UW synthetic biology researchers have demonstrated a new method for digital information processing in living cells, analogous to the logic gates used in electric circuits. They built a set of synthetic genes that function in cells like NOR gates, commonly used in electronics, which each take two inputs and only pass on a positive signal if both inputs are negative. NOR gates are functionally complete, meaning one can assemble them in different arrangements to make any kind of information processing circuit.

The UW engineers did all this using DNA instead of silicon and solder, and inside yeast cells instead of at an electronics workbench. The circuits the researchers built are the largest ever published to date in eurkaryotic cells, which, like human cells, contain a nucleus and other structures that enable complex behaviors.

"While implementing simple programs in cells will never rival the speed or accuracy of computation in silicon, genetic programs can interact with the cell's environment directly," said senior author and UW electrical engineering professor Eric Klavins. "For example, reprogrammed cells in a patient could make targeted, therapeutic decisions in the most relevant tissues, obviating the need for complex diagnostics and broad spectrum approaches to treatment."

Each cellular NOR gate consists of a gene with three programmable stretches of DNA -- two to act as inputs, and one to be the output. The authors then took advantage of a relatively new technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to target those specific DNA sequences inside a cell. The Cas9 protein acts like a molecular gatekeeper in the circuit, sitting on the DNA and determining if a particular gate will be active or not.

If a gate is active, it expresses a signal that directs the Cas9 to deactivate another gate within the circuit. In this way, the researchers can "wire" together the gates to create logical programs in the cell.

What sets the study apart from previous work, researchers said, is the scale and complexity of the circuits successfully assembled -- which included up to seven NOR gates assembled in series or parallel.

At this size, circuits can begin to execute really useful behaviors by taking in information from different environmental sensors and performing calculations to decide on the correct response. Imagined applications include engineered immune cells that can sense and respond to cancer markers or cellular biosensors that can easily diagnose infectious disease in patient tissue.

These large DNA circuits inside cells are a major step toward an ability to program living cells, the researchers said. They provide a framework where logical programs can be easily implemented to control cellular function and state.

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High pressure key to lighter, stronger metal alloys, scientists find

High pressure could be the key to making advanced metal mixtures that are lighter, stronger and more heat-resistant than conventional alloys, a new study by Stanford researchers suggests.

Humans have been blending metals together to create alloys with unique properties for thousands of years. But traditional alloys typically consist of one or two dominant metals with a pinch of other metals or elements thrown in. Classic examples include adding tin to copper to make bronze, or carbon to iron to create steel.

In contrast, "high-entropy" alloys consist of multiple metals mixed in approximately equal amounts. The result is stronger and lighter alloys that are more resistant to heat, corrosion and radiation, and that might even possess unique mechanical, magnetic or electrical properties.

Despite significant interest from material scientists, high-entropy alloys have yet to make the leap from the lab to actual products. One major reason is that scientists haven't yet figured out how to precisely control the arrangement, or packing structure, of the constituent atoms. How an alloy's atoms are arranged can significantly influence its properties, helping determine, for example, whether it is stiff or ductile, strong or brittle.

"Some of the most useful alloys are made up of metal atoms arranged in a combination of packing structures," said study first author Cameron Tracy, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

A new structure

To date, scientists have only been able to re- create two types of packing structures with most high-entropy alloys, called body-centered cubic and face-centered cubic. A third, common packing structure has largely eluded scientists' efforts -- until now.

In the new study, published online in the journal Nature Communications, Tracy and his colleagues report that they have successfully created a high-entropy alloy, made of common and readily available metals, with a so-called hexagonal close-packed (HCP) structure.

"A small number of high-entropy alloys with the HCP structure have been made in the last few years, but they contain a lot of exotic elements such as alkali metals and rare earth metals," Tracy said. "What we managed to do is to make an HCP high-entropy alloy from common metals that are typically used in engineering applications."

The trick, it appears, is high pressure. Tracy and his colleagues used an instrument called a diamond-anvil cell to subject tiny samples of a high-entropy alloy to pressures as high as 55 gigapascals -- roughly the pressure one would encounter in Earth's mantle. "The only time you would ever naturally see that pressure on Earth's surface is during a really big meteorite impact," Tracy said.

High pressure appears to trigger a transformation in the high-entropy alloy the team used, which consisted of manganese, cobalt, iron, nickel and chromium. "Imagine the atoms as a layer of ping pong balls on a table, and then adding more layers on top. That can form a face-centered cubic packing structure. But if you shift some of the layers slightly relative to the first one, you would get a hexagonal close-packed structure," Tracy said.

