Published in the academic journal Aquaculture, the research compares two scallop farming methods, ear-hanging and lantern net culture, over a complete grow-out cycle to determine which approach yields the best results for commercial growers. The study, led by UMaine postdoctoral researcher Christopher Noren, provides new insights into how each method influences scallop size and adductor muscle weight, a key factor in market value.

Evaluating Two Common Farming Methods

Maine’s scallop aquaculture industry is still in its early stages, and growers are looking for efficient ways to scale up production. Suspended culture is the most common approach, with farmers typically using multi-tiered lantern nets to grow scallops to a harvestable size. However, this method requires frequent maintenance to manage biofouling — an unwanted accumulation of microorganisms, plants and animals — and to optimize growth conditions.

Ear-hanging, a technique adapted from Japanese scallop farming, offers a potential alternative. This method involves drilling a small hole in the scallop’s shell and suspending it on a line, allowing for better water flow and potentially reducing maintenance needs.

To evaluate the effectiveness of each method, researchers partnered with two commercial scallop farms in Maine’s Penobscot Bay and Frenchman Bay. Over four years, they measured scallop growth and the weight of their adductor muscles, the primary product from scallops that are sold in U.S. seafood markets.

Findings to inform Maine’s aquaculture industry

The study found that scallops grown with ear-hanging culture had slightly larger shell heights, about 1-4% greater than those in lantern nets. More significantly, ear-hanging scallops had up to 12% more adductor muscle weight, which is the primary product sold in U.S. seafood markets and commands a higher price per pound when larger. This suggests a potential advantage for growers aiming to maximize profitability within that market.

“We wanted to provide growers with data they could actually use on the water,” said Christopher Noren, doctoral researcher at UMaine and lead author of the study. “By comparing these two methods across a full grow-out cycle, we were able to identify where the biological advantages lie and how they might translate to better yields and more efficient operations.”

The results also highlight the role of temperature in scallop growth. Ear-hanging scallops grew more quickly in optimal conditions, which are between 50 and 59 degrees Farhenheit, but were more affected by colder winter temperatures than those in lantern nets.

“These findings give scallop farmers a clearer picture of how different methods impact growth and harvest timing. Understanding the trade-offs between techniques will help inform decisions about production strategies.” says co-author Damian Brady, a professor of oceanography at UMaine.

Supporting a sustainable, domestic seafood supply

The U.S. imports the majority of its seafood, including scallops, from foreign markets. As interest in domestic scallop aquaculture grows, studies like this can help Maine farmers refine their operations and improve profitability.

“This research gives us real-world numbers to work with,” said Andrew Peters, owner of Vertical Bay LLC and co-author on the study. “Understanding how small changes in gear choice impact growth and market value helps us make smarter decisions as we scale up scallop farming in Maine.”

By identifying methods that balance growth efficiency with labor demands, UMaine researchers are contributing to the development of a sustainable scallop aquaculture industry in the Gulf of Maine.

The study, published in Nature, involves hydrogenation — adding the diatomic hydrogen molecule, H₂, to other compounds.

“Hydrogenation is a critical and diverse reaction used to create food products, fuels, commodity chemicals and pharmaceuticals,” said Zhenxing Feng, associate professor of chemical engineering. “However, for the reaction to be economically viable, a catalyst such as palladium or platinum is invariably required to increase its reaction rate and thus lower cost.”

Feng, OSU doctoral students Alvin Chang and Mason Lyons and researchers at four institutions in China took a deep dive into single-atom catalysts; a catalyst is anything that speeds the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed by the reaction, and a single-atom catalyst is one in which the metal catalytic sites exist as isolated single atoms on a supporting substrate.

“SACs are a rising star among hydrogenation catalysts and demonstrate excellent catalytic activities compared to nanoparticle catalysts,” Feng said. “Interactions between the metal catalyst and support material lead to unique synergies that improve catalytic activity and stability, but the reason for this enhanced performance had not been understood.”

In a project led by collaborators at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China, researchers created and characterized 34 palladium SACs on 14 semiconductor supports.

Advanced X-ray, infrared and electrochemical characterization techniques showed the SACs’ effectiveness depended on how well a substrate could accept electrons, a connection that was consistent and predictable.

