Techniques used by researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to analyze a simple marine worm and its resident bacteria could accelerate efforts to understand more complex microbial communities such as those found in humans.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a multi-institutional research team analyzed the proteins found in a marine worm known as Olavius algarvensis. The worm lacks a digestive system and relies on microbes that live in its body to process its waste and provide energy. Previous research, however, had not untangled the metabolic details of this mutually beneficial, or symbiotic, relationship.

“This community is like the simplest form of the human gut,” said coauthor Nathan VerBerkmoes of ORNL. “It is a model system to understand symbiosis.”

While some complex microbial communities such as the human gastrointestinal system contain hundreds of thousands of microbes, the marine worm relies on only four to five bacteria. Understanding the simple network of relationships between the worm and its symbionts, however, still required novel techniques to analyze the functions of a whole system rather than individual parts.

“Very often, you’ll have a community that does function x,” VerBerkmoes said. “But if you try to isolate any one of those microbes out of the community and get it to do that function, one microbe alone can’t do it. Furthermore these microbes cannot be easily isolated and studied by traditional molecular approaches.”

To unravel the interactions of the worm community, an ORNL team led by VerBerkmoes used metaproteomics, a form of analysis that identifies and categorizes the proteins in an organism’s cell. Genomics, which yields the DNA sequence of an organism, can predict a cell’s behavior, whereas proteomics gives scientists a real-time snapshot of what actually happens in the cell’s metabolism.

The combination of genomics and proteomics can also help explain apparent redundancies in a system where several organisms appear at first glance to perform the same function.

“One of the key questions in metagenomic analyses of complex symbiotic consortia, including those of the human gut, is why there is so much functional redundancy,” said lead author Nicole Dubilier of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. “Our metaproteomic analyses of the bacteria found in O. algarvensis indicate functional differences in the metabolism of two symbionts despite their genetic similarities. This appears to be a common theme in microbial communities.”

Metaproteomics provided indirect evidence for the research team’s hypotheses about the worm community’s metabolism, such as the potential use of hydrogen and carbon monoxide as energy sources. VerBerkmoes adds that while their analysis rapidly provided a broad overview of the system, the techniques do not confirm the specifics of individual protein behavior or function, which must be established via further direct biochemical studies. The research is published as “Metaproteomics of a gutless marine worm and its symbiotic microbial community reveal unusual pathways for carbon and energy use.” Coauthors include ORNL’s Jacque Young, Yun-Juan Chang and Manesh Shah, and researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, the University of Greifswald, the University of Freiburg, the Institute of Marine Biotechnology in Greifswald, and the HYDRA Institute for Marine Sciences. The project was lead by Manuel Kleiner and Nicole Dubilier from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology.

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On The Net:

• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• National Academy of Sciences

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com

Plastic trash has been accumulating in the Pacific Ocean at an alarming rate and its effects are reverberating throughout the ecosystem, according to a new study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

The  study, published in the May 9 online issue of the journal Biology Letters, found that plastic trash in the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” has increased by 100 times over in the past 40 years.  Experts disagree over the scale of the debris zone, but some say it is twice the size of Hawaii, while other say it covers a swath of ocean the size of Texas.

“Plastic only became widespread in late ’40s and early ’50s, but now everyone uses it and over a 40-year range we’ve seen a dramatic increase in ocean plastic,” said Scripps graduate student Miriam Goldstein, lead author of the study. “Historically we have not been very good at stopping plastic from getting into the ocean so hopefully in the future we can do better.”

The effect of this plastic can be seen on the population of Halobates sericeus. Also known as ℠sea-skaters´, these insects are related to the ℠water-skaters´ or ℠water bugs´ typically seen gliding across ponds in the U.S. The sea skaters reproduce by laying their eggs on floating debris. The natural sources for these eggs, like feathers or driftwood, are being replaced by the tiny bits of plastic garbage floating on the ocean´s surface.

Ironically, the widespread availability of artificial egg-laying surfaces is driving up the population of these insects, according to researchers. In turn, this population boom will be felt all the way up the food chain, starting with the sea skaters natural predators, such as sea birds and crabs.

The garbage patch appears benefit other invertebrates as well.  Barnacles, crabs, fish that like to live under some kind of cover could be well-suited to take advantage of the garbage patch. The explosions of these populations would also have unforeseen effects of the ocean´s food chains.

“The study raises an important issue, which is the addition of hard surfaces to the open ocean,” Goldstein said.