Scientists have speculated that the reason high-entropy alloys don't undergo this shift naturally is because interacting magnetic forces between the metal atoms prevent it from happening. But high pressure seems to disrupt the magnetic interactions.

"When you pressurize a material, you push all of the atoms closer together. Oftentimes, when you compress something, it becomes less magnetic," Tracy said. "That's what appears to be happening here: compressing the high-entropy alloy makes it non-magnetic or close to non-magnetic, and an HCP phase is suddenly possible."

Stable configuration

Interestingly, the alloy retains an HCP structure even after the pressure is removed. "Most of the time, when you take the pressure away, the atoms snap back to their previous configuration. But that's not happening here, and that's really surprising," said study coauthor Wendy Mao, an associate professor of geological sciences at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

The team also discovered that by slowly cranking up the pressure, they could increase the amount of hexagonal close-pack structure in their alloy. "This suggests it's possible to tailor the material to give us exactly the mechanical properties that we want for a particular application," Tracy said.

For example, combustion engines and power plants run more efficiently at high temperatures but conventional alloys tend to not perform well in extreme conditions because their atoms start moving around and become more disordered.

"High-entropy alloys, however, already possess a high degree of disorder due to their highly intermingled natures," Tracy said. "As a result, they have mechanical properties that are great at low temperatures and stay great at high temperatures."

In the future, materials scientists may be able to fine-tune the properties of high-entropy alloys even further by mixing different metals and elements together. "There's a huge part of the periodic table and so many permutations to be explored," Mao said.

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Designer worm spit supercharges healing

Every day 12 Australian diabetics have a limb amputated because of a non-healing wound. Globally, it's one every 30 seconds.

A molecule produced by a Thai liver parasite could be the solution to those non-healing wounds -- and scientists from the Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM) are now able to produce a version of the molecule on a large enough scale to make it available for laboratory tests and eventually clinical trials.

The molecule is granulin, one of a family of protein growth factors involved with cell proliferation.

"It's produced by a parasitic liver fluke, Opisthorchis viverrini, which originally came to our attention because it causes a liver cancer that kills 26,000 people each year in Thailand," parasitologist Dr Michael Smout said.

As part of their work on a potential vaccine to protect people from the parasite, Dr Smout and colleagues established that the granulin it produces has a hidden talent -- it supercharges healing.

"We realised the molecule, discovered in worm spit, could offer a solution for non-healing wounds, which are a problem for diabetics, smokers and the elderly," he said.

With fellow researchers from the AITHM at James Cook University in Cairns, Dr Smout has been investigating ways to produce granulin in sufficient quantities for larger-scale testing.

The team first tried recombinant DNA techniques, effectively inserting granulin into bacteria, with the aim of producing plentiful supplies of a reliable copy of the molecule.

"Unfortunately, granulin didn't perform well when we introduced it to E. coli bacteria, so we couldn't use recombinant techniques to produce a testable supply," said Professor Norelle Daly, whose research involves exploring the potential of peptides as drug candidates for therapeutic applications.

"We had to go back to the drawing board and find a way to synthesize part of the molecule -- to build our own version of designer worm spit," she said.

The researchers worked to establish which parts of the molecule were critical to wound healing, and to find a way to reproduce the active parts of granulin molecules (peptides).

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy revealed the molecule's complex shape: a string of amino acids bent into a twisted 3D shape that includes hairpin bends.

"In biology the shape and fold of a molecule can be critical to its function," Dr Smout said. "Getting the fold right is important -- it can be like the difference between throwing a well folded paper plane, or tossing a crumpled ball of paper."

After testing different segments and structures, the team concluded that those hairpin bends were the key.

"They're held in the twisted 3-D shape by disulfide bonds, and surprisingly we've found that by introducing an extra, non-native, bond we can produce peptides that hold the right shape to promote healing," Professor Daly said.

"You could say we've found an extra fold that helps our peptide paper plane fly straight and target wounds."

The lab-produced granulin peptides have shown great promise in tests, driving cell proliferation in human cells grown in lab plates, and demonstrating potent wound healing in mice.

Now that they can mass-produce perfectly folded, wound-healing peptides, the researchers are looking for potential partners as they progress towards further testing and eventually clinical trials.

"We have plenty of work to do before clinical trials, but we're confident we have a very strong contender for what could one day be a cream that a diabetic could apply at home, avoiding a lengthy hospital stay and possible amputation," said Professor Alex Loukas, whose work includes the investigation of hookworm proteins to treat autoimmune and allergic diseases.

