While Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of oats, high oil content in oat grains creates challenges during milling, reducing processing efficiency and limiting product innovation – particularly in high-demand sectors like oat flour and plant-based proteins.

Researchers from the University of South Australia, the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI), and the University of Adelaide are collaborating on research designed to better understand the biological processes responsible for oil synthesis in oat grains.

In this study, two contemporary varieties of oats were examined using spatial imaging techniques to track oil build-up during grain development. Researchers then applied ‘omics’ technologies – lipidomics and proteomics – to analyse lipid and protein expression, which provided key insights into the biological mechanisms involved in the actual formation of the grain, including those relating to oil synthesis.

The UniSA findings have provided further evidence of the mechanisms that underlie the amount of oil in an oat grain. These findings will help to guide future breeding efforts for naturally lower-oil oat varieties, improving milling yields and creating new value-added opportunities across the oat supply chain.

UniSA PhD candidate, Darren Lau, says that current oil removal methods are inefficient and that low-oil breeding programs will aid industry growth.

“While oil can be removed from partially milled oat flakes – using supercritical carbon dioxide prior to further milling – this approach is laborious and expensive,” he says.

“Breeding low-oil oat varieties is a cost-effective approach but requires further understanding of oil production in oats. This is where our research is critical.

“Our analysis has identified several key enzymes that are involved in oil synthesis which could be genetically manipulated to lower oil content of oat grains.

“Reducing oil content could also unlock new opportunities in sectors like oat flour and alternative proteins, which could significantly strengthen Australia’s position in the market.”

The economic potential of these opportunities is reflected in the quantity of oats exported globally. For example, in 2022 twenty-six million metric tonnes of oats were produced worldwide, ranking them seventh among cereals in production quantity.

Lowering oil content in oat grains will enhance processing and product versatility, positioning them alongside traditional cereal staples like barley, maize, wheat, and rice, and further driving industry growth.

The UniSA findings are being used by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) oat grain quality consortium to improve suitability for milling and food/beverage ingredient development. Additional research is continuing within the consortium that will build on the study’s findings to further inform breeding efforts aimed at reducing oil content in oats.

“The consortia are currently working on a larger and more diverse oat cohort to further investigate molecular markers and nutrient partitioning of oil in oats,” Lau says.

“The consortia are also investigating one of the key enzymes validated in this study to determine whether manipulating or removing it can lower oil content, and how that affects the growth of the plant.”

SARDI Project Lead Dr Janine Croser, says the study’s findings provide further evidence of key pathways involved in oat oil biosynthesis.

“This research provides important insights into the biological mechanisms underlying varietal differences of oil production in developing oat grains,” Dr Croser says.

“We expect that the development of low-oil lines will improve efficiencies in the flour milling process and potentially lead to novel uses for oats.

“With demand for plant-based foods on the rise, we anticipate the oat grain quality consortium research will help put Australia at the forefront of oat innovation – supporting growers, processors, and exporters alike.”

The full paper, Proteomic and lipidomic analyses reveal novel molecular insights into oat (Avena sativa L.) lipid regulation and crosstalk with starch synthesis during grain development, is available online.

In a new study, published July 18 in the high impact journal Science Advances, Western engineering professor Bing Li and his collaborators at Universidad Industrial de Santander (Industrial University of Santander) in Colombia and the United States Geological Survey used machine learning to re-examine historical earthquake data from the Yellowstone caldera over a 15-year period. The team was able to retroactively detect and assign magnitudes to approximately 10 times more seismic events, or earthquakes, than previously recorded.

A caldera – like the one at Yellowstone Park spanning parts of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana – is a large depression or hollow formed when a volcano erupts and the magma chamber beneath it empties, leading to the collapse of the land above. This is different than a volcanic crater, which is formed by outward blasting.

The historical catalogue for the Yellowstone caldera now contains 86,276 earthquakes spanning the years 2008 to 2022, significantly improving previous understanding of volcanic and seismic systems through better data collection and systematic analyses.

A key finding in the study is that more than half of the earthquakes recorded in Yellowstone were part of earthquake swarms – groups of small, interconnected earthquakes that spread and shift within a relatively small area over a relatively short period of time. This is unlike an aftershock, which is a smaller earthquake that follows a larger mainshock in the same general area.

“While Yellowstone and other volcanoes each have unique features, the hope is that these insights can be applied elsewhere,” said Li, an expert in fluid-induced earthquakes and rock mechanics. “By understanding patterns of seismicity, like earthquake swarms, we can improve safety measures, better inform the public about potential risks, and even guide geothermal energy development away from danger in areas with promising heat flow.”

Molten-detecting machines

Prior to the application of machine learning, earthquakes were generally detected through manual inspection by trained experts. This process takes time, is cost-intensive and often detects fewer events than possible now with machine learning. Machine learning has sparked a data-mining gold rush in recent years as seismologists revisit the wealth of historical waveform data stored in datacenters across the world and learn more about current and previously unknown seismic regions around the world.

“If we had to do it old school with someone manually clicking through all this data looking for earthquakes, you couldn’t do it. It’s not scalable,” said Li.

The study also shows that earthquake swarms beneath the Yellowstone caldera have occurred along relatively immature, rougher fault structures, compared to more typical mature fault structures seen in regions such as southern California and even immediately outside the caldera.

