Researchers from the University of Granada are leading the ActiveBrains study,in which more than 100 overweight or obese children participated
The research shows that children who go to bed earlier and sleep better and have more grey matter than those with poorer-quality sleep, leading to better academic performance and higher IQ
Children who sleep better (that is, those who wake up less during night) and those who wake up earlier have more grey matter in their brains (specifically, in eight cortical regions and in the hippocampus), perform better academically, and have a higher level of intelligence (IQ).
This has been demonstrated by scientists from the Sport and Health University Research Institute (iMUDS) and the Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Centre (CIMCYC)—both part of the University of Granada (UGR). The scientists are collaborating in the ‘ActiveBrains’ study led by researcher Francisco Ortega, which involves a sample of more than 100 overweight or obese children.
Their work, published in the journal Pediatric Obesity, reveals that the regions of the brain associated with sleep in children include: the temporal (inferior temporal gyrus and the fusiform gyrus), the parietal (superior parietal cortex, supramarginal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, and precuneus), the frontal (frontal–superior medial gyrus), and the subcortical (hippocampus).
“Our research shows that sleep is associated with greater grey matter in some areas of the brain that are important for better academic performance and cognitive development,” explains Jairo Hidalgo Migueles, researcher at the UGR’s Department of Physical Education and Sports and principal author of this work.
This research highlights the importance of developing strategies to improve children’s quality of sleep (not only its duration) at the cognitive level in the various stages of child development.
An appropriate window of time
“Similarly, we found that waking up earlier was strongly associated with better academic performance. This result seems to indicate that the appropriate window of time must be ensured, from the time the child wakes up until the school day begins, thus ensuring good cognitive activation,” notes Hidalgo Migueles.
Among the most original aspects of this study is the fact that the authors performed an objective and highly detailed measurement of sleep through accelerometers built into smartbands that the children wore through the night.
The UGR scientists also obtained high-quality images of the brain activity of the schoolchildren using magnetic resonance imaging carried out at the CIMCYC.
Bibliography
Migueles J.H., Cadenas-Sanchez C., Esteban-Cornejo I., Mora-Gonzalez J., Rodriguez-Ayllon M., Solis-Urra P., Erickson K.I., Kramer A.F., Hillman C.H., Catena A., and Ortega F.B. (2020), ‘Associations of sleep with gray matter volume and their implications for academic achievement, executive function and intelligence in children with overweight/obesity’. Pediatriatric Obesity. Online: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ijpo.12707
Jairo Hidalgo Migueles, researcher at the Department of Physical Education and Sports, UGR, and the main author of this work
Regions of the brain in which grey matter volume is associated with sleep characteristics in overweight or obese children. Children who enjoyed better-quality sleep also had a greater volume of grey matter in certain areas (marked here in red)
Children who sleep better (that is, those wake up less during the night) and also those who wake up earlier have more grey matter in the brain, deliver better academic performance, and have a higher IQ
Media enquiries:
Jairo Hidalgo Migueles
Department of Physical Education and Sports, Faculty of Sport Sciences, University of Granada
An international team of scientists, led by the University of Granada, has, for the first time, applied the study of palaeodermatoglyphs (ancient fingerprints) to the cave paintings found in the Los Machos rock-shelter (on the eastern slope of the Cerro de Jabalcón in Zújar, Granada)
An international team of scientists, led by the University of Granada (UGR), has determined for the first time the gender and age of the authors of cave paintings found in the Los Machos rock-shelter (on the eastern slope of the Cerro de Jabalcón in Zújar, Granada) by using fingerprint analysis.
Their study, published in the prestigious journal Antiquity, analysed the 32 prehistoric motifs painted in the Los Machos rock-shelter between 7,000 and 5,000 thousand years ago. The researchers identified fingerprints belonging to two different individuals in the paintings: an adult male, older than 36, and possibly a young woman or, more likely, a young individual who could be male or female.
Francisco Martínez Sevilla, a researcher at the UGR and the University of Alcalá de Henares, explains: “the identification of two individuals of different ages or genders opens up new horizons in the interpretation of rupestrian art and sheds light on the social context in which it was produced, most notably involving different members of the community. This study shows that the representations in these cave paintings were not limited to a specific group denoted by age or gender.”
This is the first application of palaeodermatoglyphic analysis to rupestrian art, demonstrating the major potential of this technique for studies of prehistoric art. These analyses were performed by the GROB Research Group on Osteobiography, coordinated by Professor Assumpció Malgosa.
Palaeodermatoglyphs—fingerprints found in archaeological contexts—are ancient skin-prints left accidentally (or even deliberately) on different materials, including the walls of prehistoric caves (such as those at Los Machos) or on ceramic surfaces.
Where the fingerprints are well conserved, their examination enables the gender and age of their owners to be identified via the analysis of papillary ridges, which are the linear raised epidermal ridges interspersed with grooves in the rounded part of the fingertip. There are differences between the genders in both the number of ridges and their width, because men have larger ridges than women.
There are also age-related features because, although the fingerprint pattern does not change during a person’s lifetime, the distance between the ridges increases during growth and stabilises in adulthood. Comparing archaeological fingerprints with present-day samples enables the gender and age of the individual to be defined within a range of probability.
