(348,'Electric Truck Hydropower, a flexible solution to hydropower in mountainous regions','electric-truck-hydropower-a-flexible-solution-to-hydropower-in-mountainous-regions','2022-03-08 07:58:27.896390','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Mountain regions have a large potential for hydropower that cannot be harnessed effectively by conventional technologies. IIASA researcher Julian Hunt and an international team of researchers developed an innovative hydropower technology based on electric trucks that could provide a flexible and clean solution for electricity generation in mountainous regions.</p><p>In our transition towards a more sustainable future, hydropower will likely grow in importance as a renewable energy source. Despite its potential, innovation in hydropower technology has been slow in the last century. Conventional methods used today rely on two connected reservoirs with different water levels where the potential energy of the water is converted into electricity.</p><p>In steep mountain regions, the potential for generating electricity from a small stream of water is high, however, the hydropower potential of these regions remains untapped as it requires storage reservoirs, which have environmental and social impacts. IIASA researcher Julian Hunt and an international team of researchers developed a new technology called Electric Truck Hydropower that could become a key method for electricity generation in steep mountainous regions. The results of the study have been published in the <em>Energy Journal</em>.</p><p>Electric Truck Hydropower would use the existing road infrastructure to transport water down the mountain in containers, applying the regenerative brakes of the electric truck to turn the potential energy of the water into electricity and charge the truck\'s battery. The generated energy could then be sold to the grid or used by the truck itself to transport other goods. Electric Truck Hydropower could also generate electricity in combination with solar and wind resources or provide energy storage services to the grid.</p><p>\"The ideal system configuration is in mountainous regions with steep roads, where the same electric trucks can be used to generate hydroelectric power from different locations. This increases the chances that water will be available,\" says Hunt.</p><p>The proposed technology is an innovative, clean source of electricity that is competitive with solar, wind, and conventional hydropower. Cost estimates show that the levelized cost of Electric Truck Hydropower is US$30-100 per MWh, which is considerably cheaper than conventional hydropower at US$50-200 per MWh.</p><p>The environmental impacts of Electric Truck Hydropower are also significantly smaller than that of conventional hydropower.</p><p>\"This technology does not require dams, reservoirs, or tunnels, and it does not disrupt the natural flow of the river and fish passage. The system requires only roads, which already exist, charging and discharging stations similar to small car parks, a battery facility connected to the grid, and the trucks,\" explains Hunt.</p><p>When looking at the global reach of this technology, the research team estimated that Electric Truck Hydropower could generate 1.2 PWh electricity per year, which is equivalent to about 4% of global energy consumption in 2019. The technology could harness the previously untapped potential for hydropower on steep mountain ranges. The regions with the highest potential are the Himalayas and the Andes.</p><p>\"It is an interesting electricity generation alternative due to its high flexibility. For example, if a country is in an energy crisis, it can buy several electric trucks to generate hydropower. Once the crisis is over, the trucks can be used to transport cargo,\" Hunt concludes.</p>','2022-03-07 20:40:25.278197','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis','Researchers have developed an innovative hydropower technology based on electric trucks that could provide a flexible and clean solution for electricity generation in mountainous regions.',1,125,'<li>Julian David Hunt, Jakub Jurasz, Behnam Zakeri, Andreas Nascimento, Samuel Cross, Carla Schwengber ten Caten, Diego Augusto de Jesus Pacheco, Pharima Pongpairoj, Walter Leal Filho, Fernanda Munari Caputo Tomé, Rodrigo Senne, Bas van Ruijven. <strong>Electric Truck Hydropower, a flexible solution to hydropower in mountainous regions</strong>. <em>Energy</em>, 2022; 248: 123495 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2022.123495\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.energy.2022.123495</a>\r\n</li>'),(349,'A sieve for molecules','a-sieve-for-molecules','2022-03-08 07:59:39.824173','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Scientists have long tried to use graphene, which is composed of carbon, as a kind of sieve. But this material doesn\'t have any pores. Now, a team has found an alternative material which comes with pores from the outset.</p><p>Researchers from Bielefeld, Bochum and Yale have succeeded in producing a layer of two-dimensional (2D) silicon dioxide. This material contains natural pores and can therefore be used like a sieve for molecules and ions. Scientists have been looking for such materials for a long time because they could for example help desalinate seawater and be used in new types of fuel cells. The team outlines the fabrication process of bilayer silicates in the journal <em>Nano Letters</em>, published online on 19 January 2022. The study was jointly conducted by the teams headed by Dr. Petr Dementyev from Bielefeld University, Professor Anjana Devi from Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Professor Eric Altman from Yale University.</p><p><strong>Naturally occurring pores in the crystal lattice</strong></p><p>When two-dimensional materials are pierced with high precision, they can be used to filter out certain ions and molecules. Researchers have time and again tried to perforate the material graphene for this purpose, which consists of carbon atoms. Since it has no natural pores, they must be inserted artificially. But it is difficult to create holes of a defined size in graphene without permanently damaging the material. This is because it loses mechanical stability due to the perforation. Consequently, an alternative had to be found. In the current study, the research team took advantage of the fact that the crystal lattice of two-dimensional silicon dioxide contains pores by nature. They showed that these pores can be used to separate certain gases from each other.</p><p>\"This is very exciting because 2D silicon dioxide has a very high density of tiny pores by nature that is simply not possible to be created in artificial membranes,\" says Petr Dementyev from the Physics of Supramolecular Systems and Surfaces research group in Bielefeld. \"Unlike in perforated graphene, the pores are all almost the same size. And there\'s such an incredible number of them that the material behaves like a fine-mesh sieve for molecules.\"</p><p><strong>Problematic to manufacture</strong></p><p>2D silica has been known since 2010. However, it was very expensive to manufacture, which could only be done on a small scale. Pooling together expertise from materials chemistry, chemical engineering and chemical physics, the researchers from Bochum, Bielefeld and Yale came up with a new material fabrication process. They used so-called atomic layer deposition to deposit a single layer of silicon dioxide on a gold surface. Using a high-pressure process, the researchers transferred the layer into its two-dimensional form and then characterised it in detail by means of spectroscopy and microscopy. They then examined the gas flow through the 2D membrane in a vacuum chamber.</p><p>While vaporous water and alcohol penetrated the silica layer, the gases nitrogen and oxygen couldn\'t pass through. \"Materials like this with selective permeability are in high demand in industry,\" says Anjana Devi. However, before the 2D silica can be used in practice, it is important to evaluate exactly how many different molecules can attach to the surface of the material or how they can penetrate it.</p><p>\"We expect our results to be of high relevance to the materials science community worldwide,\" concludes Anjana Devi from the Inorganic Materials Chemistry research group. Such 2D membranes could be at the forefront of aiding sustainable development, for example in the field of energy conversion or storage.\"</p>','2022-03-07 20:40:28.027290','uploads/news/download_17.jpg',1,'Ruhr-University Bochum','Scientists have long tried to use graphene, which is composed of carbon, as a kind of sieve. But this material doesn\'t have any pores. Now, a team has found an alternative material which comes with pores from the outset.',1,112,'<li>Daniil Naberezhnyi, Lukas Mai, Nassar Doudin, Inga Ennen, Andreas Hütten, Eric I. Altman, Anjana Devi, Petr Dementyev. <strong>Molecular Permeation in Freestanding Bilayer Silica</strong>. <em>Nano Letters</em>, 2022; 22 (3): 1287 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04535\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c04535</a>\r\n</li>'),(350,'Cell division in microalgae: Mitosis revealed in detail','cell-division-in-microalgae-mitosis-revealed-in-detail','2022-03-08 08:00:41.372496','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Cell division ensures growth or renewal and is thus vital for all organisms. However, the process differs somewhat in animals, bacteria, fungi, plants, and algae. Until now, little was known about how cell division occurs in algae. Researchers at Bielefeld University have used confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) to capture the very first high-resolution three-dimensional images of cell division in live cells of the microalga Volvox carteri, and have identified new cellular structures involved in the process. Professor Dr Armin Hallmann from the Faculty of Biology is leading the study. The findings have now been published open access in the journal <em>The Plant Cell</em>.</p><p>The cell is the smallest organisational unit of life. It contains the necessary building blocks of life in a compact form and is the place where vital biochemical reactions take place. With the help of enzymes, substance and energy transformations take place, which are processes also known as metabolism. The cell interior is separated and thus protected from the environment by the cell membrane. Genetic material, the cell\'s information store, is often located in the cell nucleus as DNA. When a cell divides by mitosis, it first divides its nucleus into two identical daughter nuclei with the same genetic material. Then the rest of the cell divides and two identical daughter cells are produced. The complex, genetically determined process of mitosis in particular must take place very precisely: the entire genetic material, divided into chromosomes, must be segregated accurately into the two daughter cell nuclei.</p><p><strong>Cell division of the alga Volvox carteri combines animal and plant characteristics</strong></p><p>\'Cell division is one of the most fundamental processes in living organisms. It has basically been preserved over countless millions of years of evolution and can be found in all organisms,\' says Professor Dr Armin Hallmann, head of the Cellular and Developmental Biology of Plants research group at Bielefeld University. Yet the mechanisms of cell division in animals, fungi, plants, and algae each have characteristic features. The multicellular green alga Volvox carteri is a particularly interesting case in point. \'It exhibits both animal and plant features in mitosis,\' says Hallmann. The researchers have now been able to clarify this phenomenon in their study. \'Until now, researchers knew very little about the exact process of mitosis in this green alga.\'</p><p><strong>Mitosis in the microalga Volvox carteri</strong></p><p>With their analyses, the scientists have been able to identify five characteristics that are crucial for mitosis in the microalga Volvox carteri.</p><p>The first two features concern the envelope of the microalgal nucleus. \'The nuclear envelope does not disintegrate at the beginning of mitosis, as is often the case, but remains in place until shortly before nuclear division is completed,\' says Armin Hallmann. \'Instead, it becomes porous and permeable, so that cellular components are exchanged between the inside of the cell nucleus and the cytosol -- a fluid that surrounds the cell nucleus. Hence, for a certain period of time, the cell nucleus loses its typical property as a confined reaction space, although the nuclear envelope is still present.\'</p><p>The third feature is related to the centrosomes of the cell. These are cell structures that play a central role in the organisation of the mitotic spindle here. The mitotic spindle arranges the chromosomes in such a way that they can be segregated accurately into the two newly forming cell nuclei. \'We have been able to show that the centrosomes play a crucial role in the mitosis of Volvox carteri even though they are located outside the nuclear envelope. They form the basic structure for organising the precise division of the genetic material with the help of the nuclear division spindle within the nuclear envelope. Until now, we only knew about an organisation of the spindle by centrosomes from cell division in animals,\' says Hallmann.</p><p>A fourth feature is the formation of a specific filamentous structure, the phycoplast, at the end of mitosis. After the cell nucleus has divided, the rest of the cell must also divide so that the newly formed cells can finally separate from each other. The dynamic phycoplast is the basis for the formation of a cleavage furrow which ultimately divides the cell, whereas plants form a different structure which ultimately leads to the formation of a separating, solid cell wall. \'The special thing about algae is that the phycoplast is formed directly by recycling the nuclear division spindle, which is then no longer required,\' explains the scientist.</p><p>Finally, the researchers were able to detect an enormous dynamic of the entire inner architecture of the cell as well as of the nuclear envelope during cell division.</p><p><strong>Making molecular processes visible</strong></p><p>The researchers were able to record the cell division processes by producing fluorescent proteins (proteins that glow when exposed to light) and tracking them in the cell using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). For the first time, scientists have succeeded in imaging the mitosis of microalgae in three dimensions in live cells and characterising it in detail, using Volvox carteri as an example.</p><p>\'The question we posed ourselves was: how exactly does cell division work in green algae? Which structures are involved in mitosis and what role do they play in the process?\' says first author Dr Eva Laura von der Heyde. She previously conducted research in Hallmann\'s research group as a doctoral student and is now a postdoc. In order to be able to localise important proteins involved in cell division in the cell, their genes are linked to the gene of a fluorescent protein using molecular biology techniques. The proteins involved in cell division thus become fluorescent, which makes them distinguishable from all other proteins in the cell. \'We used a special laser to excite different fluorescent proteins to glow. Using a confocal laser scanning microscope, we were able to detect the yellow-green glow of the microstructures formed by the proteins in live cells,\' says Eva Laura von der Heyde.</p><p>The researchers also recorded on video how the proteins move during cell division, how they form microstructures, and how these structures are rebuilt. In a time-lapse video, which condenses 30 minutes of mitosis to nine seconds and shows it simultaneously in ten optical section planes, it becomes clear how the centrosomes organise the formation of the nuclear division spindle and how the nuclear division spindle finally transforms into the phycoplast after the chromosomes have separated.</p><p><strong>Insights into evolution</strong></p><p>In the long term, Armin Hallmann and Eva Laura von der Heyde hope to be able to build on these new findings to learn more about the evolution of cell division. How did the different variants of cell division that are found today in animals, fungi, plants, and algae come about? \'In evolution, the first land plants developed from primordial green algae. This is why the green alga Volvox carteri also possesses properties that it has in common with land plants growing today. However, it is striking that Volvox carteri also possesses properties that can be found in animals living today. Other of their characteristics are again only found in green algae. These special characteristics also make this model organism so important for our understanding of the evolution of cell division,\' says Hallmann.</p>','2022-03-07 20:40:30.370346','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Bielefeld University','Cell division ensures growth or renewal and is thus vital for all organisms. However, the process differs somewhat in animals, bacteria, fungi, plants, and algae. Until now, little was known about how cell division occurs in algae. Researchers have used confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) to capture the very first high-resolution three-dimensional images of cell division in live cells of the microalga Volvox carteri, and have identified new cellular structures involved in the process.',1,51,'<li>Eva Laura von der Heyde, Armin Hallmann. <strong>Molecular and cellular dynamics of early embryonic cell divisions in Volvox carteri</strong>. <em>The Plant Cell</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koac004\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1093/plcell/koac004</a>\r\n</li>'),(351,'Traffic accidents significantly dropped during COVID-19 lockdown, study finds','traffic-accidents-significantly-dropped-during-covid-19-lockdown-study-finds','2022-03-08 07:20:48.160428','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that traffic accidents decreased by nearly half during the two-month period at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when residents of most states were under a stay-at-home order.</p><p>Using a detailed data set from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, Jason Huh, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Rensselaer, found that traffic accidents in Louisiana decreased by 47% during March and May 2020 when Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards issued a series of orders that closed businesses and schools, limiting mobility throughout the state. Accidents involving injuries decreased by 46% and those where an ambulance was called fell by 41%.</p><p>The number of fatal accidents, however, showed no significant decrease.</p><p>Dr. Huh\'s research also showed that the decline in accidents was not equal across all demographics. Traffic accidents involving males, nonwhite drivers, and individuals in the 25 -- 64 age group all saw a smaller reduction in accidents.</p><p>\"The number of cars on the roads was altered substantially due to these stay-at-home orders,\" Dr. Huh said. \"Differential effects on individual behaviors might stem from differences in compliance with the lockdown or job characteristics such as whether remote work is possible.\"</p><p>Dr. Huh was able to calculate the dollar value of the reduction in car accidents by combining publicly available data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration with his findings of a 47% reduction to approximate that the COVID-19 lockdown led to a decrease in car crash costs of $21 billion nationally during the March to May 2020 time period.</p><p>\"While it may seem obvious that when fewer people are driving due to a public health crisis there would be fewer accidents, the precise magnitude of the impact and who it is impacting most is important and useful information for the public, researchers, and policymakers alike,\" he said.</p><p>Dr. Huh was joined in the research paper, -- \"COVID-19 Lockdown and Traffic Accidents: Lessons from the Pandemic\" -- by Stephen Barnes at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Louis-Philippe Beland at Carleton University (Ottawa), and Dongwoo Kim at Texas Christian University.</p>','2022-03-07 20:54:49.309439','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute','Research shows that traffic accidents decreased by nearly half during the two-month period at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic when residents of most states were under a stay-at-home order.',1,148,'<li>Stephen R. Barnes, Louis‐Philippe Beland, Jason Huh, Dongwoo Kim. <strong>COVID‐19 lockdown and traffic accidents: Lessons from the pandemic</strong>. <em>Contemporary Economic Policy</em>, 2022; 40 (2): 349 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/coep.12562\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1111/coep.12562</a>\r\n</li>'),(352,'New study questions explanation for last winter\'s brutal U.S. cold snap','new-study-questions-explanation-for-last-winters-brutal-us-cold-snap','2022-03-08 07:23:02.375335','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A new study challenges a commonly accepted explanation that a \"sudden stratospheric warming\" caused the unusually cold weather over the U.S. early last year, a view which was widely reported in the media and discussed among scientists at the time.</p><p>Instead, the research finds that the spike in temperature of the normally frigid air mass locked high above the Arctic on Jan. 5, 2021 -- and the accompanying disruption of the polar vortex -- did not significantly impact weather in the weeks that followed, including the unprecedented and brutal cold snap that gripped Texas that February.</p><p>The research findings are valuable for scientists who are working to extend weather forecasts beyond today\'s two-week window and who are increasingly focused on events in the stratosphere as possible sources of longer-term predictability. Sudden stratospheric warmings, for example, occur on average every other year during winter, and in the month that follows, a predictable pattern of weather tends to unfold, including cold air outbreaks in the United States. However, the mechanism that might connect the events is not well understood.</p><p>For the new study, published last week in the journal <em>Nature Communications</em>, a team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) used a sophisticated Earth system model to analyze the sudden stratospheric warming that occurred on Jan. 5, 2021 and its potential impacts. Using a new method to assess causality, they found that while the subsequent weather did indeed match the expected pattern, the sudden stratospheric warming itself was not likely the cause.</p><p>\"The mechanisms for how these layers of the atmosphere interact are probably more nuanced than we\'re giving them credit for, and that\'s important for making better forecast models,\" said NCAR scientist Nicholas Davis, who led the study. \"Once you know the mechanism, you can model it better.\"</p><p>The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR\'s sponsor, the U.S. Department of Energy, and NOAA.</p><p><strong>\"Scrambling\" the forecast</strong></p><p>During the Northern Hemisphere winter, when the North Pole tilts away from the Sun and remains shrouded in darkness, a frigid mass of cold air forms in the stratosphere above the pole. The cold air is locked into place by a jet stream called the stratospheric polar vortex.</p><p>Occasionally, the polar vortex is disrupted by planetary-scale waves, which propagate upward from the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. When these planetary-scale waves break, they warm the vortex, which can weaken it and cause it to be displaced or split in two -- an event known as a sudden stratospheric warming. In the month afterward, it\'s usually warmer than normal in Canada, Alaska, and the Middle East and colder than normal over Siberia, with more frequent cold air outbreaks in Europe and the United States.</p><p>For the new study, the researchers dug into the connections between the stratosphere and troposphere using the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) configured with an atmospheric component called the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM).</p><p>To start, the team kicked off the model using the atmospheric conditions present in both the stratosphere and the troposphere on Jan. 4, 2021, the day before the sudden stratospheric warming took place. This \"standard forecast\" did an excellent job of capturing the weather that actually occurred over the following four weeks.</p><p>Then the team ran three more forecasts. In one forecast, the troposphere was \"scrambled,\" meaning the conditions in the troposphere did not match the actual weather observations from Jan. 4, 2021. In a second forecast, the stratosphere was scrambled, which removed the sudden stratospheric warming from the forecast.</p><p>The scrambling experiments showed that the initial state of the stratosphere had no impact on the weather in the two weeks after the sudden stratospheric warming, and only a minor impact nearly one month later, when the stratosphere acted to sustain the expected weather patterns. Instead, the initial state of the troposphere was the primary driver.</p><p>\"I think everyone imagined that a pinball is shot up from the troposphere, hits the polar vortex, and breaks it apart,\" Davis said. \"And then another pinball shoots back down and changes the weather. But this study shows that it\'s not so simple. I think it possible that the events in the troposphere and the stratosphere are feeding back on one another and reinforcing what\'s happening.\"</p><p><strong>The Texas deep freeze</strong></p><p>The research team also analyzed the record-breaking cold temperatures that swept across Texas and the central U.S. in mid-February 2021. Because the cold snap happened about six weeks after the sudden stratospheric warming, it was beyond the timeframe of predictability associated with that event. However, the polar vortex had not yet recovered from the sudden stratospheric warming and remained stretched, looping down over North America, a configuration often associated with cold air outbreaks in the U.S.</p><p>Scientists have posited that a disturbed polar vortex can reflect planetary waves back down into the troposphere where they can intensify weather systems and create cold air outbreaks in the United States, but whether this mechanism is at work is unclear.</p><p>The research team ran a series of simulations, as before, but this time they kicked them off using atmospheric conditions on Feb. 8, 2021, about a week prior to the onset of the extreme cold. In this case, the team found that the standard forecast did a good job of predicting the vortex stretching, the wave reflection, and the extreme cold conditions over North America. The forecast with the scrambled stratosphere, on the other hand, did not capture the wave reflection nor the full extent of the polar vortex stretching, but its temperature forecast was about the same as the standard forecast, suggesting that the vortex stretching and wave reflection did not contribute to the cold air breakout.</p><p><strong>A better forecast</strong></p><p>The same atmospheric elements that cause a sudden stratospheric warming -- and associated distortion in the polar vortex -- may also be causing the weather patterns, though the sudden stratospheric warming may be helping to sustain them over long periods. And because the emergence of a sudden stratospheric warming is predictable weeks in advance, the weather pattern that follows also remains more predictable.</p><p>The new research, however, could allow for more accurate predictions in the future, since an improved understanding of the actual mechanisms connecting the two phenomena could improve the forecast models themselves. A better understanding of the mechanisms at play could also help scientists evaluate how the changing climate could amplify or dampen the connections between the troposphere and the stratosphere.</p><p>The study is also valuable because of the \"scrambling\" technique it demonstrates, Davis said. This technique allows the \"scrambled\" component of the model to drift for a week leading up to the date that the actual forecast is started on, while the \"unscrambled\" components are nudged to align with observations during the same time. This new ability to experimentally separate out resolved components of the Earth system, while also keeping the whole system physically consistent, could allow scientists to undertake an array of attribution studies to look at causal relationships in the atmosphere and larger Earth system.</p><p>\"This forecast model set-up and approach will allow us to answer some urgent questions about attribution -- what is really the underlying cause of weather and climate events -- in nearly real time,\" Davis said. \"If we have a hypothesis about what the mechanism for an event is, this technique can provide us with a more direct answer.\"</p>','2022-03-07 20:54:53.068557','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research','A new study challenges a commonly accepted explanation that a \'sudden stratospheric warming\' caused the unusually cold weather over the U.S. early last year, a view which was widely reported in the media and discussed among scientists at the time.',1,151,'<li>N. A. Davis, J. H. Richter, A. A. Glanville, J. Edwards, E. LaJoie. <strong>Limited surface impacts of the January 2021 sudden stratospheric warming</strong>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28836-1\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41467-022-28836-1</a>\r\n</li>'),(353,'New maps show airplane contrails over the U.S. dropped steeply in 2020','new-maps-show-airplane-contrails-over-the-us-dropped-steeply-in-2020','2022-03-08 07:25:44.191246','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">As Covid-19\'s initial wave crested around the world, travel restrictions and a drop in passengers led to a record number of grounded flights in 2020. The air travel reduction cleared the skies of not just jets but also the fluffy white contrails they produce high in the atmosphere.</p><p>MIT engineers have mapped the contrails that were generated over the United States in 2020, and compared the results to prepandemic years. They found that on any given day in 2018, and again in 2019, contrails covered a total area equal to Massachusetts and Connecticut combined. In 2020, this contrail coverage shrank by about 20 percent, mirroring a similar drop in U.S. flights.</p><p>While 2020\'s contrail dip may not be surprising, the findings are proof that the team\'s mapping technique works. Their study marks the first time researchers have captured the fine and ephemeral details of contrails over a large continental scale.</p><p>Now, the researchers are applying the technique to predict where in the atmosphere contrails are likely to form. The cloud-like formations are known to play a significant role in aviation-related global warming. The team is working with major airlines to forecast regions in the atmosphere where contrails may form, and to reroute planes around these regions to minimize contrail production.</p><p>\"This kind of technology can help divert planes to prevent contrails, in real time,\" says Steven Barrett, professor and associate head of MIT\'s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. \"There\'s an unusual opportunity to halve aviation\'s climate impact by eliminating most of the contrails produced today.\"</p><p>Barrett and his colleagues have published their results today in the journal <em>Environmental Research Letters</em>. His co-authors at MIT include graduate student Vincent Meijer, former graduate student Luke Kulik, research scientists Sebastian Eastham, Florian Allroggen, and Raymond Speth, and LIDS Director and professor Sertac Karaman.</p><p><strong>Trail training</strong></p><p>About half of the aviation industry\'s contribution to global warming comes directly from planes\' carbon dioxide emissions. The other half is thought to be a consequence of their contrails. The signature white tails are produced when a plane\'s hot, humid exhaust mixes with cool humid air high in the atmosphere. Emitted in thin lines, contrails quickly spread out and can act as blankets that trap the Earth\'s outgoing heat.</p><p>While a single contrail may not have much of a warming effect, taken together contrails have a significant impact. But the estimates of this effect are uncertain and based on computer modeling as well as limited satellite data. What\'s more, traditional computer vision algorithms that analyze contrail data have a hard time discerning the wispy tails from natural clouds.</p><p>To precisely pick out and track contrails over a large scale, the MIT team looked to images taken by NASA\'s GOES-16, a geostationary satellite that hovers over the same swath of the Earth, including the United States, taking continuous, high-resolution images.</p><p>The team first obtained about 100 images taken by the satellite, and trained a set of people to interpret remote sensing data and label each image\'s pixel as either part of a contrail or not. They used this labeled dataset to train a computer-vision algorithm to discern a contrail from a cloud or other image feature.</p><p>The researchers then ran the algorithm on about 100,000 satellite images, amounting to nearly 6 trillion pixels, each pixel representing an area of about 2 square kilometers. The images covered the contiguous U.S., along with parts of Canada and Mexico, and were taken about every 15 minutes, between Jan. 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2020.</p><p>The algorithm automatically classified each pixel as either a contrail or not a contrail, and generated daily maps of contrails over the United States. These maps mirrored the major flight paths of most U.S. airlines, with some notable differences. For instance, contrail \"holes\" appeared around major airports, which reflects the fact that planes landing and taking off around airports are generally not high enough in the atmosphere for contrails to form.</p><p>\"The algorithm knows nothing about where planes fly, and yet when processing the satellite imagery, it resulted in recognizable flight routes,\" Barrett says. \"That\'s one piece of evidence that says this method really does capture contrails over a large scale.\"</p><p><strong>Cloudy patterns</strong></p><p>Based on the algorithm\'s maps, the researchers calculated the total area covered each day by contrails in the US. On an average day in 2018 and in 2019, U.S. contrails took up about 43,000 square kilometers. This coverage dropped by 20 percent in March of 2020 as the pandemic set in. From then on, contrails slowly reappeared as air travel resumed through the year.</p><p>The team also observed daily and seasonal patterns. In general, contrails appeared to peak in the morning and decline in the afternoon. This may be a training artifact: As natural cirrus clouds are more likely to form in the afternoon, the algorithm may have trouble discerning contrails amid the clouds later in the day. But it might also be an important indication about when contrails form most. Contrails also peaked in late winter and early spring, when more of the air is naturally colder and more conducive for contrail formation.</p><p>The team has now adapted the technique to predict where contrails are likely to form in real time. Avoiding these regions, Barrett says, could take a significant, almost immediate chunk out of aviation\'s global warming contribution.</p><p>\"Most measures to make aviation sustainable take a long time,\" Barrett says. \"(Contrail avoidance) could be accomplished in a few years, because it requires small changes to how aircraft are flown, with existing airplanes and observational technology. It\'s a near-term way of reducing aviation\'s warming by about half.\"</p><p>The team is now working towards this objective of large-scale contrail avoidance using realtime satellite observations.</p><p>This research was supported in part by NASA and the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative.</p>','2022-03-07 20:54:57.394212','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Massachusetts Institute of Technology','Researchers have generated new maps of jet contrails over the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, which show a steep reduction in the area covered by contrails in 2020.',1,5,'<li>Vincent R Meijer, Luke Kulik, Sebastian D Eastham, Florian Allroggen, Raymond L Speth, Sertac Karaman, Steven R H Barrett. <strong>Contrail coverage over the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic</strong>. <em>Environmental Research Letters</em>, 2022; 17 (3): 034039 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac26f0\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1088/1748-9326/ac26f0</a>\r\n</li>'),(354,'World Trade Center responders at higher risk for blood cancer-associated mutations, study finds','world-trade-center-responders-at-higher-risk-for-blood-cancer-associated-mutations-study-finds','2022-03-08 07:27:09.402637','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Scientists from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) collaborated with researchers from New York to determine that 9/11 first responders to the World Trade Center have increased levels of mutations that escalate their risk for blood cancers or cardiovascular disease, according to a study published March 7 in <em>Nature Medicine</em>.</p><p>The researchers determined that a significantly higher percentage of World Trade Center responders have an increased mutational burden when compared to blood sample data from BioVU, Vanderbilt\'s biorepository of DNA extracted from discarded blood collected during routine clinical testing. Among the World Trade Center firefighters, 10% had evidence of clonal hematopoiesis compared to 6.7% for firefighters who were not exposed to particulate matter from the burning skyscrapers. Clonal hematopoiesis is an age-associated phenomenon marked by mutations in commonly mutated genes within blood cells that provide those cells a competitive advantage and increases risk of blood cancer and cardiovascular disease.</p><p>The VUMC team was able to access the DNA of 203 Nashville firefighters from BioVU. The Vanderbilt team was able to use the de-identified, annotated data within the Synthetic Derivative (SD) to locate over 200 firefighters who were age, sex and smoking-status matched to first responders at the World Trade Center disaster. Combined with 52 firefighters recruited at the annual convention of the International Association of Firefighters, this control group was compared to those exposed to particulate matter at the World Trade Center disaster.</p><p>The VICC researchers were led by Michael Savona, MD, holder of the Beverly and George Rawlings Directorship in Hematology Research, professor of Medicine and Head of Hematology, Cellular Therapy and Stem Cell Transplantation at VICC.</p><p>\"This is the first publication that I am aware of that successfully leveraged BioVU to measure somatic genetic changes to study clonal hematopoiesis,\" said Savona, one of four corresponding authors on the study.</p><p>Alexander Silver, a MD/PhD candidate working in the Savona Lab, is one of seven lead authors of the study.</p><p>The research team included scientists and physicians from Vanderbilt, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, the Fire Department of the City of New York Bureau of Health Services, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, New York University School of Medicine, Genoptix, The Leukemia Lymphoma Society and Dana Farber Cancer Center.</p><p>Researchers also exposed mice to World Trade Center particulate matter thought to be equivalent to what the first responders absorbed. The scientists observed a significant expansion of hematopoietic stem cells 30 days after exposure.</p><p>The researchers concluded that first responders to the World Trade Center have an increased mutational burden that puts them at greater risk for blood cancers beyond what normally occurs with aging, and further studies of the particulate matter and the mechanism of blood cancer development are under way.</p><p>The research work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, The Leukemia Lymphoma Society, EvansMDS (an initiative of the Edward P. Evans Foundation), the V Foundation for Cancer Research, the Adventure Alle Fund, The Biff Ruttenberg Foundation, the Beverly and George Rawlings Directorship, and a gift from the Dempsey and Leinbach Families.</p><p>Other Vanderbilt authors on the study included Cosmin \"Adi\" Bejan, PhD, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics, and clinical fellows in Hematology/Oncology, Shannon Stockton, MD, and Travis Spaulding, MD.