Month: May 2015

Dr. Kendra Sewall awarded grant from the Jeffress Memorial Trust

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 27, 2015

Kendra Sewall, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences. — Kendra Sewall

Kendra Sewall, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences and Global Change Center Faculty Affiliate, received a grant from the Jeffress Memorial Trust, which provides $100,000 awards to conduct innovative interdisciplinary pilot studies in fields such as biosciences, chemistry, engineering, and environmental sciences. She joins a select group of VT researchers to win this award in recent years, which has been limited to four submissions per institution per year.

The project is entitled, “”Using Social Network Models and Manipulations of Glucocorticoids to Understand How The Social Environment Impacts Neural Function”. See more about Dr. Sewall’s research in the VT News story below.

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From VT News

Jeffress fig_sm BLACKSBURG, Va., June 25, 2015 – Want a healthy brain? Get a little help from your friends.
Research shows that social experiences can directly improve brain function, as long as they don’t become overly stressful, which can impair brain function.

This sweet spot of optimum social interaction is the research focus of Virginia Tech neurobiologist Kendra Sewall, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Science and a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate.

Supported by a recent $100,000 grant from the Jeffress Trust Awards Program in Interdisciplinary Research, Sewall examines the correlation between social interaction and brain function in zebra finches—a highly sociable bird that lives in a range of flock sizes, from pairs and small family groups (2 to 4 birds) to large aggregate flocks (up to 100 birds).

Extensive social behavior, which often accompanies a large flock size, is associated with superior cognitive abilities, larger brains, and enhanced neuronal architecture.

However, if the social behavior becomes chronically stressful, perhaps due to overcrowding or competition, a stress hormone called glucocorticoid is produced. In high amounts, this hormone can impair neural plasticity and compromise brain function.

“This research will help us better understand the behaviors of wild birds living in populations at higher density due to habitat degradation and decreased food resources,” said Sewall, who is also a faculty member with the new Global Change Center at Virginia Tech. “But it will also inform thinking about both beneficial and negative impacts of social experiences on human mental health in an age of increased brain-related disorders such as anxiety, depression, and autism. Human responses to social contact and stress mirror those of social animals such as zebra finches.”

Sewall and her team rear zebra finches in captivity and house birds in either large or small flocks to manipulate the amount of enriching social contact. Then, some birds are treated with stress hormones to mimic the negative effects of chronic social stress.

By comparing measures of neuronal survival and synaptic plasticity that are important for learning in birds from different treatment groups, Sewall’s team will determine how the costs and benefits of social experiences directly impact brain function.

They will use new radio frequency identification technology to track individuals within groups and generate mathematical models of social dynamics to better understand the basis of individual variation in brain changes.

A university-level Research Institute of Virginia Tech, the Fralin Life Science Institute enables and enhances collaborative efforts in research, education, and outreach within the Virginia Tech life science community through strategic investments that are often allied with colleges, departments, and other institutes.

Climate Change Global Change News Water

Texas: a history of flooding is compounded by development and warming impacts

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 27, 2015

From the New York Times

The holiday and the type of hazard have changed, but once again fast-growing Texas is seeing outsize (and tragic) impacts from extreme weather events. On Labor Day weekend in 2011, the disaster was heat- and drought-fueled fires that whipped through the exurbs east of Austin, most of which didn’t exist just a few decades earlier. Now, Houston is flooded and Hays County, west of Austin, is still in search and rescue mode after Memorial Day weekend flash flooding swelled rivers to record heights, inundating fast-growing riverbank towns and sweeping away a home packed with vacationers. (A Mexican border town and parts of Oklahoma are also reeling.)

What connects wildfire and raging waters?

Somewhere, deep in the statistical noise, there is a contribution from the global buildup of heat-trapping gases changing the climate system.

Among the clearest outcomes of global warming are hotter heat waves and having more of a season’s rain come in heavy downpours. But the picture gets murky, indeed nearly insoluble, at the scale of states or smaller regions. There’s more on this below from the Texas state climatologist and others. The bottom line is there’s no trend in Texas gullywashers.

What’s vividly clear is the extreme vulnerability created by the continuing development pulse in some of the state’s most hazardous places — including Hays County, in the heart of an area that weather and water agencies long ago dubbed “Flash Flood Alley.” (Here’s a great interactive explainer.)