“In the North Pacific, for example, there’s no floating seaweed like there is in the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic. And we know that the animals, the plants and the microbes that live on hard surfaces are different to the ones that live floating around in the water,” Goldstein told BBC News

“So, what plastic has done is add hundreds of millions of hard surfaces to the Pacific Ocean. That’s quite a profound change.”

The Garbage Patch is directly affecting other organisms besides just the sea skaters. Another Scripps report found that 9 percent of fish collected in the debris zone had ingested some form of plastic trash. The report, published in Marine Ecology Progress Series, estimated the fish at intermediate ocean depths could be ingesting plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000 to 24,000 tons per year. These fish are often eaten by larger predators, which then send the plastic trash further up the food chain.

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com

A system of video camera traps set by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has captured evidence of the Cross River gorilla, a notoriously reclusive and endangered species of primate.

“The video represents the best images to date of Cross River gorillas, normally shy animals that flee at the slightest hint of human presence,” said WCS director Christopher Jameson.

“The footage provides us with our first tantalizing glimpses of Cross River gorillas behaving normally in their environment. A person can study these animals for years and never even catch a glimpse of the gorillas, much less see anything like this.”

One of the four cameras captured eight gorillas traveling through Cameroon´s Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary for almost two minutes. The video shows the animals emerging from the forest and surveying the area, possibly aware of the camera´s presence. At one point, a male silverback gorilla charges past the camera while beating his chest. Another gorilla appears to be missing a hand, the possible result of a poacher´s snare.

According to the WCS, evidence of a snare-related injury should serve as both an alarm and a warning to those looking to protect these rare creatures.

“Cross River gorillas occur in very low densities across their entire range, so the appearance of a possible snare injury is a reminder that continued law enforcement efforts are needed to prevent further injuries to gorillas in the sanctuary,” said Liz Macfie, gorilla coordinator for WCS´s Species Program.

Government patrols have reduced hunting activities in the area since the establishment of the Kagwene Gorilla Sanctuary in 2008. The sanctuary, which measures almost 20 square kilometers in size and contains 20 to 30 gorillas, was created as a keystone in the effort to save the Cross River gorilla. It evolved out of the “Gorilla Guardian” network, created by WCS to improve gorilla survival prospects in the most vulnerable unprotected forest sites in Cameroon. The sanctuary is now managed by a three person staff, all appointed by Cameroon´s Ministry of Forests and Wildlife. The sanctuary also retains a team of local staff from the eight villages near the protected area. Kagwene is the only site where daily monitoring of Cross River gorilla movements takes place.

When researchers first confirmed gorilla´s presence in 2003, they quickly realized the potential of the area as a monitoring site due to the presence of a significant number of gorillas, relatively easy tracking conditions, and the interest of local communities in the gorilla´s conservation.

Cross River gorillas are considered ℠critically endangered´ and it is believed that the entire population is between 250 and 300 gorillas. They only live in the mountainous regions along the Nigeria—Cameroon border, where they exist in disjointed groups spread out over 12,000 kilometers. A 2007 genetic study and field surveys suggest that these groups are often linked by the migration of individual gorillas.

The major threats to their survival are habitat loss and poaching. While less than one percent of illegal poaching involves Great Apes, their smaller population means that they feel a greater proportional impact. The results of ape poaching also include the orphaning of younger apes, which are often illegally sold as pets.

Researchers studying the highest mountain range in the continental United States have been able to detect the rate at which it is growing and perhaps how old the mountains that are found there using new technology from space.

The team of researchers from University of Nevada´s Geodetic Laboratory in Reno and University of Glasgow in the UK, said the Sierra Nevada mountains are steadily growing at the rate of about 1 inch every two decades across the entire 400-mile-long range on the Nevada-California border.

Though it has remained unclear in the past how or when the mountains in the region got there, the team believes that with the aid of GPS and space radar technology, they can determine just how old the Sierra Nevada range in fact is. Mt. Whitney, the Sierra´s highest peak at 14,405 feet, is growing at about 1 to 2 millimeters per year. This calculation has led the team to theorize the age of the mountain and its range at just about 3 million years old.

“There´s a surprisingly wide variety of opinions about how and why the Sierra Nevada goes up, and about the ages and timing of all the events that contribute to the uplift,” lead researcher William Hammond, a geophysicist at the University of Nevada, told Crystal Gammon of OurAmazing Planet on MSNBC.com. “These findings suggest that whatever mechanism is at play, it´s acting on the entire range.”