</p>','2022-03-07 20:55:57.275151','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Vanderbilt University Medical Center','Scientists determined that 9/11 first responders to the World Trade Center have increased levels of mutations that escalate their risk for blood cancers or cardiovascular disease, according to a new study.',1,152,'<li>Sakshi Jasra, Orsi Giricz, Rachel Zeig-Owens, Kith Pradhan, David G. Goldfarb, Angelica Barreto-Galvez, Alexander J. Silver, Jiahao Chen, Srabani Sahu, Shanisha Gordon-Mitchell, Gaurav S. Choudhary, Srinivas Aluri, Tushar D. Bhagat, Aditi Shastri, Cosmin A. Bejan, Shannon S. Stockton, Travis P. Spaulding, Victor Thiruthuvanathan, Hiroki Goto, Jeannine Gerhardt, Syed Hissam Haider, Arul Veerappan, Matthias Bartenstein, George Nwankwo, Ola Landgren, Michael D. Weiden, Jacqueline Lekostaj, Ryan Bender, Frederick Fletcher, Lee Greenberger, Benjamin L. Ebert, Ulrich Steidl, Britta Will, Anna Nolan, Advaitha Madireddy, Michael R. Savona, David J. Prezant, Amit Verma. <strong>High burden of clonal hematopoiesis in first responders exposed to the World Trade Center disaster</strong>. <em>Nature Medicine</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-01708-3\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41591-022-01708-3</a>\r\n</li>'),(356,'Lensless camera captures cellular-level, 3D details in living tissue','lensless-camera-captures-cellular-level-3d-details-in-living-tissue','2022-03-08 08:02:02.033483','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Want to monitor the brain of a running tiger?</p><p>First, catch the tiger.</p><p>Then attach Bio-FlatScope, the latest iteration of lensless microscopy being developed at Rice University.</p><p>That particular use is fanciful but not far-fetched, according to Jacob Robinson, an electrical and computer engineer at Rice\'s George R. Brown School of Engineering who led the recent effort to test Bio-FlatScope in living creatures.</p><p>The research team\'s FlatCam, a lensless device that channels light through a mask and directly onto a camera sensor, aimed primarily outward at the world at large. The raw images looked like static, but a custom algorithm used the data they contained to reconstruct what the camera saw.</p><p>The new device looks inward to image micron-scale targets like cells and blood vessels inside the body, even through the skin. Bio-FlatScope captures images that no lensed camera can see -- showing, for example, dynamic changes in the fluorescent-tagged neurons in running mice.</p><p>One advantage over other microscopes is that light captured by Bio-FlatScope can be refocused after the fact to reveal 3D details. And without lenses, the scope\'s field of view is the size of the sensor (at close range to the target) or wider, without distortion.</p><p>A small, low-cost Bio-FlatScope could eventually look for signs of cancer or sepsis or become a valuable tool for endoscopy, said Robinson, who teamed with colleagues at Rice\'s Neuroengineering Initiative on the project.</p><p>The team\'s proof-of-concept study also imaged plants, hydra and even, to a limited degree, a human. Their results appear in <em>Nature Biomedical Engineering</em>.</p><p>The mechanism combines a sophisticated phase mask to generate patterns of light that fall directly onto the chip, according to the researchers. The mask in the original FlatCam looks something like a bar code and limits the amount of light that passes through to the camera sensor. But it doesn\'t work well for biological samples.</p><p>The Bio-FlatScope phase mask looks more like the random map of a natural landscape, with no straight lines. \"We had to start from scratch and think about how to make it function in a realistic biological setting,\" Robinson said.</p><p>\"Being random allows the mask to be pretty diverse in gathering light from all directions,\" said postdoctoral researcher Vivek Boominathan, one of four lead authors on the study. \"And then we take the random input, which is called Perlin noise, and do some processing to get these high-contrast contours.\"</p><p>At the sensor, light that comes through the mask appears as a point spread function, a pair of blurry blobs that seems useless but is actually key to acquiring details about objects below the diffraction limit that are too small for many microscopes to see. The blobs\' size, shape and distance from each other indicate how far the subject is from the focal plane. Software reinterprets the data into an image that can be refocused at will.</p><p>A tiger was a little beyond their budget, so the researchers started small, first capturing cellular structures in a lily of the valley, then calcium activity in tiny, jellyfishlike hydra. They moved on to monitoring a running rodent, attaching the Bio-FlatScope to a rodent\'s skull and setting it down on a wheel. The data showed fluorescent-tagged neurons in a region of the animal\'s brain, connecting activity in the motor cortex with motion and resolving blood vessels as small as 10 microns in diameter.</p><p>In collaboration with Rebecca Richards-Kortum and research scientist Jennifer Carns from Rice Bioengineering, the team identified vascular imaging as a potential clinical application of the Bio-FlatScope. Graduate student and co-lead author Jimin Wu offered her lower lip to see if light passing through to the camera could deliver structural details of the blood vessels within.</p><p>\"It was kind of an engineering challenge because it\'s difficult to position the Bio-FlatScope at the correct position and keep it there,\" Wu said. \"But it showed us it could be a good tool for seeing signs of sepsis, because pre-sepsis changes the density of the vasculature. Cancer also alters the morphology of the microvasculature.\"</p><p>\"We can imagine it would be hard to stick a microscope in that position, but maybe a little clip you put on your lip would be able to look for things like sepsis or tumors in the oral mucosa,\" Robinson said.</p><p>Long term, the team sees potential for a camera that could curve around its subject, like brain tissue, \"so it could match the morphology of what you\'re looking at,\" Robinson said. \"Or maybe you could fold it up, stick it in place and have it unfold and deploy.</p><p>\"You could also do really interesting things by bending it for a fisheye effect, or you could curve it inward and have very high light-collection efficiency,\" he said.</p><p>Co-lead authors of the study include Rice alumnus Jesse Adams and Applied Physics graduate student Dong Yan. Co-authors are Rice graduate students Sibo Gao and Soonyoung Kim; postdoctoral alumnus Alex Rodriguez; Caleb Kemere, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and of bioengineering; and Ashok Veeraraghavan, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.</p><p>Richards-Kortum is the Malcolm Gillis University Professor, a professor of bioengineering and electrical and computer engineering and director of the Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technology. Robinson is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and of bioengineering, and he, Kemere and Veeraraghavan are core members of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative.</p><p>The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (N66001-17-C-4012), the National Institutes of Health (RF1NS110501) and the National Science Foundation (1730574) supported the research.</p>','2022-03-07 22:52:57.888009','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Rice University','The lensless Bio-FlatScope is a small, inexpensive camera to monitor biological activity that can\'t be captured by conventional instruments. The device could eventually be used to look for signs of cancer or sepsis or become a valuable endoscopy tool.',1,41,'<li>Adams, J.K., Yan, D., Wu, J. et al. <strong>In vivo lensless microscopy via a phase mask generating diffraction patterns with high-contrast contours</strong>. <em>Nat Biomed Eng</em>, 2022 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41551-022-00851-z\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41551-022-00851-z</a>\r\n</li>'),(357,'Genetic study gives extensive insights into severe COVID-19','genetic-study-gives-extensive-insights-into-severe-covid-19','2022-03-08 08:04:14.433762','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">The world\'s largest study of the genetics of critical Covid-19, involving more than 57,000 people, has revealed fresh details about some of the biological mechanisms behind the severe form of the disease.</p><p>Some 16 new genetic variants associated with severe Covid-19, including some related to blood clotting, immune response and intensity of inflammation, have been identified.</p><p>These findings will act as a roadmap for future efforts, opening new fields of research focused on potential new therapies and diagnostics with pinpoint accuracy, experts say.</p><p>Researchers from the GenOMICC consortium -- a global collaboration to study genetics in critical illness -- led by University of Edinburgh in partnership with Genomics England, made these discoveries by sequencing the genomes of 7,491 patients from 224 intensive care units in the UK.</p><p>Their DNA was compared with 48,400 other people who had not had Covid-19, participants in Genomics England\'s 100,000 Genomes Project and that of a further 1,630 people who had experienced mild Covid.</p><p>Determining the whole genome sequence for all participants in the study allowed the team to create a precise map and identify genetic variation linked to severity of Covid-19. The team found key differences in 16 genes in the ICU patients when compared with the DNA of the other groups.</p><p>They also confirmed the involvement of seven other genetic variations already associated with severe Covid-19 discovered in earlier studies from the same team.</p><p>The findings included how a single gene variant that disrupts a key messenger molecule in immune system signaling -- called interferon alpha-10 -- was enough to increase a patient\'s risk of severe disease.</p><p>This highlights the gene\'s key role in the immune system and suggests that treating patients with interferon -- proteins released by immune cells to defend against viruses -- may help manage disease in the early stages.</p><p>The study also found that variations in genes that control the levels of a central component of blood clotting -- known as Factor 8 -- were associated with critical illness in Covid-19.</p><p>This may explain some of the clotting abnormalities that are seen in severe cases of Covid-19. Factor 8 is the gene underlying the most common type of haemophilia.</p><p>Professor Kenneth Baillie, the project\'s chief investigator and a Consultant in Critical Care Medicine at University of Edinburgh, said: \"Our latest findings point to specific molecular targets in critical Covid-19. These results explain why some people develop life-threatening Covid-19, while others get no symptoms at all. But more importantly, this gives us a deep understanding of the process of disease and is a big step forward in finding more effective treatments.</p><p>\"It is now true to say that we understand the mechanisms of Covid better than the other syndromes we treat in intensive care in normal times -- sepsis, flu, and other forms of critical illness. Covid-19 is showing us the way to tackle those problems in the future.\"</p><p>Professor Sir Mark Caulfield from Queen Mary University of London, formerly Chief Scientist at Genomics England and co-author on this study, said: \"As Covid-19 evolves, we need to focus on reducing the number of people getting seriously ill and being hospitalised. Through our whole genome sequencing research, we\'ve discovered novel gene variants that predispose people to severe illness -- which now offer a route to new tests and treatments, to help protect the public and the NHS from this virus.\"</p><p>Dr Rich Scott, Chief Medical Officer at Genomics England, said: \"Strategically, we\'re at a point where genomic science is becoming an integral part of the national infrastructure in routine healthcare. This study illustrates the value of whole genome sequencing to detect rare and common variants that influence critical illness requiring intensive care. It represents a major leap forward in our understanding of how our genetic makeup influences severe illness with Covid-19.\"</p><p>\"All those involved in the study went to great efforts to engage with all communities within the UK -- including groups that have historically been under-represented in medical studies. The inclusive element of our work has generated meaningful results for everyone in the country.\"</p><p>Lord Kamall, Minister for innovation at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), said: \"Clinical research has been vital in our fight against Covid-19 and the UK\'s innovation is enabling us to transform our health service and ensure the NHS is able to deliver world-class care.</p><p>\"This research is an important step forward in better understanding how Covid-19 impacts certain people, allowing us to take the necessary action to protect the most vulnerable and save lives.\"</p><p>The findings have been published in Nature.</p><p>GenOMICC (Genetics of Susceptibility and Mortality in Critical Care) started in 2015 as an open, global consortium of intensive care clinicians dedicated to understanding genetic factors influencing outcomes in intensive care from diseases such as SARS, flu and sepsis.</p><p>The consortium is led by the University of Edinburgh, and since 2020 it has been focused on Covid-19 research in partnership with Genomics England and in collaboration with NHS Lothian, the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC), and Queen Mary University of London.</p><p>The ground-breaking 100,000 Genomes Project was established in 2014 to sequence 100,000 genomes from people with a rare disease or cancer. The Project was completed in 2018 and paved the way for the creation of a new genomic medicine service for NHS England, transforming patient care by bringing advanced diagnosis and personalised treatments.</p><p>GenOMICC is funded by DHSC, LifeArc, the charity Sepsis Research FEAT, the Intensive Care Society, Wellcome, UK Research and Innovation, Scotland\'s Chief Scientist Office, the Department of Health and Social Care and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), and supported by Illumina.</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:02.727211','uploads/news/coviddnagettyimages-1312985523.jpg',1,'University of Edinburgh','The world\'s largest study of the genetics of critical COVID-19, involving more than 57,000 people, has revealed fresh details about some of the biological mechanisms behind the severe form of the disease.',1,5,'<li>Athanasios Kousathanas, Erola Pairo-Castineira, Konrad Rawlik, Alex Stuckey, Christopher A. Odhams, Susan Walker, Clark D. Russell, Tomas Malinauskas, Yang Wu, Jonathan Millar, Xia Shen, Katherine S. Elliott, Fiona Griffiths, Wilna Oosthuyzen, Kirstie Morrice, Sean Keating, Bo Wang, Daniel Rhodes, Lucija Klaric, Marie Zechner, Nick Parkinson, Afshan Siddiq, Peter Goddard, Sally Donovan, David Maslove, Alistair Nichol, Malcolm G. Semple, Tala Zainy, Fiona Maleady-Crowe, Linda Todd, Shahla Salehi, Julian Knight, Greg Elgar, Georgia Chan, Prabhu Arumugam, Christine Patch, Augusto Rendon, David Bentley, Clare Kingsley, Jack A. Kosmicki, Julie E. Horowitz, Aris Baras, Goncalo R. Abecasis, Manuel A. R. Ferreira, Anne Justice, Tooraj Mirshahi, Matthew Oetjens, Daniel J. Rader, Marylyn D. Ritchie, Anurag Verma, Tom A. Fowler, Manu Shankar-Hari, Charlotte Summers, Charles Hinds, Peter Horby, Lowell Ling, Danny McAuley, Hugh Montgomery, Peter J. M. Openshaw, Paul Elliott, Timothy Walsh, Albert Tenesa, Angie Fawkes, Lee Murphy, Kathy Rowan, Chris P. Ponting, Veronique Vitart, James F. Wilson, Jian Yang, Andrew D. Bretherick, Richard H. Scott, Sara Clohisey Hendry, Loukas Moutsianas, Andy Law, Mark J. Caulfield, J. Kenneth Baillie. <strong>Whole genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical Covid-19</strong>. <em>Nature</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04576-6\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41586-022-04576-6</a>\r\n</li>'),(358,'Amazon rainforest is losing resilience: New evidence from satellite data analysis','amazon-rainforest-is-losing-resilience-new-evidence-from-satellite-data-analysis','2022-03-08 08:06:12.606683','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">The Amazon rainforest is likely losing resilience, data analysis from high-resolution satellite images suggests. This is due to stress from a combination of logging and burning -- the influence of human-caused climate change is not clearly determinable so far, but will likely matter greatly in the future. For about three quarters of the forest, the ability to recover from perturbation has been decreasing since the early 2000s, which the scientists see as a warning sign. The new evidence is derived from advanced statistical analysis of satellite data of changes in vegetation biomass and productivity.</p><p>\"Reduced resilience -- the ability to recover from perturbations like droughts or fires -- can mean an increased risk of dieback of the Amazon rainforest. That we see such a resilience loss in observations is worrying,\" says Niklas Boers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Technical University of Munich, who conducted the study jointly with researchers from the University of Exeter, UK.</p><p>\"The Amazon rainforest is a home to a unique host of biodiversity, strongly influences rainfall all over South America by way of its enormous evapotranspiration, and stores huge amounts of carbon that could be released as greenhouse gases in the case of even partial dieback, in turn contributing to further global warming,\" Boers explains. \"This is why the rainforest is of global relevance.\"</p><p><strong>\"When the tipping itself will be observable, it would be too late\"</strong></p><p>The Amazon is considered a potential tipping element in the Earth system and a number of studies revealed its vulnerability. \"However, computer simulation studies of its future yield quite a range of results,\" says Boers. \"We\'ve therefore been looking into specific observational data for signs of resilience changes during the last decades. We see continuously decreasing rainforest resilience since the early 2000s, but we cannot tell when a potential transition from rainforest to savanna might happen. When it will be observable, it would likely be too late to stop it.\" The research is part of the project \'Tipping Points in the Earth System\' (TiPES) funded by European Union\'s Horizon 2020 programme.</p><p>The team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Global Systems Institute of the University of Exeter used stability indicators that had previously already been applied to the Greenland ice sheet and the Atlantic overturning circulation. These statistical indicators aim at predicting the approach of a system towards an abrupt change by identifying a critical slowing down of the system\'s dynamics, for instance its reaction to weather variability. The analysis of two satellite data sets, representing biomass and the greenness of the forest, revealed the critical slowing down. This critical slowing down can be seen as a weakening of the restoring forces that usually bring the system back to its equilibrium after perturbations.</p><p><strong>\"A system might seem stable if one is considering only its mean state\"</strong></p><p>While a system might seem stable if one is considering only its mean state, taking a closer look at the data with innovative statistical methods can reveal resilience loss,\" says Chris Boulton from the University of Exeter\'s Global Systems Institute. \"Previous studies based on computer simulations indicated that large parts of the Amazon can be committed to dieback before showing a strong change in the mean state. Our observational analysis now shows that in many areas destabilization indeed seems to be underway already.\"</p><p>To try and determine causes for the loss of resilience that the scientists find in the data, they explored the relation to rainfall in a given area in the Amazon, culminating in three \'once in a century\' drought events in the region. Drier areas turn out to be more at risk than wetter ones. \"This is alarming, as the IPCC models project an overall drying of the Amazon region in response to anthropogenic global warming,\" says Boers. Another factor is the distance of an area to roads and settlements from where people can access the forest. The data confirms that areas close to human land-use are more threatened.</p><p>\"Our novel analysis of empirical data brings additional evidence to the worries about the forest\'s resilience, especially in the near future,\" says Tim Lenton, Director of the Global Systems Institute. \"It confirms that strongly limiting the logging, but also limiting global greenhouse gas emissions, is necessary to safeguard the Amazon.\"</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:05.154401','uploads/news/amazon-rainforest-1.jpg',1,'Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)','The Amazon rainforest is likely losing resilience, data analysis from high-resolution satellite images suggests. This is due to stress from a combination of logging and burning -- the influence of human-caused climate change is not clearly determinable so far, but will likely matter greatly in the future. For about three quarters of the forest, the ability to recover from perturbation has been decreasing since the early 2000s, which the scientists see as a warning sign. The new evidence is derived from advanced statistical analysis of satellite data of changes in vegetation biomass and productivity.',1,34,'<li>Boulton, C.A., Lenton, T.M. &amp; Boers, N. <strong>Pronounced loss of Amazon rainforest resilience since the early 2000s</strong>. <em>Nat. Clim. Chang.</em>, 2022 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01287-8\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41558-022-01287-8</a>\r\n</li>'),(359,'New early signs of Parkinson’s uncovered in diverse study','new-early-signs-of-parkinsons-uncovered-in-diverse-study','2022-03-08 08:08:13.259268','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Hearing loss and epilepsy are early features of Parkinson\'s, according to pioneering new research from Queen Mary University of London -- the first UK study of the condition in such a diverse population, published today (7 March 2022) in <em>JAMA Neurology</em>.</p><p>Queen Mary researchers funded by Bart\'s Charity used electronic primary healthcare records from over a million people living in East London between 1990 and 2018 to explore early symptoms and risk factors for Parkinson\'s.</p><p>The researchers found that known symptoms associated with Parkinson\'s, including tremor and memory problems, can appear up to ten and five years before diagnosis respectively. They also uncovered two new early features of Parkinson\'s, epilepsy and hearing loss, and were able to replicate these findings using additional data from the UK Biobank.</p><p>Whilst early signs of Parkinson\'s have been described previously, these studies have largely focused on affluent white populations, with patients from minority ethnic groups and those living in areas of high social deprivation largely under-represented in Parkinson\'s research to date. The new study provides further evidence of risk factors and early signs of Parkinson\'s, using data from such a diverse and deprived urban population for the first time.</p><p>In East London, conditions like hypertension and Type 2 diabetes were associated with increased odds of developing Parkinson\'s. The researchers also observed a stronger association between memory complaints within this population than previously described.</p><p>East London has one of the highest proportions of Black, South Asian and mixed/other ethnic groups, which comprise around 45% of residents in the area, in comparison to 14% in the rest of the UK. It also has some of the highest levels of deprivation in the UK, and 80% of patients included in the study were from low-income households.</p><p>Lead study author Dr Cristina Simonet, neurologist and PhD student at Queen Mary University of London, commented: \"This is the first study focusing on the pre-diagnostic phase of Parkinson\'s in such a diverse population with high socioeconomic deprivation but universal access to health care. People from minority ethnic groups and deprived areas have largely been under-represented in Parkinson\'s research up till now, but to allow us to get a full picture of the condition we need to ensure research is inclusive and represents all those affected.</p><p>\"Our results uncovered novel risk factors and early symptoms: epilepsy and hearing loss. Whilst previous research has hinted at the association, such as epilepsy being more prevalent in Parkinson\'s patients than in the general population, more research is now needed for us to fully understand the relationship. In the meantime, it\'s important that primary care practitioners are aware of these links and understand how early the symptoms of Parkinson\'s can appear, so that patients can get a timely diagnosis and doctors can act early to help manage the condition.\"</p><p>Dr Alastair Noyce, reader in neurology and neuroepidemiology at Queen Mary University of London, who is also an author on the new research, continued: \"People see their GPs with symptoms but often don\'t get a diagnosis until five to ten years after this. Tremor, for example, is one of the most recognisable symptoms of Parkinson\'s -- but was seen ten years before eventual diagnosis in our study. This is too long for patients to wait. If we\'re able to diagnose Parkinson\'s earlier, we have a real opportunity to intervene early and offer treatments that could improve quality of life for patients.</p><p>\"This study confirms that many of the symptoms and early features of Parkinson\'s can occur long before a diagnosis. Through our ongoing PREDICT-PD research, we\'re hoping to identify people at high risk of Parkinson\'s even before obvious symptoms appear -- which means that we could do more than just improve quality of life for patients, and perhaps be in the position to slow down or cure Parkinson\'s in the future.\"</p><p>PREDICT-PD is a large research project funded by Parkinson\'s UK that aims to identify people at high risk of developing the condition. The researchers are looking for 10,000 people aged 60-80 years from all backgrounds who do not have Parkinson\'s, to take part in a simple set of online tests that screen for factors linked to increased risk of the condition.</p><p>Shafaq Hussain-Ali, a former native East Londoner of Pakistani Punjabi descent who was diagnosed with young onset Parkinson\'s three years ago and is a member of Parkinson\'s UK Race Equality Steering Group, said: \"Parkinson\'s affects everyone, regardless of race or social background, but research has often failed to represent the diversity of the community. This research and the work that Parkinson\'s UK is leading helps address the many unknowns regarding how the condition affects people from under-represented groups. It means that life-changing new treatments can be developed that will benefit everyone with the condition.</p><p>\"I want to get the message out that young Asian people like myself can be affected by this condition, and that more people are likely to be affected by young onset Parkinson\'s in the future. Getting an early diagnosis can make such a difference to quality of life and Parkinson\'s progression. With appropriate management, you can carry on living well and have a productive life. I am still a practicing dentist, who enjoys swimming, walking and Kung Fu. I also still love doing my crochet!\"</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:12.821142','uploads/news/download_19.jpg',1,'Queen Mary University of London','Hearing loss and epilepsy are early features of Parkinson\'s, according to pioneering new research.',1,154,'<li>Cristina Simonet, Jonathan Bestwick, Mark Jitlal, Sheena Waters, Aaron Ben-Joseph, Charles R. Marshall, Ruth Dobson, Soha Marrium, John Robson, Benjamin M. Jacobs, Daniel Belete, Andrew J. Lees, Gavin Giovannoni, Jack Cuzick, Anette Schrag, Alastair J. Noyce. <strong>Assessment of Risk Factors and Early Presentations of Parkinson Disease in Primary Care in a Diverse UK Population</strong>. <em>JAMA Neurology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.0003\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.0003</a>\r\n</li>'),(360,'Safer, more powerful batteries for electric cars, power grid','safer-more-powerful-batteries-for-electric-cars-power-grid','2022-03-08 08:10:51.733427','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Solid-state batteries, currently used in small electronic devices like smart watches, have the potential to be safer and more powerful than lithium-ion batteries for things such as electric cars and storing energy from solar panels for later use. However, several technical challenges remain before solid-state batteries can become widespread.</p><p>A Sandia National Laboratories-led study, published on March 7 in the scientific journal <em>Joule</em>, tackled one of these challenges -- a long-held assumption that adding some liquid electrolyte to improve performance would make solid-state batteries unsafe. Instead, the research team found that in many cases solid-state batteries with a little liquid electrolyte were safer than their lithium-ion counterparts. They also found, if the battery were to short-circuit, releasing all its stored energy, the theoretically super-safe, all-solid-state battery could put out a dangerous amount of heat.</p><p>\"Solid-state batteries have the potential to be safer, and they have the potential for higher energy density,\" said Alex Bates, a Sandia postdoctoral researcher who led the study for the paper. \"This means, for electric vehicles, you could go farther in between charges, or need fewer batteries for grid-scale energy storage. The addition of liquid electrolyte may help bridge the gap to commercialization, without sacrificing safety.\"</p><p><strong>Better batteries through chemistry </strong></p><p>Solid-state batteries are somewhat like lithium-ion batteries. In both, lithium ions move from one side of the battery to the other, while electrons flow through a circuit to power the device. One big difference is that throughout a lithium-ion battery, there is a substance that helps the lithium ions move quickly: the liquid electrolyte.</p><p>Loraine Torres-Castro, a battery safety expert in Sandia\'s Battery Abuse Testing Laboratory who is involved in the project, compares liquid electrolyte to a fleet of cars pulling into driveways: It shuttles lithium ions directly where they need to go. However, current liquid electrolytes are flammable and can cause a battery explosion or fire, especially when the battery is damaged.</p><p>In a solid-state battery, the liquid electrolyte is replaced by a solid material, called a solid electrolyte, that also helps the lithium ions move quickly. One technical challenge is that while the lithium ions can move quickly within the solid electrolyte, they have a hard time moving from the solid electrolyte to the electrodes and vice versa, Bates said. The solid electrolyte could be compared to a cadre of trains, also quickly shuttling the lithium ions to the station, but then the passengers still have to travel a bit farther to get home.</p><p>One way scientists have sped up this \"direct shuttling\" -- and thus battery charging speeds and performance -- is by adding a little bit of liquid electrolyte to the positive side of the battery.</p><p>However, Yuliya Preger, a Sandia battery reliability expert on the project, said, \"There has been a lot of controversy in the solid-state battery research community about the safety of including liquid electrolyte to \'grease the wheels.\' Some scientists say that any amount of liquid electrolyte is unsafe. So, we did the calculations to see what the impacts of liquid electrolyte could be, instead of just accepting the \'party line.\'\"</p><p>Steve Harris, a battery scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Katie Harrison, a Sandia battery scientist, first questioned the \'party line\' that led to the study. Both were involved in the study.</p><p><strong>How safe are solid-state batteries?</strong></p><p>In order to figure out just how safe a solid-state battery with a little liquid electrolyte would be, the research team started by calculating how much heat could be released in a lithium-ion battery, an all solid-state battery and solid-state batteries with varying amounts of liquid electrolyte. All batteries tested had equivalent amounts of stored energy. Then, they looked at three different bad things that could happen to the batteries, and the heat that would be released due to each type of failure.</p><p>\"We started by determining just how much chemical energy is in the three kinds of batteries,\" said John Hewson, a Sandia heat-release calculation expert on the project. \"There\'s only so much energy you can release, which will heat up the battery a certain amount, if a chemical reaction does occur.\"</p><p>The first bad thing that could happen is if the batteries caught on fire -- from either a neighboring battery or a surrounding building -- Torres-Castro said. In these cases, the researchers found that the solid-state battery with a little liquid electrolyte in it produced about one-fifth of the heat of a comparable lithium-ion battery -- depending on how much liquid electrolyte it had. The solid-state battery without liquid electrolyte didn\'t produce any heat under this scenario.</p><p>The second bad thing that could happen to the batteries is if repeated charging and discharging caused the lithium metal to form a \"spike\" called a dendrite. This dendrite can puncture a hole through the separator that keeps the two sides distinct and causes a short-circuit, Preger said. This is a known issue with all batteries that have lithium metal on one side. In this case, all three batteries produced similar amounts of heat, which depended on how much lithium metal was in the batteries.</p><p>The third bad thing that could happen to a solid-state battery is the solid electrolyte could break. This could happen if the battery was crushed or punctured or due to built-up pressure during operation, which would allow oxygen from one side of the battery to react with the lithium metal on the other side, Torres-Castro said. In these cases, the solid-state battery without liquid electrolyte could reach temperatures near that of the lithium-ion battery, which the team found surprising.</p><p><strong>From safety calculations to laboratory experiments</strong></p><p>\"One of the promises of solid-state batteries is that they are safe because the solid electrolyte is firm and unlikely to break. But if it does break, the temperature rise could be about as much as when lithium-ion batteries fail,\" Preger said. \"This study highlighted the importance of engineering the heck out of that separator so that it does not fail.\"</p><p>The next steps for the project include conducting similar calculations with other solid electrolyte materials and conducting experiments to validate the new and original calculations, Bates said.</p><p>\"We found if the solid-state battery has lithium metal, it has the potential to be dangerous, regardless of if it has liquid electrolyte or not,\" he said. \"What we were trying to point out in this paper is that there\'s a definite trade-off between performance and safety, but adding a bit of liquid may greatly increase performance while only having a small impact on safety.\"</p><p>Understanding this trade-off may help speed up commercialization, Torres-Castro added. \"Having the clarity and the confidence that knowing a small amount of liquid electrolyte will not create huge safety issues may help the development of commercial solid-state batteries. Adding liquid electrolyte could fix one of their main problems, the solid electrolyte interface.\"</p><p>This safety study was supported by the Department of Energy\'s Office of Electricity Energy Storage Program.</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:15.390025','uploads/news/download_20.jpg',1,'DOE/Sandia National Laboratories','A new study tackled a long-held assumption that adding some liquid electrolyte to improve performance would make solid-state batteries unsafe. Instead, the research team found that in many cases solid-state batteries with a little liquid electrolyte were safer than their lithium-ion counterparts. They also found, if the battery were to short-circuit, releasing all its stored energy, the theoretically super-safe, all-solid-state battery could put out a dangerous amount of heat.',1,72,'<li>Alex M. Bates, Yuliya Preger, Loraine Torres-Castro, Katharine L. Harrison, Stephen J. Harris, John Hewson. <strong>Are solid-state batteries safer than lithium-ion batteries?</strong> <em>Joule</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2022.02.007\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.joule.2022.02.007</a>\r\n</li>'),(361,'Tiny worms make complex decisions, too','tiny-worms-make-complex-decisions-too','2022-03-08 08:12:38.397574','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">How does an animal make decisions? Scientists have spent decades trying to answer this question by focusing on the cells and connections of the brain that might be involved. Salk scientists are taking a different approach -- analyzing behavior, not neurons. They were surprised to find that worms can take multiple factors into account and choose between two different actions, despite having only 302 neurons compared to approximately 86 billion in humans.</p><p>The findings, published in <em>Current Biology</em> on March 7, 2022, have important implications for the way researchers assess motivation and cognitive abilities in animals. What\'s more, the study demonstrates that complex decision-making capabilities could be encoded in small biological and artificial networks.</p><p>\"Our study shows you can use a simple system such as the worm to study something complex, like goal-directed decision-making. We also demonstrated that behavior can tell us a lot about how the brain works,\" says senior author Sreekanth Chalasani, associate professor in Salk\'s Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory. \"Even simple systems like worms have different strategies, and they can choose between those strategies, deciding which one works well for them in a given situation. That provides a framework for understanding how these decisions are made in more complex systems, such as humans.\"</p><p>Whether eating prey or defending its food source, the predatory worm <em>Pristionchus pacificus</em> relies on biting. The team\'s challenge was to determine the worm\'s intentions when it bites.</p><p>The researchers found that <em>P. pacificus</em> chooses between two foraging strategies for biting its prey and competitor, another worm called <em>Caenorhabditis elegans</em>: 1) predatory strategy, in which its goal for biting is to kill prey, or 2) territorial strategy, in which biting is instead used to force <em>C. elegans</em> away from a food source. <em>P. pacificus </em>chooses the predatory strategy against larval <em>C. elegans</em>, which is easy to kill. In contrast, <em>P. pacificus</em> selects the territorial strategy against adult <em>C. elegans</em>, which is difficult to kill and outcompetes <em>P. pacificus</em> for food.</p><p>To the team, it appeared that <em>P. pacificus </em>weighed the costs and benefits of multiple potential outcomes of an action -- behavior that\'s familiar in vertebrates but unexpected in a worm.</p><p>\"Scientists have always assumed that worms were simple -- when <em>P. pacificus</em> bites we thought that was always for a singular predatory purpose,\" says first author Kathleen Quach, a postdoctoral fellow in Chalasani\'s lab. \"Actually, <em>P. pacificus</em> is versatile and can use the same action, biting <em>C. elegans</em>, to achieve different long-term goals. I was surprised to find that <em>P. pacificus </em>could leverage what seemed like failed predation into successful and goal-directed territoriality.\"</p><p>In the future, the scientists would like to determine which of <em>P. pacificus</em>\' cost-benefit calculations are hard-wired or flexible. They hope more research like this will help further uncover the molecular underpinnings of decision-making.</p><p>The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (5R01MH113905), the W.M. Keck Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Salk Women &amp; Science and a Paul F. Glenn Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.</p><p><br></p>','2022-03-07 22:53:25.155932','uploads/news/download_21.jpg',1,'Salk Institute','How does an animal make decisions? Scientists have spent decades trying to answer this question by focusing on the cells and connections of the brain that might be involved. Scientists are taking a different approach -- analyzing behavior, not neurons. They were surprised to find that worms can take multiple factors into account and choose between two different actions, despite having only 302 neurons compared to approximately 86 billion in humans.',1,111,'<li>Kathleen T. Quach, Sreekanth H. Chalasani. <strong>Flexible reprogramming of Pristionchus pacificus motivation for attacking Caenorhabditis elegans in predator-prey competition</strong>. <em>Current Biology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.033\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.033</a>\r\n</li>'),(362,'Cellular rejuvenation therapy safely reverses signs of aging in mice','cellular-rejuvenation-therapy-safely-reverses-signs-of-aging-in-mice','2022-03-08 08:13:48.673437','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Age may be just a number, but it\'s a number that often carries unwanted side effects, from brittle bones and weaker muscles to increased risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute, in collaboration with Genentech, a member of the Roche group, have shown that they can safely and effectively reverse the aging process in middle-aged and elderly mice by partially resetting their cells to more youthful states.