Climate change research: If warming approaches 2°C, a trickle of extinctions will become a flood

As delegates discuss the climate crisis in Dubai for COP28, the dazzling variety of life found on Earth hangs in the balance.

Our world has warmed by roughly 1.2°C since the pre-industrial period. Many species are already exposed to increasingly intolerable conditions, driving some populations to die off or contract at the hottest edges of their geographic ranges. Biodiversity is feeling the heat in all ecosystems and regions, from mountain tops to ocean depths.

If all national plans to cut emissions are fulfilled, the world would still be on track for 2.5 to 2,9 C of global warming by the end of the century. If species are stressed now, imagine how they will fare over the coming decades.

Are there thresholds of warming beyond which the risks to wildlife accelerate? And if so, where and when might we cross them? In short, what does the future hold for Earth's biodiversity?

Answering these questions has been tricky. Computer simulations that attempt to model how biodiversity will behave in a  warming world have only compared the current status of species to how it may look at a particular point in the future, such as 2050 or 2100.

In a recent paper, researchers studied how the area over which species are exposed to potentially dangerous temperatures will expand from one year to the next, from now until the end of the century.

They overlaid the projections of climate models with data on the geographic distributions of more than 35,000 species on land and in the ocean. We found that the area over which each species will be exposed to intolerable temperatures is likely to increase abruptly during the coming decades.

Most populations may initially appear safe. But then, suddenly, a threshold of global warming is crossed beyond which multiple populations across widespread areas face intolerable conditions in rapid succession.

Of the populations within a species projected to be at risk this century, researchers found that, on average, more than half will switch from being relatively safe to facing dangerous heat in as little as a single decade. A good example is Coral Reefs. Just a few decades ago, coral bleaching events driven by extreme sea surface temperatures were rare and localized. Today, these events degrade reefs globally on an almost annual basis.

The sudden increase in risk to species that scientists' models project is in part due to the rapid pace of global warming itself. When combined with natural variability in the climate (El Niño events are one example), warming tends to raise regional temperatures in sudden jumps rather than smooth inclines.

However, they also found that these thermal thresholds are sharpened by the shape of the planet. For instance, across the Amazon basin in South America, temperatures are similarly hot from one place to another. If one population of a species exceeds its thermal limit, it will also be exceeded across many other populations simultaneously.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02070-4.epdf?sharing_tok...

Read the original article.

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Newly created ultra-hard material rivals diamond

Dominique Laniel et al, Synthesis of Ultra‐Incompressible and Recoverable Carbon Nitrides Featuring CN4 Tetrahedra, Advanced Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202308030

Natural gas is actually migrating under permafrost, and could see methane emissions skyrocket if it escapes
Beneath Svalbard's permafrost, millions of cubic meters of methane are trapped—and scientists have now learned that it can migrate beneath the cold seal of the permafrost and escape. A large-scale escape could create a cycle of warming that would send methane emissions skyrocketing: warming thaws the permafrost, causing more gas to escape, allowing more permafrost to thaw and more gas to be released.
Because Svalbard's geological and glacial history is very similar to the rest of the Arctic region, these migrating deposits of methane are likely to be present elsewhere in the Arctic.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. At present, the leakage from below permafrost is very low, but factors such as glacial retreat and permafrost thawing may 'lift the lid' on this in the future.

Thomas Birchall et al, Permafrost Trapped Natural Gas in Svalbard, Norway, Frontiers in Earth Science (2023). DOI: 10.3389/feart.2023.1277027

Carbon footprints of wars

War is bad for the environment, with toxic chemicals left polluting the soil and water for decades after fighting ceases. Much less obvious are the carbon emissions from armed conflicts and their long-term impacts on the climate.

Some military emissions are not necessarily specific to wartime, but dramatically increase during combat. Among the largest sources are jet fuel for planes and diesel for tanks and naval ships.

Other sources include weapons and ammunition manufacturing, troop deployment, housing, and feeding armies. Then there is the havoc that militaries cause by dropping bombs, including fires, smoke and rubble from damage to homes and infrastructure—all amounting to a massive "carbon war bootprint".

In order to account for all of this carbon, researchers must begin with basic data surrounding direct "tailpipe" emissions, known as Scope 1 emissions. This is the carbon emitted directly from burning fuel in the engine of a plane, for instance. If we know how much fuel is consumed per kilometre by a certain type of jet plane, we can begin to estimate how much carbon is emitted by a whole fleet of those planes over a certain amount of missions.

Then we have emissions from heating or electricity that are an indirect result of a particular activity—emissions from burning gas to produce electricity to light up an army barracks, for instance. These are Scope 2 emissions.

From there, we can try to account for the complex "long tail" of indirect or embodied emissions, known as Scope 3. These are found in extensive military supply chains and involve carbon emitted by anything from weapons manufacturing to IT and other logistics.

To understand combat emissions better, my colleagues have even proposed a new category, Scope 3 Plus, which includes everything from damage caused by war to post-conflict reconstruction. For example, the emissions involved in rebuilding Gaza or Mariupol in Ukraine will be enormous.

Then there is use of concrete to build walls,  Ammunition and explosives 

https://theconversation.com/how-to-assess-the-carbon-footprint-of-a...

Landmark Study Shows Antibody Therapy Controls 92% of Severe Asthma Cases

However, these promising results only apply to a very specific type of asthma, the researchers caution. They only tested people who responded well to benralizumab, patients who have severe eosinophilic asthma and don't respond as well to benralizumab likely still require the intensive steroid treatments.

Due to the risks from high steroid doses the Global Initiative for Asthma recommends lowering doses in patients who are responding positively to immune therapies. This research supports that recommendation, however the results may not be the same across all similar treatments.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02284-5/fulltext

Part 2

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New way to charge batteries harnesses the power of 'indefinite causal order'

Batteries that exploit quantum phenomena to gain, distribute and store power promise to surpass the abilities and usefulness of conventional chemical batteries in certain low-power applications. For the first time, researchers take advantage of an unintuitive quantum process that disregards the conventional notion of causality to improve the performance of so-called quantum batteries, bringing this future technology a little closer to reality.

There are several upcoming quantum technologies worth paying attention to. One such item is the quantum battery which, though initially puzzling in name, holds unexplored potential for sustainable energy solutions and possible integration into future electric vehicles. Nevertheless, these new devices are poised to find use in various portable and low-power applications, especially when opportunities to recharge are scarce.

At present, quantum batteries only exist as laboratory experiments, and researchers around the world are working on the different aspects that are hoped to one day combine into a fully functioning and practical application. 

Researchers are investigating the best way to charge a quantum battery, and this is where time comes into play. One of the advantages of quantum batteries is that they should be incredibly efficient, but that hinges on the way they are charged.

Current batteries for low-power devices, such as smartphones or sensors, typically use chemicals such as lithium to store charge, whereas a quantum battery uses microscopic particles like arrays of atoms. While chemical batteries are governed by classical laws of physics, microscopic particles are quantum in nature, so we have a chance to explore ways of using them that bend or even break our intuitive notions of what takes place at small scales.

Part 1

Researchers experimented with ways to charge a quantum battery using optical apparatuses such as lasers, lenses and mirrors, but the way they achieved it necessitated a quantum effect where events are not causally connected the way everyday things are.

Earlier methods to charge a quantum battery involved a series of charging stages one after the other. However, here, the team instead used a novel quantum effect they call indefinite causal order, or ICO. In the classical realm, causality follows a clear path, meaning that if event A leads to event B, then the possibility of B causing A is excluded. However, at the quantum scale, ICO allows both directions of causality to exist in what's known as a quantum superposition, where both can be simultaneously true.