Cave paintings are perhaps one of humanity’s most universal symbolic expressions. Research in this area to date has focused on the study of the motifs represented, their meaning, their geographical distribution, and their dating. But the question of authorship—who exactly painted or etched these marks—is particularly fascinating for researchers. Being able to ascertain the gender and age of the authors of these pictorial representations can provide an insight into the social context in which they were made—that is, whether they were the result of individual expression or created by various members of the community.
Analysis of the cave and the pictorial panel
“In this project, we conducted an interdisciplinary study of the ‘schematic art’ on the panel [rock surface] of the Los Machos rock-shelter. ‘Schematic’ art is one of the three styles of rupestrian art defined in the late prehistoric Iberian Peninsula, together with ‘Levantine’ and ‘Macro-Schematic’. Schematism is a pictorial style that appears throughout the Peninsula and dates from the Early Neolithic to the Copper Age (mid-6th Century to 3rd Century BC),” explains Martínez Sevilla.
The researchers’ examination of the rock-shelter and the pictorial panel included: an analysis of its geological morphology (which accounts for the paintings’ state of conservation and durability over time); the techniques used in the application of the paint; the regional archaeological context; the dating that could be attributed; and identification of the biological profile of the authors of the paintings by means of palaeodermatoglyphic analysis.
Also participating in the study along with Francisco Martínez Sevilla were Meritxell Arqués, Xavier Jordana, and Assumpció Malgosa (Autonomous University of Barcelona), José Antonio Lozano Rodríguez, Margarita Sánchez Romero, and Javier Carrasco Rus (University of Granada), and Kate Sharpe (University of Durham, UK).
On the pictorial panel of the Los Machos rock-shelter, a total of 32 painted motifs were identified, the majority of which comprise anthropomorphic, circular, and geometric figures. The paintings are likely to have been preserved in their entirety, as evidenced by the geomorphological study and their layout on the rock surface. The superposition of the figures and the different pigment tones suggest that the paintings were made in two phases, which could represent two distinct chronological episodes.
«Our analysis of the width of the outlines enabled us to confirm that the pigment was applied with fingers and that the fingerprints pertained to Phase 2, the most recent, in which a dark ochre pigment was used,» the authors conclude.
View of the Cerro de Jabalcón (Zújar, Granada) from its eastern slope where the Los Machos rock-shelter is located
Los Machos rock-shelter and panel featuring Schematic Art
A) photograph of the ‘Schematic Art’ panel at Los Machos and B) photograph processed using ImageJ® software
Tracing of the Los Machos rupestrian art panel and detail of the fingerprints identified
Bibliography:
Martínez-Sevilla, F., Arqués, M., Jordana, X., Malgosa, A., Lozano Rodríguez, JA, Sánchez Romero, M., Sharpe, K., and Carrasco Rus, J. (2020), ‘Who painted that? The authorship of Schematic rock art at the Los Machos rock-shelter in southern Iberia’. Antiquity, 1–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2020.140
Media enquiries:
Francisco Martínez Seville
Research Group for the Study of Recent Prehistory in Andalusia (GEPRAN)
Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of Granada
Assistant Professor (tenure track), University of Alcalá (Alcalá de Henares, Madrid)
Prehistory Seminar, Department of History and Philosophy.
An international team of scientists, led by the Andalusian Earth Sciences Institute (CSIC-UGR), shows that Australian stingless bees produce their honeycombs by following complex patterns, yet they have no prior plan, nor do they coordinate with the other worker bees
This is a beautiful example of the applicability of mathematics to nature: bees build their honeycombs following the same mathematical rules as atoms or molecules attaching to a crystal
An international team of scientists, led by the Andalusian Institute of Earth Sciences (IACT, a mixed centre of the Spanish Higher Council for Scientific Research/ CSIC and the University of Granada), has revealed for the first time one of nature’s best-kept secrets: the mathematical patterns followed by bees in order to make such perfect honeycombs.
The researchers, who have published their results in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, demonstrated, in a beautiful example of the applicability of mathematics to nature, that Australian stingless bees (Tetragonula carbonaria, endemic to that continent) build their combs following complex patterns without any planning and with no overall coordination with the other worker bees.
The study concludes that bees produce their combs following the same mathematical rules as atoms or molecules attaching to a crystal. Thus, the honeycombs form the same terraced patterns that are observed in minerals, such as in the mother-of-pearl produced by molluscs.
“Tetragonula carbonaria honeycombs present surprising patterns that can be spirals, double spirals, or in a bull’s-eye-like formation,” explain Bruno Escribano Salazar and Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró,two of the IACT researchers who participated in this study. Until now, it was only known that worker bees build hives by adding new cells at the end of each layer or terrace of the honeycomb, but there was no convincing explanation as to how these Australian bees are able to form such complex patterns. “It was originally thought that some kind of coordination and communication between workers would be necessary, possibly through chemical signals,” they add.
No master plan
Now, in this study led by the UGR (in which scientists from the University of Cambridge and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, collaborated), a mathematical model has been developed that explains how bees produce these patterns without the need for any master plan or overall coordination.