</p><p>\"We are elated that we can use this approach across the life span to slow down aging in normal animals. The technique is both safe and effective in mice,\" says Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, co-corresponding author and a professor in Salk\'s Gene Expression Laboratory. \"In addition to tackling age-related diseases, this approach may provide the biomedical community with a new tool to restore tissue and organismal health by improving cell function and resilience in different disease situations, such as neurodegenerative diseases.\"</p><p>As organisms age, it is not just their outward appearances and health that change; every cell in their bodies carries a molecular clock that records the passage of time. Cells isolated from older people or animals have different patterns of chemicals along their DNA -- called epigenetic markers -- compared to younger people or animals. Scientists know that adding a mixture of four reprogramming molecules -- Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and cMyc, also known as \"Yamanaka factors\" -- to cells can reset these epigenetic marks to their original patterns. This approach is how researchers can dial back adult cells, developmentally speaking, into stem cells.</p><p>In 2016, Izpisua Belmonte\'s lab reported for the first time that they could use the Yamanaka factors to counter the signs of aging and increase life span in mice with a premature aging disease. More recently, the team found that, even in young mice, the Yamanaka factors can accelerate muscle regeneration. Following these initial observations, other scientists have used the same approach to improve the function of other tissues like the heart, brain and optic nerve, which is involved in vision.</p><p>In the new study, Izpisua Belmonte and his colleagues tested variations of the cellular rejuvenation approach in healthy animals as they aged. One group of mice received regular doses of the Yamanaka factors from the time they were 15 months old until 22 months, approximately equivalent to age 50 through 70 in humans. Another group was treated from 12 through 22 months, approximately age 35 to 70 in humans. And a third group was treated for just one month at age 25 months, similar to age 80 in humans.</p><p>\"What we really wanted to establish was that using this approach for a longer time span is safe,\" says Pradeep Reddy, a Salk staff scientist and co-first author of the new paper. \"Indeed, we did not see any negative effects on the health, behavior or body weight of these animals.\"</p><p>Compared to control animals, there were no blood cell alterations or neurological changes in the mice that had received the Yamanaka factors. Moreover, the team found no cancers in any of the groups of animals.</p><p>When the researchers looked at normal signs of aging in the animals that had undergone the treatment, they found that the mice, in many ways, resembled younger animals. In both the kidneys and skin, the epigenetics of treated animals more closely resembled epigenetic patterns seen in younger animals. When injured, the skin cells of treated animals had a greater ability to proliferate and were less likely to form permanent scars -- older animals usually show less skin cell proliferation and more scarring. Moreover, metabolic molecules in the blood of treated animals did not show normal age-related changes.</p><p>This youthfulness was observed in the animals treated for seven or 10 months with the Yamanaka factors, but not the animals treated for just one month. What\'s more, when the treated animals were analyzed midway through their treatment, the effects were not yet as evident. This suggests that the treatment is not simply pausing aging, but actively turning it backwards -- although more research is needed to differentiate between the two.</p><p>The team is now planning future research to analyze how specific molecules and genes are changed by long-term treatment with the Yamanaka factors. They are also developing new ways of delivering the factors.</p><p>\"At the end of the day, we want to bring resilience and function back to older cells so that they are more resistant to stress, injury and disease,\" says Reddy. \"This study shows that, at least in mice, there\'s a path forward to achieving that.\"</p><p>Belmonte is currently an Institute Director at Altos Labs, Inc., in addition to being a professor at the Salk Institute.</p><p>Other authors included Mako Yamamoto, Isabel Guillen Guillen, Sanjeeb Sahu, Chao Wang, Yosu Luque, Javier Prieto, Lei Shi, Kensaku Shojima, Tomoaki Hishida and Concepcion Rodriguez Esteban of Salk; Kristen Browder, Zijuan Lai, Qingling Li, Feroza Choudhury, Weng Wong, Yuxin Liang, Dewakar Sangaraju, Wendy Sandoval, Michal Pawlak, Jason Vander Heiden and Heinrich Jasper of Genentech, Inc.; Amin Haghani and Steve Horvath of UCLA; Estrella Nuñez Delicado of Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia; and Pedro Guillen Garcia of Clínica CEMTRO.</p><p>The study was supported by Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia (UCAM), and Fundación Dr. Pedro Guillén.</p><p>Video: <a href=\"https://youtu.be/XryS6SnGTho\">https://youtu.be/XryS6SnGTho</a></p>','2022-03-07 22:53:28.395560','uploads/news/TwoWhiteMiceInACageLookingCute_600.webp',1,'Salk Institute','Age may be just a number, but it\'s a number that often carries unwanted side effects, from brittle bones and weaker muscles to increased risks of cardiovascular disease and cancer. Now, scientists have shown that they can safely and effectively reverse the aging process in middle-aged and elderly mice by partially resetting their cells to more youthful states.',1,155,'<li>Browder, K.C., Reddy, P., Yamamoto, M. et al. <strong>In vivo partial reprogramming alters age-associated molecular changes during physiological aging in mice</strong>. <em>Nat Aging</em>, 2022 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43587-022-00183-2\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s43587-022-00183-2</a>\r\n</li>'),(363,'How does the brain make memories?','how-does-the-brain-make-memories','2022-03-08 08:15:05.512444','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Researchers have discovered two types of brain cells that play a key role in dividing continuous human experience into distinct segments that can be recalled later. The discovery provides new promise as a path toward development of novel treatments for memory disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer\'s disease.</p><p>In a study led by Cedars-Sinai, researchers have discovered two types of brain cells that play a key role in dividing continuous human experience into distinct segments that can be recalled later. The discovery provides new promise as a path toward development of novel treatments for memory disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer\'s disease.</p><p>The study, part of a multi-institutional BRAIN Initiative consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health and led by Cedars-Sinai, was published in the peer-reviewed journal <em>Nature Neuroscience. </em>As part of ongoing research into how memory works, Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, professor of Neurosurgery, Neurology, and Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai, and co-investigators looked at how brain cells react as memories are formed.</p><p>\"One of the reasons we can\'t offer significant help for somebody who suffers from a memory disorder is that we don\'t know enough about how the memory system works,\" said Rutishauser, senior author of the study, adding that memory is foundational to us as human beings.</p><p>Human experience is continuous, but psychologists believe, based on observations of people\'s behavior, that memories are divided by the brain into distinct events, a concept known as event segmentation. Working with 19 patients with drug-resistant epilepsy, Rutishauser and his team were able to study how neurons perform during this process.</p><p>Patients participating in the study had electrodes surgically inserted into their brains to help locate the focus of their epileptic seizures, allowing investigators to record the activity of individual neurons while the patients viewed film clips that included cognitive boundaries.</p><p>While these boundaries in daily life are nuanced, for research purposes, the investigators focused on \"hard\" and \"soft\" boundaries.</p><p>\"An example of a soft boundary would be a scene with two people walking down a hallway and talking, and in the next scene, a third person joins them, but it is still part of the same overall narrative,\" said Rutishauser, interim director of the Center for Neural Science and Medicine and the Board of Governors Chair in Neurosciences at Cedars-Sinai.</p><p>In the case of a hard boundary, the second scene might involve a completely different set of people riding in a car. \"The difference between hard and soft boundaries is in the size of the deviation from the ongoing narrative,\" Rutishauser said. \"Is it a totally different story, or like a new scene from the same story?\"</p><p>When study participants watched film clips, investigators noted that certain neurons in the brain, which they labeled \"boundary cells,\" increased their activity after both hard and soft boundaries. Another group of neurons, labeled \"event cells,\" increased their activity only in response to hard boundaries, but not soft boundaries.</p><p>Rutishauser and his co-investigators theorize that peaks in the activity of boundary and event cells -- which are highest after hard boundaries, when both types of cells fire -- send the brain into the proper state for initiating a new memory.</p><p>\"A boundary response is kind of like creating a new folder on your computer,\" said Rutishauser. \"You can then deposit files in there. And when another boundary comes around, you close the first folder and create another one.\"</p><p>To retrieve memories, the brain uses boundary peaks as what Rutishauser calls \"anchors for mental time travel.\"</p><p>\"When you try to remember something, it causes brain cells to fire,\" Rutishauser said. \"The memory system then compares this pattern of activity to all the previous firing peaks that happened shortly after boundaries. If it finds one that is similar, it opens that folder. You go back for a few seconds to that point in time, and things that happened then come into focus.\"</p><p>To test their theory, investigators gave study participants two memory tests.</p><p>They first showed participants a series of still images and asked them whether or not they had seen them in the film clips they had viewed. Study participants were more likely to remember images that closely followed a hard or soft boundary, when a new \"memory folder\" would have been created.</p><p>Investigators also showed participants pairs of images from film clips they had viewed and asked which of the images appeared first. Participants had difficulty remembering the correct order of images that appeared on opposite sides of a hard boundary, possibly because the brain had segmented those images into separate memory folders.</p><p>Rutishauser said that therapies that improve event segmentation could help patients with memory disorders. Even something as simple as a change in atmosphere can amplify event boundaries, he explained.</p><p>\"The effect of context is actually quite strong,\" Rutishauser said. \"If you study in a new place, where you have never been before, instead of on your couch where everything is familiar, you will create a much stronger memory of the material.\"</p><p>The research team included postdoctoral fellow Jie Zheng, PhD, and neuroscientist Gabriel Kreiman, PhD, from Boston Children\'s Hospital; neurosurgeon Taufik A. Valiante, MD, PhD, of the University of Toronto; and Adam Mamelak, MD, professor of Neurosurgery and director of the Functional Neurosurgery Program at Cedars-Sinai.</p><p>In follow-up studies, the team plans to test the theory that boundary and event cells activate dopamine neurons when they fire, and that dopamine, a chemical that sends messages between cells, might be used as a therapy to strengthen memory formation.</p><p>Rutishauser and his team also noted during this study that when event cells fired in time with one of the brain\'s internal rhythms, the theta rhythm -- a repetitive pattern of activity linked to learning, memory and navigation -- subjects were better able to remember the order of images they had seen. This is an important new insight because it shows that deep brain stimulation that adjusts theta rhythms could prove therapeutic for memory disorders.</p><p>\"Theta rhythms are thought to be the \'temporal glue\' for episodic memory,\" said Zheng, first author of the study. \"We think that firing of event cells in synchrony with the theta rhythm builds time-based links across different memory folders.\"</p><p><em>The study was funded by National Institutes of Health Grants number U01NS103792 and U01NS117839, National Science Foundation Grant number 8241231216, and Brain Canada.</em></p>','2022-03-07 22:53:31.250936','uploads/news/image.jpg',1,'Cedars-Sinai Medical Center','Researchers have discovered two types of brain cells that play a key role in dividing continuous human experience into distinct segments that can be recalled later. The discovery provides new promise as a path toward development of novel treatments for memory disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer\'s disease.',1,124,'<li>Zheng, J., Schjetnan, A.G.P., Yebra, M. et al. <strong>Neurons detect cognitive boundaries to structure episodic memories in humans</strong>. <em>Nat Neurosci</em>, 2022 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01020-w\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41593-022-01020-w</a>\r\n</li>'),(364,'Nanoparticle reduces skin and lung scarring for scleroderma, mouse study finds','nanoparticle-reduces-skin-and-lung-scarring-for-scleroderma-mouse-study-finds','2022-03-08 08:16:31.929171','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Investigators have discovered that a biodegradable nanoparticle used in medical sutures could combat a rare, sometimes-fatal autoimmune disease.</p><p>Researchers found that a unique macrophage, an immune cell that removes bacteria or dead cells, plays a key role in the chronic inflammation and scarring in the lungs and skin of people with scleroderma, or systemic sclerosis. This macrophage, called MARCO+, was found to be elevated in people with the orphan disease, which affects around 70,000 Americans and currently has no effective treatment.</p><p>The research team injected mice with biodegradable PLG nanoparticles, short for poly (lactic-co-glycolic) acid. The results, published in <em>JCI Insight</em>, reveal that PLG specifically targeted MARCO+ inflammatory cells and prevented skin and lung fibrosis. Even more striking, nanoparticle treatment could even reverse fibrosis in these mice, says John Varga, M.D., senior author of the paper and chief of the Michigan Medicine Division of Rheumatology.</p><p>\"The findings reveal a stark difference: untreated mice had terrible scarring in the lungs, and those treated with this nanoparticle saw the disease decease in severity or completely disappear,\" said John Varga, M.D., senior author of the paper and chief of the Michigan Medicine Division of Rheumatology. \"This is a promising step towards targeted treatment for patients with early scleroderma that could potentially mitigate the worst effects of the disease.\"</p><p>The research team believes the MARCO+ cells become activated in people with scleroderma and circulate in the blood stream, traveling to the tissues and causing scar formation. While the PLG nanoparticle reduced fibrosis in mouse models, Varga says future studies are needed to determine exactly how it prevents the MARCO+ activation.</p><p>PLG is already approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for creating biodegradable sutures. In previous studies, Varga\'s co-authors found that PLG decreased inflammation in mouse models of myocardial infarction. It is not currently available as a treatment for patients.</p><p>\"We hope that this type of therapy will one day be evaluated in clinical trials for scleroderma,\" Varga said. \"People with scleroderma are at great risk for skin and lung thickening that impacts function, and we look for any way to stop that from happening.\"</p><p><em>Disclosures: Stephen D. Miller is a co-founder of, member of the Scientific Advisory Board, grantee of, and holds stock options in COUR Pharmaceutical Development Company and onCOUR Pharma, Inc., which holds the patent for the PLG nanoparticle technology.</em></p><p>Additional authors include Swati Bhattacharyya, Swarna Bale, both of Michigan Medicine, and Dan Xu, Wenxia Wang, Igal Ifergan, Ming-Yi Alice Chiang Wong, Daniele Procissi, Anjana Yeldandi, Robert G Marangoni, Craig Horbinski, and Stephen D. Miller, all of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:40.615727','uploads/news/Lungs.jpg',1,'Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan','Researchers found a unique immune cell plays a key role in the chronic inflammation and scarring in the lungs and skin of people with scleroderma, or systemic sclerosis. After injecting mice with biodegradable PLG nanoparticles, which are used in medical sutures, researchers found that the nanoparticles specifically targeted these inflammatory cells and prevented skin and lung fibrosis. Researchers say it\'s a promising step towards targeted treatment for patients with early scleroderma.',1,108,'<li>Dan Xu, Swati Bhattacharyya, Wenxia Wang, Igal Ifergan, Ming-Yi Alice Chiang Wong, Daniele Procissi, Anjana Yeldandi, Swarna Bale, Roberta G. Marangoni, Craig Horbinski, Stephen D. Miller, John Varga. <strong>PLG nanoparticles target fibroblasts and MARCO  monocytes to reverse multi-organ fibrosis</strong>. <em>JCI Insight</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.151037\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1172/jci.insight.151037</a>\r\n</li>'),(365,'Novel treatment makes pancreatic cancer susceptible to immunotherapy, mouse study shows','novel-treatment-makes-pancreatic-cancer-susceptible-to-immunotherapy-mouse-study-shows','2022-03-08 08:19:15.453150','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive and deadly tumor types and notorious for its resistance to virtually all types of treatment, including newer immunotherapies.</p><p>A new study -- in mice -- from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that blocking a major inflammatory pathway that is activated in pancreatic cancer makes the tumors sensitive to chemotherapy and a type of immunotherapy that prompts the immune system\'s T cells to attack the cancer cells. The therapy more than doubled survival in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer.</p><p>The study\'s results, published March 7 in the journal <em>Gastroenterology</em>, lend additional support for the rationale behind a new national clinical trial that will evaluate the same treatment strategy in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma -- the most common malignant tumor of the pancreas. The researchers plan to enroll about 50 patients nationwide.</p><p>Washington University researchers at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine will lead the national trial that is part of the National Cancer Institute\'s (NCI) Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network, a collaboration of industry, academic medical centers and researchers focused on early clinical investigations of innovative cancer therapies. The network includes more than 30 clinical sites in the U.S. and Canada.</p><p>\"Washington University has a lot of strengths in bringing science from the lab to the clinic,\" said senior author Kian-Huat Lim, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine and principal investigator for translational science on the national trial. \"With this therapy, we are going after a pathway that we know is involved in driving the aggressiveness of pancreatic cancer. The results of this study are promising in that it showed a way to break through the defenses of this tumor type, making it susceptible to our therapeutics, including combinations of chemotherapy and newer immunotherapies that stimulate T cells to fight the cancer.\"</p><p>The researchers, including first author Vikas Somani, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in Lim\'s lab in the Division of Oncology in the Department of Medicine, found that a protein called IRAK4 drives inflammation in pancreatic tumors and leads to T cell exhaustion, meaning the T cells can\'t function as they should to attack harmful cells, including cancer. The researchers tested an IRAK4 inhibitor, called CA-4948, and found that the treatment reduced inflammatory signaling in the tumors in mice and improved the ability of T cells to infiltrate the tumors and kill pancreatic cancer cells. The therapy also sensitized the tumors to a type of immunotherapy called checkpoint immunotherapy, which \"take the brakes off\" T cells, improving their ability to attack tumor cells.</p><p>The researchers found that the IRAK4 inhibitor shuts down a key pathway called NF-kappaB, which has long been known for its roles in driving cancer. Much research is focused on shutting down this pathway and its downstream effects after it becomes activated. A novel element of this therapy is that the IRAK4 inhibitor prevents the harmful pathway from becoming activated in the first place.</p><p>In mice with a common aggressive model of pancreatic cancer, the researchers found that the IRAK4 inhibitor alone increased survival compared with a placebo or chemotherapy. In combination, the IRAK4 inhibitor plus chemotherapy increased survival further compared with placebo or chemotherapy alone. In addition, when combined with two immunotherapies, the IRAK4 inhibitor significantly extended survival from an average of 25 days with the inhibitor alone to an average of 46 days with the inhibitor plus immunotherapy combination. Some of the mice survived as long as 100 days on the combination therapy.</p><p>The IRAK4 inhibitor is already in national clinical trials investigating its use against blood cancers.</p><p>\"We look forward to beginning the national clinical trial of this drug in patients with pancreatic cancer -- the trial is a direct translation of this particular paper,\" said Haeseong Park, MD, an associate professor of medicine and principal investigator of the new trial. \"We are excited to be working with the NCI and clinical sites in the Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network so that we can harness our innovative homegrown science and bring it to the national level.\"</p><p>Soon, Park\'s team also will begin a single-center trial at Siteman Cancer Center to test the safety and efficacy of the IRAK4 inhibitor CA-4948 in gastric cancer.</p><p>This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers R37CA219697-01 and 1P50CA196510-01A1; the American Cancer Society, grant number RSG- 17-203-01-TBG; the Washington University Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Pancreatic Cancer Career Enhancement Award, grant number 1P50CA196510-01A1; and the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center Siteman Investment Program, which is supported by the Barnard Trust and The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital.</p><p>The biotechnology company CURIS provided the IRAK4 inhibitor, CA-4948, used in this study.</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:43.850609','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Washington University School of Medicine','A new study -- in mice -- suggests that blocking a major inflammatory pathway that is activated in pancreatic cancer makes the tumors sensitive to chemotherapy and a type of immunotherapy that prompts the immune system\'s T cells to attack the cancer cells. The therapy more than doubled survival in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer.',1,23,'<li>Vikas Somani, Daoxiang Zhang, Paarth B. Dodhiawala, Varintra E. Lander, Xiuting Liu, Liang-I Kang, Hung-Po Chen, Brett L. Knolhoff, Lin Li, Patrick M. Grierson, Mariana B. Ruzinova, David G. DeNardo, Kian-Huat Lim. <strong>IRAK4 signaling drives resistance to checkpoint immunotherapy in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma</strong>. <em>Gastroenterology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2022.02.035\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1053/j.gastro.2022.02.035</a>\r\n</li>'),(366,'Harnessing AI and Robotics to treat spinal cord injuries','harnessing-ai-and-robotics-to-treat-spinal-cord-injuries','2022-03-08 08:20:43.320532','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">By employing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to formulate therapeutic proteins, a team led by Rutgers researchers has successfully stabilized an enzyme able to degrade scar tissue resulting from spinal cord injuries and promote tissue regeneration.</p><p>The study, recently published in <em>Advanced Healthcare Materials, </em>details the team\'s ground-breaking stabilization of the enzyme Chondroitinase ABC, (ChABC) offering new hope for patients coping with spinal cord injuries.</p><p>\"This study represents one of the first times artificial intelligence and robotics have been used to formulate highly sensitive therapeutic proteins and extend their activity by such a large amount. It\'s a major scientific achievement,\" said Adam Gormley, the project\'s principal investigator and an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Rutgers School of Engineering (SOE) at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.</p><p>Gormley expressed that his research is also motivated, in part, by a personal connection to spinal cord injury.</p><p>\"I\'ll never forget being at the hospital and learning a close college friend would likely never walk again after being paralyzed from the waist down after a mountain biking accident,\" Gormley recalled. \"The therapy we are developing may someday help people such as my friend lessen the scar on their spinal cords and regain function. This is a great reason to wake up in the morning and fight to further the science and potential therapy.\"</p><p>Shashank Kosuri, a biomedical engineering doctoral student at Rutgers SOE and a lead author of the study noted that spinal cord injuries, or SCIs, can negatively impact the physical, psychological, and socio-economic well-being of patients and their families. Soon after an SCI, a secondary cascade of inflammation produces a dense scar tissue that can inhibit or prevent nervous tissue regeneration.</p><p>The enzyme successfully stabilized in the study, ChABC, is known to degrade scar tissue molecules and promote tissue regeneration, yet it is highly unstable at the human body temperature of 98.6° F. and loses all activity within a few hours. Kosuri noted that this necessitates multiple, expensive infusions at very high doses to maintain therapeutic efficacy.</p><p>Synthetic copolymers are able to wrap around enzymes such as ChABC and stabilize them in hostile microenvironments. In order to stabilize the enzyme, the researchers utilized an AI-driven approach with liquid handling robotics to synthesize and test the ability of numerous copolymers to stabilize ChABC and maintain its activity at 98.6° F.</p><p>While the researchers were able to identify several copolymers that performed well, Kosuri reported that one copolymer combination even continued to retain 30% of the enzyme for up to one week, a promising result for patients seeking care for spinal cord injuries.</p><p>The study received support from grants funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and The New Jersey Commission on Spinal Cord research. In addition to Gormley and Kosuri, the Rutgers research team also included SOE Professor Li Cai and Distinguished Professor Martin Yarmush, as well as several SOE-affiliated students. Faculty and students from Princeton University\'s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering also collaborated on the project.</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:45.900424','uploads/news/ai-robotics-sci-neurosinces-770x513.webp',1,'Rutgers University','By employing artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to formulate therapeutic proteins, a team has successfully stabilized an enzyme able to degrade scar tissue resulting from spinal cord injuries and promote tissue regeneration. The study details the team\'s ground-breaking stabilization of the enzyme Chondroitinase ABC, (ChABC) offering new hope for patients coping with spinal cord injuries.',1,156,'<li>Shashank Kosuri, Carlos H. Borca, Heloise Mugnier, Matthew Tamasi, Roshan A. Patel, Isabel Perez, Suneel Kumar, Zachary Finkel, Rene Schloss, Li Cai, Martin L. Yarmush, Michael A. Webb, Adam J. Gormley. <strong>Machine‐Assisted Discovery of Chondroitinase ABC Complexes toward Sustained Neural Regeneration</strong>. <em>Advanced Healthcare Materials</em>, 2022; 2102101 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adhm.202102101\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1002/adhm.202102101</a>\r\n</li>'),(367,'Novel antiviral drug combinations demonstrate COVID-19 therapeutic potential','novel-antiviral-drug-combinations-demonstrate-covid-19-therapeutic-potential','2022-03-08 08:30:28.042403','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Researchers from Columbia Engineering, Fiocruz\'s Center for Technological Development in Health and the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Brazil, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Rockefeller University recently reported that, by combining inhibitors of polymerases and exonucleases -- enzymes that allow SARS-CoV-2 to reproduce -- they were able to reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication 10 times more than when using just the polymerase inhibitors. They also identified a polymerase inhibitor with a unique modification that largely resists its removal from the RNA by the exonuclease. Their findings from both the molecular and cellular levels reveal the great potential of novel antiviral drug combinations to stop the spread of COVID-19 and other coronavirus diseases. The study was published February 22 by <em>Communications Biology</em>, an open access journal from Nature Portfolio.</p><p>\"COVID has created an unprecedented public health crisis, with severe effects on the global economy and infrastructure; however, we can use the power of science to stop this pandemic,\" said the Columbia team leader Jingyue Ju, Samuel Ruben-Peter G. Viele Professor of Engineering; professor of chemical engineering and pharmacology; and director, Center for Genome Technology &amp; Biomolecular Engineering. \"We expect drug combinations like the ones we found will powerfully inhibit RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses that could lead to future pandemics. Because polymerase and exonuclease are highly conserved enzymes in coronaviruses with very rare mutations appearing in variants, we anticipate that therapeutics developed to target these enzymes should be widely applicable to all coronaviruses with the potential to cause serious disease.\"</p><p>SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus causing the global COVID-19 pandemic, uses a protein called polymerase to replicate its RNA genome inside infected human cells. In theory, terminating the polymerase reaction should stop the propagation of the coronavirus, leading to its eradication by the human host\'s immune system. However, SARS-CoV-2 has two key enzymes that allow it to replicate: the polymerase which reproduces its RNA and a proofreading exonuclease that corrects errors in the replication process.</p><p>The presence of the exonuclease for proofreading is unique to the coronaviruses and is needed to reduce the number of mutations and thereby maintain the integrity and function of the large RNA genomes of coronaviruses. Thus, the vaccine approach has been quite effective in containing the COVID-19 pandemic because the coronaviruses do not mutate as frequently as influenza virus and HIV, which have no proofreading function and therefore mutate more frequently.</p><p>Nucleotide-based viral polymerase inhibitors are very successful drugs for treating HIV and hepatitis viruses B and C infections. However, because of the presence of the proofreading exonuclease in SARS-CoV-2, which can remove these inhibitors from the RNA, the polymerase inhibitor Remdesivir, the sole FDA-approved drug for COVID-19, is not as effective as hoped for in preventing serious disease. If the exonuclease could be concurrently inhibited or its activity evaded, viral replication would be more efficiently blocked.</p><p>The research team, led by Ju and Dr. Thiago Souza, Full Researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute\'s Center for Technological Development in Health, decided to investigate whether the combination of polymerase and exonuclease inhibitors could work together to inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 more effectively, or if polymerase inhibitors with certain modifications could resist removal by the exonuclease. The Columbia Engineering team conceived the overall project and performed the molecular-level studies to identify interactions among the inhibitors and enzymes, using a novel mass-spectrometry-based approach. The Brazilian team designed and conducted the cellular studies to measure the inhibitory effects of drug combinations on virus reproduction. Dr. Thomas Tuschl\'s group at Rockefeller University and Dr. Dinshaw Patel\'s team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center produced the polymerase and exonuclease complexes used in the molecular studies.</p><p>Souza\'s group demonstrated that the polymerase and exonuclease inhibitors work together to block the virus\'s ability to reproduce in infected lung cells. \"While these results were obtained in a cell culture model, we purposely chose inhibitors already approved as drugs for treatment of other common virus infections, such as those caused by HIV and hepatitis viruses, with the aim of being able to quickly advance them to clinical trials,\" Souza noted.</p><p>The team is now exploring whether the enhanced antiviral effects of the combination drugs can be demonstrated in a COVID-19 animal model, with acceptable pharmacological properties. If the results are positive, these drugs can be moved rapidly to clinical trials as they have been previously approved for treatment of other viral infections. They have also established an initiative with a consortium of pharmacologists, virologists, medicinal chemists, and structural biologists to develop new therapeutics with enhanced potency and safety profiles for COVID-19 based on the discoveries reported in this study.</p>','2022-03-07 22:53:49.242562','uploads/news/hero.jpg',1,'Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science','Researchers demonstrate that combinations of antiviral drugs inhibiting both polymerase and exonuclease reduce SARS-CoV-2 replication 10 times more than polymerase inhibitors alone.',1,88,'<li>Xuanting Wang, Carolina Q. Sacramento, Steffen Jockusch, Otávio Augusto Chaves, Chuanjuan Tao, Natalia Fintelman-Rodrigues, Minchen Chien, Jairo R. Temerozo, Xiaoxu Li, Shiv Kumar, Wei Xie, Dinshaw J. Patel, Cindy Meyer, Aitor Garzia, Thomas Tuschl, Patrícia T. Bozza, James J. Russo, Thiago Moreno L. Souza, Jingyue Ju. <strong>Combination of antiviral drugs inhibits SARS-CoV-2 polymerase and exonuclease and demonstrates COVID-19 therapeutic potential in viral cell culture</strong>. <em>Communications Biology</em>, 2022; 5 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s42003-022-03101-9\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s42003-022-03101-9</a>\r\n</li>'),(368,'Climate mitigation measures could impact food security, study finds','climate-mitigation-measures-could-impact-food-security-study-finds','2022-03-08 08:31:42.923277','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Many countries have set carbon neutrality as a policy goal, but according to a new study by an international team of researchers from IIASA, Japan, and the US, there are various risks associated with the reduction of greenhouse gases, especially in the agriculture, forestry, and land use sectors, that need to be considered when formulating mitigation strategies.</p><p>While eliminating emissions from the energy sector is undoubtedly a step in the right direction to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement, agriculture, forestry, and other land use accounted for 20-25% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. According to the authors of the study just published in <em>Nature Food</em>, both the magnitude of baseline emissions and the impact on other Sustainable Development Goals when trying to mitigate these emissions, means that this sector cannot be ignored in the context of meeting ambitious long-term climate change mitigation targets.</p><p>The strategies needed to decarbonize the agriculture, forestry, and other land use sectors, however, may cause food prices to soar, which may have a potential negative impact on food security. The authors suggest three main reasons for this. The first of these is increased costs associated with methane and nitrous oxide abatement. Secondly, current decarbonization strategies could cause intensified competition for land due to the expansion of bioenergy crops; and lastly, they could lead to a higher value being placed on forest carbon to sequester additional carbon and prevent large-scale plantations and bioenergy crops from encroaching on forestland. Although these factors are thought to affect agricultural markets through different mechanisms, it is still uncertain to what extent they could affect future agricultural prices and food security.</p><p>\"Previous studies have pointed out that decarbonization strategies in the agriculture and land use sectors could lead to higher food prices and potential negative impacts on food security, but it has not been clear which of the three main factors would have the greatest impact. In this study, we used six global agricultural economic models to show the extent to which these three factors would change the agricultural market and food security situation under a decarbonization scenario,\" explains Shinichiro Fujimori, a guest researcher in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program and lead author of the study.</p><p>Considering only socioeconomic conditions such as future population growth and economic level improvement, the findings indicate a population at risk of hunger in 2050 of around 420 million people.</p><p>If all three of the above greenhouse gas reduction measures for agriculture and land use are implemented, the international food price will increase by about 27%. This would lead to a decrease in food consumption among the poor in developing countries, which would in turn lead to an estimated additional 120 million people at risk of hunger.</p><p>Of the above additional hunger risk, it was estimated that about 50% would likely be due to large-scale afforestation, and 33% to increased costs of methane and nitrous oxide abatement, while 14% could be ascribed to the expansion of bioenergy crops. The study also estimates that large-scale afforestation could account for nearly 60% of the increase in international food prices, followed by the increase in the cost of methane and nitrous oxide reduction, which accounts for about another 33%.</p><p>From a regional perspective, the impact is not uniform, with methane and nitrous oxide reduction costs having a greater impact in Asia, and large-scale afforestation having a greater impact in Africa. According to the authors, this can be attributed to the fact that methane emissions from rice cultivation account for a large proportion of the breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the agricultural sector in Asia.</p><p>\"Traditionally, the expansion of bioenergy to achieve negative emissions has been discussed as a food security concern. However, it turns out that other factors are rather more significant, particularly in general equilibrium models,\" notes Stefan Frank, a researcher in the IIASA Integrated Biosphere Futures Research Group and one of the study authors.</p><p>The researchers caution that, since all emission reduction measures in their study are expressed by assuming a uniform global carbon tax, the results should be used with caution. For example, afforestation and forest protection are represented by assuming that carbon stocks in forests will be taxed by carbon taxes. The model estimates that this would greatly increase the potential value of land, raise the cost of agricultural production, and increase food prices. Whether such a measure will really be taken needs to be scrutinized. On the other hand, previous studies have highlighted that bioenergy crops can erode forests on a large scale if the carbon stored in forests is not properly valued. It is also assumed that methane and nitrous oxide will be subject to the same carbon taxes as carbon dioxide.</p><p>\"Unlike carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, it is not so easy to measure these emissions, so we need to be careful about generalizing our model assumptions. Similarly, the actual risk of hunger in response to agricultural price increases or mean food consumption decreases is difficult to elucidate due to the complex nature of hunger and poverty,\" says study coauthor Petr Havlik, IIASA Integrated Biosphere Futures Research Group leader.