Neighborhood opportunities influence infant development and cognition

 Growing up in neighborhoods with more educational and socioeconomic opportunities has a positive impact on infants' brain activity, according to new research from Boston Medical Center (BMC). The study, published in The Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, suggests that enhancing neighborhood opportunities, particularly in education, can be a promising approach to promoting early childhood development.

A team of early childhood researchers examined how neighborhood opportunity -- the socioeconomic, educational, health, and environmental conditions relevant to child health and development -- is associated with infant brain activity and cognitive development.

The researchers found that infants in neighborhoods with more opportunities have greater brain function at six months of age.

In areas with better educational opportunities, these brain differences are also related to better cognition at 12 months old.

"This study highlights that even in infancy, neighborhoods matter for child development. Our findings suggest that focusing on neighborhood opportunities, like increasing access to high-quality education, can promote child neurodevelopment," said Mei Elansary, MD, MPhil, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at BMC and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

The researchers collected their data from 65 infants in community pediatric practices in the Boston and Los Angeles areas.

The team examined whether associations between neighborhood opportunity and children's cognitive development at 12 months of age could be explained by differences in brain activity at six months of age, measured by electroencephalography (EEG). Cognitive development was measured using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL), a standardized play-based developmental assessment.

Elansary and colleagues found that higher levels of neighborhood opportunity are associated with greater absolute EEG power in mid-to high-frequency bands in six months old infants.

These EEG measurements are related to better language and cognitive scores later in childhood, suggesting a neuroprotective role of living in higher opportunity neighborhoods early in life.

The team also found that higher levels of educational opportunity, specifically, are associated with better MSEL scores.

This means that neighborhoods with more educational opportunities, like high quality center-based care, may provide more resources to get kids engaged in cognitively simulating activities and enhance their development."Prior work has focused on the role of socioeconomic disadvantages in child development. Our study aims to shift the conversation towards solutions for improving the environments that kids experience in early childhood to support their development and address inequalities," says Elansary. "Given that race and ethnicity have been strongly associated with differential access to high opportunity neighborhoods, it is important to think about ways to promote access to these places for all families."

Source: ScienceDaily

Groundbreaking discovery: Zinc can make crop yields more climate-resilient

 Researchers have discovered that zinc plays a crucial role in the nitrogen fixation process of legumes. This finding, along with the transcriptional regulator Fixation Under Nitrate (FUN), could revolutionize legume-based agriculture by optimizing crop efficiency and reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers. By understanding how zinc and FUN regulate nitrogen fixation, researchers might be able to enhance nitrogen delivery, improve crop yields, and promote more sustainable agricultural practices.

The new knowledge about zinc can change the way we cultivate crops, as plants can be made more climate-resilient. This means that the plant can acquire increased tolerance to extreme weather, which can not only ensure a more stable crop yield but also reduce the need for artificial fertilizers and enable the cultivation of legumes in new, previously unsuitable areas.

"Bacteria can cooperate with legumes to fix nitrogen from the air in root nodules. However, the nodules are sensitive to environmental influences such as temperature, drought, flooding, soil salinity, and high concentrations of nitrogen in the soil," elaborates Assistant Professor and lead author of the study, Jieshun Lin.

Researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, in collaboration with Polytechnic University of Madrid and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France, have discovered that legumes use zinc as a secondary signal to integrate environmental factors and regulate nitrogen fixation efficiency. In the study published in Nature, the researchers discovered that FUN is a novel type of zinc sensor, which decodes zinc signals in nodules and regulates nitrogen fixation.

"It's truly remarkable to discover zinc's role as a secondary signal in plants. It is a vital micronutrient, and it has never been considered as a signal before. After screening over 150,000 plants, we finally identified the zinc sensor FUN, shedding light on this fascinating aspect of plant biology," Jieshun Lin explains.

In this study the researcher identifies that FUN is an important transcription factor that control nodule breakdown when soil nitrogen concentrations are high: "FUN is regulated by a peculiar mechanism that monitor the cellular zinc levels directly and we show that FUN is inactivated by zinc into large filament structures and liberated into the active form when zinc levels are low," Professor Kasper Røjkjær Andersen explains.

