Rethinking nuclear

As someone who has spent decades studying the evolution of nuclear energy, I’ve seen its emergence as a promising transformative technology, its stagnation as a consequence of dramatic accidents and its current re-emergence as a potential solution to the challenges of global warming.

While the issues of global warming and sustainable energy strategies are among the most consequential in today’s society, it is difficult to find objective sources that elucidate these topics. Discourse on this subject is often positioned at one or another polemical extreme. Further complicating the flow of objective information is the involvement of advocates of vested interests as seen in the lobbying efforts of the coal, gas and oil industries. My goal has been to present nuclear energy’s potential role in a sustainable energy future—alongside renewables like wind and solar—without ideological baggage.

An additional hurdle that must be overcome in dealing with the pros and cons of nuclear energy is the psychological context in which fear of nuclear weapons and of radiation impedes rational analysis. The deep antipathy to nuclear phenomena is illustrated by what might be called the “Godzilla Complex” that developed after the crew of the Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon 5, was exposed to heavy radiation from a nuclear weapons test in 1954. Godzilla was conceived as a monster that emerged from the depths of the ocean due to radiation exposure. It has become an enduring concept that has been portrayed in nearly forty films in the United States and Japan and in numerous video games, novels, comic books and television shows.

It is not surprising that fear of nuclear reactor radiation has been widespread. In spite of the fact that there are no documented deaths due to nuclear reactor waste (in contrast to deaths from accidents), it is widely assumed that nuclear reactor waste is quite dangerous. In contrast, the fact that premature deaths attributable to the fossil-fuel component of air pollution worldwide exceeds more than 5 million annually generates little concern. Similarly, the total waste produced from nuclear energy can be stored on one acre in a building 50 feet high, whereas for every tonne of coal that is mined, 880 pounds of waste material remain. Furthermore, this waste contains toxic components. Yet public concern for nuclear waste clearly overshadows that for coal, despite these contrasting impacts.

After an in-depth review of the most significant nuclear accidents and recognition of the deep psychological antipathy to nuclear energy, I’ve become increasingly interested in the emergence of an international effort to develop safe, cost-effective nuclear energy known as the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative. This began in 2000 with nine participating countries and has since grown substantially.

In the early years, the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative took a systematic approach to identify reactor designs that could meet demanding criteria—including the key characteristic of being “fail safe”. Rather than depending upon add-on safety apparatus, “fail safe” designs rely on the laws of nature—such as gravity and fluid flow—to provide cooling in the event that the reactor overheats. Another high priority design feature is modular construction, allowing multiple units to be constructed in a timely and economical fashion.

After reviewing dozens of options, the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative settled on six designs that it found to be the most attainable and desirable. Since its initial efforts, countries that have embraced the goals of the Generation IV Nuclear Initiative have been pursuing additional designs including reactors that range in size from quite small to about one third the size of the typical one megawatt reactor.

In my book, I’ve focused my attention on four promising designs. These four designs eschew the vulnerabilities of using water as a coolant that proved so devastating at Chernobyl and Fukushima. The explosion at Chernobyl was due to steam and the three explosions at Fukushima were due to hydrogen gas that resulted from oxidation of fuel rods by overheated water. These were not nuclear explosions. Instead, the four designs I’ve highlighted use liquid sodium, liquid lead, molten salts and helium gas as coolants. Liquid sodium and liquid lead cooled reactors are operating successfully in Russia, while China incorporated a gas cooled reactor into its grid in 2023. In the United States, Kairos Power is constructing a molten salt cooled reactor, while the TerraPower company (founded by Bill Gates) has broken ground on construction of a sodium cooled reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. These are intended to be models for replacing coal fired power plants with Generation IV nuclear plants. Multiple implementations of this approach are planned through the early 2030s.

Given the world-wide interest in Generation IV reactor development and the many initiatives that are being pursued, it is likely that at least some of these projects will come to fruition in the near future. While success is not guaranteed, there is clearly a need for the general public and students to be kept informed of progress leading up to 2030 and beyond.

To help bridge the knowledge gap in this rapidly evolving domain, I’ve launched a newsletter on Substack called “Nuclear Tomorrow.” It’s written for anyone concerned with the intersection of public policy, energy generation, and its impact on global warming. I hope it serves as a resource for those seeking clarity in a complex and consequential field.

^{Feature image: nuclear power plant via Pixabay.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Caring fish dads evolved prostates faster

Animals caring for their young, such as a lioness carrying her cub by their scruff or a matriarchal elephant herd nursing young calves, are the kinds of behavior that many would pay good money to watch on a safari. However, fish, especially father fish, caring for their young has received limited popular attention, except maybe for the clownfish father-son duo featured in Finding Nemo. Findings published in the recent article “Parental care drives the evolution of male reproductive accessory glands across ray-finned fishes” in the journal Evolution by a group of scientists in Canada shed new light on the evolution of fish paternal care. Lucas Eckert (McGill University), along with his co-advisors Ben Bolker and Sigal Balshine (both at McMaster University) and their co-authors Jessica Miller and John Fitzpatrick, show that, among ray-finned fish, species in which fathers look after young evolved reproductive accessory organs six times faster than those without male care.

Ray-finned fish, bony fish with webbed fins supported by thin, long rays of bone, represent the vast majority of known fish species. Some of these species have reproductive accessory organs, which are parts analogous to prostate glands in humans. These organs are not directly involved in producing gametes, but they optimize reproductive potential through functions such as sperm storage and nourishment. They also produce fluids that increase the ability of sperm to move and fertilize eggs. Research on how these glands evolved has focused mostly on mammals and insects, with little known about their evolution in fish.

“Accessory reproductive glands are a bit of a ‘mystery organ’ when it comes to fish”, says Dr. Sigal Balshine, fish behavioral ecologist and co-principal investigator of this study. “Some fish have them while some don’t have them at all. We know of their existence only in a very few species out of nearly 30,000 fish species in the world. Even when they are present, accessory reproductive glands show bizarre diversity which has always made me think that there must be interesting evolutionary drivers shaping them. There was a lot we didn’t know regarding how or when they evolved, which is why we started collecting data on them”.

In certain groups of animals, sperms of multiple males compete to fertilize the eggs of a single female, a scenario known as sperm competition. Accessory glands produce secretions that enhance sperm performance, and scientists have long believed that they evolved as a weapon to aid in this post-copulatory war in organisms such as rodents and insects. Most fish biologists assumed fish reproductive accessory glands followed the same evolutionary trend. However, in their study, Eckert and colleagues shift the focus away from sperm competition towards parental care. These authors reconstruct the evolutionary history of reproductive accessory organs, testing whether parental care and/or mate competition among males contributed to their evolution.

“There was evidence that these organs were super important in the species that have them, in securing reproductive success and fitness through a variety of functions. In that context, when some species have them and some don’t, the most obvious question was what were the drivers that selected for their evolution in the first place.” says Lucas Eckert, PhD student and lead author of the study, and one of the many students who have been collecting these data since 2017.

The team approaches this question using a quantitative synthesis of phylogenetic, morphological, and behavioral trait data of ray-finned fish collected from published databases. A plethora of published research data is available on reproductive traits of fishes, owing to their remarkable diversity in reproductive organs and behaviors. However, previous studies mostly only describe these traits, without formally testing any hypotheses regarding their evolution. In this study, the authors compile reproductive trait data for over 600 fish species from research conducted over many decades, to quantify the influence that sperm competition and parental care have had in shaping the accessory glands.

In this study, we have been able to put existing data and methods together in ways that they have not been connected before”, says Dr. Ben Bolker, mathematical biologist and co-principal investigator of the study. “This study has been able to find ways to ask the question and find, how much sperm competition and parental care contribute to the evolution of accessory reproductive organs of ray-finned fish, rather than ask what exactly caused accessory glands to evolve, because in biology everything does everything”.

The special benefits accessory glands provide male fish for improving their reproductive success explains why they evolved faster in species with paternal care. Unlike in many other animal groups where mothers take care of their young, when it comes to fish, that duty was most commonly delegated to fathers by evolution: they had the resources to maximize the survival of fertilized eggs, such as territory, security and nutrition. Accessory glands produce secretions that protect fertilized eggs against microbial infections and increase sperm adhesiveness and the viable period of sperm after release. These secretions allow these stay-at-home fish dads to multi-task in keeping their sperm viable for newly spawning females even while taking care of their young and defending their nests.

Though the evolution of accessory glands is traditionally thought to be driven by sperm competition, this study uncovers a new angle on drivers of fish accessory gland evolution by considering parental care behaviors. The authors hope that these results will encourage researchers to take a closer look at these mysterious glands and consider their potential importance in the species that possess them.

^{Featured image: Goby eggs by Olivier Dugornay, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

A snapshot of genomics and bioinformatics in modern biology research

I often tell my students that biology has become a data-driven field. Certainly, there’s a general sense that methods related to biological sequences (that is methods in genomics and bioinformatics) have become very widespread. But what does that really mean?

To put a little flesh on those bones, I decided to look in detail at all the biology-related articles in a single issue of the journal Nature (issue 8069, the one that was current when I started). I’m focusing here on articles, representing novel peer reviewed research. By my count, 16 of the 26 papers in this issue are related to biology in one way or another. (Those 16 also include neuroscience and bio-engineering related papers).

For each of these articles I went through the methods looking for genomics and bioinformatics related approaches. I sorted what I found into a few categories. Here’s a short summary:

• Four of the papers (25%) used high throughput DNA sequencing.
• Four were doing phylogenetic reconstruction. (Two of these were doing both phylogenetic reconstruction and sequencing).
• Four were doing RNA seq, that is high throughput sequencing of RNA to study gene expression.
• Five used computational methods of sequence analysis (e.g. alignment or its derivatives).
• My “other high throughput methods” category also contained five papers.

Considering all high throughput sequence-related methods together, I found that 10/16 papers fell into at least one of these categories. That is, just over 60% of biology papers in this issue were using one or another such method. Which is to say, these methods really are very common in modern research.

The papers in issue 8069 used these methods to study a huge diversity of questions. One paper used sequencing based approaches to better characterize variation in the pea plant studied by Gregor Mendel, using this to get insights into the basis of several of his traits (which had not previously been known). Another looked at deep phylogenetic relationships among eukaryotes. Still another compared patterns of methylation during development between eutherian and marsupial mammals. I could go on, but the message is that genomics and bioinformatics are used to answer many different kinds of questions.

The take-away is that these are foundational methods for modern biology. As such they should be basic training for any student interested in continuing with research in the biological sciences. This is not only so students can conduct research on their own, but also so they can understand papers they read in a deeper and more sophisticated way.

In our recent second edition of the book Concepts in Bioinformatics and Genomics, we try to balance biology, mathematics and programming, as well as build knowledge from the ground up. Topics range from RNA-Seq and genome-wide association studies to alignment and phylogenetic reconstruction. Our hope is that this approach will help students understand the research they encounter on a deeper level and prepare them to potentially participate in that enterprise.

^{Featured image: by CI Photos via ShutterStock.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Searching DNA databases: cold hits and hot-button issues

Many criminal investigations, including “cold cases,” do not have a suspect but do have DNA evidence. In these cases, a genetic profile can be obtained from the forensic specimens at the crime scene and electronically compared to profiles listed in criminal DNA databases. If the genetic profile of a forensic specimen matches the profile of someone in the database, depending on other kinds of evidence, that individual may become the prime suspect in what was heretofore a suspect-less crime.

Searching DNA databases to identify potential suspects has become a critical part of criminal investigations ever since the FBI reported its first “cold hit” in July 1999, linking six sexual assault cases in Washington, D.C., with three sexual assault cases in Jacksonville, Florida. The match of the genetic profiles from the evidence samples with an individual in the national criminal database ultimately led to the identification and conviction of Leon Dundas.

How the statistical significance of a match obtained with a database search is presented to the jury should, in my view, be straightforward but, given the adversarial nature of our criminal justice system, remains contentious. One view is that if the profiles of the evidence and a suspect who had been identified by the database search match, then the estimated population frequency of that particular genetic profile (equivalent to the Random Match Probability in a non-database search case) is still the relevant statistic to be presented to the jury. The Random Match Probability (RMP) is an estimate of the probability that a randomly chosen individual in a given population would also match the evidence profile. The RMP is estimated as the population frequency of the specific genetic profile, which is calculated by multiplying the probabilities of a match at each individual genetic marker (the “Product Rule”).