</p><p>With that said, the study\'s results are important in that they highlight the complexity and challenges in the implementation of decarbonization measures in agriculture, forestry management, and other land use from multiple angles. This could be helpful to ensure better coordination in emissions reduction and agricultural market management policies, as well as better representation of land use and associated greenhouse gas emissions in modeling.</p>','2022-03-07 22:54:24.142200','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis','Many countries have set carbon neutrality as a policy goal, but according to a new study, there are various risks associated with the reduction of greenhouse gases, especially in the agriculture, forestry, and land use sectors, that need to be considered when formulating mitigation strategies.',1,70,'<li>Shinichiro Fujimori, Wenchao Wu, Jonathan Doelman, Stefan Frank, Jordan Hristov, Page Kyle, Ronald Sands, Willem-Jan van Zeist, Petr Havlik, Ignacio Pérez Domínguez, Amarendra Sahoo, Elke Stehfest, Andrzej Tabeau, Hugo Valin, Hans van Meijl, Tomoko Hasegawa, Kiyoshi Takahashi. <strong>Land-based climate change mitigation measures can affect agricultural markets and food security</strong>. <em>Nature Food</em>, 2022; 3 (2): 110 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00464-4\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s43016-022-00464-4</a>\r\n</li>'),(369,'Collectors in the prehistoric world recycled old stone tools to preserve the memory of their ancestors','collectors-in-the-prehistoric-world-recycled-old-stone-tools-to-preserve-the-memory-of-their-ancestors','2022-03-08 08:33:55.131082','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A first-of-its-kind study at Tel Aviv University asks what drove prehistoric humans to collect and recycle flint tools that had been made, used, and discarded by their predecessors. After examining flint tools from one layer at the 500,000-year-old prehistoric site of Revadim in the south of Israel\'s Coastal Plain, the researchers propose a novel explanation: prehistoric humans, just like us, were collectors by nature and culture. The study suggests that they had an emotional urge to collect old human-made artefacts, mostly as a means for preserving the memory of their ancestors and maintaining their connectedness with place and time.</p><p>The study was led by PhD student Bar Efrati and Prof. Ran Barkai of the Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at TAU\'s Entin Faculty of Humanities, in collaboration with Dr. Flavia Venditti from the University of Tubingen in Germany and Prof. Stella Nunziante Cesaro from the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. The paper appeared in the journal <em>Scientific Reports, </em>published by Nature.</p><p>Bar Efrati explains that stone tools with two lifecycles have been found at prehistoric sites all over the world, but the phenomenon has never been thoroughly investigated. In the current study the researchers focused on a specific layer at Revadim -- a large, open-air, multi-layered site in the south of Israel\'s Coastal Plain, dated to about 500,000 years ago. The rich findings at Revadim suggest that this was a popular spot in the prehistoric landscape, revisited over and over again by early humans drawn by an abundance of wildlife, including elephants. Moreover, the area is rich with good-quality flint, and most tools found at Revadim were in fact made of fresh flint.</p><p>Bar Efrati: \"The big question is: Why did they do it? Why did prehistoric humans collect and recycle actual tools originally produced, used, and discarded by their predecessors, many years earlier? Scarcity of raw materials was clearly not the reason at Revadim, where good-quality flint is easy to come by. Nor was the motivation merely functional, since the recycled tools were neither unusual in form nor uniquely suitable for any specific use.\"</p><p>The key to identifying the recycled tools and understanding their history is the patina -- a chemical coating which forms on flint when it is exposed to the elements for a long period of time. Thus, a discarded flint tool that lay on the ground for decades or centuries accumulated an easily identifiable layer of patina, which is different in both color and texture from the scars of a second cycle of processing that exposed the original color and texture of flint.</p><p>In the current study, 49 flint tools with two lifecycles were examined. Produced and used in their first lifecycle, these tools were abandoned, and years later, after accumulating a layer of patina, they were collected, reworked, and used again. The individuals who recycled each tool removed the patina, exposing fresh flint, and shaped a new active edge. Both edges, the old and the new, were examined by the researchers under two kinds of microscopes, and via various chemical analyses, in search of use-wear marks and/or organic residues. In the case of 28 tools, use-wear marks were found on the old and/or new edges, and in 13 tools, organic residues were detected, evidence of contact with animal bones or fat.</p><p>Surprisingly, the tools had been used for very different purposes in their two lifecycles -- the older edges primarily for cutting, and the newer edges for scraping (processing soft materials like leather and bone). Another baffling discovery: in their second lifecycle the tools were reshaped in a very specific and minimal manner, preserving the original form of the tool, including its patina, and only slightly modifying the active edge.</p><p>Prof. Ran Barkai: \"Based on our findings, we propose that prehistoric humans collected and recycled old tools because they attached significance to items made by their predecessors. Imagine a prehistoric human walking through the landscape 500,000 years ago, when an old stone tool catches his eye. The tool means something to him -- it carries the memory of his ancestors or evokes a connection to a certain place. He picks it up and weighs it in his hands. The artifact pleases him, so he decides to take it \'home\'. Understanding that daily use can preserve and even enhance the memory, he retouches the edge for his own use, but takes care not to alter the overall shape -- in honor of the first manufacturer. In a modern analogy, the prehistoric human may be likened to a young farmer still plowing his fields with his great-grandfather\'s rusty old tractor, replacing parts now and then, but preserving the good old machine as is, because it symbolizes his family\'s bond with the land. In fact, the more we study early humans, we learn to appreciate them, their intelligence, and their capabilities. Moreover, we discover that they were not so different from us. This study suggests that collectors and the urge to collect may be as old as humankind. Just like us, our early ancestors attached great importance to old artifacts, preserving them as significant memory objects -- a bond with older worlds and important places in the landscape.\"</p>','2022-03-07 22:54:32.197100','uploads/news/Low-Res_Figure_1.jpg.png',1,'Tel-Aviv University','A new study asks what drove prehistoric humans to collect and recycle flint tools that had been made, used, and discarded by their predecessors. After examining flint tools from one layer at the 500,000-year-old prehistoric site of Revadim in the south of Israel\'s Coastal Plain, researchers propose a novel explanation: prehistoric humans, just like us, were collectors by nature and culture.',1,158,'<li>Bar Efrati, Ran Barkai, Stella Nunziante Cesaro, Flavia Venditti. <strong>Function, life histories, and biographies of Lower Paleolithic patinated flint tools from Late Acheulian Revadim, Israel</strong>. <em>Scientific Reports</em>, 2022; 12 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-06823-2\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41598-022-06823-2</a>\r\n</li>'),(370,'Researchers uncover how the human brain separates, stores, and retrieves memories','researchers-uncover-how-the-human-brain-separates-stores-and-retrieves-memories','2022-03-08 08:35:24.250333','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Researchers have identified two types of cells in our brains that are involved in organizing discrete memories based on when they occurred. This finding improves our understanding of how the human brain forms memories and could have implications in memory disorders such as Alzheimer\'s disease. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health\'s Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative and published in <em>Nature Neuroscience</em>.</p><p>\"This work is transformative in how the researchers studied the way the human brain thinks,\" said Jim Gnadt, Ph.D., program director at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the NIH BRAIN Initiative. \"It brings to human neuroscience an approach used previously in non-human primates and rodents by recording directly from neurons that are generating thoughts.\"</p><p>This study, led by Ueli Rutishauser, Ph.D., professor of neurosurgery, neurology and biomedical sciences at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, started with a deceptively simple question: how does our brain form and organize memories? We live our awake lives as one continuous experience, but it is believed based on human behavior studies, that we store these life events as individual, distinct moments. What marks the beginning and end of a memory? This theory is referred to as \"event segmentation,\" and we know relatively little about how the process works in the human brain.</p><p>To study this, Rutishauser and his colleagues worked with 20 patients who were undergoing intracranial recording of brain activity to guide surgery for treatment of their drug-resistant epilepsy. They looked at how the patients\' brain activity was affected when shown film clips containing different types of \"cognitive boundaries\" -- transitions thought to trigger changes in how a memory is stored and that mark the beginning and end of memory \"files\" in the brain.</p><p>The first type, referred to as a \"soft boundary,\" is a video containing a scene that then cuts to another scene that continues the same story. For example, a baseball game showing a pitch is thrown and, when the batter hits the ball, the camera cuts to a shot of the fielder making a play. In contrast, a \"hard boundary\" is a cut to a completely different story -- imagine if the batted ball were immediately followed by a cut to a commercial.</p><p>Jie Zheng, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at Children\'s Hospital Boston and first author of the study, explained the key difference between the two boundaries.</p><p>\"Is this a new scene within the same story, or are we watching a completely different story? How much the narrative changes from one clip to the next determines the type of cognitive boundary,\" said Zheng.</p><p>The researchers recorded the brain activity of participants as they watched the videos, and they noticed two distinct groups of cells that responded to different types of boundaries by increasing their activity. One group, called \"boundary cells\" became more active in response to either a soft or hard boundary. A second group, referred to as \"event cells\" responded only to hard boundaries. This led to the theory that the creation of a new memory occurs when there is a peak in the activity of both boundary and event cells, which is something that only occurs following a hard boundary.</p><p>One analogy to how memories might be stored and accessed in the brain is how photos are stored on your phone or computer. Often, photos are automatically grouped into events based on when and where they were taken and then later displayed to you as a key photo from that event. When you tap or click on that photo, you can drill down into that specific event.</p><p>\"A boundary response can be thought of like creating a new photo event,\" said Dr. Rutishauser. \"As you build the memory, it\'s like new photos are being added to that event. When a hard boundary occurs, that event is closed and a new one begins. Soft boundaries can be thought of to represent new images created within a single event.\"</p><p>The researchers next looked at memory retrieval and how this process relates to the firing of boundary and event cells. They theorized that the brain uses boundary peaks as markers for \"skimming\" over past memories, much in the way the key photos are used to identify events. When the brain finds a firing pattern that looks familiar, it \"opens\" that event.</p><p>Two different memory tests designed to study this theory were used. In the first, the participants were shown a series of still images and were asked whether they were from a scene in the film clips they just watched. Study participants were more likely to remember images that occurred soon after a hard or soft boundary, which is when a new \"photo\" or \"event\" would have been created.</p><p>The second test involved showing pairs of images taken from film clips that they had just watched. The participants were then asked which of the two images had appeared first. It turned out that they had a much harder time choosing the correct image if the two occurred on different sides of a hard boundary, possibly because they had been placed in different \"events.\"</p><p>These findings provide a look into how the human brain creates, stores, and accesses memories. Because event segmentation is a process that can be affected in people living with memory disorders, these insights could be applied to the development of new therapies.</p><p>In the future, Dr. Rutishauser and his team plan to look at two possible avenues to develop therapies related to these findings. First, neurons that use the chemical dopamine, which are most-known for their role in reward mechanisms, may be activated by boundary and event cells, suggesting a possible target to help strengthen the formation of memories.</p><p>Second, one of the brain\'s normal internal rhythms, known as the theta rhythm, has been connected to learning and memory. If event cells fired in time with that rhythm, the participants had an easier time remembering the order of the images that they were shown. Because deep brain stimulation can affect theta rhythms, this could be another avenue for treating patients with certain memory disorders.</p><p>This project was made possible by a multi-institutional consortium through the NIH BRAIN Initiative\'s Research on Humans program. Institutions involved in this study were Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Children\'s Hospital Boston (site PI Gabriel Kreiman, Ph.D.), and Toronto Western Hospital (site PI Taufik Valiante, M.D., Ph.D.). The study was funded by the NIH BRAIN Initiative (NS103792, NS117839), the National Science Foundation, and Brain Canada.</p>','2022-03-07 22:54:46.284661','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke','Researchers have identified two types of cells in our brains that are involved in organizing discrete memories based on when they occurred. This finding improves our understanding of how the human brain forms memories and could have implications in memory disorders such as Alzheimer\'s disease.',1,124,'<li>Jie Zheng, Andrea G. P. Schjetnan, Mar Yebra, Bernard A. Gomes, Clayton P. Mosher, Suneil K. Kalia, Taufik A. Valiante, Adam N. Mamelak, Gabriel Kreiman, Ueli Rutishauser. <strong>Neurons detect cognitive boundaries to structure episodic memories in humans</strong>. <em>Nature Neuroscience</em>, Mar. 7, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41593-022-01020-w\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41593-022-01020-w</a>\r\n</li>'),(371,'Lead exposure in last century shrank IQ scores of half of Americans, study finds','lead-exposure-in-last-century-shrank-iq-scores-of-half-of-americans-study-finds','2022-03-08 07:30:33.457929','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">In 1923, lead was first added to gasoline to help keep car engines healthy. However, automotive health came at the great expense of our own health and well-being.</p><p>A new study calculates that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today, about half the population of the United States.</p><p>The findings, from Aaron Reuben, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Duke University, and colleagues at Florida State University, suggest that Americans born before 1996 may now be at greater risk for lead-related health problems, such as faster aging of the brain. Leaded gas for cars was banned in the U.S. in 1996, but the researchers say that anyone born before the end of that era, and especially those at the peak of its use in the 1960s and 1970s, had concerningly high lead exposures as children.</p><p>The team\'s paper appeared the week of March 7 in the journal <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</em></p><p>Lead is neurotoxic and can erode brain cells after it enters the body. As such, there is no safe level of exposure at any point in life, health experts say. Young children are especially vulnerable to lead\'s ability to impair brain development and lower cognitive ability. Unfortunately, no matter what age, our brains are ill-equipped for keeping it at bay.</p><p>\"Lead is able to reach the bloodstream once it\'s inhaled as dust, or ingested, or consumed in water,\" Reuben said. \"In the bloodstream, it\'s able to pass into the brain through the blood-brain barrier, which is quite good at keeping a lot of toxicants and pathogens out of the brain, but not all of them.\"</p><p>One major way lead used to invade bloodstreams was through automotive exhaust.</p><p>To answer the complex question of how leaded gas use for more than 70 years may have left a permanent mark on human health, Reuben and his co-authors Michael McFarland and Mathew Hauer, both professors of sociology at Florida State University, opted for a fairly simple strategy.</p><p>Using publicly available data on U.S. childhood blood-lead levels, leaded-gas use, and population statistics, they determined the likely lifelong burden of lead exposure carried by every American alive in 2015. From this data, they estimated lead\'s assault on our intelligence by calculating IQ points lost from leaded gas exposure as a proxy for its harmful impact on public health.</p><p>The researchers were stunned by the results.</p><p>\"I frankly was shocked,\" McFarland said. \"And when I look at the numbers, I\'m still shocked even though I\'m prepared for it.\"</p><p>As of 2015, more than 170 million Americans (more than half of the U.S. population) had clinically concerning levels of lead in their blood when they were children, likely resulting in lower IQs and putting them at higher risk for other long-term health impairments, such as reduced brain size, greater likelihood of mental illness, and increased cardiovascular disease in adulthood.</p><p>Leaded gasoline consumption rose rapidly in the early 1960s and peaked in the 1970s. As a result, Reuben and his colleagues found that essentially everyone born during those two decades are all but guaranteed to have been exposed to pernicious levels of lead from car exhaust.</p><p>Even more startling was lead\'s toll on intelligence: childhood lead exposure may have blunted America\'s cumulative IQ score by an estimated 824 million points -- nearly three points per person on average. The researchers calculated that at its worst, people born in the mid-to-late 1960s may have lost up to six IQ points, and children registering the highest levels of lead in their blood, eight times the current minimum level to initiate clinical concern, fared even worse, potentially losing more than seven IQ points on average.</p><p>Dropping a few IQ points may seem negligible, but the authors note that these changes are dramatic enough to potentially shift people with below-average cognitive ability (IQ score less than 85) to being classified as having an intellectual disability (IQ score below 70).</p><p>Moving forward, McFarland is analyzing the racial disparities of childhood lead exposure, hoping to highlight the health inequities suffered by Black children, who were exposed more often to lead and in greater quantities than white children.</p><p>Reuben\'s next step will be to examine the long-term consequences of past lead exposure on brain health in old age, based on previous findings that adults with high childhood lead exposure may experience accelerated brain aging.</p><p>\"Millions of us are walking around with a history of lead exposure,\" Reuben said. \"It\'s not like you got into a car accident and had a rotator cuff tear that heals and then you\'re fine. It appears to be an insult carried in the body in different ways that we\'re still trying to understand but that can have implications for life.\"</p>','2022-03-07 23:55:11.989563','uploads/news/download_13.jpg',1,'Duke University','Researchers calculate that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from over 170 million Americans alive today, more than half of the population of the United States.',1,105,'<li>Michael J. McFarland, Matt E. Hauer, Aaron Reuben. <strong>Half of US population exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (11) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2118631119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2118631119</a>\r\n</li>'),(372,'Researchers create tool to help protect native fish from hybridizing with non-natives','researchers-create-tool-to-help-protect-native-fish-from-hybridizing-with-non-natives','2022-03-08 07:31:47.517056','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Oregon State University researchers have created a tool to assess the risk of hybridization among native and non-native fish, a development that could aid natural resource managers trying to protect threatened or endangered freshwater fish species.</p><p>The introduction of non-native species poses challenges to native species, including competition for resources and habitat, exposure to diseases carried by the introduced species and the risk of hybridization, which occurs naturally in wild populations as part of the evolutionary process.</p><p>The Oregon State research, just published in the journal <em>Frontiers in Environmental Science</em>, focused on two species: bull trout, a fish native to western North America that is protected under the Endangered Species Act; and brook trout, a native to eastern North America introduced in the West more than 100 years ago for recreational fishing purposes.</p><p>Bull trout were once abundant in Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho and Montana but today are found in less than half of their historic range, and no longer exist in California. They are threatened by habitat degradation and fragmentation, blockage of migratory corridors, poor water quality, the effects of climate change and fisheries management practices, including the introduction of brook trout.</p><p>While some studies have documented hybridization among bull and brook trout, there has not been enough research to allow natural resource managers to quantify hybridization risk, the Oregon State researchers said.</p><p>\"The goal was to come up with a tool that allows managers to look at the potential long-term impacts when they are planning restoration or conservation projects,\" said Michael Manning, the lead author of the paper who worked on the research as an Oregon State graduate student.</p><p>The researchers developed a hybridization risk model, which could also be applied to other species that hybridize in freshwaters, such as cutthroat or rainbow trout and coho and chinook salmon.</p><p>Guillermo Giannico, a freshwater fish ecologist and a co-author of the paper, compared the model to programs people use when deciding where to live.</p><p>\"In that case, there is this algorithm that combines information about distance to the nearest supermarket, cost of living, where the schools are,\" he said. \"This risk model we created is roughly the same. It tells you whether this is a good neighborhood for fish based on the gradient of the stream, the substrate at the bottom of the stream, the temperature of the water, how much the water discharge changes through the year.\"</p><p>In Oregon, 55% of bull trout habitat is in the northeastern part of the state within the John Day and Powder/Burnt River basins. Additional bull trout habitats are located in the Malheur/Owyhee, Klamath, Deschutes, Willamette Valley and Columbia River drainage basins.</p><p>The researchers studied 47 sub-basins, a U.S. Geological Survey term for a subsection of a river drainage area. Sub-basins encompass an average area of about 1,125 square miles. Of the sub-basins they studied, 11 had only bull trout, 16 had only brook trout and 20 had both species.</p><p>In Oregon, brook trout are present in 9.8% (120 miles) of bull trout spawning habitat. The model showed that an additional 57 miles of bull trout spawning habitat would be at extreme hybridization risk if brook trout were introduced in those areas.</p><p>The model also identified 13% (177 miles) of all bull trout spawning habitat as being in the moderate to extreme hybridization risk category. Of these 177 miles, 90% are in northeastern Oregon.</p><p>The researchers note that the model is valuable because of its ability to identify hybridization risks in small sections of streams (to the 100-meter scale) whether brook trout already exist in bull trout spawning habitat or are absent.</p><p>This level of detail allows natural resource managers to identify individual reaches of streams that might be candidates for brook trout removal, to model potential hybridization risk if bull trout are reintroduced, or to incorporate scenarios of brook trout introductions or expansion, they said.</p><p>Other co-authors of the paper are Ivan Arismendi and J. Andres Olivos, both of the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Science in Oregon State\'s College of Agricultural Sciences.</p>','2022-03-07 23:55:14.585647','uploads/news/bullhead.jpg',1,'Oregon State University','Researchers have created a tool to assess the risk of hybridization among native and non-native fish, a development that could aid natural resource managers trying to protect threatened or endangered freshwater fish species.',1,116,'<li>Michael A. Manning, Ivan Arismendi, J. Andres Olivos, Guillermo Giannico. <strong>Assessing Hybridization Risk Between ESA-Listed Native Bull Trout (Salvelinus confluentus) and Introduced Brook Trout (S. fontinalis) Using Habitat Modeling</strong>. <em>Frontiers in Environmental Science</em>, 2022; 10 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.834860\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.3389/fenvs.2022.834860</a>\r\n</li>'),(373,'Physicists discover method for emulating nonlinear quantum electrodynamics in a laboratory setting','physicists-discover-method-for-emulating-nonlinear-quantum-electrodynamics-in-a-laboratory-setting','2022-03-08 07:32:42.596397','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">On the big screen, in video games and in our imaginations, lightsabers flare and catch when they clash together. In reality, as in a laser light show, the beams of light go through each other, creating spiderweb patterns. That clashing, or interference, happens only in fiction -- and in places with enormous magnetic and electric fields, which happens in nature only near massive objects such as neutron stars. Here, the strong magnetic or electric field reveals that vacuum isn\'t truly a void. Instead, here when light beams intersect, they scatter into rainbows.</p><p>A weak version of this effect has been observed in modern particle accelerators, but it is completely absent from our daily lives or even normal laboratory environments.</p><p>Yuli Lyanda-Geller, professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Science at Purdue University, in collaboration with Aydin Keser and Oleg Sushkov from the University of New South Wales in Australia, discovered that it is possible to produce this effect in a class of novel materials involving bismuth, its solid solutions with antimony and tantalum arsenide.</p><p>With this knowledge, the effect can be studied, potentially leading to vastly more sensitive sensors as well as supercapacitors for energy storage that could be turned on and off by a controlled magnetic field.</p><p>\"Most importantly, one of the deepest quantum mysteries in the universe can be tested and studied in a small laboratory experiment,\" Lyanda-Geller said. \"With these materials, we can study effects of the universe. We can study what happens in neutron stars from our laboratories.\"</p><p><strong>Brief summary of methods</strong></p><p>Keser, Lyanda-Geller and Sushkov applied quantum field theory nonperturbative methods used to describe high-energy particles and expanded them to analyze the behavior of so-called Dirac materials, which recently became the focus of interest. They used the expansion to obtain results that go both beyond known high-energy results and the general framework of condensed matter and materials physics. They suggested various experimental configurations with applied electric and magnetic fields and analyzed best materials that would allow them to experimentally study this quantum electrodynamic effect in a nonaccelerator setting.</p><p>They subsequently discovered that their results better explained some magnetic phenomena that had been observed and studied in earlier experiments.</p><p><strong>Funding</strong></p><p>U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences; Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering; and the Australian Research Council, Centre of Excellence in Future Low Energy Electronics Technologies</p>','2022-03-07 23:55:24.545813','uploads/news/1646388987_0x0.webp',1,'Purdue University','On the big screen, in video games and in our imaginations, lightsabers flare and catch when they clash together. That clashing, or interference, happens only in fiction -- and in places with enormous magnetic and electric fields, which happens in nature only near massive objects such as neutron stars. A team of physicists has discovered discovered that it is possible to produce this effect in a laboratory setting, using a class of novel materials.',1,68,'<li>Aydın Cem Keser, Yuli Lyanda-Geller, Oleg P. Sushkov. <strong>Nonlinear Quantum Electrodynamics in Dirac Materials</strong>. <em>Physical Review Letters</em>, 2022; 128 (6) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.066402\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.066402</a>\r\n</li>'),(378,'Human-induced disease outbreak in animals causes cascading ecological effects','human-induced-disease-outbreak-in-animals-causes-cascading-ecological-effects','2022-03-08 07:33:54.112850','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A Yale School of the Environment-led study that investigated the impacts of a mange outbreak that killed vicuñas in a protected area in the Argentine Andes found that it had unique effects on the ecology of the region.</p><p>The study published in <em>Ecology Letters</em> is unique in that it tracked the cascading effects of the deaths of the vicuñas, which are wild South American camelids, from the disease on vegetation and biodiversity in the region.</p><p>\"We largely don\'t have many examples in literature of how a rapid-disease outbreak can cause effects, not just on populations, but throughout the ecosystem. So, this provides really important context,\'\' says YSE PhD student Julia Monk, a lead author of the study.</p><p>Monk, a student in the lab of YSE Oastler Professor of Population and Community Ecology Oswald Schmitz, who also co-authored the report, was doing field work in the high desert of San Guillermo National Park in the Andes when mange ravaged the vicuñas. She was studying the important role that pumas and their prey play in carbon storage and nutrient cycling on landscapes.</p><p>The impact of the loss of vicuñas from disease were significantly different than the deaths of vicuñas by predation from pumas, Monk and a team of researchers discovered.</p><p>\"What is really different about what we found was that we were able to track the change in ecosystem function, from a system governed by pumas as the top predator to a system dominated by this disease and to determine that they\'re not analogous. You don\'t just swap out one for the other. We actually had completely diverging outcomes based on which was a dominant source of mortality for these vicuñas,\'\' says Justine Smith, assistant professor of ?wildlife, fish, and conservation biology at University of California, Davis, who was co-lead author of the study. The deaths from mange led to an increase in vegetation as well as a reduced presence of condors, that forage off vicuñas carcasses killed by pumas in the national park.</p><p>\"Disease transmission between wildlife and domestic animals can be catastrophic for both players, threatening local livelihoods and disrupting natural processes in protected areas. As land use modification and fragmentation continue to increase interactions between domestic and wild animals, disease-dominated trophic cascades may come to supplant predators as top-down forces in some systems,\'\' the study notes.</p><p>Recent research indicates the outbreak of mange was linked to domestic llamas that were released outside the park.</p><p>Smith says the study points to the importance of tracking the effects of disease outbreaks globally.</p><p>\"It\'s hard for us to anticipate all of the ways that people can change ecosystems. There are a lot of interacting effects, and I think we\'re going to continue to see rapidly restructured ecosystems,\'\' says Smith. \"And that is something that we need to learn a lot more about if we\'re going to create conservation plans in the changing world that we live in.\"</p><p>The study highlights the need to prepare for more impacts of human-induced wildlife disease outbreaks and how it affects conservation.</p><p>\"Developing strategies for human-wildlife coexistence and protected areas management that minimize the exchange and spread of disease will be critical for the conservation of ecosystems sustained by tightly connected food webs as well as the preservation of human health and livelihoods,\'\' the study states.</p><p>Schmitz says when nature threw Monk and Smith a curveball in the field when the disease broke out, they quickly were able to recognize important analysis.</p><p>\"They co-led an environmental data science analysis comprehensively showing how an explosive disease outbreak, could quickly unravel a long-running ecosystem state, in a putative protected area no less. It is a sober reminder of how human transformation of the planet outside of protected areas can have unintended but far-reaching, consequences,\'\' Schmitz says.</p>','2022-03-08 02:41:08.086391','uploads/news/Riis_vicuna2.jpeg',1,'Yale University','A study that investigated the impacts of a mange outbreak that killed vicunas in a protected area in the Argentine Andes found that it had unique effects on the ecology of the region.',1,98,'<li>Julia D. Monk, Justine A. Smith, Emiliano Donadío, Paula L. Perrig, Ramiro D. Crego, Martin Fileni, Owen Bidder, Sergio A. Lambertucci, Jonathan N. Pauli, Oswald J. Schmitz, Arthur D. Middleton. <strong>Cascading effects of a disease outbreak in a remote protected area</strong>. <em>Ecology Letters</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.13983\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1111/ele.13983</a>\r\n</li>'),(379,'Locally sourced: Pelicans prefer native fish to sportfish at Utah\'s strawberry reservoir','locally-sourced-pelicans-prefer-native-fish-to-sportfish-at-utahs-strawberry-reservoir','2022-03-08 07:35:25.883180','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">American white pelicans who pause their migration at Strawberry Reservoir are filling their bellies with native species like Utah sucker for the most part, leaving cutthroat trout to the human anglers, according to new research from Phaedra Budy, Gary Thiede, Kevin Chapman and Frank Howe from the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State Univerisity.</p><p>Strawberry Reservoir is one of the most popular sport fisheries in Utah and has considerable economic value for recreation purposes for the state. It has also become a refuge for migratory birds who traverse the deserts of the Great Basin along their path. Since man-made reservoirs are relatively new to the ecological landscape, researchers have to decipher how these introduced systems function on an ecological level, including understanding how birds interact with fish populations.</p><p>It\'s expensive to stock and maintain cutthroat trout populations, and managers spend a lot of money and effort to keep stocked sportfish hatchlings alive and thriving. But over the last two decades, the abundance of cutthroat trout in the reservoir has varied -- from a high of 464,000 adult fish in 2007 to lows of approximately 220,000 in 2012 and 2014. Beyond hatching and egg-to-fry survival, the primary culprits for cutthroat demise is predation by other fish, death by pelican, impacts from anglers (harvest and catch-and-release injury), disease and age. The group\'s research sought to understand the impacts of the predator-prey relationships between fish-loving pelicans and cutthroat trout by examining what the pelicans ate.</p><p>Pelicans tend to eat local, for the most part. Over a two-year period, researchers found that pelican diets at the reservoir consisted of 85% Utah sucker, 6% Utah chub, 3% cutthroat trout, and 6% other prey. Utah sucker and Utah chub are abundant native fish whose expanding populations are a concern to managers, so the fact that birds use these fish as a staple food is good news. Diet samples collected from birds during the cutthroat spawning run contained more Utah chub (24%) and cutthroat trout (10%), but Utah sucker still comprised the majority of the birds\' diet even then. The number of adult cutthroat trout consumed by pelicans represented approximately 1% of the adult population of cutthroat trout in the reservoir, the research found.</p><p>\"Cutthroat trout are fast swimmers and can outswim native chubs and suckers, and they stay too deep for pelicans when they are out in the open water,\" said Budy, lead author on the research. \"Pelicans eat what they can easily catch, and chubs and suckers are relatively slow swimmers and like shallow habitat where they are easy for pelicans to catch.\"</p><p>The researchers also observed (anecdotally) that cutthroat trout tended to flee quickly when they sensed shadows of boats, while Utah chub and sucker loitered, apparently less concerned about what was going on above the waterline, she said.</p><p>Managers at the reservoir were also curious about the possibility of pelicans inhibiting trout from spawning. Pelicans sometimes form feeding \"fences\" -- barriers at the edge of the reservoir blocking spawning tributaries, where they can easily catch fish in the shallows. The researchers found that this didn\'t seem to be an issue at Strawberry Reservoir most of the time. Trout made it into spawning streams whether pelicans were present or not, according to data from electronically tagged fish. The researchers did find that on the days with the very highest densities of pelicans, trout travel could be delayed, and they identified a threshold for managers to intervene in order to avoid impacting trout populations long-term.</p><p>\"Because pelicans are highly visible and congregate in large numbers at Strawberry Reservoir, anglers assume that they are eating tons of trout,\" Howe said. \"But the study shows that pelicans are not interested in the same fish species that are prized by human anglers. Knowing that the impact from pelicans to cutthroat trout is minor and short-lived will let managers focus on more important factors impacting trout populations at the reservoir.\"</p><p>The pelicans actually seem to be doing managers a favor by removing competing native fish in far greater numbers than they could do themselves, and for free, Budy said. Meanwhile American white pelicans, a protected species, are getting a good meal out of it.</p>','2022-03-08 02:41:55.877936','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University','American white pelicans who pause their migration at Strawberry Reservoir in Utah are filling their bellies with native species like Utah sucker for the most part, leaving cutthroat trout to the human anglers, according to new research.',1,116,'<li>Phaedra Budy, Frank Howe, Kevin Chapman, Gary P. Thiede. <strong>Conflicts among protected native birds and valuable sport fishes: potential pelican predation effects</strong>. <em>Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjfas-2021-0228\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1139/cjfas-2021-0228</a>\r\n</li>'),(380,'Communities with higher levels of racial prejudice have worse health outcomes','communities-with-higher-levels-of-racial-prejudice-have-worse-health-outcomes','2022-03-08 07:36:52.878615','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">People who live in communities with higher levels of racial prejudice have worse health outcomes, including more heart disease and mental health problems and higher overall mortality rates, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.</p><p>The researchers conducted a systematic review of fourteen papers that used data gathered from Google, Twitter and other big-data sources to look at how prejudice and health are intertwined in communities across the United States.