“The catalytic abilities of palladium SACs have a universal linear relationship with the molecular orbital position of their supporting substrates,” Feng said. “This opens a new avenue for the screening of metal-support pairs for high activity and stability. We also found that this molecular orbital position can be tuned by reducing support particle size, leading to SACs with record high activities and excellent stabilities.”

For this study, researchers looked at the semihydrogenation of acetylene in excess ethylene, a common industrial process. In hydrogenation, hydrogen molecules are added to unsaturated bonds in organic compounds, converting them to saturated compounds. For example, hydrogenation is used to convert vegetable oils, which are unsaturated fats, into margarine and shortening.

Hydrogenation is also important for the refining of petroleum products, including converting alkenes like ethylene into alkanes to make cleaner-burning fuels such as propane and butane.

The OSU China Experience Fund and the National Natural Science Foundation of China Center for Single-Atom Catalysis were among the funders of this project, which also featured researchers from the National University of Defense Technology and Suzhou Laboratory.

Oxygen, the most critical resource for life on Earth, plays an important role in other nutrient cycles such as carbon and nitrogen. Oxygen depletion in water, called hypoxia, is causing problems. They are piling up in various coastal and freshwater systems. The result? Dying fish, disrupted food webs, poor water quality and more which is already affecting freshwater ecosystems across the globe. This study shows it’s not just a local problem — it’s a planetary one.

Behind oxygen depletion: accelerated oxygen cycle

A group of researchers, led by Utrecht Earth scientists Junjie Wang and Jack Middelburg, have developed for the first time a global model that describes the entire oxygen cycle of inland waters around the world. ‘With this model, we offer the most complete possible understanding of this cycle on a large scale, so that one can see oxygen related problems coming, get to know the causes, and hopefully intervene in time,’ Jack Middelburg explains.

Inland waters have become much busier places when it comes to oxygen. The team found that the global “oxygen turnover” — that is how much oxygen is produced and consumed — has increased. But here’s the twist: these waters are consuming more oxygen than they produce, making them a growing sink of atmospheric oxygen.

Cause

‘More farming, more wastewater, more dams, and a warmer climate — they all change how our freshwater ecosystems function,’ says Junjie Wang. With more nutrients flowing into rivers, lakes and reservoirs, algae grow faster, but when they die and decompose, they use up huge amounts of oxygen. ‘We found that the main causes lay in these direct human activities. First, it turns out that nutrient input through, for example, over-fertilization, is a major driver of this acceleration. Secondly, the longer travel time of freshwater to the sea through the construction of dams and reservoirs has proven to be just as important’, says Jack Middelburg.

At the same time, indirect human impacts like rising temperatures make oxygen less soluble in water, transport slower vertically across the water column, and speed up processes that burn through it even faster. ‘Until now, the consensus in the scientific literature has always been that the rise in temperature is primarily causing this acceleration. But our model shows that warming only contributes about 10-20% to this phenomenon,’ Junjie Wang says.

The Anthropocene fingerprint

This study showed that the modern oxygen cycle in inland waters looks nothing as it did in the early 1900s. ‘Even though these waters cover just a tiny fraction of Earth’s surface, they now remove nearly 1 billion tonnes of oxygen from the atmosphere each year — overall half of what the entire ocean emits back,’ says Middelburg. ‘We can’t ignore inland waters in global climate and oxygen budgets anymore,’ Junjie Wang adds. ‘They’re changing faster than we thought, and they’re crucial pieces of the Earth system puzzle.’

Diet contributes significantly to cardiovascular disease mortality, with estimates indicating that across the European region, one in every five premature deaths could be prevented by an optimised diet.

“In 2019, the Planetary Health Diet (PHD) was developed to optimise global dietary quality while keeping the environmental impacts of food production within sustainable planetary boundaries,” said study author Dr. Mercedes Sotos Prieto of the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. “However, there was a lack of evidence on how the PHD compares with the Mediterranean Diet, a plant-based diet with established health and environmental benefits, that is well rooted in Mediterranean countries. We evaluated the effects of both diets on all-cause mortality and environmental impact in a large representative Spanish population.”