From an agricultural perspective, continued nitrogen fixation could be a beneficial trait that increases nitrogen availability, both for the legume and for co-cultivated or future crops that rely on the nitrogen left in the soil after legumes are grown. This helps lay the foundations for future research that provides new ways for us to manage our farming systems and reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizer and reduce its impact on the environment.

The implications of this research are significant. By understanding how zinc and FUN regulate nitrogen fixation, researchers are developing strategies to optimize this process in legume crops. This could lead to increased nitrogen delivery, improving crop yields and reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers, which have environmental and economic costs.

sources-science daily

Researchers address ocean paradox with 55 gallons of fluorescent dye

 For the first time, researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography led an international team that directly measured cold, deep water upwelling via turbulent mixing along the slope of a submarine canyon in the Atlantic Ocean.

The pace of upwelling the researchers observed was more than 10,000 times the global average rate predicted by the late renowned oceanographer Walter Munk in the 1960s.

The results appear in a new study led by Scripps postdoctoral fellow Bethan Wynne-Cattanach and published today in the journal Nature. The findings begin to unravel a vexing mystery in oceanography and could eventually help improve humanity's ability to forecast climate change. The research was supported by grants from the Natural Environment Research Council and the National Science Foundation.

The world as we know it requires large-scale ocean circulation, often called conveyor belt circulation, in which seawater becomes cold and dense near the poles, sinks into the deep, and eventually rises back up to the surface where it warms, beginning the cycle again. These broad patterns maintain a turnover of heat, nutrients, and carbon that underpins global climate, marine ecosystems, and the ocean's ability to mitigate human-caused climate change.Despite the conveyor belt's importance, however, a component of it known as meridional overturning circulation (MOC), has proven difficult to observe. In particular, the return of cold water from the deep ocean to the surface through upwelling has been theorized and inferred but never directly measured.In 1966, Munk calculated a global average pace of upwelling using the rate at which cold, deep water was formed near Antarctica. He estimated the speed of upwelling at one centimeter per day. The volume of water transported by this rate of upwelling would be huge, said Matthew Alford, professor of physical oceanography at Scripps and senior author of the study, "but spread out over the entire global ocean, that flow is too slow to measure directly."

Munk proposed that this upwelling occurred via turbulent mixing caused by breaking internal waves under the ocean's surface. About 25 years ago, measurements began to reveal that undersea turbulence was higher near the seafloor, but this presented oceanographers with a paradox, Alford said.

If turbulence is strongest near the bottom where the water is coldest, then a given parcel of water would experience stronger mixing beneath it where the water is colder. This would have the effect of making bottom waters even colder and denser, pushing water down instead of lifting it toward the surface. This theoretical prediction, since confirmed by measurements, appears to contradict the observed fact that the deep ocean has not simply filled up with the cold, dense water formed at the poles.

In 2016, researchers including Raffaele Ferrari, oceanographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of the current study, proposed a new theory that had the potential to resolve this paradox. The idea was that steep slopes on the seafloor in places like the walls of underwater canyons might produce the right kind of turbulence to cause upwelling.

Wynne-Cattanach, Alford, and their collaborators set out to see if they could directly observe this phenomenon by conducting an experiment at sea with the help of a barrel of a non-toxic, fluorescent green dye called fluorescein. Beginning in 2021, the researchers visited a roughly 2,000-meter-deep undersea canyon in the Rockall Trough, about 370 kilometers (230 miles) northwest of Ireland.

"We selected this canyon out of the roughly 9,500 we know of in the oceans because this spot is pretty unremarkable as deep sea canyons go," said Alford. "The idea was for it to be as typical as possible to make our results more generalizable."

Floating above the submarine canyon in a research vessel, the team lowered a 55-gallon drum of fluorescein to 10 meters (32.8 feet) above the seafloor and then remotely triggered the release of the dye.

Then the team tracked the dye for two and a half days until it dissipated using several instruments adapted in-house at Scripps for the demands of the experiment. The researchers were able to track the dye's movement at high resolution by slowly moving the ship up and down the canyon's slope. The key measurements came from devices called fluorometers that are capable of detecting the presence of tiny amounts of the fluorescent dye -- down to less than 1 part per billion -- but other instruments also measured changes in water temperature and turbulence.

