Health & Science

Potato blight that caused our Famine still with us

THE evolution of different strains of the plant pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s, which originally set down roots in the United States before attacking Europe, has been the subject of ongoing research ever since.

Plant pathologists studied the genomes of about 140 pathogen samples — historic and modern — from 37 countries on six continents to track the evolution of differing strains of Phytophthora infestans, a major cause of lateblight disease on potato and tomato plants.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, shows that the historic lineage called FAM-1 was found in nearly threequarters of the samples (73%) and on all six continents.

“FAM-1 was much more widespread than previously assumed, spreading from Europe to Asia and Africa along British colony trade routes,” says Jean Ristaino, professor of plant pathology at North Carolina State University. “The lineage was also found over a span of more than 140 years.”

FAM-1 caused outbreaks of potato late blight in the United States in 1843 and then two years later in Great Britain and Ireland. It was also found in historic samples from Colombia — suggesting a South American origin.

FAM-1 caused massive and debilitating late-blight disease outbreaks in Europe, leaving starvation and migration in its wake. Ristaino theorises that the pathogen arrived in Europe via infected potatoes on South American ships or directly from infected potatoes from the United States.

FAM-1 survived for about 100 years in the United States but then a different strain of the pathogen called US-1 displaced it, Ristaino says.

“US-1 is not a direct descendant of FAM-1, but rather a sister lineage,” he says. “We found US-1 in 27% of samples in the study and they were found much later.”

Even more aggressive strains of the pathogen that originated in Mexico US-1 have since elbowed out US-1. Winter tomato crops—grown in Mexico and imported into the US—harbour the pathogen, Ristaino says.

The study also suggests that the pathogen spread first in potatoes and then later jumped into tomatoes. Spread of the pathogen in ripe tomatoes in ships’ holds would have been unlikely, Ristaino says.

The pathogen’s effects aren’t limited to the decimation of Ireland’s potato crop some 175 years ago. Billions are spent worldwide each year in attempts to control the pathogen, Ristaino says. Potatoes in the developing world are particularly vulnerable as fungicides are less available and often unaffordable.

The US Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative and the North Carolina Agricultural Research Service funded the work.

Book or digital...which is better for learning?

DURING the pandemic, many schools and colleges intermittently abandoned assignments from printed textbooks and turned instead to digital texts or multimedia coursework.

Writing for the website Futurity, Naomi S. Baron, Professor of Linguistics Emerita, reports that she began studying how electronic communication compares to traditional print when it comes to learning. Is comprehension the same whether a person reads a text onscreen or on paper? And are listening and viewing content as effective as reading the written word when covering the same material?

The answers to both questions are often “no,” as she discuss in her book ‘How We Read Now’. The reasons relate to a variety of factors, including diminished concentration, an entertainment mindset and a tendency to multitask while consuming digital content.

She says: “When reading texts of several hundred words or more, learning is generally more successful when it’s on paper rather than on screen. A cascade of research confirms this finding.

“The benefits of print particularly shine through when experimenters move from posing simple tasks – like identifying the main idea in a reading passage – to ones that require mental abstraction – such as drawing inferences from a text. Print reading also improves the likelihood of recalling details – like ‘What was the colour of the actor’s hair?’ – and remembering where in a story events occurred – ‘Did the accident happen before or after the political coup?’

“Studies show that both school students and college students assume they’ll get higher scores on a comprehension test if they have done the reading digitally. And yet, they actually score higher when they have read the material in print before being tested, “ she concludes.

Read all about it! How our brains take in news

HOW people consume news and take actions based on what they read, hear, or see, is different than how human brains process other types of information on a daily basis, according to new research.

While the newspaper industry in a flux, the researchers at the University of Missouri discovered people still actually love reading newspapers.

The researchers believe a newspaper’s physical layout and structure could help curators of digital news platforms enhance their readers’ experiences.

“Many people still love print newspapers, and to an extent, we also see that they like the digital replicas of print newspapers as much as they do the physical version,” says Damon Kiesow, a Professor of Journalism and coauthor of the study.

“But we believe there is more to understanding this notion than just simply habit and experience. We feel newspapers are fulfilling some sort of need in a person’s daily life that is not currently being effectively fulfilled with the digital version,” Kiesow says.

“The contextual clues that help tell readers what stories are important, why they should care about what stories they are reading and where to locate the news that is most important to them, are being weakened by structures missing in digital news.”

By conducting in-depth interviews with 12 long-time newspaper subscribers, the team was able to identify the following about people who read the print version of papers like:

The ability to physically hold something, navigate a newspaper’s defined sections and pages, and create a physical archive of multiple editions for later viewing.

The ability to determine a story’s importance, how pictures and/or graphics are added for contextual purposes, to allow readers to express feelings of possession, and to allow readers to distinguish between different topics of interest.

The print version allows the reader to either actively or passively seek information, and to allow for the discovery of unexpected information.

The researchers now believe print newspapers have moved to digital platforms without first having a proper understanding of how readers use printed ‘contextual clues’ to make sense of the news.