With ICO, researchers demonstrated that the way you charge a battery made up of quantum particles could drastically impact its performance. They saw huge gains in both the energy stored in the system and the thermal efficiency. And somewhat counterintuitively, we discovered the surprising effect of an interaction that's the inverse of what you might expect: A lower-power charger could provide higher energies with greater efficiency than a comparably higher-power charger using the same apparatus.

The phenomenon of ICO the team explored could find uses beyond charging a new generation of low-power devices. The underlying principles, including the inverse interaction effect uncovered here, could improve the performance of other tasks involving thermodynamics or processes that involve the transfer of heat. One promising example is solar panels, where heat effects can reduce their efficiency, but ICO could be used to mitigate those and lead to gains in efficiency instead.

Charging Quantum Batteries via Indefinite Causal Order: Theory and Experiment, Physical Review Letters (2023). journals.aps.org/prl/accepted/ … 109d959f76f487564a34

Part 2

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Nanoparticles amplify potential cancer vaccine power

Researchers have identified minuscule particles that supercharge therapeutic cancer vaccines, which train the immune system to attack tumors. These new lipid nanoparticles—tiny structures made of fat—not only stimulate a two-pronged immune system response that enhances the body's ability to fight cancer but also make vaccines more effective in targeting tumours.

This research marks a pivotal turning point in our understanding of how lipid nanoparticles can be harnessed to optimize anticancer immunity. These findings  unlock new avenues for enhancing the efficacy of RNA-based treatments for cancer and infectious diseases.

Lipid nanoparticles, made famous for their use in delivering messenger RNA in COVID-19 vaccines, have gained attention as carriers in cancer immunotherapy. Previous research focused on optimizing lipid nanoparticles to trigger a strong response by T helper 1 cells, cells that enable the immune system to identify and attack cancerous cells.

Using a new screening method, researchers fine-tuned the composition of lipid nanoparticles to customize and maximize immune-response activation. They identified lipid nanoparticles that generated responses simultaneously using two parallel pathways to present tumor antigens to both Th1 and Th2 cells, another type of helper cell.

The team also combined lipid nanoparticles with "checkpoint inhibitor treatment," a type of cancer immunotherapy drug that helps the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells. These inhibitors block "checkpoints:" molecules on immune cells that either stimulate or inhibit an immune response. Cancer cells sometimes evade these checkpoints and thus go undetected by the immune system. The team's LNPs enhance the therapeutics' ability to reduce tumor size and extend patient survival time.

The researchers say that their study is unique because it demonstrates that lipid nanoparticles can boost both Th1 and Th2 responses, producing coordinated attacks on cancer by multiple immune cell types.

Yining Zhu et al, Screening for lipid nanoparticles that modulate the immune activity of helper T cells towards enhanced antitumour activity, Nature Biomedical Engineering (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-023-01131-0

Extremely rare half female, half male bird captured on film

 A striking and extremely rare half female, half male bird has been spotted by a  zoologist.

Sesquicentennial Distinguished Professor Hamish Spencer was holidaying in Colombia when an amateur ornithologist John Murillo pointed out a wild Green Honeycreeper with distinct half green, or female, and half blue, male, plumage.
Many birdwatchers could go their whole lives and not see a bilateral gynandromorph in any species of bird. The phenomenon is extremely rare in birds.

Photographs of the bird make the discovery even more significant as they are "arguably the best of a wild bilateral gynandromorphic bird of any species ever."

A report on the find, only the second recorded example of gynandromorphism in the species in more than 100 years, has been published in the Journal of Field Ornithology.

Professor Spencer says gynandromorphs—animals with both male and female characteristics in a species that usually have separate sexes—are important for our understanding of sex determination and sexual behavior in birds.

The main groups in which the phenomenon has been recorded include animal species that feature strong sexual dimorphism; most often insects, especially butterflies, crustaceans, spiders, and even lizards and rodents.

"This particular example of bilateral gynandromorphy—male one side and female the other—shows that, as in several other species, either side of the bird can be male or female.

The phenomenon arises from an error during female cell division to produce an egg, followed by double-fertilization by two sperm.

Part 1

Bilaterally gynandromorphic Green Honeycreeper near Manizales, Colombia, 20 May 2022. Image courtesy: John Murillo.

John Murillo et al, Report of bilateral gynandromorphy in a Green Honeycreeper ( Chlorophanes spiza ) from Colombia, Journal of Field Ornithology (2023). DOI: 10.5751/JFO-00392-940412

Rubber that doesn't grow cracks when stretched many times

Researchers  have increased the fatigue threshold of particle-reinforced rubber, developing a new, multiscale approach that allows the material to bear high loads and resist crack growth over repeated use. This approach could not only increase the longevity of rubber products such as tires but also reduce the amount of pollution from rubber particles shed during use.

Naturally-occurring rubber latex is soft and stretchy. For a range of applications, including tires, hoses, and dampeners, rubbers are reinforced by rigid particles, such as carbon black and silica. Since their introduction, these particles greatly improve the stiffness of rubbers but not their resistance to crack growth when the material is cyclically stretched, a measurement known as the fatigue threshold.

In fact, the fatigue threshold of particle-reinforced rubbers hasn't improved much since it was first measured in the 1950s. This means that even with the improvements to tires that increase wear resistance and reduce fuel consumption, small cracks can shed large amounts of rubber particles into the environment, which cause air pollution for humans and accumulate into streams and rivers.

Previous research markedly increased the fatigue threshold of rubbers by lengthening polymer chains and densifying entanglements. But how about particle-reinforced rubbers?

The present research team added silica particles to their highly entangled rubber, thinking the particles would increase stiffness but not affect fatigue threshold, as commonly reported in the literature. They were wrong. Adding particles would increase the fatigue threshold and they discovered that it increased by a factor of 10.

This material deconcentrates stress around a crack over two length scales: the scale of polymer chains, and the scale of particles. This combination stops the growth of a crack in the material. The team demonstrated their approach by cutting a crack in a piece of their material and then stretching it tens of thousands of times. In their experiments, the crack never grew.

 Jason Steck et al, Multiscale stress deconcentration amplifies fatigue resistance of rubber, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06782-2

Captive Goffin's cockatoos found to dunk hard bread to improve its texture

A pair of veterinary medicine researchers has found that some captive Goffin's cockatoos prefer to dunk their hard bread before eating it, seemingly as a means to improve its texture. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, they describe their observations of the birds and their theories on why the birds dunk the bread.

Many animals have been observed dunking food in water before consumption—raccoons are a prime example. Prior research has shown that at least 25 species of birds dunk food in water before consumption, though why they do so has remained unclear. In this new effort, the researchers discovered by happenstance that some of the birds in the lab carried pieces of rusk to a nearby water bowl and dunked it for several seconds before consuming their treat. Rusk is a type of twice-baked, dry and brittle bread that is commonly given to teething babies. In this instance, it is given to captive Goffin's cockatoos as part of their daily rations at the lab.

The researchers report that they happened to note that one of the birds, a male named Pippin, picked up a piece of rusk and headed to a nearby water bowl, normally used for bathing. Once there, he pushed the bread piece underwater and held it there for several seconds. He then pulled the snack from the water and ate it.

Intrigued by their observation, the researchers began to watch more closely as the birds were given their food—the rusk was served along with seeds, bird pellets, dried fruit and cornflakes. As they watched, the researchers noted that several of the birds mimicked the actions of Pippin, though they varied in both dedication and the amount of time they dunked the bread.

After watching the birds eat over a 12-day period, the researchers noted that 7 of the 18 birds in the lab dunked their food—and it was almost always rusk. The birds left the bread in the water for an average of 23 seconds, more than enough time to soften its texture. They also found that some of the birds were willing to go to great lengths to soak their bread before eating it, such as climbing ladders and moving things out of the way.