The region’s population and building booms are far outpacing efforts to reduce exposure to flood dangers, resulting in long-predicted scenarios playing out at high cost in lives and money.

“The main challenge to rational planning for flood risk in the country is that private property rights trump even modest limitations on floodplain development,” said Nicholas Pinter, an expert on floods, people and politics at Southern Illinois University, in an email today. “And that sentiment runs deep in Texas. The result is unchecked construction on flood-prone land, up to the present day and in some places even accelerating.”

It’s worth noting that a similar pattern, although with a different mix of drivers, can be seen far from the strip malls and condos around Austin. In some of the world’s poorest places, rapid population growth and flimsy housing in zones of profound “natural” hazard have created huge vulnerability (the latest case in point is, of course, Nepal).

In Texas, there’s a “too little, too late” feel to the steps that have gotten under way — including a variety of United States Army Corps of Engineers studies of flood risk.

One such flood analysis, for the northern part of Hays County, begun in 2011 and is just now entering final review. The risk was laid out four years ago in an announcement of the study:

Hays County’s population has been increasing dramatically – the county’s population grew from 97,589 in 2000 to 157,107 in 2010, a 61% increase. Development has subsequently increased as well. This growth has the potential to place residents at a greater risk for human and economic losses from floods.

In a telephone interview, Randy Cephus, a public affairs official in the Corps’s Fort Worth district office, said this was a fast pace. “The Corps has gone through a transformation,” he said. “In the past, studies have taken 8 to 10 years to complete. We’re trying to undergo those within 3 years.”

It’s important to get these studies done, but I doubt they’ll have much impact as long as politicians and communities in the region stick with the go-go development mentality that has been so vividly on display.

Read the full story (much more) at the NYT’s

Climate Change Drinking water Global Change News

Dr. Cayelan Carey partners with the United Nations to confront global water crisis

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 19, 2015

From VT News

BLACKSBURG, Va., May 19, 2015 – A Virginia Tech ecologist provided potential solutions to the world’s water problems in an article published recently in the United Nations’ Chronicle.

The report will assist the United Nations in finalizing its post-2015 sustainable development goals, which include ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

The goals were proposed by world leaders at the Rio+20 conference held in Brazil in 2012 and were meant to set realistic, action-oriented targets for global sustainable development.

Cayelan Carey, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the College of Science and a Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate, partnered with Justin Brookes, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Adelaide, to prepare the report.

The report focuses on four objectives:

Separation of drinking water from wastewater;
Access to treated water in the home or within a short walk;
Protection and restoration of freshwater ecosystems that have been degraded by human activity;
Development of water-sharing agreements to ensure equitable access for all water users.

“Justin and I had a lot of long discussions about how best to put the report together, and evaluated a list of possible solutions that the U.N. is considering,” said Carey, who is also affiliated with the Interfaces of Global Change interdisciplinary graduate education program and the new Global Change Center at Virginia Tech.

“We recognized that it is impossible to complete all objectives, given the enormous economic and cultural barriers, but felt strongly that our recommendations must be grounded in strong science,” Carey said. “Our goal was to recommend solutions to the U.N. that were able to contribute both to the protection of the natural environment as well as ensure a good quality of life, following the premise that water sustains life, but clean, safe drinking water defines civilization.”

Less than half of the world has access to safe drinking water, a problem that increases with human population growth, climate change, pollution, disease, land-use change, nutrient pollution, and other pressures.

Although 70 percent of the Earth is made up of water, only 2.5 percent of it is freshwater and most of that is locked up in glaciers, according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The United Nations estimates that about 3.5 million people, mostly in developing countries, die each year because of inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene.

Carey focuses primarily on lakes and reservoirs because they are critically important for drinking water, fisheries, industry, and recreation. She wants to know if warmer temperatures and increased nutrients interact to promote algal blooms, and, if so, which lake management techniques could offset future decreases in water quality.

Carey teaches undergraduate freshwater ecology courses as well as a graduate class entitled “Freshwaters in the Anthropocene,” which explores global water sustainability issues.