The PHD involves energy intake of around 2,500 kcal/day and focuses primarily on high consumption of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and unsaturated oils; moderate intake of dairy, starchy vegetables, poultry and fish; and low consumption of saturated fats, red meat and added sugars.

The Mediterranean Diet is characterised by a pattern rich in fruits and vegetables (seasonal), legumes, whole grains and nuts, with olive oil as the main dietary fat, greater consumption of white or lean meats than of red or processed meats, and with moderate consumption of dairy products, fish and eggs.

In the analysis, data on food intake were collected from 11,488 participants in the Study on Nutrition and Cardiovascular Risk in Spain (ENRICA), a prospective cohort study of individuals recruited between June 2008 and October 2010. The PHD Index (0-140 points) was calculated for each participant based on their consumption of 15 food groups: whole grains, starchy vegetables, vegetables, whole fruits, dairy foods, red/processed meat, chicken and other poultry, eggs, fish/shellfish, nuts, non-soy legumes, soybean/soy foods, added saturated and trans-fat, added unsaturated oils, and added sugar and fruit juice. Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet was assessed using the 14-item MEDAS score (0-14 points), which is based on components such as using olive oil for cooking and dressings, eating white meat and seafood over red meat, the consumption of fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts, and low intake of high-fat dairy products, commercial baked goods and sugar-sweetened/carbonated beverages. The environmental impact of each diet was assessed using the SHARP-Indicators Database (SHARP-ID), which includes data on greenhouse gas emissions and land use. Mortality data were obtained from the National Death Index of Spain. Analyses were performed across tertiles of adherence to the diets, with adjustment for confounders.

Study participants had a mean age of 47.5 years (range, 18-96 years) and around a half (52.5%) were women. A total of 1,157 all-cause deaths occurred during a mean follow-up of 14.4 years.

Higher adherence to the PHD and Mediterranean Diet was similarly associated with lower all-cause mortality. Participants in the top third for adherence to the PHD had a 22% lower chance of dying than those in the lowest third (adjusted hazard ratio [HR] 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.66-0.91). For the Mediterranean Diet, participants in the top third for adherence had a 21% lower chance of dying than those in the lowest third (adjusted HR 0.79; 95% CI 0.68-0.93). Adherence to some components of the PHD (fruits, dairy and unsaturated oils) and the Mediterranean Diet (nuts, low consumption of soda and pastries) was independently associated with lower mortality.

In terms of environmental impact, both diets had similarly low footprints. For the PHD, the average level of greenhouse gas emissions was 4.15 kg of CO₂ per day and average level of land use was 5.54 m2 per daily food intake. The average level of greenhouse gas emissions for the Mediterranean Diet including dairy was 4.36 kg of CO₂ per day and the average level of land use was 5.43 m2 per daily food intake. Dairy and meat products were the largest footprint contributors.

Dr. Sotos Prieto concluded: “Higher adherence to both diets was similarly associated with lower all-cause mortality and with comparable low environmental impact, highlighting the substantial health and planetary advantages of adopting one of these plant-based diets.”

Directive 2010/63/EU laid down restrictions on animal testing for the testing of cosmetics and their ingredients throughout the EU. Therefore, there is an intense search for alternatives to test the absorption and toxicity of nanoparticles from cosmetics such as sun creams. A team of researchers from Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) and the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT) in India is working on the development of skin imitations that mimic the native three-layer tissue structure and biomechanics of human skin. Such imitations can be produced using 3D printing and consist of hydrogel formulations that are printed together with living cells.

Hydrogels in which skin cells survive and grow

“The hydrogels for our skin imitation from the 3D printer have to fulfil a number of requirements,” says Karin Stana Kleinschek from the Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Biobased Systems. “The hydrogels must be able to interact with living skin cells. These cells not only have to survive, but also have to be able to grow and multiply.” The starting point for stable and 3D-printable structures are hydrogel formulations developed at TU Graz. Hydrogels are characterised by their high-water content, which creates ideal conditions for the integration and growth of cells. However, the high-water content also requires methods for mechanical and chemical stabilisation of the 3D prints.

