Researchers from the University of Southampton and Marine Biological Association (MBA) predict that increased ocean temperatures will see this already endangered species driven into new habitats crossed by busy shipping lanes.

The study predicts that the co-occurrence of whale sharks and large ships could be 15,000 times higher by the end of the century compared to the present day.

Lead author Dr Freya Womersley, University of Southampton and MBA Postdoctoral Research Scientist said: “These shifts in the whale sharks’ habitat were most extreme under high emission scenarios. A global reshuffling could lead to core habitat losses in some areas as well as increased co-occurrence with shipping traffic as oceans warm and other variables change.”

Whale sharks, the world’s largest fish, are highly mobile and responsive to changes in temperature. Recent evidence suggests they are also particularly vulnerable to ship strikes — where large marine animals are struck and injured, often fatally, by large vessels in the global fleet.

Researchers used whale shark satellite-tracking data coupled with global climate models to project the distribution of whale sharks under three different future climate scenarios.

The models project core habitat losses of over 50% in some national waters by 2100 under high emissions (where we continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels), with the greatest potential losses in Asia. Under a sustainable development scenario (in line with the target of no more than 2°C of global warming), some areas showed a gain in core habitat, notably in Europe.

“The shifts we predict are likely to be less extreme if we are able to slow warming and mitigate climate change, suggesting that even complex, multi-factor impacts of climate change can be somewhat alleviated by our actions,” says Professor David Sims, co-author and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and MBA.

The team paired the distribution maps with information on shipping traffic density to determine if these habitat shifts would see whale sharks move into more heavily trafficked areas in future, potentially increasing the likelihood of ship strikes.

They found that some newly suitable habitats overlapped with busy shipping routes. This was the case in the US part of the North Pacific Ocean, the Japanese part of the Eastern China Seas, and the Sierra Leonian part of the North Atlantic Ocean, among many other sites globally.

Some areas, such as the Mexican part of the Gulf of Mexico, saw reductions in co-occurrence, where core habitats shifted into more coastal waters, away from the busy shipping routes in the centre of the Gulf.

Professor Sims says: “Overall ship co-occurrence increased under all future climate scenarios, even if shipping remained at current levels, rather than its anticipated expansion of up to 1,200 per cent by 2050.”

Womersley added: “We show that climate change has the potential to indirectly impact highly mobile marine species through interacting pressures of humans and the environment. This highlights the importance of factoring climate change into discussions around endangered species management.”

The research was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU Horizon 2020 Programme.

Of course, the cell is not powerless in the face of such lesions. It has an extensive catalog of cellular mechanisms that are set in motion following DNA damage. DNA damage response, or DDR for short, is the technical term for this. Specific signaling pathways usually initiate the immediate recognition and repair of DNA damage, thus ensuring the survival of the cell.

A new look at the DNA damage response

A team of scientists from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, has now taken a closer look at one of these signaling pathways. The group has identified a new mechanism of the DNA damage response that is mediated via an RNA transcript. Their results help to broaden the conceptual view on the DNA damage response and to link it more closely with RNA metabolism.

Dr. Kaspar Burger, junior research group leader at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was responsible for this study. The group has published the results of their investigations in the journal Genes & Development.

RNA transcripts as regulators of genome stability

“In our study, we focused on so-called long non-coding RNA transcripts. Previous data suggest that some of these transcripts act as regulators of genome stability,” says Kaspar Burger, explaining the background to the work. The study focused on the nuclear enriched abundant transcript 1 — also known as NEAT1 — which is found in high concentrations in many tumor cells. NEAT1 is also known to react to DNA damage and to cellular stress. However, its exact role in the DNA damage response was previously unclear.

“Our hypothesis was that RNA metabolism involves NEAT1 in the DNA damage response in order to ensure the stability of the genome,” says Burger. To test this hypothesis, the research group experimentally investigated how NEAT1 reacts to serious damage to the genome — so-called DNA double-strand breaks — in human bone cancer cells. The result: “We were able to show that DNA double-strand breaks increase both the number of NEAT1 transcripts and the amount of N6-methyladenosine marks on NEAT1,” says the scientist.

RNA modification marks are often deregulated in cancer cells

Methyladenosine marks on RNA transcripts are a topic that scientists have not been dealing with for very long. They fall into the area of epitranscriptomics — the field of biology that deals with the question of how RNA modifications are involved in the regulation of gene expression. Methyl groups play a key role in this. It is known, for example, that RNA modifications are often misplaced in cancer cells.