Global Change June Newsletter News

Engineers and scientists to examine antibiotic resistance in food chain

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 14, 2015

Virginia Tech College of Engineering

Growing evidence suggests that agricultural practices, especially widespread antibiotic use, could be contributing to the increasing antibiotic resistance problem in humans. In order to learn how to effectively control this spread of antibiotic resistance from livestock manure, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded a $2.25 million grant to a Virginia Tech team of engineers and scientists to examine the food chain from farm to fork.

One of the team’s immediate concerns is to determine if the proposed Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act rules for composting manure, intended for the control of pathogens, will effectively limit the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria. The team’s plan includes tracking the fate of antibiotics, antibiotic resistant bacteria, and antibiotic resistance genes, as they are potentially carried over from manure to fresh produce.

Leading the interdisciplinary group is Amy Pruden, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, a pioneer in examining environmental sources and pathways of antibiotic resistance genes as emerging contaminants. A 2007 Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering and a 2006 National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient, Pruden was most recently honored with the 2014 Paul L. Busch Award from the Water Environment Research Foundation for innovation in applied water quality research.

Last September President Barack Obama signed an executive order establishing a Task Force for Combatting Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria. The task force creation came on the heels of a President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report on ways to fight antibiotic resistance in the U.S. Part of this report spoke of the “very serious concern” of antibiotic use in animal agriculture.

“Antibiotic resistance is a serious human health threat,” Pruden said. “Our goal is to identify all possible means by which we can control the spread of antibiotic resistance so that these drugs continue to work when we need them. In this case, we hope to work with existing practices intended to control the spread of pathogens from livestock manure and to determine how we can ensure that antibiotic resistance also is not spread.”

Evidence is showing that antibiotic resistance rates of human pathogens is rising in both hospital acquired and community acquired infections. While looking at ways to minimize the spread of resistance, “the fact that the majority of antibiotic use in the U.S. is for livestock cannot be ignored,” Pruden added.

The Food and Drug Administration recently estimated that 80 percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. are administered to livestock. Combine this fact with the knowledge that between “40 and 90 percent of the antibiotic is excreted in the feces and urine where they can remain active and potentially stimulate antibiotic resistance,” cautioned Kang Xia,associate professor of crop and soil environmental sciences at Virginia Tech and a co-principal investigator. And it reinforces “our call for new strategies.”

In the U.S., antimicrobials are widely used for therapy, disease prevention, and growth promotion in animals raised as a source of food. “They generally act by targeting specific aspects of the bacterial cells and inhibiting their growth,” Pruden explained. “However the bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics when they carry antibiotic resistance genes.”

So the Virginia Tech team is focusing on these genes “since they can be shared among bacteria, even dead to living bacteria, and could therefore persist during pre-harvest and post-harvest stages,” said Pruden. “Antibiotic resistance genes are arguably of greater concern than antibiotic resistant bacteria because they are typically associated with mobile genetic elements that enable them to be passed between microorganisms via horizontal gene transfer, a phenomenon possible even from dead to living cells.”

Pruden points out that “horizontal gene transfer is considered to be the most important mechanism driving the spread of antibiotic resistance”.

Monica Ponder, associate professor of food science and technology at Virginia Tech, also a member of the team, noted concerns about produce eaten raw, as vegetable surfaces are naturally colonized by a variety of bacteria, yeasts, and fungi. Most are harmless, but when they do occasionally carry pathogens, the results can be deadly, as was the case in the 2006 outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 linked to spinach.

This contamination can come from lapses in manure management, such as contamination of irrigation water, poor composting, or application too near the harvest time. “In the U.S., it is not permissible to apply raw manure to fields intended for food production, but there may be simple ways we could improve the composting process, selection of soil type, crop type, or post-harvest washing practices to ensure that antibiotic resistance is not spread,” Ponder emphasized.

The Food and Drug Administration has already launched an initiative to promote voluntary phase out of medically important antibiotics such as third generation cephalosporins in food producing animals. “While limiting antibiotic use in livestock makes sense from a practical standpoint, the science of the effect of antibiotic withdrawal on antibiotic resistance is complex,” cautioned team member Katharine Knowlton, the Virginia Tech Colonel Horace E. Alphin Professor of Dairy Science cautioned, and other undesirable effects may occur.