TU Graz is working intensively on cross-linking methods for stabilisation. Ideally, following nature’s example, the cross-linking takes place under very mild conditions and without the use of cytotoxic chemicals. After successful stabilisation, the cooperation partners in India test the resistance and toxicity of the 3D prints in cell culture. Only when skin cells in the hydrogel survive in cell culture for two to three weeks and develop skin tissue can we speak of a skin imitation. This skin imitation can then be used for further cell tests on cosmetics.

Successful tests

The first tests of 3D-printed hydrogels in cell culture were very successful. The cross-linked materials are non-cytotoxic and mechanically stable. “In the next step, the 3D-printed models (skin imitations) will be used to test nanoparticles,” says Karin Stana Kleinschek. “This is a success for the complementary research at TU Graz and VIT. Our many years of expertise in the field of material research for tissue imitations and VIT’s expertise in molecular and cell biology have complemented each other perfectly. We are now working together to further optimise the hydrogel formulations and validate their usefulness as a substitute for animal experiments.”

In a recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, an international team of researchers tested a new hypothesis for why some Lepidoptera have very specific diets, feeding on only a few types of plants, while others are far less picky.

The new idea, called the Salient Aroma Hypothesis, suggests that the smells plants release play a crucial role in determining how specialized a butterfly or moth’s diet becomes. The researchers found that greater availability of plant aromas during the day provides more chemical information for day-active insects to use to locate and specialize on particular host plants, while the decrease in plant aromas at nighttime means night-active Lepidoptera have to take what they can get and have a more varied diet.

“This idea provides a new perspective on why some butterflies and moths are picky eaters while others are not,” said Po-An Lin, an assistant professor at the National Taiwan University who launched the research while earning his doctoral degree from Penn State and continued the work as a postdoc in Taiwan. “It also highlights the critical role of plant volatiles, or scents, in shaping insect-plant interactions and evolutionary adaptations.”

To determine whether plant scent may have driven adaptation, the researchers looked at the insects’ primary organs for smelling — the antennae — and compared the antennal size of 582 specimens from 94 species of butterflies and moths.

The Penn State team collaborated with a team at Harvard that found that female Lepidoptera that are active during the day tend to have larger antennae relative to their body size than those active at night.

This might suggest that having better “smelling” equipment is more beneficial when there are more smells to detect, explained Gary Felton, the Ralph O. Mumma Professor of Entomology at Penn State, co-author on the paper and Lin’s research adviser. Similarly, specialist female Lepidoptera — those that feed from only a few types of plants — often have larger antennae than generalist females, possibly because they need to be very good at detecting the specific aromas of their host plants.

“The relationship between antennal size and host plant breadth was very strong,” Felton said. “Larger antennal sizes have been associated with a greater number of sensilla, the sensory structures involved in the sense of smell, thereby increasing the surface area for sensory receptors. The enhanced capacity may be a key adaptation for how certain Lepidoptera have evolved to feed on a limited and specific range of plants.”

The findings suggest a potential link between the availability of plant aromas during the day and an evolutionary investment in olfactory structures in the insects, particularly in females that engage in host plant selection by laying their eggs on the plant, Lin explained.

“This finding demonstrates how the availability of chemical signals influences the evolution of sensory organs in insects,” he said. “It provides a fascinating example of how plants, through their chemical emissions, have played a direct role in shaping the evolution of the insects that rely on them.”

Lin and colleagues at Penn State used a combination of approaches to investigate the link between plant aromas and Lepidoptera diets. They first conducted a meta-analysis of existing scientific literature to confirm that plants generally release more diverse and abundant volatile organic compounds, or aromas, during the day versus the night. Then they studied the Lepidoptera family tree to analyze the relationship between the insects’ activity patterns — day or night active — and their preferred host plants, using statistical models that account for evolutionary relationships.

“Our analyses showed a significant correlation between being active during the day or night and the diversity of host plant species that Lepidoptera consume,” said Naomi Pierce, professor of biology at Harvard University and co-author on the paper.

The researchers found that day-active Lepidoptera, like monarch butterflies, have more opportunities and more specialized organs to detect plant aromas and, as such, have evolved to be picky eaters. On the other hand, night-active species, like the Polyphemus Moth, encounter fewer and less diverse plant aromas. With less clear chemical information available, it might be harder for them to be so selective, potentially leading them to have more generalized diets, feeding on a wider range of plants.

