Predicting seizures before they happen

A new study has found a pattern of molecules that appear in the blood before a seizure happens. This discovery may lead to the development of an early warning system, which would enable people with epilepsy to know when they are at risk of having a seizure.

Researchers at FutureNeuro, the SFI Research Centre for Chronic and Rare Neurological Diseases, hosted at RCSI (Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland) led the study, which is published in the current edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI).

FutureNeuro and RCSI researchers have discovered molecules in the blood that are higher in people with epilepsy before a seizure happens. These molecules are fragments of transfer RNAs (tRNAs), a chemical closely related to DNA that performs an important role in building proteins within the cell. When cells are stressed, tRNAs are cut into fragments. Higher levels of the fragments in the blood could reflect that brain cells are under stress in the build up to a seizure event.

Using blood samples from people with epilepsy at the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit in Beaumont Hospital, Dublin and in a similar specialist centre in Marburg, Germany, the group found that fragment levels of three tRNAs "spike" in the blood many hours before a seizure.

"People with epilepsy often report that one of the most difficult aspects of living with the disease is never knowing when a seizure will occur," said Dr Marion Hogg, FutureNeuro investigator, Honorary Lecturer at RCSI, and the study's lead author.

"The results of this study are very promising. We hope that our tRNA research will be a key first step toward developing an early warning system."

Approximately 40,000 people in Ireland have epilepsy and one third of those do not respond to current treatments, meaning they continue to experience seizures. The World Health Organisation estimates that more than 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy.

"New technologies to remove the unpredictability of uncontrolled seizures for people with epilepsy are a very real possibility," said Professor David Henshall, Director of FutureNeuro and Professor of Molecular Physiology and Neuroscience at RCSI who was a co-author on the paper.

Read more at Science Daily

Night owls can 'retrain' their body clocks to improve mental well-being and performance

'Night owl' concept

A simple tweak to the sleeping patterns of 'night owls' -- people with extreme late sleeping and waking habits -- could lead to significant improvements in sleep/wake timings, improved performance in the mornings, better eating habits and a decrease in depression and stress.

New international research by the Universities of Birmingham and Surrey in the UK, and Monash University in Australia, showed that, over a three-week period, it was possible to shift the circadian rhythm of 'night owls' using non-pharmacological and practical interventions.

The study, recently published in Sleep Medicine, showed participants were able to bring forward their sleep/wake timings by two hours, while having no negative effect on sleep duration. In addition, participants reported a decrease in feelings of depression and stress, as well as in daytime sleepiness.

"Our research findings highlight the ability of a simple non-pharmacological intervention to phase advance 'night owls', reduce negative elements of mental health and sleepiness, as well as manipulate peak performance times in the real world," lead researcher Dr Elise Facer-Childs from Monash University's Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health said.

'Night owls' are individuals whose internal body clock dictates later-than-usual sleep and wake times -- in this study participants had an average bedtime of 2.30am and wake-up time of 10.15am.

Disturbances to the sleep/wake system have been linked to a variety of health issues, including mood swings, increased morbidity and mortality rates, and declines in cognitive and physical performance.

"Having a late sleep pattern puts you at odds with the standard societal days, which can lead to a range of adverse outcomes -- from daytime sleepiness to poorer mental wellbeing," study co-author Dr Andrew Bagshaw from the University of Birmingham said.

"We wanted to see if there were simple things people could do at home to solve this issue. This was successful, on average allowing people to get to sleep and wake up around two hours earlier than they were before. Most interestingly, this was also associated with improvements in mental wellbeing and perceived sleepiness, meaning that it was a very positive outcome for the participants. We now need to understand how habitual sleep patterns are related to the brain, how this links with mental wellbeing and whether the interventions lead to long-term changes."

Twenty-two healthy individuals participated in the study. For a period of three weeks participants in the experimental group were asked to:

• Wake up 2-3 hours before regular wake up time and maximise outdoor light during the mornings.
• Go to bed 2-3 hours before habitual bedtime and limit light exposure in the evening.
• Keep sleep/wake times fixed on both work days and free days.
• Have breakfast as soon as possible after waking up, eat lunch at the same time each day, and refrain from eating dinner after 7pm.

The results highlighted an increase in cognitive (reaction time) and physical (grip strength) performance during the morning when tiredness is often very high in 'night owls', as well as a shift in peak performance times from evening to afternoon. It also increased the number of days in which breakfast was consumed and led to better mental well-being, with participants reporting a decrease in feelings of stress and depression.