</p><p>\"Racism is gaining recognition as a fundamental driver of health inequities,\" said lead study author Eli Michaels, MPH, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. \"Leveraging big data to capture area-level racial prejudice is one innovative approach to measuring the overall racial climate in which people live, work, play and pray. The studies included in this review revealed that living in an area with high levels of racial prejudice may harm health and widen racial health inequities.\"</p><p>The research was published in the journal <em>Health Psychology</em>.</p><p>The studies in the review used a variety of sources to measure community-level racial prejudice and included tens of millions of data points from large-scale surveys, internet searches and social media. Three studies analyzed data from Google Trends on how often users\' searches included a racial slur. Four studies analyzed data from Twitter on tweets that included negative sentiments toward people of color. Three studies used data from the General Social Survey, a nationally representative survey of social and political attitudes in the United States. And four studies used data from Project Implicit, an online tool that assesses people\'s implicit biases toward various groups. All of the data were coded by geographic area.</p><p>The studies examined how these different indicators of area-level racial prejudice correlated with health outcomes among individuals living in those areas, including mortality rates, adverse birth outcomes for mothers and infants, cardiovascular outcomes, mental health and overall self-rated health. All of the studies found an association between communities\' levels of racial prejudice and adverse health outcomes for the people of color who lived there; four studies also showed a similar association among white residents (two studies showed a smaller but still harmful effect on whites compared with people of color).</p><p>\"The majority of research on racial discrimination and health to date has focused on experiences at the individual level,\" said Amani M. Allen, PhD, MPH, a professor of community health sciences and epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and senior author of the study.</p><p>\"The emerging body of work examined in this review is an important step in going above the level of the individual to capture the context of place and how it may impact the health of people living in those places,\" Allen said. \"As we see from this review, living in an environment with an overall climate that is prejudiced against people of color is not only bad for racially marginalized groups, but for everyone. Area-level racial prejudice is a social determinant of population health.\"</p><p>There are various theories as to how community racial prejudice may harm health, according to the researchers. One is that at an individual level, living in a community with more prejudice could increase the number of prejudiced interactions that a person experiences, causing harmful stress. At the community level, more racial prejudice may erode social capital -- defined as \"the norms of reciprocity, trust and social obligation\" in a community -- leading to less social and emotional support to buffer stressful life events and less political support for policies and programs that could enhance the health and welfare of all community members.</p><p>More research is needed to disentangle these various factors that may tie community-level racial prejudice to adverse health outcomes for communities overall and for people of color in particular, according to the researchers.</p><p>\"Because racism is multidimensional, dismantling it and its effects on health will require multidimensional solutions,\" Michaels said. \"Research identifying the root causes of, and testing interventions to shift, our collective prejudice is an urgent priority.\"</p>','2022-03-08 02:42:03.250552','uploads/news/download_15.jpg',1,'American Psychological Association','People who live in communities with higher levels of racial prejudice have worse health outcomes, including more heart disease and mental health problems and higher overall mortality rates, according to new research.',1,153,'<li>Eli K. Michaels, Christine Board, Mahasin S. Mujahid, Corinne A. Riddell, David H. Chae, Rucker C. Johnson, Amani M. Allen. <strong>Area-level racial prejudice and health: A systematic review.</strong>. <em>Health Psychology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hea0001141\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1037/hea0001141</a>\r\n</li>'),(385,'How baboons keep healthy family boundaries','how-baboons-keep-healthy-family-boundaries','2022-03-08 08:38:09.628852','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Finding love in a small isolated place can be tough when everyone is a familiar face, or when half the dating pool is already out because they\'re all close relatives.</p><p>That\'s no less true for the wild baboons of Amboseli, who live in close-knit groups of 20 to 150 at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in Kenya.</p><p>A new Duke University-led study takes an in-depth look at the various ways these monkeys keep their family and romantic lives from getting too intertwined.</p><p>Drawing on 48 years of data on the family trees and mate choices of 1,624 wild baboons, the researchers were able to better understand how baboons avoid inbreeding, but also where their barriers break down.</p><p>Because closer relatives have more similar DNA, inbreeding increases the chances that offspring will inherit two identical copies of a defective gene -- the same version from each parent -- and no \"normal\" copy to compensate for its ill effects.</p><p>Infant baboons in captivity are much more likely to die at birth if their parents were closely related. But this rarely happens in the wild, the authors found. Sifting through pedigree data on 607 offspring born between 1971 and 2019, only six infants -- 1% -- were born to parents who were close kin.</p><p>The researchers say that\'s partly because, like in many monkeys and apes, baboon brothers and sisters go their separate ways as they grow up. While females spend their whole lives within the group where they were born, males leave their families as they reach adulthood to seek out other groups and make a life for themselves elsewhere.</p><p>That, coupled with high mortality rates for wild baboons, means that opposite-sex kin rarely overlap in adulthood, since their time together is cut short by death or dispersal, the authors report.</p><p>\"The risk of inbreeding for your average baboon is pretty low,\" said senior author Susan Alberts, professor of biology at Duke. \"They don\'t have that many opportunities.\"</p><p>Even when close relatives do live together as adults, they go out of their way to avoid sexual contact.</p><p>The researchers combed through detailed records of courtships between 178 adult females and 208 males to put together a picture of baboon mating choices. For each female, they identified which males courted her during her most fertile times: following her around, grooming her, mounting her, and keeping her from the advances of other males during the days in her cycle when she was most likely to conceive.</p><p>The researchers saw from the data that baboons generally steer clear of mates that are half-siblings or closer. Genetically speaking that means any animal with whom they share 25% or more of their DNA.</p><p>But baboons proved less discriminating with their father\'s side of the family than their mother\'s. Mother-son dalliances were almost nonexistent, but things got murkier between fathers and daughters, even though father-daughter pairs share the same amount of DNA as mother-son pairs. And while half-siblings from the same mother managed to avoid each other, \"paternal half-siblings appear to make more mistakes,\" Alberts aid.</p><p>The most likely explanation, Alberts said, is that baboons simply have more familiarity with the female side of the family they\'ve known since birth. It\'s easier for a male baboon to recognize his maternal sisters, since they all grew up suckling the same mom, but paternal sisters are more of a mystery.</p><p>\"The particularly strong bond that mothers form with their offspring give them a very reliable cue about who their relatives are,\" Alberts said. \"By contrast, while fathers can certainly play a big role in their offspring\'s lives, the fact that this species is not monogamous means that paternity is never certain. That makes the cues of paternal kinship less reliable, more error-prone.\"</p><p>The study appeared Feb. 24 in the online edition of<em> Current Biology.</em></p><p>This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (IOS 1456832, DGE 1644868), the National Institutes of Health (R01AG053330, R01AG053308, R01HD088558, P01AG0, T32GM007754), Duke, Princeton University, and the University of Notre Dame.</p>','2022-03-08 03:43:33.948255','uploads/news/16-dec_baboons-accents.webp',1,'Duke University','Drawing on 48 years of data on the family trees and mate choices of 1,624 wild baboons in Kenya, a new study finds that baboons generally steer clear of mates that are half-siblings or closer. But baboons proved less discriminating with their father\'s side of the family than their mother\'s, the researchers report.',1,159,'<li>Allison A. Galezo, Melina A. Nolas, Arielle S. Fogel, Raphael S. Mututua, J. Kinyua Warutere, I. Long’ida Siodi, Jeanne Altmann, Elizabeth A. Archie, Jenny Tung, Susan C. Alberts. <strong>Mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance in a wild primate</strong>. <em>Current Biology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.082\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.cub.2022.01.082</a>\r\n</li>'),(389,'Closer look helps experts ponder when a protein’s prone to wander','closer-look-helps-experts-ponder-when-a-proteins-prone-to-wander','2022-03-08 16:04:08.663825','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A surface that feels smooth to human touch could be pretty rough to a protein. That can be good or bad, depending on what you want that protein to do.</p><p>Exactly how proteins interact with solid surfaces is a concern for health care manufacturers who design drugs, make biosensors or develop anti-fouling materials.</p><p>The mechanisms that control these interactions are hard to see, but researchers at Rice University are changing that with a microscopy technique to assess the effects of surface roughness as well as water-repelling properties (hydrophobicity) and electrostatic charge. The ability to tune those parameters will lead to more predictable materials.</p><p>\"The main idea is to understand the how the combination of these properties influences protein dynamics,\" said Anastasiia Misiura, lead author of a study in the <em>Journal of Chemical Physics</em> and a graduate student in the Rice lab of chemist Christy Landes. \"It turned out that roughness and hydrophobicity are opposite forces, but proteins get stuck on areas that are very rough.\"</p><p>The paper, an \"editor\'s choice,\" is part of the journal\'s \"Ever-Expanding Optics of Single Molecules and Nanoparticles\" collection.</p><p>How molecules interact at surfaces is important at every scale in the physical realm, from grinding planetary plates to brakes grabbing the wheels in your car to the invisible molecular transactions that make life possible. Understanding these mechanisms at the very smallest level is the focus of Landes\' lab as its members attempt to clarify what\'s actually happening down there.</p><p>To that end, the lab develops sophisticated microscopes that see things smaller than visible light and the best of lenses will allow. In this case, the lab used single molecule fluorescence microscopy, a technique that allows them to watch how proteins interact with the surfaces they design.</p><p>The team discovered two modes of transport that influence whether and how proteins attach themselves to a surface, travel along it or release their grip, never to return. The two distinct interaction mechanisms they found ranged from the quicker localized adsorption/desorption, associated with less hydrophobic surfaces, and an unpredictable continuous-time random walk observed in interactions with rough, more hydrophobic surfaces.</p><p>For experiments, the researcher placed a \"well-studied model protein,\" fluorescent-labeled a-lactalbumin, on a surface with bare glass alternating with stripes in various concentrations of a self-assembled monolayer (SAM) commonly used to purify proteins via chromatography. Each stripe contained a different balance between hydrophobicity and surface roughness.</p><p>The bare glass showed plenty of localized action with proteins taking a longer time on the surface, while the degree of roughness in the SAM-covered regions (due to the concentration of octadecyltrichlorosilane, or ODTS) promoted longer flights. The degree of \"stickiness\" is associated with a greater concentration of long alkyl chains on the surface.</p><p>Understanding how to tailor surfaces could give manufacturers a handle to fine-tune protein interactions in their products, Landes said.</p><p>\"Because all these complicated things are happening at different time scales and space scales, you could never separate the mechanistic contributions of each one of those individual effects,\" she said. \"The real value of single molecule spectroscopy and measuring at these scales is that you can distinguish the separate contributing factors.\"</p><p>Co-authors are Rice postdoctoral researcher Chayan Dutta, graduate students Wesley Leung, Jorge Zepeda O and research scientist Tanguy Terlier. Landes is the Kenneth S. Pitzer Schlumberger Chair at Rice and a professor of chemistry, electrical and computer engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering.</p><p>The Welch Foundation (C-1787) and the National Science Foundation (1808382, 1626418) supported the research.</p>','2022-03-08 09:58:20.555798','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Rice University','Using sophisticated microscopy techniques, researchers show why proteins stick better to some surfaces than others. The details could be important to manufacturers fine-tuning drug purifications, biosensors or anti-fouling surfaces.',1,36,'<li>Anastasiia Misiura, Chayan Dutta, Wesley Leung, Jorge Zepeda O, Tanguy Terlier, Christy F. Landes. <strong>The competing influence of surface roughness, hydrophobicity, and electrostatics on protein dynamics on a self-assembled monolayer</strong>. <em>The Journal of Chemical Physics</em>, 2022; 156 (9): 094707 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0078797\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1063/5.0078797</a>\r\n</li>'),(393,'Optimism may promote emotional well-being by limiting how often one experiences stressful situations','optimism-may-promote-emotional-well-being-by-limiting-how-often-one-experiences-stressful-situations','2022-03-08 16:07:27.764968','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">\"Don\'t worry, be happy,\" is more than just song lyrics. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging, but it is unclear how optimism impacts health.</p><p>When it comes to dealing with day-to-day stressors, such as household chores or arguments with others, a new study has found that being more or less optimistic did not make a difference in how older men emotionally reacted to or recovered from these stressors. However, optimism appeared to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations or changing the way they interpret situations as stressful.</p><p>\"This study tests one possible explanation, assessing if more optimistic people handle daily stress more constructively and therefore enjoy better emotional well-being,\" said corresponding author Lewina Lee, PhD, clinical psychologist at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at the VA Boston Healthcare System and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.</p><p>The researchers followed 233 older men who first completed an optimism questionnaire; 14 years later, they reported daily stressors along with positive and negative moods on eight consecutive evenings up to three times over an eight-year span. The researchers found more optimistic men reported not only lower negative mood but also more positive mood (beyond simply not feeling negative). They also reported having fewer stressors which was unrelated to their higher positive mood but explained their lower levels of negative mood.</p><p>While studies have increasingly supported the idea of optimism as a resource that may promote good health and longevity, we know very little about the underlying mechanisms. \"Stress, on the other hand, is known to have a negative impact on our health. By looking at whether optimistic people handle day-to-day stressors differently, our findings add to knowledge about how optimism may promote good health as people age,\" says Lee.</p><p>These finding appear online in <em>the Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences</em>.</p><p>Funding for this study was provided by the NIH (grant numbers R01-AG053273, K08- AG048221, RF1-064006, R00-CA201542, UL1-TR001430, R01-AG018436); and a Senior Research Career Scientist Award from the Clinical Science R&amp;D Service, US Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study is a research component of the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center and is supported by the VA Cooperative Studies Program/Epidemiological Research Centers.</p>','2022-03-08 09:58:34.525022','uploads/news/download_25.jpg',1,'Boston University School of Medicine','\'Don\'t worry, be happy,\' is more than just song lyrics. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging, but it is unclear how optimism impacts health. When it comes to dealing with day-to-day stressors, such as household chores or arguments with others, a new study has found that being more or less optimistic did not make a difference in how older men emotionally reacted to or recovered from these stressors. However, optimism appeared to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations or changing the way they interpret situations as stressful.',1,160,'<li>Lewina O Lee, Francine Grodstein, Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald, Peter James, Sakurako S Okuzono, Hayami K Koga, Joel Schwartz, Avron Spiro, Daniel K Mroczek, Laura D Kubzansky. <strong>Optimism, Daily Stressors, and Emotional Well-Being Over Two Decades in a Cohort of Aging Men</strong>. <em>The Journals of Gerontology: Series B</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbac025\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1093/geronb/gbac025</a>\r\n</li>'),(403,'Field-based patient trial for cell-free Zika testing delivers highly accurate results','field-based-patient-trial-for-cell-free-zika-testing-delivers-highly-accurate-results','2022-03-08 16:08:54.386436','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">An international team of researchers, headed by experts from the University of Toronto\'s Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, has led one of the first field trials for a synthetic biology-based diagnostic using patient samples. This work, conducted on-site in Latin America, reveals the potential for cell-free synthetic biology tools and companion hardware for providing rapid, de-centralized, and low-cost patient testing for infectious diseases like the Zika virus.</p><p>Study results, published today in <em>Nature Biomedical Engineering</em><em>, </em>show that the novel diagnostic platform has analytical specificity and sensitivity equivalent to a US Centre for Disease Control PCR test for Zika and a diagnostic accuracy of 98.5 per cent with 268 patient samples collected in Recife, Brazil. The platform is also programmable and can be similarly applied to detect any pathogen sequence. In addition to validating highly accurate diagnostic results for Zika, the team also achieved similar diagnostic performance for chikungunya virus, another mosquito-borne arbovirus.</p><p>\"We see emerging diagnostics, like the paper-based tests we\'ve developed, as having tremendous near-term potential to augment existing PCR capacity, improve equity in access to health care, and aid in the responses to public health crises,\" said Keith Pardee, assistant professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences, Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto.</p><p>Prior to the current global COVID-19 pandemic, the 2015/2016 outbreak of Zika virus in Latin America emphasized the urgent need for rapid and low-cost testing that can be deployed beyond the reach of centralized diagnostic labs, explains Pardee who has a Canada Research Chair in Synthetic Biology and Human Health. \"We were investigating and developing this technology well before the COVID-19 pandemic brought these issues to light at the global level. We\'ve now been able to apply it and validate it in a region of endemic disease, which is really promising because these tools are meant to enable health systems to better respond to future outbreaks of infectious disease, particularly in low-resource settings,\" he said.</p><p>The portable diagnostic platform is a combination of a cell-free, paper-based test and a field-ready companion device that allows data to be collected using image-based color analysis -- purple for positive and yellow for negative. Called \"PLUM\" (Portable, Low-cost, User-friendly, Multimode), the toaster-size reader presents results from up to 384 samples and displays them in a single image capture. The hardware and software that make up PLUM were originally developed by co-authors Livia Guo and Seray Çiçek as part of their graduate work in the Pardee lab. To keep production costs low, Guo and Çiçek, co-founders of LSK Technologies, used customizable software programs and off-the shelf electronics, enabling PLUM to be built for approximately $500 USD per unit.</p><p>On the molecular side, the cell-free tests can be freeze-dried, allowing for distribution without refrigeration and, significantly, all of the molecular components of the test are independent of the PCR-supply chain. \"Here we have demonstrated that these two technologies combined create a low-cost, highly accurate diagnostic tool,\" said study lead author Margot Karlikow, a postdoctoral fellow in the Pardee lab from 2016 to 2021 and now co-founder of En Carta Diagnostics. \"We also demonstrated that it is feasible to transport the platform across a significant distance and implement it effectively in another country. In many low- and middle-income countries, there is no PCR testing available outside of main cities, so the ultimate goal is that this platform be used as a high-quality alternative to PCR in more regional settings,\" she said.</p><p>Dr. Lindomar Pena, department of virology, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), led the Brazilian team that collaborated on the project. \"This robust diagnostic platform displayed desirable features to be used in developing countries such as Brazil and in laboratories with basic infrastructure. We hope it can be further developed and deployed in the Brazilian network of public health laboratories to diagnose Zika patients, trace contacts and identify hot-spot areas with active community transmission,\" he said.</p><p>Showing that the platform could be transported and accurately detect Zika virus in patient samples is a significant step forward in creating more accessible and de-centralized testing, says Pardee. However, the extraction of RNA from patient samples still requires liquid handling by skilled technicians at this stage. \"With performance on patient samples now validated, we are tackling these next challenges, like sample preparation, so that the platform and PCR-like diagnostic capacity can be distributed more broadly into the communities where they are needed.\"</p>','2022-03-08 13:05:08.598171','uploads/news/field-based-patient-tr.jpg',1,'University of Toronto - Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy','Researchers have led one of the first field trials for a synthetic biology-based diagnostic using patient samples. This work, conducted on-site in Latin America, reveals the potential for cell-free synthetic biology tools and companion hardware for providing rapid, de-centralized, and low-cost patient testing for infectious diseases like the Zika virus.',1,5,'<li>Margot Karlikow, Severino Jefferson Ribeiro da Silva, Yuxiu Guo, Seray Cicek, Larissa Krokovsky, Paige Homme, Yilin Xiong, Talia Xu, Maria-Angelica Calderón-Peláez, Sigrid Camacho-Ortega, Duo Ma, Jurandy Júnior Ferraz de Magalhães, Bárbara Nayane Rosário Fernandes Souza, Diego Guerra de Albuquerque Cabral, Katariina Jaenes, Polina Sutyrina, Tom Ferrante, Andrea Denisse Benitez, Victoria Nipaz, Patricio Ponce, Darius G. Rackus, James J. Collins, Marcelo Paiva, Jaime E. Castellanos, Varsovia Cevallos, Alexander A. Green, Constância Ayres, Lindomar Pena, Keith Pardee. <strong>Field validation of the performance of paper-based tests for the detection of the Zika and chikungunya viruses in serum samples</strong>. <em>Nature Biomedical Engineering</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41551-022-00850-0\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41551-022-00850-0</a>\r\n</li>'),(406,'Tiny \'skyscrapers\' help bacteria convert sunlight into electricity','tiny-skyscrapers-help-bacteria-convert-sunlight-into-electricity','2022-03-08 16:10:46.210538','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Researchers have made tiny \'skyscrapers\' for communities of bacteria, helping them to generate electricity from just sunlight and water.</p><p>The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, used 3D printing to create grids of high-rise \'nano-housing\' where sun-loving bacteria can grow quickly. The researchers were then able to extract the bacteria\'s waste electrons, left over from photosynthesis, which could be used to power small electronics.</p><p>Other research teams have extracted energy from photosynthetic bacteria, but the Cambridge researchers have found that providing them with the right kind of home increases the amount of energy they can extract by over an order of magnitude. The approach is competitive against traditional methods of renewable bioenergy generation and has already reached solar conversion efficiencies that can outcompete many current methods of biofuel generation.</p><p>Their results, reported in the journal <em>Nature Materials</em>, open new avenues in bioenergy generation and suggest that \'biohybrid\' sources of solar energy could be an important component in the zero-carbon energy mix.</p><p>Current renewable technologies, such as silicon-based solar cells and biofuels, are far superior to fossil fuels in terms of carbon emissions, but they also have limitations, such as a reliance on mining, challenges in recycling, and a reliance on farming and land use, which results in biodiversity loss.</p><p>\"Our approach is a step towards making even more sustainable renewable energy devices for the future,\" said Dr Jenny Zhang from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who led the research.</p><p>Zhang and her colleagues from the Department of Biochemistry and the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy are working to rethink bioenergy into something that is sustainable and scalable.</p><p>Photosynthetic bacteria, or cyanobacteria, are the most abundant life from on Earth. For several years, researchers have been attempting to \'re-wire\' the photosynthesis mechanisms of cyanobacteria in order to extract energy from them.</p><p>\"There\'s been a bottleneck in terms of how much energy you can actually extract from photosynthetic systems, but no one understood where the bottleneck was,\" said Zhang. \"Most scientists assumed that the bottleneck was on the biological side, in the bacteria, but we\'ve found that a substantial bottleneck is actually on the material side.\"</p><p>In order to grow, cyanobacteria need lots of sunlight -- like the surface of a lake in summertime. And in order to extract the energy they produce through photosynthesis, the bacteria need to be attached to electrodes.</p><p>The Cambridge team 3D-printed custom electrodes out of metal oxide nanoparticles that are tailored to work with the cyanobacteria as they perform photosynthesis. The electrodes were printed as highly branched, densely packed pillar structures, like a tiny city.</p><p>Zhang\'s team developed a printing technique that allows control over multiple length scales, making the structures highly customisable, which could benefit a wide range of fields.</p><p>\"The electrodes have excellent light-handling properties, like a high-rise apartment with lots of windows,\" said Zhang. \"Cyanobacteria need something they can attach to and form a community with their neighbours. Our electrodes allow for a balance between lots of surface area and lots of light -- like a glass skyscraper.\"</p><p>Once the self-assembling cyanobacteria were in their new \'wired\' home, the researchers found that they were more efficient than other current bioenergy technologies, such as biofuels. The technique increased the amount of energy extracted by over an order of magnitude over other methods for producing bioenergy from photosynthesis.</p><p>\"I was surprised we were able to achieve the numbers we did -- similar numbers have been predicted for many years, but this is the first time that these numbers have been shown experimentally,\" said Zhang. \"Cyanobacteria are versatile chemical factories. Our approach allows us to tap into their energy conversion pathway at an early point, which helps us understand how they carry out energy conversion so we can use their natural pathways for renewable fuel or chemical generation.\"</p><p>The research was supported in part by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Cambridge Trust, the Isaac Newton Trust and the European Research Council. Jenny Zhang is BBSRC David Phillips Fellow in the Department of Chemistry, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 13:05:20.240085','uploads/news/download_26.jpg',1,'University of Cambridge','Researchers have made tiny \'skyscrapers\' for communities of bacteria, helping them to generate electricity from just sunlight and water.',1,161,'<li>Xiaolong Chen, Joshua M. Lawrence, Laura T. Wey, Lukas Schertel, Qingshen Jing, Silvia Vignolini, Christopher J. Howe, Sohini Kar-Narayan, Jenny Z. Zhang. <strong>3D-printed hierarchical pillar array electrodes for high-performance semi-artificial photosynthesis</strong>. <em>Nature Materials</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41563-022-01205-5\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41563-022-01205-5</a>\r\n</li>'),(415,'Neurobiology: Our minds distinguish between various social influences','neurobiology-our-minds-distinguish-between-various-social-influences','2022-03-08 16:12:42.621726','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">When people change their opinion after they have received additional information from another person, this is an example of informational social influence. But when people revise their views because they want to be socially accepted, researchers refer to normative social influences. Previously, it was uncertain which neural mechanisms underlie these two situations.</p><p>\"This question is all the more relevant in today\'s world of social media and the manipulation of opinions, as many people rely on the opinions of others to form their own view,\" says Dr. Bahador Bahrami from the LMU Department of Psychology.</p><p>Together with Dr. Ali Mahmoodi from the University of Oxford and other researchers, he characterized brain activities that occur if people are socially influenced to change their opinion. The study has now been published in <em>PLOS Biology</em>. \"We were able to show that our brain solves social conflicts -- that is, differences of opinion -- via the same neural machinery that it uses to solve its own internal, subjective conflicts,\" summarizes Bahrami. \"A specific region of the brain takes two factors into account: how confident we are in our opinion and how polite we are obliged to be toward others.\"</p><p><strong>Study uses computer-based game and functional magnetic resonance imaging</strong></p><p>In their study, the researchers used a computer-based game. Participants in the experiment had to try and remember the position of a dot displayed on a screen. They gave confidence values for their answers. However, they were allowed to revise their guesses after they had seen the answer of a computer or of a virtual \'partner\' to whom they had been introduced before the experiment. In reality, all answers were provided by computers.</p><p>Bahrami\'s team tracked the brain activity of all test subjects during the game using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This non-invasive method allows areas of the brain with high activity -- that is to say, with high oxygen consumption -- to be displayed with high spatial resolution.</p><p>The study showed: People tended to adjust their answers when their confidence was low, irrespective of whether they thought their partner was human or not. This informational influence was controlled by activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) of the brain, a region of the cerebral cortex.</p><p>Test subjects also exhibited more conformity toward other opinions if they received confirmation from their communication partner. This normative influence arose only when they believed that their partners were human, as did the correlation with dACC activity. Moreover, the normative influence was associated with stronger functional connections between the dACC and other social processing regions of the brain. This was not the case for the informational influence.</p><p>As part of the study, Bahrami and his colleagues also wanted to know what their results meant for AI applications, which are increasingly being used in all kinds of areas. \"We established that the human brain only feels the need for politeness when it\'s interacting with other people and not with a purportedly artificial (albeit intelligent) agent,\" says the LMU researcher. In view of the burgeoning use of artificial intelligence in a wide variety of fields, Bahrami concludes, this is an important topic for further projects.</p>','2022-03-08 13:05:50.669862','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München','Researchers show what happens in the human brain when we try to influence other people or when we ourselves are influenced by others.',1,162,'<li>Ali Mahmoodi, Hamed Nili, Dan Bang, Carsten Mehring, Bahador Bahrami. <strong>Distinct neurocomputational mechanisms support informational and socially normative conformity</strong>. <em>PLOS Biology</em>, 2022; 20 (3): e3001565 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001565\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1371/journal.pbio.3001565</a>\r\n</li>'),(416,'How stress hormones guide bacteria in their host','how-stress-hormones-guide-bacteria-in-their-host','2022-03-08 16:14:12.354828','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A newly discovered protein helps bacteria recognize stress hormones in the human body and direct their motion in the host.</p><p>In humans and animals, catecholamines such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, and dopamine are common stress hormones. Stress can increase the body\'s susceptibility to bacterial infections. In the laboratory, stress hormones stimulate the growth of various pathogens. This had already been observed in Salmonella (<em>Salmonella enterica</em> serovar Typhimurium), and other intestinal bacteria, <em>Escherichia coli</em> and the causative agent of cholera, <em>Vibrio cholerae</em>. Furthermore, epinephrine and norepinephrine make it easier for bacteria to infect the body\'s cells. And these hormones also influence the biosynthesis of virulence factors, which enable pathogens to adhere to, penetrate, and destroy cells.</p><p>\"We therefore suspected that some bacteria use such hormones as signals to recognize the eukaryotic host environment,\" says LMU microbiologist Professor Kirsten Jung. \"But the molecular basis was not known.\" Together with Professor Stephan A. Sieber from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and other researchers, Jung has now identified the binding site of epinephrine and the epinephrine derivative phenylephrine in the bacterium <em>Vibrio campbellii</em>. As the team reports in PNAS, the target of both molecules is the protein CheW. \"The biological significance of the mechanism is that bacteria recognize, for example, that they are no longer in sea water, but in the intestine of a host,\" explains Jung.</p><p><strong>Studies with the model organism V. campbellii</strong></p><p>\"We wanted to know how bacteria recognize catecholamines as signaling molecules,\" says the LMU scientist. \"Which receptors control this process?\" Her experiments consisted of several individual steps.</p><p>For the study, Sieber developed a method for chemically modifying epinephrine and phenylephrine, so that the researchers could directly isolate complexes from the catecholamines and the bound bacterial proteins. A prerequisite of the experiments was that the new compounds would not have any biological characteristics that the unmodified molecules did not have. Jung\'s group did laboratory experiments to demonstrate this was so. Epinephrine binds iron, whereas the epinephrine derivative phenylephrine does not. With their choice of compounds, the researchers wanted to rule out effects that arise when the bacteria have a better supply of iron.</p><p>Jung and Sieber worked with <em>Vibrio campbellii</em> as a model organism. The marine bacterium infects fish, shrimp, squid, and many other marine invertebrates. They added <em>Vibrio campbellii</em> to the chemically modified catecholamines and lysed the cells. Next, they extracted from the lysate all proteins to which a molecule had bound and characterized them by using proteome analysis. This resulted in a particular enrichment of the soluble chemotaxis protein CheW.</p><p>Subsequently, Jung\'s group isolated the CheW protein directly from bacteria, purified it, and measured its binding affinity to catecholamines. In the process, the researchers discovered something surprising: the hormones do not bind to the chemoreceptors themselves, as originally expected, but to the coupling protein CheW, which is located between receptors and a signal transduction cascade. This entire stimulus perception system controls the motion of the bacterium in a chemical gradient.</p><p>\"Our study provides new insights into the communication of bacteria with their host,\" summarizes Jung. \"We were able to show that the swimming behavior of bacteria is modified by host hormones, which is controlled by CheW.\" Motility, and in particular directed motility, is decisively important for host colonization, as bacteria deliberately seek to colonize an organism and conquer all niches. In the next step, Jung now wants to find out whether the same mechanism can be detected in other bacteria.</p>','2022-03-08 13:05:56.971130','uploads/news/how-stress-hormones-gu.jpg',1,'Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München','A newly discovered protein helps bacteria recognize stress hormones in the human body and direct their motion in the host.',1,52,'<li>Angela Weigert Muñoz, Elisabeth Hoyer, Kilian Schumacher, Marianne Grognot, Katja M. Taute, Stephan M. Hacker, Stephan A. Sieber, Kirsten Jung. <strong>Eukaryotic catecholamine hormones influence the chemotactic control of            Vibrio campbellii            by binding to the coupling protein CheW</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (10) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2118227119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2118227119</a>\r\n</li>'),(417,'An aromatic tomato could be looming – a la heirloom varieties','an-aromatic-tomato-could-be-looming-a-la-heirloom-varieties','2022-03-08 16:16:05.763533','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">You can scarcely find a tasty, heirloom tomato in the grocery store. But University of Florida scientists helped discover a way to enhance tomato smell and taste. Breeding efforts over the last half century have emphasized traits that are important to producers -- yield, disease resistance, appearance and post-harvest shelf life among them.</p><p>While those traits are important, modern commercial varieties tend to fall short of the flavor potential shown in older varieties. But consumers want tomatoes that taste and smell good.</p><p>Indeed, in a study published in 2012, consumers who taste-tested several tomato varieties preferred tomatoes with high levels of nitrogenous volatiles.</p><p>For years, consumers have lamented what they deem as the bland taste of tomatoes. Any flavor you savor when you bite into the fruit comes from a combination of many aroma compounds. Some of those compounds contain nitrogen, and they add fruity, floral and tomato vine profiles to the flavor mix. Working on an international team of scientists, two UF/IFAS researchers helped find a route to several important nitrogen-containing tomato flavor compounds.</p><p>In a newly published study, scientists showed that five of the compounds are part of a biochemical pathway for synthesis of these important flavor compounds.</p><p>Using a closely related fruit, <em>Solanum pennellii</em>, scientists found a site on a chromosome essential to produce detectable nitrogenous volatiles in tomatoes, said Denise Tieman, a UF/IFAS research assistant professor of horticultural sciences.