By examining the structures and order that emerge in the combs, the researchers have identified a model of minimal complexity in which each individual worker bee only needs the minimal information about its closest environment to contribute to the structure, without the need for group coordination or superior intelligence. The patterns observed by the scientists are, therefore, an emergent phenomenon resulting from the localised behavior of the workers.
The researchers have simplified the model to just two parameters: (R) the typical size of the bee and (α) a random term related to the variability in the honeycomb cells. By modifying these parameters, the model is able to generate all the patterns observed in the honeycombs.
The recent discoveries regarding the cognition of bees and bumblebees are astonishing. “We know that bumblebees learn by watching others; that the behaviour of bees is affected by their emotional states, and that they can even respond to concepts such as ‘the same’ and ‘different’”, explain the authors. “There is also evidence of intelligence when building their honeycombs: they resolve occasional construction problems and they do it in a flexible way that suggests they are not acting solely on instinct.”
‘Inflexible’ behaviours
But, as is well known, they also have a series of simple, ‘inflexible’, and innate behaviours that enable the hive to function. In bee colonies, these innate behaviours form part of a phenomenon known as stigmergy, in which complex results can be achieved through the simple actions of many individuals, without the need for any planning between them.
“Bees coordinate their actions by modifying their environment, they do not need a master plan … in this case, they do not even need to communicate!” the researchers observe. All they have to do is modify their environment locally, and self-organisation emerges almost out of nowhere. “The structures that we describe here are the result of an emerging phenomenon, it is not a plan but the outcome of simple accumulated actions,” they explain.
The researchers had previously applied the same model to crystal growth on a microscopic scale, albeit with some differences in its parameters (https://www.pnas.org/content/106/26/10499). Yet, although both systems are very different, the same patterns emerged as a result of the same rules of self-organisation.
UGR researchers Bruno Escribano Salazar and Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró.
Bibliography:
Silvana S. S. Cardoso, Julyan H. E. Cartwright, Antonio G. Checa, Bruno Escribano, Antonio J. Osuna-Mascaró and C. Ignacio Sainz-Díaz (2020), ‘The bee Tetragonula builds its comb like a crystal’, Journal of The Royal Society Interface 17(168). Online: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2020.0187
This forest species disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula due to natural—mainly climatic—causes at some point in the Pleistocene (from about 2 million years ago to about 10,000 years ago), but the precise moment of its disappearance remains unknown, as do the causes
A team of scientists from the University of Granada has analysed the pollen records of the Cedrus (the cedar), a forest species that disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula due to natural—mainly climatic—causes at some point in the Pleistocene, to study why this species is also now disappearing in the Middle Atlas and the Rif Mountains of Morocco.
The fossil pollen of this tree is found in the Sierra Nevada but was likely to have originally been carried across from Northern Africa by the wind. Together with the sediments that have accumulated in the last few thousand years in the lakes of Sierra Nevada, it presents many similarities with comparable records from lakes in Morocco. Furthermore, the Sierra Nevada records could be used as a proxy for changes in the cedar forests of North Africa.
Mountainous and alpine environments are especially fragile and sensitive to climate change. Previous studies have shown that rising temperatures and drought conditions in the Mediterranean are inducing mortality among humidity-sensitive forest species such as the cedar (Cedrusatlantica) in the Middle Atlas and Rif Mountains of Morocco. The current situation for cedar in those two areas is a cause for concern.
In the Iberian Peninsula, the cedar is known to have disappeared during the Pleistocene (from about 2 million years to about 10,000 years ago), but the precise timing of its disappearance and the exact causes are not known.
The study carried out by UGR researchers also shows that the unusually high temperatures and the increase in summer drought have generated a marked drop in the cedar population in the mountains of Morocco and that they play a very important role in its abundance over time.
Climatic projections of an increase in temperature and drought in the Sierra Nevada region are putting this significant forest species in serious danger.
Bibliography:
Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno*, R. Scott Anderson, María J. Ramos-Román, Jon Camuera, Jose Manuel Mesa-Fernández, Antonio García-Alix, Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo, José S. Carrión, Alejandro López-Avilés (2020) ‘The Holocene Cedrus pollen record from Sierra Nevada (S Spain), a proxy for climate change in N Africa.’ Quaternary Science Reviews 242. Online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2020.106468
Media enquiries:
Gonzalo Jimenez-Moreno
Department of Stratigraphy and Palaeontology, University of Granada
This work is part of a strand of research being undertaken by the Department of Optics of the University of Granada (UGR) in Spain to analyse the effectiveness of various aids marketed as ostensibly ‘improving’ colour vision among colour-blind people
In 2018 and 2019, the research team demonstrated the ineffectiveness of two such products: EnChroma’s Cx-65 glasses and VINO’s 02 Amp Oxy-Iso glasses. Neither was found to improve the colour vision of colour-blind people.
In Spain alone there are almost 2 million colour-blind people (one in 12 men and one in 200 women) who struggle to discern the different colours. Due to this reduced capacity to distinguish certain colours, they experience a range of day-to-day difficulties and it also impedes them from applying for jobs in some professions—for example, they are excluded from being train drivers, pilots, police officers, fire-fighters, and so on.