"Establishing simple routines could help 'night owls' adjust their body clocks and improve their overall physical and mental health. Insufficient levels of sleep and circadian misalignment can disrupt many bodily processes putting us at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes," Professor Debra Skene from the University of Surrey said.

Dr Facer-Childs said 'night owls', compared to 'morning larks', tended to be more compromised in our society due to having to fit to work/school schedules that are out of sync with their preferred patterns.

"By acknowledging these differences and providing tools to improve outcomes we can go a long way in a society that is under constant pressure to achieve optimal productivity and performance," she said.

Read more at Science Daily

Site of biggest ever meteorite collision in the UK discovered

Illustration of meteors streaking through Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists believe they have discovered the site of the biggest meteorite impact ever to hit the British Isles.

Evidence for the ancient, 1.2 billion years old, meteorite strike, was first discovered in 2008 near Ullapool, NW Scotland by scientists from Oxford and Aberdeen Universities. The thickness and extent of the debris deposit they found suggested the impact crater -- made by a meteorite estimated at 1km wide -- was close to the coast, but its precise location remained a mystery.

In a paper published today in Journal of the Geological Society, a team led by Dr Ken Amor from the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University, show how they have identified the crater location 15-20km west of a remote part of the Scottish coastline. It is buried beneath both water and younger rocks in the Minch Basin.

Dr Ken Amor said: 'The material excavated during a giant meteorite impact is rarely preserved on Earth, because it is rapidly eroded, so this is a really exciting discovery. It was purely by chance this one landed in an ancient rift valley where fresh sediment quickly covered the debris to preserve it.

'The next step will be a detailed geophysical survey in our target area of the Minch Basin.'

Using a combination of field observations, the distribution of broken rock fragments known as basement clasts and the alignment of magnetic particles, the team was able to gauge the direction the meteorite material took at several locations, and plotted the likely source of the crater.

Dr Ken Amor said: 'It would have been quite a spectacle when this large meteorite struck a barren landscape, spreading dust and rock debris over a wide area.'

1.2 billion years ago most of life on Earth was still in the oceans and there were no plants on the land. At that time Scotland would have been quite close to the equator and in a semi-arid environment. The landscape would have looked a bit like Mars when it had water at the surface.

Earth and other planets may have suffered a higher rate of meteorite impacts in the distant past, as they collided with debris left over from the formation of the early solar system.

However, there is a possibility that a similar event will happen in the future given the number of asteroid and comet fragments floating around in the solar system. Much smaller impacts, where the meteorite is only a few meters across are thought to be relatively common perhaps occurring about once every 25 years on average.

It is thought that collisions with an object about 1 km (as in this instance) across occur between once every 100,000 years to once every one million years -- but estimates vary.

Read more at Science Daily

Mass anomaly detected under the moon's largest crater

Illustration of far side of the moon

A mysterious large mass of material has been discovered beneath the largest crater in our solar system -- the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin -- and may contain metal from the asteroid that crashed into the Moon and formed the crater, according to a Baylor University study.

"Imagine taking a pile of metal five times larger than the Big Island of Hawaii and burying it underground. That's roughly how much unexpected mass we detected," said lead author Peter B. James,

Ph.D., assistant professor of planetary geophysics in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. The crater itself is oval-shaped, as wide as 2,000 kilometers -- roughly the distance between Waco, Texas, and Washington, D.C. -- and several miles deep. Despite its size, it cannot be seen from Earth because it is on the far side of the Moon.

The study -- "Deep Structure of the Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin" -- is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

To measure subtle changes in the strength of gravity around the Moon, researchers analyzed data from spacecrafts used for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission.

"When we combined that with lunar topography data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, we discovered the unexpectedly large amount of mass hundreds of miles underneath the South Pole-Aitken basin," James said. "One of the explanations of this extra mass is that the metal from the asteroid that formed this crater is still embedded in the Moon's mantle."

The dense mass -- "whatever it is, wherever it came from" -- is weighing the basin floor downward by more than half a mile, he said. Computer simulations of large asteroid impacts suggest that, under the right conditions, an iron-nickel core of an asteroid may be dispersed into the upper mantle (the layer between the Moon's crust and core) during an impact.