</p><p>That data led scientists to identify a step in the pathway to nitrogen-containing flavor compounds.</p><p>\"Now that we know how these compounds are made in tomatoes, we can identify varieties that have the heirloom version of the enzyme and high levels of these flavor compounds, and we can breed this trait into modern tomatoes to improve flavor,\" Tieman said.</p><p>Tomatoes produce many aroma volatiles, including nitrogen-containing volatiles that are relatively rare in other fruits.</p><p>Since these volatiles are active at low concentrations, increasing their levels does not impact yield or fruit size.</p><p>Tomatoes are the most valuable fruit produced worldwide. Indeed, in 2020, American farmers harvested about 12,600 tons of fresh market tomatoes and 11 million tons of processing tomatoes from 273,00 acres. That adds up to $1 billion in revenue. Florida harvested 26,000 areas of tomatoes during the 2018-2019 season, valued at almost $426 million.</p><p>The new research, published recently in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, </em>was led by Harry Klee, a UF/IFAS professor emeritus of horticultural sciences and Charles Goulet, a professor of plant science at Universite Laval in Quebec City, Canada.</p>','2022-03-08 13:05:59.891778','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Florida','Scientists helped discover a way to enhance tomato smell and taste. Scientists showed that five of the compounds are part of a biochemical pathway for synthesis of these important flavor compounds.',1,70,'<li>David K. Liscombe, Yusuke Kamiyoshihara, Jérémie Ghironzi, Christine J. Kempthorne, Kevin Hooton, Blandine Bulot, Vassili Kanellis, James McNulty, Nghi B. Lam, Louis Félix Nadeau, Michael Pautler, Denise M. Tieman, Harry J. Klee, Charles Goulet. <strong>A flavin-dependent monooxygenase produces nitrogenous tomato aroma volatiles using cysteine as a nitrogen source</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (7) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2118676119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2118676119</a>\r\n</li>'),(418,'Promising approach against treatment-resistant cancer','promising-approach-against-treatment-resistant-cancer','2022-03-08 16:17:42.691938','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A research team led by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine has devised a novel and highly promising strategy for overcoming a key cause of cancer deaths: the ability of cancer cells to thrive in the face of chemotherapy drugs designed to destroy them.</p><p>As described in the March 7 issue of <em>Nature Communications</em>, investigators used a two-drug combination to achieve chemotherapy\'s goal<strong>: </strong>to make cancer cells self-destruct via the biological process known as apoptosis, often referred to as programmed cell death. The treatment worked againsthumancancer cell lines that resisted apoptosis despite exposure to different types of chemotherapy, and also against apoptosis-resistant human tumors implanted in mice (i.e., xenograft mouse models).</p><p>\"Targeted therapies that home in on specific genetic vulnerabilities of cancers have vastly improved treatment in recent years, but not everyone has benefited,\" said Evripidis Gavathiotis, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and of medicine at Einstein, co-leader of the Cancer Therapeutics Program at the NCI-designated Albert Einstein Cancer Center, and corresponding author on the paper. \"We need new, broadly active therapies that can attack a range of cancers while causing fewer side effects than current treatments, and we hope our new therapeutic strategy will prove to be a viable option.\"</p><p><strong>Eliminating Unwanted Cells</strong></p><p>The body relies on apoptosis for getting rid of unwanted cells -- excess cells pruned during embryological development, for example, and damaged cells that need to be removed so they don\'t survive to develop into cancer cells. Both chemotherapy and radiation rely on damaging cancer cells severely enough that they\'ll undergo apoptosis -- which, unfortunately, does not always happen.</p><p>Every cell in the body contains the seeds of its own destruction: some two dozen apoptotic proteins that engage in a life-or-death balancing act. Some proteins stimulate apoptosis (pro-apoptotic proteins), while others block the process (anti-apoptotic proteins). DNA damage, for example, tips the balance in favor of cell death -- causing the cell to express and activate pro-apoptotic proteins that ultimately kill the cell by poking holes in its mitochondria. The new drug combination discovered by Dr. Gavathiotis and colleagues kills apoptosis-resistant cancer cells by boosting the active form of one pro-apoptotic protein in particular: BAX, dubbed the \"executioner protein.\"</p><p><strong>Enhancing the \"Executioner Protein\"</strong></p><p>In 2012, Dr. Gavathiotis discovered the first small, human-made molecule capable of directly activating BAX. In their new study, he and his team evaluated whether BTSA1.2 -- their third-generation BAX activator -- would prove effective against a diverse group of 46 human blood and solid tumor cell lines, including non-small cell lung cancer, breast, colorectal, pancreatic, melanoma, leukemia, and lymphoma cell lines. Most of those cell lines had resisted all pro-apoptotic drugs developed so far.</p><p>BTSA1.2 did not perform impressively against several solid-tumor cell lines. The problem: Even as BTSA1.2 was increasing levels of active pro-apoptotic BAX in solid-tumor cells, an anti-apoptotic protein called BCL-XL was neutralizing BAX. The researchers then devised a novel strategy for killing apoptosis-resistant cancer cells: Combine BAX-boosting BTSA1.2 with Navitoclax, an investigational pro-apoptotic cancer drug that inhibits BCL-XL.</p><p>The combination of BTSA1.2 and Navitoclax proved to be a game-changer. When Dr. Gavathiotis and colleagues, led by co-first author Andrea Lopez, Ph.D., tested the drug duo against the 46 cell lines, it packed a one-two punch, with BTSA1.2 boosting active BAX to toxic levels in cancer cells, and Navitoclax acting as BAX\'s bodyguard by preventing BCL-XL from neutralizing BAX.</p><p><strong>Limiting Side Effects</strong></p><p>The two orally administered drugs were then tested against apoptosis-resistant tumor xenografts -- in this case, mice implanted with tumor cells from a colorectal-cancer cell line that had resisted BTSA1.2 and Navitoclax as individual drugs but had succumbed to their combined use. The <em>in vivo</em> experiment produced similar results: After xenografts were established, the mice were treated with BTSA1.2, Navitoclax, or the two drugs combined. Individually, each drug had limited effectiveness in reducing tumor growth, while combining them significantly suppressed tumor growth, indicating that the two drugs act synergistically to defeat apoptosis-resistant tumors.</p><p>\"Equally important, mice receiving the two-drug combination tolerated it remarkably well,\" noted Dr. Gavathiotis. \"Moreover, analysis of the treated mice showed that healthy cells were not affected by the two-drug combination -- likely making it safer than standard chemotherapies, which are toxic to all dividing cells, both cancerous and normal.\"</p><p>The study is titled \"Co-targeting of BAX and BCL-XL proteins broadly overcomes resistance to apoptosis in cancer.\" Other Einstein authors are co-first author Denis E. Reyna, Ph.D., Nadege Gitego, Felix Kopp, Lars Ulrik Nordstrøm, and Swathi-Rao Narayanagari. Additional authors include Hua Zhou and Aristotelis Tsirigos at NYU Langone Health and School of Medicine, Miguel A. Miranda-Roman and Ping Chi at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Eduardo Vilar at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Einstein has licensed the BAX activator technology to BAKX Therapeutics Inc., which plans to commercialize the technology further to benefit patients. Dr. Gavathiotis is a co-founder and scientific advisor of BAKX Therapeutics, Inc.</p><p>Studies were supported by the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance, NCI grant 2R01CA178394, and the Irma T. Hirschl Trust Career Award. Partial support was also provided by NCI grant P30 CA013330, 1S10OD01630 and a NYSTEM grant to the Einstein Stem Cell Isolation and Xenotransplantation Facility.</p>','2022-03-08 13:06:02.872673','uploads/news/41419_2013_Article_BFcddis2013350_Fig1_HTML.jpg',1,'Albert Einstein College of Medicine','A research team has devised a novel and highly promising strategy for overcoming a key cause of cancer deaths: the ability of cancer cells to thrive in the face of chemotherapy drugs designed to destroy them.',1,41,'<li>Andrea Lopez, Denis E. Reyna, Nadege Gitego, Felix Kopp, Hua Zhou, Miguel A. Miranda-Roman, Lars Ulrik Nordstrøm, Swathi-Rao Narayanagari, Ping Chi, Eduardo Vilar, Aristotelis Tsirigos, Evripidis Gavathiotis. <strong>Co-targeting of BAX and BCL-XL proteins broadly overcomes resistance to apoptosis in cancer</strong>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28741-7\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41467-022-28741-7</a>\r\n</li>'),(419,'Novel acute myeloid leukemia subtypes identified','novel-acute-myeloid-leukemia-subtypes-identified','2022-03-08 16:18:58.489379','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">In order to better treat patients diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), researchers need to understand the pathological processes and distinguish between different subgroups of the disease. With the help of proteome and genetic analysis, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, together with cooperation partners from the Frankfurt University Hospital, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) as well as German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) have discovered a new subtype. This subtype shows increased amounts of mitochondrial proteins as well as an altered mitochondrial metabolism. In laboratory tests, these so-called Mito-AML cells can be combated more effectively with inhibitors against mitochondrial respiration than with conventional chemotherapeutic agents.</p><p>Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive cancer originating from blood cells. When immature blood cells in the bone marrow acquire certain aberrations in their genome they can become malignant and overgrow the bone marrow, the place where normally blood cells are produced. As a consequence, normal blood cells are suppressed by leukemia cells which leads to infections, bleeding and ultimatively death of patients. Most patients diagnosed with AML undergo chemotherapy.</p><p>In a multidisciplinary project, a team of researchers led by Matthias Mann from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry as well as Thomas Oellerich and Hubert Serve from the University Hospital Frankfurt, DKTK &amp; DKFZ studied the proteome -- i.e. the totality of all proteins -- of AML cells. By combining the proteome and genome data, the researchers have identified several AML subgroups with specific biological features. One of the subgroups -- the so-called Mito-AML -- was only recognisable at the proteome level and had therefore not been discovered before. The new subgroup is characterised by a high number of mitochondrial proteins and an altered mitochondrial metabolism and shows clinical resistance to chemotherapy.</p><p><strong>Possible approach for new therapies</strong></p><p>Since mitochondria are the power plants of cells, the research team further investigated whether the disease-specific metabolic changes in Mito-AML can be therapeutically exploited. In a series of experiments, they found that drugs that interfere with mitochondrial respiration are highly effective in Mito-AML cell cultures and thus might be a more effective therapy compared to traditional chemotherapeutics. These agents include, for example, the drug venetoclax.</p><p>In the last decades genomic studies already identified molecular subtypes within the disease thereby opening up a perspective for personalized therapeutic approaches. This has certainly revolutionised the molecular understanding of the disease and laid the groundwork for personalised therapies. Despite these developments, the prognosis for AML remains poor. This highlights the urgent need to better understand the pathologically altered processes during AML and to search for more efficient therapies.</p><p>To study the protein expression profiles in AML cells, the team used mass spectrometry. This technology allows proteins to be identified and quantified by determining their specific weight. The protein expression profiles provide researchers with an overview of which proteins are present in the pathologically altered cells and in what quantities. In parallel, the team examined the human genome of AML cells using DNA and RNA sequencing technologies.</p><p>\"The discovery of the Mito-AML subset demonstrates the great potential of proteomics technology for identifying clinically relevant biomarkers and drug targets. Our study clearly shows that genomic and proteomic data complement each other, allowing us to elucidate previously undescribed aspects of disease biology and to name innovative treatment approaches,\" says Matthias Mann. \"Our approach led to the discovery of new molecular AML subgroups with clinical relevance. It thus provides a proteomic systematics as a basis for a better molecular understanding and clinical classification of AML,\" says Thomas Oellerich.</p><p>This new insight was made possible through close collaboration between clinicians at Frankfurt University and the Study Alliance Leukemia (SAL), a nationwide network to improve the treatment of AML, and basic scientists. \"It helps us understand why some patients respond better to different forms of therapy than others,\" says Hubert Serve. Next, medical researchers want to test the laboratory results in clinical trials on patients.</p>','2022-03-08 13:06:05.065592','uploads/news/download_29.jpg',1,'Max-Planck-Gesellschaft','Researchers have discovered the first proteomic subtype of an aggressive blood cancer by using mass spectrometry technology.',1,69,'<li>Ashok Kumar Jayavelu, Sebastian Wolf, Florian Buettner, Gabriela Alexe, Björn Häupl, Federico Comoglio, Constanze Schneider, Carmen Doebele, Dominik C. Fuhrmann, Sebastian Wagner, Elisa Donato, Carolin Andresen, Anne C. Wilke, Alena Zindel, Dominique Jahn, Bianca Splettstoesser, Uwe Plessmann, Silvia Münch, Khali Abou-El-Ardat, Philipp Makowka, Fabian Acker, Julius C. Enssle, Anjali Cremer, Frank Schnütgen, Nina Kurrle, Björn Chapuy, Jens Löber, Sylvia Hartmann, Peter J. Wild, Ilka Wittig, Daniel Hübschmann, Lars Kaderali, Jürgen Cox, Bernhard Brüne, Christoph Röllig, Christian Thiede, Björn Steffen, Martin Bornhäuser, Andreas Trumpp, Henning Urlaub, Kimberly Stegmaier, Hubert Serve, Matthias Mann, Thomas Oellerich. <strong>The proteogenomic subtypes of acute myeloid leukemia</strong>. <em>Cancer Cell</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ccell.2022.02.006\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.ccell.2022.02.006</a>\r\n</li>'),(420,'Using raw materials more sustainably','using-raw-materials-more-sustainably','2022-03-08 16:36:07.734434','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">The experimental elucidation of the structures at the interface between a working catalyst and the reacting molecules is the key to a fundamental understanding of heterogeneous catalysis. Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have reassigned the vibrational spectrum of vanadium pentoxide, an important catalyst for the synthesis of valuable products through the reaction of organic molecules with gas-phase oxygen, and have thus been able to elucidate which centres are involved in the activation of the oxygen molecule and the oxidation of hydrocarbons.</p><p>In the crystal structure of vanadium pentoxide, three different types of oxygen atoms are distinguished by how they link neighbouring vanadium atoms. The vibrational spectra of the oxide measured by Raman spectroscopy differ when the oxygen atoms with the regular atomic mass 16 are exchanged for the heavier oxygen isotope with mass 18. The researchers have now simulated the Raman spectra for the cases where either only one of the three positions in the solid or all three are occupied by a heavier oxygen atom. By comparing calculated spectra with spectra measured in the presence of isotopically labelled oxygen, the team of the Fitz Haber Institute showed which of the three different oxygen atoms in the lattice of the catalyst reacts with the gas phase.</p><p>Due to the well-defined structure of the solid and the fact that the investigations were carried out under realistic catalysis conditions, experimentally verified conclusions about the influence of the reaction conditions in the oxidation of propane on the structure of the working catalyst were possible. The type of the oxygen atom and whether only the surface or also centres in deeper layers of the solid are involved in the reaction depends on the temperature and the chemical composition of the gas phase. This information is important because different oxygen species direct the surface reaction either towards valuable oxidation products or towards a total combustion of the hydrocarbon to carbon dioxide. It was found that only at very high temperatures and under strongly reducing conditions are oxygen atoms in the lattice of the catalyst exchanged for oxygen atoms from the gas phase. Under conditions where the catalyst produces high-value reaction products like propylene or oxygenates, this is hardly the case and measurable only after long times in operation. This means that established mechanistic and design concepts in oxidation catalysis have to be reconsidered in order to achieve a sustainable use of raw materials by avoiding their total combustion to carbon dioxide.</p>','2022-03-08 13:06:11.169114','uploads/news/download_30.jpg',1,'Max-Planck-Gesellschaft','Insights into the oxidation of hydrocarbons at vanadium pentoxide pave the way for a new catalyst design.',1,131,'<li>Yuanqing Wang, Frank Rosowski, Robert Schlögl, Annette Trunschke. <strong>Oxygen Exchange on Vanadium Pentoxide</strong>. <em>The Journal of Physical Chemistry C</em>, 2022; 126 (7): 3443 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.2c00174\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1021/acs.jpcc.2c00174</a>\r\n</li>'),(421,'Common houseplants can improve air quality indoors','common-houseplants-can-improve-air-quality-indoors','2022-03-08 16:38:30.625806','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Ordinary potted house plants can potentially make a significant contribution to reducing air pollution in homes and offices, according to new research led by the University of Birmingham and in partnership with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS).</p><p>During a series of experiments monitoring common houseplants exposed to nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2</sub>) -- a common pollutant -- researchers calculated that in some conditions, the plants could be able to reduce NO<sub>2</sub> by as much as 20 per cent.</p><p>The researchers tested three houseplants commonly found in UK homes, easy to maintain and not overly expensive to buy. They included Peace lily (<em>Spathiphyllum wallisii</em>), Corn plant (<em>Dracaena fragrans)</em> and fern arum<em> (Zamioculcas zamiifolia).</em></p><p>Each plant was put, by itself, into a test chamber containing levels of NO<sub>2</sub> comparable to an office situated next to a busy road.</p><p>Over a period of one hour, the team calculated that all the plants, regardless of species, were able to remove around half the NO<sub>2</sub> in the chamber. The performance of the plants was not dependent on the plants\' environment, for example whether it was in light or dark conditions, and whether the soil was wet or dry.</p><p>Lead researcher Dr Christian Pfrang said: \"The plants we chose were all very different from each other, yet they all showed strikingly similar abilities to remove NO<sub>2</sub> from the atmosphere. This is very different from the way indoor plants take up CO<sub>2</sub> in our earlier work, which is strongly dependent on environmental factors such as night time or daytime, or soil water content.\"</p><p>The team also calculated what these results might mean for a small office (15 m<sup>3</sup>) and a medium-sized office (100 m<sup>3</sup>) with different levels of ventilation. In a poorly ventilated small office with high levels of air pollution, they calculated that five houseplants would reduce NO<sub>2</sub>levels by around 20 per cent. In the larger space, the effect would be smaller -- 3.5 per cent, though this effect would be increased by adding more plants.</p><p>While the effects of the plants in reducing NO<sub>2</sub> are clear, the precise mechanism by which they do this remain a mystery. Dr Pfrang added: \"We don\'t think the plants are using the same process as they do for CO<sub>2</sub> uptake, in which the gas is absorbed through stomata -- tiny holes -- in the leaves. There was no indication, even during longer experiments, that our plants released the NO<sub>2</sub> back into the atmosphere, so there is likely a biological process taking place also involving the soil the plant grows in -- but we don\'t yet know what that is.\"</p><p>Dr Tijana Blanusa, principal horticultural scientist at the RHS and one of the researchers involved in the study said: \"This complements RHS efforts to understand scientific detail behind what we know to be a popular passion. Understanding the limits of what we can expect from plants helps us plan and advise on planting combinations that not only look good but also provide an important environmental service.\"</p><p>In the next phase of the research, the team will be designing sophisticated tools for modelling air quality indoors encompassing a much wider range of variables. The new project, funded by the Met Office, will use mobile air quality measuring instruments to identify pollutants and test their effects in both residential and office spaces, producing a wealth of data to inform the tool\'s development.</p>','2022-03-08 13:06:15.509864','uploads/news/monstera-gbecc5feda_1920.jpg',1,'University of Birmingham','Ordinary potted house plants can potentially make a significant contribution to reducing air pollution in homes and offices, according to new research.',1,108,'<li>Curtis Gubb, Tijana Blanusa, Alistair Griffiths, Christian Pfrang. <strong>Potted plants can remove the pollutant nitrogen dioxide indoors</strong>. <em>Air Quality, Atmosphere &amp; Health</em>, 2022; 15 (3): 479 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11869-022-01171-6\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1007/s11869-022-01171-6</a>\r\n</li>'),(422,'New modelling framework developed to improve infectious disease control','new-modelling-framework-developed-to-improve-infectious-disease-control','2022-03-08 16:45:03.540275','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A new model to analyse infectious disease outbreak data has been developed by mathematicians that could be used to improve disease tracking and control.</p><p>Researchers from the University of Nottingham developed a new data-driven framework for modelling how infectious diseases spread through a population that could reduce errors in decisions made about disease control measures. Their findings have been published in PNAS.</p><p>The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that the ability to unravel the dynamics of the spread of infectious diseases is profoundly important for designing effective control strategies and assessing existing ones. Mathematical models of how infectious diseases spread continue to play a vital role in understanding, mitigating, and preventing outbreaks.</p><p>Dr Rowland Seymour led the study and explains: \"Most of the infectious disease models contain specific assumptions about how transmission occurs within a population. These assumptions can be arbitrary, particularly when it comes to describing how transmission varies between individuals of different types or in different locations and can be lacking in appropriate biological or epidemiological justification. this can lead to erroneous scientific conclusions and misleading predictions.\"</p><p>The researchers developed a data-driven framework for modelling how infectious diseases spread through a population by avoiding strict modelling assumptions which are often difficult to justify. The researchers used the method to enhance understanding of the 2001 UK Foot and Mouth outbreak in which over 6 million animals were culled with a cost to the public and private purse of over £8 billion.</p><p>The proposed methodology is very general making it applicable to a wide class of models, including those which take into account the population\'s structure (e.g. households, workplaces) and individual\'s characteristics (e.g. location and age).</p><p>Dr Rowland Seymour continues: \"Infectious diseases both within human and animal populations continue to pose serious health and socioeconomic risks. We have developed a suite of contemporary statistical methods that dispenses with the need for the underlying transmission assumptions of existing models. Our approach enables instead the analysis to be driven by evidence in the data and hence allowing policy makers to make data-driven decisions about controlling the spread of a disease. Our work is another tool in the fight against the spread of infectious diseases and we are excited to develop this framework further.\"</p><p>This work has opened several avenues for further research in this area, including improving its computationally efficiency and being applicable in real-time, i.e. when the outbreak is still ongoing. The latter is of material importance for policy makers and government authorities, so they can be responsive to the data that is emerging from the outbreak.</p>','2022-03-08 13:06:20.404367','uploads/news/new-modeling-framework.jpg',1,'University of Nottingham','A new model to analyse infectious disease outbreak data has been developed by mathematicians that could be used to improve disease tracking and control.',1,52,'<li>Rowland G. Seymour, Theodore Kypraios, Philip D. O’Neill. <strong>Bayesian nonparametric inference for heterogeneously mixing infectious disease models</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (10) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2118425119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2118425119</a>\r\n</li>'),(425,'New micro-protein helps yeast cells cope with nutrient scarcity','new-micro-protein-helps-yeast-cells-cope-with-nutrient-scarcity','2022-03-08 16:46:44.737786','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Researchers from the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Montreal (Canada) have discovered that a micro-protein, which they named Nrs1, supports cell division and proliferation when nutrients are scarce. This result, published in <em>PLOS Biolog</em>y last week, sheds a new light on how evolution subtly reshapes the genomes of unicellular microorganisms, providing them with plasticity to adjust their growth and proliferation to ever-changing environments.</p><p>At the turn of the millennium, scientists became able to experimentally determine the DNA sequence of entire genomes. They next used this information to <em>predict</em> genome products: the proteins.</p><p>\"At this time, very short DNA sections coding for very small proteins were overlooked. Why spend resources studying these tiny, shy dudes when there\'s already so much to do with the big, tough guys? This strategy paid off to identify central, evolutionary conserved cellular mechanisms; but the <em>adaptation potential</em>, though, hides in less conserved, often short DNA sequences,\" says University Researcher Sylvain Tollis who carried out the study in Montreal and at the Institute of Biomedicine, University of Eastern Finland.</p><p>Furthermore, micro-proteins are increasingly associated with disease in humans: for instance, humanin, which is only 24 amino acids long, is involved in neuronal cell death and survival<sup>1</sup>, while the cancer-associated microprotein CASIMO1 promotes cell proliferation and motility in breast cancer cell lines through the actin cytoskeleton<sup>2</sup>. These results urge the community to scrutinize smaller proteins, or micro-proteins, and other genome sequences previously left aside.</p><p>In the newly published study, the authors used the bakers\' yeast <em>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</em> to seek for molecular routes by which the information on nutrient availability could be communicated to the key molecules, called transcription factors, that orchestrate the commitment to division, referred to as the Start point. Indeed, cell growth and division are strongly affected by the availability of nutrients. For this purpose, they deleted from the yeast genome the main activators of cell division, and overexpressed one by one the remainder of yeast proteins, including many small ones. A unique micro-protein emerged from this screen as capable of rescuing cell proliferation despite the absence of key cell division activators. Further biochemical analyses and ground-breaking quantitative microscopy investigations revealed that cells express this protein only under poor nitrogen conditions, and when it is time to divide. The authors have therefore renamed it as Nrs1 for Nitrogen-Responsive Start regulator. Nrs1 binds to and activates the main transcription factors that trigger the decision to divide, providing an alternative, nutrient-regulated mechanism for Start activation.</p><p>Sequence analysis across yeast species indicated that Nrs1 is a recently-evolved microprotein, illustrating how microproteins can rapidly emerge to rewire fundamental cellular processes.</p><p>\"Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that short DNA sequences would require less evolution-selected mutations than long sequences to be functionally optimized. This work raises the hypothesis that micro-proteins would make a versatile tool for evolution to quickly rewire key cellular pathways and provide plasticity to adapt to changing environment,\" Tollis concludes.</p><p>This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Genome Quebec and Genome Canada, and the Sigrid Jusélius Foundation.</p><p><strong>References:</strong></p><p>1: Gong Z, Tasset I, Diaz A, Anguiano J, Tas E, Cui L, et al. Humanin is an endogenous activator of chaperone-mediated autophagy.<em> J Cell Biol.</em> 2018;217(2):635-47.</p><p>2: Polycarpou-Schwarz M, Gross M, Mestdagh P, Schott J, Grund SE, Hildenbrand C, et al. The cancer-associated microprotein CASIMO1 controls cell proliferation and interacts with squalene epoxidase modulating lipid droplet formation. <em>Oncogene.</em> 2018;37(34):4750-68.</p>','2022-03-08 13:06:35.022567','uploads/news/download_31.jpg',1,'University of Eastern Finland','Researchers have discovered that a micro-protein, which they named Nrs1, supports cell division and proliferation when nutrients are scarce.',1,51,'<li>Sylvain Tollis, Jaspal Singh, Roger Palou, Yogitha Thattikota, Ghada Ghazal, Jasmin Coulombe-Huntington, Xiaojing Tang, Susan Moore, Deborah Blake, Eric Bonneil, Catherine A. Royer, Pierre Thibault, Mike Tyers. <strong>The microprotein Nrs1 rewires the G1/S transcriptional machinery during nitrogen limitation in budding yeast</strong>. <em>PLOS Biology</em>, 2022; 20 (3): e3001548 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001548\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1371/journal.pbio.3001548</a>\r\n</li>'),(426,'CO2 could be stored below ocean floor','co2-could-be-stored-below-ocean-floor','2022-03-08 16:48:11.654715','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. To combat its potentially catastrophic effects, scientists are searching for new technologies that could help the world reach carbon neutrality.</p><p>One potential solution that is drawing growing attention is to capture and store carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) emissions in the form of hydrates under ocean floor sediments, kept in place by the natural pressure created by the weight of the seawater above. A major question, however, has been how stable this stored CO<sub>2 </sub>would be for the extended periods of storage required to keep the carbon in place and out of the atmosphere.</p><p>Now researchers from the National University of Singapore\'s (NUS) Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering have demonstrated the first-ever experimental evidence of the stability of CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates in oceanic sediments -- an essential step in making this carbon storage technology a viable reality.</p><p>\"It\'s the first of its kind experimental evidence that we hope is going to spur further activity on this technology development,\" said Professor Praveen Linga, the lead researcher of the study. The team\'s findings -- part of a project funded through the Singapore Energy Centre -- were first published in scientific journal <em>Chemical Engineering Journal.</em></p><p>Using a specially designed laboratory reactor the NUS team showed that CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates can remain stable in oceanic sediments for a period of up to 30 days. Going forward, the team says, the same process can be used to validate the stability of CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates for much longer periods.</p><p><strong>Trapped in ice-like substances</strong></p><p>At low-temperature and under high-pressure conditions created by the ocean, CO<sub>2</sub> can be trapped within water molecules, forming an ice-like substance. These CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates form at a temperature just above the freezing point of water and can store as much as 184 cubic metres of CO<sub>2</sub> in one cubic meter of hydrates.</p><p>The presence of huge volumes of methane hydrates in similar locations around the world and their safe existence presents a natural analogy to support the belief that CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates will remain stable and safe if stored in deep-oceanic sediments.</p><p>The research team says that this technology could eventually be developed into a commercial-scale process, allowing countries like Singapore to efficiently sequester more than two million tons of CO<sub>2</sub> annually as hydrates to meet emission reduction targets.</p><p><strong>Ocean floor conditions</strong></p><p>Working with specially designed equipment, Prof Linga and his team recreated the conditions of the deep ocean floor, where temperatures range between 2°C to 6°C and pressures are 100 times higher than what we experience at sea level. Creating a macro-scale reactor that could maintain such conditions was challenging and is one of the reasons why experiments to test the stability of CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates were previously not possible. The NUS team overcame this challenge using an in-house designed pressurised vessel, lined with a silica sand bed, which imitated ocean sediments.</p><p>The team was able to form solid hydrates on top and within the silica sand bed and transitioned the pressurised vessel to mimic oceanic conditions to observe the stability of the formed solid CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates in sediments. Under pressurised conditions, the hydrates were observed for 14 to 30 days and were found to show a high degree of stability.</p><p>This hydrate technology would allow nations to sequester large volumes of carbon emissions in deep-ocean geological formations in addition to how it is currently stored in depleted oil and gas reserves and saline aquifer formations. For countries like Singapore, which has set a target to become carbon neutral by 2050, the technology could be a significant tool for reducing CO<sub>2</sub> emissions.</p><p>\"In order to achieve carbon-neutrality targets, we have to look at new options that provide scale and speed to sequester CO<sub>2</sub>. Deep-ocean sequestration in sediments as CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates is a promising solution,\" said Prof Linga.</p><p>The next step for the team will be to scale up the experiment\'s volume and timescale.</p><p>\"From an experimental standpoint, we are planning to scale up by 10 times along with further innovations to develop quantifiable tools and methods for the technology,\" said Prof Linga. Moving forward, he said, the team aimed soon to demonstrate six months stability for the CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates.</p><p>The team\'s recently announced funding under the Low-Carbon Energy Research Funding Initiative from the Singapore government to develop cutting-edge low-carbon energy technology solutions will greatly support the development of this storage technology. With the planned future experiments, the team hopes to develop and validate models that can predict the stability of CO<sub>2</sub> hydrates thousands of years into the future.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 13:06:40.267559','uploads/news/download_32.jpg',1,'National University of Singapore','Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity. To combat its potentially catastrophic effects, scientists are searching for new technologies that could help the world reach carbon neutrality. One potential solution that is drawing growing attention is to capture and store carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the form of hydrates under ocean floor sediments, kept in place by the natural pressure created by the weight of the seawater above. A major question, however, has been how stable this stored CO2 would be for the extended periods of storage required to keep the carbon in place and out of the atmosphere. A research team has shown that CO2 hydrates, under the ocean\'s cold and high-pressure environment, can remain stable in oceanic sediments for up to 30 days. Going forward, the team says, the same process can be used to validate the stability of CO2 hydrates for much longer periods.',1,163,'<li>M Fahed Qureshi, Junjie Zheng, Himanshu Khandelwal, Pradeep Venkataraman, Adam Usadi, Timothy A Barckholtz, Ashish B Mhadeshwar, Praveen Linga. <strong>Laboratory demonstration of the stability of CO2 hydrates in deep-oceanic sediments</strong>. <em>Chemical Engineering Journal</em>, 2022; 432: 134290 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2021.134290\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.cej.2021.134290</a>\r\n</li>'),(428,'Increasing frequency of El Niño events expected by 2040','increasing-frequency-of-el-nino-events-expected-by-2040','2022-03-08 16:49:43.777966','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Global weather fluctuations called El Niño events are likely to become more frequent by 2040, a new study shows.</p><p>El Niño -- the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean -affects climate, ecosystems and societies worldwide.</p><p>The study examined four possible scenarios for future carbon emissions, and found increased risk of El Niño events in all four.</p><p>This means El Niño events and associated climate extremes are now more likely \"regardless of any significant mitigation actions\" to reduce emissions, the researchers warn.</p><p>Lead author Dr Jun Ying, from the Second Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources in China and the University of Exeter, said: \"We know from previous studies that, when measuring El Niño changes in terms of rainfall shifts in the eastern equatorial Pacific, models predict an increase in the frequency of events.</p><p>\"This study shows that those changes could happen after the next two decades.\"</p><p>The study, published in <em>Nature Climate Change</em>, examines the \"time of emergence\" of changes in the tropical Pacific using state-of-the-art climate models.</p><p>The time of emergence is defined as when the signal of climate change emerges from the usual background noise of natural climate variability.</p><p>When looking at changes in El Niño rainfall patterns, the best estimate of the time of emergence of changes converges on 2040 in all of the four emissions scenarios considered.</p><p>Co-author Professor Mat Collins, from the University of Exeter and part of the Global Systems Institute, added: \"What surprised us is that changes emerge regardless of the scenario we look at.</p><p>\"Because rainfall in the tropics is associated with the warmest sea surface temperatures (SSTs), it is the relative changes in SST that are more important than the absolute change.</p><p>\"This leads us to the rather stark conclusion that these changes are essentially unavoidable.\"</p><p>The study was carried out by Dr Ying as part of a year-long Chinese Scholarship Council sponsored visit to the University of Exeter.</p><p>The paper is entitled: \"Emergence of Climate Change in the Tropical Pacific.\"</p>','2022-03-08 13:06:47.772407','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Exeter','Global weather fluctuations called El Niño events are likely to become more frequent by 2040, a new study shows.',1,164,'<li>Jun Ying, Matthew Collins, Wenju Cai, Axel Timmermann, Ping Huang, Dake Chen, Karl Stein. <strong>Emergence of climate change in the tropical Pacific</strong>. <em>Nature Climate Change</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01301-z\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41558-022-01301-z</a>\r\n</li>'),(429,'Extending the battery life of small drones to strengthen security on U.S. Border','extending-the-battery-life-of-small-drones-to-strengthen-security-on-u.s.