Extinction vulnerability during ancient biodiversity crises is unpredictable

Jurassic marine fossils
Photo Credit: Dr James Witt

Evidence from past extinctions cannot be used as a definitive way of predicting future biodiversity loss, scientists have found by using AI.

A team of researchers including Dr James Witts of the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences and led by Dr William Foster from Hamburg University used fossils from previous mass extinctions to see if AI-generated models can accurately predict extinction vulnerability.

Despite expectations, this research found that mass extinctions could not be used to generate predictive models for other biodiversity crises, with no common cause flagged. This is because marine communities are constantly evolving and no two mass extinctions are impacting the same marine ecosystem.

Co-author Dr Witts explained: “In a time of increasing extinction risk, knowing whether we can make predictions about the vulnerabilities of different organisms to extinction is essential.”

Dr Foster continued: “The scale of environmental change currently affecting our planet is unprecedented in human history, and so the best source of evidence we have for comparable environmental change lies in the deep past, accessible via analysis of the fossil record.

A common metabolite may help treat autoimmune diseases

In mice models with adoptive transfer experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis, treatment with itaconate (right) greatly ameliorates the effects of the disease, compared to untreated mice
Image Credit: Kuniyuki Aso, et al. Nature Communications. February 27, 2023

Researchers have revealed the modulatory effect of the anti-inflammatory metabolite itaconate on T helper and T regulatory cells, which may lead to new therapeutic approaches to treating some autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases occur when the immune system attacks its own body. There are more than eighty known types of autoimmune diseases. In many cases, autoimmune diseases can be treated by suppressing the immune system; however, a side effect of such treatment is that the patient has an increased risk of severe infectious diseases, which is a leading cause of death. Hence there is a need to establish novel therapies for autoimmune diseases to reduce the risk of infectious diseases. 

A research team led by Professor Tatsuya Atsumi, Assistant Professor Michihito Kono and graduate student Kuniyuki Aso at Hokkaido University, along with Senior Lecturer Masatoshi Kanda at Sapporo Medical University, has studied the effect of the molecule itaconate on the immune system. Their findings, which have implications for treating autoimmune disorders, were published in the journal Nature Communications.

World’s first completely roll-to-roll printable perovskite solar cell

Dr David Beynon (Left) and Dr Ershad Parvazian (Right) hold a sample of the new fully roll-to-roll (R2R) coated device.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Swansea University

Swansea University has established a low-cost and scalable carbon ink formulation capable of unlocking, for the first time, the potential for perovskite solar cells to be manufactured at scale.

Using slot die coating in a roll-to-roll (R2R) process, academics from the SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre at Swansea University have established a way to create “fully printable” perovskite photovoltaics (PV), a term often used but, until now, incorrect.

The team searched for an alternative to the gold electrode that is typically applied using an expensive and slow evaporation process after the device has been printed.

Dr David Beynon, Senior Research Officer at SPECIFIC, said: “The key was identifying the right solvent mix, one which dries as a film without dissolving the underlying layer.

“X-ray diffraction analysis showed carbon electrode ink is capable of this when formulated with an orthogonal solvent system.

“This innovative layer can be applied continuously and compatibly with the underlying layers at a low temperature and high speed.”

Stanford study reveals why the world's largest whales needed to be so big

Minke whales in Antarctica were studied by researchers using instrumented tags that can measure various aspects of their feeding activity.
Image Credit: Duke Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing.
This research was conducted under National Marine Fisheries Service permit #23095

Scientists studied a unique group of Antarctic minke whales and found that these gigantic mammals actually represent the smallest possible body size required for their style of feeding. The findings could inform which whale species are more vulnerable to future climate change impacts, like shifting food sources.

The largest animals to ever live owe their enormous size to feeding on the tiniest creatures in the sea, but their survival requires a minimum body size, Stanford-led research has found.

Published March 13 in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the study focuses on the “rorqual whales,” a lineage of filter feeders that includes the blue whale, the largest animal of all time. The group is characterized by a lunging maneuver where individuals engulf an enormous amount of water along with their prey, which they then strain through fringed structures at the roof of their mouth.

By examining the smallest living species in this group – the Antarctic minke whale – the authors found that individuals need to grow to at least 4.5 meters (approximately 15 feet, or weighing 1-2 tons), the length of weaned minke juveniles, in order to eat enough food to survive.

Hitchhiker plants inspire improved techniques for reattaching tendon to bone

The unique array of hooks on the fruit of hitchhiker plant H. palermi led researchers at the Center for Engineering MechanoBiology to develop improved suturing techniques for surgically repairing tissues.
 Image Credit: Genin laboratory

For most people, getting burrs stuck to your clothes during a hike is nothing more than a nuisance, something to pick off and throw out when you get home. But for scientists at the Center for Engineering MechanoBiology (CEMB), the hooks on these little hitchhikers are inspiring new suturing schemes for surgical reattachment of tendon to bone. 

Tendon-to-bone reattachment is required in many surgical procedures, perhaps most commonly in repairing torn rotator cuff tendons in the shoulder, a condition that will affect more than 30% of the population over 60. Current suturing methods fail to distribute stress evenly, leading to failure rates as high as 94% due to ineffective attachment and re-tearing of sutures.

Cow dung possible sustainable material of the future, study finds

Photo Credit: Jonas Koel

Livestock dung could be used to create the next generation of cellulosic materials, according to a new report.

