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Team uncovers the complex social life of rats, with potential implications for human psychiatry

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Team uncovers the complex social life of rats, with potential implications for human psychiatry


The complex social life of rats uncovered with potential implications for human psychiatry
The researchers at ELTE observed varied patterns of dominance and coexistence, challenging preconceived notions about rats and potentially human social interactions. In some instances, hierarchies stabilized only after numerous conflicts, while peaceful cohabitation was the norm in other scenarios. These dynamics were influenced significantly by the composition and reorganization of the rat groups, showcasing the profound impact of the social environment on behavior. Credit: The Department of Biological Physics at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University

The social behaviors of the Rattus norvegicus, commonly known as the Norway rat, are far more complex than previously thought, according to a team of researchers from ELTE Eötvös Loránd University.

Their pioneering study is published in the journal Scientific Reports. This discovery not only deepens our understanding of rat social structures but also implies important lessons for developing psychiatric medications.

The biological properties of rats show much greater similarities to human cells and organs than most people would expect. In simplified terms, nearly 90% of the genes in humans and rats share significant similarities.

The rats were color-coded so that the automated system could track them 24 hours a day for eight months. The researchers at ELTE observed varied patterns of dominance and coexistence, challenging preconceived notions about rats and potentially human social interactions.






A series of recordings from the experiment can be viewed in the following video (showing a week’s worth of the four colonies’ nights in fast-forward, as the rats are mostly inactive during the day, sleeping or huddling together) Credit: The Department of Biological Physics at ELTE   

In some instances, hierarchies stabilized only after numerous conflicts, while peaceful cohabitation was the norm in other scenarios. These dynamics were influenced significantly by the composition and reorganization of the rat groups, showcasing the profound impact of the social environment on behavior.

When rats from a hierarchical group were mixed with those from a non-hierarchical group, the outcome was sometimes a hierarchical group, and sometimes a peaceful one. Another unexpected result was that there was relatively little correlation between the “personality” traits defined in standard personality and social tests (commonly used in drug or behavioral research) and the actual behavior observed within the real groups.

This suggests that rats’ social lives, socialization, and relationship to their traits are far more complex than can be interpreted using any simple mechanism. One interesting aspect of this result is that when examining the effects of certain psychotropic drugs in animal experiments, researchers must be extremely cautious with their conclusions, as rat group behavior contains paradoxes.

The complex social life of rats uncovered with potential implications for human psychiatry
(A) Photo of the rats with color-codes for individual identification and tracking. (C) Continuous tracking allowed for the reconstruction of each individual’s space use. The heatmap shows the space use of two rats during a 3-week period at the beginning of phase 3. Areas used only by a3 are shown with red, only by β1 with green, and areas visited by both (e.g. at the water and the feeder) are shown with yellow. For more information: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-72437-5/figures/1. Credit: The Department of Biological Physics at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University

The Department of Biological Physics at ELTE, in collaboration with Enikő Kubinyi at the Department of Ethology, conducted this gap-filling research.

The resulting publication is a unique work in its field, due to the enormous amount of data behind it, the design of the experiments, and the wide range of evaluation methods used. Máté Nagy played a key role in the design and execution, while Gábor Vásárhelyi developed highly innovative software solutions for processing visual data.

At the end of the experiment, the researchers made efforts to take care of the animals, and they were delighted that all of them found adoptive homes.

More information:
Máté Nagy et al, Long-term tracking of social structure in groups of rats, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-72437-5

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Team uncovers the complex social life of rats, with potential implications for human psychiatry (2024, October 9)
retrieved 9 October 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-10-team-uncovers-complex-social-life.html

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Consumer food insights report highlights increasing use of food-ordering apps

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Consumer food insights report highlights increasing use of food-ordering apps


Consumer food insights report highlights increasing use of food-ordering apps
“Have you ever used a food ordering mobile application (e.g., UberEats, Grubhub, or restaurant app) to order food for delivery or takeout?”, September 2024. Credit: Purdue University

Around two-thirds of consumers have used a food-ordering app at least once for takeout, delivery or both, according to the September 2024 Consumer Food Insights Report (CFI). Over half have used an app for a delivery order. Of those who say they have used an app to order food, nearly half report using one for either delivery or takeout at least once a week.

The survey-based report out of Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability (CFDAS) assesses food spending, consumer satisfaction and values, support of agricultural and food policies, and trust in information sources. Purdue experts conducted and evaluated the survey, which included 1,200 consumers across the U.S.