“The exciting thing is we can watch the range growing in real time,” Hammond said in a recent press statement. “Using data back to before 2000 we can see it with accuracy better than 1 millimeter per year. Perhaps even more amazing is that these miniscule changes are measured using satellites in space.”

Hammond and colleagues used satellite-based GPS data and InSAR (space-based radar) data to make their calculations, which show that the crust moves upward compared to Earth´s center of mass and compared to relatively stable eastern Nevada. The data could help resolve a long-standing debate on the exact age of the mountain range.

Geologists have two very different possible theories on the age of the Sierra Nevada range: the first is that the range is 40 to 80 million years old, and the second is that it is about 3 million years old.

That is a big difference, said Hammond. Either the mountains are very old and no longer growing, or they are still quite young and growing at a measurable rate.

By using GPS and InSAR, the team took microwave snapshots of the mountains and surrounding features as the satellites whizzed by overhead. The satellites revisit the same spot every month or so to take more microwave snapshots. Because it can monitor large swaths of landscape over long periods of time, InSAR data is particularly useful for measuring slow and steady changes in the shape of the Earth´s surface.

“Most of the seismic cycle is made up of periods of time where the Earth is not shaking, but it is deforming,” Hammond told Gammon. “We´re getting better at measuring that slow shape change as a way of understanding, for example, where the Earth might break in future earthquakes.”

Hammond and colleagues analyzed the Sierra´s for 18 years using the InSAR images, along with the precise measurements from GPS stations, to zero in on the growth rate. They determined that, based on their analysis of the data received, the Sierra Nevada range, with an average elevation of 6,500 to 8,200 feet, could have been built in less than 3 million years.

While the team can put a possible age on the mountain range, determining exactly how the range was built is still a mystery.

The range lies just west of the Basin and Range Province in Nevada, where east-west tectonic forces are in the process of ripping the Earth´s crust apart. Some geologists believe this stretching might be causing the eastern side of the range to grow upward.

Seismologists believe there is a heavy blob in the Earth´s mantle that may have been attached to the base of the range´s tectonic block. They think this dense blob used to weigh the block down, like a keel on the bottom of a ship. Then, sometime between 3 million and 10 million years ago, this keel peeled off and sank down deeper into the Earth, and the Sierra Nevada block popped up.

Whichever it was, Hammond said the process affected nearly the entire range and is still building up the Sierra Nevada today.

The research team includes Hammond, Geoff Blewitt, Hans-Peter Plag and Corné Kreemer from the University of Nevada; and Zhenhong Li of the Centre for the Observation and Modeling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics, School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow in the UK.

GPS data for the research was collected through the team´s MAGNET GPS Network in Reno, and more than 1200 stations from the national Science Foundation (NSF) EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory and more than 10,000 stations from around the entire world. The InSAR radar data came from the European Space Agency with support from NASA.

The research was funded in the US by the NSF and NASA, and in the UK by the Natural Environment Research Council. Findings of the study were published in the April 27 issue of the journal Geology.

Brett Smith for RedOrbit.com

Dinosaurs may have had a silent, but deadly effect on their climate according to new research by scientists at two UK universities.

The study, published in the May 8 edition of Current Biology, compared the digestion-related methane production of Mesozoic-era sauropods to modern cows in an attempt to determine a possible impact as the gas ripped into their prehistoric environment.

“A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate,” said Dave Wilkinson of Liverpool’s John Moores University. “Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources–both natural and man-made–put together.”

Against the backdrop of the climate change debate, many scientists have been studying the environmental impact of methane production for years. Microbes within animals´ intestinal tracts aid in the digestion of their diet and produce methane as a byproduct. These researchers have found that methane production of the microbes´ host animal is directly related to its weight.

These previous findings allowed the UK researchers to scale up the methane production of cows, which typically weigh around 1000 pounds. Based on the calculated weight of the typical sauropods , the largest weighing in at about 240 tons, they determined that methane emissions of the ancient beasts to be around 520 million tons. This compares to the estimated production of today´s cattle of between 50 and 100 million tons. Modern methane production that includes manmade sources is estimated to be around 500 million tons.

Methane is known as a “greenhouse gas” because it absorbs the sun´s radiation and the impact of these calculations means the Mesozoic climate was likely warmer because of its effects. Previous research has shown that the Earth was up to 18 degrees higher during this time.

As impressive as these calculations are, Wilkinson added that dinosaurs were not the sole producers of methane at the time.