"A take-home cream would be a great step forward for those with chronic wounds, and it would also save our health system a great deal of money.

"One in every seven diabetics in Australia will have a non-healing wound at some point, and many suffer amputations as a result. It's estimated the long hospital stays involved in treating chronic wounds cost our healthcare system AU$3.7 billion per year."

The research is published in the latest edition of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

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The birth and death of a tectonic plate

Several hundred miles off the Pacific Northwest coast, a small tectonic plate called the Juan de Fuca is slowly sliding under the North American continent. This subduction has created a collision zone with the potential to generate huge earthquakes and accompanying tsunamis, which happen when faulted rock abruptly shoves the ocean out of its way.

In fact, this region represents the single greatest geophysical hazard to the continental United States; quakes centered here could register as hundreds of times more damaging than even a big temblor on the San Andreas Fault. Not surprisingly, scientists are interested in understanding as much as they can about the Juan de Fuca Plate.

This microplate is "born" just 300 miles off the coast, at a long range of underwater volcanoes that produce new crust from melt generated deep below. Part of the global mid-ocean ridge system that encircles the planet, these regions generate 70 percent of Earth's tectonic plates. However, because the chains of volcanoes lie more than a mile beneath the sea surface, scientists know surprisingly little about them.

UC Santa Barbara geophysicist Zachary Eilon and his co-author Geoff Abers at Cornell University have conducted new research -- using a novel measurement technique -- that has revealed a strong signal of seismic attenuation or energy loss at the mid-ocean ridge where the Juan de Fuca Plate is created. The researchers' attenuation data imply that molten rock here is found even deeper within Earth than scientists had previously thought. This in turn helps scientists understand the processes by which Earth's tectonic plates are built, as well as the deep plumbing of volcanic systems. The results of the work appear in the journal Science Advances.

"We've never had the ability to measure attenuation this way at a mid-ocean ridge before, and the magnitude of the signal tells us that it can't be explained by shallow structure," said Eilon, an assistant professor in UCSB's Department of Earth Science. "Whatever is down there causing all this seismic energy to be lost extends really deep, at least 200 kilometers beneath the surface. That's unexpected, because we think of the processes that give rise to this -- particularly the effect of melting beneath the surface -- as being shallow, confined to 60 km or less."

According to Eilon's calculations, the narrow strip underneath the mid-ocean ridge, where hot rock wells up to generate the Juan de Fuca Plate, has very high attenuation. In fact, its levels are as high as scientists have seen anywhere on the planet. His findings also suggest that the plate is cooling faster than expected, which affects the friction at the collision zone and the resulting size of any potential megaquake.

Seismic waves begin at an earthquake and radiate away from it. As they disperse, they lose energy. Some of that loss is simply due to spreading out, but another parameter also affects energy loss. Called the quality factor, it essentially describes how squishy Earth is, Eilon said. He used the analogy of a bell to explain how the quality factor works.

"If I were to give you a well-made bell and you were to strike it once, it would ring for a long time," he explained. "That's because very little of the energy is actually being lost with each oscillation as the bell rings. That's very low attenuation, very high quality. But if I give you a poorly made bell and you strike it once, the oscillations will die out very quickly. That's high attenuation, low quality."

Eilon looked at the way different frequencies of seismic waves attenuated at different rates. "We looked not only at how much energy is lost but also at the different amounts by which various frequencies are delayed," he explained. "This new, more robust way of measuring attenuation is a breakthrough that can be applied in other systems around the world.

"Attenuation is a very hard thing to measure, which is why a lot of people ignore it," Eilon added. "But it gives us a huge amount of new information about Earth's interior that we wouldn't have otherwise."

Next year, Eilon will be part of an international effort to instrument large unexplored swaths of the Pacific with ocean bottom seismometers. Once that data has been collected, he will apply the techniques he developed on the Juan de Fuca in the hope of learning more about what lies beneath the seafloor in the old oceans, where mysterious undulations in Earth's gravity field have been measured.

"These new ocean bottom data, which are really coming out of technological advances in the instrumentation community, will give us new abilities to see through the ocean floor," Eilon said. "This is huge because 70 percent of Earth's surface is covered by water and we've largely been blind to it -- until now.

"The Pacific Northwest project was an incredibly ambitious community experiment," he said. "Just imagine the sort of things we'll find out once we start to put these instruments in other places."