Five scientists from the University of Granada (UGR), in their on-going research into this issue, have computationally modelled almost 100,000 different colour filters (rather than testing filters that are already marketed by various companies, such as EnChroma or VINO, which sell ‘glasses for the colour-blind’). Using these computer models, they have studied which of the filters would increase the number of colours that colour-blind people could perceive and what their effect would be on the results of two tests that are commonly used in diagnosing colour-blindness (the Ishihara test and the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue test).
Among the filters they modelled, the scientists also included lenses with a colour filter sold by the aforementioned companies VINO and EnChroma. These lenses have received considerable media attention in recent years, with viral videos that have flooded social networks showing colour-blind people overwhelmed with emotion when trying on such glasses for the first time.
The findings of the research showed that, although certain filters do increase the number of discernible colours, the improvement is negligible and the increase does not enable colour-blind people to perceive the same range of colours as normal subjects. It was also found that none of these filters would pass the Ishihara test or the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue test, the latter being very reliable in assessing colour vision in humans.
These results support the hypothesis that, despite the apparent success of the marketing campaigns implemented by the companies that sell this type of glasses, these filters will never enable colour-blind people to enjoy a similar degree of perception in their vision to that of individuals with normal colour perception.
The results have recently been published in the scientific journal SENSORS. The five doctors who contributed to the article are all from the Department of Optics of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Granada: Miguel Ángel Martínez Domingo, Luis Gómez Robledo, Eva Valero Benito, Rafael Huertas Roa, and Javier Hernández Andrés.
Bibliography:
Miguel A. Martínez-Domingo, Eva M. Valero, Luis Gómez-Robledo, Rafael Huertas, and Javier Hernández-Andrés (2020), ‘Spectral filter selection for increasing chromatic diversity in CVD subjects’, Sensors, 20(7), 2023. Online: https://doi.org/10.3390/s20072023
Image captions:
Simulation of how different types of observers would perceive the same scene (by columns from left to right: normal vision, protanomalous, protanope, deuteranomalous and deuteranope), without the filter (above) and with the filter (below), showing the greatest number of perceived colours that the filter would provide to each type of observer.
The researchers at the UGR who conducted this study on colour-blindness.
Media enquiries:
Miguel Ángel Martínez Domingo
Department of Optics, Faculty of Science, University of Granada
A multidisciplinary team of researchers, coordinated by the University of Granada, describes this curious phenomenon in a particular species for the first time, which is due to ‘phenotypic plasticity’ (the ability of a genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to changes in the environment)
The higher temperatures and longer daylight hours in Summer trigger changes in the expression of more than 625 genes of this plant, which cause it to start producing radically different flowers: whereas, in Spring, they are large, cross-shaped, ultraviolet-reflecting lilac flowers, in Summer they are small, rounded, and white, and absorb the ultraviolet (UV) rays
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Granada, the Arid Zone Research Station (of the Spanish Higher Research Council), and Vigo, Pablo Olavide, and Rey Juan Carlos Universities have discovered that a particular plant, Moricandia arvensis (Brassicaceae), produces radically different flowers in Spring than in Summer because heat modifies the expression of its genes.
This curious phenomenon, which these researchers have described for the first time in a species, is due to what is known as ‘phenotypic plasticity’, which is the ability of a genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to changes in the environment. While it is an essential property of living beings, its role in species’ adaptation and acclimatisation to environmental changes is not yet fully understood.
These researchers have now published an article in the prestigious journal Nature Communications, in which they describe how their study demonstrates experimentally—both under natural conditions and in the laboratory—the phenotypic plasticity of the flowers of this particular plant species that lives in semi-arid environments.
They found that, in Spring, Moricandia arvensis produces large, cross-shaped, UV-reflecting lilac flowers. These attract mainly large long-tongued bees as pollinators. However, unlike most co-occurring species, M. arvensis continues to flower during the dry, hot western Mediterranean summer. «This is due to its plasticity in key vegetative and photosynthetic traits that adjust its metabolism to these extreme conditions of high temperature and water deficit,” explains Francisco Perfectti Álvarez, Professor of Genetics at the UGR and one of the principal authors of this work.
Changes in over 625 genes
The high temperatures and longer daylight hours of Summer trigger changes in the expression of more than 625 genes of this plant, which cause it to start producing radically different flowers: whereas, in Spring, they are large, cross-shaped, UV-reflecting lilac flowers, in Summer they are small, rounded, UV-absorbing, and white.
What is more, in Summer, these flowers attract a different assemblage of pollinators, comprising more generalist species. This change in the pollinator set (the pollination niche) enables this plant to successfully reproduce under difficult conditions.
«In light of our study, we can affirm that phenotypic plasticity in flower, vegetative, and photosynthetic traits appears to enable M. arvensis to cope with anthropogenic perturbations and climate change,» concludes the UGR researcher.
Bibliography:
Gómez, J.M., Perfectti, F., Armas, C., Narbona, E., González-Megías, A., Navarro, L., DeSoto, L., and Torices, R. (2020). ‘Within-individual phenotypic plasticity in flowers fosters pollination niche shift’, Nature Communications 11:4019. Online: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17875-1
Francisco Perfectti Álvarez, Professor in the Department of Genetics at the UGR, is one of the main authors of this work
The flower produced by Moricandia arvensis in Spring vs. in Summer
A study conducted by the University of Granada and the Andalusian School of Public Health has analysed the main risk factors in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during the national lockdown in Spain, including going out to work or living with patients diagnosed with COVID-19.