Tracking the dye's movements revealed turbulence-driven upwelling along the slope of the canyon, confirming Ferrari's proposed resolution of the paradox with direct observations for the first time. Not only did the team measure upwelling along the canyon's slope, that upwelling was much faster than Munk's 1966 calculations predicted.Where Munk inferred a global average of one centimeter per day, measurements at Rockall Trough found upwelling proceeding at 100 meters per day. Additionally, the team observed some dye migrating away from the canyon's slope and toward its interior, suggesting the physics of the turbulent upwelling were more complex than Ferrari originally theorized.

"We've observed upwelling that's never been directly measured before," said Wynne-Cattanach. "The rate of that upwelling is also really fast, which, along with measurements of downwelling elsewhere in the oceans, suggests there are hotspots of upwelling."

Alford called the study's findings "a call to arms for the physical oceanography community to understand ocean turbulence a lot better."

Wynne-Cattanach said that it was a huge honor for her, as a graduate student, to lead a project that represents the culmination of decades of work from scientists across the field with such prominent researchers as collaborators. Based on the team's preliminary findings, Wynne-Cattanach became the first student to be invited to speak at the Gordon Research Conference on Ocean Mixing in 2022.

The next step will be to test whether there is similar upwelling in other submarine canyons around the world. Given the canyon's unremarkable features, Alford said it seems reasonable to expect the phenomenon to be relatively common.

If the results hold true elsewhere, Alford said global climate simulations will need to begin explicitly accounting for this type of turbulence-driven upwelling at ocean floor topographical features. "This work is the first step to adding in missing ocean physics to our climate models that will ultimately improve the ability of those models to predict climate change," he said.

The route to improving the scientific understanding of ocean turbulence is two-fold, according to Alford. First, "we need to be doing more high-tech, high-resolution experiments like this one in key parts of the ocean to better understand the physical processes." Second, he said, "we need to be measuring turbulence in as many different places as possible with autonomous instruments like the Argo floats."

sources-science daily

Researchers find genetic stability in a long-term Panamanian hybrid zone of manakin birds

 We often think of species as separate and distinct, but sometimes they can interbreed and create hybrids. When this happens consistently in a specific area, it forms what's known as a hybrid zone. These zones can be highly dynamic or remarkably stable, and studying them can reveal key insights into how species boundaries evolve -- or sometimes blur. In a new study published in Evolution, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign describe a hybrid zone between two manakin species in Panama that has overall remained relatively stable over the past 30 years.

Hybrids resulting from mixed-species breeding are not uncommon; consider, for example, the mule (horse-donkey) or the liger (lion-tiger). However, many of these classic examples of hybrids are typically infertile and exist only as first-generation crosses. In contrast, along the western edge of Panama, against the Caribbean Sea, a long-term hybrid zone exists between two species of birds, the golden-collared manakin and the white-collared manakin.

Previous research conducted nearly 30 years ago on this hybrid zone found that the genomic center -- where the population's genome is nearly 50% white-collared DNA and 50% golden-collared DNA -- did not overlap with the phenotypic transition zone, the area where the population visually transitions from more golden-collared plumage to more white-collared. The previous study found these two areas were about 60 km apart, and until recently, it was unclear whether there had been any changes over the years.

Kira Long, a former graduate student in Jeff Brawn's lab, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Idaho, and her team decided to compare the current population of manakins in the hybrid zone to those from the previous study ~30 years ago. Doing so would allow the researchers to see whether the genomic center or the phenotypic transition zone has moved over time, and how stable the genomic and phenotypic traits are across the population.

"Currently, hybrids at the genomic center look phenotypically almost identical to the golden-collared manakins," explained Long. "They have the golden yellow collar and dark green belly of golden-collared manakins. What's crazy is that these hybrids are the most genetically mixed between white and golden-collared manakins, yet they look almost identical to the golden-collared parents. Whereas the birds that visually look the most mixed have genetically a majority of white-collared DNA."

Long's team includes Illinois researchers Jeff Brawn, a professor emeritus of natural resources and environmental sciences, Julian Catchen (CIS/GNDP), an associate professor of integrative biology, and his former graduate student Angel Rivera-Colón, as well as collaborators from the University of Maryland College Park and the Smithsonian Institution.

Over four years, the team captured and took blood samples from over 600 manakins across different areas of the hybrid zone. The blood samples were sequenced using RADseq to examine thousands of genomic markers across the genome. These were then compared to samples taken from museum specimens housed at the Smithsonian Institution that were used in the original, older study. The team also measured phenotypic traits of the wild-caught and historical birds, known to differ between golden-collared and white-collared manakins, including feather coloration and length.

sources-science daily

Do astronauts experience 'space headaches'?