-border','2022-03-08 14:39:30.209788',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">To enhance security of the nation\'s border, a pioneer in drone technology at the University of Houston is proposing a continuous flight of small drones over its perimeter. One small problem: The battery limitation of small drones (they last about 30 minutes) is a major obstacle to continuous flight time.</p><p>To address this problem, Gino Lim, R. Larry and Gerlene (Gerri) R. Snider Endowed Chair of Industrial Engineering, proposes the use of drones with a built-in wireless electrification line (E-line) battery charging system. Lim pioneered that technology in 2017.</p><p>\"Smart border patrol using small-size drones may provide significant help in patrolling areas inaccessible to patrol agents, reduce agent response time, and increase the safety of patrol agents working in dangerous regions. To strengthen border security and reduce the need for patrolling via human agents, we propose the use of drones coupled with the use of E-lines for continuous border surveillance,\" Lim reports in the journal <em>Computers &amp; Industrial Engineering</em>. The paper\'s first author is Navid Ahmadian, a former doctoral student in Lim\'s lab.</p><p>The E-line system charges the drones during their surveillance, enables a continuous and seamless flight over the border and eliminates the need for battery charging stations. Continuous monitoring sends live information about different locations of the borderline to the designated control centers, helping enhance border security and reducing the necessity of systems operated by people.</p><p>\"This work provides an optimization model to determine the optimal number of drones, the optimal length of the E-line, and the optimal location of the E-line system required for border surveillance,\" said Lim.</p><p>In developing their model, the team reviewed a case study of a segment of the U.S.-Mexico borderline spanning 22.8 miles and located between two border crossings within the Cochise County limits in Arizona.</p><p>Although drones have been the subject of many studies, few studies have focused on the implementation of the drone for continuous border surveillance.</p><p>In previous work Lim provided a template for drone routes targeting chronic patients in rural areas to assist in medicine delivery via drone.</p>','2022-03-08 14:39:30.209788','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Houston','To enhance security of the nation\'s border, a pioneer in drone technology is proposing a continuous flight of small drones over its perimeter with enhanced, wireless batteries to extend flying time.\n',1,27,'<li>Navid Ahmadian, Gino J. Lim, Maryam Torabbeigi, Seon Jin Kim. <strong>Smart border patrol using drones and wireless charging system under budget limitation</strong>. <em>Computers &amp; Industrial Engineering</em>, 2022; 164: 107891 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2021.107891\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.cie.2021.107891</a>\n</li>'),(430,'A speed limit could be a breakthrough for stem cell therapy','a-speed-limit-could-be-a-breakthrough-for-stem-cell-therapy','2022-03-08 14:54:46.735636',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Replacing sick or damaged cells with healthy cells: this is a major goal of regenerative medicine. One of the most promising approaches is cellular reprogramming, whereby one cell type in our body converts to another cell type. Research carried out at Helmholtz Munich and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München has discovered new ways to improve the cellular reprogramming efficiency, unlocking potential for cellular repair therapies.</p><p>Adult cells in our body can only give rise to the same cell type. For example, a skin cell cannot give rise to a muscle cell but to skin cells only. This limits the potential use of adult cells for therapy. During early development, however, the cells in the embryo have the capacity to generate all cell types of our body, including stem cells. This capacity, which is called totipotency, has served as an inspiration for researchers to find new ways to recapitulate totipotency through cellular reprogramming in the lab.</p><p><strong>Totipotent cells have their own speed</strong></p><p>Totipotent cells have many properties, but we do not know all of them yet. Researchers at Helmholtz Munich have now made a new discovery: \"We found out that in totipotent cells, the mother cells of stem cells, DNA replication occurs at a different pace compared to other more differentiated cells. It is much slower than in any other cell type we studied,\" says Tsunetoshi Nakatani, first-author of the new study.</p><p>DNA replication, in fact, is one of the most important biological processes. Throughout the course of our lives, each time that a cell divides it generates an exact copy of its DNA so that the resulting daughter cells carry identical genetic material. This fundamental principle enables faithful inheritance of our genetic material.</p><p>The researchers discovered that the speed of DNA replication is also low in totipotent-like cells, which scientists can culture in a petri dish. Tsunetoshi Nakatani adds: \"This led us to the question: If we manage to change the speed at which DNA replicates, can we improve the reprogramming of cells into totipotent cells?\"</p><p><strong>Less speed, improved cellular reprogramming</strong></p><p>In an outstanding experimental effort, the researchers observed indeed that slowing down the DNA replication speed -- for example by limiting the substrate that the cells use for DNA synthesis -- increases reprogramming efficiency, that is, the rate at which cells can convert to another cell type.</p><p>\"This is amazing,\" says Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla, the leader of the study. \"Over the years, we have been studying totipotent cells in order to learn how nature has made them so incredibly capable of generating all cell types of our bodies. This is a fundamental strategy of our research towards regenerative medicine approaches. This new concept is very simple, yet extremely important and we believe that it is a huge advance for stem cell therapy.\"</p><p><strong>About the people</strong></p><p>Prof. Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla is Head of the Stem Cell Center at Helmholtz Munich and leads the Institute for Epigenetics and Stem Cells. She is also Professor for Stem Cell Biology at Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität München (LMU). Tsunetoshi Nakatani is the first author of this study and is a postdoc in Torres-Padilla\'s group at Helmholtz Munich.</p>','2022-03-08 14:54:46.735636','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health','One of the most promising approaches to replacing sick or damaged cells with healthy cells is cellular reprogramming, whereby one cell type in our body converts to another cell type. Research has uncovered new ways to improve the cellular reprogramming efficiency, unlocking potential for cellular repair therapies.\n',1,27,'<li>Tsunetoshi Nakatani, Jiangwei Lin, Fei Ji, Andreas Ettinger, Julien Pontabry, Mikiko Tokoro, Luis Altamirano-Pacheco, Jonathan Fiorentino, Elmir Mahammadov, Yu Hatano, Capucine Van Rechem, Damayanti Chakraborty, Elias R. Ruiz-Morales, Paola Y. Arguello Pascualli, Antonio Scialdone, Kazuo Yamagata, Johnathan R. Whetstine, Ruslan I. Sadreyev, Maria-Elena Torres-Padilla. <strong>DNA replication fork speed underlies cell fate changes and promotes reprogramming</strong>. <em>Nature Genetics</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01023-0\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41588-022-01023-0</a>\n</li>'),(434,'The secret to longevity? Ask a yellow-bellied marmot','the-secret-to-longevity-ask-a-yellow-bellied-marmot','2022-03-09 04:58:40.174185','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">What if you were told there was a completely natural way to stop your body from aging? The trick: You\'d have to hibernate from September to May each year.</p><p>That\'s what a team of UCLA biologists and colleagues studying yellow-bellied marmots discovered. These large ground squirrels are able to virtually halt the aging process during the seven to eight months they spend hibernating in their underground burrows, the researchers report today in the journal <em>Nature Ecology and Evolution</em>.</p><p>The study, the first to analyze the rate of aging among marmots in the wild, shows that this anti-aging phenomenon kicks in once the animals reach 2 years old, their age of sexual maturity.</p><p>The researchers studied marmot blood samples collected over multiple summer seasons in Colorado, when the animals are active above ground, to build statistical models that allowed them to estimate what occurred during hibernation. They assessed the biological aging of the marmots based on what are known as epigenetic changes -- hundreds of chemical modifications that occur to their DNA.</p><p>\"Our results from different statistical approaches reveal that epigenetic aging essentially stalls during hibernation,\" said lead author Gabriela Pinho, who conducted the study as a UCLA doctoral student advised by Daniel Blumstein and Robert Wayne, professors of ecology and evolutionary biology. \"We found that the epigenetic age of marmots increases during the active season, stops during hibernation and continues to increase in the next active season.\"</p><p>This process, the researchers said, helps explain why the average life span of a yellow-bellied marmot is longer than would be expected from its body weight.</p><p>Hibernation, an evolutionary adaptation that allows animals to survive in harsh seasonal environments where there is no food and temperatures are very low, is common among smaller mammals, like marmots, native to the mountainous western regions of the U.S. and Canada.</p><p>The marmots\' hibernation alternates between periods of metabolic suppression that last a week or two and shorter periods of increased metabolism, which generally last less than a day. During metabolic suppression, their breathing slows and their body temperature drops dramatically, to the point that \"they feel like fuzzy, cold rocks,\" Blumstein said.</p><p>In addition, they use a miniscule amount of energy, burning about a single gram of fat a day. \"That\'s essentially nothing for a 5,000-to-6,000-gram (11-13 lbs.) animal,\" Pinho noted. This allows them to save energy and survive long periods without food.</p><p>During their active summer season, marmots eat a lot, doubling their weight so that they have sufficient fat to survive the next hibernation period.</p><p>All of these hibernation-related conditions -- diminished food consumption, low body temperature and reduced metabolism -- are known to counter the aging process and promote longevity, the researchers said. This delayed aging is likely to occur in other mammals that hibernate, they said, because the molecular and physiological changes are similar.</p><p>\"This study is the closest scientists have gotten to showing that biological processes involved in hibernation are important contributors to their longer-than-expected life span based on their body weight,\" said Pinho, now a researcher with the nonprofit Institute of Ecological Research\'s Lowland Tapir Conservation Initiative in Brazil.</p><p>\"The fact that we are able to detect this reduced aging during hibernation in a wild population means the effect of hibernation on slowing aging is really strong,\" said Blumstein, a member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and a senior author of the study. \"This study was possible only because we had access to blood samples from free-living animals whose ages are known. Not many wild populations have detailed information about individual chronological age, and this reinforces the importance of long-term field projects.\"</p><p>There may be biomedical advantages to inducing hibernation conditions in humans or human cells, the researchers said -- to preserve organs for transplantation, for example, or as part of long-term space missions.</p><p>For the current publication, Pinho and her colleagues studied 73 female yellow-bellied marmots throughout their lives and collected blood samples every two weeks over 14 active seasons, analyzing them regularly. The marmots\' chronological age was calculated based on the date at which juveniles first emerged from their natal burrows. (The age of male marmots is difficult to determine, the researchers said, because they often migrate from one area to another.)</p><p>The research is part of part of a 60-year study of yellow-bellied marmots based at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Colorado and was funded by Brazil\'s Science Without Borders program, part of the country\'s National Counsel of Technological and Scientific Development, and the National Geographic Society, a Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory research fellowship and the National Science Foundation.</p><p>Other senior study authors are Robert Wayne; Matteo Pellegrini, a UCLA professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology; Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics and biostatistics at UCLA\'s Fielding School of Public Health who developed the \"epigenetic clock\" in 2013; Julien Martin from Canada\'s University of Ottawa; and Sagi Snir from Israel\'s University of Haifa. The authors received insights from UCLA\'s Statistical Consulting Group.</p>','2022-03-08 14:54:58.944006','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of California - Los Angeles','A new study shows that aging slows to a crawl when yellow-bellied marmots hibernate. These large ground squirrels are able to virtually halt the aging process during the seven to eight months they spend hibernating in their underground burrows, the researchers report. The study is the first to analyze the rate of aging among marmots in the wild.',1,53,'<li>Gabriela M. Pinho, Julien G. A. Martin, Colin Farrell, Amin Haghani, Joseph A. Zoller, Joshua Zhang, Sagi Snir, Matteo Pellegrini, Robert K. Wayne, Daniel T. Blumstein, Steve Horvath. <strong>Hibernation slows epigenetic ageing in yellow-bellied marmots</strong>. <em>Nature Ecology &amp; Evolution</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01679-1\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41559-022-01679-1</a>\r\n</li>'),(435,'Predicting the progression of rheumatoid arthritis','predicting-the-progression-of-rheumatoid-arthritis','2022-03-09 05:00:31.661938','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Predicting the future may be beyond our grasp, but what about predicting disease progression? Researchers in Japan have delved into the human genome to investigate a predictive tool for the progression of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an inflammatory autoimmune disease showing progressive joint damage.</p><p>In a new study published in <em>Arthritis &amp; Rheumatology</em>, researchers led by Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) used data from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of RA susceptibility to construct a polygenic risk score (PRS). They evaluated the PRS\'s ability to predict radiographic progression -- progressive anatomical damage assessed by radiographic imaging -- in individuals with RA.</p><p>In a GWAS, genomic analysis of a group of individuals is performed to identify genetic variants that may be associated with a certain trait or disease. A PRS can be generated from a GWAS dataset and represents an individual\'s risk of developing a specific disease based on a summation of the genetic variants associated with that disease. Previous studies have identified genetic factors associated with radiographic progression of RA, including the presence of anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPAs) and variants located in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region of the human chromosome that contribute to regulating the immune system. However, the predictive accuracy of these factors is not robust. Therefore, the TMDU-led research team set out to evaluate the ability of the PRS to predict radiographic progression in people with RA.</p><p>\"We generated the PRS using summary statistics from a GWAS analysis of RA susceptibility and evaluated radiographic joint damage retrospectively from patient medical records,\" explains lead author Suguru Honda.</p><p>The researchers then conducted statistical analysis to assess whether there is an association between PRS and severity of radiographic progression. Additionally, the research team performed a multivariable analysis to evaluate the association between radiographic progression and the combination of PRS and other factors such as sex, age of onset, and presence of ACPAs or HLA region variants.</p><p>\"Our analyses revealed an association between PRS and radiographic progression,\" says senior author Yuta Kochi. \"The PRS significantly differed between severe and non-severe progression groups.\"</p><p>The researchers found that patients with a higher PRS had a higher risk of severe progression, particularly among younger-onset individuals. Furthermore, the multivariable analysis revealed that the association of the PRS with radiographic progression is not influenced by other clinical factors. Thus, PRS\'s could be used to predict radiographic progression. These findings highlight the potential applications of genetic profiling in the development of precision medicine approaches for the treatment of RA.</p>','2022-03-08 14:55:43.453538','uploads/news/predicting-the-progres.jpg',1,'Tokyo Medical and Dental University','Researchers evaluated the ability of a polygenic risk score constructed from a genome-wide association study of rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility to predict radiographic progression, which is indicative of structural joint damage in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis. The research team identified an association between the polygenic risk score and radiographic progression, an observation that was pronounced in people with a younger age of onset of rheumatoid arthritis.',1,165,'<li>Suguru Honda, Katsunori Ikari, Koichiro Yano, Chikashi Terao, Eiichi Tanaka, Masayoshi Harigai, Yuta Kochi. <strong>Polygenic risk scores are associated with radiographic progression in patients with rheumatoid arthritis</strong>. <em>Arthritis &amp; Rheumatology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/art.42051\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1002/art.42051</a>\r\n</li>'),(437,'Early killer whales ate fish — not other marine mammals','early-killer-whales-ate-fish--not-other-marine-mammals','2022-03-09 05:02:01.279885','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Only two species of cetaceans (dolphins, whales, and porpoises), prey on other marine mammals: the true killer whale, or orca, and the false killer whale, which has a skeleton similar to the orca but gray coloring vs. black and white. Both predators are members of the oceanic dolphin family, with pods of orcas even known to aggressively hunt and eat blue whales -- the largest creatures to ever live. However, it is unclear when this predatory behavior began and fossil records for both species are extremely limited.</p><p>Now, a study published March 7 in the scientific journal <em>Current Biology</em>, co-authored by Jonathan Geisler, Ph.D., associate professor and department chair of anatomy at New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Giovanni Bianucci, Ph.D., a paleontologist at the University of Pisa (Italy), may hold vital clues.</p><p>In 2020, the remains of an ancient dolphin unknown to science were found on the Greek island of Rhodes, providing the first clear fossil evidence for the origins of the false killer whale. Geisler, Bianucci, and several other colleagues from the University of Pisa named the species <em>Rododelphis stamatiadisi</em>, after the island where the fossil was found and the paleontologist who made the discovery (Polychronis Stamatiadis). Based on the layer of earth that contained <em>Rododelphis</em>, it is estimated that the dolphin lived 1.5 million years ago, during the Pleistocene epoch.</p><p>To better understand <em>Rododelphis</em>, the researchers compared its anatomy to today\'s false killer whales and orcas, as well as <em>Orcinus citoniensis</em>, the orca\'s only known fossil relative. Based on the width of its skull, <em>Rododelphis</em> was roughly the same size as modern false killer whales, measuring 13 feet long and weighing approximately 1,200 pounds. Surprisingly, next to the fossil were remnants of its last meal: fish bones.</p><p>Much like modern orcas,<em> Orcinus </em>had very powerful jaw muscles and sharp interlocking teeth. However, these teeth were smaller than those of today\'s orcas, and there were more of them. Interestingly, the teeth of both <em>Orcinus</em> and <em>Rododelphis</em> lacked the rough scratches and chipping commonly caused by eating limbed prey, such as mammals. Instead, their teeth had fine scratches and little chipping, suggesting that both species ate fish.</p><p>The study\'s findings also contradict the popular theory that large whales, including the blue whale, evolved giant bodies to avoid predation. While the first giant whales emerged 3.6 million years ago, Geisler and Bianucci\'s findings suggest that ancient dolphins began preying on other marine mammals, including whales, well after this. The researchers believe that this behavior began in orcas within the last three million years, with false killer whales adapting this behavior within the last 1.5 million years.</p><p>\"The diversification of the oceanic dolphin family occurred within the last five million years, but fossil evidence from the Pleistocene epoch is exceedingly rare,\" said Geisler, who is an expert in marine mammal evolution. \"With <em>Rododelphis</em>, we\'re now beginning to fill this gap and better understand the repeated evolution of feeding adaptations in oceanic dolphins -- in other words, how both orcas and false killer whales separately evolved similar cranial anatomy and the behavior of feeding on other marine mammals.\"</p><p>While the findings provide the first fossil data for determining when these feeding adaptations began, narrowing the timeline further will require more fossils and additional research. Given this, the researchers call for future investigations in areas like Greece and Italy, some of the few regions where Pleistocene marine sediments are extensively exposed.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 14:56:00.522004','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'New York Institute of Technology','A new study provides vital clues on when killer whales began feeding on other marine mammals.',1,73,'<li>Giovanni Bianucci, Jonathan H. Geisler, Sara Citron, Alberto Collareta. <strong>The origins of the killer whale ecomorph</strong>. <em>Current Biology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.041\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.041</a>\r\n</li>'),(440,'Bunkers that save sight? Researchers take a close look','bunkers-that-save-sight-researchers-take-a-close-look','2022-03-09 05:03:12.214489','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Chronically stressing the retina can weaken it and damage our ability to see. But retinal cells have a remarkable ability to wall off damage, a team of neuroscientists led by UConn Health reports in the 1 March issue of <em>PNAS</em>. The walling-off or \"bunkering\" of the damage may be key to preserving our eyesight.</p><p>The retina is a delicate tissue in the back of the eye that detects light and transmits images to the brain. <em>Muller glia</em> are very long cells that span the thickness of the retina and provide mechanical strength, supporting the neurons and light receptors that detect light, shape and color.</p><p>Muller glia are also involved in protein changes related to retinal injury, being the first cells to respond. UConn School of Medicine neuroscientist Royce Mohan and colleagues have discovered that the <em>endfeet</em>, a specialized zone in Muller cells, is where proteins become modified when the retina is under stress. These endfeet are at the opposite end of the retina, quite a distance from light receptors. The researchers propose in the paper that this segregation of the endfeet and light receptors may permit light detection to continue even as the retina responds to stress.</p><p>The modification of proteins Mohan\'s lab has been studying is called citrullination. In citrullination, the amino acid arginine is changed into citrulline. Because in early stages of stress or disease, the citrullinated proteins stay sequestered in the Muller cells\' endfeet, Mohan calls this area the citrullination bunker. But if this bunker is chronically engaged, then the overabundance of citrullinated proteins reach other parts of the retina. Muller cells in human age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and mouse models of retinal degeneration reveal citrullinated proteins extending out of the endfeet and spreading throughout the cells.</p><p>Citrullination may have many effects on Muller glial cells which are only just being understood. For example, arginine is positively charged, while citrulline is not. The loss of the positive charges is permanent, and may irreversibly change the flexibility or other mechanical properties of the Muller glial cells. This may cause the Muller cells to become incapable of adapting to fluid build-up when the retina swells up under stress. Alternatively, it\'s possible the citrullinated proteins could appear foreign to the body and draw the attention of the immune system, potentially beginning autoimmune disease. Turning off citrullination in the end feet bunker could delay or avoid these problems and preserve eyesight for longer.</p><p>This team has also identified that the endfeet citrullination process is controlled by an enzyme known as peptidyl arginine deiminase-4 (PAD4). Small molecule inhibitors of PAD4 have been developed for other types of citrullination-dependent diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. Mohan believes that such therapeutic agents could be applied to reduce citrullination at early stages of AMD and spare the retina of undesired responses to this protein modification.</p>','2022-03-08 17:55:17.467838','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Connecticut','Chronically stressing the retina can weaken it and damage our ability to see. But retinal cells have a remarkable ability to wall off damage, a team of neuroscientists reports. The walling-off or \'bunkering\' of the damage may be key to preserving our eyesight.',1,27,'<li>Sarah I. Palko, Nicholas J. Saba, Elias Mullane, Benjamin D. Nicholas, Yosuke Nagasaka, Jayakrishna Ambati, Bradley D. Gelfand, Akihito Ishigami, Paola Bargagna-Mohan, Royce Mohan. <strong>Compartmentalized citrullination in Muller glial endfeet during retinal degeneration</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (9) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2121875119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2121875119</a>\r\n</li>'),(443,'Objection: No one can understand what you’re saying','objection-no-one-can-understand-what-youre-saying','2022-03-09 05:05:48.785325','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Legal documents, such as contracts or deeds, are notoriously difficult for nonlawyers to understand. A new study from MIT cognitive scientists has determined just why these documents are often so impenetrable.</p><p>After analyzing thousands of legal contracts and comparing them to other types of texts, the researchers found that lawyers have a habit of frequently inserting long definitions in the middle of sentences. Linguists have previously demonstrated that this type of structure, known as \"center-embedding,\" makes text much more difficult to understand.</p><p>While center-embedding had the most significant effect on comprehension difficulty, the MIT study found that the use of unnecessary jargon also contributes.</p><p>\"It\'s not a secret that legal language is very hard to understand. It\'s borderline incomprehensible a lot of the time,\" says Edward Gibson, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences and the senior author of the new paper. \"In this study, we\'re documenting in detail what the problem is.\"</p><p>The researchers hope that their findings will lead to greater awareness of this issue and stimulate efforts to make legal documents more accessible to the general public.</p><p>\"Making legal language more straightforward would help people understand their rights and obligations better, and therefore be less susceptible to being unnecessarily punished or not being able to benefit from their entitled rights,\" says Eric Martinez, a recent law school graduate and licensed attorney who is now a graduate student in brain and cognitive sciences at MIT.</p><p>Martinez is the lead author of the study, which appears in the journal <em>Cognition</em>. Frank Mollica, a former visiting researcher at MIT who is now a lecturer in computational cognitive science at the University of Edinburgh, is also an author of the paper.</p><p><strong>Translating legalese</strong></p><p>While a student at Harvard Law School, Martinez became interested in how lawyers and judges use language to communicate. He cross-registered for an MIT linguistics class taught by Gibson, and after he finished his law degree, he joined Gibson\'s lab as a grad student.</p><p>In their new study, Martinez, Mollica, and Gibson set out to figure out just why legal documents, such as terms of service agreements, mortgage documents, and other kinds of contracts, are so hard to understand. First, they compared a large selection of legal contracts (totaling about 3.5 million words) to other types of writing, including movie scripts, newspaper articles, and academic papers.</p><p>Using a text analysis tool that can identify patterns in large volumes of text, the researchers identified several features that occur much more commonly in legal documents than in other kinds of writing. As one example, they found that legal documents include many instances of nonstandard capitalization, such as using all caps. This is legally required in some types of legal documents to make certain provisions more conspicuous. Legal writing also features much more use of the passive voice, the researchers found.</p><p>When the researchers asked nonlawyers to read either legal documents or documents in which certain features of the text were altered without changing the meaning, they found that the passive voice and nonstandard capitalization did not make the documents more difficult to understand.</p><p>The biggest culprit, they found, was center-embedding. In this type of construction, a writer introduces the subject of a sentence, then inserts a definition of the subject, and then continues on with the sentence. In their paper, the researchers included this sentence, with a lengthy definition in parentheses, as an example:</p><p>\"In the event that any payment or benefit by the Company (all such payments and benefits, including the payments and benefits under Section 3(a) hereof, being hereinafter referred to as the \'Total Payments\'), would be subject to excise tax, then the cash severance payments shall be reduced.\"</p><p>The paper offers this as a more understandable alternative, with the definition separated out:</p><p>\"In the event that any payment or benefit by the Company would be subject to excise tax, then the cash severance payments shall be reduced. All payments and benefits by the Company shall hereinafter be referred to as the \'Total Payments.\' This includes the payments and benefits under Section 3(a) hereof.\"</p><p>The researchers found that when they tested people on their ability to understand and recall the meaning of a legal text, their performance improved the most when center-embedded structures were replaced with more straightforward sentences, with terms defined separately.</p><p>\"Using center-embedded clauses is standard writing practice in legal documents, and it makes the text very difficult to understand. It\'s memory intensive for anyone, including lawyers,\" Gibson says. \"This is something you could change and not affect the meaning in any way, but improve the transmission of the meaning.\"</p><p>Another feature that contributed to the incomprehensibility of legal documents was the use of uncommon words such as \"lessee\" and \"lessor.\" The researchers found that replacing these words with more common alternatives such as \"tenant\" and \"landlord\" improved readers\' ability to understand and recall the meaning of what they had read.</p><p>\"We found more words that could have been simplified in legal text than in any other genre that we looked at, including academic text,\" Martinez says.</p><p><strong>A plea for plainer language</strong></p><p>One argument that legal theorists have put forth for why legal documents are written the way they are is that the language needs to be complex in order to unambiguously convey the meaning of complicated related concepts. However, the MIT researchers believe that is not true, because they found that many of the jargony terms used in legal documents can be replaced with more common words without changing the meaning, and the center-embedded clauses can also be replaced by nonembedded clauses to give rise to the same meaning.</p><p>Another possibility that the MIT researchers raise is that lawyers may not want to change the way they write, either because it\'s what they\'re used to or because they want their documents to look \"professional\" and be taken more seriously by their colleagues and clients.</p><p>Efforts to write legal documents in plainer language date to at least the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon declared that federal regulations should be written in \"layman\'s terms.\" However, another study by Martinez, Mollica, and Gibson, not yet published, suggests that legal language has changed very little since that time. The researchers hope that their <em>Cognition</em> study, which points out specific aspects of legal language that make it more difficult to understand, will help inspire those who write legal documents to make a greater effort to improve the clarity of their documents.</p><p>\"This is the first time someone has been able to say, here\'s what makes legal language difficult to understand. Before, they just speculated, and maybe that\'s why it hasn\'t changed,\" Gibson says. \"If people know what makes it hard to understand, then maybe they can work on fixing it.\"</p><p>Making legal documents easier to understand could help anyone who needs to read such documents, but would have the most benefit for people who are unable to hire lawyers to help them, the researchers say.</p><p>\"This is something that is especially important for those who are not able to afford legal counsel to help them understand the law,\" Martinez says. \"If you can\'t afford to hire an attorney, then being able to read the documents on your own will better equip you to understand your rights.\"</p><p>This work was partially supported by research funds from MIT\'s Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.</p>','2022-03-08 17:55:35.950772','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Massachusetts Institute of Technology','A new study from cognitive scientists offers an answer to why legal documents such as contracts or deeds are often so impenetrable.',1,166,'<li>Eric Martínez, Francis Mollica, Edward Gibson. <strong>Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives processing difficulty in legal language</strong>. <em>Cognition</em>, 2022; 224: 105070 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105070\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105070</a>\r\n</li>'),(444,'Study of rare disease reveals insights on immune system response process','study-of-rare-disease-reveals-insights-on-immune-system-response-process','2022-03-08 18:02:18.739856',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">In laboratory experiments involving a class of mutations in people with a rare collection of immune system disorders, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have uncovered new details about how immune system cells respond to disease-causing bacteria, fungi and viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.</p><p>The findings, the scientists report, reveal a critical step in the molecular circuitry inside what are known as B and T cells that mobilizes the immune system to fight off foreign invaders. Though the researchers studied rare disease mutations, they believe the findings point to subtle genetic variations among all human populations that may help explain the wide variability in individual responses to infections.</p><p>Reporting Feb. 18 in <em>iScience</em>, the researchers focused on the cell biology and genetics of three inherited conditions classified as primary immunodeficiency syndromes, which are caused by mutations in the CARD11 gene in B and T immune cells. People with the syndromes are unable to mount immune defenses to pathogens, and are prone to life-threatening fungal infections, pneumonia, upper respiratory infections, and food and environmental allergies.</p><p>The culprit, an altered version of the CARD11 gene, fails to activate a signaling pathway that in turn spurs the immune system to recognize pathogens and launch defenses against them. The pathway is the same one activated by most vaccines.</p><p>Normally, the CARD11 gene encodes instructions for a cluster of proteins called an oligomer. When one or both copies of a gene is mutated, producing an abnormal form of the oligomer, the faulty copy overrides the potential to launch protective responses. Unlike some other gene mutations, in which one normal, functional copy of a gene can provide some protection, some CARD11 mutations severely impact the oligomer regardless of whether one or both gene copies are mutated.</p><p>\"Proteins in an oligomer sometimes need every protein subunit in the cluster to be fully functional for it to do its job,\" says Joel Pomerantz, Ph.D., associate professor of biological chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. \"In certain CARD11-related syndromes, one bad copy of the gene can disrupt the whole cluster.\"</p><p>To pinpoint how this happens, Pomerantz and Jacquelyn Bedsaul, the study report\'s first author and a graduate student at Johns Hopkins, focused on identifying which step in the signaling cascade requires all of the CARD11 protein subunits in the cluster to be functional.</p><p>Using laboratory-grown T cells with both functioning and mutated CARD11 genes, they tracked protein levels and the cells\' ability to become activated and signal other immune cells. They learned that CARD11 mutations primarily affect how the protein cluster opens itself to bind with other proteins in a series of chain reactions that awaken T cells to foreign pathogens.</p><p>Specifically, they found that the mutated version of CARD11 prevents the protein cluster from opening at all. If it\'s closed, the CARD11 cluster can\'t signal to other proteins to start an immune response.</p><p>The researchers also conducted experiments to learn if the opening phase is the only step affected by the mutated CARD11 gene. To determine this, they used genetically engineered T cells that have CARD11 proteins perpetually in the open state. The researchers found that even when CARD11 proteins are open, a mutation in CARD11 blocks the signaling pathway.</p><p>\"The mutation also appears to disrupt the ability of the protein subunits to interact with other signalizing partners and function normally,\" says Pomerantz.</p><p>The conditions arising from CARD11 mutations in their most severe forms are rare in humans. Pomerantz hopes that, eventually, scientists can develop gene editing techniques to correct CARD11 mutations in immune cells in these patients.</p><p>For people with genetic variants less severe than those studied for this report, Pomerantz says the findings offer insight into the wide variation among immune system responses, and could someday explain why some people are at higher risk of bad outcomes when exposed to disease-causing pathogens.</p><p>\"When we understand the fundamental mechanisms of how our immune cells operate, we\'ll gain a better understanding of how genetic variation in immune-related genes in the human population can lead to different immunologic outcomes,\" says Pomerantz.</p><p>In addition to Pomerantz and Bedsaul, Neha Shah and Shelby Hutcherson from Johns Hopkins contributed to the research.</p><p>The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (RO1AI148143, T32AI007247, T32CA009110 and T32GM007445) and funds from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Department of Biological Chemistry.</p>','2022-03-08 18:02:18.739856','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Johns Hopkins Medicine','In laboratory experiments involving a class of mutations in people with a rare collection of immune system disorders, researchers say they have uncovered new details about how immune system cells respond to disease-causing bacteria, fungi and viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.