The authors warn of the need among dog-lovers to take extreme hygiene measures regarding their pets, as it is not yet clear whether the owners were infected because the animal acted as the host for the virus and transmitted it directly, or whether they picked it up indirectly due to the increased exposure of the dog to vehicles of the virus (that is, objects or surfaces where the virus lies)
“From a scientific point of view, there is no justification for children’s playgrounds being closed to prevent infections while parks where dogs are walked are allowed to remain open, when there are numerous objects there that can act as vehicles for SARS-CoV-2,” observe the authors
A study carried out by researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) and the Andalusian School of Public Health has analysed the main risk factors in the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus during the national lockdown in Spain, between March and May 2020.
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, has revealed that living with a dog and buying basic products in the supermarket with home delivery were two of the socio-demographic variables (of those analysed) that most increased the risk of contracting COVID-19 during the period under study—by 78% in the case of living with a dog, and by 94% in that of supermarket home delivery.
The authors warn dog-owners of the need to take extreme hygiene measures in relation to their pets, as it is not yet clear whether the owners were infected because the animal acted as a host for the virus (and transmitted it) or due to having taken it out for a walk in public.
As explained by Cristina Sánchez González, a researcher at the UGR’s Biomedical Research Centre and the main author of this work, “in view of the rapid spread of the virus even during lockdown, we consider it important to study the socio-demographic characteristics, habits, and comorbidities of the SARS-CoV-2 infection in order to implement effective prevention strategies.”
To this end, the researchers designed a survey to capture variables of interest during the lockdown period that might help explain the exponential spread of the virus, despite the highly restrictive mobility conditions implemented nationally in Spain.
Study based on 2,086 individuals
This study, carried out throughout Spain, sought to shed light on other possible routes of transmission of the COVID-19 disease, risk factors, and the effectiveness of the hygiene measures recommended by the Authorities, in order to detect critical points of exposure to the virus and thus minimise its spread—not only in this pandemic but also for any future events that could compromise public health.
Based on a sample of 2,086 individuals, 41% of the population surveyed were aged between 40 and 54 years and had studied to degree (44%) or postgraduate (32%) level. This collective presented a prevalence of the disease of 4.7%.
The results showed that the risk of suffering from COVID-19 is 60 times higher among those who cohabit with a COVID-19 patient. In addition, of all the socio-demographic variables analysed, the one with the most powerful effect in terms of increasing the risk of contracting the disease (by up to 78%) was living with a dog and taking it for a walk. By contrast, having cats or other types of pets had no significant effect on the prevalence of the disease.
“The results of our research warn of increased contagion among dog-owners, and the reason for this higher prevalence has yet to be elucidated. Taking into account the current scarcity of resources to carry out the diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 in humans, the possibility of diagnosis in dogs is extremely unlikely,” notes Sánchez González.
These results point to cohabiting with dogs as being a strong risk factor for COVID-19 infection, although further studies are needed to determine whether the reason for this sharp increase in the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection is due to transmission between humans and dogs, to the dog acting as a vehicle for the virus, or to the increased contact with other vehicles for the virus (that is, objects or surfaces where the virus is present). The latter could be caused by greater exposure to the virus due to the unhygienic behaviours and habits of dogs when out in the street and their subsequent return to the home.
“At the international level, there are several studies that have obtained results similar to ours regarding Coronavirus infection in dogs, but it is necessary to dig deeper on this issue and establish whether this prevalence of the virus among dog-owners is due to one reason or another,” explains the UGR researcher.
Sánchez González warns that, “in the midst of a pandemic and in the absence of an effective treatment or vaccine, preventive hygiene measures are the only salvation, and these measures should also be applied to dogs, which, according to our study, appear to directly or indirectly increase the risk of contracting the virus.”
The researcher also points out that “from a scientific point of view, there is no justification for children’s playgrounds being closed to prevent infections while parks where dogs are walked are allowed to remain open, when there are numerous objects there that can act as vehicles for SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, we should not rule out the possibility that the virus may be transmitted via faecal matter.”
Disinfecting supermarket products
In this study, the effect of certain variables—gender, age, educational level, type of residence, size of household, cohabitation with children or adolescents, the presence of workers among the household members, the presence of domestic workers in the home during lockdown, or having any type of pet other than a dog—was found to have no statistical significance.
The most effective hygiene measure in helping to reduce the prevalence of the disease was to disinfect products purchased from the market once back home (which reduced the risk by 94%). This was found to be more effective than other hygiene measures, such as the use of facemasks, gloves, disinfecting with ethanol or bleach, disinfecting shoes, and washing clothes when returning home.
Among mobility variables that were studied, those with the greatest effect in terms of increasing the prevalence of the virus were working outside the home (which increased the risk by 76%) and the use of public transport (particularly the underground system or tram network). A higher prevalence of the disease was also detected among those surveyed who had purchased their basic products at a supermarket and then used the home delivery service, compared to those who brought their shopping home themselves (the risk increased by 94% among the former group).
The authors emphasize that this was an epidemiological study, which neither addresses the mechanisms surrounding the virus nor establishes causal relationships. This was a descriptive study in which the selected variables were statistically associated with prevalence.