An alternative view, often invoked by the defense, is that the size of the database should be multiplied by the RMP. For example, if the RMP is 1/100 million and the database that was searched is 1 million, this perspective argues that the number 1/100 is the one that should be presented to the jury. This calculation, however, represents the probability of getting a “hit” (match) with the database and not the probability of a coincidental match between the evidence and suspect (1/100 million), the more relevant metric for interpreting the probative significance of a DNA match. Although these arguments may seem arcane, the estimates that result from these different statistical metrics could be the difference between conviction and acquittal.

There are many different kinds of DNA databases. Ethnically defined population databases are used to calculate genotype frequencies and, thus, to estimate RMPs but are not useful for searching. The first DNA searches were of databases of convicted felons. In some jurisdictions, databases of arrestees have also been established and searched. These searches have recently been expanded to include “partial matches,” potentially implicating relatives of the individuals in the database. This strategy, known as “familial searching,” has been very effective but contentious, with discussions typically focused on the “trade-offs” between civil liberties and law enforcement. In some jurisdictions, the “trade-off” has been between two different controversial criminal database programs. In Maryland, for example, an arrestee database (albeit one specifying arraignment) was allowed but familial searching was outlawed. Familial searching has been critiqued as turning relatives of people in the database into “suspects.” A more accurate description is that these partial matches revealed by familial searching identify “persons of interest” and that they provide potential leads for investigation.

Recently, searching for partial matches in the investigation of suspect-less crimes has expanded from criminal databases to genealogy databases, as applied in the Golden State Killer case in 2018. These databases consist of genetic profiles from people seeking information about their ancestry or trying to find relatives. Genetic genealogy involves constructing a large family tree going back several generations based on the individuals identified in the database search and on genealogical records. Identifying several different individuals in the database whose profile shares a region of DNA with the evidence profile allows a family tree to be constructed. The shorter the shared region between two individuals or between the evidence and someone in the database, the more distant the relationship. This is because genetic recombination, the shuffling of DNA regions that occurs in each generation, reduces the length of shared DNA segments over time. So, in the construction of a family tree, the length of the shared region indicates how far back in time you have to go to locate the common ancestor. Tracing the descendants in this family tree who were in the area when the crime was committed identifies a set of potential suspects.

The DNA technologies used in investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) are different from those typically used in analyzing the evidence samples or the criminal database samples, which are based on around 25 short tandem repeat markers (STRs). The genotyping technology used to generate profiles in genealogy databases is based on analyzing thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). With the recent implementation of Next Generation Sequencing technology to sequence the whole genome, even more informative searching for shared DNA regions can be accomplished. (Next Generation Sequencing of the whole genome is so powerful that it can now distinguish identical (monozygotic) twins!)

Investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) has completely upended the trade-offs and guidelines proposed for familial searching as well as many of the arguments. Many of the rationales justifying familial searching of criminal databases, such as the recidivism rate, and the presumed relinquishing by convicts of certain rights do not apply to genealogical databases. Also, the concerns about racial disparities in criminal databases don’t apply to these non-criminal databases either. In general, it’s very hard to draw lines in the sand when the sands are shifting so rapidly and the technology is evolving so quickly. And it is particularly difficult when dramatic successes in identifying the perpetrators of truly heinous unsolved crimes are lauded in the media, making celebrities of the forensic scientists who carried out the complex genealogical analyses that finally led to the arrest of the Golden State Killer and, shortly thereafter, to many others.

It’s still possible and desirable to set some guidelines for IGG, a complex and expensive procedure. It should be restricted to serious crimes. The profiles in the database should be restricted to those individuals who have consented to have their personal genomic data searched for law enforcement purposes. With the appropriate guidelines, the promise of DNA database searching to solve suspect-less crimes can truly transform our criminal justice system.

_{Featured image by TanyaJoy via iStock.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Nature’s landscape artists

Claude Monet once said, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Perhaps he should have given bees equal credit for his occupation. Without them, the dialectical coevolutionary dance with flowers that has lasted 125 million years would not have produced the colorful landscapes he so cherished. For Darwin, it was an abominable mystery; for Monet, an endless inspiration.

Bees, like Monet, paint the landscape. Their tool kit, however, is not one of canvas, paint pigments, and brushes, but consists of special body parts and behavior. Their bodies, covered with branched hairs, trap pollen when they rub against floral anthers and transfer it to the stigma—pollination. Their visual spectrum is tuned to the color spectrum of flowers, not an adaptation of the bees to flowers but an adaptation of flowers to attract the pollinators. Insects evolved their color sensitivities long before flowering plants exploited them.

The behavioral toolkit of honey bees is expansive. Bees learn the diurnal nectar delivery rhythms of the flowers; they also learn their colors, shapes, odors, and where they are located. Honey bees are central-place foragers, meaning they have a stationary nest from which they explore their surroundings. They can travel more than 300 km² in search of rewarding patches of flowers. To do this, they have a navigational tool kit. First, they need to know how far they have flown: an odometer. This they accomplish by measuring the optical flow that traverses the nearly 14,000 individual facets that make up their compound eyes, similar to us driving through a city and noting how much city flows by in our periphery. They calculate how far they have flown and the angle of their trajectory relative to the sun, requiring a knowledge of the sun’s location and a compass. Then they integrate the individual paths they took and determine a straight-line direction and distance from the nest. Equipped with this information, they return to the nest and tell their sisters the location of the bonanza they discovered.

Communication among honey bees is not done with airborne sounds, as they have no organs for detecting them. Information is conveyed through a dance performed by returning foragers on the vertical surface of a comb in a dark nest. New recruits gather on the comb dance floor, attend the dances, and learn the direction and distance to the patch of flowers. How they perceive the information in the dance is not known, but to us as observers, we can decipher the direction by the orientation of the dance, and the distance by timing one part of it. Because the dance is done on a vertical comb inside a dark cavity, perhaps a hollow tree or a box hive provided by a beekeeper, the forager has two challenges. First, she must perform a bit of analytical geometry and translate the angle of the food source relative to the location of the sun from a horizontal to a vertical plane, then she must represent the direction of the sun at the top of comb. This is a constant like north at the top of our topographical maps.

Equipped with this information, recruits fly out of the nest in the direction of the resource for the distance indicated by the dance and seek the flowers. The flowers lure them in with attractive colors, shapes, odors, and sweet nectar that the bees imbibe and in the process transfer pollen onto the stigma, fertilizing the ova. The seeds develop, drop to the ground and wait until the following spring when the plants emerge and paint the fresh landscape with a kaleidoscope of colors that rivals Claude Monet.

_{Featured image by JLGutierrez on iStock.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Understanding fossil-fuel propaganda: a Q&A with Genevieve Guenther

2024’s UN climate summit in Azerbaijan is a key moment for world leaders to express their convictions and plans to address the escalating stakes of the climate crisis. This month we sat down with Genevieve Guenther—author of The Language of Climate Politics, and founder of End Climate—to discuss the current state of climate activism and how propaganda from the fossil fuel industry has shaped the discourse.

Sarah Butcher: How did you first get involved in climate change activism?

Genevieve Guenther: I got really concerned about climate change after I had a child and started to worry about what kind of world he would inherit after I died. So I utilized my training as a scholar to master the field of climate communication, while learning about climate science and economics, in the hopes of using my expertise in the political effects of language to help move our climate politics forward. Eventually I began working on The Language of Climate Politics, and while I was writing it I also founded the group End Climate Silence to help push the news media to cover climate change with the urgency it deserves.

SB: How did you come to recognize that the language people–and more importantly the media—use was having an impact on efforts to actually create change?

GG: As recently as 2018, public-opinion surveys showed that even many Democrats felt some doubt that climate change was real. I could see that this doubt tracked very neatly onto the rise of the disinformation that there was a lot of scientific “uncertainty” around the issue. (Scientists were projecting a range of possible outcomes from rising carbon emissions, but they were definitely not saying that climate change was fake.) I realized that voters had heard about this supposed uncertainty because, at the time, news outlets were platforming so-called “climate skeptics” to provide what they called “a balance of opinion” about climate change. Later I discovered that most Americans learn everything they know about climate change from the news media. So it became apparent to me that how journalists talk about climate change had, and still has, a great deal of influence over America’s climate politics!

SB: Do you have any examples of fossil-fuel propaganda that you share with people to illustrate the scope of the problem?

GG: Fossil-fuel propaganda is a huge phenomenon! There are many lies about climate change and clean energy floating around. You may have heard that developing off-shore wind turbines is killing whales (it isn’t), or that fossil fuels are the most reliable form of energy (they aren’t), or that focusing on your personal carbon footprint is the most important thing you can do to fight climate change (it definitely isn’t). But the propaganda I investigate in my book is the complex of lies, myths, and incorrect assumptions that create the false and dangerous belief that we can keep using coal, oil, and gas but still deal with climate change anyway. We cannot! So I expose the scientists, economists, lobbyists, and journalists who propagate this false belief, illuminating the bankruptcy of their ideas and giving readers clear, actionable messages to counter mis- and disinformation in their own conversations about climate change. Focus-group polling shows that these messages increase concerned Democrats’ and Republicans’ support for phasing out fossil fuels by up to ten points.

SB: What are the biggest misconceptions you see around fossil-fuel propaganda?

GG: That it spreads only among the uneducated or the right wing. My book shows how some scientists, economists, journalists, and even climate advocates sometimes inadvertently echo the core fossil-fuel propaganda and thereby normalize it, shaping mainstream views about climate change.

SB: What sets your book on the climate change crisis apart?

GG: I think my book is personal and accessible, but also has a real scope. I try to sort out the whole kaleidoscope of climate disinformation, so we can see and counter it clearly. The book discusses what the science says will happen to the US and the UK if we don’t phase out fossil fuels; how past economic models have low-balled climate damages and what the new economic models project for the future; the promise and challenges of climate technologies; the recent history of US and international climate politics; advice for coping with climate change emotionally and helping to build a more powerful climate movement; and more! The climate journalist Amy Westervelt said in her endorsement that the book “takes the whole overwhelming universe of fossil-fuel propaganda and distills it,” providing “one of the best explanations I’ve read of how the heck the climate crisis has gone unchecked for so long.” And Kieran Setiya, who’s not even a climate person, but a Professor of Philosophy at MIT, said: “if you want to understand the climate crisis and you only have time to read one book, this should be it.” I’m pretty proud of that, honestly.

SB: What was the most surprising thing you discovered working on this book?

GG: That China has enacted a whole-of-government, whole-of-society climate policy, called the “1 + N” policy, to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060. That was a huge surprise! I hadn’t known that China had passed comprehensive climate legislation. I don’t think many people in the West know this either. But I describe the provisions of China’s climate policies in Chapter 4, so hopefully now more people will understand the depth of China’s commitment to decarbonization.

SB: Is there anything in the current debate that gives you hope about our climate future?

GG: I try not to deal in hope. Hope keeps my focus on things I cannot control. Instead, I try to embrace what I think of as intellectual humility—I don’t know what’s going to happen politically, because no one does—and I try to accept what I take to be my duty. That is, I feel like, being alive with relative privilege at this historical moment, I have a responsibility to help resolve the climate crisis, so that at the end of the day I can say I did my best. I mean, that’s all that can be asked of us, right?

SB: What do you hope readers take away from your book?

GG: I hope they feel equipped to resist the dominant forms of climate disinformation in public discourse and feel empowered to talk about the climate crisis in ways that will focus the conversation on phasing out fossil fuels. And I hope they feel fortified and inspired to do that work!

_{Featured image by USGS on Unsplash.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Charles Darwin the geologist

Who was Charles Darwin the geologist? Was he a nephew, or maybe a cousin, of the illustrious naturalist, who first published the theory of evolution by natural selection? I know they had big families… But no, this is the one and the same. It is often forgotten that, early in his career, Charles Darwin was a ‘card-carrying’ geologist.

It did not start well. Aged 17, he assessed the Edinburgh University geology lectures he dropped in on, while studying Medicine, so ‘incredibly dull’, that he would ‘never attend to the subject of geology’.

His lecturer was Robert Jameson, who was on the wrong side in the dispute about the origin of dolerite. As dolerite could be found as a layer among strata of sandstone and limestone, he believed it had somehow precipitated out of water. It turned out a sill could be intruded between the layers as red-hot basaltic magma.