The new USDA project will integrate research, education, and extension in order to train future leaders equipped to address complex problems like the spread of antibiotic resistance in the environment and to engage with farmers and livestock producers in translating the research to practice. “Virginia Tech is the ideal locale for this project given its land-grant mission and highly supportive atmosphere for agricultural extension, for which efforts in this project will be lead by Thomas Archibald and Amber Vallotton,” Pruden said. Archibald is an assistant professor of agricultural leadership and community education at Virginia Tech and Vallotton is an assistant professor of horticulture, both at Virginia Tech.

Krometis_small — Leigh-Anne Krometis, Biological Systems Engineering

The team attributes its success in attracting this competitive USDA grant to prior seed funding from the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science and a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates site, led by Leigh-Anne Krometis, assistant professor of biological systems engineering and W. Cully Hession, professor of biological systems engineering, who round out the team’s members. They developed the integrated undergraduate research and education training infrastructure at Virginia Tech.

They will also partner with the Interfaces of Global Change Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Program (IGC-IGEP) in expanding graduate education opportunities associated with this new project.

Story by Lynn Nystrom

tansy@vt.edu

Accolades Drinking water News

Amy Pruden receives best paper award from Environmental Science and Technology

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 11, 2015

From VT News

BLACKSBURG, Va., May 11, 2015 – Amy Pruden, associate dean for interdisciplinary graduate education in the Graduate School and professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, received a best paper award for 2014 from the journal Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).

Her paper, “Balancing Water Sustainability and Public Health Goals in the Face of Growing Concerns about Antibiotic Resistance” was named the top paper in the feature section.

Pruden’s paper discussed how “global initiatives are underway to advance the sustainability of urban water infrastructure through measures such as water reuse.” The paper noted how efforts on the part of engineers could advance sustainable water strategies and help avoid unintended consequences for public health.

Her paper was chosen from more than 1,700 papers that ES&T published in 2014. “Our best papers exemplify ES&T’s commitment to publishing research that makes a difference,” stated David L. Sedlak, editor-in-chief.

Pruden’s research involves applying environmental microbiology to solving environmental engineering problems. These include water sustainability and its balance with concerns such as antimicrobial resistance, emerging contaminants, opportunistic pathogens, and environmental implications of nanotechnology.

Her focus on antibiotic resistance emphasizes the role of on antibiotic resistance genes. She brings in environmental engineering tools to understand the fate and transport of these genes in the environment and their impact on water treatment options. The research suggests that standard pathogen inactivation imposed by water and wastewater treatment may not be sufficient to protect public health. Technologies that remove or destroy drug-resistant DNA may be necessary.

Pruden earned her bachelor’s degree in biological sciences and a Ph.D. in environmental science from University of Cincinnati. She is widely recognized for her research with numerous awards, including: the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a Virginia Tech College of Engineering Faculty Fellow award.

Disease Global Change Interfaces of Global Change IGEP News Student Spotlight Video

IGC Fellows Estrada and Medina work on issues that address declining species worldwide

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 11, 2015

Video: In the rainforests of Central America, a research team studies a skin disease that may be the tipping point for amphibian life on the planet.

[hr]From VT News

As the clock ticks, populations of endangered species decline and threaten the functioning of healthy ecosystems.

Pollution, hunting, habitat degradation, climate change, and invasive species have dealt blows to global biodiversity. Climate change alone is putting one in six species on Earth at risk of extinction, according to a meta-analysis of 131 published studies in the journal Science.

Virginia Tech researchers from multiple colleges and disciplines, many affiliated with the Fralin Life Science Institute, are doing what they can to save populations of endangered species, including honeybees, frogs, and the horned anole lizard.

FROGS

In the rainforests of Central America, a research team studies a skin disease that may be the tipping point for amphibian life on the planet. A disease caused by chytrid fungus already threatens about 500 frog species. The disease disrupts frog skin, potentially resulting in death.

“Chytrid fungus is responsible for many amphibian population declines and extinctions across the world, causing scientists to claim it to be the root of the greatest disease-associated loss of biodiversity in recorded history,” said Lisa Belden, an associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Science and faculty member with Virginia Tech’s new Global Change Center. “The disease has already contributed to the decline of the Panamanian golden frog, which is now thought to be extinct in the wild.”

Belden’s team is interested in how a frog’s skin microbiome, or the collection of bacteria on its skin, helps it survive chytrid fungus exposure.

Doctoral students Angie Estrada and Daniel Medina collect microbiome samples from frogs in the rainforests of Panama.

