“This is extremely valuable for people with hereditary eye disease,” said Ala Moshiri, associate professor of ophthalmology and vision science in the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine and Eye Center. “The whole ophthalmic community is going to start using these data.”

The results are the latest to come from the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, of which UC Davis’ Mouse Biology Program is a founding member. The goal of the consortium is to identify a function for every gene in the mouse genome, by creating lines of “knockout” mice that lack a single specific gene and screening them for their effects. Consortium researchers have previously identified a set of genes essential to life, genes linked to deafness and even those linked to hereditary bad breath.

To date, the consortium has generated more than 7,000 strains of gene-knockout mice, of which 4,364 have been characterized across 11 organ systems.

“The data being generated by the IMPC is accelerating the application of genomics in clinical medicine,” said Kent Lloyd, director of the UC Davis Mouse Biology Program and principal investigator of the Knockout Mouse Production and Phenotyping (KOMP2) project at UC Davis.

261 new genes linked to blindness

The team led by Bret Moore, resident at the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, Moshiri and colleagues combed the consortium database for genes linked to eye and vision defects. They identified 347 genes, of which 86 were either well-established as involved in eye disease or were associated with vision in some way. Three-quarters of the genes — 261 — were not previously known to cause eye disease in any species.

“In 2018, if someone has a form of hereditary blindness, we can identify the cause 50 to 75 percent of the time,” Moshiri said. “In the remaining cases, we know the mutation is there but we don’t know where to look. Now eye centers that do DNA sequencing can call back patients and screen them for these new genes.”

While the mouse and human genomes clearly differ, most human genes have an analogous counterpart in mice. The UC Davis team is collaborating with eye centers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the University of Iowa to check the newly identified mouse genes against their human equivalents, Moshiri said.

The new genetic information could also enable new therapies for hereditary eye disease. In 2017, the FDA approved the first gene therapy for any disease — treating hereditary blindness caused by a defect in the retinal gene RPE65.

“We expect that more and more of these genetic diseases will be treatable,” Moshiri said.

The research in this paper was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Medical Research Council in the U.K. Additional support came from Research for Preventing Blindness, the International Retinal Research Foundation and the government of Canada.

UC Davis authors in addition to Moore, Moshiri and Lloyd are: Brian Leonard, Lionel Sebbag, Sydney Edwards, Ann Cooper, Denise Imai, Christopher Reilly, Stephen Griffey, Lynette Bower, David Clary and Sara Thomasy. Other authors were from institutions including the MRC Harwell Institute, U.K.; European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and The Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, U.K.; Université de Strasbourg, France; The Centre for Phenogenomics, The Hospital for Sick Children and Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto; Baylor College of Medicine, Houston; The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine; Nanjing University, China; RIKEN BioResource Center, Tsukuba, Japan; Queen Mary University of London; Seoul National University, South Korea; CNR Institute of Cell Biology and Neurobiology, Italy; and German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.

Harvard University researchers have developed a soft, non-toxic wearable sensor that unobtrusively attaches to the hand and measures the force of a grasp and the motion of the hand and fingers.

The research was published in Advanced Functional Materials and is a collaboration between The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Boston Children’s Hospital.

One novel element of the sensor is a non-toxic, highly conductive liquid solution.

“We have developed a new type of conductive liquid that is no more dangerous than a small drop of salt water,” said Siyi Xu, a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the paper. “It is four times more conductive than previous biocompatible solutions, leading to cleaner, less noisy data.”

Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has filed a portfolio of intellectual property relating to the architecture of novel soft sensors and is seeking commercialization opportunities for these technologies.

The sensing solution is made from potassium iodide, which is a common dietary supplement, and glycerol, which is a common food additive. After a short mixing period, the glycerol breaks the crystal structure of potassium iodide and forms potassium cations (K+) and iodide ions (I-), making the liquid conductive. Because glycerol has a lower evaporation rate than water, and the potassium iodide is highly soluble, the liquid is both stable across a range of temperatures and humidity levels and highly conductive.

“Previous biocompatible soft sensors have been made using sodium chloride-glycerol solutions but these solutions have low conductivities, which makes the sensor data very noisy, and it also takes about 10 hours to prepare,” said Xu. “We’ve shortened that down to about 20 minutes and get very clean data.”