In the spirit of student rebellion Charles also assessed all but one of his lecturers in medicine as ‘intolerably dull’. Squeamish about anatomy, he ostensibly switched to the University of Cambridge to study theology. By the summer of 1831 he needed to prove some rapid geological acumen in applying to become the geologist/naturalist on a round-the-world voyage on the survey ship HMS Beagle.

Charles convinced Cambridge Professor Adam Sedgwick to allow him to spend a few weeks as a field assistant while the professor mapped the geology of North Wales. The learning was intensive, but it worked.

While on the Beagle, Darwin’s notes on geology were four times longer than those reporting natural history. He wrote to his sister that ’the pleasure of the first day’s partridge shooting …. cannot be compared to finding a fine group of fossil bones’—there were some great bones to be found in Patagonia.

On returning after almost five years away on the Beagle, Darwin became the society secretary to the Geological Society of London where he remained for three years. He published four scientific papers on geology, including how coral reefs formed above sinking volcanoes.

Less known was Darwin’s solo expedition to investigate the ‘parallel roads’ contouring Glen Roy in the Scottish Highlands. This was a real adventure. From London one could only get as far as Liverpool by train. Like the raised beach deposits he had mapped on the coast of Chile, he visited Glen Roy to record former sea levels.

Another facet of Darwin’s geology emerged on the long walks he took around his wife’s family’s house at Maer near Stoke on Trent. (His own family life was hectic, with ten children.) On one of these walks he discovered an igneous dyke, now named Butterton Dyke, which intruded around the time of the Hebridean volcanoes (one date gives 54 million years ago) but which chemically and by orientation is of mystery origin. To commemorate Darwin, again as a geologist, a fragment of the dyke was sent into orbit on the Mir space station and then flown to a last resting place on the Moon.

Although no longer collecting bones, or dolerite samples, after the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species, he summoned geological evidence to manifest the time needed to allow for evolution. He proposed sluggish rates of erosion of 500-foot-tall Sussex cliffs, such as an inch per century, to explain how much geological time had passed to enable evolution. His estimates for erosion have proved to be perhaps a hundred times too slow and he came under much criticism from physicists who calculated the age of the habitable earth from simple thermal decay. However, by the beginning of a new century, twenty years after his death, the discovery of heating accompanying radioactive decay vindicated his projection of the duration of geological time.

If you were scoring Charles Darwin as a geologist the results would be mixed. Always concocting hypotheses, he was ready to change his theories as new evidence arrived. He admitted there was only one such area of theorizing (the explanation for coral reefs) where he hadn’t had to change his mind. And it was Darwin the geologist who could give Darwin the evolutionist the eons of time required to realise his theory of natural selection.

_{Featured image via © Getty Images; iStock.com (Used with Permission).}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The art of the bee

In June 1799, Alexander von Humboldt departed Spain on a five-year expedition that traversed what was known in the New World as New Granada and New Spain. Along the way, he made extensive collections and observations of geography, geology, climate, atmospheric science, astronomy, magnetic flux, botany, zoology, biogeography, ecology, and anthropology. He converted his 4,000 pages of notes into a collection of volumes called the Cosmos. His most popular work, however, was a book called Ansichten der Natur (Views of Nature), a condensed version of the Cosmos. In this book, von Humboldt organized chapters around themes and brought into each chapter a consilience of disciplines that spanned botany to anthropology. Woven together into a narrative, the book painted a view that reflected both an opinion and a glimpse of nature.

Humboldt appealed to artists and poets to interpret and paint nature. He believed that they would be better at conveying views of nature to the public than would science-oriented naturalists. The nineteenth century philosopher Henry David Thoreau was strongly influenced by Humboldt when he wrote his most noted work, Walden, weaving a tapestry of science and imagination. The American painter Edwin Church accepted Humboldt’s challenge and, beginning in 1853, retraced his expedition across South America. The result was 1.7 x 3 meter canvas painting, The Heart of the Andes (1859), now hanging in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting, like the chapters of Ansichten Der Natur, is a composite interpretation of the natural history of the Andes, showing amazingly accurate details of the flora and includes geography, geology, and even an element of anthropology.

As I set out to write a book on honey bee biology, I kept Humboldt as an aspirational model. Rather than write the typical biology text that reflected an excavation of levels of biological organization like taxonomy, biogeography, physiology, anatomy, etc., I built chapters around themes relating to honey bee impacts, behavior, and ecology.

The impact of bees on our world is immeasurable. Bees are responsible for the evolution of the vast array of brightly colored flowers and for engineering the niches of multitudes of plants, animals, and microbes. They’ve painted our landscapes with flowers through their pollination activities and have evolved the most complex societies to aid their exploitation of the environment. The biology of the honey bee is one that reflects their role in transforming environments with their anatomical adaptations and a complex language that together function to exploit floral resources. A complex social system that includes a division of labour builds, defends, and provisions nests containing tens of thousands of individuals, only one of whom reproduces.

My book, The Art of the Bee: Shaping the Environment from Landscapes to Societies, presents fundamental biology, not in layers, but wrapped in interesting themes and concepts, and in ways designed to explore and understand each concept and learn fundamental bee biology. It examines the coevolution of bees and flowering plants, bees as engineers of the environment, the evolution of sociality, the honey bee as a superorganism and how it evolves, and the mating behaviour of the queen.

We will explore the wonderful biology and behavior of honey bees in future installments, each related to a different chapter painting a view, an opinion and a glimpse, of the wonderful world of bees.

_{Feature image by John Pons via Wikimedia Commons. CC4.0.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Brighter than a trillion suns: an intense X-rated drama

You may be unaware of the celestial wonder known as OJ 287 but, as you will see, it is one of the most outlandish objects in the cosmos. Astronomers have known of periodic eruptions from OJ 287 since 1888 and in recent decades a mind-boggling explanation has emerged. It seems that the outbursts arise deep in the heart of a distant galaxy where two supermassive black holes are locked in a deadly embrace.

What is a black hole?

A black hole forms when a huge quantity of matter collapses under its own gravity to form an object whose gravitational attraction is so intense that nothing can escape, not even light. This fate awaits the most massive stars at the end of their lives.

Such stellar mass black holes may be a whopping five, ten, or even a hundred times the mass of the Sun. The first stellar mass black hole to be identified is known as Cygnus X-1. A black hole’s size is characterized by its event horizon. This is the sphere of no return: once inside all roads lead inexorably inwards. The radius of the event horizon of a 10 solar mass black hole is just 30 kilometres.

Astronomers believe that at the centre of every galaxy there lurks a black hole on another scale entirely. These are the supermassive black holes whose mass may be millions or even billions of times that of the Sun. We do not, as yet, fully understand how they grow to be so enormous in the time available since the Big Bang.

Brighter than a trillion stars

Over time galaxies collide and merge, and this may bring their central supermassive black holes into close proximity. Indeed, OJ 287 is the most well-studied example of such a system where two colossal black holes dance around each other performing a celestial tango de la muerte. Astronomers estimate that the primary black hole is a staggering 18 billion solar masses, while its much smaller companion is a mere 150 million solar masses. This gives the primary’s event horizon a radius of over 50 billion kilometres. To put this into context, the distance between the Sun and the outermost planet Neptune is 4.5 billion kilometres. So, the primary black hole is a vast bottomless pit that would dwarf the entire solar system.

Surrounding this chasm is the black hole’s accretion disc—an incredibly hot swirling disc of plasma with a temperature of billions of degrees—so hot that it emits X-rays and gamma rays. As the secondary dances around its gigantic partner, it periodically crashes through this seething whirlpool of fire releasing a blast of radiation that is picked up by telescopes here on Earth, and this is how we know of this amazing system.

These two-week-long flares are brighter than the combined light of an entire giant galaxy of a trillion stars. The radiation blast is produced mainly by hot plasma from the accretion disc spiralling into the secondary black hole. The OJ 287 system is 5 billion light years distant, so the light in these flares has been travelling our way since before the Earth formed. It is only because the flares are so bright that we can see them from such an incredible distance.

The clash of the cosmic titans

There are two flares every 12 years, the most recent in February 2022, as the secondary black hole plunges and re-emerges through the primary’s accretion disc. Like a cosmic duel in Lucifer’s inner sanctum, the two writhing supermassive black holes twist, twirl, and cavort around each other. Researchers led by Finnish astrophysicist Mauri Valtonen of Turku University and his colleague Achamveedu Gopakumar from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India have used the precise timing of the flares to build a detailed picture of the orbit of the black holes based on our best theory of gravity—Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This enables them to predict when future flares will occur. The extreme nature of OJ 287 challenges our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, offering tests for general relativity that have not been possible before. A wide range of astronomical instruments will be ready and waiting when the next blast is due to arrive. In the years ahead, we are sure to learn much more about this amazing system that illustrates just how weird the universe can be.

References: Mauri J Valtonen et al, ‘Refining the OJ 287 2022 impact flare arrival epoch’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 521, Issue 4, June 2023, Pages 6143–6155, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad922

_{Feature image: Black Hole and a Disk of Glowing Plasma by Daniel Megias via iStock.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Scientific writing as a research skill

Scientific papers are often hard to read, even for specialists that work in the area. This matters because potential readers will often give up and do something else instead. And that means the paper will have less impact.

The fact that many scientific papers are hard to read is surprising. Scientists want others to read their papers—they don’t try to make them difficult to get through! So why does this problem arise? And how can we fix it?

The curse of knowledge

One problem is that scientists are incredibly knowledgeable about every detail of their research: from the studies that inspired them, to their methods and results, to the implications of those results. This means that they’re about as far away as it’s possible to be from someone who is new to the topic, so often they’re the worst person in the world to write up their study.

This problem is so common that it has even been given a name in psychology literature: the ‘curse of knowledge’. The curse means that people tend to unwittingly assume that others have the necessary background to understand what they are saying. Put simply, it’s easy for a scientist to miss out crucial points or steps because they’ve forgotten how important those things are for understanding their work.

Another aspect of the ‘curse of knowledge’ is that scientists tend to write like scientists. They use jargon, technical abbreviations, and phrases that they would never use in everyday speech. This ‘science speak’ usually makes things harder, not easier, for potential readers. This is particularly true with readers of interdisciplinary research, or with readers who are new to the specific subject area, who are less likely to know the meaning behind the jargon.

So how can we fix the writing problems that come from science speak and the curse of knowledge?

Writing as a research skill

The first step is that we need to acknowledge that writing is a skill that needs to be learnt, just like any other aspect of scientific research. Indeed, good writing can require a much longer learning period than many familiar research techniques. Once you have learnt how to pipette, you can do it, but writing is something that you can keep improving throughout your career.

Writing can be learnt in multiple ways. Courses can be run, usually for undergraduate or graduate students. But learning to write needs practise and motivation, and these courses are often run before the students need to write up their own research, An alternative is guide

books, that provide advice and tips, that writers can read and apply as they go along, as they produce the different sections of their paper. But what exactly needs to be learnt?

The reader

The next step is to pause and imagine potential readers. A potential reader is likely to be time-limited, stressed, and easily bored. They have a million other things to do and will take any excuse to give up on reading your paper. They might be a PhD student trying to get to grips with their subject, or a professor who doesn’t really have time to read papers anymore.

They key point is that they don’t have to read your paper—it’s the writer’s job to make them want to. This leads to a fundamental principle of scientific writing: the reader must come first. It is the job of the writer to help the reader understand the content of their paper by making things as clear and straightforward as possible.

Guiding principles

Unfortunately, putting the reader first does not always come naturally, and can require a change of thinking on the part of the writer. Luckily there are a few general principles that help with this:

1. Keep it Simple. Use simple clear writing to make it as easy as possible for the reader.
2. Assume nothing. A paper is more likely to be hard to read because it assumed too much, rather than because it was dumbed down too much.
3. Keep it to essentials. A more focused paper will better at both getting the major points across and keeping the attention of a time-stressed reader.
4. Tell your story. Good scientific writing tells a story. It tells the reader why the topic you have chosen is important, what you found out, and why that matters.

The beauty is in the details

The above advice might still seem a bit vague, but it’s just an overview. In our recent book, Scientific Writing Made Easy, we build upon these guiding principles to provide a toolkit for writing the different parts of a scientific paper. We provide both a structure for each section, and detailed tips for how to fill that structure out. We make writing easier and less scary.