Bibliography:
Rodríguez Barranco, M., Rivas García, L., Quiles, J.L., Redondo Sánchez, D., Aranda, P., Llopis, J., Sánchez Pérez, M.J., & Sánchez González, C., ‘The spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Spain: Hygiene habits, sociodemographic profile, mobility patterns and comorbidities’. Environmental Research. Online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.110223.
The research team from the University of Granada and the Andalusian School of Public Health that conducted this study
People walking their dogs along the street
Media enquiries:
Cristina Sánchez González,“José Mataix Verdú” Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology. Sport and Health Joint University Institute. Department of Physiology, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Granada
A team of researchers, led by the University of Granada, has unravelled the complex relationship between the two species concerning the carrion on which they feed, which will help to better understand how the two largest African carnivores can coexist even in small natural reserves
Lions, the dominant species, show a greater preference for large animal carcasses, while hyaenas also feed off smaller carcasses, which are practically ignored by lions
It is well known that lions (Panthera leo) and spotted hyaenas (Crocuta crocuta) compete over the same prey—primarily medium-to-large hoofed mammals. Lions can even steal the prey hunted by hyaenas, and vice versa, in an interaction known as ‘kleptoparasitism.’ However, the carrion-eating habits of these two species are even more complex, in that both take advantage of practically any dead animal they find when scanning the territory. In fact, they sometimes consume more carrion than live prey. But how do lions and hyaenas interact over the carrion?
A team of researchers, led by the University of Granada (UGR), has recently published a study in the journal Oikos that attempts to answer this question. The fieldwork was carried out in two South African nature reserves, one with both lions and hyaenas (Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park) and another with hyaenas but no lions (Mkhuze Game Reserve), both in the Zululand region.
Marcos Moleón Paiz, researcher at the UGR’s Department of Zoology and one of the authors of this work, explains how “the pattern of carrion-consumption was similar in both species, albeit we found important differences. For example, lions showed a stronger preference for large animal carcasses, while hyaenas also consumed smaller carcasses, which the lions virtually overlooked.”
The data indicate that, when both species are present around the same carrion—the probability of this scenario increasing, the larger the size of the carcass—the lion is the dominant species, especially when an adult male appears. “Hyaenas modify their behavior in the presence of their competitor,” continues Moleón. “On the one hand, they have to give up part of the feast to the lions. On the other, their behaviour becomes more diurnal than in the area where there are no lions, where they are genuinely nocturnal and crepuscular.”
Interestingly, the relationship between lions and hyaenas also includes positive interactions. For example, “hyaenas locate carrion faster if lions are already present, probably because the former listen, smell, or even actively follow the latter,” says Moleón.
This study reveals that, in order to guarantee the long-term coexistence of lion and hyaena populations in the same area (particularly in the case of small nature reserves), it is important to seek a varied supply of prey, which includes megaherbivores such as elephants and rhinoceroses.
Small populations
“Unfortunately, the populations of these megaherbivores are being dramatically reduced due to the trafficking of elephant ivory and rhinoceros horn, which is on the increase during these times of reduced environmental surveillance due to the COVID-19 epidemic,” laments the UGR researcher.
This study required years of intensive fieldwork. The sampling involved first placing the dead animals of different sizes—from chickens from a local farm to wild animals such as impalas, nyalas, wildebeest, buffalos, rhinoceroses (black and white), and even elephants. Next, close by, one or two camera–traps were placed to capture images of all the carrion-eating animals that approached. Once the carrion was consumed, the cameras were removed and the photographs analysed (in total, 6,927 images were obtained, including 789 of lions and 2,133 of hyaenas).
“In the case of some buffalo, rhinoceroses, and elephants,” explains Moleón, “when we arrived with the carcasses we found that lions or hyaenas were already ahead of us. So, we had to scare them off, a few metres away, while we positioned the camera. In these situations, for safety reasons, we were always accompanied by a rangerarmed with a rifle, although they never needed to shoot, not even into the air.”
To conduct the study, Moleón lived in one of the reserves (Hluhluwe-Imfolozi) for two years, in a small camp surrounded by an electrified fence. “Having the opportunity to experience Africa from within is an absolutely magical and unforgettable experience, both personally and professionally. Since I first arrived in Zululand in 2010, a large part of my research career has revolved around the megafauna of the African continent,” he comments.
“Future projects on this continent include studying how the presence of these large carnivores influences the ‘landscape of fear’of the other animals of the savannah, and how the African megafauna, in general, can act as an economic driver for African society.”
Bibliography:
Amorós et al. (2020), ‘Hyaenas and lions: How the largest African carnivores interact at carcasses.’ Oikos. Online: Doi: 10.1111/oik.06846
Lion – Pantherapardus (image credit: David Carmona)
Scientists from the University of Granada have applied Artificial Intelligence techniques to the analysis of huge volumes of data from Twitter, during the previous US election campaign to create a political forecasting system
Researchers from the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada (UGR) have modelled a system based on artificial intelligence techniques that enable election results to be forecast by analysing opinions on Twitter.