“The COVID-19 pandemic changed the economy in many ways, particularly in the service economy,” said the report’s lead author, Joseph Balagtas, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue and director of CFDAS.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that spending on food-ordering apps for deliveries from full-service restaurants quadrupled between prepandemic months and 2022. The trend prompted the CFDAS team to partner with Valerie Kilders, assistant professor of agribusiness marketing at Purdue, to measure and evaluate consumer usage of the apps.

When ordering food online, 68% of consumers say they “sometimes,” “often” or “always” use discounts or promo codes.

Food purchased away from home is typically more costly than food prepared at home with groceries. Understandably, many consumers seek cost reductions when paying for the convenience of a prepared meal, Balagtas said. This is particularly true for consumers who spend the least on food. Half of them used discounts and promo codes “often” or “always” when ordering food online.

The report breaks down per-person weekly food expenditure into three groups: thrifty (less than $50 a week), moderate ($50 to $85 a week) and liberal (more than $85 a week) spenders. “Consumers who spend the most on food tend to seek out discounts less frequently,” Balagtas said.

The CFI survey also asked consumers about the additional fees associated with many food-ordering apps. Many attribute the fee to operating expenses of the service, whether it’s to cover fuel and time for delivery services or administration and maintenance of the app itself.

The survey further revealed that on average, consumers say they tip between 10% and 19% for a food delivery order.

“Interestingly, 15% say they tip less than 10% of the total order, and 14% say they do not tip at all for this service,” Balagtas said. “We see little difference in the tipping percentages when disaggregating the responses by per-person weekly food spending.”

The sustainable food purchasing index remained unchanged from the CFI survey’s last assessment in June 2024.

“Consumers continue to purchase food that they feel is safe and fits their tastes, budgets and nutritional needs,” said Elijah Bryant, a survey research analyst at CFDAS and a co-author of the report. Fewer consumers currently buy or plan to buy foods with environmental and social sustainability in mind.

“Even though consumers may value the environmental impact and social responsibility of their food, when it comes to purchasing factors, more immediate priorities like food security, taste, economic factors and nutrition drive their decisions,” he said.

Since its inception in January 2022, the CFI survey has documented a gradual positive trend in per-person weekly food expenditures. In January 2022, the figure was around $72. Last month, consumers reported an average per-person weekly spending total of $83, a 15% increase.

“Consumers are having to adjust their budgets to accommodate higher food prices to purchase the same groceries,” Bryant said. “Wage growth will be a key determinant in food purchasing behavior changes as food prices remain higher after inflation spiked in 2022.”

Based on the USDA’s questionnaire for measuring food insecurity, the CFDAS researchers estimate the national food insecurity rate to be 13%, unchanged from last month. The rate of food insecurity is highest among households that spend less than $50 on food per person per week.

“We have seen a clear correlation between income and food security in the past and see that many households that spend less on food are likely doing so due to income constraints,” Bryant said. Around 29% said they use free food resources, such as food banks, to supplement their diets. This shows the importance of these resources for people who struggle with food insecurity due to a lower food budget, he said.

Around 14% of thrifty food spenders adhere to either a vegetarian or vegan diet, relative to just 6% of moderate and liberal food spenders. Thrifty spenders also report growing their own food in either a home or community garden at a higher rate (32%) than moderate (24%) and liberal (21%) food spenders.

“We do not observe many substantial differences in the frequency of a variety of surveyed food behaviors between the spending groups,” Bryant said. “However, we do observe thrifty food spenders choosing generic foods over brand-name foods more frequently than moderate and liberal spenders.”

In line with the larger share of vegans and vegetarians in the thrifty group, they are also more likely to choose plant-based proteins over animal proteins.

More information:
Survey results: ag.purdue.edu/cfdas/data-resou … sumer-food-insights/

Provided by
Purdue University


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Consumer food insights report highlights increasing use of food-ordering apps (2024, October 9)
retrieved 9 October 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-10-consumer-food-insights-highlights-apps.html

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Small turbines can capture wasted energy and generate electricity from man-made wind sources

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Small turbines can capture wasted energy and generate electricity from man-made wind sources


A methodology for generating electricity from man-made wind sources using small turbines
Case study: Data Center located in Colombia. Equipment that is responsible for expelling air into the environment: Chiller Liebert HPC-M and EC-FAN fans- ECblue—model C116. Credit: Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-74141-w

A pair of electrical engineers at Distance University of Madrid, working with a colleague from Mision Critica-Data Center, ZFB Technology Services, in Columbia, has developed a methodology for generating electricity from man-made wind sources using small turbines.

