A team of neurobiologists at Harvard Medical School’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute has uncovered the neural mechanism involved in the unique way hairy animals such as dogs shake themselves when wet. In their study published in the journal Science, the group applied oils to the necks of mice while looking for a response from several mechanosensory neurons.
Prior research and anecdotal evidence have shown that when animals such as dogs and bears get wet or need to remove irritants from their skin, they shake themselves in a unique, undulating fashion that effectively flings water from their coats into the air around them. The research team noted that the neural mechanism behind such shaking has not been studied and was therefore unknown. To learn more about the behavior, they conducted experiments in which they tested stimuli on wet mice, which shake themselves in the same manner after getting wet.
Initial experiments involved applying several types of stimuli to backs and necks to learn more about what sets off the shaking behavior. The research team found that in addition to water, the mice reacted to puffs of air or oils applied to the back of the neck. They used oil applied to the back of the neck as an irritant in follow-up experiments.
Suspecting that reactions to stimuli that set off shaking were due to mechanosensory rather than automatic responses to changes in temperature, the team removed the Piezo2 gene in test mice and found that doing so stopped them from shaking. The Piezo2 gene is known to control ion channels involved in the sense of touch.
They next measured the responsiveness of three mechanoreceptors, testing several mice by stimulating them with oil. One receptor, called C-LTMRs, consistently led to shaking when the mice were stimulated. They also found that removing it led to a substantial reduction in shaking.
The researchers then created a map showing the path sensory signals took during stimulation from the skin to the spinal cord and then to the brain. The result was a complete outline of the neural mechanisms involved in what the team describes as “wet dog shakes.”
More information:
Dawei Zhang et al, C-LTMRs evoke wet dog shakes via the spinoparabrachial pathway, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adq8834
Citation:
Why do wet dogs shake? Biologists discover the neural mechanism behind this hairy mammalian tactic (2024, November 8)
retrieved 8 November 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-11-dogs-biologists-neural-mechanism-hairy.html
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Members of a research team take various measurements around a pecan tree at the Orranteño Farm in Saucillo, Chihuahua, Mexico, on July 31, 2023. This work served as a precursor to a National Science Foundation-supported study led by Hugo Gutierrez-Jurado, Ph.D. (not pictured), associate professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences at The University of Texas at El Paso, investigating the impact of climate change on dryland agricultural ecosystems such as pecan orchards in the Chihuahuan Desert region. Credit: Hugo Gutierrez-Jurado/The University of Texas at El Paso
How are U.S. agricultural crops affected by climate change? A research team from The University of Texas at El Paso aims to find out, starting with the region’s pecan farms.
The research is led by Hugo Gutierrez-Jurado, Ph.D., associate professor in UTEP’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences.
“Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, which are already having a profound impact on the crops in large agricultural areas across the country’s arid regions,” said Gutierrez-Jurado. “We are seeing decreases in crop productivity due to plant stress from excessive dry and warm conditions.”
Pecans are one of the most economically significant crops for communities across the Chihuahuan Desert region on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Gutierrez-Jurado said. According to Iowa State University’s Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, the pecan crop in the U.S. alone was valued at $500 million in 2022.
The UTEP study will look at how drought, heat waves and soil impact the cycle of water and carbon between plants and the atmosphere in dryland agricultural ecosystems. It will focus on two orchards, one in the El Paso area and another in the Conchos River basin near the city of Delicias in the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
Hugo Gutierrez-Jurado, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Resource Sciences at The University of Texas at El Paso, examines a soil monitoring device at the Orranteño Farm in Saucillo, Chihuahua, Mexico, on July 31, 2023. Gutierrez-Jurado will lead a study, supported by the National Science Foundation, investigating the impact of climate change on dryland agricultural ecosystems, such as pecan orchards in the Chihuahuan Desert region. Credit: Hugo Gutierrez-Jurado/The University of Texas at El Paso
The research team will monitor tree and root system growth, soil-plant water status and canopy temperature. Their goal is to develop a detailed understanding of how soil structure and management practices can either mitigate or exacerbate the stress that plants experience during extreme weather events. Additionally, the project will explore how these stressors affect the ability of crops to sequester, or capture and store, carbon dioxide, a critical factor in addressing climate change.
“This is a new way of looking at this problem. There has been a lot of research into how to make pecans and other crops more productive through input control, especially irrigation levels, but much of that work has failed to take into account the changes that trees and plants experience as a result of climate-related stress,” Gutierrez-Jurado said.
The goal of the study is to uncover valuable insights for farmers and policymakers on how to improve water use efficiency and enhance carbon sequestration in agro-ecosystems.
If successful, the work will bring innovation to an area of agricultural practice known as precision farming, the team said, which seeks to improve productivity by taking a detailed look at the characteristics and unique variables that affect a specific plot of land.
“This research aims to determine the optimal timing for irrigation, which is vital information for agricultural producers, both local and beyond, as it will help improve orchard efficiency and conserve valuable resources,” said Robert Kirken, Ph.D., dean of the UTEP College of Science. “I congratulate Dr. Gutierrez-Jurado and his team for receiving this award from NSF.”