“There were other sources of methane in the Mesozoic so total methane level would probably have been much higher,” he told BBC News.

Studies of mammalian herbivores have found that the larger animals have developed more efficient digestive processes. Food of larger herbivores tends to remain in the digestive tract longer, allowing the animals to maximize the amount of nutrients extracted from their diet. Many of these animals contain ℠fermentation chambers´ that cultivate large colonies of microbes, which assist in digestion.

The impact of methane produced by these herbivores can have a substantial impact on climate. A 2007 report published by the International Panel on Climate Change found that the 100-year global warming potential of methane is 25 times as great as that of carbon dioxide.

Researchers are currently exploring a variety of options for reducing digestion-related methane emissions from cattle and other animals. These solutions include genetic selection, diet modification and grazing management. Interestingly, cattle that eat grain produce less methane than their grazing counterparts; however greenhouse gas production is somewhat offset by pastures´ greater ability to capture CO2 as opposed to the same area used for grain production.

Jason Farmer for RedOrbit.com

For over two decades, researchers have been conducting experiments that are designed to mimic the effects of rising temperatures on the rates at which plants first begin to leaf and flower each spring. However, a new study has found that that these models are inaccurate, and that the actual impact of global warming on plants may cause the flowering and leafing of plants to occur up to eight times faster than the models predicted.

For many years, researchers assumed that plants would respond in much the same way in experiments that simulate global warming as they would to changes in temperature occurring in the natural environment. To test this assumption, Dr Elizabeth Wolkovich, of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and her colleagues compared the data on the timing of the flowering and leafing of plants found in observational studies to data based on warming experiments.

Dr Wolkovich and her colleagues were surprised by the results.

“What we found is that the experiments don´t line up with the long term data, and in fact they greatly underestimate how much plants change their leafing and flowering with warming,” Wolkovich told BBC News.

Observational data is gathered by the long term systematic recording of flowering and leafing rates in the natural world. According to Dr Wolkovich, the recent research suggests that these observations carried out in many different parts of the world over the past three decades are in remarkable agreement.

“In terms of long term observations, the records are very coherent and very consistent and they suggest for every degree Celsius of warming we get we are going to get a five- to six-day change in how plants leaf and flower.”

The researchers have concluded that scientists have greatly underestimated the difficulty of mimicking the impacts of the natural world in an artificial setting where the warming experiments are conducted. Real world factors not only include changes in temperature, but also changes in precipitation, cloud patterns and other unpredictable variables.

“I guess we will never get to perfectly match nature, but I am hopeful as scientists we can do much, much better, given funding resources,” Wolkovich told BBC News.

The team found that the greater investment in the design and monitoring of experiments, the more accurate the result.

Several other researchers were also surprised by the results.

Dr This Rutishauser, at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern in Switzerland, says based on this new research, scientists will have to rethink the impacts of global warming.

“The bottom line is that the impacts might be bigger than we have believed until now. That’s going to provoke a lot of work to probably revise modeling results for estimations of what’s going to happen in the future for food production especially.”

Dr Wolkovich has also concluded that if the models so grossly underestimate the real world observations, there could be a much greater impact on the world´s water supply than had been predicted by the artificial warming experiments.

“If a whole plant community starts growing a week earlier than we expect according to these experiments, it’s going to take up a lot more water over the growing season and if you add to that many years of the model projections, you are going to see big changes in the water supply.”

Long-forgotten coastal habitats reappeared, species unseen for years returned

The reappearance of long-forgotten habitats and the resurgence of species unseen for years may not be among the expected effects of a natural disaster.

Yet that’s exactly what researchers found in a study of the sandy beaches of south central Chile, after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake and devastating tsunami in 2010.

Their study also revealed a preview of the problems wrought by sea level rise–a major symptom of climate change.

In a scientific first, researchers from Southern University of Chile and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) were able to document the before-and-after ecological impacts of such cataclysmic occurrences.

A paper appearing today in the journal PLoS ONE details the surprising results of their study, pointing to the potential effects of natural disasters on sandy beaches worldwide.

The study is said to be the first-ever quantification of earthquake and tsunami effects on sandy beach ecosystems along a tectonically active coastal zone.

“So often you think of earthquakes as causing total devastation, and adding a tsunami on top of that is a major catastrophe for coastal ecosystems,” said Jenny Dugan, a biologist at UCSB.

“As expected, we saw high mortality of intertidal life on beaches and rocky shores, but the ecological recovery at some of our sandy beach sites was remarkable.