J. S. Zewald et al, Dunking rusk: innovative food soaking behaviour in Goffin's cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana), Biology Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2023.0411

Enzymes can't tell artificial DNA from the real thing

The genetic alphabet contains just four letters, referring to the four nucleotides, the biochemical building blocks that comprise all DNA. Scientists have long wondered whether it’s possible to add more letters to this alphabet by creating brand-new nucleotides in the lab, but the utility of this innovation depends on whether or not cells can actually recognize and use artificial nucleotides to make proteins.

Now, researchers  have come one step closer to unlocking the potential of artificial DNA. They found that RNA polymerase, one of the most important enzymes involved in protein synthesis, was able to recognize and transcribe an artificial base pair in exactly the same manner as it does with natural base pairs.

The findings, published December 12, 2023 in Nature Communications, could help scientists create new medicines by designing custom proteins.
Considering how diverse life on Earth is with just four nucleotides, the possibilities of what could happen if we can add more are enticing. Expanding the genetic code could greatly diversify the range of molecules we can synthesize in the lab and revolutionize how we approach designer proteins as therapeutics.

The four nucleotides that comprise DNA are called adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C). In a molecule of DNA, nucleotides form base pairs with a unique molecular geometry called Watson and Crick geometry, named for the scientists who discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953. These Watson and Crick pairs always form in the same configurations: A-T and C-G. The double-helix structure of DNA is formed when many Watson and Crick base pairs come together.

This is a remarkably effective system for encoding biological information, which is why serious mistakes in transcription and translation are relatively rare. As scientists have also learned, they may be able to exploit this system by using synthetic base pairs that exhibit the same geometry.

The study uses a new version of the standard genetic alphabet, called the Artificially Expanded Genetic Information System (AEGIS), that incorporates two new base pairs. Originally developed by Benner, AEGIS began as a NASA-supported initiative to try to understand how extraterrestrial life could have developed.

By isolating RNA polymerase enzymes from bacteria and testing their interactions with synthetic base pairs, they found that the synthetic base pairs from AEGIS form a geometric structure that resembles the Watson and Crick geometry of natural base pairs. The result: the enzymes that transcribe DNA can’t tell the difference between these synthetic base pairs and those found in nature.

In biology, structure determines function. By conforming to a similar structure as standard base pairs, our synthetic base pairs can slip in under the radar and be incorporated in the usual transcription process.

Part1

In addition to expanding the possibilities for synthetic biology, the findings also support a hypothesis that dates back to Watson and Crick’s original discovery. This hypothesis, called the tautomer hypothesis, says the standard four nucleotides can form mismatched pairs due to tautomerization, or the tendency of nucleotides to oscillate between several structural variants with the same composition. This phenomenon is thought to be one source of point mutations, or genetic mutations that only impact one base pair in a DNA sequence.

Tautomerization allows nucleotides to come together in pairs when they aren’t usually supposed to. Tautomerization of mispairs has been observed in replication and translation processes, but here we provide the first direct structural evidence that tautomerization also happens during transcription.

Juntaek Oh, Zelin Shan, Shuichi Hoshika, Jun Xu, Jenny Chong, Steven A. Benner, Dmitry Lyumkis, Dong Wang. A unified Watson-Crick geometry drives transcription of six-letter expanded DNA alphabets by E. coli RNA polymerase. Nature Communications, 2023; 14 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43735-9

The researchers are next interested in testing whether the effect they observed here is consistent in other combinations of synthetic base pairs and cellular enzymes.

Part 2

A global biodiversity tipping point as first marine fish extinction declared

A species of ray, so rare it has only ever been recorded once back in the late 1800s, has been declared extinct after an assessment by an international team led by Charles Darwin University (CDU). The loss of the Java Stingaree, a small relative of stingrays, is the first marine fish extinction as a result of human activity.

This news comes as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released its updated Red List of Threatened Species.

The Java Stingaree (Urolophus javanicus) was known only from a single specimen collected in 1862 from a fish market in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The team conducted new modeling encompassing all available information on the species which has revealed the Java Stingaree as extinct.

Intensive and generally unregulated fishing is likely the major threat resulting in the depletion of the Java Stingaree population, with coastal fish catches in the Java Sea already declining by the 1870s.

The northern coast of Java, particularly Jakarta Bay where the species was known to occur, is also heavily industrialized, with extensive, long-term habitat loss and degradation.

These impacts were severe enough to unfortunately cause the extinction of this species.

 www.iucnredlist.org/species/60 … sessment-information

People, not the climate, found to have caused the decline of the giant mammals

For years, scientists have debated whether humans or the climate have caused the population of large mammals to decline dramatically over the past several thousand years. A new study confirms that climate cannot be the explanation.

About 100,000 years ago, the first modern humans migrated out of Africa in large numbers. They were eminent at adapting to new habitats, and they settled in virtually every kind of landscape—from deserts to jungles to the icy taiga in the far north.

Part of the success was human's ability to hunt large animals. With clever hunting techniques and specially built weapons, they perfected the art of killing even the most dangerous mammals.

But unfortunately, the great success of our ancestors came at the expense of the other large mammals.

It is well-known that numerous large species went extinct during the time of worldwide colonization by modern humans. Now, new research reveals that those large mammals that survived also experienced a dramatic decline.

By studying the DNA of 139 living species of large mammals, scientists have been able to show that the abundances of almost all species fell dramatically about 50,000 years ago.

For the past 800,000 years, the globe has fluctuated between ice ages and interglacial periods about every 100,000 years. If the climate was the cause, we should see greater fluctuations when the climate changed prior to 50.000 years ago. But we don't. Humans are, therefore, the most likely explanation.

So far, some of the most important evidence in the debate has been fossils from the past 50,000 years. They show that the strong, selective extinction of large animals in... Therefore, the extinction of animals can hardly be linked to climate.

Juraj Bergman et al, Worldwide Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene population declines in extant megafauna are associated with Homo sapiens expansion rather than climate change, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43426-5

Kids with cats have more than double the risk of developing schizophrenia, researchers find

Researchers  have added to the growing body of evidence that cat ownership is a major risk factor for schizophrenia and quantified the risk at more than double.

In a paper, "Cat Ownership and Schizophrenia-Related Disorders and Psychotic-Like Experiences: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis," published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, the team details the connections between youth cat ownership and later-in-life schizophrenia-related diagnosis.

The researchers conducted an extensive study search across various databases and gray literature from January 1, 1980, to May 30, 2023, without geographical or language limitations. They included studies reporting original data on cat ownership and schizophrenia-related outcomes. Out of 1,915 identified studies, 17 were used from 11 different countries.

Cat ownership was associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia-related disorders. The unadjusted pooled odds ratio (OR) was 2.35, and the adjusted estimate was 2.24, indicating an over twofold increase in the odds of developing schizophrenia-related disorders among all individuals exposed to cats.

While some studies suggest childhood exposure to cats might be associated with an increased risk of developing schizophrenia-related disorders, the exact age or specific time frame of exposure is not clearly defined across all studies.

One included study from Finland initially reported higher scores on perceptual aberration, schizoid, and social anhedonia scales for those exposed to cats under age seven, though they limited their conclusion to perceptual aberration. Another study from the UK found associations between cat exposure during childhood (at 4 and 10 years) and higher psychotic-like experiences at age 13.

The research suggests that the critical window of exposure needs to be better defined and might be influenced by various factors. More robust investigations are needed to precisely identify the specific period of exposure that might pose the highest risk for schizophrenia-related disorders associated with youth cat exposure.

The overall risk trend focuses on the interaction between the developing brain and feline exposure. But of course, it is not just hanging out with cat personalities that is to blame for the higher risk. There is a causal agent operating unseen in the cat environment that is likely the true culprit—Toxoplasma gondii.

Part1

Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is an intracellular protozoan parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, an infection that around 25% of the world population has gotten at some point.