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Increased protection of world's national animal symbols needed, suggests study

The snowy-feathered head and distinctive brown body of the bald eagle is a proud national symbol of the United States, adorning the country's currency and passports. The lion, known as "King of the Beasts," represents national strength and identity in several African countries.

But, how are populations of the planet's most valued wildlife faring in the 21st century? How well are societies protecting the species they have chosen to embody their ideals and represent their national identity?

In a new study, scientists from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science assessed the extinction risk and conservation status of all the world's national animal symbols. The 189 animal symbols assessed ranged from the lion and bald eagle to the turtle dove and common loon.

The analysis by UM researchers Neil Hammerschlag and Austin Gallagher found that an alarming 35 percent of the world's national animal symbols are threatened with extinction and 45 percent are experiencing population declines. They determined that the primary threats facing national animal symbols are killing for food, human-wildlife conflict, and habitat loss.

The researchers were surprised to find that only 16 percent of all symbols were receiving any sort of national protection within the country in which they are considered symbolic. The also found that populations of national animal symbols represented by North America and Australia-Oceania were faring better than those found within the African continent, which hosted the highest proportion of threatened animal symbols by geographic region.

"If current population trends persist, over 50 percent of national animal symbols may face future extinction," said the study's lead author Hammerschlag, a research assistant professor at UM's Rosenstiel School and Abess Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy. "This clearly shows the opportunity for individual countries to protect their own national symbols."

The researchers analyzed data from the IUCN Red List to assess the threat and conservation status of national animal symbols, representing 127 countries, including some countries who share national symbols. The Africa lion, for example, is the national animal symbols of Morocco, Togo, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, although the lion already went extinct within the borders of these countries. Some countries, including the U.S. have taken specific conservation actions that have allowed populations of the once-threatened national symbol, the bald eagle, to recover and now thrive, demonstrating that these animals can be conserved with appropriate conservation action.

"Given the potential significance of animal symbols to national and personal identity, it may be relatively easy to garner public support and protection for these animals such that they may continue to function as not only a national symbol, but also a flagship species indirectly supporting the conservation of other species and their habitats," said study co-author Gallagher, an adjunct assistant professor at UM Rosenstiel School and director of the non-profit Beneath the Waves Inc.

"The results of the study pose a sobering question, if a country isn't able to conserve or protect its own national symbol, what hope do any other species in that country have?" said Gallagher. "Local conservation initiatives may benefit from generating increased awareness of threats facing national animal symbols."

The researchers note that it may be relatively easy within a country to garner support for national animal symbols as flagship species if citizens become aware of the risks they face. "The fact that countries have been able to bring their national animal symbols back from near-extinction through strong conservation efforts is an important lesson and excellent sign of hope for all nations," said Hammerschlag.

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New brain mapping tool produces higher resolution data during brain surgery

Researchers have developed a new device to map the brain during surgery and distinguish between healthy and diseased tissues. The device provides higher resolution neural readings than existing tools used in the clinic and could enable doctors to perform safer, more precise brain surgeries.

The device is an improved version of a clinical tool called an electrode grid, which is a plastic or silicone-based grid of electrodes that is placed directly on the surface of the brain during surgery to monitor the activity of large groups of neurons. Neurosurgeons use electrode grids to identify which areas of the brain are diseased in order to avoid damaging or removing healthy, functional tissue during operations. Despite their wide use, electrode grids have remained bulky and have not experienced any major advances over the last 20 years.

The new electrode grid, developed by a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego and Massachusetts General Hospital, is about a thousand times thinner -- 6 micrometers versus several millimeters thick -- than clinical electrode grids. This allows it to conform better to the intricately curved surface of the brain and obtain better readings. The new electrode grid also contains a much higher density of electrodes -- spaced 25 times closer than those in clinical electrode grids -- enabling it to generate higher resolution recordings.

"Our goal is to develop a tool that can obtain more reliable information from the surface of the brain," said electrical engineering professor Shadi Dayeh, who co-led the study with neuroscience professor Eric Halgren and electrical engineering professor Vikash Gilja, all at UC San Diego. The project was funded by the Center for Brain Activity Mapping (CBAM) at UC San Diego and brought together experts from multiple fields, including neurosurgeons, neuroscientists, electrical engineers, materials scientists and experts in systems integration. Researchers published their work on May 12 in Advanced Functional Materials.

"By providing higher resolution views of the human brain, this technology can improve clinical practices and could lead to high performance brain machine interfaces," Gilja said.