In a study published in the international journal IEEE Access, the UGR scientists explain their descriptive Big Data system capable of handling huge volumes of unstructured information (in the form of a ‘data lake’) derived from Twitter. Using this approach, they were able to create a political forecasting system and validate it with the real-life 2016 US elections, in which Donald Trump won against Hillary Clinton.
Political talk is perhaps more prevalent than ever before—one need only look to social networks for evidence of this, and the sheer amount of posts and threads devoted to political topics each day. One of the most widely used social networks for these purposes is Twitter, where the opinions of parties, leaders, and activists combine with those of people simply interested in politics. The ability to effectively process this data and convert it into knowledge is a laborious task that delivers benefits for innumerable fields, from academia to business or journalism.
The UGR study is the result of an endeavour to ‘summarize’ a large volume of data and reduce it to clear, concise information that can contribute value to a research query. The system in question was developed by José Ángel Díaz García, María Dolores Ruiz and María José Martín-Bautista from the UGR’s Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. It was tested on a real-life comparative problem concerned with two politicians and their respective policies: that of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, in their head-to-head clash in the November 2016 US general elections.
Analysis of sentiments and emotions
The system devised by the UGR scientists provides a series of associations between concepts and discussions on Twitter about the two politicians—in a format that is easy to interpret and explain—together with the sentiments and emotions generated by these debates.
“At the heart of our system are what we call unsupervised artificial intelligence techniques—that is, techniques that do not rely on databases having been pre-labelled in order to be trained and used,” the authors explain.
Among these techniques, of particular importance are ‘association rules’, as these enable sentiment analysis to be conducted by means of sentiment lexicons and dictionaries. “Today, these techniques are of enormous value because they provide readily interpretable and easily understandable solutions. They enable straightforward data traceability and provide easily-explained results that may be used by people with no technical knowledge, thus democratizing access to artificial intelligence,” the authors continue.
This new descriptive approach differs from the traditional ‘machine learning’ models geared to predictive sentiment analysis. Those require large pre-labelled databases (very hard to achieve in relation to social networks, due to the volatility of the topics concerned), and typically offer solutions that are extremely difficult to interpret due to the highly complex mathematical adaptations.
Analysis of the results achieved by the new system endorses its capacity to obtain association rules and sentiment patterns with significant descriptive value in the case of its application to the US elections. Thus, parallels between these patterns and real-life events can be drawn.
Some of the parallels discovered by the system may be those, for instance, that establish a very strong link between the words prohibition/service/transgender and Donald Trump. This shows that the current US president was linked to transgender people being banned from Military Service—a move that was already being considered in 2016 and was confirmed in 2017.
Regarding sentiments, the system reveals that there was a higher level of anger in US society directed toward Hillary Clinton than toward Trump. The latter, by contrast, stood out for his association with the emotion of ‘trust’—in other words, the Tweets posted about Trump were from people with a high degree of confidence in him as President.
If we take into account that the data were processed during the electoral campaign, a parallel could therefore even be drawn in the subsequent results that led Donald Trump to victory.
Bibliography:
J. A. Diaz-Garcia, M. D. Ruiz and M. J. Martin-Bautista (2020), ‘Non-Query-Based Pattern Mining and Sentiment Analysis for Massive Microblogging Online Texts’, IEEE Access 8: 78166-78182. DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2990461.
Image captions:
1. Words associated with emotions
2. Generalization of words (by sentiment)
3. The authors of this research. From left to right: Maria Jose Martin-Bautista, J. Angel Díaz-García and María Dolores Ruiz
Media enquiries:
José Ángel Díaz García Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, University of Granada Email: joseangeldiazg@ugr.es
A study of the dental wear of 106 individuals buried in the Castellón Alto archaeological site (Granada, Spain) found that only the women used their anterior teeth as tools to make threads and cords
The Journal of Archaeological Science recently published a paper on this research, in which the University of Granada participated
Between 2200 and 1550 Before the Common Era (BCE), the culture of El Argar developed in the south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. It is known that this was a complex society that practiced social differentiation based on gender, age, and specialisation in tasks such as craftwork—that is, working with ceramics, lithics, textiles, and metals. This understanding has now been reaffirmed by a new study published recently in Journal of Archaeological Science.
The study, led by Marina Lozano, researcher at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) and Rovira i Virgili University (URV), was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the Anthropology Laboratory of the University of Granada, including Ángel Rubio Salvador, one of the co-authors of the published study.
Analysis of dental wear from the remains of 106 individuals buried at the Castellón Alto archaeological site in Granada, Spain, revealed that, as early as the Bronze Age (1900–1600 BCE), women used their anterior (front) teeth to perform certain tasks associated with making threads and cords.
The signs of wear observed with different types of microscopy included notches, chipped enamel, and occlusal and interproximal grooves resulting from the manipulation of fibres of plant and animal origin. Such materials were already known to be related to textile and basketry production, thanks to pre-existing evidence of the material culture of El Argar, but prior to this new study, it had proved possible to establish such a direct relationship that would point to the identity of these artisans.
A dual division of labour
Thus, one of the most important findings of this study is the evidence that, as early as the end of the Bronze Age—that is, almost 4,000 years ago—there was a dual division of labour: only a small group of people were devoted to craftwork in the making of threads (the very basis of textile production), and this group comprised exclusively women using their teeth as tools.