Two of Belden’s doctoral students, who are also Fellows with the Interfaces of Global Change program, travel to Panama to collect microbiome samples from frogs living in the rainforests.

Angie Estrada of Panama City, Panama, investigates how chytrid fungus infection varies during wet and dry seasons in the lowlands of central Panama.

“Some species of frog seem to be doing well at a few sites, while disappearing from many other sites,” Estrada said. “I want to try to understand why they persist and what is special about these sites so that we can try to mimic that success in other places.”

Daniel Medina, also of Panama City, examines how amphibian skin microbes affect chytrid fungus in low and high elevations. Frogs in warmer, lower elevations are generally able to withstand infection better than those in cooler, higher elevations.

Read the full story at VT News

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Interfaces of Global Change IGEP News Student Spotlight

Ben Vernasco studies the social dynamics and physiology of dancing birds

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 2, 2015

From Fralin Spotlight

by Cassandra Hockman

Ben Vernasco knew he wanted to pursue a Ph.D. in conservation biology while studying tropical birds in Peru. After his trip, he got in touch with his mentor, Brandt Ryder, a research ecologist at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C.

Ryder and his Virginia Tech colleague Ignacio Moore, an associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Science, had just received a National Science Foundation grant with a spot for a graduate student. Vernasco was in luck.

Now, Vernasco is a doctoral student in biological sciences at Virginia Tech, and studies the wire-tailed manakin, or Pipra filicauda – a tropical bird named for the wired filaments on its tail and known by researchers for its unique social display: the males perform to attract the females.

To some researchers, this display looks like a dance – these birds perform with quick, smooth moves, back and forth on a branch, while flicking their wings to make sound. Some people have likened the movements of the red-capped manakin to Michael Jackson’s moonwalk: a seamless backward slide. And another species, the club-winged manakin, rubs its wings together over its back to make a buzzing noise, a movement so fast it is invisible to the naked eye.

As part of their display, manakins perform on the same designated perches within their territories. They even alter the habitat around their perch by tearing down leaves to make it a better arena to dance in, said Vernasco.

But dancing to attract females is not the only thing unique about these displays – males also display with other males. Within a particular territory, males will display together in order to form the basis of what Vernasco explained are social coalitions. Within these coalitions, the same males display together for years in order to develop social hierarchies.

Watch the elaborate dance of the wire-tailed manakin:

During these male-to-male displays, one male will assume the position of the female, and the other will display to its comrade as if it were displaying to a female. Then, when a female comes by, the territory-holding male will take over and perform in order to mate, whereas the non-territory holders, or ‘floater’ males, will step aside until he makes his way up the social ladder.

“The more social bonds these floaters have,” said Vernasco, “the more likely they are to eventually gain a territory themselves and sire offspring.”

With Ryder and Moore’s guidance, Vernasco investigates this elaborate social behavior and its underlying physiology to get a better sense of the birds’ reproductive success and overall health. This includes measuring testosterone levels, which have been shown to increase when the males gain territory.

Read the complete story at Fralin

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Header photo: Wire-tailed Manakin by Joao Quental via Wikimedia Commons
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jquental

Global Change New Books News Video

State of the Amazon: WWF report by Dr. Leandro Castello

Post author By jcoker
Post date May 1, 2015

From WWF Global

Amazon report In 2014, the World Wildlife Fund Living Amazon Initiative launched the series, “State of the Amazon”, presenting the first report, “State of the Amazon: Ecological Representation, Protected Areas and Indigenous Territories”.

In April 2015, the second report was released: “State of the Amazon: Freshwater Connectivity and Ecosystem Health”. Prominent researchers Marcia Macedo and Leandro Castello wrote the core scientific assessment which provides a comprehensive assessment of the current state of Amazon freshwater ecosystems and highlights the importance of hydrological connectivity and land-water interactions in maintaining the ecological functions that support water, food and energy security.

Citation:

Macedo, M. and L. Castello. 2015. State of the Amazon: Freshwater Connectivity and Ecosystem Health; edited by D. Oliveira, C. C. Maretti and S. Charity. Brasília, Brazil: WWF Living Amazon Initiative. 136pp.

Read the report here.

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FROGS

Listen to Dr. Castello’s presentation at his book launch in Korea in April 2015: