Light during sleep in older adults linked to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure

In a sample of older men and women ages 63 to 84, those who were exposed to any amount of light while sleeping at night were significantly more likely to be obese, and have high blood pressure and diabetes compared to adults who were not exposed to any light during the night, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

Light exposure was measured with a wrist-worn device and tracked over seven days.

This is a real world (not experimental) study demonstrating the prevalence of any light exposure at night being linked to higher obesity, high blood pressure (known as hypertension) and diabetes among older adults.

“Whether it be from one’s smartphone, leaving a TV on overnight or light pollution in a big city, we live among an abundant number of artificial sources of light that are available 24 hours of a day,” said study corresponding author Dr. Minjee Kim, assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician. “Older adults already are at higher risk for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so we wanted to see if there was a difference in frequencies of these diseases related to light exposure at night.”

Study researchers were surprised to find that less than half of the 552 study participants consistently had a five-hour period of complete darkness per day. The rest of participants were exposed to some light even during their darkest five-hour periods of the day, which were usually in the middle of their sleep at night.

Oil and Gas Activity Linked to Most Recent Earthquakes in West Texas

The Yates Oil Field in the Delaware Basin.
Credit: Jan Buchholtz.

Since 2009, earthquakes have been rapidly rising in the Delaware Basin – a prolific oil-producing region in West Texas and New Mexico. According to a study led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, the majority of them can be linked to oil and gas production.

The researchers looked back on data that tracked seismicity and oil and gas production in the region from 2017 to 2020 and found that 68% of earthquakes above magnitude 1.5 were highly associated with one or more of the following oil and gas production activities: hydraulic fracturing or the disposal of produced formation water into either shallow or deep geologic formations. Formation water is found in all subsurface reservoirs and produced with oil and gas. Companies dispose of produced water by injecting it into geologic formations that are separate from oil and gas reservoirs.

All of these production activities are known to increase subsurface pore pressure, which is a mechanism for triggering earthquakes, said the study’s co-author, Alexandros Savvaidis, a researcher at the UT Bureau of Economic Geology and the principal investigator of Texas’ state seismic monitoring network and seismicity research TexNet, which is overseen by the bureau. By using a combination of statistical analysis and physics-based modeling, the study was able to disentangle which activities have a connection to past earthquakes.

“This paper shows that we now know a lot about how oil and gas activities and seismic activity are connected,” Savvaidis said. “The modeling techniques could help oil and gas producers and regulators identify potential risks and adjust production and disposal activity to decrease them.”

The study was published in Seismological Research Letters.

Southern resident killer whales not getting enough to eat since 2018

A southern resident killer whale.
Credit: NOAA, Ocean Wise

The endangered southern resident killer whale population isn’t getting enough to eat, and hasn’t been since 2018, a new UBC study has determined.

The animals have been in an energy deficit, averaging across spring, summer and fall, for six of the last 40 years—meaning the energy they get from food is less than what they expend. Three of those six years came in the most recent years of the study, 2018 to 2020. The average difference in energy is 28,716 calories, or about 17 per cent of the daily required energy for an average adult killer whale, the authors say.

“With the southern resident population at such a low level, there’s a sense of urgency to this kind of research,” says lead author Fanny Couture, a doctoral student at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF) and Ocean Wise. “Both killer whales and Chinook salmon, the southern resident’s main prey, are important, iconic species for the west coast of Canada. Studying what is happening to the population may help offer solutions, both for the southern residents and potentially other killer whale populations in the future.”

The southern resident population, which feeds mainly on Chinook salmon, numbered 73 individuals as of October 2021, compared with the increasing northern resident population of about 300. Studies have posited that the growth of the southern resident population may be impeded by a lack of food.

Supernumerary virtual robotic arms can feel like part of our body

VR supernumerary robotic system. In this diagram of the system, the dotted lines represent wireless connections and solid lines represent wired connections.
Credit: 2022 Ken Arai.

Research teams at the University of Tokyo, Keio University and Toyohashi University of Technology in Japan have developed a virtual robotic limb system which can be operated by users’ feet in a virtual environment as extra, or supernumerary, limbs. After training, users reported feeling like the virtual robotic arms had become part of their own body. This study focused on the perceptual changes of the participants, understanding of which can contribute to designing real physical robotic supernumerary limb systems that people can use naturally and freely just like our own bodies.

What would you do with an extra arm, or if like Spider-Man’s nemesis Doctor Octopus, you could have an extra four? Research into extra, or supernumerary, robotic limbs look at how we might adapt, mentally and physically, to having additional limbs added to our bodies.

Doctoral student Ken Arai from the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) at the University of Tokyo became interested in this research as a way to explore the limits of human “plasticity” — in other words, our brain’s ability to alter and adapt to external and internal changes. One example of plasticity is the way that we can learn to use new tools and sometimes even come to see them as extensions of ourselves, referred to as “tool embodiment,” whether it’s an artist’s paintbrush or hairdresser’s scissors.

Virus Discovery Offers Clues About Origins of Complex Life

Comparison of all known virus genomes. Those viruses with similar genomes are grouped together including those that infect bacteria (on the left), eukaryotes (on the right and bottom center). The viruses that infect Asgard archaea are unique from those that have been described before.
Credit: University of Texas at Austin.

The first discovery of viruses infecting a group of microbes that may include the ancestors of all complex life has been found, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin report in Nature Microbiology. The discovery offers tantalizing clues about the origins of complex life and suggests new directions for exploring the hypothesis that viruses were essential to the evolution of humans and other complex life forms.

There is a well-supported hypothesis that all complex life forms such as humans, starfish and trees — which feature cells with a nucleus and are called eukaryotes — originated when archaea and bacteria merged to form a hybrid organism. Recent research suggests the first eukaryotes are direct descendants of the so-called Asgard archaea. The latest research, by Ian Rambo (a former doctoral student at UT Austin) and other members of Brett Baker’s lab, sheds light on how viruses, too, might have played a role in this billions-year-old history.

“This study is opening a door to better resolving the origin of eukaryotes and understanding the role of viruses in the ecology and evolution of Asgard archaea,” Rambo said. “There is a hypothesis that viruses may have contributed to the emergence of complex cellular life.”

Researchers find deadly fungus can multiply by having sex, which could produce more drug-resistant, virulent strains

 Jianping Xu, professor in McMaster University’s
Department of Biology and researcher with Canada’s
Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats
Credit: McMaster University

Researchers at McMaster University have unlocked an evolutionary mystery of a deadly pathogen responsible for fueling the superbug crisis: it can reproduce by having sex.

And while such fraternizing is infrequent, scientists report it could be producing more drug-resistant and more virulent strains of Candida auris, capable of spreading faster.

C. auris is a fungus that can cause severe infections and sometimes death, often striking immunocompromised hospital patients.

Unlike animals and plants, microorganisms of this nature usually divide and reproduce asexually, so one produces two, two produce four and so on, all genetically identical to each other, through a process of very simple division and without the exchange of genetic material.

“One of the really complex and puzzling questions about this fungal pathogen is its origin and how it reproduces in nature,” says Jianping Xu, a professor in McMaster’s Department of Biology and researcher with Canada’s Global Nexus for Pandemics and Biological Threats.

For the study, recently published online in Computation and Structural Biotechnology Journal, researchers analyzed nearly 1,300 strains available on a public database of C. auris genome sequences. They searched for and confirmed recombination events, or sexual activity.

The findings will help to further research because scientists can now replicate those sexual behaviors in the lab.

“The research tells us that this fungus has been recombined in the past and can recombine in nature, which enables it to generate new genetic variants rather quickly,” explains Xu. “That may sound frightening, but it’s a double-edged sword. Because we learned they could recombine in nature, we could possibly replicate the process in the lab, which could allow us to understand the genetic controls of virulence and drug resistance and potentially other traits that make it such a dangerous pathogen, much faster.”

Long-term liquid water also on non-Earth-like planets?