Our toolkit can be applied to different types of paper across the life, human, and natural sciences. While there are important differences, a lot of the same principles can be applied whether someone is writing up a laboratory experiment, a mathematical model, or an observational field study.

Learn more about Scientific Papers Made Easy with this review from the Stated Clearly YouTube channel.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Genomic insights into the past and future of the black rhinoceros

The iconic African black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis) faces an uncertain future after intense poaching caused a 98% decline in wild populations from 1960 to 1995. While numbers are currently increasing, the animal remains critically endangered.

The historical range of the black rhinoceros covered vast swaths of sub-Saharan Africa, but today’s remaining individuals inhabit just a handful of protected areas. The survival of the black rhinoceros within the fragmented remains of its natural habitat relies on dedicated conservation efforts. A study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, “Historic Sampling of a Vanishing Beast: Population Structure and Diversity in the Black Rhinoceros”, reshapes our understanding of the evolutionary and natural history of the black rhinoceros, opening a window into the species’ genetic past while urging us to forge a path toward its conservation.

The study characterizes the population structure and genomic diversity of the black rhinoceros, both before and after its range-wide collapse in the last century, providing a model for how genetic diversity is shaped during population contractions. “The only way to really explore this is to use species with well documented, temporal collections that are also tied to good demographic records,” says Thomas Gilbert, one of the study’s lead authors. “Sadly, species like the black rhinoceros are a perfect example, given their long-term appeal to big game hunters and poachers.” The motivation for the study, however, extended beyond mere scientific curiosity according to co-first author Binia De Cahsan Westbury: “Studying the genetic history of the black rhinoceros through time provides crucial insights into its evolutionary trajectory and aids in developing effective conservation strategies for its remaining populations.”

With this goal, the authors sequenced the genomes of 63 museum specimens collected from 1775 to 1981, as well as 20 individuals from modern black rhinoceros populations, compiling the most comprehensive genetic dataset of the species to date and significantly advancing earlier research efforts. “Whole genome sequences have revealed much more conservation-relevant population structure in the black rhinoceros than expected from traditional markers,” notes the study’s other lead author, Yoshan Moodley, emphasizing the transformative power of cutting-edge genomic techniques.

Analysis of the data revealed the presence of six major black rhinoceros populations historically as well as four subpopulations, offering more precise delineation of population borders than ever before. Notably, the results suggested that tectonic rifts in Africa during the Pleistocene had “driven the evolution of several hitherto unknown populations, many of which probably still exist within the present day Kenyan metapopulation,” highlights Moodley.

In addition to geographical barriers, the evolutionary history of the black rhinoceros was shaped by secondary contact when these barriers to gene flow were temporarily removed. “The interplay of these events has resulted in a significant pattern of isolation by distance across the sub-Saharan territory of the species,” says De Cahsan Westbury, referring to a trend in which populations that are farther apart geographically also show greater genetic differences from each other.

The researchers further evaluated levels of inbreeding among historical and modern populations of the black rhinoceros, an essential consideration for species that have suffered severe population bottlenecks. “Modern samples underscore the profound impact of population contractions and subsequent genetic drift,” notes De Cahsan Westbury, “with southern African individuals experiencing the most severe effects and the highest inbreeding among all populations.” Some populations showed evidence of inbreeding that predated the colonial period, which highlights the long-standing impact of human activity on this species according to the study’s authors.

Altogether, the study offers a resounding call to action to improve the conservation and management of the black rhinoceros. “For too long, wildlife conservation authorities have struggled to incorporate and implement urgent genetic recommendations, to the detriment of the biodiversity concerned,” notes Moodley. “It is absolutely crucial that the new populations identified in East Africa be given the highest conservation priority,” he emphasizes, echoing the study’s urgent plea for comprehensive genetic testing of black rhinoceroses in Kenya and Tanzania. In addition, the distinct evolutionary groups identified in the study, such as the Ruvuma, Maasai Mara-Serengeti, and possibly Chyulu National Park subpopulations, should be the focus of separate management to maintain their unique genetic lineages.

The study pays homage to the late Professor Mike Bruford of Cardiff University, a prominent figure in conservation genetics and a co-author of the project. His death “was a tragedy for not only his family but conservation biology in general,” note the authors. Bruford’s legacy continues to influence the field, an enduring testament to the pursuit of knowledge and the protection of Earth’s genetic heritage.

_{Featured image by Ron Porter via Pixabay.}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Science in the time of war: voices from Ukraine

On 23 February 2022, I drove back to Michigan after giving a talk at the University of Kentucky on genome diversity in Ukraine. My niece Zlata Bilanin, a recent college graduate from Ukraine, was with me. She was calling her friends in Kyiv, worried. A single question was on everyone’s mind: will there be a war tomorrow? The thought of invasion, though, seemed unimaginable, illogical, even absurd.

At 2am, Zlata woke me up. “They are coming,” she said. I remember the color of her face–pale green. The world would never be the same again.

Indeed, the war has changed everything; priorities are no longer the same. Many researchers enlisted and went to fight. Others, their homes destroyed, fled. Many packed and crossed the border in the hope of a better life in the West.

Nearly 600 days later, the war continues, each day amplifying the human tragedy, of lives and futures lost—lives that could have otherwise been dedicated to better and more meaningful purposes.

As a researcher, my colleagues and I could not help but think about the crushing blow the war delivered to the vibrant Ukrainian scientific community. Ukraine is a country with incredible resources, unique human genetics given the land once served as a human migration crossroads, and a large dedicated, community of researchers working on numerous and varied projects. Now, however, research centers have been destroyed, and universities have few new students, as they now go to study abroad where there are opportunities, and they cannot be drafted.

Through all this, although my laboratory is at Oakland University, I continue to work with my colleagues back home, building a research program in genomics at my alma mater, Uzhhorod National University (UzhNU). Several years ago, my colleagues and I dreamed up a project to sequence a hundred Ukrainian genomes to provide data for researchers to have tools to study the history of migration, admixture, and distribution of medically relevant variation in the local population. This collaboration started with President of UzhNU, Prof Volodymyr Smolanka, a neurosurgeon by training, an effective administrator, and an active scientist.

Given his work and his position, for this blog post, I wanted a comment from him on the state of Ukrainian science since the start of the war. I called and asked, simply: “Is it harder or easier?” His reply was one that matches the current thoughts of those now involved in retaining and rebuilding Ukrainian scientific programs, “One thing I can say is that there is a lot less government funding. That’s clearly a negative. On the other hand, there seem to be more grant opportunities from international sources, and this helps us to stay afloat.”

“What about the people,” I ask, “How do they feel about science?”

“I would not say that they were optimistic. I am not sure that pessimistic would be the right word either. You know, those scientists that did not leave, they are working, they really want to work in science.”

Thinking about those who are not leaving, I contacted an old colleague who has stayed: Dr Serghey Gashchak, a legendary field biologist, who, among many things, worked in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone and knew everything there was to know about animals in Chornobyl. We used to call him “Stalker” in reference to a 1979 Soviet science fiction art film about a post-apocalyptic wasteland called “The Zone.”

Given his research background and work in a disaster zone, I emailed Serghey about his thoughts on the current situation. “It’s impossible to work in the Zone these days,” he said. “The barbarians are not at the gates anymore, but there are no research projects, and if there were, there’s no one to work on them. Many of the research staff are fighting in the war. Perhaps it is time to close.”

I was stunned to hear that, knowing Serghey’s inquisitive nature, it was hard for me to believe he would just stop doing research, Worse, I realized, this was likely felt by many. While my head said this might be true, my heart felt there must be a way forward. But, with the war’s destruction of institutions and financial mechanisms, such a mechanism couldn’t rely on expensive infrastructure and top-down government funding schemes. That would take decades to rebuild. What was needed was a way to integrate Ukrainian research into the worldwide research community: to bring opportunity and virtual infrastructure to Ukraine. In fact, the basic mechanisms for bringing research to places all around the world have been in place for decades in the form of international courses and conferences, remote learning, and worldwide collaboration — quite simply we could take the current international infrastructure and modify it to empower researchers in disaster zones.

A case in point is a summer research program developed in 2022—during the war—that takes place at Uzhhorod National University, which, although it is in Ukraine, is a safe distance from the war zone. This research program is led by an international team: Drs Fyodor Kondrashov (OIST, Japan), Roderic Guigo (CRG, Spain), Serghei Mangul (USC), and Wolfgang Huber (EMBL, Germany). Here, international faculty come to Ukrainian students and continue to train them and engage them in work around the globe.

I called Dr Kondrashov at his home in Okinawa and asked what research area he thought would be most useful to bring to a devastated Ukraine. He replied immediately: “Bioinformatics is a good choice because you could accomplish a lot more with the same amounts of resources than in other disciplines, such as molecular biology.”

He was right. The hybrid nature of bioinformatics—combining biology, computer science, mathematics, and statistics—encourages cross-disciplinary collaborations essential for solving complex biological problems—that can easily be carried out across borders. More, skills in these areas are highly transferable, can involve people who work remotely, and can serve as a catalyst for revitalizing war-affected regions.

This is just one example of how already in-place international infrastructure can be brought to Ukrainian research, and it is now one of many ongoing projects to allow Ukrainian researchers to continue their work. Many more examples are presented in the recent review, Scientists without Borders in GigaScience. In fact, we have come to realize, and have described in the review, that these mechanisms can be expanded: taking suitable and already existing international mechanisms and infrastructure to areas anywhere in the world that have been destroyed by political strife and natural disasters.

For Ukraine, and personal involvement, I teach and train Ukrainian students remotely. It is well worth it: an example of the passion of young researchers to continue their training, to embrace new opportunities is Valerii Pokrytiuk. He was admitted to my graduate program in bioinformatics at Oakland University in Michigan, but before he could come, the war broke out. Valerii volunteered to fight and is doing so somewhere in Eastern Ukraine. Periodically, when conditions allow, Valerii still joins us online for book club discussions, lab meetings, and to listen to courses I teach.

The war continues. And so does our fight.

_{Featured image: “Bucha, Ukraine, June 2022” by U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine, Wikimedia Commons (public domain)}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Supporting researchers at every career stage

Academia is a complex ecosystem with researchers at various stages of their careers striving to make meaningful contributions to their fields. In support of furthering knowledge, academic journals work with researchers to disseminate findings, engage with the scholarly community, and share academic advances.

Oxford University Press (OUP) publishes more than 500 high-quality trusted journals, two-thirds of which are published in partnership with societies, organizations, or institutions. The remaining third is a list of journals owned and operated by the Press. Fundamental to this list of owned journals is our mission to create world-class academic and educational resources and make them available as widely as possible, including expanding our fully open access options for authors. As a not-for-profit university press, our financial surplus is reinvested for the purpose of educational and scholarly objectives of the University and the Press, thereby fostering the continued growth of open access initiatives and supporting the scholarly community.

How do we support researchers in different career stages through our journals?

Early Career Researchers: nurturing talent

For early career researchers (ECRs), having their work published in a reputable journal is a crucial step in establishing their academic reputation. OUP journals provide several avenues of support including:

• Mentoring and guidance: Some journals provide mentorship programs or editorial support to help young researchers navigate the publishing process.

Featuring Oxford Open Immunology and Oxford Open Energy:

Two of our Oxford Open series journals, Oxford Open Immunology and Oxford Open Energy run dedicated ECR boards, which provide a key channel for direct engagement between ECR participants and our high profile academic senior editorial teams. Activities are planned throughout the year and may include assisting with facilitating journal webinars, joining ECR board meetings to discuss journal strategy and direction, suggesting and coordinating special collections or commissioned pieces on highly topical areas of research.

• Open access initiatives: 120 of the journals we publish are fully open access and the vast majority of the remaining journals offer authors open access options, making research freely available for a global audience to read, share, cite, and reuse. This helps early career researchers, and researchers of all stages in their career, gain visibility of their work and reach a wider readership.

Featuring our Oxford Open series:

The Oxford Open series is underpinned by a set of guiding principles, which include an emphasis on open research, with each journal having been developed in a bespoke way to best serve the needs of its own research community.

Hear more about OUP’s approach to OA published and the Oxford Open series in The Oxford Comment podcast.