The roughness was measured by characterizing earthquakes as fractals, which are geometric shapes that exhibit self-similarity, meaning they appear similar at different scales. First visualized by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1980, fractal patterns are seen in coastlines, snowflakes, broccoli, and even the branching of blood vessels. The fractal-based models, targeting roughness versus regularity, were able to characterize these earthquake swarms, which the researchers believe were caused by the mix of slowly moving underground water and sudden bursts of fluid.

“To a large extent, there is no systematic understanding of how one earthquake triggers another in a swarm. We can only indirectly measure space and time between events,” said Li. “But now, we have a far more robust catalogue of seismic activity under the Yellowstone caldera, and we can apply statistical methods that help us quantify and find new swarms that we haven’t seen before, study them, and see what we can learn from them.”

Researchers found the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine, introduced across the UK in late summer 2024, led to a 72 percent reduction in babies hospitalized with the virus if mothers were vaccinated.

The findings are the first to show the real-world effectiveness of the vaccine in pregnant women in the UK.

Uptake of the jab among pregnant women could help to limit the number of sick babies each winter, reducing hospital pressures, experts say.

RSV is a common virus that causes coughs and colds but can lead to a severe lung infection called bronchiolitis, which can be dangerous in babies, with some requiring admission to intensive care. The virus is the main infectious cause of hospitalization for babies in the UK and globally.

Receiving the vaccine during pregnancy helps to protect both mother and baby. Antibodies – proteins which help to prevent the virus causing severe infection – produced by the mother in response to the vaccine are passed to the fetus, providing protection from severe RSV for the first six months after birth.

The research team, led by the Universities of Edinburgh and Leicester, recruited 537 babies across England and Scotland who had been admitted to hospital with severe respiratory disease in the winter of 2024-2025, the first season of vaccine implementation. 391 of the babies tested positive for RSV.

Mothers of babies who did not have RSV were two times more likely to have received the vaccine before delivery than the mothers of RSV-positive babies – 41 percent compared with 19 percent.

Receiving the vaccine more than 14 days before delivery offered a higher protective effect, with a 72 percent reduction in hospital admissions compared with 58 percent for infants whose mothers were vaccinated at any time before delivery.

Experts recommend getting vaccinated as soon as possible from 28 weeks of pregnancy to provide the best protection, as this allows more time for the mother to generate and pass on protective antibodies to the baby, but the jab can be given up to birth.

Previous research has found that only half of expectant mothers in England and Scotland are currently receiving the RSV vaccine, despite its high success at preventing serious illness.

The findings highlight the importance of raising awareness of the availability and effectiveness of the new vaccine to help protect babies, experts say.

The study is published in the journal The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health. The research collaboration also included the Universities of Bristol, Oxford, Queen’s University Belfast, UCL and Imperial College London and 30 hospitals across England and Scotland.

The study was funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) Respiratory Syncytial Virus Consortium in Europe (RESCEU), the Wellcome Trust and National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit in Respiratory Infections, Imperial College London.

Dr Thomas Williams, study lead from the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Regeneration and Repair, and Paediatric Consultant at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh, said: “With the availability of an effective RSV vaccine shown to significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization in young infants in the UK, there is an excellent opportunity for pregnant women to get vaccinated and protect themselves and their infants from RSV bronchiolitis this coming winter.”

Professor Damian Roland from the Leicester Hospitals and University and Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine, said: “Our work highlights the value of vaccination and in keeping with the treatment to prevention principle of the NHS 10 Year plan we would ask all health care systems to consider how they will optimize the roll out of RSV vaccination for mothers.”

The object was found as part of the survey project FOSSIL (Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy), which takes advantage of the Subaru Telescope’s wide field of view. The object was discovered through observations taken in March, May, and August 2023 using the Subaru Telescope. The object is currently designated 2023 KQ₁₄; a more classical name will be assigned later by the International Astronomical Union. After that, follow-up observations in July 2024 with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and a search for unrecognized sightings of the object in old data from other observatories allowed astronomers to track the object’s orbit over 19 years. Due to its peculiar distant orbit, 2023 KQ₁₄ has been classified as a “sednoid,” making it only the fourth known example of this rare type of object.

Numerical simulations conducted by the FOSSIL team, some of which used the PC cluster operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, indicate that 2023 KQ₁₄ has maintained a stable orbit for at least 4.5 billion years. Although its current orbit differs from those of the other sednoids, the simulations suggest that their orbits were remarkably similar around 4.2 billion years ago.

The fact that 2023 KQ₁₄ now follows an orbit different from the other sednoids indicates that the outer Solar System is more diverse and complex than previously thought. This discovery also places new constraints on the hypothetical Planet Nine. If Planet Nine exists, its orbit must lie farther out than typically predicted.

Dr. Yukun Huang of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan who conducted simulations of the orbit comments, “The fact that 2023 KQ₁₄‘s current orbit does not align with those of the other three sednoids lowers the likelihood of the Planet Nine hypothesis. It is possible that a planet once existed in the Solar System but was later ejected, causing the unusual orbits we see today.”

Regarding the significance of this discovery, Dr. Fumi Yoshida states, “2023 KQ₁₄ was found in a region far away where Neptune’s gravity has little influence. The presence of objects with elongated orbits and large perihelion distances in this area implies that something extraordinary occurred during the ancient era when 2023 KQ₁₄ formed. Understanding the orbital evolution and physical properties of these unique, distant objects is crucial for comprehending the full history of the Solar System. At present, the Subaru Telescope is among the few telescopes on Earth capable of making such discoveries. I would be happy if the FOSSIL team could make many more discoveries like this one and help draw a complete picture of the history of the Solar System.”