The design of the sensors also takes the need of children into account. Rather than a bulky glove, the silicon-rubber sensor sits on top of the finger and on the finger pad.

“We often see that children who are born early or who have been diagnosed with early developmental disorders have highly sensitive skin,” said Eugene Goldfield, coauthor of the study and an Associate Professor in the Program in Behavioral Sciences at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Associate Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University. “By sticking to the top of the finger, this device gives accurate information while getting around the sensitively of the child’s hand.”

Goldfield is the Principal investigator of the Flexible Electronics for Toddlers project at the Wyss Institute, which designs modular robotic systems for toddlers born prematurely and at risk for cerebral palsy.

Goldfield and his colleagues currently study motor function using the Motion Capture Lab at SEAS and Wyss. While motion capture can tell a lot about movement, it cannot measure force, which is critical to diagnosing neuromotor and cognitive developmental disabilities.

“Early diagnosis is the name of the game when it comes to treating these developmental disabilities and this wearable sensor can give us a lot of advantages not currently available,” said Goldfield.

This paper only tested the device on adult hands. Next, the researchers plan to scale down the device and test it on the hands of children.

“The ability to quantify complex human motions gives us an unprecedented diagnostic tool,” says Rob Wood, the Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at SEAS, Founding Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute, and senior author of the study. “The focus on the development of motor skills in toddlers presents unique challenges for how to integrate many sensors into a small, lightweight, and unobtrusive wearable device. These new sensors solve these challenges — and if we can create wearable sensors for such a demanding task, we believe that this will also open up applications in diagnostics, therapeutics, human-computer interfaces, and virtual reality.”

This research was co-authored by Daniel M. Vogt, Wen-Hao Hsu, John Osborne, Timothy Walsh, Jonathan R. Foster, Sarah K. Sullivan, Vincent C. Smith and Andreas Rousing. It was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

“Bone is a dynamic tissue that responds to external stimuli, so changes in bone structure provide great clues about where and how a person lived and died,” Smith-Guzmán said. “When I looked at an additional 125 skulls from nine burial sites across Panama, I found seven cases of surfers’ ear in males and one in a female skull, all from sites near the Gulf of Panama.”

No one really understands exactly how the bony growths, technically called exostoses, form. But the skin is thin in the ear canal and the accepted theory is that cold water or cold temperatures caused by wind and water make the bone react by growing extra layers, similar to the way bone spurs form on the feet and in other places where there is constant irritation or stress. Almost half of the members of a swimming club in England had surfer’s ear according to a report cited in the study.

Unlike most tropical countries where seawater is warm, water temperature in the Gulf of Panama plummets between January and April when strong trade winds from the north force warm surface water out into the Pacific and colder, deep water rises to the surface to replace it. This deep, nutrient-rich water feeds tiny sea organisms, which in turn are eaten by fish and whales. The Gulf becomes an extraordinarily productive fishing ground supporting a thriving fishing industry and attracting dolphins, sharks and other top-of-the-food-chain animals.

Years ago, when co-author Richard Cooke, zooarchaeologist at STRI, unearthed a male skeleton with surfer’s ear in Sitio Sierra, near Aguadulce in Panama, he was a STRI post-doctoral student with only rudimentary knowledge of physical anthropology. But he collected all of the human remains he found, enabling Nicole-Smith Guzmán to reexamine them 43 years later.

Cooke spent much of his career studying ancient fishing practices. He found that Panama’s pre-Columbian peoples fished from boats all along both the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Panama. If fishing alone put people at higher risk for surfer’s ear, then more cases of the bony growth would be present at all of the sites, but all of the examples came from areas near the Gulf.

“We think it more likely that diving in the cold waters of the Gulf caused these cases of surfer’s ear,” Smith-Guzmán said. “Silvery mother-of-pearl ornaments, and orange and purple ones from two large ‘thorny’ oysters in the Spondylus genus were common in burials and comprised an important trade item in the region. Some of these shells wash up on beaches, but by the time Vasco Nuñez de Balboa and other Spanish explorers arrived, their chronicles tell us that expert divers were trained from childhood to dive down to four fathoms to retrieve pearl oysters of desirable large size.”