Livestock dung is typically used as a fertilizer or as a source of biogas for green energy applications, but the study, led by scientists at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) in collaboration with the universities of Bristol and Edinburgh, reviewed recent research into the development of high-value manure-derived materials from ruminant animals such as cattle.

They found that dung has been largely overlooked despite the variety of different applications for recycled ruminant waste biomass (RWB).

The most common applications use manure in combination with other components to create composite materials such as plastic, recycled card and paper or concrete. However, it could also be used for the extraction of nanocellulose - a prospective bio-based and biodegradable material of the future.

Currently, there is a trade-off between the performance of the material and the amount of processing required to achieve this – limiting the capacity of RWB to replace conventional materials on a commercial level.

World’s fastest burst-mode X-ray camera hits the road

Sandia National Laboratories’ Quinn Looker inspects sensors used in the ultrafast X-ray imaging camera.
Photo Credit: Craig Fritz

Nuclear reactions are fast. Really fast. Faster than billionths of a second. Your best shot at catching one is with a high-speed X-ray camera that can only be obtained from the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories. But these cameras could soon become more widely available.

Sandia has partnered with Albuquerque-based startup Advanced hCMOS Systems (pronounced “H C moss”) to commercialize ultrafast imaging technology invented at the Labs and used extensively in fusion research. If successful, the collaboration could move the world more quickly to limitless clean energy by accelerating such research, while potentially impacting many other research and development areas.

“A perfect example is glass research,” said Liam Claus, cofounder of Advanced hCMOS Systems. “The Gorilla Glass that’s in your iPhone so it doesn’t shatter every time it slips out of your hand — there’s a ton of materials science that’s gone into that. They need to understand how it fractures, and glass fractures can propagate at extremely high speeds.”

Rice labs seek RNA programming for ‘smart’ antibiotics

Rice University bioscientists James Chappell (left) and Joff Silberg aim to create “genetically encoded antibiotics,” strands of RNA that bacteria will readily copy and share. The RNA will selectively kill disease-causing bacteria thanks to a triggering mechanism that will be activated by “virulence genes” or other biomarkers found only in bacterial pathogens.
Photo Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

Synthetic biologists at Rice University are embarking on a three-year project to create “genetically encoded antibiotics,” strands of RNA that bacteria will readily copy and share that will selectively kill only disease-causing, pathogenic bacteria.

“Most bacteria pose no danger to human health,” said James Chappell, an assistant professor of biosciences and bioengineering at Rice. “The question for us as synthetic biologists is, ‘Can we create genetic programs that move through microbial communities and precisely remove only the bad actors from those communities?’”

Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the Kleberg Foundation, Chappell’s lab and the lab of Rice bioscientist and bioengineer Jonathan “Joff” Silberg are getting a chance to test their idea of combating antibiotic resistance by enlisting the aid of bacteria that either benefit humans or pose no threat to them.

In prototype tests, they showed they could design RNA programs that were highly targeted and potent, killing 99.99% of “bad actor” pathogens within a matter of hours. In the three-year project, they also plan to partner with Dr. Pablo Okhuysen from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to design RNA antibiotics that are effective against diarrhea-causing E. coli, as well as RNA drugs that selectively kill the opportunistic Lactobacillus iners, a pathogen that has been associated with cervical cancer radiation therapy resistance.

Epilepsy could become easier to pinpoint with blood test

Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have discovered higher levels of immune proteins in the blood before and after an epileptic seizure. The possible biomarkers can be identified using a simple blood test. Diagnosing epilepsy is currently resource intensive, and distinguishing it from other conditions can be challenging. Better diagnostic methods as soon as the patient seeks medical care after a suspected seizure is therefore an urgent necessity.

Epilepsy is the collective name for abnormal activity in the brain that causes temporary loss of control of behavior and movement. The condition can be congenital, be caused by a tumor, stroke or infection in the brain and cause very different symptoms depending on which part of the brain the episode begins in or spreads to. Inflammation processes that start as an immune response in the body can also provoke a seizure. That is why researchers started to look for possible biomarkers for epilepsy within the immune system. Previous studies exist, but the results have so far been mixed and difficult to interpret:

“In our study, we have a carefully selected group of participants and we have a lot of background information on each person. We have also taken into account a number of confounding factors that may affect the immune system such as other neurological and immunological illnesses, infections and various psychiatric conditions,” says Christine Ekdahl Clementson.

New “traffic cop” algorithm helps a drone swarm stay on task

MIT engineers have developed a method to tailor any wireless network to handle a high load of time-sensitive data coming from multiple sources.
Illustration Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT
(CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

How fresh is your data? For drones searching a disaster zone or robots inspecting a building, working with the freshest data is key to locating a survivor or reporting a potential hazard. But when multiple robots simultaneously relay time-sensitive information over a wireless network, a traffic jam of data can ensue. Any information that gets through is too stale to consider as a useful, real-time report.

Now, MIT engineers may have a solution. They’ve developed a method to tailor any wireless network to handle a high load of time-sensitive data coming from multiple sources. Their new approach, called WiSwarm, configures a wireless network to control the flow of information from multiple sources while ensuring the network is relaying the freshest data.

The team used their method to tweak a conventional Wi-Fi router, and showed that the tailored network could act like an efficient traffic cop, able to prioritize and relay the freshest data to keep multiple vehicle-tracking drones on task.

The team’s method, which they will present in May at IEEE’s International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), offers a practical way for multiple robots to communicate over available Wi-Fi networks so they don’t have to carry bulky and expensive communications and processing hardware onboard.