NEAT1 releases an DNA repair factor

The experiments conducted by Kaspar Burger and his team show that the frequent occurrence of DNA double-strand breaks causes excessive methylation of NEAT1, which leads to changes in the NEAT1 secondary structure. As a result, highly methylated NEAT1 accumulates at some of these lesions to drive the recognition of broken DNA. In turn, experimentally induced suppression of NEAT1 levels delayed the DNA damage response, resulting in increased amounts of DNA damage.

NEAT1 itself does not repair DNA damage. However, as the Würzburg team discovered, it enables the controlled release and activation of an RNA-binding DNA repair factor. In this way, the cell can recognize and repair DNA damage highly efficiently.

According to the scientists, knowledge about the role of NEAT1 methylation in the recognition and repair of DNA damage could open up new therapeutic options for tumors with high NEAT1 expression. However, it must first be clarified whether these results, which were obtained in simple cell systems, can also be transferred to complex tumor models.

Kaspar Burger’s research was supported by the German Cancer Aid and the Mildred Scheel Early Career Center for Cancer Research (MSNZ) in Würzburg.

Whenever cells divide, there is a high risk of damage to the genetic material. After all, the cell has to duplicate its entire genetic material and copy billions of genetic letters before it divides. This repeatedly results in “reading errors” of the genome. However, other factors are also responsible for the accumulation of DNA damage in the course of a person’s life: exposure to sun light, alcohol and cigarettes are just a few examples of factors that are known to damage the genetic material and thus can cause cancer, among other things.

Of course, the cell is not powerless in the face of such lesions. It has an extensive catalog of cellular mechanisms that are set in motion following DNA damage. DNA damage response, or DDR for short, is the technical term for this. Specific signaling pathways usually initiate the immediate recognition and repair of DNA damage, thus ensuring the survival of the cell.

A new look at the DNA damage response

A team of scientists from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, has now taken a closer look at one of these signaling pathways. The group has identified a new mechanism of the DNA damage response that is mediated via an RNA transcript. Their results help to broaden the conceptual view on the DNA damage response and to link it more closely with RNA metabolism.

Dr. Kaspar Burger, junior research group leader at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, was responsible for this study. The group has published the results of their investigations in the journal Genes & Development.

RNA transcripts as regulators of genome stability

“In our study, we focused on so-called long non-coding RNA transcripts. Previous data suggest that some of these transcripts act as regulators of genome stability,” says Kaspar Burger, explaining the background to the work. The study focused on the nuclear enriched abundant transcript 1 — also known as NEAT1 — which is found in high concentrations in many tumor cells. NEAT1 is also known to react to DNA damage and to cellular stress. However, its exact role in the DNA damage response was previously unclear.

“Our hypothesis was that RNA metabolism involves NEAT1 in the DNA damage response in order to ensure the stability of the genome,” says Burger. To test this hypothesis, the research group experimentally investigated how NEAT1 reacts to serious damage to the genome — so-called DNA double-strand breaks — in human bone cancer cells. The result: “We were able to show that DNA double-strand breaks increase both the number of NEAT1 transcripts and the amount of N6-methyladenosine marks on NEAT1,” says the scientist.

RNA modification marks are often deregulated in cancer cells

Methyladenosine marks on RNA transcripts are a topic that scientists have not been dealing with for very long. They fall into the area of epitranscriptomics — the field of biology that deals with the question of how RNA modifications are involved in the regulation of gene expression. Methyl groups play a key role in this. It is known, for example, that RNA modifications are often misplaced in cancer cells.

NEAT1 releases an DNA repair factor

The experiments conducted by Kaspar Burger and his team show that the frequent occurrence of DNA double-strand breaks causes excessive methylation of NEAT1, which leads to changes in the NEAT1 secondary structure. As a result, highly methylated NEAT1 accumulates at some of these lesions to drive the recognition of broken DNA. In turn, experimentally induced suppression of NEAT1 levels delayed the DNA damage response, resulting in increased amounts of DNA damage.

NEAT1 itself does not repair DNA damage. However, as the Würzburg team discovered, it enables the controlled release and activation of an RNA-binding DNA repair factor. In this way, the cell can recognize and repair DNA damage highly efficiently.

According to the scientists, knowledge about the role of NEAT1 methylation in the recognition and repair of DNA damage could open up new therapeutic options for tumors with high NEAT1 expression. However, it must first be clarified whether these results, which were obtained in simple cell systems, can also be transferred to complex tumor models.

Kaspar Burger’s research was supported by the German Cancer Aid and the Mildred Scheel Early Career Center for Cancer Research (MSNZ) in Würzburg.

The study, led by The University of Queensland researcher Joseph McMahon from the Reef Catchments Science Partnership, explores how the integrity of water quality offsets — critical to protecting the health of the Great Barrier Reef — can improve, especially in areas with growing populations such as Cairns and Mackay.

“Water quality offsets are designed to counterbalance industrial pollution by reducing emissions elsewhere, often from agricultural sources,” Mr McMahon said.

“However, our study highlights substantial uncertainties in the effectiveness of this approach, especially in accurately measuring pollution reductions from agricultural land use changes.

“In this study, we summarised these uncertainties and estimated the demand for water quality offsets from sewage treatment plants — the largest industrial emitter of total nitrogen in Great Barrier Reef catchments — until 2050.

“We also discussed the implications of both on the ability of offsetting to counterbalance industrial emissions in catchments where water quality has a large influence on the Reef’s health.”

Researchers found that sewage treatment plants will require a large volume of water quality offsets by 2050 in Cairns, and a small volume of offsets immediately in Mackay.

“It’s particularly important that water quality offsets in these catchments have a high integrity to ensure increased industrial pollution is adequately counterbalanced and important water quality targets for the Reef are met,” Mr McMahon said.

“Water quality offsets could help industries like sewage treatment plants comply with regulations while also protecting the Reef, but uncertainties in measuring their effectiveness pose challenges.

“Some examples of water quality offsets these regions could employ include improved crop management practices and riverbank revegetation to improve water quality in waterways in Reef catchment areas.

“In general, if agricultural offsets are implemented near industrial emissions and have a high certainty of effectiveness, they are more likely to have a high integrity.

“This allows industries to comply with regulations while protecting the Reef from pollution linked to population growth.

“This approach provides a balance between scientific rigour and policy workability until further research into pollution hotspots and transport pathways can address some of the uncertainties.”

Many people overlook their gutters when it comes to home upkeep. However, gutter maintenance protects their dwelling and the surrounding property from considerable damage. How you clean gutters clean can significantly affect the environment.

Homeowners take on many responsibilities when they buy a house, including gutter maintenance. Clean gutters protect your home from water damage, roof rotting and infestations. For example, birds and wasps may create nests using debris buildup, while mosquitos may lay their eggs in standing water. Maintaining your gutters also prevents backed-up water from washing away mulch, plants and soil, destroying your landscaping.

Know Your Gutter Maintenance Choices

Experts recommend homeowners clean their gutters twice annually, preferably in the spring and fall. This entails removing leaves, branches and other obstructions. However, if your yard has overhanging trees, you may need to clean them more often. Of course, there’s a correct way to keep them clean while safeguarding the environment. Here are seven ways you can sustainably and effectively maintain your gutters.

Install Gutter Guards

Installing gutter guards keeps pine needles, leaves, branches and other natural debris out of your roofline’s gutter, allowing water to flow more easily. As a result, there is also less chance of ice dam formation and pest infestations.

You can choose from several gutter guards, including steel mesh, screens, bristled brushes and hoods. Deciding on the correct type of guard should depend on your climate, gutter size and the most common debris. For instance, you’ll want a stronger guard if you live somewhere with heavy rain and snow, while mesh is more suitable for smaller particles.

Trim Tree Branches

Tall, lush trees improve curb appeal and are ideal for providing habitats to local species. However, overhanging ones can be a real hassle for gutter maintenance. When trees drop branches and leaves in the gutter, it can cause significant water blockages, resulting in costly home damage.

By trimming back trees, you can avoid the accumulation of natural debris and prevent roof deterioration during severe weather. It is best to prune trees between November and March when they are dormant.

Remove Debris Mannually

Although there are different ways to remove debris from gutters, the most environmentally friendly way is to do it manually. This reduces water consumption from power washing and the need for potentially hazardous chemicals.

Always wear gloves to avoid cutting your hands or getting infected by sharp or pointed leaf litter. A plastic scoop designed for gutters can make removing buildup easier.

Of course, you should only clean your gutters manually if you are capable and steady enough to stand on a ladder. Otherwise, have someone do it for you.

Maintain the Roof

Addressing roof problems is crucial for maintaining gutters, especially since shingle granules and other debris can accumulate and cause clogging. If your roof is no more than five years old, you can usually get away with checking for problems yourself. Stand back from your house and look for loose or missing shingles.

If your roof is older, experts recommend having your roofs inspected twice annually by a professional and after severe weather, such as a snowstorm, tropical cyclone or tornado. Staying ahead of potential problems keeps your gutters working effectively and prolongs your roof’s life span.

Use Sustainable Cleaners

Synthetic cleaners will seep into your backyard and possibly cause ecological harm to local wildlife and the natural environment. If you must use cleaners on your gutter, ensure they are plant-based or non-toxic.

Sustainable cleaners should not contain phosphates and chlorine, which can pollute waterways through stormwater runoff. Fortunately, these non-toxic cleaners are as effective at removing gutter debris and dirt as conventional cleaners.

Compost Debris

Use whatever leaf litter you collect from your gutter to make compost. This helps reduce waste and provide additional nutrients to the soil. You can then use the matter in your garden beds for healthier plants and flowers.

There are several reasons to use compost in your garden. It provides better moisture control and produces nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur as leaves break down — crucial for optimal plant growth. It also combats pests and plant diseases by creating a habitat for essential soil organisms.

Harvest Rainwater

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average household consumes over 300 gallons of water daily. Nearly 30% is used outdoors, although the number is likely higher in drier, hotter regions. A rainwater collection barrel can reduce your outdoor watering impact.

Maintaining clear gutters allows water to flow more freely into a rainwater collection bin. You can then use the harvested water to irrigate your lawn and garden, wash your property’s walkways and driveways, or do household chores, reducing your home’s water footprint.

Home Ownership Is A Responsibility

Gutter maintenance should always be prioritized to protect your home and property. However, adopting sustainable practices will elevate your efforts to reduce your environmental footprint. Prevent gutter issues before they occur to avoid costly damage.

About the Author

Rose Morrison is the managing editor of Renovated Magazine. She has over six years of experience writing about sustainability, circular economy, and better building. When not contributing to various reputable publications and advocating for environmental awareness, Rose loves being outdoors and spending time with her pets.  

Gender inequalities in health-related quality of life are generally few and small, even in large surveys. Yet many generic measures limit assessment to quality of life overall and its physical and psychological dimensions, while overlooking internationally important environmental, social, and spiritual quality of life. To overcome this limitation, Skevington and colleagues collected data using four surveys of 17,608 adults living in 43 cultures worldwide. The researchers analyzed data encompassing six quality of life domains: physical, psychological, independence, social, environmental, and spiritual.

The results showed that environmental quality of life explained a substantial 46% of women’s overall quality of life and health, and home environment contributed the most to this result. In addition, women younger than 45 years reported the poorest quality of life on every domain. After the age of 45 years, all domains except physical quality of life increased to very good, and high levels were sustained beyond 75 years of age, especially environmental quality of life.

According to the authors, environmental actions that young adults take to draw public attention to climate change may be motivated by their poorer environmental quality of life. Very good environmental quality of life of older women may provide reason for them to work toward retaining this valued feature for future generations. This could be the topic of future research, as the data for this study was collected before it was widely appreciated that the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss would depend on changing human behavior.

In the meantime, the findings underscore the importance of assessing environmental, social, and spiritual quality of life to fully understand women’s quality of life and health. Moreover, information from this study could be used for the timely implementation of interventions to enhance the quality of life of young and older women.

The authors add: “For women, the effect of the environment, in particular, on their quality of life is substantial. This includes things like their home conditions, financial resources, and environmental health including pollution levels.”

Low- and middle-income countries are disproportionately impacted by climate change’s acute (e.g., flooding) and chronic (e.g., rising sea levels) effects. Countries undergoing climate shocks are more likely to see increased intimate partner violence against women, possibly because climate disasters reaffirm the gender-based economic disparities.

Mannell and colleagues analyzed 363 nationally representative surveys from 156 countries to estimate the prevalence of intimate partner violence, defined as physical or sexual violence against a woman from her partner in the last year. Each survey represented one year of data for its respective country encompassing 1993-2019. Most countries had five or fewer years represented.