In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, Isabel Gil-García, Ana Fernández-Guillamón, and Álvaro Montes-Torres describe their methodology and outline how they used it to generate electricity from wasted wind generated by chilling machines at a data center in Columbia.

Prior research has suggested that there are many ways to capture some of the wind energy that is wasted by many technologies. Air moving across a ship or train, for example, or wind created by fans used on HVAC cooling systems. In this new study, the research team has developed a general methodology for capturing some of the energy typically lost by such technologies.

The new methodology starts with identifying a possible man-made resource, such as a ship, truck, train, or fan used for general cooling. The second step involves investigating how much of the resource is being wasted. In the case of wind applications, an anemometer can be used to test wind speeds, which can be used to determine the amount of wind being generated, and how much of it is available for use.

The next step is to estimate the amount of electrical energy that can likely be harvested from such a resource to ensure that it is worth the effort. The final step is selecting the technology that can be used to capture the wasted wind—typically a turbine. Once a plan is in place, an initial test can be conducted.

To demonstrate their methodology, the research team identified a possible source as wind emanating from cooling devices used to keep computers used in a data center in Columbia from overheating. The site featured three chillers, each with eight fans. The fans operated at 480 V and ran at 900 rpm.

The researchers chose to use Tesup V7 wind turbines to capture the wasted wind because of their small and lightweight features. They mounted six of them above the fans and were able to produce 513.82 MWh annually. After deducting the energy consumed by the fans, the researchers found that adding the turbines reduced net electricity by 467.6 MWh annually.

More information:
Isabel C. Gil-García et al, Innovation in clean energy from man-made wind and small-wind generation, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-74141-w

© 2024 Science X Network

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Small turbines can capture wasted energy and generate electricity from man-made wind sources (2024, October 9)
retrieved 9 October 2024
from https://techxplore.com/news/2024-10-small-turbines-capture-energy-generate.html

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Arctic river erosion linked to permafrost thaw

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Arctic river erosion linked to permafrost thaw


Permafrost thaw may cause Arctic river erosion to speed up
Bends of the Koyukuk River, photographed by airplane in March of 2024. The Koyukuk River is frozen from October to May of each year. Credit: Emily Geyman

Permafrost, the thick layer of perennially frozen ground that covers much of the Arctic, slows down the migration of Arctic rivers, according to a new Caltech study. River migration is a common process in which a river’s path meanders over time due to erosion of the riverbanks. This rerouting, which can also occur in sudden floods, poses a threat for many communities that live along and depend on rivers. The findings also have implications for how the Arctic region will be impacted by a warming climate as permafrost thaws over time.

The research was conducted in the Caltech laboratory of Michael Lamb, professor of geology, and is described in a paper appearing in the journal Nature.

Led by graduate student Emily Geyman, the study focused on the Koyukuk River, a large tributary of the Yukon River that winds for hundreds of miles through interior Alaska. There was debate within the scientific community about whether the frozen soil along the riverbanks serves to fortify the banks against erosion or to promote it.

“Large rivers like the Yukon or the Amazon can move tens to hundreds of feet per year,” Geyman says. “Arctic rivers in particular differ from temperate rivers because they need to thaw the material of their banks before they can pick that material up and move it.”

Due to climate change, permafrost is slowly thawing over decades. But a river can experience drastic natural changes within a single year, with flow conditions changing from very cold and fast in early spring to warm and slow a few months later. Geyman and her collaborators leveraged these major changes that take place within a single season to gain a glimpse into how the rivers will behave in response to climate change decades or centuries into the future.

In spring, the Koyukuk River swells in volume from snowmelt, flowing with fast, cold water. For more temperate rivers, a fast flow means more erosion. But in the Arctic, the temperature of the water matters—cold water is unable to thaw the frozen banks in order to migrate.

Permafrost thaw may cause Arctic river erosion to speed up
Representative field photos of the Koyukuk River near Huslia (65.689° N, 156.381° W). a, Scroll bars are arcuate traces of the river’s former position recorded in the floodplain landscape. b, The inner bend of a channel (point bar) is accretionary, whereas its outer bend (cut bank) is erosional. c, A zoom-in on an erosional permafrost cut bank. Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07978-w

In the new study, Geyman and her collaborators used satellite imagery of the Koyukuk over the past several years and developed a technique to decode high-resolution changes from the images. The team hypothesized that if permafrost was slowing the river’s migration, they should only see migration later in the summer when the river water has warmed up. Their hypothesis matched with the satellite data, suggesting that permafrost does, in fact, slow down river migration.