Furthermore, given the fact that this behaviour has been identified from the remains of individuals of different ages— the older the individual, the more pronounced the wear—it can be inferred that this specialisation began in adolescence and that the women continued performing this task throughout their lives.
This study forms part of one of the research strands at the IPHES that aims to identify the use of teeth as tools. In this case, the research also generated data on age- and gender-based division of labour, thus providing a clearer understanding of the lifestyle and social organisation of the El Argar culture.
Bibliography:
Lozano, Marina, Jiménez-Brobeil, Sylvia A., Willman, John C., Sánchez-Barba, Lydia P., Molina, Fernando, Rubio, Ángel (2020), ‘Argaric craftswomen: Sex-based division of labor in the Bronze Age southeastern Iberia’. Journal of Archaeological Science. Online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2020.105239
Image captions:
‘Individual 90’ from Castellón Alto, showing evidence of the use of teeth for non-masticatory purposes. Image credit: Ángel Rubio Salvador
A general overview of the Castellón Alto site. Image courtesy of the GEPRAN research group of the University of Granada
Grooves on the teeth of various females from the Castellón Alto site, indicative of having worked with cords and threads (arrows indicate points of wear). Image credit: Marina Lozano/IPHES
Ángel Rubio Salvador, researcher at the Anthropology Laboratory of the University of Granada
José Luis Gómez Urquiza, who has been nominated Best Teacher in Spain in the IV Educa Abanca Awards, uses this popular social network to enable the Spanish nurses of the future to confront health-related hoaxes on social networks
A Nursing lecturer at the University of Granada is using the popular social network TikTok as part of his ‘Nursing Adults (1)’ course to teach the nurses of the future how to combat the arguments of deniers with scientific fact.
José Luis Gómez Urquiza, who has just been nominated Best Teacher in Spain in the IV Educa Abanca Awards, was keen to make a personal contribution to addressing this issue at a particularly critical time—in the Coronavirus crisis. This pandemic has brought with it entire social networking movements led by deniers and hoaxers in health-related matters, particularly aimed at the different measures to control the spread of the disease (use of facemasks, PCR tests, future vaccines, and so on).
“In making their arguments, deniers regularly use false information or information based on erroneous knowledge and data, so that is precisely what I do [for teaching purposes] with my students, using social networks such as TikTok or Instagram, with which they are very familiar,” explains the UGR nursing lecturer.
Gómez Urquiza is highly active on various social networks and uses different accounts for professional means. In recent months, he has noticed a growing trend toward accounts that spread false information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the health-and-hygiene measures recommended for its control. “I have also seen how other colleagues in the healthcare field have attempted to deal with this issue by sharing verified information based on scientific evidence,” he explains.
As a result of this experience, at the start of the 2020/2021 academic year, Gómez Urquiza came up with a new approach to evaluating the practical sessions he had taught on the Nursing Adults (1) course, which covers topics such as blood gas analysis and sterile clothing in the operating theatre. He realised that, by playing the role of a denier or a proponent of conspiracy theories on health-related issues on social media, with his nursing students in the role of healthcare workers, they could learn how to challenge such deniers online and refute their arguments and false information by using the same methods—that is, striking and appealing social media content.
The vaccine–5G hoax
To do this, Gómez Urquiza created an Instagram account linked to his course (https://instagram.com/adulto1byc?igshid=a1pldeukcm3q), where he uploads a TikTok video and an Instagram post about each area of practice the students undertake. Based on that content, and on what they have learned in class, the students have to use their knowledge (and their creativity!) to challenge the fake information he communicates online.
“This is about the students demonstrating, in addition to having learned the technique in question and its theoretical principles, skills in the professional use of social networks, not just for fun. To do this, they must be able to deconstruct unfounded arguments and hoaxes using a medium in which, in principle, they should have a significant advantage over me: social networks. Because, to be honest, figuring out how to use TikTok has been an uphill climb for me—and some!”, Gómez Urquiza acknowledges.
Deniers of COVID-19, he notes, insist that this is a planned pandemic, that vaccines are linked to 5G technology, or that many healthcare professionals are, in fact, actors being paid to propagate fear of the coronavirus. “I use those same absurd arguments in class to recommend that people do not undergo planned surgery (because the professionals protect themselves with masks, gowns, and gloves due to the radiation given off by the microchips that they implant in the operating theatre), or that patients do not allow blood gas analyses to be conducted on them (because it is a test that does not actually diagnose anything), just like the deniers of the coronavirus PCR test do.”
The UGR lecturer points out that his goal is for Nursing students to become competent in the dissemination of high-quality content on social networks, to enable them to effectively refute deniers of other health problems that may arise in the future—deniers whose most active defenders will always be found online.
Along with Gómez Urquiza, also nominated for Best Teacher in Spain in the IV Educa Abanca Awards are Fernando Gómez and Antonio Cárdenas of the UGR.
Image captions:
Two students on the ‘Nursing Adults (1)’ course at the University of Granada.
Lecturer José Luis Gómez Urquiza, on his TikTok account.
Media enquiries:
José Luis Gómez Urquiza Department of Nursing, University of Granada Tel.: +34 958 241000 ext. 26195 Email: jlgurquiza@ugr.es
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