"We did the math and showed that a sufficiently dispersed core of the asteroid that made the impact could remain suspended in the Moon's mantle until the present day, rather than sinking to the Moon's core," James said.

Another possibility is that the large mass might be a concentration of dense oxides associated with the last stage of lunar magma ocean solidification.

James said that the South Pole-Aitken basin -- thought to have been created about 4 billion years ago -- is the largest preserved crater in the solar system. While larger impacts may have occurred throughout the solar system, including on Earth, most traces of those have been lost.

James called the basin "one of the best natural laboratories for studying catastrophic impact events, an ancient process that shaped all of the rocky planets and moons we see today."

This research was supported through the NASA Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) science team.

Read more at Science Daily

The mystery of the galaxy with no dark matter

Galaxies with no dark matter are impossible to understand in the framework of the current theory of galaxy formation, because the role of dark matter is fundamental in causing the collapse of the gas to form stars. In 2018, a study published inNature magazine announced the discovery of a galaxy that lacked dark matter, which made a strong impact, and occupied the covers of popular scientific magazines.

Now, according to an article published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) a group of researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has solved this mystery via a very complete set of observations of KKS2000]04 (NGC1052-DF2), previously nicknamed "the galaxy without dark matter."

In this study the researchers, perplexed because all the parameters that depended on the distance of the galaxy were anomalous; have revised the available distance indicators. Using five independent methods to estimate the distance of the object they found that all of them coincided in one conclusion: the galaxy is much nearer than the value presented in the previous research.

The original article published in Nature stated that the galaxy is at a distance of some 64 million light years from Earth. However, this new research has revealed that the real distance is much less, around 42 million light years.

Thanks to these new results, the parameters of the galaxy inferred from its distance have become "normal" and fit the observed trends traced by galaxies with similar characteristics.

The most relevant datum that has been found via the new distance analysis is that the total mass of this galaxy is around a half of the mass estimated previously, but the mass of its stars is only about quarter of the previously estimated mass. This implies that a significant part of the total mass must be made up of dark matter. The results of this work show the fundamental importance of the correct measurement of extragalactic distances. It has always been one of the most challenging tasks in astrophysics: how to measure the distances to objects which are very far away and which we cannot touch.

From Science Daily

How genes interact to build tissues and organisms

Although the knowledge we have about human cells and tissues has steadily increased over recent decades, many things remain unknown. For instance, cells exist in transient, dynamic states and understanding them is fundamental to decipher diseases and find cures. Classic techniques used in the lab to study cell types faced limitations and did not enable a finely detailed profile of cell function.

To overcome this obstacle, a group of scientists at the National Centre for Genomic Analysis (CNAG-CRG) from the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), in Barcelona, Spain, led by Holger Heyn, developed a new computational tool, based on the mathematical Graph theory, to infer global, large-scale regulatory networks, from healthy and pathological organs, such as those affected by diabetes or Alzheimer's disease. The researchers were able to pinpoint genes relevant to organ function and potential drivers of diseases. They are publishing their results in the current issue of the Genome Biology journal.

"Our previously developed single-cell transcriptomic tools were very useful to discover unknown cell types," says Giovanni Iacono, senior postdoc researcher at the CNAG-CRG and first author of the study. "Those tools allowed us to describe new types and subtypes of cells, with their unique biological roles and hierarchical relationships," he adds.

Up to now, single-cell analysis had been used to understand cell types and their function within tissue. "Large-scale consortia like the Human Cell Atlas Project generate single-cell maps of entire organisms and sophisticated analysis strategies are required to transform big data into disruptive biological and clinical insights," says Holger Heyn, team leader of the Single Cell Genomics Group at the CNAG-CRG and senior author of the article.

The tool that this scientific team has now developed will enable them to go one step further, to see how genes interact to form tissues. "Our tool tries to address precisely the regulatory process that controls the morphology and functions of a cell," highlights Iacono.

The tool is based on the Graph theory, an abstract mathematical model in which there are nodes connected by edges. Once you have a graph, a structure, you can measure the importance of each node for the network. In this case, each node was a gene and importance was defined as the function of that gene being key for the biological system under study.

CNAG-CRG researchers processed datasets from ten-thousands of cells to infer the regulatory networks that drive cell phenotype formation and their respective functions. They applied their tool to study type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease and were able to find the functional changes relevant to those diseases. Importantly, this opens the door to finding new drug targets.