Next, the team compared sections of the river that flow through permafrost with those that do not. The Koyukuk is special because it traverses a patchwork of both permafrost and unfrozen ground. The team traveled to the Arctic to map the erosion on various bends of the river and found that sections without permafrost migrated twice as fast as analogous riverbends through permafrost terrain.

The research is part of a larger effort to understand the dynamics of rivers and how they transport carbon, nutrients, and other materials trapped in the soil.

“River migration has implications for local communities and infrastructure, and also for the Arctic environment,” Lamb says. “About 1,500 gigatons of carbon are stored in the frozen permafrost—about twice as much carbon as in the atmosphere, for comparison. There is also mercury frozen in the soil that could be liberated into rivers as permafrost thaws. We are, ultimately, trying to understand what happens to these elements in the context of river erosion.”

The work was a collaboration with local Alaska Native communities, in particular from the town of Huslia.

“It’s been an honor working with Caltech and that they selected our little community to measure permafrost thaw,” says Carl Burgett, Chief of Huslia. “With the thawing and northern geotechnical timelines, we are facing a great threat of losing at least a third of our community within a short time period. With the new data we collected, hopefully a relocation plan can be funded for our community, along with much needed infrastructure.”

More information:
Emily C. Geyman et al, Permafrost slows Arctic riverbank erosion, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07978-w

Citation:
Arctic river erosion linked to permafrost thaw (2024, October 9)
retrieved 9 October 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-10-arctic-river-erosion-linked-permafrost.html

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Light pollution disturbs moths—even in the dark, study shows

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Light pollution disturbs moths—even in the dark, study shows


Light pollution disturbs moths, even in the dark
The flight paths of individual moths were tracked using radar. On the left a large yellow underwing (Noctua pronuba) with a transponder. Credit: Jacqueline Degen/University of Würzburg

Light pollution is more serious than expected: Moths not only lose their orientation directly under street lamps. Their flight behavior is also disturbed outside the cone of light.

The increasing use of artificial light at night is one of the most dramatic man-made changes on earth. Streetlights and illuminated buildings are significantly changing the environment for nocturnal animals.

Scientists have identified light pollution as one of the causes of the sharp decline in insects in recent years: many nocturnal insects fly to artificial light sources and circle around them incessantly. There they become easy prey for bats and other predators or eventually fall to the ground exhausted and die.

Moths are one group of nocturnal insects that are in significant decline. Their disappearance is also problematic because they play a key role in food webs and in the pollination of plants.

A new study now shows that the behavior of moths changes not only in the cone of light from street lamps, but also outside the illuminated area. The experiments were carried out by a group from Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, in cooperation with researchers from Berlin and Providence (U.S.). The results have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Using radar tracking, we found that the orientation of moths is also disturbed outside the cone of light: the flight paths of the three species of hawkmoths and one species of lappet moths, for which we were even able to demonstrate a barrier effect from streetlights, were significantly more curvy than normal,” says Dr. Jacqueline Degen, head of a junior research group at the JMU Biocentre.

“Surprisingly, we had to reject our basic assumption that most individuals would fly to one of the streetlights,” explains the Würzburg researcher. This only applied to 4% of the individuals studied: “This suggests that the effects of light pollution are not limited to direct attraction to light sources, but are much more far-reaching and complex than previously assumed.”

Flight tracking using a radar system near Marburg

The experiments took place at a radar system in Großseelheim near Marburg in Germany. The harmonic radar is currently the only radar system that can track small insects over several hundred meters. The research group observed the flight behavior of a total of 95 moths up to 1 kilometer away from the release point, which was surrounded by a total of six street lamps at a distance of 85 meters.

In order to record the insects by radar, a transponder had to be attached to each individual moth. This small antenna is 10.5 milligrams light and 12 millimeters long. It does not change the flight behavior of the moths in any way—the researchers had previously clarified this in elaborate control experiments.

Interaction with the moon

What also emerged from the experiments is there is an interaction between the disorientation of the moths caused by artificial light and the moon. This depends on whether the moon is above or below the horizon.

“We don’t yet have a precise understanding of this interaction,” says Degen. But this is likely to change in the course of further research.

More information:
Jacqueline Degen et al, Shedding light with harmonic radar: Unveiling the hidden impacts of streetlights on moth flight behavior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2401215121

Citation:
Light pollution disturbs moths—even in the dark, study shows (2024, October 9)
retrieved 9 October 2024
from https://phys.org/news/2024-10-pollution-disturbs-moths-dark.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.





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