Many of our Oxford Open journals offer article types that are specifically developed for ECRs to start their publication journey, these may take the form of a Rapid Report, Short Communication, or Perspective article, for example. We regularly invite ECRs to submit their work to the journal, often in collaboration with their mentors or supervisors as appropriate.

Mid-career researchers: advancing expertise

As researchers progress in their careers, they require journals that can help them deepen their expertise and broaden their impact. OUP journals provide several avenues of support including:

• Cutting-edge research: OUP journals prioritise publishing high-impact, innovative research, allowing mid-career researchers to stay updated with the latest advancements in their fields.

Featuring Exposome:

Exposome is the home of cutting-edge research from the emerging field of exposomics. The journal sits at the systematic intersections of environmental science, toxicology, chemistry, and public health and policy, and it calls on daring science from a broad community of investigators to provide a forum for engagement, redefine our understanding of the human exposome, and critically advance the field.

Editor-in-Chief Gary W Miller outlines the need for this new field in the inaugural editorial.

• Editorial and reviewer roles: Many researchers at this stage are invited to serve as peer reviewers or editorial board members to further contribute their knowledge to the academic community and enhance their own expertise.

Featuring STEM CELLS Translational Medicine:

For over 10 years, STEM CELLS Translational Medicine has served as a home for timely and important research to advance the utilization of cells for clinical therapy. The journal’s peer reviewers play a critical role in ensuring that the research published in the journal serves the needs of this research community by helping move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best patient practices and ultimately improve outcomes.

STEM CELLS Translational Medicine is proud to work with mid-career researchers, and reviewers of all career stages and encourages researchers to join the journal’s network of expert peer reviewers where researchers can get a first-hand look at the quality of research that is required and preview cutting-edge scientific work that helps them stay atop their field.

Established researchers: global recognition

For established researchers, maintaining a high level of visibility and recognition in the academic world is paramount. OUP journals provide several avenues of support including:

• Prestige and impact in the field: OUP journals are known for their prestige and rankings in their relevant fields. Publishing in our journals can bolster an established researcher’s reputation.

Featuring Nucleic Acids Research:

For almost 50 years, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) has provided the scientific community with detailed and constructive editorial feedback resulting in publications of the very highest standard. The quality of content has been demonstrated in this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which cited this article from NAR as one of three publications fundamental to the research recognized by the award.

Edited by a fully independent team of leading academic researchers, the journal serves as a beacon of trusted and high-quality research in a rapidly advancing field. Having flipped to fully OA in 2005, NAR has opened the doors to rigorous, impactful research, sharing knowledge globally and it remains at the cutting edge of molecular biology science.

• Leadership opportunities: As a partner to academic research, all of OUP’s journals are edited by members of the academic community, longstanding experts in their own fields. Our journals therefore offer established researchers the opportunity to take on leadership roles within journal editorial boards as associate editors or editors-in-chief, helping to shape the direction of the journal and their fields.

Featuring Oxford Open Neuroscience:

Oxford Open Neuroscience is run by a representative group of five active scientists who are subject specialists, rather than a single editor-in-chief. Representing the needs of that community and making science-based decisions, the journal’s senior editors act as ambassadors for their individual fields.

As a researcher-led publication with a focus on diversity, transparency and innovation, Oxford Open Neuroscience is a fully open access alternative to more traditional neuroscience journals and enables researchers themselves to propel the field into a new publishing era.

OUP’s owned journals are more than just platforms for publishing research, they are invaluable partners in the academic journey of researchers at every career stage. From nurturing early career talent to supporting mid-career researchers in advancing their expertise and providing global recognition for established scholars, our journals contribute to the growth and success of the academic community. As the world of research continues to evolve, our journals will remain dedicated to supporting researchers around the world, ensuring knowledge is disseminated, shared, and celebrated.

_{Featured image by Pexels on Pixabay (public domain)}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Rising seas, eroding beaches, and fewer fish in Africa

Climate change has brought dangerous new threats to food production in West Africa. Crop farmers face disrupted rainfall and protracted drought, which are serious livelihood threats since most small farms have no irrigation. Yet coastal fishermen are now threatened as well, due to ocean warming and sea-level rise. West Africa’s traditional marine fishermen launch their 30-foot wooden canoes from broad beaches that are now rapidly eroding, which denies space to haul their nets ashore and leaves their fragile homes exposed to sudden storm surges. Meanwhile warmer sea temperatures have reduced their catch. The World Bank projects that by 2050, climate change alone could reduce Ghana’s potential fish catch by 25% or more. This will be a serious threat, since fish currently provide 60% of total animal protein in the Ghanaian diet.  

I am a food security expert who has often worked with traditional farmers in Africa, but until now not with coastal fishermen. My perspective was enriched this July when I joined a research team visiting coastal fishing communities in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. We saw shocking evidence of livelihood threats from rapid beach erosion everywhere, but the complaints we heard from the fishermen themselves went well beyond a changing climate.  

Our research team—five from Harvard University and five from partner institutions in West Africa—spent three weeks travelling by van to visit more than a dozen different fishing communities along the Gulf of Guinea coast, using translators when necessary to overcome local language differences. We always explained our business in advance to community chiefs, the key arbiters in all dealings with outsiders. We visited first with fishermen engaged in net mending or boat repair and then spoke at length with community leaders, usually out of the sun in a covered meeting hall. Like traditional fishing communities everywhere (including the small lobster harbor I know on the coast of Maine), those we met took obvious pride in their hard work and distinctive way of life, but worried about looming changes beyond their control.

In all of these communities we saw evidence of damaging beach erosion. Shorelines in some places were moving inland by several meters a year. We visited the town of Keta, in eastern Ghana, where a storm surge in 2017 displaced more than 300 local inhabitants. All along the coast concrete block buildings were being toppled, undercut by the waves. We often found the remains of tarmac roads that were originally built well behind the beach but were now regularly under water.  At one location near Accra, we interviewed two women standing in distress beside homes wrecked just two weeks earlier by a storm that came at high tide.

Some of this was damage from climate change, but not all. Local experts explained that a strong natural west-to-east current had been scraping sand from the beaches along the coast for at least the past century. This natural erosion was then worsened by human actions not connected to the climate, such as the building of hydro dams that stop river sediments from reaching the shore, and illegal “sand mining” from the beach to supply a booming construction industry needing concrete. Sand is also dredged offshore for fill, to turn coastal wetlands into marketable real estate. Jetties built to protect harbors and navigation channels trap sediment, accelerating erosion down the coast. Concrete sea walls (one known as “The Great Wall of Lagos”) are constructed to protect tourist hotels and other high-value real estate, but this only deflects the ravages of the sea onto unprotected areas nearby, including the fishing communities we visited.

Several other non-climate factors also threaten traditional fishing communities in West Africa. Small wooden canoes with outboard motors cannot hope to compete for fish with large diesel-powered trawlers equipped with fish-finding sonar, bigger nets, mechanized hauling devices, and chilled storage for the fish. On paper, the trawlers are officially restricted in what they can catch and where they can operate, but most of the fishermen we talked to complained loudly about “Chinese trawlers” fishing without restriction at night, while government patrol boats looked the other way.  

The weak support provided to artisanal fishing communities by governments in Africa has a parallel in what traditional farming communities also experience. More than half of all citizens in sub-Saharan Africa are farmers, yet most governments devote only 5% of their public budget (less than this in many cases) to any kind of agricultural development. As a consequence, essential public goods like farm-to-market roads are either poorly repaired or missing completely, cutting farms off from marketing opportunities. Our research team visited fishing communities also cut off due to roads with deep potholes making them virtually undrivable. When we asked why government authorities hadn’t fixed the roads, we were told that visiting politicians regularly promised repairs just before election-time, but then never returned.    

We asked community leaders if non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had taken an interest in their plight and were advocating on their behalf.  Social justice and environmental NGOs claim to care for the special needs of those they call “fisherfolk,” and whilst some of the community leaders we questioned confirmed that well-meaning representatives from these organizations did visit to ask questions, they as well tended not to return and how they used the collected information remained a mystery. We knew our own research team would be seen in the same light if we failed to report back on the final outcome of our own project, so our intent is not to let this happen.

_{Featured image: photo by Robert Paarlberg}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The rise of dairy consumption [infographic]

Domestication of livestock in different regions of the world occurred as a gradual process starting 9,000 to 10,000 years ago. As trade routes were established, dairy animals became widely available in areas of the planet capable of sustaining herds, thus dairy products became important components of dietary and cultural diversity within global populations.

Lactase, the enzyme that facilitates digestion of lactose in breastmilk and other milks, is produced during infancy in mammals. While lactose is a sugar that provides energy for infants, most adults have lost the ability to digest lactose, leaving them lactose intolerant. However, in some populations, adults have maintained expression of lactase. This lactase persistence is associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)—in other words, replacements of a single nucleotide in the DNA sequence—near the gene that encodes for lactase. Specific global populations have different variants of SNPs, suggesting that adaptive responses to increased dietary dairy occurred independently following the adoption of agriculture in different regions and populations. Generally, lactase persistence occurred more frequently in northern latitudes, higher altitudes, or regions subject to periodic droughts—regions where non-dairy food sources may be impacted yearly or seasonally by the environment.  

What are the consequences of extending milk consumption beyond infancy?

In the infant, milk provides a superfood that has high caloric content, transfers proteins and other nutrients from mothers to offspring, and assists with establishing the offspring’s microbiome. Beyond calories, dairy intake may have accelerated development, increased growth, and enabled earlier reproduction and wider birth canals in early humans. The availability of dairy therefore afforded better chances at individual and species survival. 

Populations that maintained the ability to digest lactose had improved infant and adolescent growth, and better later-life health outcomes. Further, populations in areas with shorter growing seasons (and therefore limited ability to rely on plant-based foods) but with availability of dairy products were able to maintain body size. Contemporary populations also demonstrate a general correlation between increased average height and lactase absorption and dairy consumption in adults, suggestive of association between the two. 

Evolution of genes that promote lactase persistence in different regions of the world but with similar timing suggests that milk played an important role culturally and nutritionally in regions where agricultural crops were difficult to establish or susceptible to environmental fluctuations. The persistence of lactase enables digestion of milk lactose throughout the lifespan allowing milk to provide an important dietary component, especially in areas with food insecurity.

This blog post is based on the article “Dairying and the evolution and consequences of lactase persistence in humans,” written by Jay Stock.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Looking through the ice: cold-adapted vision in Antarctic icefish

A recent study reveals the genetic mechanisms by which the visual systems of Antarctic icefishes have adapted to both the extreme cold and the unique lighting conditions under Antarctic sea ice.

Antarctica may seem like a desolate place, but it is home to some of the most unique lifeforms on the planet. Despite land temperatures averaging around -60°C and ocean temperatures hovering near the freezing point of saltwater (-1.9°C), a number of species thrive in this frigid habitat. Antarctic icefishes (Cryonotothenioidea) are a prime example, exhibiting remarkable adaptations that allow them to survive in the icy waters surrounding the continent. For example, these fish have evolved special “antifreeze” glycoproteins that prevent the formation of ice in their cells. Some icefishes are “white-blooded” due to no longer making hemoglobin, and some have lost the inducible heat shock response, a nearly universal molecular response to high temperatures. Adding to this repertoire of changes, a recent study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution reveals the genetic mechanisms by which the visual systems of Antarctic icefishes have adapted to both the extreme cold and the unique lighting conditions under Antarctic sea ice. 

A team of researchers, led by Gianni Castiglione (now at Vanderbilt University) and Belinda Chang (University of Toronto), set out to explore the impact of sub-zero temperatures on the function and evolution of the Antarctic icefish visual system. The authors focused on rhodopsin, a temperature-sensitive protein involved in vision under dim-light conditions. As noted by Castiglione, a key role for rhodopsin in cold adaptation was suggested by their previous research. 

“We had previously found cold adaptation in the rhodopsins of high-altitude catfishes from the Andes mountains, and this spurred us into investigating cold adaptation in rhodopsins from the Antarctic icefishes.”

Indeed, the authors observed evidence of positive selection and accelerated rates of evolution in rhodopsins among Antarctic icefishes. Taking a closer look at the specific sites identified as candidates for positive selection, Castiglione and coauthors found two amino acid variants that were absent from other vertebrates. These changes are predicted to have occurred during two key periods in Antarctic icefish history: the evolution of antifreeze glycoproteins and the onset of freezing polar conditions. This timing suggests that these variants were associated with icefish adaptation and speciation in response to climatic events.