Gutierrez-Jurado’s project continues a study initially funded by a program aimed at strengthening relationships between researchers on both sides of the border and promoting academic work that benefits the entire Paso del Norte region.
Throughout both phases of his project, Gutierrez-Jurado has collaborated closely with colleagues from Mexican institutions, including the Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua and the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales, Agrícolas y Pecuarias.
The research team will also collaborate with a local museum in El Paso to create hands-on, interactive learning experiences for the public, with a focus on climate change and its impact on the region’s agriculture.
Citation:
Research team investigates climate change impact on pecan orchards (2024, November 8)
retrieved 8 November 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-11-team-climate-impact-pecan-orchards.html
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Encouraging quietness during zoo trips can help visitors better appreciate their inhabitants and lead to more fulfilling, respectful and informative experiences, a new paper argues.
More opportunities for silence would allow people to better notice the natural world and the behavior of animals, researchers say.
Being considerately and respectfully quiet may help visitors to care more about the animals and the work of zoos to protect species. The paper says it is possible for zoos to be places of entertainment and quiet recreation.
The study, published in Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics, is by Alexander Badman-King, Tom Rice, Samantha Hurn and Paul Rose from the University of Exeter and Adam Reed, from the University of St Andrews.
Researchers conducted experimental silent zoo visits in the South West of the UK. A high proportion of those who took part suggested that they would be willing to pay a premium to gain access to the zoo for designated quiet visiting times.
Participants in the silent and quiet visits run as part of the Listening to the Zoo project frequently mentioned feeling that being quiet made their experience of the zoo conducive to meditation, mindfulness and relaxation. The visits allowed them to engage with the zoo environment in ways which they felt enhanced their well-being.
Dr. Badman-King said, “During quiet appreciation people can still experience enjoyment, even fun, and quietness is best suited to the learning and conservation aims of zoos.
“If we say ‘here are some animals which we are keeping in captivity so that you can come and appreciate them in a respectful way and learn about the plight of their wild counterparts,’ then we are engaging in a very different kind of activity from the more conventional ‘fun day out’ way of thinking about zoo visits.
“Zookeepers pay close and quiet attention to both individual animals and species more generally. They can provide an example of the kind of appreciation towards which this culture shift should point.
“It is important not to misconstrue this suggestion as being an oddly macabre insistence that everyone should be miserable when they visit zoos. Zoos must and should communicate some unpleasant facts. They also show us profound beauty, the almost unfathomable wonder of the natural world, and yes, the funny, cute and intimidating forms and behavior of these animals.
“An attitude of appreciation, one which is coterminous with being quiet, fits this complex mixture of experiences far better than a culture of zoogoing which regards noise as normal.”
Professor Rice said, “By encouraging and allowing visitors to direct their attention more fully at the animals, plants, environments and information in zoos, these places can offer us all something far richer and more valuable than they already do.”
The study says encouraging more quietness in zoos could help to partially restore their original purpose as places for quieting overstimulated minds, with related benefits in terms of health and well-being for human visitors, and many non-human residents of the zoo. But any changes will require initiatives from zoos themselves.
More information:
A Badman-King et al, Why we should keep quiet at the zoo, Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics (2024). DOI: 10.3354/esep00214
Citation:
Encouraging quiet during zoo visits might lead to a better appreciation of the animals, say researchers (2024, November 8)
retrieved 8 November 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-11-quiet-zoo-animals.html
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Economists from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently announced that global public debt would soon collectively catch up to the worldwide gross domestic product (GDP), likely matching it by 2030. New research from the University of Notre Dame suggests that this could happen even sooner, thanks to countries’ hidden debts.
These hidden debts—debt that was already in a government’s books but had not been disclosed—are the result of malicious intent or corruption, fear of scrutiny by lenders or simple accounting errors. Too much debt prevents governments from investing in the things its citizens need most, including infrastructure, health care and education.
Monitoring a country’s debt level is also top of mind for investors and analysts who want to ensure the lendability and dependability of a borrower.
But revelations of hidden debt have dire consequences for those misreporting borrowers and those who lend to them.
According to a new study from an economist at the University of Notre Dame, misreported debt can lead to higher interest rates for borrowers and lower recovery rates for lenders. These findings suggest indirect adverse effects on global financial stability and consumer welfare.
Cesar Sosa-Padilla, associate professor of economics and a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, part of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, along with co-authors from the World Bank, the University of Hamburg and the University of Duisburg-Essen, authored a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “Hidden Debt Revelations.”
The researchers used the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics database to measure the accuracy of reported debt levels spanning more than 50 years for 146 developing and emerging market countries.
The researchers tracked revisions to the World Bank’s external-debt statistics database, which compiles reports from all countries that borrow from foreign lenders, from 1970 through 2022. Each revision showed discrepancies when compared to the previous year’s data, indicating an underreported or overreported debt amount.
Their research method, which also included digitizing records that preceded online capabilities, revealed several facts regarding the size, timing and characteristics of hidden debt, according to Sosa-Padilla.