"The network analysis we have developed goes beyond currently applied approaches to provide deep insights into how gene activities shape tissues and organs. This is critical to understand diseases in which these networks are disrupted and find their 'Achilles heels' for effective treatments." says Heyn.

Read more at Science Daily

Translation of genes more complex than expected

Illustration of DNA in cell

Researchers from the group of Marvin Tanenbaum at the Hubrecht Institute have shown that translation of the genetic information stored in our DNA is much more complex than previously thought. This discovery was made by developing a type of advanced microscopy that directly visualizes the translation of the genetic code in a living cell. Their study is published in the scientific journal Cell on June 6th.

From gene to protein

Each cell in our body contains the same DNA, yet different cells, like brain cells or muscle cells, have different functions. The differences in cell function depend on which parts of the genetic information (called genes) are active in each cell. The genetic information stored in these genes is translated by specialized translation factories called ribosomes. Ribosomes read the genetic code and assemble proteins based on the information stored in this genetic code analogous to a factory building a machine based on a blueprint. Proteins are the workhorses of our body and perform the functions encoded in our genes. For our cells and organs to function correctly, it is critical that the genetic information stored in our genes is translated accurately to proteins. If the genetic code is translated incorrectly, harmful proteins can be produced, which can lead to neurological diseases such as Huntington's disease.

The 'reading frame' of genes

The genetic code is translated in groups of 3 letters, each resembling a word, which is translated into a single part of the protein. If a ribosome starts translating the code at the wrong position, a shift in the 3-letter-code can occur. For example, the sentence below should read:

"the man saw his new red car"

However, if a ribosome starts translating this sentence one letter too late, the sentence would read:

"hem ans awh isn ewr edc ar"

In the case of the genetic code, this phenomenon is called 'out-of-frame' translation. Sanne Boersma, researcher at the Hubrecht Institute explains: "As illustrated by the example sentence, out-of-frame translation has a big effect on the protein and usually results in a protein that behaves differently and can damage the cell." Until now, it was unclear how the ribosome knows where to start translating the code, and how often the ribosome gets it wrong.

A new method: SunTag and MoonTag

The researchers developed a new method to visualize the decoding of our genetic information in living cells. They were able to label different protein products in different colors and visualize the production of each type of protein using advanced microscopy. Each protein was labeled using a specific label, or tag, called the SunTag and MoonTag, which they could see through the microscope. By combining the MoonTag and the SunTag, the researchers could now see for the first time how often out-of-frame translation takes place.

Read more at Science Daily

Could climate change make Siberia more habitable?

Island in the city of Irkutsk on the Angara River, eastern Siberia, Russia.

Large parts of Asian Russia could become habitable by the late 21st century due to climate change, new research has found.

A study team from the Krasnoyarsk Federal Research Center, Russia, and the National Institute of Aerospace, USA, used current and predicted climate scenarios to examine the climate comfort of Asian Russia and work out the potential for human settlement throughout the 21st century.

They published their results today in Environmental Research Letters.

At 13 million square kilometres Asian Russia -- east of the Urals towards the Pacific -- accounts for 77 per cent of Russia's land area. Its population, however, accounts for just 27 per cent of the country's people and is concentrated along the forest-steppe in the south, with its comfortable climate and fertile soil.

"Previous human migrations have been associated with climate change. As civilisations developed technology that enabled them to adapt, humans became less reliant on the environment, particularly in terms of climate," said the study's lead author Dr Elena Parfenova, from the Krasnoyarsk Federal Research Center.

"We wanted to learn if future changes in climate may lead to the less-hospitable parts of Asian Russia becoming more habitable for humans."

For their analysis, the team used a combination of 20 general circulation models (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5) and two CO2 Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios -- RCP 2.6 representing mild climate change and RCP 8.5 representing more extreme changes.

They applied the collective means of January and July temperatures and annual precipitation of the two scenarios to Asian Russia to find their respective effects on three climate indices that are important for human livelihood and well-being: Ecological Landscape Potential (ELP), winter severity, and permafrost coverage.

Dr Parfenova said: "We found increases in temperature of 3.4°C (RCP 2.6) to 9.1°C (RCP 8.5) in mid-winter; increases of 1.9°C (RCP 2.6) to 5.7°C (RCP 8.5) in mid-summer; and increases in precipitation of 60 mm (RCP 2.6) to 140 mm (RCP 8.5).