It is the reason kitty litter bags have a warning label for pregnant women to avoid contact with cat feces, as toxoplasmosis infection is the leading cause of newborn blindness globally, as well as later vision loss, mental disability, and seizures.

Toxoplasmosis can be a significant cause of death among people with severely weakened immune systems. A daily drug is taken by patients with AIDS, undergoing organ transplant, or with intense chemotherapy treatments just to counter the effects of this one parasite.

T. gondii has previously been linked with all sorts of neurological impairments and behavioural changes, from guilt issues to novelty seeking and increased car accidents. Some presentations of schizophrenia can be reversed by antiprotozoal drugs, suggesting that a T. gondii infection may have been the root cause of those case symptoms.

A 2012 meta-analysis of 38 studies, "Toxoplasma gondii and Other Risk Factors for Schizophrenia," also published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, found that patients with schizophrenia were nearly three times more likely to have toxoplasma antibodies in their blood, suggesting past infections were far more prevalent with the pathology.

A striking find in that study, while comparing risk factors for schizophrenia, was the discrepancy between the risk associated with having a first-degree relative with schizophrenia (RR 6.99–9.31) and the risk associated with specific genetic polymorphisms (OR 1.09–1.24). While a family disease pattern can suggest the involvement of shared genes, it can also point to nongenetic factors like environmental exposure to an infectious agent, like a chemical superfund site, or cats.

Toxoplasmosis has also been linked to various wildlife illnesses, as behavioral changes in wild animals often result in poor survival strategies. Rats, for example, become unafraid of cats while infected. It is a common comorbidity for most California sea lions found distressed or dead to have a toxoplasma infection. If anyone is wondering how a sea lion has contact with a cat, try to see a sandy beach from a cat's perspective. That and the human habit of flushing cat litter have created a massive problem for marine mammals.

Part 2

The connection to cats has to do with T. gondii's affinity for reproducing only in domestic cats. This affinity may be related to the lack of a single enzyme in feline guts, delta-6-desaturase.

While any mammal can become infected by the parasite, the digestive enzyme delta-6-desaturase prevents the parasite from getting high enough levels of linoleic acid the parasite requires to fuel reproduction.

Unlike all other mammals, cats are full of linoleic acid due to not producing the data-6-desaturase enzyme that would convert linoleic acid to oleic acid. So, the parasite only reproduces in cat intestines.

Cats then shed oocytes (protozoan parasite eggs) by the millions when they defecate, trapping them on fur and paw used to dutifully cover up their deposit, tracking them wherever a cat's paw may wander.

With the parasite completing its lifecycle, it may not affect the rest of cat biology. In humans and other animals, the failure to turn into the larger reproductive form allows the tiny parasite to migrate past the blood-brain barrier, where the disruption occurs.

The missing enzyme and the independent social lives of outdoor cats, mingling in shared sandboxes and loose garden soils around the world, make cat contact the primary vector for the infection. The secondary vector would be anything that has been in contact with a cat, such as a kitchen counter or any surface a cat has walked on or rubbed against.

While social media has clearly made the case that society would crumble without cats, it is important for all cat owners never to allow their cats outdoors to prevent the continued spread of the T. gondii parasite.

It is even more important that parents, with or without cats, understand the danger cat-borne parasites can pose to the long-term mental health of their children.

A framework to train multi-skilled robots for domestic use

Roboticists have been trying to develop robots that can tackle various everyday house chores, such as washing dishes or tidying up, for several years. However, so far none of the robots created has been commercialized adopted on a large scale.

Researchers  recently introduced Dobb-E, a new framework specifically designed to effectively train mobile robots on domestic tasks, ultimately contributing to their future widespread use. This framework, outlined in a paper pre-published on the server arXiv, could be applied to various robots designed to assist humans in their homes.

We already have specialist 'robots' in our homes, such as a dishwasher or a laundry machines, but a generalist robot that can learn how to complete each home-work and how it can help best in that situation has been a distant goal for all too long now.

So researchers developed an ergonomic demonstration collection tool, enabling us to gather task-specific demonstrations in unfamiliar homes without direct robot operation.

The Dobb-E framework has four key components, namely a data collection tool, a pre-trained model, a diverse data set and a deployment scheme. 

Remarkably, the robot was taught to complete 109 different household tasks. For each of these tasks, the researchers fine-tuned their model with five minutes of new video data on average.

The most exciting result of this paper is the confirmation that with our current level of technology we can build learned robotic agents that can address a wide range of tasks in a similarly large range of homes.

Now I want to buy one!

Nur Muhammad Mahi Shafiullah et al, On Bringing Robots Home, arXiv (2023). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2311.16098

Common Forever Chemicals May Trigger Cancer Cells to Spread

When colorectal cancer cells are exposed to two different types of 'forever chemicals' in the lab, the chemicals can potentially accelerate cancer progression, new research suggests.

A new study conducted an analysis of exposure levels comparable to those found in firefighters and other people who come into regular contact with per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Firefighters' blood levels of PFAS tend to be higher than the general population's because of their frequent exposure to firefighting foam, which contains PFAS chemicals for its flame retardant properties. Firefighters are more likely than the general population to develop and die from a variety of cancers that include colorectal cancer. Environmental factors are believed to be related to about 80 percent of CRC cases. In the new research, PFAS exposure in the lab induced CRC cells to migrate to new positions, implying a potential role in cancer spreading (metastasis) in living organisms. It doesn't prove it's metastasis, but they have increased motility, which is a feature of metastasis, according to researchers.

PFAS are human-made chemicals based on carbon-fluorine bonds, and as the nickname 'forever chemicals' suggests, these bonds are very strong and resistant to degradation, which makes PFAS popular for use in many kinds of products. Unfortunately, it also allows them to survive in the environment for years in ever-increasing concentrations.

They have been frequently detected in the environment, such as in drinking water, indoor dust, cleaning products, and coatings.

Many of these 'forever chemicals' are still present in everyday items, though the hazards of PFAS are largely unclear – partially because of the many different compounds involved. Research has shown that these long-lasting chemicals spread throughout the environment, and exposure to high levels has been linked to harmful health effects in people and animals. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a widely used PFAS, was classified as carcinogenic to humans by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in November 2023, and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), another common PFAS, was classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

Part 1

When exposed to PFOS and PFOA, the cells showed increased movement and a higher tendency of spreading. In a different test with CRC cells grown in a flat layer, a line was scratched down the middle to split them. When the chemicals were introduced, the cells grew and moved toward each other again.

To dig deeper, the researchers examined the chemicals' effects on the cell's metabolism. PFAS exposure altered various metabolites crucial for cell function, like amino acids and fatty acids, as well as signaling proteins associated with metastasis.

Substances that are usually anti-inflammatory and protective against cancer were reduced in the CRC cells after exposure, too. Some differences were more noticeable in the mutated cells, which could mean that cancers with this mutation may be more likely to spread with exposure to PFAS.

These results in the lab indicate that exposure to high levels of PFOS and PFOA could potentially increase the risk of CRC spreading in real-life conditions. This is crucial information for those in jobs with potential high exposure, the team says, and monitoring these chemicals is key to safeguarding their health, as are future clinical studies.

"Many in vitro studies can't be translated into humans but  understanding first the mechanisms of how they can actually affect cancer cell growth is important."

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.3c04844

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Part 2

Massive drug search uncovers infinitesimal molecule that kills cancers while sparing immune cells

Scientists have found an experimental small molecule that induces a form of cell death to kill a variety of cancers while enhancing the power of the immune system and leaving healthy cells totally unscathed.

The molecule triggers ferroptosis, a unique form of cell death that is increasingly being tested as an anti-cancer strategy. The international team of scientists reported their findings in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

All biologists know that the three major forms of cell death are  apoptosis, or type 1 cell death; autophagy, type 2 cell death; and cell necrosis, or type 3. Ferroptosis, by contrast, is a distinct form of cell death that relies on a buildup of iron and the generation of reactive oxygen species, which ultimately cause a doomed cell to self-destruct.