The Spanish encouraged this industry and for many years, Panama was known for its pirates and pearls, including La Peregrina, the largest pearl known at the time it was found.

The team also ruled out fungal or bacterial ear infections common in the tropics that sometimes cause bone deformations: most of the skulls affected were from males, and infections should occur in both male and females at about the same rate. From the evidence they have so far, it looks like mostly males were involved in whatever activity caused surfer’s ear in Panama. In another study, archaeologists in the Canary Islands found roughly equal numbers of cases of surfer’s ear in ancient male and female skulls, suggesting that aquatic activities there were not restricted to one gender.

“I spoke to one ear, nose and throat specialist in Panama and she has never seen a case of surfer’s ear here, but we want to do a follow-up study in which we look at skulls from a much wider area and also do a survey of doctors in Panama to find out if surfers or divers ever show up with surfer’s ear these days,” Smith-Guzmán said.

Surfer’s ear is an intriguing subject that archaeologists, anthropologists and medical doctors have explored for more than a century. Although the exact causes of this phenomenon is still debated, these bony growths offer important clues into the cultural activities, gendered division of labor and environmental conditions in the past.

Biology’s electrical circuits

Complex I is found in most living organisms. In plant cells it is used in two places: one is in mitochondria, the cell’s power plants, the other is in chloroplasts, where photosynthesis occurs. In both instances, it forms part of an electron transport chain, which can be thought of as biology’s electrical circuit. These are used to drive the cells molecular machines responsible for energy production and storage. The structure and function of mitochondrial complex I as part of cellular respiration has been well investigated, whereas photosynthetic complex I has been little studied so far.

Short-circuiting photosynthesis

Using cryoelectron microscopy, the researchers were able to solve for the first time the molecular structure of photosynthetic complex I. They showed that it differs considerably from its respiratory relative. In particular, the part responsible for electron transport has a different structure, since it is optimised for cyclic electron transport in photosynthesis.

Cyclic electron transport represents a molecular short circuit in which electrons are reinjected into the photosynthetic electron transport chain instead of being stored. Marc Nowaczyk explains: “The molecular details of this process have been unknown and additional factors have not yet been unequivocally identified.” The research team simulated the process in a test tube and showed that the protein ferredoxin plays a major role. Using spectroscopic methods, the scientists also demonstrated that the electron transport between ferredoxin and complex I is highly efficient.

Molecular fishing rod

In the next step, the group analysed at the molecular level which structural elements are responsible for the efficient interaction of complex I and ferredoxin. Further spectroscopic measurements showed that complex I has a particularly flexible part in its structure, which captures the protein ferredoxin like a fishing rod. This allows ferredoxin to reach the optimal binding position for electron transfer.

“This enabled us to bring the structure together with the function of the photosynthetic complex I and gain a detailed insight into the molecular basis of electron transport processes,” summarises Marc Nowaczyk. “In the future, we plan to use this knowledge to create artificial electron transport chains that will enable new applications in the field of synthetic biology.”

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When we look at a mirror from an angle, we see the image of the object located at the opposite direction. This is because the scattering light of the object is reflected by the mirror and then perceived by observers’ eyes. This process, known as specular reflection, is angle-symmetric: if the person stands on the left side of mirror can see the right person, then the right person can always see the left one with the same clearness. Conventional mirrors always have symmetric responses for light coming from both sides of the mirrors. Recently, researchers at Aalto University have successfully broken the angle-symmetric response of a mirror using the concept of gradient metasurfaces. The artificially synthesized surfaces can be designed to look “bright” at one direction, while “dark” for the observer at the opposite direction.