“Insect herbivores, such as butterflies and moths, must find the right plants to feed on and, in the case of females, to lay their eggs,” Lin said. “This is a crucial decision because caterpillars depend entirely on the selected plant for survival. Unlike humans, who eat a wide variety of foods to stay healthy, many insect herbivores specialize in feeding on only a few plant species. The Salient Aroma Hypothesis helps explain why some insects are highly specialized while others are more flexible in their diet.”

The other authors on the paper are Wei-Ping Chan and Even Dankowicz of Harvard University; Liming Cai of the University of Texas Austin; Yun Hsiao of National Taiwan University; and Kadeem Gilbert of Michigan State University.

The U.S. National Science Foundation, Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council and the Yushan Fellowship Program from the Ministry of Education of Taiwan funded this work.

The aptamers — short single-strand snippets of DNA that can target molecules like larger antibodies do — not only deliver cancer-fighting drugs, but also are themselves toxic to the cancer stem cells, the researchers said.

Led by Xing Wang, a U. of I. professor of bioengineering and of chemistry, the researchers documented their findings in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

“This work demonstrates a way to get to the root of leukemia,” Wang said. “Targeted cancer treatments often have problems with toxicity or efficacy. Our aptamers seek out these stem cells specifically and kill them effectively.”

Leukemia and other cancers of the blood are more difficult to target than cancers that produce localized tumors because the cancerous cells circulate throughout the body and can’t be surgically removed, said postdoctoral researcher Abhisek Dwivedy, first author of the paper. Leukemia has a high rate of relapse due to its evasive stem cells. Though they make up a tiny fraction of cancerous cells, leukemia stem cells have the ability to evade chemotherapy by retreating to the bone marrow, since they share markers and properties, Dwivedy said. The cancerous cells can lurk, sometimes for years, and later proliferate and migrate.

“It’s important in leukemia, lymphoma or other blood cancers that we actually target and eliminate these stem cells, because as long as any are remaining, they can cause relapse and secondary cancers,” Dwivedy said.

The researchers began by finding DNA aptamers that seek out markers found on the surface of acute myeloid leukemia stem cells. They wanted to target not just the cancer, but the stem cells specifically.

“A big thing we showed in this study is that having two targets is better than one in terms of selectivity,” Wang said. “There are known antibody-drug conjugates for blood cancers that target one marker, but that marker is also found on a lot of healthy cells. So there is a lot of toxicity associated with antibody conjugates. But we used two targets: a combination often found in leukemia cancer cells and leukemia stem cells. The two together give a very specific target.”

The researchers then paired their aptamers with the leukemia-fighting drug daunorubicin. The drug-laden aptamers carry the drug to their target, then release the drug once inside the cell so the drug can act.

“This is especially important for drugs like daunorubicin, because the drug on its own cannot cross the cell membrane easily. But aptamers can carry it in,” Dwivedy said.

The researchers tested the drug-delivering aptamers in leukemia cell cultures as well as in live mice with leukemia.

After 72 hours, the aptamer alone had reduced the cancer cells in culture by 40 percent, demonstrating the aptamer’s toxicity to the cancer, the researchers report. When the aptamers carried the leukemia-fighting drug, the cells were wiped out with a dose 500 times smaller than the standard dosage of the drug. In mice with leukemia, delivering the drug via aptamer yielded the same efficacy at a dose 10 times smaller than the clinical standard, showing that the one-two punch of the aptamer and drug is more effective than either alone.

“This was exciting to us, because in cancer research, what we see in vitro is not always what we see in the body. Yet we saw excellent survivability and tumor reduction in the mice treated with our aptamer-drug conjugates, at one-tenth of the therapeutic dose, and no off-target effects,” Wang said.

The researchers said they hope to expand their suite of drug-delivering aptamers by identifying key marker combinations for other cancers, as well as coupling the aptamers with other drugs.

“Every cancer cell has a signature in its surface biomarkers. If we can find markers that are present uniquely in cancer cells, we can target other cancer types as well. Also, in my experience, it’s much easier to pair a drug with the DNA molecules than proteins, so that opens possibilities for delivering more drugs this way,” Dwivedy said.