Turning to a different form of cell death is vital because most forms of cancer treatment today trigger cell death by enzyme-dependent apoptosis. Unfortunately, a key hallmark of human cancers is their capacity to develop resistance to treatment, and many tumor types have shockingly developed resistance to apoptosis, hence the hunt for a different way to kill tumour cells.

Even though ferroptosis is being actively pursued as a potential cancer treatment, other researchers are studying the process for its pathological role in a variety of disparate diseases that range from Alzheimer's, cardiovascular disease to even various forms of cancer. Ferroptosis is intimately involved in the disease processes of these conditions, studies have shown.

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In terms of harnessing this form of cell death as a therapeutic, teams worldwide are racing to overcome a number of conundrums, especially what's known as the "non-selective" activities of ferroptotic cell death. It doesn't just kill cancer cells, it kills a multitude of cells in the immediate micro-environment, particularly the Big Three: dendritic cells, T cells and neutrophils, which seemingly defeats the promise that ferroptosis holds as a cancer fighter.

That means most compounds capable of inducing ferroptosis in cancer cells may also inflict the same fate on various immune cells, weakening the immune system's ability to swoop in and wage war on deadly tumours.

Part 1

Now researchers have pinpointed a promising small molecule called N6F11, which not only triggers ferroptotic cell death, it also selectively causes the degradation of glutathione peroxidase-4, also known as GPX4, a notorious blocker of ferroptosis.

With N6F11 in the mix, ferroptosis can be triggered and GPX4 is no longer in the way to prevent this specialized form of cell death from annihilating tumors. Even more eye-opening, N6F11 degraded GPX4 in human pancreatic, bladder, breast, and cervical cancer cells without affecting GPX4 in that vital trio of the immune system: dendritic cells, T cells and neutrophils. They also also found that N6F11 slowed the growth of active tumors in mouse models inoculated with pancreatic cancer cells. The animals endured the treatment without severe side effects—an effect the authors tied to N6F11's ability to stimulate T cells.

In summary, researchers now identified a small molecule, N6F11, that induces the selective degradation of GPX4 in malignant, but not immune cells in small tumours, N6F11-induced ferroptosis and initiates a powerful antitumour immune system.

Jingbo Li et al, Tumor-specific GPX4 degradation enhances ferroptosis-initiated antitumor immune response in mouse models of pancreatic cancer, Science Translational Medicine (2023). DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adg3049

Part 2

Scientists construct a synthetic yeast genome

Chromosomes are long DNA molecules that collectively form a genome, containing all the genetic material of an organism. Advances in technology have allowed scientists to redesign and construct different chromosomal sequences, facilitating the study of the link between gene variations and traits.

Notably, yeast is an important model organism for the understanding of basic cellular processes, owing to its similarity to plants and animals at the cellular level while being considerably simpler to manipulate and study. Therefore, redesigning and synthesizing a yeast genome can help scientists to understand the impact of genetic variations on individual traits, potentially elucidating the mechanisms of genetic diseases.

With this goal in mind, scientists 

have synthesized a redesigned yeast—chromosome XV, that comprises 1.05 million base pairs—the largest synthesized chromosome in Asia.

The work is published in Cell Genomics. It is seen as a major milestone in the field of synthetic biology. 

In creating the synthetic Chromosome XV (synXV), the Medicine team extensively redesigned the original DNA to incorporate various changes that resulted in a sequence which is distinctively unique and different from the natural one.

In order to streamline the assembly process of synXV, the team developed a groundbreaking technology, called CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mitotic recombination with endoreduplication (CRIMiRE). This innovative technology significantly speeds up the exchange of large chromosomal DNA segments at specific sites, hence enabling multiple synthetic chromosome segments to be assembled concurrently and stitched together into a complete synthetic Chromosome XV.

Upon generating the synthetic yeast chromosome, CRIMiRE further allows for the intentional mixing and matching of synXV with another yeast chromosome. This generates different genetic combinations for studies, which illuminates the association between genetic variations and individual traits.

Given the challenges of working with extremely long DNA sequences, the traditional approaches are unable to change the sequences efficiently. However, the use of CRIMiRE has simplified the process, shortening it tenfold, potentially revolutionizing the way larger synthetic chromosomes are built for more complex organisms. This achievement opens the door to understanding basic questions about biological processes.

 Jee Loon Foo et al, Establishing chromosomal design-build-test-learn through a synthetic chromosome and its combinatorial reconfiguration, Cell Genomics (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100435

Research suggests women lose more muscle than men in spaceflight

New research published ahead of print in the Journal of Applied Physiology suggests women lose more muscle than men in a microgravity environment such as spaceflight. The study "represent[s] the longest bed rest study on a large cohort of women" and underscores the need for more sex-specific studies on physiological responses to microgravity, the research team wrote.

Historically, only about 2 out of every 10 astronauts sent into space have been women. With NASA's decision to diversify crewmembers in future spaceflight missions, including the agency's intention to send the first woman to the moon in 2024, scientists are more interested than ever in discovering how biological sex plays a role in the physiological response to microgravity. However, existing literature on the female response to low-gravity environments is sparse.

The current study explored muscle loss (atrophy) in men and women during two extended bed rest trials. The men spent 90 days, and the women spent 60 days in a 6-degree head-down tilt position, where their head was below their feet. This simulated a weightless condition similar to what crewmembers experience during spaceflight. Both volunteer groups ate, slept, performed personal hygiene, and all other activities in either the head-down tilt or a horizontal position.

The research team conducted magnetic resonance imaging tests on the volunteers' thigh and calf muscles before and after the trial as well as at the one-month mark of bed rest. These muscles were chosen "because they are critical for ambulation and extravehicular activities that likely will be required of space crews visiting the moon or Mars," the researchers said.

The researchers found that all participants lost a significant amount of muscle mass in both areas of the leg throughout their bed rest period compared to before bed rest. The women lost more muscle from the quadriceps at one month compared to the men, and the women lost more muscle mass at two months than the men lost at three months. This trend is concerning not only because of the impact on typical muscle function but also because "it is now established that muscle serves as an endocrine organ, communicating with numerous other organs," the research team explained.

The current findings from two spaceflight simulation studies suggest that women are more susceptible to weightlessness-induced muscle atrophy," the researchers wrote. "Therefore, a more appropriate path to understand sex-specific responses to microgravity (including the muscle atrophy issue) and to obtain data to better protect the health of future crewmembers may be through well-controlled long-duration bed rest studies with only exercise countermeasure groups."

The research team explained that they suggest this path because other studies have shown women to be very responsive to exercise countermeasures during (simulated) weightlessness. In addition, future space missions are likely to be much longer than the current study and information in this area is needed for longer durations of weightlessness.

Weaponized mosquitoes

The World Mosquito Program will start producing disease-fighting mosquitoes at a factory in Brazil next year. The mosquitos are infected by a bacterial strain that prevents them from transmitting pathogenic viruses, and could protect up to 70 million people from diseases such as dengue and zika. The non-profit organization will produce up to five billion bacteria-infected mosquitoes per year over the next decade.

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Illuminating dark matter

Results of an experiment to detect dark-matter particles known as axions will see light in 2024. Axions are thought to be emitted by the Sun and converted into light, but the tiny particles have not yet been observed experimentally because they require sensitive detection tools and an extremely strong magnetic field. The experiment BabyIAXO at the German Electron Synchrotron in Hamburg is using a solar telescope made of a 10-metre-long magnet and ultra-sensitive noise-free X-ray detectors to track the centre of the Sun for 12 hours per day, to capture the conversion of axions into photons.