To confirm the functional effects of these two amino acid variants, the researchers performed in vitro assays in which they created versions of rhodopsin containing each variant of interest. Both amino acid variants affected rhodopsin’s kinetic profile, lowering the activation energy required for return to a “dark” conformation and likely compensating for a cold-induced decrease in rhodopsin’s kinetic rate. In addition, one of the amino acid changes resulted in a shift in rhodopsin’s light absorbance toward longer wavelengths. This dual functional change came as a surprise to Castiglione and his co-authors. “We were surprised to see that icefish rhodopsin has evolved mutations that can alter both the kinetics and absorbance of rhodopsin simultaneously. We predict that this allows the icefish to adapt their vision to red-shifted wavelengths under sea ice and to cold temperatures through very few mutations.” 

Interestingly, the amino acid changes observed in the Antarctic icefishes were distinct from those conferring cold adaptation in the high-altitude catfishes previously studied by the team, suggesting multiple pathways to adaptation in this protein. To continue this line of study, Castiglione and his colleagues hope to investigate cold adaptation in the rhodopsins of other cold-dwelling fish lineages, including Arctic fishes. “Arctic fishes share many of the cold-adapted phenotypes found in the Antarctic icefishes, such as antifreeze proteins. However, this convergent evolution appears to have been accomplished through divergent molecular mechanisms. We suspect this may be the case in rhodopsin as well.” 

Unfortunately, acquiring the data needed to conduct such an analysis may prove difficult. “A major obstacle to our research is the difficulty of collecting fishes from Antarctic and Arctic waters,” says Castiglione, “which limits us to publicly available datasets.” This task may become even more challenging in the future as these cold-adapted fish are increasingly affected by warming global temperatures. As Castiglione points out, “Climate change may alter the adaptive landscape of icefishes in the very near future, as sea ice continues to melt, forcing the icefish to very likely find themselves at an evolutionary ‘mismatch’ between their environment and their genetics.”

_{Featured image by Uwe Kils, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Inside the shark nursery: the evolution of live birth in cartilaginous fish

A new study in Genome Biology and Evolution reveals that egg yolk proteins may have been co-opted to provide maternal nutrition in live-bearing sharks and their relatives.

While giving birth to live young is a trait that most people associate with mammals, this reproductive mode—also known as viviparity—has evolved over 150 separate times among vertebrates, including over 100 independent origins in reptiles, 13 in bony fishes, nine in cartilaginous fishes, eight in amphibians, and once in mammals. Hence, understanding the evolution of this reproductive mode requires the study of viviparity in multiple lineages. 

Among cartilaginous fishes—a group including sharks, skates, and rays—up to 70% of species give birth to live young; however, viviparity in these animals remains poorly understood due to their elusiveness, low fecundity, and large and repetitive genomes. In a recent article published in Genome Biology and Evolution, a team of researchers led by Shigehiro Kuraku, previously Team Leader at the Laboratory for Phyloinformatics at RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research in Japan, set out to address this gap. Their study identified egg yolk proteins that were lost in mammals after the switch to viviparity but retained in viviparous sharks and rays. Their results suggest that these proteins may have evolved a new role in providing nutrition to the developing embryo in cartilaginous fishes. 

According to Kuraku, who now works as Professor of Molecular Life History Laboratory at the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima, investigators have long wanted to learn more about the evolution of viviparity in sharks and their relatives. “Reproduction is one of the most fascinating features of cartilaginous fishes because they show a broad spectrum of reproductive modes.” Among viviparous species, this includes a range of mechanisms for providing nutrients to the developing embryo, from relying solely on nutrients present in the embryo’s yolk sac, to feeding the embryo unfertilized eggs, secreting nutrients from the uterus (“uterine milk”), or transferring nutrients via a placenta. 

To better understand these various mechanisms, the authors searched genomic and transcriptomic data from 12 cartilaginous fishes for homologs of vitellogenin (VTG), a major egg yolk protein synthesized in the female liver in egg-laying species. Regardless of their reproductive mode, all cartilaginous fish species had at least two copies of VTG, while all copies of VTG have been lost from mammals (although the authors did identify a copy in the Tasmanian devil, a marsupial, which was not previously known to harbor a VTG gene). 

Next, the authors searched for homologs of the VTG receptor; while mammals retain a single copy of this receptor, Kuraku and his colleagues identified two ancient tandem duplications giving rise to three copies of the receptor in cartilaginous fishes. The authors note that this finding was unexpected. “We predicted the retention of egg yolk protein genes in the shark genomes because live-bearing sharks rely partly on nutrition supply from the egg yolk,” says Kuraku. “What surprised us the most was that cartilaginous fish including sharks have more copies of the egg yolk protein receptor genes.” This suggested that these proteins may provide a novel function in this viviparous lineage.

To shed light on the functions of VTG and its receptor in these species, the authors compared tissue-by-tissue transcriptome data from one egg-laying shark (the cloudy catshark) and two viviparous sharks. The frilled shark is a viviparous species that provides no maternal nutrients to the developing embryo, while the spotless smooth-hound has a placenta. In the egg-laying cloudy catshark, VTG is primarily expressed in the liver, and its receptors are primarily expressed in the ovary. In contrast, in the two viviparous sharks, VTG was expressed not only in the liver but also in the uterus. Interestingly, the VTG receptor was also expressed in the uterus in these species. This suggests that VTG proteins may not only function as yolk nutrients but may also be transported into the uterus, where they may play a role in providing maternal-based nutrition in some cartilaginous fishes.

As noted by the authors, this intriguing possibility remains to be confirmed through functional studies. They also hope to expand this analysis to a genome-wide survey of factors associated with the various reproductive modes of cartilaginous fishes. Unfortunately, such experiments are difficult in these species given the challenge in obtaining biological samples. Kuraku and his collaborators, however, hope to change this. “This study was enabled by networking among individuals with various types of expertise who recognize the biological potential of cartilaginous fishes,” says Kuraku. “It also led to the launch and development of the Squalomix consortium,” an initiative launched in 2020 to promote genomic and molecular approaches specifically targeting shark and ray species. The consortium aims to make its resources publicly available, including a cell culture technique that may help enable functional assays of molecules, facilitating future research into the reproductive modes of these elusive and fascinating creatures.

_{Featured image is in the public domain}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Societal roles for meat: what does science tell us?

“Today’s food systems face an unprecedented double challenge. There is a call to increase the availability of livestock-derived foods (meat, dairy, eggs) to help satisfy the unmet nutritional needs of an estimated three billion people, for whom nutrient deficiencies contribute to stunting, wasting, anaemia, and other forms of malnutrition. At the same time, some methods and scale of animal production systems present challenges with regards to biodiversity, climate change and nutrient flows, as well as animal health and welfare within a broad One Health approach.” 

Dublin Declaration

The debate about the use of animal-sourced food is not new. 

 Livestock and human nutrition 

Humans evolved as omnivores, and meat is a high-quality food source providing protein, fats, and a variety of nutrients, including those that are limiting factors in diets worldwide (Leroy et al, 2023). It’s broadly accepted that populations with limited access to meat have greater occurrences of health problems such as stunting. On the other hand, how much meat should be included in human diets has also been the topic of much research and discussion. 

Based on international standards for evidence-based health recommendations, associations between red meat consumption and non-communicable diseases (such as metabolic diseases, obesity, and cardiovascular diseases) were of low to very-low certainty (Johnston et al., 2023). These limited risks depend on variation between individuals, as well as the preparation methods and degree of processing of the meat. Regular consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs as part of a well-balanced diet is advantageous. 

Given the complex nutrient composition of meat, there are very limited options for replacement, and no simple 1-for-1 replacement. Individuals with sufficient resources are able to consume a well-balanced diet while restricting meat, dairy, and other animal food sources. However, individuals with fewer resources may not have access to alternatives but can ensure a balanced diet by including animal sourced foods. Reducing meat consumption globally could result in additional malnutrition, especially in already vulnerable populations such as children and pregnant women. 

Livestock and the environment 

Plant-based foods have been proposed as an alternative to meat. Plant-based food production generates large amounts of by-products that are inedible by humans (Thompson et al., 2023). Livestock consume by-products of human food production, simultaneously converting these back into the natural cycle and producing high-quality food products. 

Well-managed livestock systems can improve environmental conditions by sequestering carbon, improving soil health, supporting biodiversity, and protecting watersheds. Simplified approaches to sustainability, such as reduction in livestock numbers globally, may actually increase environmental problems on a larger scale, especially as increases in plant-based food production require additional arable land. 

Are there alternatives? 

Technologies based on cultured cells that aim to create a food product similar to meat have been under development for several decades (Wood et al, 2023). Should these technologies create a product with similar nutrient profiles, at less cost, and with lower environmental impact, they could provide nutrient-dense alternatives to meat. However, the technological issues with scaling production to a level where it is viable indicate that it may take considerable additional time to meet those goals.

To meet the demand of a growing population, it is critical that we increase efficiency of meat production, while building environmentally sustainable livestock food systems. It is critical to continue research, active conversations, and allowing science to do what science does best—asking questions. 

Related articles

Johnston, B., De Smet, S., Leroy, F., Mente, A., & Stanton, A. (2023). Non-communicable disease risk associated with red and processed meat consumption-magnitude, certainty, and contextuality of risk? Animal Frontiers 13(2). 28-34. https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfac094

 Leroy, F., Smith, N., Adesogan, A. T., Beal, T., Iannotti, L., Moughan, P. J., & Mann, N. The role of meat in the human diet: Evolutionary aspects and nutritional value. Animal Frontiers 13(2) 11-18. https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfac093

 Thompson, L., Rowntree, J., Windisch, W., Waters, S. M., Shalloo, L., & Manzano, P. (2023). Ecosystem management using livestock: Embracing diversity and respecting ecological principles. Animal Frontiers 13(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfac094

 Wood, P., Thorrez, L., Hocquette, J.-F., Troy, D., & Gagaoua, M. (2023). “Cellular agriculture”: Current gaps between facts and claims regarding “cell-based meat.” Animal Frontiers 13(2) 68-74. https://doi.org/10.1093/af/vfac092

To read the entire Dublin Declaration, or to sign, visit the website. As of the publication date, there are over 900 signatures from across the globe.

_{Featured image via Pixabay (public domain)}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Studying ancient tsunamis is all about glasses

If you go back a mere 40 years or so, not a long time really, then you pretty much arrive at the time when the modern study of ancient tsunamis began. Before then there had been some work, but it really kicked off with Brian Atwater and his work on the 1700 CE Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. His seminal work pieced together all the evidence that basically said there was a big earthquake and it generated a huge tsunami. The evidence included the now-famous ghost forests you can find along the Washington State coast if you know where to look. It also included a long thin strip of sediment sandwiched between peat layers like a jam sponge cake that you can easily pick out on river banks as they near the sea. This evidence had been there for nearly 300 years waiting for someone to come along and have a Eureka moment. This is where the glasses come in.

Like anyone who is myopic, you need glasses to see properly. It is the same with a scientist. Scientific discovery isn’t as you see in the movies where handsome actor A says to an even more ridiculously handsome actor B something like “I know what this is, look at that rock, it’s obvious…” OK, so that was a B-movie, but the point is that invariably with the study of ancient tsunamis nothing is obvious. While it is often the case today that a tsunami researcher wanders down to a bit of coast, pokes around a bit, and finds an ancient tsunami, this does not mean that it is easy. A lot of work has gone in before a spade has been put into the ground. Maps, satellite images, historical documents, academic papers, and old traditions have all been studied to try and make every moment you spend “on the ground” actually worth it. After all, research funding does not grow on trees and it needs to go a long way.

In the early days of tsunami research, it wasn’t exactly the Wild West but the world’s coastlines were pretty much your oyster. They were a blank sheet. We knew where a lot of historical tsunamis had happened, but when you dipped into prehistory there were no newspaper accounts, no convenient photos or tweets on the internet. It was down to science. The downside, though, was that unlike today where you can take university courses about tsunamis or even do a thesis about them, in the beginning of the study of ancient tsunamis there was no rule book, no textbook to learn from; we were making the rules up as we went along.