To make their high resolution electrode grid, researchers had to find a way to shrink the size of the electrodes to pack them closer together. But with metal electrodes, which are typically used to make these grids, there is a tradeoff -- shrinking their size increases their electrical resistance, resulting in more noisy readings.

To overcome this problem, the team switched out the metal electrodes with ones made of a conductive polymer called PEDOT:PSS. The material is transparent, thin and flexible. Using this material enabled researchers to make smaller electrodes without sacrificing electrochemical performance. It also enhanced the richness of the information measured from the surface of the brain.

"These electrodes occupy minuscule volumes -- imagine Saran wrap, but thinner. And we demonstrate that they can capture neural activity from the human brain at least as well as conventional electrodes that are orders of magnitude larger," Gilja said.

Researchers worked with neurosurgeons at Thornton Hospital at UC San Diego and Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston to test their grid on four patients. The PEDOT:PSS electrode grid and a standard clinical electrode grid were compared side by side. In standard clinical recordings, the PEDOT:PSS electrode grid either performed similarly or slightly better than the standard electrode grid, recording with lower noise and higher resolution.

"In order to introduce a new electrode grid for clinical use, we first need to show that the device can yield the same information as that used in the clinic. Then we can build upon that work to make an even better product that can improve patient care," Dayeh said.

In one test, the team performed background readings of a patient's brain waves both while the patient was awake and unconscious. The PEDOT:PSS electrode grid produced similar readings as the standard clinical electrode grid. In another test, the team monitored the brain activity of a patient undergoing epilepsy surgery. Both electrode grids identified normal functioning areas of the brain versus where the seizures were happening. The main difference is that the PEDOT:PSS electrode grid produced more detailed and higher resolution readings than the clinical electrode grid.

Other tests monitored the brain activity of patients performing cognitive tasks. Patients were either shown a particular word or a picture illustrating that word. The word was afterwards recited to the patients. In the readings from both the PEDOT:PSS and standard electrode grids, researchers could differentiate between when the patients were hearing the word versus when they were seeing it (or a picture). "This experiment shows we can resolve functional and cognitive activity from the surface of the brain using these electrodes," Dayeh said.

The team's next steps are to make higher density electrode grids for improved resolution and biocompatibility tests to see how long they can stay in the body before they experience biofouling.

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New brain mapping tool produces higher resolution data during brain surgery

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Modified experimental vaccine protects monkeys from deadly malaria

Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, modified an experimental malaria vaccine and showed that it completely protected four of eight monkeys that received it against challenge with the virulent Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite. In three of the remaining four monkeys, the vaccine delayed when parasites first appeared in the blood by more than 25 days.

Malaria symptoms occur when parasites replicate inside red blood cells and cause them to burst. To enter blood cells, the parasite first secretes its own receptor protein, RON2, onto the cell's surface. Another parasite surface protein, AMA1, then binds to a specific portion of RON2, called RON2L, and the resulting complex initiates attachment to the outer membrane of the red blood cell.

Several experimental malaria vaccines previously tested in people were designed to elicit antibodies against AMA1 and thus prevent parasites from entering blood cells. Although AMA1 vaccines did generate high levels of antibodies in humans, they have shown limited efficacy in field trials in malaria-endemic settings.

To improve vaccine efficacy, the NIAID scientists modified an AMA1 vaccine to include RON2L so that it more closely mimics the protein complex used by the parasite. Monkeys were vaccinated with either AMA1 alone or with the AMA1-RON2L complex vaccine. Although the overall levels of antibodies generated did not differ between the two groups, animals vaccinated with the complex vaccine produced much more neutralizing antibody, indicating a better quality antibody response with AMA1-RON2L vaccination. Moreover, antibodies taken from AMA1-RON2L-vaccinated monkeys neutralized parasite strains that differed from those used to create the vaccine. This suggests, the authors note, that an AMA1-RON2L complex vaccine could protect against multiple parasite strains. Taken together, the data from this animal study justify progression of this next-generation AMA1 vaccine toward possible human trials, they conclude.

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Materials provided by NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Modified experimental vaccine protects monkeys from deadly malaria

Sleep loss affects your waistline

Sleep loss increases the risk of obesity through a combination of effects on energy metabolism. This research, presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Lisbon, will highlight how disrupted sleep patterns, a common feature of modern living, can predispose to weight gain, by affecting people’s appetite and responses to food and exercise.

In the 24/7 culture of the modern world, an increasing number of people report routine reduced quality of sleep and several studies have correlated sleep deprivation with weight gain. The underlying cause of increased obesity risk from sleep disruption is unclear but may relate to changes in appetite, metabolism, motivation, physical activity or a combination of factors.