“Plants are coming back in places where there haven’t been plants, as far as we know, for a very long time. The earthquake created sandy beach habitat where it had been lost. This is not the initial ecological response you might expect from a major earthquake and tsunami.”

Their findings owe a debt to serendipity.

The researchers were knee-deep in a study supported by FONDECYT in Chile and the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Santa Barbara Coastal Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site of how sandy beaches in Santa Barbara and south central Chile respond, ecologically, to man-made armoring such as seawalls and rocky revetments.

By late January, 2010, they had surveyed nine beaches in Chile.

The earthquake hit in February.

Recognizing a unique opportunity, the scientists changed gears and within days were back on the beaches to reassess their study sites in the catastrophe’s aftermath.

They’ve returned many times since, documenting the ecological recovery and long-term effects of the earthquake and tsunami on these coastlines, in both natural and human-altered settings.

“It was fortunate that these scientists had a research program in the right place–and at the right time–to allow them to determine the responses of coastal species to natural catastrophic events,” said David Garrison, program director for NSF’s coastal and ocean LTER sites.

The magnitude and direction of land-level change resulting from the earthquake and exacerbated by the tsunami brought great effects, namely the drowning, widening and flattening of beaches.

The drowned beach areas suffered mortality of intertidal life; the widened beaches quickly saw the return of biota that had vanished due to the effects of coastal armoring.

“With the study in California and Chile, we knew that building coastal defense structures, such as seawalls, decreases beach area, and that a seawall results in the decline of intertidal diversity,” said lead paper author Eduardo Jaramillo of the Universidad Austral de Chile.

“But after the earthquake, where significant continental uplift occurred, the beach area that had been lost due to coastal armoring has now been restored,” said Jaramillo. “And the re-colonization of the mobile beach fauna was underway just weeks afterward.”

The findings show that the interactions of extreme events with armored beaches can produce surprising ecological outcomes. They also suggest that landscape alteration, including armoring, can leave lasting footprints in coastal ecosystems.

“When someone builds a seawall, beach habitat is covered up with the wall itself, and over time sand is lost in front of the wall until the beach eventually drowns,” said Dugan.

“The semi-dry and damp sand zones of the upper and mid-intertidal are lost first, leaving only the wet lower beach zones. This causes the beach to lose diversity, including birds, and to lose ecological function.”

Sandy beaches represent about 80 percent of the open coastlines globally, said Jaramillo.

“Beaches are very good barriers against sea level rise. They’re important for recreation–and for conservation.”

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On the Net:

• NSF
• NSF Santa Barbara Coastal LTER Site
• NSF LTER Network
• Southern University of Chile
• University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)
• PLoS ONE

Connie K. Ho for RedOrbit.com

A controversial report regarding avian flu research was finally published on May 3 in the journal Nature.

The research, which studies how the avian H5N1 influenza spreads among mammals, had been contested by a government review panel who wanted to stop the report from being published.

According to Med Page Today, the study finds four key mutations in a gene of the H5N1 avian flu that helps it adjust to mammals. The debate about the publication of the paper was based on fears that terrorist groups or criminals could use the findings to harm others.

“This information could be used by an aggressor and shows one of the building blocks for the development of a potential BW [biowarfare] weapon,” highlighted the AFP on the report´s response to the danger of publicizing the information.

Flu and public health researchers argued that the study was important in informing the public to be prepared and aware of the virus.

“Our study shows that relatively few amino acid mutations are sufficient for a virus with an avian H5 hemagglutinin to acquire the ability to transmit in mammals,” remarked Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a University of Wisconsin-Madison flu researcher, in a prepared statement. “This study has significant public health benefits and contributes to our understanding of this important pathogen. By identifying mutations that facilitate transmission among mammals, those whose job it is to monitor viruses circulating in nature can look for these mutations so measures can be taken to effectively protect human health.”

The group of researchers had already identified a subset of viruses in some poultry in Egypt and parts of Southeast Asia. Kawaoka´s study on the H5N1 virus transmissibility found that there were unknown mutations that could pass. With these unknown mutations, he believes that it is important to continue the research to find out how the mutations function. The findings also show that the viruses that currently circulating in nature only need four mutations to the hemagglutinin protein to become a bigger risk to human health. The team looked at a laboratory-modified bird flu/human flu hybrid virus that could affect humans with a few mutations. They learned that the virus could be controlled by medical countermeasures like an H15N vaccine or oseltamivir, an antiviral drug.