Low-mass planets with a primordial atmosphere of hydrogen and helium might have the temperatures and pressures that allow water in the liquid phase. The presence of liquid water is favorable for life, so that these planets potentially harbor exotic habitats for billions of years.
Credit: (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) - Thibaut Roger - Universität Bern - Universität Zürich

Liquid water is an important prerequisite for life to develop on a planet. As researchers from the University of Bern, the University of Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS report in a new study, liquid water could also exist for billions of years on planets that are very different from Earth. This calls our currently Earth-centered idea of potentially habitable planets into question.

Life on Earth began in the oceans. In the search for life on other planets, the potential for liquid water is therefore a key ingredient. To find it, scientists have traditionally looked for planets similar to our own. Yet, long-term liquid water does not necessarily have to occur under similar circumstances as on Earth. Researchers of the University of Bern and the University of Zurich, who are members of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, report in a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy, that favorable conditions might even occur for billions of years on planets that barely resemble our home planet at all.

Will renaming carp help control them?

Joseph Parkos directs the Illinois Natural History Survey’s Kaskaskia, Ridge Lake and Sam Parr biological stations in Illinois.
Photo Credit: B. Gallo-Parkos

Illinois officials this month announced that Asian carp would now be called “copi” in an attempt to make the fish more desirable for eating. Joseph Parkos, the director of the Illinois Natural History Survey’s Kaskaskia, Ridge Lake and Sam Parr biological stations in Illinois, spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about scientific initiatives to study and control carp/copi fish populations and the potential for rebranding to aid those efforts.

What are Asian carp/copi and where in Illinois are their populations a problem?

Silver carp produce more offspring than other carp species. 
Photo Credit: USGS

Study hopes to understand the impact of exposure to COVID-19 infection early in life on a child’s brain development

More than 650,000 babies are born every year [i] in the UK, and during the pandemic some of them will have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus which causes COVID-19. A national study, funded by the charity Action Medical Research, will investigate the long-term impact of exposure to SARS-CoV-2 in the womb or shortly after birth.

It is known that exposure to certain viral infections shortly after birth or during pregnancy can impact a baby’s brain development or affect their development later in life, but it is not known if this is the case with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The SINEPOST (SARS-CoV-2 infection in neonates or in pregnancy) study, led by the University of Bristol in collaboration with researchers from the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit (NPEU) at the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, and University of Leicester, aims to compare the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the development of children who were exposed to the virus during pregnancy or shortly after birth to infants who have not been exposed to the virus.

Two hundred and fifty-seven infants have already been enrolled into the study, with recruitment ongoing until October 2022. The children will be followed up when they are 21 to 24 months old, with parents or carers being asked to complete questionnaires on how their child is developing.

The questionnaire will include the Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) used by professionals to monitor a child’s developmental progress; the Liverpool Respiratory Symptoms Questionnaire (LRSQ) which assesses patterns of wheezing and other respiratory symptoms in infants and preschool children; and additional questions about the child’s general health and use of health care services.

Chemically modified plant substances work against the hepatitis E virus

Chemically modified rocaglamides prevent certain viruses from multiplying.
Credit: Department of Molecular and Medical Virology

Rocaglamides from mahogany plants raise hope for the development of an antiviral drug.

The hepatitis E virus (HEV) is widespread and so far, there is no effective drug. In the search for this, the so-called rocaglamides have come into focus: plant substances that can inhibit the multiplication of viruses. Researchers from the Molecular and Medical Virology Department at the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) have examined a library of chemically modified rocaglamides for their antiviral effects, which a team from Boston has created. A group of active substances that has a so-called amidino group stood out. It particularly effectively inhibited virus multiplication. The team around Dimas F. Praditya, Mara Klöhn and Prof. Dr. Eike Steinmann reports in the journal Antiviral Research.

Plant substances inhibit the multiplication of cancer cells and viruses

Rocaglamides are a group of plant substances that are produced by various mahogany plants. It is known that they have an inhibitory effect on the multiplication of some cancer cells. It was not until 2008 that findings on their antiviral effects against RNA viruses were published for the first time: for example, they can inhibit the multiplication of Ebolaviruses, HEV, zikaviruses or Sars-Cov-2.