Dr Christian Benedict from Uppsala University, Sweden and his group have conducted a number of human studies to investigate how sleep loss may affect energy metabolism. These human studies have measured and imaged behavioural, physiological and biochemical responses to food following acute sleep deprivation. The behavioural data reveal that metabolically healthy, sleep-deprived human subjects prefer larger food portions, seek more calories, exhibit signs of increased food-related impulsivity, experience more pleasure from food, and expend less energy.

The group’s physiological studies indicate that sleep loss shifts the hormonal balance from hormones that promote fullness (satiety), such as GLP-1, to those that promote hunger, such as ghrelin. Sleep restriction also increased levels of endocannabinoids, which is known to have appetite-promoting effects. Further work from Dr Benedict’s team shows that acute sleep loss alters the balance of gut bacteria, which has been widely implicated as key for maintaining a healthy metabolism. The same study also found reduced sensitivity to insulin after sleep loss.

Dr Christian Benedict remarks, “Since perturbed sleep is such a common feature of modern life, these studies show it is no surprise that metabolic disorders, such as obesity are also on the rise.”

Although Dr Benedict’s work has shed light on how short periods of sleep loss can affect energy metabolism, longer-term studies are needed to validate these findings. The group are now investigating longer-term effects and also whether extending sleep in habitual short sleepers can restore these alterations in appetite and energy metabolism.

Dr Christian Benedict says, “My studies suggest that sleep loss favours weight gain in humans. It may also be concluded that improving sleep could be a promising lifestyle intervention to reduce the risk of future weight gain.”

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Materials provided by European Society of Endocrinology. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Sleep loss affects your waistline

Air pollution may disrupt sleep

High levels of air pollution over time may get in the way of a good night's sleep, according to new research presented at the ATS 2017 International Conference.

"Prior studies have shown that air pollution impacts heart health and affects breathing and lung function, but less is known about whether air pollution affects sleep," said lead author Martha E. Billings, MD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. "We thought an effect was likely given that air pollution causes upper airway irritation, swelling and congestion, and may also affect the central nervous system and brain areas that control breathing patterns and sleep."

The researchers analyzed data from 1,863 participants (average age 68) in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) who also enrolled in both MESA's Sleep and Air Pollution studies. The researchers looked at two of the most common air pollutants: NO2 (traffic-related pollutant gas) and PM2.5, or fine-particle pollution. Using air pollution measurements gathered from hundreds of MESA Air and Environmental Protection Agency monitoring sites in six U.S. cities, plus local environment features and sophisticated statistical tools, the research team was able to estimate air pollution exposures at each participant's home at two time points: one year and five years.

Wrist actigraphy, which measures small movements, provided detailed estimates of sleep and wake patterns over seven consecutive days. This was used to calculate "sleep efficiency" -- a measure of the percentage of time in bed spent asleep vs. awake. Researchers found that the sleep efficiency of the lowest 25 percent of participants was 88 percent or less. The research team studied if pollution exposures differed among those in this low sleep efficiency group.

The population was divided into "fourths" according to levels of pollution. The quarter of those who experienced the highest levels of pollution was compared to the quarter with the lowest levels.

The study found:

The group with the highest levels of NO2 over five years had an almost 60 percent increased likelihood of having low sleep efficiency compared to those with the lowest NO2 levels. The group with the highest exposures to small particulates (PM2.5) had a nearly 50 percent increased likelihood of having low sleep efficiency.

The authors adjusted for a range of factors, including age, body mass, obstructive sleep apnea, race/ethnicity, income and smoking status. They also adjusted for neighborhood socioeconomic status.

The researchers were particularly interested in chronic exposure to air pollution and what that long-term exposure might mean for sleep health. "There may be acute sleep effects to short-term exposure to high pollution levels as well, but we lacked the data to study that link," Dr. Billings said, noting that the parent MESA study is investigating the chronic effects of air pollution on cardiovascular health.

"These new findings indicate the possibility that commonly experienced levels of air pollution not only affect heart and lung disease, but also sleep quality. Improving air quality may be one way to enhance sleep health and perhaps reduce health disparities," Dr. Billings said.

Future studies, she added, need to explore the association between other air pollutants and sleep, the mechanisms by which these pollutants may disrupt sleep patterns and whether traffic noise is the driving factor contributing to poor sleep quality.

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Materials provided by American Thoracic Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Air pollution may disrupt sleep