“For athletes who participate in a sport that involves a tackle or direct contact, adapting a rugby-style tackle where the players lead with their shoulders, not their heads, could make college sports safer,” said study author Zach Garrett, DHS, of Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. “A small number of NFL teams have incorporated the rugby-style tackle in an effort to reduce risk of concussion.”

The study measured impact data from 30 male university athletes during their spring practice season. Twenty of the participants were football players who had impact sensors placed in their helmets. Ten of the participants were rugby players who had mouthguards with sensors inserted into them.

At the end of the practice season, the football participants totaled 3,921 impacts over the course of 12 practices, compared to 1,868 impacts over nine practices received by rugby participants. After researchers adjusted for other factors such as false impacts, different sample sizes, and practices, they found that the frequency of impacts was lower for the rugby players than for the football players. The research team also found that the sensors recorded lower impact forces to the head in rugby in comparison to football.

Impact was measured in g-force, which is the measurement of gravity described in units of acceleration. Overall the rugby players had impacts with an average of 21 g-force. Football players had impacts with an average of 63 g-force.

“Further studies with larger numbers of participants are needed to confirm these results and also to determine whether using a rugby-style tackle could effectively reduce the force of impact and potentially reduce the number or severity of concussions in college football,” said Garrett.

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Conceptualized by Najibi and tested on the Missouri River Basin, the statistical model is based on data in the area from the last 50 years. They found that long duration floods first require high flow conditions in rivers created by recurrent high intensity rainfall events, which is then followed by a large stable long-lived low-pressure system — a storm cell. These conditions may then result in large-scale devastating floods. In shorter duration floods, however, this land-atmospheric coupling is negligible thus explaining why not all storms result in widespread flooding.

“It is possible to predict the duration of floods by coupling atmospheric dynamics and land surface conditions in the watershed,” summed up Najibi, a PhD candidate majoring in civil and environmental engineering (water resources engineering) in CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering.

On the benefits of this new development, Najibi and Devineni said they are are able to mitigate potential risk imposed by longer duration floods on critical infrastructure systems such as flood control dams, bridges and power plants. It is also possible to predict how long the duration of flooding and inundation will be.

Najibi and his team plan to expand their study, which appeared in the Nature research journal npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, across the United States. This work is part of Devineni’s DOE Early Career project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Devineni is an associate professor in the Grove School and NOAA CREST. Other collaborators in the research include Mengqian Lu (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) and Rui A. P. Perdigão (Universtät Wien, Austria/ University of Lisbon, Portugal).

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Still, farmers have mixed results when they supplement their fields with beetles or other predators.

A new study of cabbage crops in New York — a state industry worth close to $60 million in 2017, according to the USDA — reports for the first time that the effectiveness of releasing natural enemies to combat pests depends on the landscape surrounding the field.

“The landscape context can inform how to better use this strategy in field conditions,” said Ricardo Perez-Alvarez, the paper’s first author and a graduate student in the lab of co-author Katja Poveda, associate professor of entomology. Brian Nault, an entomology professor at Cornell AgriTech, is also a co-author.

The paper, “Effectiveness of Augmentative Biological Control Depends on Landscape Context,” was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports. It showed that releasing pest predators led to fewer pests, less plant damage and increased crop biomass on farms surrounded by more forest and natural areas and less agricultural land. But on farms predominantly surrounded by other farms, the reverse was true, with more pests and plant damage and reduced crop biomass in spite of added predators.

The reasons behind this phenomenon are complex, and depend on interactions between local predators and those that are added, which can vary on a case-by-case basis.

“Landscape composition influences how predator species interact with one another and thereby mediates the potential consequences for biological pest control,” Perez-Alvarez said.

The study focused on cabbage crops and three cabbage pests (the larvae of the cabbage white butterfly, the diamondback moth and the cabbage looper moth), and their natural enemies. In central New York, there are 156 native predator species and seven parasitoid wasps that prey on these pests. Among these, two generalist predators are commonly used to augment fields with additional pest enemies: the spined soldier bug and the convergent ladybird beetle. These two generally complement each other well because soldier bugs feed on larvae and ladybugs feed on eggs.

In the study, the researchers set up experimental plots on 11 cabbage farms in central New York, which together represented a range of surrounding landscapes from agricultural lands to natural areas.

Each farm had two cabbage plots: one that was left alone so it was exposed to the naturally occurring predators, and another where soldier bugs and ladybugs were added. The researchers then collected a wide range of data that included surveys of pest and predator abundances, plant damage and final crop yields. They also conducted lab experiments to better understand the relationships between predators and how those interactions impact pest control.

Given how complex these predator-predator and predator-pest interactions and their relationships to pest control can be, more study is needed to make specific recommendations to growers. Still, the paper is a first step toward understanding how landscapes influence the effects of augmenting farms with predators for pest control.

The study was funded by National Institute of Food and Agriculture at the United States Department of Agriculture.

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The large-scale genome-wide association study, undertaken by over 100 academics worldwide, identified eight genetic variants linked to anorexia nervosa. The results suggest that the genetic origins of the disorder are both metabolic and psychiatric.

Anorexia nervosa is a serious and potentially life-threatening illness. Symptoms of anorexia can include a dangerously low body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and a distorted body image. Anorexia nervosa affects between 1-2% of women and 0.2-0.4% of men and has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness.

The researchers combined data collected by the Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative and the Eating Disorders Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. The resulting dataset included 16,992 cases of anorexia nervosa and 55,525 controls, from 17 countries across North America, Europe, and Australasia.

The key findings of the study are:

• The genetic basis of anorexia nervosa overlaps with metabolic (including glycemic), lipid (fats), and anthropometric (body measurement) traits, and the study shows that this is independent of genetic effects that influence body mass index (BMI).
• The genetic basis of anorexia nervosa overlaps with other psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia.
• Genetic factors associated with anorexia nervosa also influence physical activity, which could explain the tendency for people with anorexia nervosa to be highly active.

Dr Gerome Breen, from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, at King’s College London, who co-led the study, commented: “Metabolic abnormalities seen in patients with anorexia nervosa are most often attributed to starvation, but our study shows metabolic differences may also contribute to the development of the disorder. Furthermore, our analyses indicate that the metabolic factors may play nearly or just as strong a role as purely psychiatric effects.”

Professor Janet Treasure, also from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, said: “Over time there has been uncertainty about the framing of anorexia nervosa because of the mixture of physical and psychiatric features. Our results confirm this duality and suggest that integrating metabolic information may help clinicians to develop better ways to treat eating disorders.”

Professor Cynthia Bulik, from the University of North Carolina, said: “Our findings strongly encourage us to shine the torch on the role of metabolism to help understand why some individuals with anorexia nervosa drop back to dangerously low weights, even after hospital-based refeeding.”

The study concludes that anorexia nervosa may need to be thought of as a hybrid ‘metabo-psychiatric disorder’ and that it will be important to consider both metabolic and psychological risks factors when exploring new avenues for treating this potentially lethal illness.

Andrew Radford, Chief Executive of Beat, the eating disorder charity, said: “This is ground-breaking research that significantly increases our understanding of the genetic origins of this serious illness. We strongly encourage researchers to examine the results of this study and consider how it can contribute to the development of new treatments so we can end the pain and suffering of eating disorders.”

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