Metasurfaces are planar artificial materials, composed of periodic arranged meta-atoms at subwavelength scale. Meta-atoms are made of traditional materials but, if they are placed in a repeating patterns, the array can show many unusual effects which cannot be realized by the natural materials.. In their article Extreme Asymmetry in Metasurfaces via Evanescent Fields Engineering: Angular-Asymmetric Absorption published in Physical Review Letters, the team from Aalto use gradient metasurfaces to engineer the contrast ratio of brightness for waves coming from two oppositely tilted angles. “Our findings provide the first demonstration that a flat surface can realize extreme optical asymmetry in angle spectrum. This is an important milestone in both physics and engineering communities,” says Xuchen Wang, who is currently a third-year doctoral student in Aalto University, and also the responsible person of this work. Xuchen studies electromagnetic metasurfaces under the supervision of Prof. Sergei Tretyakov. Xuchen explains.

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Sometimes when you’re stuck on a problem, the solution could be closer than you think, for instance in a different area of the research field you are working in. But thinking across disciplines is difficult and requires a good mix of expertise and an environment that fosters such interdisciplinary collaborations. Giacomo Bighin found such an environment at IST Austria when he, a condensed matter physicist, joined the group of Mikhail Lemeshko, a molecular physicist. The result is a new method for molecular physics, one that can greatly facilitate the description of rotating molecules in solvents and paves the way for eventually controlling their reactions.

“Molecules always rotate, and how they interact with one another depends on their relative orientation. That is, if they hit another molecule with one end, it has a different effect than if they hit it with the other end,” explains Mikhail Lemeshko. The orientation of molecules and hence chemical reactions have already been controlled in experiments on molecular gases, but it is quite challenging to do the same in solvents. This is a long-term goal that Mikhail Lemeshko and his group are working towards, one step at a time. The step they have just taken is about being better able to describe the rotation of a molecule in a solvent — a prerequisite for eventually controlling reactions in this environment.

Transferring the method, however, was not easy. “Feynman diagrams work for point-like particles such electrons. Point-like means that they are not affected by rotations: if you rotate an electron, it looks exactly the same as before. Molecules, on the other hand, are more complex and can rotate and change their orientation in space” explains Giacomo Bighin. In order to transfer the method from electrons to molecules, he had to develop a new formalism. Previously, it was not known if it would even work for molecules, and adapting the method took Bighin more than a year. Now the formalism is ready to use in chemical problems.

“We expect that people from a more molecular background will see that it is now possible to study molecules in this way. The technique delivers extremely precise results in condensed matter physics, and it has the potential to achieve the same accuracy in molecular simulations,” Lemeshko adds.

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X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) monitors unoccupied electronic orbitals with element specificity, from which the electronic structure can be derived. For the majority of organic molecules the soft-X-ray spectral region (100-1000 eV) is relevant, as K-edge transitions of low-Z elements (C, N, and O), and the L-edges of 3d metals are found there. XAS is typically performed at large scale facilities, such as storage rings or free-electron lasers. Table-top laser-based sources have until now only been sparsely used to probe pure materials, e.g., metals and organic films. So far, measurements of the carbon or nitrogen K-edges of organic molecules in dilute aqueous solution have not been reported.

The research team at the MBI has now developed a bright source of femtosecond soft X-ray pulses, making use of the extreme high-order harmonic generation process. Long-wavelength (1.8 µm) driver pulses generated with an amplified Ti:sapphire laser system were used to generate high-order harmonics well above the conventional spectral range, i.e., now extending up to 450 eV. They have combined this source with liquid flatjet technology fully functioning under vacuum conditions. Steady-state absorption spectra of organic molecules and inorganic salts in a thin (~ 1 µm) sheet of aqueous solution can now be measured, throughout the so-called water window region between 200-540 eV. In particular, this technique enables the simultaneous local probing at both carbon and nitrogen sites within the molecules. With this the research team demonstrates the feasibility of following multiple sites within molecular systems, with the potential of probing possible correlations between these sites upon molecular rearrangements.

This investigation represents a major step towards the systematic investigation of ultrafast rearrangements of solution phase molecular systems with femtosecond soft X-ray spectroscopy. New insights into ultrafast charge transport processes and photo-induced reactions in chemistry and biology are envisaged to become accessible.

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A team of researchers from Imperial College London, the University of Oxford, and the National Physical Laboratory have experimentally achieved a long-standing goal to demonstrate the so-called “strong-coupling regime” between light and high-frequency acoustic vibrations.