And 2024 could be the year that scientists nail down the mass of the neutrino — the most mysterious particle in the standard model of particle physics. Results of the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino experiment in 2022 showed that neutrinos had a maximum mass of 0.8 electron volts. Researchers will finish collecting data in 2024 and are expected to make a definite measurement of the tiny particles.

What we can expect in the year 2024 in the field of science

The consciousness debate: round two

Next year could bring new insights into the neural basis of consciousness. A large project that is testing two theories of consciousness through a series of adversarial experiments is expected to release the results of its second experiment by the end of 2024. In the first round, both theories failed to completely align with observed brain-imaging data, settling a 25-year bet in favour of philosophy over neuroscience. The second round could put neuroscience closer to deciphering the mysteries of the subjective experience.

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Saving the planet

In the second half of 2024, the International Court of Justice in the Hague could give an opinion on nations’ legal obligations to combat climate change, and rule on legal consequences for those deemed to be damaging the climate. Although the ruling will not be legally binding, the court’s clout can push countries to strengthen their climate goals and can be cited in domestic legal cases.

Negotiations for the UN plastics treaty, which seeks to establish a binding international agreement to eliminate plastic pollution, will wrap up next year. Since the 1950s, the world has produced 10 billion tonnes of plastic, of which more than 7 billion tonnes is now waste — much of which is polluting oceans and harming wildlife. But there is growing concern among researchers that the UN negotiations, which started last year, are advancing too slowly and will not accomplish the intended goals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04044-9?utm_source=Live+...

Flu has long-term illness risk — like COVID

People who have been very ill with flu could develop a long-haul illness similar to long COVID. The medical records of more than 81,000 people who were hospitalized with COVID-19 and almost 11,000 with flu show that both infections carried a risk of health problems in the following .... ‘Long flu’ symptoms were more likely to be respiratory — shortness of breath or cough. We need to “stop trivialising viral infections and understand that they are major drivers of chronic diseases”, says clinical epidemiologist and study co-author Ziyad Al-Aly.

Reference: The Lancet Infectious Diseases paper

Using AI, researchers identify a new class of antibiotic candidates that can kill a drug-resistant bacterium

Using a type of artificial intelligence known as deep learning, researchers have discovered a class of compounds that can kill a drug-resistant bacterium that causes thousands of deaths around the world every year.

In a  study  appearing in Nature, the researchers showed that these compounds could kill methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) grown in a lab dish and in two mouse models of MRSA infection. The compounds also show very low toxicity against human cells, making them particularly good drug candidates. A key innovation of the new study is that the researchers were also able to figure out what kinds of information the deep-learning model was using to make its antibiotic potency predictions. This knowledge could help researchers to design additional drugs that might work even better than the ones identified by the model.

James Collins, Discovery of a structural class of antibiotics with explainable deep learning, Nature (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06887-8. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06887-8

Why paint does not dry slower in a humid environment

A team of physicists  working with an infection and immunity specialist  has, via experimentation, validated a theory to explain why paint dries at the same rate regardless of humidity levels. The study is published in Physical Review Letters.

Common sense suggests that paint should dry faster on an outdoor fence on a dry day than when it is humid because evaporation occurs faster when the air around a liquid source is drier. But anecdotal evidence suggests this is not the case for paint and other liquids. Six years ago, chemists developed a theory to explain why this is the case. They suggested it is because large molecules in the liquid are pulled to the surface during evaporation, forming a 'polarization layer' that inhibits evaporation, and by extension, drying. In this new effort, the research team conducted an experiment to test this theory.

The researchers found that in their experiments evaporation rates remained constant for approximately three hours. But then, rates plummeted, as was theorized by chemists, regardless of humidity levels. The evaporation rate did not decrease as humidity increased during the initial three hours. However, the theory only appeared to hold for humidity levels up to 80%—at rates higher than that, evaporation did slow down, which the team suggests was likely due to some other force.

The researchers suggest their work could have medical applications as recent research efforts have shown that respiratory droplets tend to form skins similar to those seen in the experimental apparatus.

Max Huisman et al, Evaporation of Concentrated Polymer Solutions Is Insensitive to Relative Humidity, Physical Review Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.248102

Study details how biomimetic nanomaterials can minimize damage after a heart attack

A recent study details how, when targeted specifically to the spleen, histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors, chemical compounds that can be used to treat cancers and other diseases, can potentially improve the healing response following a heart attack.

Normally, immune cells  migrate from the spleen to the heart after a heart attack in response to injury. Here, researchers found that they could design nanomaterials that mimic dead and dying red blood cells, causing them to be retained in the spleen and enabling them to deliver inhibitors that modulate the inflammatory response.

Notably, this targeting strategy significantly decreases cardiac scar size and the preservation of heart function, even after just one dose, when given within two hours of heart attack injury.

 Rajendran JC Bose et al, Biomimetic Nanomaterials for the Immunomodulation of the Cardiosplenic Axis Postmyocardial Infarction, Advanced Materials (2023). DOI: 10.1002/adma.202304615

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Mineral coatings could enable shelf-stable mRNA therapies

A protective mineral coating identified by University of Wisconsin–Madison biomedical engineering researchers could allow powerful messenger RNA therapeutics like COVID-19 vaccines to be stored at room temperature, making them more accessible to lower-resourced communities across the world.

Researchers demonstrate how magnetism can be actively changed by pressure

Magnetism occurs depending on how electrons behave. For example, the elementary particles can generate an electric current with their charge and thereby induce a magnetic field. However, magnetism can also arise through the collective alignment of the magnetic moments (spins) in a material. What has not been possible until now, however, is to continuously change the type of magnetism in a crystal.

An international research team has now succeeded in doing just that: Changing magnetism  "by pushing a button." For that, the team continuously changed the magnetic interactions in a single crystal by applying pressure. The researchers recently published their results in Physical Review Letters.

Spins can be visualized as small compass needles that can align themselves in an external magnetic field and have a magnetic field themselves. In case of ferromagnetism, which is used in permanent magnets, all electron spins align parallel to each other. In some arrangements of electron spins, for example in ordinary square, checkerboard-type crystal lattices, an anti-parallel alignment of the spins is also possible: Neighboring spins always point alternately in opposite directions.

With triangular lattices (or lattices in which triangular structures occur, such as the more complex kagome lattice), a completely antiparallel arrangement is not possible: If two corners of a triangle have opposite spin directions, the remaining side must match one of the two directions. Both options—spin up or spin down—are then exactly equivalent. "This possibility of multiple identical alternatives is known as 'geometrical frustration' and occurs in crystal structures with electron spins arranged in triangular, kagome or honeycomb lattices.

The remaining unpaired magnetic moments could be entangled with each other, manipulated with external magnetic fields and thus used for data storage or computational operations in quantum computers.

In real materials, we are still far from such a state of ideal frustration. First of all, we need to be able to precisely control the symmetry of the crystal lattice and thus the magnetic properties

Part 1

In order to change the magnetism in the material investigated "by pushing a button," the researchers put the crystal under pressure. Starting from a kagome structure, the crystal lattice was deformed by uniaxial stress, which changed the magnetic interactions between the electrons.

Researchers used mechanical pressure to force the system into a preferred magnetic direction. The team succeeded in increasing the temperature of the magnetic phase transition by more than 10%

Jierong Wang et al, Controlled Frustration Release on the Kagome Lattice by Uniaxial-Strain Tuning, Physical Review Letters (2023). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.256501. On arXiv: DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2209.08613

Part 2

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Changing face of invention in the age of AI

With the widespread adoption of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, we can no longer assume that new ideas and inventions are solely the result of human effort. So, what does this mean for inventors and the IP they create?