In the beginning, our eyes were open but not seeing: what were the signs that indicated that an ancient tsunami had been here? Many times over the years, I have been asked what a tsunami deposit (the geological evidence) looks like. That is a bit like asking “how long is a piece of string?” There is no one-size-fits-all answer. I have come up with what I feel is about the only reasonable answer to that question: it is a deposit that is out of place. A bit like a weed in garden, there is something not quite right about it. In many cases it is obvious; you are standing two miles inland on the edge of a river bank and can see a beautiful yellow sandy layer sandwiched between two dark brown peats. The sandy layer extends as far as the eye can see in both directions, it is chock full of sea shells, and lies on top of a layer of dead trees all pointing inland in the direction they fell. 

OK, that might be a bit of a researcher’s dream, but there are deposits like that. A layer of sand that has come from the sea, bowled over a forest, and deposited sand and shells two miles inland. You don’t have to be a genius to figure that out—or rather, you don’t have to be one now, but when we started it was head-scratchingly interesting and needed a lot of laboratory analysis to work out all the details. We have “banked” all of that information now and so do not need to reinvent the wheel for some types of deposit—in a sense, that information represented the first pair of glasses. We could see better and we could find tsunami deposits!

Through the years my “glasses” have been changed regularly. As the years go by, the banked information from a seemingly endless variety of deposits has grown and so what used to be seemingly impossible to figure out is now much easier to recognize. However, all that has really happened is that we have moved on to harder cases or revisited cases that were less obvious the first time around now equipped with new insights. The more we learn, the more we change our way of seeing the evidence around us.

There have been several occasions where I have given myself a hearty head smack when I have revisited a site and the veil has been lifted by my new glasses. It is good to know that we do not know everything, but equally it is good to know that we are learning more every year. If nothing else, we are keeping the tsunami optician in business and in doing that we increase our understanding of these devastating events. There is a saying in earth science: “the present is the key to the past.” Well, our work puts a spin on that: “the past is the key to the future.” Bigger tsunamis have occurred in prehistory than we have ever seen in historic time. We need to learn as much about these as possible in order to be prepared for them in the future, and for that there will continue to be a need for new glasses.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

How sustainable is sustainability?

Sustainability in agriculture is a topic of much discussion, particularly as it relates to raising specific livestock such as pigs. But what IS sustainability in agriculture? The United States (US Code Title 7, Section 3103) defines sustainable agriculture as:

an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will over the long-term: Satisfy human food and fiber needs; enhance environmental quality and the natural resource base upon which the agriculture economy depends; make the most efficient use of nonrenewable resources and on-farm resources and integrate, where appropriate, natural biological cycles and controls; sustain the economic viability of farm operations; and enhance the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.

Simplified, sustainability can fit into four areas—environmental, economic, societal, and health/wellbeing. 

As described in Vanderohe et al, to reduce environmental impact, the swine industry has used genetic selection (in other words, breeding decisions), enhanced and/or precision nutrition, altered management, and building/mechanical advancements. Breeding for increased feed efficiency and improved maternal behaviors and reproductive traits can increase the amount of product produced with similar or reduced resources. 

The environmental impact of swine production has been reduced through precision feeding and dietary strategies to increase feed use and decrease nutrient excretion. Capturing excreted nutrients for further use as fertilizer is an important management strategy, but this requires proper handling and use to prevent unintentional negative environmental impacts. Further, dietary additions such as phytase can result in a more optimal nitrogen to phosphorous ratio in the animal waste, therefore allowing more nutrients to remain in the soil once applied. However, reducing greenhouse gas emissions will require additional changes to manure processing. 

Increasing animal growth rates, number of animals, and concentration of swine production can create health challenges. Several viral pathogens pose critical risks to swine production (African swine fever, porcine reproductive and respiratory virus, etc.) due to their devastating consequences to the animal/herd, lack of vaccination and treatment options, and fast transmission between animals. Bacterial pathogens pose different challenges; as we face limited diagnostic tools, rapid pathogenesis of many organisms, increased antibiotic resistance, and decreased public acceptance of antibiotic use. There is a need to focus on controlling stressors to minimize immunosuppression and maximize ability of the animals to resist infection, all while improving biosecurity measures that will continue to protect the animals and workers themselves. 

The public has added animal welfare to many definitions of sustainability, with three major concerns: physical functioning (animal should be able to function/thrive and not be pushed to mental or physical failure), naturalness (expression of natural behavior of the species), and subjective interactions (the animal can experience positive states, with reduced negative states within its environment). For example, increased public attention in these areas has led to increased pen sizes for various species and contention over the use of farrowing crates for sows. However, there’s a need to balance improvements in efficiency and sustainability with societal acceptance. If an improvement isn’t accepted by consumers, it will not be profitable. For example, the Enviropig, a genetically altered pig which drastically reduced phosphorus excretion (thus lessening the environmental impact) was not ever approved for consumption and received much criticism from the public despite its potential positive impact on nutrient balance. 

Changes to management such as larger pen sizes can increase the cost of production while simultaneously reducing the number of animals that can be housed. In general, there are increased costs to the producer to support sustainability. These increased costs require the producer to increase yield or increase product price to remain economically sustainable. However, overall consumer opinions on sustainability and animal welfare are not widely reflected in their consumer behaviors and purchasing decisions. 

As we move forward into increasing sustainability in agriculture, it’s important to remember that sustainability in the swine industry is but a piece of a larger puzzle of animal agriculture, which itself is a piece of the large puzzle of global sustainability.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Climate emergency: lessons from Classic Maya to contemporary China [podcast]

The consequences of climate change are catastrophic; floods, fires, droughts, rising sea levels, reduced biodiversity, and resource scarcity are but a few of the effects of failing to act. With the warmest decade on record behind us, and rising emissions before us, not to mention present conversations on how to best manage climate refugees, it is unsurprising that climate change is now a leading concern among institutions, and individuals, around the world. This real and present threat to our planet may seem insurmountable, but there are—and have been—lessons shared on how to mitigate the damage already wrought, and how to prevent future detriment.

On today’s episode, we explore two unique examples of societal adaptation to climate change: one from our past, and one from our present. First, we welcomed Kenneth E. Seligson, the author of The Maya and Climate Change: Human-Environmental Relationships in the Classic Period Lowlands, who shared insights into his work exploring the environmental resilience of the Classic Maya, the environmental challenges they faced and overcame, and the lessons we can learn from them. We then interviewed Scott M. Moore, the author of China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future, to speak about contemporary China’s meteoric and controversial rise to a global power, its leading role in sustainability and technology, and what this means for institutions around the world.

Check out Episode 81 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment podcast through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors.

Recommended reading

You can read the introduction from Scott M. Moore’s book, China’s Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China’s Rise and the World’s Future, which provides an accessible overview of a broad range of emerging issues that have reshaped China’s relationship with the world, including climate change, public health, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology.

In ‘Shifting the Focus’ from Kenneth E. Seligson’s The Maya and Climate Change: Human-Environmental Relationships in the Classic Period Lowlands, Seligson introduces conservation and sustainability practices of the Classic Maya including forestry, agriculture, water management, burnt lime production, and stone processing.

New in paperback, read the introductory chapter of Sustainable Materialism: Environmental Movements and the Politics of Everyday Life, by David Schlosberg and Luke Craven, which proposes the construction of different practices, institutions, systems for meeting some of our basic material needs—food, energy, and clothing—in more just and sustainable ways.

Also new in paperback, read the introduction to Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption, by Alice C. Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, which analyses key developments and anticipated challenges in the emerging field of climate resilience, drawn from the authors’ unique network of national and international leaders in the private, public, and NGO sectors.

Read the following Open Access articles from our leading journals:

• “Low-carbon warfare: climate change, net zero and military operations” by Duncan Depledge from International Affairs (March 2023)
• “Climate Change, Energy Transition, and Constitutional Identity” by J. S. Maloy from International Studies Review (March 2023)
• “Coping with Complexity: Toward Epistemological Pluralism in Climate–Conflict Scholarship” by Paul Beaumont and Cedric de Coning from International Studies Review (December 2023)
• “(Dis)order and (in)justice in a heating world” by Robyn Eckersley from International Affairs (January 2023)
• “What If: The Literary Case for More Climate Change” by Lucy Burnett from ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

_{Featured image: “A morning shot in the jungle of Palenque of the Maya Temple of the Inscriptons and Temple of the Red Queen,” Danny van Dijk, CC0 via Unsplash}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Five books to celebrate British Science Week 2023

British Science Week is a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and math’s, taking place between 10-19 March 2023. To celebrate, join in the conversation, and keep abreast of the latest in science, delve into our reading list. It contains five of our latest books on plant forensics, the magic of mathematics, women in science, and more.

1. Planting Clues: How Plants Solve Crimes

Discover the extraordinary role of plants in modern forensics, from their use as evidence in the trials of high-profile murderers such as Ted Bundy to high value botanical trafficking and poaching.

In Planting Clues, David Gibson explores how plants can help to solve crimes, as well as how plant crimes are themselves solved. He discusses the botanical evidence that proved important in bringing a number of high-profile murderers such as Ian Huntley (the 2002 Soham Murders), and Bruno Hauptman (the 1932 Baby Lindbergh kidnapping) to trial, from leaf fragments and wood anatomy to pollen and spores. Throughout he traces the evolution of forensic botany, and shares the fascinating stories that advanced its progress.

Buy Planting Clues, How Plants Solve Crimes

Take a look at Gibson’s blog on Environmental DNA, as well as John Parrington’s (author of ‘Mind Shift’) blog on what neuroscience can tell us about the mind of a serial killer.

2. The Spirit of Mathematics: Algebra and all that

 What makes mathematics so special? Whether you have anxious memories of the subject from school, or solve quadratic equations for fun, David Acheson’s book will make you look at mathematics afresh.

Following on from his previous bestsellers, The Calculus Story and The Wonder Book of Geometry, here Acheson highlights the power of algebra, combining it with arithmetic and geometry to capture the spirit of mathematics. This short book encompasses an astonishing array of ideas and concepts, from number tricks and magic squares to infinite series and imaginary numbers. Acheson’s enthusiasm is infectious, and, as ever, a sense of quirkiness and fun pervades the book.

Buy The Spirit of Mathematics, Algebra and all that

To learn more, discover our Very Short Introductions series, including editions about Geometry, Algebra, Symmetry, and Numbers.

3. Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science

Why are girls discouraged from doing science? Why do so many promising women leave science in early and mid-career? Why do women not prosper in the scientific workforce?

Not Just For the Boys looks back at how society has historically excluded women from the scientific sphere and discourse, what progress has been made, and how more is still needed. Athene Donald, herself a distinguished physicist, explores societal expectations during both childhood and working life using evidence of the systemic disadvantages women operate under, from the developing science of how our brains are—and more importantly aren’t—gendered, to social science evidence around attitudes towards girls and women doing science.

Buy Not Just for the Boys, Why We Need More Women in Science

Make sure not to miss Athene Donald’s limited 4-part podcast series featuring Donald in conversation with fellow female scientists and allies about the issues women face in the scientific world. 

4. Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science

Using a wide range of entertaining examples, this fascinating book examines the impacts of society’s growing distrust of science, and ultimately provides constructive suggestions for restoring the credibility of the scientific community.

This thought-provoking book argues that, ironically, science’s credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing and confirmation bias, and data mining is fueled by the technological advances in Big Data and the development of ever-increasingly powerful computers.

Buy Distrust, Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science

Check out Gary Smith’s previous titles, including: The Phantom Pattern Problem, The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science, and The AI Delusion.

5. Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness

What is consciousness and why has it evolved? Conscious sensations are essential to our idea of ourselves but is it only humans who feel this way? Do animals? Will future machines?

To answer these questions we need a scientific understanding of consciousness: what it is and why it has evolved. Nicholas Humphrey has been researching these issues for fifty years. In this extraordinary book, weaving together intellectual adventure, cutting-edge science, and his own breakthrough experiences, he tells the story of his quest to uncover the evolutionary history of consciousness: from his discovery of blindsight after brain damage in monkeys, to hanging out with mountain gorillas in Rwanda, to becoming a leading philosopher of mind. Out of this, he has come up with an explanation of conscious feeling—”phenomenal consciousness”—that he presents here in full for the first time.  