The team’s research will have impact for classical- and quantum-information processing and even testing quantum mechanics at large scales. The details of their research are published today in the journal Optica.

Central to the team’s research are ‘whispering-gallery-mode resonances’ where light bounces many times around the surface of a tiny round glass structure shown in the figure above.

This phenomenon is named after an effect that was observed in St Paul’s cathedral in the nineteenth century, where one could whisper along the wall of the round gallery building and be heard on the other side.

“It is fascinating that these glass ring resonators can store excessive amounts of light, which can ‘shake’ the molecules in the material and generate acoustic waves,” said project co-author Dr Pascal Del’Haye of the National Physical Laboratory.

As the light circulates around the circumference of the glass structure it interacts with an 11 GHz acoustic vibration that causes light to be scattered in the reverse direction. This interaction allows energy to be swapped between the light and sound at a certain rate. However, both the light- and the sound-fields will decay due to friction-like processes, preventing the two from dancing in step.

The team overcame this challenge by utilizing two such whispering-gallery-mode resonances and achieved a coupling rate that is larger than these friction-like processes, allowing the signatures of the light-sound dance to be observed.

Lead author of the project, Georg Enzian at the University of Oxford, said: “Achieving this strong-coupling regime was a thrilling moment for us.” Professor Ian Walmsley, co-author of the project, and Provost of Imperial College London, said: “I’m excited about the near- and longer-term-prospects for this new experimental platform.”

Looking ahead, the team are now preparing the next generation of these experiments that will operate at temperatures close to absolute zero. “This will allow highly sensitive quantum mechanical behaviour to be explored and utilized for the development of quantum technologies,” said principal investigator of the project, Dr Michael Vanner from the Quantum Measurement Lab at Imperial College London.

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TU Wien (Vienna) and several research groups from China have now developed new ideas and implemented them in an experiment. A “crystal ” made of light waves is created to hold atoms in a very special geometric pattern. These “light crystals,” which have been used in different ways for the manipulation of atoms, can now be used to deliberately drive the system out of equilibrium. By switching between simple and complicated states, the system reveals whether or not it has topologically interesting states. These findings have now been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Bread Rolls and Donuts

The importance of topology can easily be seen if we pack too many things into a shopping bag: a bread roll may be slightly crushed and squeezed into a shape similar to a banana. Bread rolls and bananas have the same basic geometric structure, topologically they are the same. On the other hand, a donut has a hole in the middle — its topology is different. Even if it is slightly squeezed, its shape can still be easily distinguished from that of the bread roll.

“It is similar with quantum states,” explains Prof. Jörg Schmiedmayer from Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) at TU Wien. “Quantum states can have a nontrivial topology which protects them with respect to certain perturbations. That’s what makes them so interesting for technology, because you always have to deal with perturbations in every experiment and in every real world technological application.” In 2016, the Nobel Prize in Physics for research was awarded for research on topological states of matter, but it is still considered extremely difficult to determine whether or not a certain material allows topologically interesting quantum states.

“Quantum states that are not in equilibrium, are changing rapidly,” says Jörg Schmiedmayer. “This dynamics is notoriously difficult to understand, but as we have shown, it is a great way to obtain extremely interesting information about the system.” Schmiedmayer cooperated with research teams from China. “The experiment was led by Prof. Shuai Chen, in the research group of Prof. Jian-Wei Pan. Both were once collaborators in my group in Heidelberg, and ever since their return to China, we have been work closely together,” says Schmiedmayer. The TU Vienna and the Chinese University of Science and Technology (USTC, Heifei, China) signed a cooperation agreement in 2016, which strengthened research cooperation, especially in the field of physics.

An Imbalance Revealing Material Properties

With the help of interfering light waves, atoms can be held in pre-defined places, creating a regular grid of atoms, similar to a crystal, the atoms taking the roles of the electrons in a solid state crystal. By changing the light, the geometry of the atomic arrangement can be switched, in order to examine how the electron states would behave in a real solid state material.

“With this change, a massive imbalance is suddenly being generated,” says Jörg Schmiedmayer. “The quantum states must rearrange and approach a new equilibrium, much like balls rolling down a hill until they find equilibrium in the valley. And during this process we can see clear signatures that tell us whether topologically interesting states are to be found or not. “

This is an important new insight for research on topological materials. One could even adapt the artificial light crystals to simulate certain crystal structures and in order to find new topological materials.