The researchers analyzed this data against climate shock data from the Emergency Events Database, filtering for eight events linked to climate change: earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, extreme temperatures, droughts, floods, storms and wildfires.

They observed a lagged association between landslides, storms and floods (together, a hydro-meteorological climate variable) and intimate partner violence, with the association taking place two years following the climate event.

The researchers observed that this climate variable had a similar magnitude of effect on intimate partner violence to GDP, suggesting that “the association … may be similar to economic drivers of violence.” Higher GDPs were generally associated with fewer instances of intimate partner violence.

These results have implications for future environmental policies designed to mitigate the social and health impacts of climate change and “progress current efforts to … consider the enormous implications of climate-related [intimate partner violence] on women’s lives.”

The researchers encourage investigation into the differences between types of intimate partner violence as associated with climate events, long-term versus short-term impact and distinctions among countries and regions.

The authors add: “Recognizing the impacts that climate change has on intimate partner violence is critical, and countries can address this by implementing it into their Nationally Defined Contributions (NDCs) in support of The Paris Agreement.”

This discovery could help wildlife managers make better-informed decisions when managing one of the boreal forest’s keystone predators.

A traveling population wave is a common dynamic in biology, in which the number of animals in a habitat grows and shrinks, moving across a region like a ripple.

Alaska’s Canada lynx populations rise and fall in response to the 10- to 12-year boom-and-bust cycle of their primary prey: the snowshoe hare. During these cycles, hares reproduce rapidly, and then their population crashes when food resources become scarce. The lynx population follows this cycle, typically lagging one to two years behind.

The study, which ran from 2018 to 2022, began at the peak of this cycle, according to Derek Arnold, lead investigator. Researchers tracked the reproduction, movement and survival of lynx as the population collapsed.

Between 2018 and 2022, biologists live-trapped 143 lynx across five national wildlife refuges in Interior Alaska — Tetlin, Yukon Flats, Kanuti and Koyukuk — as well as Gates of the Arctic National Park. The lynx were outfitted with GPS collars, allowing satellites to track their movements across the landscape and yielding an unprecedented body of data.

Arnold explained that lynx responded to the collapse of the snowshoe hare population in three distinct stages, with changes originating in the east and moving westward — clear evidence of a traveling population wave.

• Reproduction decline: The first response was a sharp decline in reproduction. At the height of the cycle, when the study began, Arnold said researchers sometimes found as many as eight kittens in a single den. However, reproduction in the easternmost study site ceased first, and by the end of the study, it had dropped to zero across all study areas.
• Increased dispersal: After reproduction fell, lynx began to disperse, moving out of their original territories in search of better conditions. They traveled in all directions. “We thought there would be natural barriers to their movement, like the Brooks Range or Denali. But they chugged right across mountain ranges and swam across rivers,” Arnold said. “That was shocking to us.” One lynx traveled nearly 1,000 miles to the Alberta border.
• Survival decline: In the final stage, survival rates dropped. While lynx dispersed in all directions, those that traveled eastward — against the wave — had significantly higher mortality rates than those that moved westward or stayed within their original territories.

Arnold said the study’s findings won’t sound surprising to anyone with real-life experience observing lynx and hares. “People like trappers have observed this pattern anecdotally for a long, long time. The data just provides evidence to support it and helps us see the big picture,” he said.

“We’ve long known that hares and lynx operate on a 10- to 12-year cycle, but we didn’t fully understand how it played out across the landscape,” Arnold said. “It wasn’t clear if the cycle occurred simultaneously across the state or if it happened in isolated areas at different times.

“Knowing that the wave usually sweeps from east to west makes lynx population trends more predictable,” he said. “It will be easier for wildlife managers to make informed decisions now that we can predict how a population is going to behave on a more local scale, instead of just looking at the state as a whole.”

Another key takeaway is the importance of maintaining refuge populations. “The lynx that disperse during population declines don’t usually survive. Most of them don’t make it when they leave their home areas,” Arnold said.

The study, developed in part from Arnold’s doctoral thesis, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Other UAF authors include Greg Breed, Shawn Crimmins and Knut Kielland.

Dozens of biologists, technicians, refuge staff and volunteers supported the collaring efforts. The research was part of the Northwest Boreal Forest Lynx Project, a collaboration between UAF, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.