We've heard many perspectives recently on the effect generative AI will have on all facets of how we work, conduct business, and ultimately live our lives. When game-changing technologies emerge, there's a tendency for people to polarize in opinion, either vastly underestimating or vastly overestimating the benefits and problems associated with using them. For example, we've heard how AI could never produce art or how it will solve all our collective problems.

But no matter what our opinions are on the dangers and benefits of AI, these tools don't exist in isolation. People using and creating generative AI tools and the tools themselves are subject to IP laws. Being aware of these laws can help protect us from their impact.

When the tools we create become the creators

From the perspective of an artist, creator or author, there's a strong argument they should have a right to control how their work is used or exploited. Copyright laws generally achieve this goal. Typically, these laws rely on the legal concept of "individual intellectual effort" to determine who the author of a work is. That is, the person creating the work needs to have added enough of their own ingenuity and creativity to distinguish their creation from other existing works. But how does a human achieve this? Some argue that unlike AI, there's something special about humans that allows us to achieve the creation of a "new" work.

I propose a different argument. The work a human creates is simply the sum total of all the things that human has sensed and experienced throughout their lifetime. Similarly, an AI tool creates an output based on the sum total of all the data it has consumed throughout its training. With time, the data that an AI consumes will grow as its sensor inputs and ability to experience become more sophisticated. There's a critical point where AI tools will exceed humans in their ability to sense and experience, and consequently exceed humans in their capability to create, author or invent. At the very least, this will happen in specific domains. For example, AI's in the specific domain of chess exceeded human capability years ago, and we're witnessing it again now in the visual arts thanks to tools like Dall-E and Midjourney.

Humans vs. AI in Intellectual Property law

Many jurisdictions have decided only "real humans" can be considered the author, creator, or inventor for the purposes of IP law. But often it's unclear who is considered the creator of a work when an AI tool is used.

In the current generation of high-profile generative AI tools, text prompts are used as the input mechanism to produce a desired output. The question is, by entering a specific set of prompts into an AI tool, did a human apply sufficient effort to be considered the author, inventor or creator of the output work? If not, and the work is not considered a copy of any other work, then from where did the ingenuity or inventive effort come?

This line of thinking leads to several problems for people using and creating these tools, especially when it comes to proving they are the creator. More broadly, it poses problems for the entire IP system.

Let's hone in on the patent system as an example. One requirement for patenting is that a new invention must be "inventive," "not-obvious," contain an "inventive step," or other similar requirements across jurisdictions. The test for meeting this threshold is often defined as whether a person skilled in an area of technology, with access to their normal working tools, would consider the invention "routine," as "a matter of course," or "obvious."

If generative AI is used as a matter of course in an area of technology, and can produce an acceptable description of an invention, then the bar for patenting is significantly raised. That is, once generative AI tools become common place (maybe they already are), we can expect a person skilled in a particular area of technology will use them to solve their problems.

But what happens when an AI tool has become so proficient that it has collected every piece of data that a human could, and has awareness of every experience that a human could have? The AI would be able to conceive a solution to every problem that a human could, just as the chess computer knows every move a grandmaster may consider. The result is almost nothing is inventive anymore, unless the human inventor has new data they can input to which no other party (including the AI tool) has access.

This scenario helps to illustrate the issues that IP law and individuals face. It is likely that over the coming years step changes in technology will be taken that lawmakers will need to respond to. But, we don't yet know how these problems will be resolved. Given that no significant legal changes have been made in the face of the current generation of AI, and the rate of change is likely to accelerate, inventors and innovators should attempt to stay ahead of any possible changes.

Part 2

Avoiding IP issues when using generative AI

There are practical steps you can take right now to help ensure you're considered the creator, author, or inventor of something made with the assistance of generative AI.

Most importantly, be careful to document how and when you interact with AI tools, and what data you use for to gain an output. For the current generation of AI tools, this means you should record the prompts you use, when they were made, and with what version of tool. This could be crucial evidence down the track to show sufficient 'intellectual effort' was used, proving you're the rightful author or inventor.

If you're creating new AI tools, you should verify that you have sufficient rights in the datasets used to train the tools. This ensures the AI model that forms the basis of your tool can't inadvertently create a copy or a derivative work that would infringe on others' rights. It's likely more jurisdictions will require disclosure about training datasets as time goes on.

And finally, when using an AI tool, it's important to remember that you're accepting a license. That license affects your rights in the works, ideas or data output by the AI. Always read the fine print.

Despite the uncertainty and potential for massive changes, you can still get creating, inventing, and authoring—but know how to protect yourself, and do it responsibly.

 Source:  CSIRO 

Part 3

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If ChatGPT wrote it, who owns the copyright? It depends on where yo...

Researchers discover novel antibiotic substance in the human nose

Researchers   have discovered a novel antibiotic substance from the human nose that can be used against pathogenic bacteria. Named epifadin, the molecule is produced from specific strains of the bacterial species Staphylococcus epidermidis, which occur on the mucous membrane of the inside wall of the nose. Strains that produce epifadin can also be isolated on the surface of the skin. Epifadin constitutes a new, previously unknown class of antimicrobial compounds that kills microorganisms and could be used as a lead structure for the development of novel antibiotics. The research is published in the journal Nature Microbiology. 

Benjamin O. Torres Salazar et al, Commensal production of a broad-spectrum and short-lived antimicrobial peptide polyene eliminates nasal Staphylococcus aureus, Nature Microbiology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01544-2

Scientists Find an Unexpected Trigger of Eczema – And Clues on How to Stop It

To figure out how the bacteria might be acting on those nerves, the researchers systematically tested different strains of S. aureus engineered to lack specific components of the microbe's molecular arsenal.

After ruling out nine others, Chiu and colleagues found one enzyme that S. aureus releases on contact with skin, protease V8, triggered itching behaviors in the mice by activating another protein, PAR1, which set off the sensory neurons.

When exposed to S. aureus devoid of V8, the mice didn't scratch nearly as much, and their skin was less flaky and irritated. And when animals were treated with a drug that blocks PAR1, their symptoms also eased.

Further experiments ruled out immune cells as the instigators of the animals' itch. Mice depleted of mast cells and basophils, two types of immune cells implicated in itches and allergies, kept on scratching after exposure to S. aureus.

"You don't necessarily have to have inflammation for the microbe to cause itch, but that itch exacerbates inflammation on the skin," explains Liwen Deng, lead author and microbiologist at Harvard Medical School.

If validated in human studies, the findings could present a clear target for alleviating eczema's endless itch that can deprive some patients of sleep.

Most current eczema treatments try to soothe the skin, calm the immune system, and restore the skin barrier without clearing up the condition entirely – though researchers have clued on to the idea that targeting skin bacteria might provide lasting relief.
The PAR1 blocker tested in this study is already used to prevent blood clots in humans so it could be repurposed. Like the mice, skin samples from patients with atopic dermatitis had higher V8 levels and more S. aureus than healthy skin, but further testing is required.

Future studies could also investigate if pathogens like S. aureus hijack itchy sensations to facilitate their spread.

"It's a speculation at this point, but the itch-scratch cycle could benefit the microbes and enable their spread to distant body sites and to uninfected hosts," Deng says.

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01164-9?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867423011649%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Part 2

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Scientists develop the first method to measure cellular changes in the body over time

While physicists continue to argue about whether time is indeed an illusion, as Albert Einstein claimed, biologists have no doubt about its significance for understanding life as a dynamic system.

In recent years, they have been gaining an increasingly deeper understanding of complex biological systems using tools enabling the simultaneous analysis of vast amounts of cellular and molecular data and the probing of cellular circuitry that drives disease. However, these in-depth investigations of how cells behave and interact have provided only separate snapshots of what happens inside complex organisms, without accounting for the dimension of time and revealing the sequence of cellular events.

Now, in a new study published in Cell, researchers  have managed for the first time to develop a method for tracking and measuring changes over time on in single cells inside the body.