They found that public debt is consistently and pervasively underreported—by an average of 1% of each country’s GDP, totaling $1 trillion of hidden debt across all countries and years and equating to more than 12% of total foreign borrowing by all countries in the study sample.
“Hidden debt is large and common,” the researchers wrote, with 70% of all debt stocks reported to the World Bank requiring amendments at least once after their initial publication. And most of those revisions, Sosa-Padilla explained, involve an adjustment upward versus downward when reporting true public debt—indicating that underreporting occurs more often than not.
These hidden debts can only be counted when they are revealed through a revision, so it is likely that some countries’ debts are actually larger than they are willing to admit, he said.
“We find that public external debt is consistently underreported, and that this phenomenon is more prevalent in countries with weak institutions,” Sosa-Padilla said.
The reporting discrepancies were most often found during bad economic years, according to Sosa-Padilla. “The accumulation of debt that was not reported usually happened during boom years,” he said, “while the revelations of that hidden debt occurred during bad economic years.”
These hidden debt revelations typically occurred when the government’s books came under close scrutiny due to loan defaults or during audits from the IMF, a multilateral organization set up to assist countries on the brink of financial crisis. The United States is the largest shareholder in the IMF.
The researchers also found that hidden debt can have adverse implications for both creditors and borrowers. For creditors, it means larger creditor losses and a lower recovery rate on loans provided to a country that is further in debt than expected. In turn, having less chance to recoup funds during the renegotiation process leads creditors to pass along less-advantageous borrowing terms to those countries seeking loans.
“Theoretically, when a country has a history of hiding its debt, it not only faces higher interest rates from foreign lenders, but it also has less ability to smooth out consumption or stabilize fluctuations in its economy,” Sosa-Padilla explained. “Essentially, it leads to a more volatile path of consumption levels, which can trickle down to affect consumer households.”
For American consumers in particular, Sosa-Padilla said that hidden debt revelations make investing in foreign bonds much riskier than originally thought. Also, as one of the IMF’s largest contributors, U.S. funders may take extra care when considering providing funds to countries that consistently misreport their economic health.
Bonds, which are publicly traded, and World Bank-provided loans have fewer incidents of misreporting as those debts are consistently disclosed. The largest revisions to yearly debt levels occur within less transparent markets, such as with borrowed funds coming from private lenders in the form of bank credit or from governments as bilateral loans.
On this point, and using a quantitative model of sovereign borrowing and default, the researchers took into account the amount of oversight and transparency that is required when it comes to monitoring each country’s forthrightness in debt reporting, saying that “only countries with strong fundamentals and low hidden debt levels benefit from increased transparency” while countries with high levels of hidden debt are “likely to find exposure to greater scrutiny to be costly.”
For that reason, the study’s findings suggest that transparency policies are best implemented during positive economic times versus times of financial crisis.
“Analysts in both asset pricing and country surveillance should take into account that debt statistics tend to increase after their initial publication, which makes default more likely,” Sosa-Padilla concluded.
More information:
Sebastian Horn et al, Hidden Debt Revelations, (2024). DOI: 10.3386/w32947
Citation:
When countries hide their public debt, they hurt themselves, their citizens and their lenders, say economists (2024, November 8)
retrieved 8 November 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-11-countries-debt-citizens-lenders-economists.html
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A spiny toad amplexus, with a female in the middle of several males.
Aloys Pichard
Each year, hordes of spiny toads (Bufo spinosus) gather to breed and lay their eggs in freshwater lakes and ponds, mainly across Spain, Portugal and France. Mating is a rough and tumble affair, though, with males often outnumbering females by 5:1. In their desperation to find a mate, males will commonly clasp onto a female already locked into an embrace – known as amplexus – by another mate.
Aloys Pichard captured one of these “breeding balls” in May (main picture), when the toads were crossing a road at night in southern France to reach egg-laying grounds. His photo, along with the others shown here, was shortlisted in this year’s Close-up Photographer of the Year contest.
Gold‑tailed Melitta bees
Joris Vegter
Joris Vegter’s image of four gold-tailed Melitta bees (Melitta haemorrhoidalis) nestling in a flower head is shown above. Melitta bees often sleep together inside bell flowers overnight for warmth. Vegter says he looked in more than 1000 flowers around Groningen in the Netherlands until he found the snoozing bees. “My passion is to share the unseen beauty of the tiny world all around us,” he says.
A male Polyphemus moth
Ignacio Castellanos
Pictured above is Ignacio Castellanos’s image of a male Polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus) in an oak forest in Huasca, Mexico. These moths measure more than 15 centimetres from wing tip to wing tip.
Potbellied seahorse
Daniel Sly
Daniel Sly’s shot of a potbellied seahorse (Hippocampus abdominalis) near Bare Island, Australia, is shown above, with Aris Kolokontes’s close-up of a ladybird spider (Eresus walckenaeri) pictured below.
Ladybird spider
Aris Kolokontes
The competition winners will be announced in January.