 Space travel and zero gravity can take a toll on the body. A new study has found that astronauts with no prior history of headaches may experience migraine and tension-type headaches during long-haul space flight, which includes more than 10 days in space. The study was published in the March 13, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Changes in gravity caused by space flight affect the function of many parts of the body, including the brain," said study author W. P. J. van Oosterhout, MD, PhD, of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. "The vestibular system, which affects balance and posture, has to adapt to the conflict between the signals it is expecting to receive and the actual signals it receives in the absence of normal gravity. This can lead to space motion sickness in the first week, of which headache is the most frequently reported symptom. Our study shows that headaches also occur later in space flight and could be related to an increase in pressure within the skull."

The study involved 24 astronauts from the European Space Agency, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. They were assigned to International Space Station expeditions for up to 26 weeks from November 2011 to June 2018.

Prior to the study, nine astronauts reported never having any headaches and three had a headache that interfered with daily activities in the last year. None of them had a history of recurrent headaches or had ever been diagnosed with migraine.

Of the total participants, 22 astronauts experienced one or more episode of headache during a total of 3,596 days in space for all participants.

Astronauts completed health screenings and a questionnaire about their headache history before the flight. During space flight, astronauts filled out a daily questionnaire for the first seven days and a weekly questionnaire each following week throughout their stay in the space station.

The astronauts reported 378 headaches in flight.

Researchers found that 92% of astronauts experienced headaches during flight compared to just 38% of them experiencing headaches prior to flight.

Of the total headaches, 170, or 90%, were tension-type headache and 19, or 10%, were migraine.

Researchers also found that headaches were of a higher intensity and more likely to be migraine-like during the first week of space flight. During this time, 21 astronauts had one or more headaches for a total of 51 headaches. Of the 51 headaches, 39 were considered tension-type headaches and 12 were migraine-like or probable migraine.

In the three months after return to Earth, none of the astronauts reported any headaches.

sources-science daily

A third of women experience migraines associated with menstruation, most commonly when premenopausal

 A third of the nearly 20 million women who participated in a national health survey report migraines during menstruation, and of them, 11.8 million, or 52.5%, were premenopausal. The analysis was conducted by researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center and Pfizer, Inc., which makes a migraine medication.

Because of the underuse of medications to help treat or prevent menstrual migraines, investigators wanted to understand how common menstrual migraines were and which groups of women could most benefit from potential therapies. The study will be presented April 16, at the American Academy of Neurology 2024 Annual Meeting in Denver.

"The first step in helping a woman with menstrual migraine is making a diagnosis; the second part is prescribing a treatment; and the third part is finding treatments patients are satisfied with and remain on to reduce disability and improve quality of life," says the study author, Jessica Ailani, MD, professor of clinical neurology at Georgetown University School of Medicine and director of the MedStar Georgetown Headache Center at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital.

The researchers used the 2021 U.S. National Health and Wellness Survey, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, to analyze responses from women who reported their current migraine treatments, frequency and disabilities via the Migraine Disability Assessment Test (MIDAS), a five-question survey. A migraine headache can cause severe throbbing pain or a pulsing sensation, usually on one side of the head. It's often accompanied by nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound.

"Discrepancies in the incidence of who gets migraine attacks associated with menses is likely due to premenopausal women having more regular menstrual cycles and thus more menstrual-related migraines," says Ailani. "Additionally, as women move into their 40's and become peri-menopausal, there tends to be a greater shift through the month in hormone levels also leading to frequent migraine attacks."

The survey found that for all women during their menstrual periods, migraine attacks occurred as frequently as 4.5 times and that monthly only migraine headaches lasted 8.4 days, on average; 56.2 % of women had moderate-to-severe migraine-specific disabilities that ranked highest on the MIDAS scale.

When looking at treatments women in the survey used to help control their migraine symptoms, 42.4% used over-the-counter medications while 48.6% used prescription medications. Of the 63.9 % of women who used migraine treatments for acute symptoms, the most commonly used were triptans, a class of drugs developed in the 1990s to quiet overactive nerves associated with migraines and cluster headaches.

sources-science daily