The method, called Zman-seq ("time"), consists of labeling cells with different time stamps and tracking them in healthy or pathological tissue. Using this cellular time machine, researchers can get to know the cells' history and how long each cell had stayed in the tissue, ultimately achieving an understanding of the molecular and cellular temporal changes that had taken place within that tissue.

Single-cell technologies, the tools that enable biologists to understand what happens inside individual cells, have advanced significantly in recent years.

With these tools, it is now possible to obtain high-resolution images of how diseases develop and how the body responds to different medications, to identify rare cell populations, decipher which cells interact with one other and how they are spatially distributed in a tissue.

Part 1

However, all these important insights are equivalent to getting many still-frame images from a movie and trying to understand the plot. "Knowing what preceded what is not enough to deduce causality, but without this knowledge, we don't really have a chance of understanding what the cause is and what is the effect". 

The development of the groundbreaking new technology started with the research on glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive brain tumour. 

We usually think of cancer as cells growing out of control, but in fact, cancer is also the loss of the ability of the body, and specifically of its immune system, to control this growth. And when you look at tumors, large parts of them are composed of dysfunctional immune cells, which sometimes make up one third or even half of all the cells in a tumour.

Glioblastoma is one of the most immune-suppressive types of tumors. "To understand how to defeat this cancer, we need to understand what happens to the immune cells as they enter the tumor and why they lose the capacity to fight the tumor and become dysfunctional.

Ideally, we'd want to have a little clock on each cell telling us when it entered the tumor and when the signals and checkpoints that instruct it to become incompetent are activated. This back to the future time machine was thought to be impossible to develop.

The breakthrough came when researchers decided to take an uncanny approach. Instead of trying to measure time in cells within the tumor tissue, they decided to try to mark the cells while they are still in the blood—before they enter the tumor. By using different fluorescent dyes at different time points, they are later able to know exactly when each cell entered the tissue and how long it had been there, and this reveals the dynamic changes that happened to the cells in the tissue, for example, what are the different stages at which immune cells become dysfunctional inside the tumour.

The challenge was to develop the optimal way to color the cells in the blood at specific time points, making sure the dye does not reach the tissue itself or stay too long in the blood, potentially mixing with the next dye. At the same time, the dye had to stay on the cells long enough for them to be measured.

As part of the study, the researchers showed that the method makes it possible to measure time in immune cells in different tissues—the brain, the lungs and the digestive system of animal models.

Using Zman-seq,  researchers were able to gain insights into why the immune system is so dysfunctional in battling glioblastoma.

They showed that immune cells called natural killer cells, which, as their name implies, are crucial to killing rogue cells, become dysfunctional very quickly because the tumor hijacks their killing mechanisms—and this happens within less than 24 hours after their entry into the tumor. This explains why therapeutic attempts to harness the immune system for fighting glioblastoma are so ineffective.

Now researchers are developing ways to block the immune-disabling tumor checkpoints in order to reactivate the immune system in glioblastoma and other hard-to-treat tumors. In addition, they plan to adapt Zman-seq to the study of temporal dynamics of cells throughout the human body.

Zman-seq supplies the 'hard facts,' the empirical measurements enabling scientists to understand the precise order of events that immune and other cells are going through when they enter a tumor, and this may lead to a completely new thinking on how to generate more effective therapies for cancer and other disorders.

Time-resolved single-cell transcriptomics defines immune trajectories in glioblastoma, Cell (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.11.032. www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)01317-X

Statins found to reduce risk of blood clots associated with menopausal hormone therapy

Researchers have provided substantial evidence supporting the potential role of statins in mitigating venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk associated with hormone therapy in postmenopausal women, possibly reshaping the risk-benefit considerations for this population.

In a paper, "Statin Use and the Risk of Venous Thromboembolism in Women Taking Hormone Therapy," published in JAMA Network Open, the researchers used a cohort of 223,949 women (mean age 57.5 years) with 20,359 cases and 203,590 matched controls to conduct a nested case-control design analyzing data from a commercially insured claims database.

Statin therapy was associated with reduced VTE risk in women on hormone therapy, highlighting potential benefits for women with perimenopausal symptoms. Hormone therapy exposure without statin therapy increased VTE risk by 53%, but when combined with statins, the risk was reduced by 18% compared to those without hormone therapy or statin exposure.

Menopause can cause problematic symptoms like hot flashes, sleep disruptions, cognitive changes, vaginal dryness and urine leakage that can significantly impact a woman's quality of life. Hormone therapy is often used to manage these symptoms. However, hormone therapy has a downside, as previous studies indicate an elevated risk of developing blood clots or VTE.

Statin drug therapy has been associated with reducing the risk of major cardiovascular events and VTE. Statin therapy, along with hormone therapy, has looked promising in some previous studies, though with different dosage guidelines than are typical.

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The current study aimed to clarify the association between hormone therapy, statin use, and VTE risk, specifically in the US population of women aged 50 to 64. The results show that statin therapy reduced hormone therapy–associated VTE risk, with high-intensity statins showing a more significant risk reduction.

The authors conclude that while statin therapy was associated with reduced risk of VTE associated with exogenous hormones, it did not eliminate the risk, suggesting that more controlled studies are needed.

Research shows that sniffing women's tears reduces aggressive behaviour in men

New research, published in PLOS Biology, shows that tears from women contain chemicals that block aggression in men. The study finds that sniffing tears leads to reduced brain activity related to aggression, which results in less aggressive behaviour.

Male aggression in rodents is known to be blocked when they smell female tears. This is an example of social chemosignaling, a process that is common in animals but less common—or less understood—in humans.
To determine whether tears have the same effect in people, the researchers exposed a group of men to either women's emotional tears or saline while they played a two-person game. The game was designed to elicit aggressive behavior against the other player, whom the men were led to believe was cheating.
When given the opportunity, the men could get revenge on the other player by causing them to lose money. The men did not know what they were sniffing and could not distinguish between the tears or the saline, which were both odorless.
Revenge-seeking aggressive behavior during the game dropped more than 40% after the men sniffed women's emotional tears. When repeated in an MRI scanner, functional imaging showed two aggression-related brain regions—the prefrontal cortex and anterior insula—that became more active when the men were provoked during the game, but did not become as active in the same situations when the men were sniffing the tears.

Individually, the greater the difference in this brain activity, the less often the player took revenge during the game. Finding this link between tears, brain activity, and aggressive behavior implies that social chemosignaling is a factor in human aggression, not simply an animal curiosity.

We found that just like in mice, human tears contain a chemical signal that blocks conspecific male aggression. This goes against the notion that emotional tears are uniquely human.

 Agron S, de March CA, Weissgross R, Mishor E, Gorodisky L, Weiss T, et al. (2023) A chemical signal in human female tears lowers aggression in males. PLoS Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002442

Hidden dangers in eco-friendly choices: The health risks of biodegradable microplastics revealed

A study published in Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering on September 25, 2023, unveils the potential health risks associated with biodegradable microplastics, particularly polylactic acid (PLA).

This in-depth study offers a nuanced exploration of the interactions between biodegradable microplastics, specifically polylactic acid (PLA), and the heavy metal cadmium (Cd(II)). It meticulously examines and contrasts the adsorption and desorption processes of these microplastics in varied environments, ranging from natural ecological settings to simulated human gastrointestinal conditions.
This comparative analysis extends to traditional non-biodegradable microplastics, providing a rich understanding of the different environmental behaviors of these materials. Significantly, the research unveils that, despite the biodegradability of PLA, its interaction with cadmium can lead to substantial health risks.

These findings are instrumental in deepening our comprehension of the multifaceted environmental impact of microplastics, especially in relation to human health and safety, thus enriching the discourse on the ecological implications of both conventional and biodegradable plastics.

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