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Historically, there have been a wide number of conflicting theories about how tornadoes form, but the most widely accepted was that they form from the top down, based on work done from the 1970s through the 1990s. For the first time, new observational evidence shows that they actually form from the ground up, which could have a profound impact on the way tornado warnings are issued in the future. It’s the first time these hypotheses have been able to be evaluated observationally, thanks to a modern radar system that collects data very rapidly.

“We need to reconsider the paradigms that we have to explain tornado formation, and we especially need to communicate this to forecasters who are trying to make and issue warnings,” said Dr. Jana Houser, assistant professor of meteorology at Ohio University and co-author of the new study. “Based on our results, it does not look like you are going to really ever be finding strong evidence of a tornado descending, so we need to stop making that a priority in our forecasting strategies.”

A team led by Houser demonstrated that tornadoes actually form at the ground and move up rapidly, contrary to the long-held hypothesis that most tornadoes form at cloud level and descend to touch the earth. This evidence, the first of its kind, was gathered after Houser observed an EF5 tornado in May 2011; this work began during her doctoral work at the University of Oklahoma. Those findings were subsequently confirmed through observations from several other tornadoes, including a very compelling visual and radar analysis of the deadly El Reno tornado of May 2013.

“The coupled visual and near-surface radar observations from the El Reno 2013 case enable an analysis of the tornadogenesis process that has never before been obtained, providing a missing link in the story of tornado formation: the rotation associated with the tornado was clearly present at the surface first,” Houser said. She presented the findings to the American Geophysical Union at a conference Dec. 14.

The findings indicate that a tornado-strength vortex can be active on the ground for a minute or more before the deeper tornadic column forms and is picked up by conventional radar. However, tornado warnings are issued based on radar readings that pick up vortex signatures at or above cloud level.

“We need to strategize how we’re issuing warnings a little bit differently. The way we’re doing it, we’re never going to get an improvement on our warning system,” Houser said.

The challenge is in getting those kinds of readings quickly. Conventional radar can’t get ground-level readings over a broad area because objects in the way, such as hills, buildings and trees, disrupt the data, and they collect data slowly. Houser’s data came from the University of Oklahoma’s Rapid-scan, X-band, polarimetric mobile radar (RaXPol). Radar observations of the wind field were used to track tornadic signatures in the core of the storm. In the 2013 El Reno tornado, observations showed evidence of a tornado that was only visible in radar data less than 20 meters above the ground, but nowhere else, at the beginning. The next elevation angle above showed no tornado-strength rotation.

In all four cases, none of the tornadoes formed from the top down. Three formed from the bottom up, and one contracted almost simultaneously over the depth of the column being observed.

The tornadoes formed in 30 to 90 seconds, making the prospect of forecasting tornadoes with 100 percent accuracy seem bleak.

In the largest tornado the team studied, the deadly 2013 El Reno tornado, video documentation showed that a funnel cloud was visible for one minute and 40 seconds before the development of a radar-derived, vertically-continuous vortex. That storm ultimately had a width of 2.6 miles and winds exceeding 300 miles per hour. When radar data were re-examined, it was determined that the only sign of tornadic-strength rotation that existed at the beginning occurred in the lowest elevation data, less than 20 meters above the ground, which was present for about one minute before the tornado’s formation and persisted until the rest of the tornado developed. This provided the first confirmation that this tornado began at the ground and was able to persist at that level for almost two minutes before the formation of the deeper vortex.

Houser said that by better understanding the mechanisms of tornado formation, it’s possible forecasters can generate short-term, high-resolution models of storms just hours before they occur to determine their likelihood of producing a tornado, efforts already being pursued by the National Weather Service and the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

Other efforts could include stationary, ground-based radar systems, though there would need to be a blanket of them to prove effective, as well as storm spotters relaying visual responses to forecasters.

“If we can get a concrete picture of what’s happening in tornado formation, we’ll have better insight into the processes and mechanisms in predicting tornadoes,” Houser said.