"Our simulations showed that under RCP8.5, by the 2080s Asian Russia would have a milder climate, with less permafrost coverage, decreasing from the contemporary 65 per cent to 40 per cent of the area by the 2080s."

The researchers also found that even under the RCP 2.6 scenario, the ELP for human sustainability would improve in more than 15 per cent of the area, which could allow for a five-fold increase in the in the capacity of the territory to sustain and become attractive to human populations.

Dr Parfenova concluded: "Asian Russia is currently extremely cold. In a future warmer climate, food security in terms of crop distribution and production capability is likely to become more favourable for people to support settlements.

"However, suitable land development depends on the authorities' social, political and economic policies. Lands with developed infrastructure and high agricultural potential would obviously be populated first.

Read more at Science Daily

Study provides new insight into origin of Canadian Rockies

Banff National Park, Canadian Rockies

The Canadian Rocky Mountains were formed when the North American continent was dragged westward during the closure of an ocean basin off the west coast and collided with a microcontinent over 100 million years ago, according to a new study by University of Alberta scientists.

The research, based on high resolution data of Earth's subsurface at the Alberta-British Columbia (BC) border, favours an interpretation different from the traditional theory of how the Canadian Rocky Mountains formed. The traditional theory, known as the accretion model, suggests that a gradual accumulation of additional matter eventually formed the Canadian Rockies -- unlike the sudden collision event proposed by this research.

"This research provides new evidence that the Canadian section of this mountain range was formed by two continents colliding," said Jeffrey Gu, professor in the Department of Physics and co-author on the study. "The proposed mechanism for mountain building may not apply to other parts of the Rocky Mountains due to highly variable boundary geometries and characteristics from north to south."

The study involved seismic data collected from a dense network of seismic stations in western Alberta and eastern BC, combined with geodynamic calculations and geological observations. The results suggest that an ocean basin off North America's west coast descended beneath the ribbon-shaped microcontinent, dragging North America westward, where it collided with the microcontinent.

"This study highlights how deep Earth images from geophysical methods can help us to understand the evolution of mountains, one of the most magnificent processes of plate tectonics observed at the Earth's surface," said Yunfeng Chen, who conducted this research during his PhD studies under the supervision of Gu. Chen received the Faculty of Science Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2018.

"There are other mountain belts around the world where a similar model may apply," said Claire Currie, associate professor of physics and co-author on the study. "Our data could be important for understanding mountain belts elsewhere, as well as building our understanding of the evolution of western North America."

Alberta and British Columbia communities supported these research efforts by hosting seismic stations on their land. This research is also supported by the Alberta Energy Regulator.

From Science Daily

Exomoons may be home to extra-terrestrial life

Artist's concept of a moon orbiting a ringed planet.

Moons orbiting planets outside our solar system could offer another clue about the pool of worlds that may be home to extra-terrestrial life, according to an astrophysicist at the University of Lincoln.

Exoplanets are planets outside our solar system and up to this point nearly 4,000 have been discovered. Only a small proportion of these are likely to be able to sustain life, existing in what is known as the habitable zone. But some planets, especially large gas giants, may harbour moons which contain liquid water.

Dr Sutton said: "These moons can be internally heated by the gravitational pull of the planet they orbit, which can lead to them having liquid water well outside the normal narrow habitable zone for planets that we are currently trying to find Earth-like planets in. I believe that if we can find them, moons offer a more promising avenue to finding extra-terrestrial life."

This interest has inspired Dr Sutton's latest research, which looked at the possibility of moons orbiting the exoplanet J1407b, analysing whether they may have caused gaps in the planet's ring system.

Because of their size and distance from Earth, exomoons are very difficult to detect. Scientists have to locate them by looking for the effect they have on objects around them, such as planetary rings.

Dr Sutton ran computer simulations to model the rings around J1407b, which are 200 times larger than those around Saturn. Gravitational forces between all particles were calculated and used to update the positions, velocities and accelerations in the computer models of the planet and its ring system. He then added a moon that orbited at various ratios outside of the rings to test whether this caused gaps to form where expected over 100 orbital periods.

Findings revealed that while the orbiting moon did have an effect on the scattering of particles along the ring edge, the expected gaps in the ring structure were unlikely to be caused by the gravitational forces of a currently unseen moon orbiting outside the rings.

From Science Daily