Buy Sentience, The Invention of Consciousness (UK Only)

As an added bonus, you can also read more on the topics of evolutionary biology, the magic of mathematics, and artificial intelligence with the Oxford Landmark Science series. Including “must-read” modern science and big ideas that have shaped the way we think, here are a selection of titles from the series to get your started.

You can also explore more titles via our extended reading list via Bookshop UK.

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

Saving Earth’s Refrigerator: what does global warming mean for our planet’s future?

Back in 1988, Jim Hansen of NASA told the United States Congress that the global warming of recent years was due to the burning of fossil fuels, which added so much dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere that it exacerbated the greenhouse effect that kept the planet naturally warm. This new global warming was causing changes to climate and weather. It was greater in high latitudes than in low, and greater over land than over the ocean. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that the continued increase in atmospheric CO₂ from 350 ppm in 1988 to 412 ppm in 2022 is due to the fact that, since 1950, we have burned more than 90% of all the fossil fuel ever burned.

We have also learned that increases in other greenhouse gases emitted by human activities—like methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), and the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)—have added to the CO₂-induced warming. Their effect is calculated by converting them to the equivalent amount of CO₂, then adding that to the actual CO₂ abundance to give the effective CO₂. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this is at about 500 ppm—a lot more than the 412 ppm due to CO₂ alone. No wonder we are warming up.

Global temperature increase means melting snow and ice caps

 Hansen was right. Although the global average temperature increase above the average for 1850-1900 is now almost 1.2ºC, it is close to 1ºC over the ocean, 2ºC over land, and about 3.6ºC over the Arctic. The Arctic is where much of the threat of global warming originates, because that’s where we have the most ice and snow in the Northern Hemisphere. We also find ice and snow in the Antarctic and in what scientists refer to as the “Third Pole,” the high mountains. In these three places, ice and snow are melting away as the world warms.

One key result is that sea level is rising. It rose about 20cm since the 1850-1900 baseline period but is happening at an increasing rate and is now 4 mm a year. Continued ice and snow melt may cause global sea level to reach between 1.5 m and 2 m by the end of the century, and 15 m by the year 2300. Although that estimate may seem extraordinary, geological data show that during periods of natural warming sea levels did rise by such amounts—for instance, 3 million years ago in Pliocene time, CO₂ levels were in the range 450-500 ppm.

Melting snow and ice means losing Earth’s albedo

My lecture audiences are not surprised that global warming melts ice and snow and makes sea levels rise. But they are surprised to learn that this same melt adds to the warming. This happens because ice and snow reflect solar energy. By doing so they keep our climate moderately cool. They are acting as Earth’s Refrigerator. As they melt away we are losing that reflectivity (Earth’s albedo). It’s as if we have gone away on vacation and accidentally left our fridge door open; everything inside begins to rot. Instead of that energy being reflected to outer space, it warms the ground and the ocean, which emit heat that is absorbed by the greenhouse gases. This creates a climate double whammy: warming caused by our CO₂ emissions plus warming added by the loss of albedo. As mentioned earlier, CO₂ is not acting alone. It is aided and abetted in particular by emissions of methane (CH₄). In addition the warming created by these gases is exacerbated by water vapour, which evaporates from the warming ocean and is a powerful greenhouse gas in its own right. 

Greenland is losing ice by melting at its surface. Antarctica is much colder, and very little of its ice is melting at the surface of its vast ice sheet. However, the Southern Ocean around the continent is warming, and its warm water is penetrating beneath the ice shelves that surround the continent, melting them from beneath. The net result is that both Greenland and Antarctica have lost about 5,000 billion tonnes of ice since 1980. Between 1993 and 2018, 8% of sea level rise came from Antarctic melt, 15% from Greenland, 21% from mountain glaciers, and 42% from the thermal expansion of heated seawater; the rest came from the pumping of groundwater for agriculture.

One of the most dramatic indicators of global warming is the loss of sea ice from the Arctic Ocean, which is likely to be ice-free in the summer by 2050. The volume of ice, as well as its area has diminished; since the late 1970s nearly all of the sea ice between 1 m and 6 m thick has disappeared. While this has not changed sea level, it did contribute to the shrinking of Earth’s Refrigerator.

Loss of ice means habitat erosion and extreme weather

Our planetary ice cover is extremely important. Mountain ice forms water towers for nearby populations. As it melts away, so does their water supply. Arctic snow and ice provide habitats for wildlife. As it melts away, those habitats shrink. As the Arctic warms, rain replaces snowfall and turns to ice at the surface, making it difficult for reindeer to feed. As the sea ice melts away from Arctic coasts, waves erode beaches and settlements. As Antarctic sea ice melts, penguin populations shift.

Away from icy regions, global warming dries vegetation and soils in already dry areas, making them more prone to wildfires. When the temperature over the ocean increases by just 1ºC, you get 7% more evaporation, which, when moist marine air hits land, means a lot more flooding in traditionally wet areas.

How can we save Earth’s Refrigerator?

Evidently, anything we can do to eliminate global warming would help us to escape from these various dire side effects. Can we save Earth’s Refrigerator? Much mentioned is the concept of Net Zero, which means taking out from the air as much CO₂ as we add to it. This is a tricky thing to do at the best of times. But in a very real sense it is an illusion, because it would mean maintaining in the air the current level of CO₂, which would lead to continued warming, ice loss, and sea level rise.

What we really need are, firstly, fewer emissions, and, secondly, “negative emissions”—multiple means for extracting vastly more CO₂ than we continue to supply. Without “negative emissions” we will hit an average global warming of well over 2ºC this century, which means well over 4ºC in the polar regions, hence vastly more ice and snow melt. To stop ice and snow melt we must also somehow increase the reflective effects of ice and snow. This could be done in the Arctic, for example, by pumping seawater into the air to stimulate the formation of reflective cloud cover. None of this will be cheap. But if we want our grandchildren and their descendants to experience the same equable climate through which our civilization developed, we have no choice but to work to save Earth’s Refrigerator.

_{Featured image by Michael Fenton, via Unsplash (public domain)}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

The social code: deciphering the genetic basis of hymenopteran social behavior

The authors of a recent study set out to uncover early genetic changes on the path to sociality

Beginning with Darwin, biologists have long been fascinated by the evolution of sociality. In its most extreme form, eusocial species exhibit a division of labor in which certain individuals perform reproductive tasks such as egg laying, while others play non-reproductive roles such as foraging, nest building, and defense. This type of system requires individuals to forgo some or all of their own reproductive success to assist the reproduction of others in their group, a concept that at first glance seems incompatible with the key tenets of evolution (i.e. the drive of natural selection on individuals). While the honeybee is perhaps the most well-known example of a social species, the honeybee’s complex society represents just one end of a spectrum of social structures that can be observed among the Hymenoptera, which includes bees, wasps, and ants. At the other end are more rudimentary social structures involving, at the most basic level, cooperation of just a few individuals and their offspring. 

While most research to date on insect sociality has focused on more complex social systems, understanding the evolution of these more rudimentary forms will likely help to reveal the earliest changes on the path to sociality. The authors of a new study published in Genome Biology and Evolution set out to fill this gap. According to first author Emeline Favreau, “Our work was unique in that we focused on six bee and wasp species that are not highly social, but have more rudimentary forms of cooperation, and are close relatives of highly social species.” By using machine learning algorithms to analyze gene expression across six species that represent multiple origins of sociality, the authors uncovered a shared genetic “toolkit” for sociality, which may form the basis for the evolution of more complex social structures.

The international team of researchers included Katherine S. Geist (co-first author) and Amy L. Toth from Iowa State University, Christopher D.R. Wyatt and Seirian Sumner from University College London, and Sandra M. Rehan from York University in Toronto. The authors worked together on this article “because we all find it important to understand the origins of sociality,” says Favreau. “We had been in the field observing the fantastic diversity of social lives, such as large nests of wasps busy with collective behavior or small carpenter bees organizing their broods in minute tree branches. We kept asking ourselves: But how did these behaviors come about? With this paper, we dove deep into the evolutionary stories to uncover molecular evidence of the emergence of social organization.” 

The study involved a comparative meta-analysis of data from three bee species and three wasp species that represent four independent origins of sociality: the halictid bee Megalopta genalis, the xylocopine bees Ceratina australensis and C. calcarata, the stenogastrine wasp Liostenogaster flavolineata, and the polistine wasps Polistes canadensis and P. dominula. “Using data on global gene expression in the brains of different behavioral groups (reproducing and non-reproducing females), we found that there is a core set of common genes associated with these fundamental social divisions in both bees and wasps,” explains Favreau. “This is exciting because it suggests that there may be common molecular ‘themes’ associated with cooperation across species.”

A number of the functional groups found to be associated with sociality in this study have also been linked to sociality in other social bees and ants. These include genes related to chromatin binding, DNA binding, regulation of telomere length, and reproduction and metabolism. On the other hand, the study also identified many lineage-specific genes and functional groups associated with social phenotypes. According to the authors, these findings “reveal how taxon-specific molecular mechanisms complement a core toolkit of molecular processes in sculpting traits related to the evolution of eusociality.”

Interestingly, Favreau notes that “a machine learning approach to these large datasets was the best method for uncovering these similarities.” While the authors first attempted traditional methods for studying differential gene expression, these largely grouped species by phylogeny and failed to identify gene sets associated with sociality. In contrast, machine learning tools provided “a more nuanced and sensitive approach,” allowing the authors to identify gene expression similarities across a wide evolutionary distance.

One remaining question is how the findings of this study, which focused on species with rudimentary forms of sociality, might compare to an obligately eusocial species with morphologically distinct castes of reproductive and non-reproductive individuals. According to Favreau, “This is something we are currently working on and hope to be able to address in the near future. We are taking a broader approach to examine how genes and genomes change during the course of social evolution.” This includes adding transcriptomic data for 16 additional bee and wasp species, enabling “a larger comparative study with species of wasps and bees that are solitary, have rudimentary sociality, and have complex sociality.” 

Expansion of the study however requires obtaining samples from around the globe, a feat that has at times proved difficult. “It was actually a challenge to find many of these species, some of which had never been studied before on a genetic level!” notes Favreau. “Given the global diversity of taxa and the remote locations many were collected in, we are happy to have been able to obtain all specimens and genomes given the global pandemic and travel restrictions the past few years.” The team was ultimately able to acquire a number of samples through partnerships with other investigators and institutions, emphasizing the critical role of collaboration in scientific discovery. 

_{Featured image by Sandra Rehan (CC-BY: https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evac182)}

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.

You are what you eat. Or is your immune system what you eat? [infographic]

You may not immediately connect the food you eat with how your body responds to inflammation. However, over the past decade, researchers have been identifying interactions between the immune system and metabolism, or, how what you eat changes your immune response. These interactions are especially important during times of high energy use, such as during growth or lactation, as activation of the immune system may cause nutrients (energy) to be redirected away from growth or lactation to the immune response (and therefore, survival; Davis, 2022). 

As described in a recent Animal Frontiers article, studies in livestock have led to several key insights in this field. The immune and metabolic systems within specific tissues are capable of responding to different environmental cues, allowing individuals to adapt to changing conditions. First used to describe the relationship between obesity and inflammation, “immunometabolism” is defined as the interaction between the immune system and the metabolic system. Importantly, the inflammation related to metabolic conditions is different from that associated with disease.

The interaction between the immune and metabolic systems occurs at several levels, with key cell types and tissues that communicate to coordinate the responses. Fatty acids and reactive oxygen species generated within cells are some of the best-known triggers of immunometabolic adaptations. The liver and fat have been most frequently studied, as these tissues play important roles in both metabolism and immune responses. However, the role of gut microbiota in both inflammation and metabolism has emerged as an important area of study. Antioxidants and other nutrients may be able to regulate the immunometabolic reactions. Thus, nutrition and the immune response are intricately linked with implications for health and performance in both livestock and in humans. 

Further study is needed to understand how climate change and other environmental variables will influence immunometabolism, as well as which nutrients most effectively control immunometabolic reactions for optimal health. 

Explore the infographic to learn more:

Recommended articles

Take a further look into immunometabolism in these related articles in Animal Frontiers:

• “Immunometabolism and inflammation: a perspective on animal productivity” by Ellen Davis
• “Immunometabolism in livestock: triggers and physiological role of transcription regulators, nutrients and microbiota” by Juan Loor and Ahmed Elolimy

OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.