“H5N1 viruses remain a significant threat for humans as a potential pandemic flu strain. We have found that relatively few mutations enable this virus to transmit in mammals. These same mutations have the potential to occur in nature,” commented Kawaoka in the statement.

The H5N1 virus, since 2003, has affected at least 600 human and killed half of the people it´s infected. The virus, found mostly in Asia, can be transmitted in close proximity of fowl but it doesn´t easily transmit among humans. The flu depends on its ability to take control of host cells, make new virus particles that can then infect other cells, and transmit to other hosts. However, the flu virus must change its topography to adjust to new host species. As such, the protein hemagglutinin allows viruses to enter host cells and uses a “globular head” to bind to the host cell. The amino acids in the hemagglutinin can then unlock the host cell, allowing the virus to enter and spread the infection.

“The first clues about what properties of the HA protein, other than receptor specificity, might be important for mammalian airborne transmission,” described Vincent Racaniello, a virologist at Columbia University, in a Nature article. “It would have been a huge loss not to publish this.”

Overall, flu viruses are powerful in their ability to adapt to new animal hosts, exchange genetic information, and then mutate.

“It is hard to predict. The additional mutations may emerge as the virus continues to circulate.”

As such, the study identifies the tool that allows H5N1 to transmit and helps them better understand the basis of the how the influenza virus transmits.

“Should surveillance activities identify flu strains accumulating additional key mutations, these emerging viruses should then be priority candidates for vaccine development and antiviral evaluation,” mentioned Kawaoka in the statement.

Furthermore, it will help governments better develop their public health policies.

“That is an important public health message, we have to take H5N1 seriously. It doesn’t mean it will become a pandemic, but it can,” noted Malik Peiris, a virology professor at the University of Hong Kong who wrote an accompanying commentary, in an interview with Reuters.

Jason Farmer for RedOrbit.com

A recent in-depth study by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) of turn signal rates-of-neglect has yielded some surprising and somewhat disturbing results. The study reveals just how rampant the problem is and gives an idea of the number of accidents caused, or potentially caused, each year by improper usage of turn signals. Solutions to the problem were also offered by the researchers in the study and were presented at the 2012 SAE World Congress.

The extensive study recorded the turn signal usage of 12,000 vehicles as they changed lanes or made turns. The data reveals the rate of turn signal neglect for vehicles changing lanes is 48%. Vehicles making turns improperly used turn signals 25% of the time. The statistics extrapolated to include all U.S. drivers means that turn signal neglect occurs over 2 billion times a day, or 750 billion times a year.

The data collected in the study indicates that turn signal neglect is responsible for up to 2 million accidents per year. This would mean that improper usage of turn signals causes more than twice the number of collisions than those resulting from distracted drivers, which, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, approaches 1 million. Given the myriad variables contributing to driver distraction, no one is quite sure how to effectively deal with that problem. However, researchers in the study have concluded that recent Smart Turn Signal technology may offer a very effective solution to the problem of turn signal neglect.

Vehicles can be fitted with Smart Turn Signal technology that use sensors and computer analysis to shut off the turn signal when necessary and remind motorists to use the turn signal on a regular basis and at the appropriate time. If the computer detects a pattern of a driver´s neglect to use the turn signal properly, it will offer a prompt to do so, like the beeping sound that reminds drivers to wear their seatbelts. The technology has been shown to assist drivers in establishing good signaling habits and can greatly reduce the risk of accidents and traffic violations.

Another potential benefit of the Smart Turn Signal technology is the savings in cost to car manufactures and buyers. The Smart Turn Signal uses already existing Stability Control System sensors standard in all new cars. And, with the new technology, the standard turn signal trip mechanism can be eliminated, also reducing weight and space in the vehicle. While it has been a very effective safety feature on all cars since it was implemented in 1940, the turn signal trip mechanism has not been improved upon since.

“This is a first of its kind report on a subject that amazingly, has never been studied. The turn signal is one of the very original automotive crash prevention devices and this simple driver to driver communication device remains extremely effective, but only when it is accurately displayed as required by law”, states Richard Ponziani, P.E., President of RLP Engineering and author of the report. “The turn signal can no longer be considered ℠optional´ and all drivers have an ongoing duty to use it, just as they have a duty to stop at a stop sign or at a red light” he added. Ponziani further stated: “Smart Turn Signals are the perfect complement to the Stability Control System since Stability Control predominately prevents single-vehicle crashes, whereas the Smart Turn Signal prevents multi-vehicle crashes.”

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