\n',1,27,'<li>Jacquelyn R. Bedsaul, Neha Shah, Shelby M. Hutcherson, Joel L. Pomerantz. <strong>Mechanistic impact of oligomer poisoning by dominant-negative CARD11 variants</strong>. <em>iScience</em>, 2022; 25 (2): 103810 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.103810\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.isci.2022.103810</a>\n</li>'),(445,'Natural gas flares likely source of respiratory illness spike','natural-gas-flares-likely-source-of-respiratory-illness-spike','2022-03-08 18:02:21.403657',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Flaring of natural gas from oil wells appeared to cause an increase of around 11,000 hospital visits for respiratory reasons in North Dakota up to 60 miles away from oil drilling sites, according to new research.</p><p>The paper, recently published in the <em>Journal of Public Economics</em>, examines the environmental health costs of flaring, or burning natural gas by-products during crude oil extraction, in North Dakota between 2007 and 2015, the early days of the state\'s oil boom.</p><p>Researchers found evidence of a causal link between natural gas flaring and increases in hospital visits for respiratory health. They estimate that a 1% increase in flared natural gas increases the hospitalization rate by 0.73%</p><p>\"The shale oil boom in North Dakota happened so quickly, and the area is so far from other oil drilling locations, they didn\'t have the infrastructure to process and clean the natural gas,\" said lead author Wesley Blundell, an assistant professor in Washington State University\'s School of Economic Sciences. \"The data shows a rapid increase in flaring and a significant impact on human health with the increase in hospital visits.\"</p><p>The researchers looked at drilling and GPS data to map where flaring occurred, then reviewed hospitalization records, using anonymous hospital data of health codes for external respiratory reasons for the visits.</p><p>Blundell and co-author Anatolii Kokoza also investigated whether the increase in hospital visits was caused by the flaring, or merely correlated with the issue. They eliminated many other potential causes, including the increase from more vehicles being driven due to the oil boom or from more people moving into the area.</p><p>The biggest surprise for Blundell wasn\'t that the flaring caused more people to require hospital visits. It was that people affected by the dirtier air aren\'t necessarily the ones benefiting from the oil production.</p><p>\"We were shocked by how unfair wind is,\" Blundell said. \"We found that 50% of the pollution from flaring went to areas that extracted less than 20% of the oil wealth. The people paying the health costs aren\'t necessarily the same people getting the benefits of drilling.\"</p><p>Natural gas is often thought of as a \"clean\" energy, but that\'s because it is captured and processed when used for electricity or to fuel vehicles. The raw gas released from drilling is contaminated with a wide variety of pollutants. Burning spreads those contaminants far and wide, hurting the health of people that may have nothing to do with oil, the researchers found.</p><p>The North Dakota example allowed the researchers to look at data for hospital visits from before the shale oil boom, during those unrestricted years, and after that period when flaring was more regulated and restricted. Having that specific window showed the impact flaring has on human health.</p><p>\"If those regulations had been in place from the start of the boom, the state would have likely seen 11,000 fewer respiratory hospital visits,\" said Blundell, the lead author on the paper. \"And that\'s in a relatively low population density state. We imagine the impact would be higher in a more populated area.\"</p><p>That cost to human health, added to the cost of greenhouse gas emission costs, make flaring even more expensive for the areas surrounding oil extraction.</p><p>During the time when North Dakota had few restrictions on flaring, the state accounted for 3% of worldwide flaring, more than all but 10 countries on its own. That also means flaring is a continuing issue around the world that is potentially causing millions of people to breathe air polluted by often-years-long flames.</p><p>Up to now, the focus on flaring has been the environmental climate cost, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Blundell said. There have been lawsuits in Texas over health impacts, and the World Bank has been fighting to reduce flaring around the world for this reason.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 18:02:21.403657','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Washington State University','Flaring of natural gas from oil wells appeared to cause an increase of around 11,000 hospital visits for respiratory reasons in North Dakota, US, up to 60 miles away from oil drilling sites.\n',1,27,'<li>Wesley Blundell, Anatolii Kokoza. <strong>Natural gas flaring, respiratory health, and distributional effects</strong>. <em>Journal of Public Economics</em>, 2022; 208: 104601 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104601\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104601</a>\n</li>'),(446,'Stunning new-to-science fairy wrasse is first-ever fish described by a Maldivian scientist','stunning-new-to-science-fairy-wrasse-is-first-ever-fish-described-by-a-maldivian-scientist','2022-03-08 18:02:23.779679',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Though there are hundreds of species of fish found off the coast of the Maldives, a mesmerizing new addition is the first-ever to be formally described -- the scientific process an organism goes through to be recognized as a new species -- by a Maldivian researcher. The new-to-science Rose-Veiled Fairy Wrasse (<em>Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa</em>), described today in the journal <em>ZooKeys</em>, is also one of the first species to have its name derived from the local Dhivehi language, \'finifenmaa\' meaning \'rose\', a nod to both its pink hues and the island nation\'s national flower. Scientists from the California Academy of Sciences, the University of Sydney, the Maldives Marine Research Institute (MMRI), and the Field Museum collaborated on the discovery as part of the Academy\'s <em>Hope for Reefs</em>initiative aimed at better understanding and protecting coral reefs around the world.</p><p>\"It has always been foreign scientists who have described species found in the Maldives without much involvement from local scientists, even those that are endemic to the Maldives,\" says study co-author and Maldives Marine Research Institute biologist Ahmed Najeeb. \"This time it is different and getting to be part of something for the first time has been really exciting, especially having the opportunity to work alongside top ichthyologists on such an elegant and beautiful species.\"</p><p>First collected by researchers in the 1990s, <em>C. finifenmaa</em> was originally thought to be the adult version of a different species, <em>Cirrhilabrus rubrisquamis</em>, which had been described based on a single juvenile specimen from the Chagos Archipelago, an island chain 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) south of the Maldives.</p><p>In this new study, however, the researchers took a more detailed look at both adults and juveniles of the multicolored marvel, measuring and counting various features, such as the color of adult males, the height of each spine supporting the fin on the fish\'s back and the number of scales found on various body regions. These data, along with genetic analyses, were then compared to the <em>C. rubrisquamis </em>specimen to confirm that <em>C. finifenmaa </em>is indeed a unique species.</p><p>Importantly, this revelation greatly reduces the known range of each wrasse, a crucial consideration when setting conservation priorities.</p><p>\"What we previously thought was one widespread species of fish, is actually two different species, each with a potentially much more restricted distribution,\" says lead author and University of Sydney doctoral student Yi-Kai Tea. \"This exemplifies why describing new species, and taxonomy in general, is important for conservation and biodiversity management.\"</p><p>Despite only just being described, the researchers say that the Rose-Veiled Fairy Wrasse is already being exploited through the aquarium hobbyist trade.</p><p>\"Though the species is quite abundant and therefore not currently at a high risk of overexploitation, it\'s still unsettling when a fish is already being commercialized before it even has a scientific name,\" says senior author and Academy Curator of Ichthyology Luiz Rocha, PhD, who co-directs the <em>Hope for Reefs </em>initiative. \"It speaks to how much biodiversity there is still left to be described from coral reef ecosystems.\"</p><p>Last month, <em>Hope for Reefs</em> researchers continued their collaboration with the MMRI by conducting the first surveys of the Maldives\' \'twilight zone\' reefs -- the virtually unexplored coral ecosystems found between 50- to 150-meters (160- to 500-feet) beneath the ocean\'s surface -- where they found new records of <em>C. finifenmaa</em> along with at least eight potentially new-to-science species yet to be described.</p><p>For the researchers, this kind of international partnership is pivotal to best understand and ensure a regenerative future for the Maldives\' coral reefs.</p><p>\"Nobody knows these waters better than the Maldivian people,\" Rocha says. \"Our research is stronger when it\'s done in collaboration with local researchers and divers. I\'m excited to continue our relationship with MMRI and the Ministry of Fisheries to learn about and protect the island nation\'s reefs together.\"</p><p>\"Collaborating with organizations such as the Academy helps us build our local capacity to expand knowledge in this field. This is just the start and we are already working together on future projects,\" Najeeb says. \"Our partnership will help us better understand the unexplored depths of our marine ecosystems and their inhabitants. The more we understand and the more compelling scientific evidence we can gather, the better we can protect them.\"</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 18:02:23.779679','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'California Academy of Sciences','The Rose-Veiled Fairy Wrasse, a stunning new addition to the tree of life, is the first-ever Maldivian fish to be described by a local scientist.\n',1,27,'<li>Yi-Kai Tea, Ahmed Najeeb, Joseph Rowlett, Luiz A. Rocha. <strong>﻿Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa (Teleostei, Labridae), a new species of fairy wrasse from the Maldives, with comments on the taxonomic identity of C. rubrisquamis and C. wakanda</strong>. <em>ZooKeys</em>, 2022; 1088: 65 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1088.78139\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.3897/zookeys.1088.78139</a>\n</li>'),(447,'Unusual partners aid blood vessel growth','unusual-partners-aid-blood-vessel-growth','2022-03-08 18:02:34.423197',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Insufficient oxygen to an area like the heart or legs, called hypoxia, is a cue to our bodies to make more blood vessels, and scientists have found some unusual partners are key to making that happen.</p><p>The endothelial cells that line existing blood vessels are essential to making new blood vessels, and they\'ve found that two receptors on the surface of those cells come together then dive inside to enable the new growth, called angiogenesis, the Medical College of Georgia scientists report in the journal <em>Nature Cell Biology</em>.</p><p>As the name implies, vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2, or VEGFR2, typically binds to VEGF, a signaling protein that enables new blood vessel growth, to go inside the cells. CTR1 enables copper, an essential mineral key to many important body functions, including angiogenesis, to also go inside.</p><p>Corresponding authors Dr. Masuko Ushio-Fukai, vascular biologist, and Dr. Tohru Fukai, vascular biologist and cardiologist, say that in the face of hypoxia, VEGF is naturally stimulated outside the cell, then in turn activates NADPH oxidase, a family of enzymes that generate reactive oxygen species, or ROS -- in this case the good kind that enables cell signaling.</p><p>They\'ve shown for the first time the step that happens next: ROS then quickly modifies CTR1, which prompts the VEGF receptor and this copper transporter to bind to each other on the cell surface and move inside the cell so the sustained VEGFR2 signaling that is essential to new blood vessel development happens.</p><p>When they knocked down the copper transporter, angiogenesis was severely impaired, Fukai says. They\'ve also used the gene editing ability of CRISPR-Cas9 to make CTR1 unmodifiable and angiogenesis was again significantly reduced.</p><p>The scientists worked in models of blood vessel development in the highly vascularized retina and in peripheral artery disease in a limb.</p><p>While it\'s long established that VEGF binding to its receptor causes angiogenesis, this is the first evidence of this binding of receptors for copper and VEGF that appears to be an early and important connection.</p><p>Their findings also make CTR1 a logical therapeutic target when more blood vessels are needed in the face of problems like ischemic heart disease, and potentially when the process becomes destructive in conditions like cancer and diabetic retinopathy, the scientists in MCG\'s Vascular Biology Center say.</p><p>Ushio-Fukai\'s lab has shown that treatment of endothelial cells with VEGF increases ROS levels in those cells. Her lab subsequently showed that ROS, a byproduct of our oxygen use, is very important for promoting VEGF-induced angiogenesis. Fukai\'s lab has focused on the impact copper metabolism has on the body, including its transporter CTR1.</p><p>Now they\'ve connected the dots between them. \"Once ROS is generated, it modifies CTR1, which changes its function to become a binding partner for VEGFR2,\" she says.</p><p>In this scenario at least, CTR1 does not take copper with it when it moves inside endothelial cells but in other parallel action it still does, which is another boon to angiogenesis.</p><p>Once the connections start generating new blood vessels, ROS levels go down and the CTR1 is free to return to the cell surface where it resumes its normal job of transporting copper inside, Ushio-Fukai says.</p><p>They also have evidence there is always some CTR1 left on the endothelial cell surface, which can continue to do its usual job of enabling copper to be used, in this case to also aid angiogenesis.</p><p>They also have indications that too much copper can be destructive. The Fukais have seen copper pile up inside cells in diabetes, where it instead impairs the ability to help make the healthy new blood vessels patients may need. They say another copper transporter, ATP7A, whose primary job is regulating copper levels inside cells, is likely a good treatment target in diabetes, where ATP7A levels are uncharacteristically low.</p><p>Copper is an essential trace mineral we need to consume in foods like nuts and whole grains which also is important to fundamentals like making red blood cells that carry oxygen. There is a lot of CTR1 in the gut to enable copper\'s uptake and use throughout the body.</p><p>While VEGF and endothelial cells are both essential to angiogenesis, it\'s other cell types, like platelets, immune cells called macrophages and even tumor cells that make VEGF.</p><p>As with copper, physiological levels of ROS are important to body functions like cell signaling, but high levels produced from unhealthy habits like smoking and the high-salt Western diet contribute to disease and conditions like hypertension and atherosclerosis in turn increase ROS.</p><p>The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.</p>','2022-03-08 18:02:34.423197','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University','Insufficient oxygen to an area like the heart or legs, called hypoxia, is a cue to our bodies to make more blood vessels, and scientists have found some unusual partners are key to making that happen. They\'ve found that two receptors on the surface of those cells come together then dive inside to enable the new growth, called angiogenesis, scientists report.\n',1,27,'<li>Archita Das, Dipankar Ash, Abdelrahman Y. Fouda, Varadarajan Sudhahar, Young-Mee Kim, Yali Hou, Farlyn Z. Hudson, Brian K. Stansfield, Ruth B. Caldwell, Malgorzata McMenamin, Rodney Littlejohn, Huabo Su, Maureen R. Regan, Bradley J. Merrill, Leslie B. Poole, Jack H. Kaplan, Tohru Fukai, Masuko Ushio-Fukai. <strong>Cysteine oxidation of copper transporter CTR1 drives VEGFR2 signalling and angiogenesis</strong>. <em>Nature Cell Biology</em>, 2022; 24 (1): 35 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41556-021-00822-7\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41556-021-00822-7</a>\n</li>'),(448,'Digital toolbox may help diagnose dementia earlier','digital-toolbox-may-help-diagnose-dementia-earlier','2022-03-08 18:02:38.575848',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Detecting cognitive changes early in the onset of dementia would be a game-changer for thousands impacted by the disease and would allow for interventions well before significant brain changes occur.</p><p>While cognitive function is often measured using paper and pencil tests with scores calculated by the number of correct answers, this number (score) omits a lot of information about the process a person uses to answer a question that might reveal important information about their brain function.</p><p>In a new study from Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH), participants were tested using a digital pen that recorded the entire process of completing the cognitive test and allowed the researchers to pick up subtle measures of cognitive function beyond what is captured in traditional scoring.</p><p>\"Rather than just being able to say that someone performed poorly on a cognitive test, these digital metrics allow us to delve further into the specific cognitive and physical functions that may be underlying poor test performance for a specific individual,\" said corresponding author Mandy (Mengtian) Du, PhD, a former graduate student at BUSPH.</p><p>Participants were asked to connect a series of dots spread out across a page in sequential numerical order (1, 2, 3, etc.) or to alternate between numbers and letters (such as 1, A, 2, B, and so on) while using a digital pen which records the movement of the pen across specialized paper and allows for a time-stamped playback of the entire drawing process. The researchers used the digital pen data to derive measures of drawing time, meaning the amount of time that the pen was used to draw on the paper and thinking time, or the time that the pen was held stationary and the participant was planning their next move.</p><p>According to the researchers, the digital pen data also allowed them to quantify the number of segments or straight lines that the participant used to complete the connections between the dots. They then looked at how these novel digital metrics were associated with other tests of cognitive and physical function. They found that the digital metrics were associated with specific cognitive functions such as processing speed, auditory attention, learning and working memory and physical functions such as walking speed and grip strength.</p><p>\"We use our brains to carry out all of the activities in our daily lives. With digital technologies, such as digital pens or even our smart phones and activity trackers, we have the ability to record high-precision data on our cognitive behaviors every day,\" added coauthor Stacy Andersen, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at BUSM.</p><p>The researchers hope they will eventually be able to take what they have learned about early, subtle digital markers of cognitive impairment and assess cognitive health through the technologies that are used every day.</p><p>These findings appear online in the journal<em> Alzheimer\'s &amp; Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment &amp; Disease Monitoring</em>, a journal of the Alzheimer\'s Association.</p><p>Funding for this study was provided by the National Institute on Aging (K01AG057798 to S.L.A., 5U19AG063893 5U01AG023749 to S.C., 5U01AG023755 to T.T.P., 5U01AG023712, 5U01AG023744, 5U01AG023746); and the Marty and Paulette Samowitz Foundation to T.T.P.</p>','2022-03-08 18:02:38.575848','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Boston University School of Medicine','Detecting cognitive changes early in the onset of dementia would be a game-changer for thousands impacted by the disease and would allow for interventions well before significant brain changes occur. While cognitive function is often measured using paper and pencil tests with scores calculated by the number of correct answers, this number (score) omits a lot of information about the process a person uses to answer a question that might reveal important information about their brain function.\n',1,27,'<li>Mengtian Du, Stacy L. Andersen, Stephanie Cosentino, Robert M. Boudreau, Thomas T. Perls, Paola Sebastiani. <strong>Digitally generated Trail Making Test data: Analysis using hidden Markov modeling</strong>. <em>Alzheimer\'s &amp; Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment &amp; Disease Monitoring</em>, 2022; 14 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/dad2.12292\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1002/dad2.12292</a>\n</li>'),(449,'New strategy for COVID-19 prophylaxis','new-strategy-for-covid-19-prophylaxis','2022-03-08 18:02:40.814280',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">SARS-CoV-2 viruses can hide from recognition by the immune system. However, the antiviral immune receptor RIG-I can be stimulated, which improves protection against lethal SARS-CoV-2 infections. Researchers led by Prof. Dr. Gunther Hartmann from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology at the University Hospital Bonn, in cooperation with other members of the cluster of excellence ImmunoSensation2 at the University of Bonn, have shown this in mice. Also, the incidence of severe disease progression was observed to be significantly reduced. The study was published online in advance in the journal <em>Molecular Therapy -- Nucleic Acids</em> and is now available in the final version.</p><p>The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has caused an imminent urge for both antiviral therapeutical drugs and vaccines. While the development of vaccines was accomplished in a remarkably short timeframe, the identification of direct antiviral treatments has progressed comparatively slowly. In the light of the further risk of pandemics in the future, however, there remains need for direct antiviral drugs and treatments. Moreover, emerging immune-evasive, I.e. camouflaged from the immune system, SARS-CoV-2 variants are of concern. These cause high numbers of infections even in a highly immunized population, underscoring the continuing need for effective antiviral drugs to treat COVID-19.</p><p>SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the genus Betacoronavirus. Like other members of this genus, SARS-CoV-2 is equipped with several molecular tools that allow it to evade recognition by the immune system. The virus carries the information to produce a series of proteins, capable of inhibiting antiviral recognition systems of the infected cell. Actually, these systems could identify viral genetic material (here: Ribonucleic acids/RNAs) and sound the alarm. Proteins of SARS-CoV-2 can alter viral ribonucleic acids in a way, that they become indistinguishable from endogenous RNA.</p><p><strong>Camouflage protects virus from immune system</strong></p><p>For example, viral RNAs are masked by the addition of a methyl group. In this way, the viral RNA escapes early recognition by the central antiviral immune-receptor RIG-I. This receptor normally induces a so called innate immune response in which antiviral active proteins, cell signals and messenger substances -- such as type I interferon (IFN) -- are generated.</p><p>\"A robust, early type I IFN production is key to clearing SARS-CoV-2 infection. Its absence is associated with disease progression and the development of severe COVID-19,\" Prof. Dr. Eva Bartok from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) explained. The PhD Student and first author Samira Marx added, \"The activation of an innate antiviral response, including the release of type I and type III IFNs, is also extremely important for the development of an appropriate antiviral adaptive immune response.\" The adaptive immune response occurs only after a few days and involves the activation of further immune cells and ultimately the production of antibodies.</p><p>The immune receptor RIG-I has previously been identified as a suitable target for prophylactic triggering of antiviral effects. For example, mouse models have shown that prophylactic stimulation of RIG-I can protect mice from lethal influenza virus infection. \"Such RIG-I stimulating RNAs that mimic viral RNA can be chemically synthesized and used as therapeutics to turn the innate immune response against numerous illnesses including cancer and viral infections,\" said Prof. Dr. Martin Schlee from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology. In the present study, the scientists analyzed the effect of synthetic 5\'triphopsphorylated dsRNA (3pRNA) on the course of infection with SARS-CoV-2 in a mouse model.</p><p><strong>Mouse model to resemble human COVID-19 infection</strong></p><p>As mice are generally not susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, the researchers had to use genetically adapted mice, able to generate the SARS-CoV-2 binding protein Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2). \"The mouse model we used recapitulates key aspects of the human COVID-19 disease,\" added Prof. Hiroki Kato from the Institute of Cardiovascular Immunology at the UKB.</p><p>Using this model, the researchers of the University Hospital Bonn could show that a systemic application of 3pRNA, one to seven days prior to infection with SARS-CoV-2, drastically reduced the proportion of lethal infections. A similar observation was made for therapeutic application of 3pRNA, one day after infection. \"Our findings clearly show that targeting RIG-I, both in a prophylactic and a therapeutical manner, is a promising approach in the treatment of COVID-19. However, prior to application in humans, further studies need to be conducted,\" summarized Prof. Gunther Hartmann from the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology and speaker of the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2.</p><p><strong>Participating institutions and funding</strong></p><p>In addition to the Institute of Clinical Chemistry and Clinical Pharmacology, the Institute of Virology, the Institute of Cardiovascular Immunology and the Mildred Scheel School of Oncology at the University Hospital Bonn, the German Center for Infection Research and the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerpen, Belgium were involved. The study was mainly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).</p>','2022-03-08 18:02:40.814280','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Bonn','SARS-CoV-2 viruses can hide from recognition by the immune system. However, the antiviral immune receptor RIG-I can be stimulated, which improves protection against lethal SARS-CoV-2 infections. Researchers have shown this in mice. Also, the incidence of severe disease progression was observed to be significantly reduced.\n',1,27,'<li>Samira Marx, Beate M. Kümmerer, Christian Grützner, Hiroki Kato, Martin Schlee, Marcel Renn, Eva Bartok, Gunther Hartmann. <strong>RIG-I-induced innate antiviral immunity protects mice from lethal SARS-CoV-2 infection</strong>. <em>Molecular Therapy - Nucleic Acids</em>, 2022; 27: 1225 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.omtn.2022.02.008\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.omtn.2022.02.008</a>\n</li>'),(450,'The language of the eyes','the-language-of-the-eyes','2022-03-08 18:02:43.860648',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">What is the significance of the sclera of our eyes? A question which researchers have been interested in for some time now. Recently a research team led by a comparative psychologist has succeeded in deciphering the mystery: The white of the eye contributes decisively to the visibility of directions of gaze through its basic color properties.</p><p>When we talk to other people, we usually maintain eye contact with one another. We know exactly who is looking at whom and which unspoken messages the person is displaying using the \"language of their eyes\" or which object they are looking at. Whilst communicating this helps us humans to be able to identify the direction of the other person\'s gaze quickly and clearly. \"We owe this to the formation of the whites of the eye. Humans might have evolved this distinguishing eye feature for conspecific communication,\" says Kano. \"In doing so, humans have probably evolved a unique communicative style critical for their hallmark social activities.\" Kano is a junior group leader at the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour (CASCB), a cluster of excellence at the University of Konstanz. This study goes back to research he conducted with Yuri Kawaguchi and Hanling Yeow at Kumamoto Sanctuary at the Kyoto University.</p><p><strong>Humans and chimpanzees can perceive the human eye better than the chimpanzees eye</strong></p><p>But how did the researchers reach these groundbreaking findings? The results are based on experiments Kano\'s research team conducted with humans and chimpanzees -- the closest relatives of humans. Both study groups were presented with images of humans and chimpanzees in computerized tasks. During the experiment, the task was to distinguish the gaze directions of humans and chimpanzees. Over a period of several months, the chimpanzees were presented with pictures of different perspectives of eyes of both species -- two with a straight line of eye sight, one viewing to the side. If they pointed to the picture with the shifted eye, they received a reward. Kano explains: \"We found that both humans and chimpanzees distinguished eye-gaze directions of humans better than those of chimpanzees, particularly in visually challenging conditions.\"</p><p>The researchers also observed that participants of both species distinguished the eye-gaze directions of chimpanzees better when the contrast polarity of the chimpanzee eye was reversed compared to when it was normal; namely when the chimpanzee eye had human-like white sclera and a darker iris. Whiteness in the sclera thus facilitates the visibility of eye-gaze direction even across species. \"Our findings thus support but also critically update the central premises of the gaze-signalling hypothesis,\" summarizes Kano his findings.</p><p>The novel aspect of the study is that the three researchers chose a cross-species design for comparison for the first time. In the experiments, they presented eye images to both chimpanzee and human participants. This is essential for distinguishing between several alternative hypotheses, Kano informs us.</p><p>Video: <a href=\"https://youtu.be/MM_yiM3-Vhw\">https://youtu.be/MM_yiM3-Vhw</a></p>','2022-03-08 18:02:43.860648','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Konstanz','What is the significance of the sclera of our eyes? A question which researchers have been interested in for some time now. Recently a research team led by a comparative psychologist has succeeded in deciphering the mystery: The white of the eye contributes decisively to the visibility of directions of gaze through its basic color properties.\n',1,27,'<li>Fumihiro Kano, Yuri Kawaguchi, Yeow Hanling. <strong>Experimental evidence that uniformly white sclera enhances the visibility of eye-gaze direction in humans and chimpanzees</strong>. <em>eLife</em>, 2022; 11 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74086\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.7554/eLife.74086</a>\n</li>'),(451,'Lower chance of pregnancy and childbirth after IVF with one ovary','lower-chance-of-pregnancy-and-childbirth-after-ivf-with-one-ovary','2022-03-08 18:02:53.044610',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Women who have had one ovary surgically removed (unilateral oophorectomy) are less likely to become pregnant after in vitro fertilisation and give birth to fewer babies than women with both ovaries. That is according to an extensive meta-analysis published in the journal <em>Fertility and Sterility</em> by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.</p><p>Whether women\'s fertility is affected by the removal of one ovary has been subject to inconclusive data. It was previously believed that the remaining ovary could compensate for the loss in women undergoing treatment with IVF and researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now interrogated the question through a meta-analysis.</p><p>\"Our meta-study shows that a successful IVF outcome was less likely in women that have only one ovary, compared with women with both intact ovaries,\" says Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg, adjunct professor at the Department of Oncology-Pathology, Karolinska Institutet, and consultant at Karolinska University Hospital. \"We have been able to show, for the first time, that the surgical removal of an ovary has an adverse effect on fertility.\"</p><p>When conducting a meta-study, researchers review published studies to compare their results against their own point of inquiry. In this present study, the researchers identified more than 3,000 papers on the subject, of which 18, published between 1984 and 2018, met their criteria and were selected for the final analysis. Taken together, the papers included 1,057 IVF attempts for women with one ovary and 45,813 for women with two. Five of the studies were included in the analyses of live births, 15 in the analysis of pregnancy rate.</p><p>In the group of women with one ovary, the chance of giving birth and of becoming pregnant were both around 30 per cent lower than in the group of women with both ovaries.</p><p>\"We need to realise the consequences on fertility of removing one ovary,\" says Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg. \"Sometimes, the operation is necessary, in the event, say, of a malignant tumour, but it\'s important to improve the information we give to women about what it can mean for their chances of having future children. Given that the biological reserve of eggs is already limited, we should, in some cases, also offer these women the opportunity to freeze their eggs ahead of an oophorectomy.\"</p><p>One reason for the previous belief that fertility was unaffected is that most of the studies carried out were too small to provide a significant result.</p><p>The researchers now want to examine if the surgical removal of an ovary has any other health effects, such as the impact that the reduced hormone production might have on the development of other diseases.</p><p>The study was financed by the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Cancer Society, the Swedish Childhood Cancer Foundation, the Cancer Research Funds of Radiumhemmet and Region Stockholm.</p>','2022-03-08 18:02:53.044610','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Karolinska Institutet','Women who have had one ovary surgically removed (unilateral oophorectomy) are less likely to become pregnant after in vitro fertilization and give birth to fewer babies than women with both ovaries. That is according to an extensive meta-analysis.\n',1,27,'<li>Kenny A. Rodriguez-Wallberg, Hanna P. Nilsson, Tekla Lind. <strong>Live birth and pregnancy rates after in vitro fertilization/intracytoplasmic sperm injection in women with previous unilateral oophorectomy: a systematic review and meta-analysis</strong>. <em>Fertility and Sterility</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2022.01.033\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.fertnstert.2022.01.033</a>\n</li>'),(452,'Nordic diet lowers cholesterol and blood sugar – even if you don\'t lose weight','nordic-diet-lowers-cholesterol-and-blood-sugar-–-even-if-you-don\'t-lose-weight','2022-03-08 18:02:55.243999',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Berries, veggies, fish, whole grains and rapeseed oil. These are the main ingredients of the Nordic diet concept that, for the past decade, have been recognized as extremely healthy, tasty and sustainable. The diet can prevent obesity and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.</p><p>Until now, Nordic diet research has primarily been linked to the diet\'s positive health effect following weight loss. But a new analysis conducted by University of Copenhagen researchers, among others, makes it clear that a Nordic diet has positive health benefits -- regardless of whether one loses weight or not.</p><p>\"It\'s surprising because most people believe that positive effects on blood sugar and cholesterol are solely due to weight loss. Here, we have found this not to be the the case. Other mechanisms are also at play,\" explains Lars Ove Dragsted, a researcher and head of section at the University of Copenhagen\'s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports.</p><p>Together with researchers from Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland, Dragsted examined blood and urine samples from 200 people over the age of 50, all with elevated BMI and increased risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The participants were divided into two groups -- one provided foods according to Nordic dietary recommendations and a control group on their habitual diet. After six months of monitoring, the result was clear.</p><p>\"The group that had been on the Nordic diet for six months became significantly healthier, with lower cholesterol levels, lower overall levels of both saturated and unsaturated fat in the blood, and better regulation of glucose, compared to the control group. We kept the group on the Nordic diet weight stable, meaning that we asked them to eat more if they lost weight. Even without weight loss, we could see an improvement in their health,\" explains Lars Ove Dragsted.</p><p><strong>The fat makes us healthy</strong></p><p>Instead of weight loss alone, the researchers point to the unique composition of fats in a Nordic diet as a possible explanation for the significant health benefits.</p><p>\"By analyzing the blood of participants, we could see that those who benefited most from the dietary change had different fat-soluble substances than the control group. These are substances that appear to be linked to unsaturated fatty acids from oils in the Nordic diet. This is a sign that Nordic dietary fats probably play the most significant role for the health effects seen here, which I hadn\'t expected,\" says Lars Ove Dragsted.</p><p>Fats in the Nordic diet come from fish, flaxseeds, sunflower and rapeseed (Canola), among other things. As a whole, they constitute a very beneficial mix for the body, although the researchers have yet to accurately explain why these fats seem to lower both blood sugar and cholesterol levels.</p><p>\"We can only speculate as to why a change in fat composition benefits our health so greatly. However, we can confirm that the absence of highly processed food and less saturated fats from animals, have a very positive effect on us. So, the fat composition in the Nordic diet, which is higher in omega-3 and omega-6 unsaturated fats, is probably a considerable part of the explanation for the health effects we find from the Nordic diet, even when the weight of participants remains constant,\" concludes Lars Ove Dragsted.</p><p><strong>Facts about the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations</strong></p><p>The Nordic Nutrition Recommendations were adopted by dietary experts in 2012 and will be updated this year.</p><p>The diet is adapted to the Nordic countries: Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland. The diet is based on ingredients that are produced locally and are thereby sustainable.</p><p>Recommended foods include vegetables such as peas, beans, cabbage, onions and root vegetables, as well as fruits, including apples, pears, plums and berries. Also recommended are nuts, seeds, whole grains, fish, and shellfish, as well as vegetable oils made from rapeseed, sunflower or flaxseed. Finally, low-fat dairy products are also recommended, as well as a significantly smaller proportion of meat than currently consumed.</p><p>The diet contributes to important fatty acids, minerals, vitamins, and plant materials that have a positive effect on our health and, among other things, reduce the risk of blood clots, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, as well as cardiovascular disease in general.</p><p><strong>Weight loss in relation to a Nordic diet</strong></p><p>The researchers stress that weight loss, which frequently results from a Nordic dietary pattern, remains very important for the diet\'s overall health benefits.</p><p>\"This study simply shows that it is not <em>only</em> weight loss that leads to the benefits of this diet. The unique composition of fats plays an important role as well,\" says Lars Ove Dragsted.</p>','2022-03-08 18:02:55.243999','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Science','A healthy Nordic diet can prevent a range of diseases. Until now, the health benefits attributed to a Nordic diet by researchers primarily focused on weight loss. But in a new study, researchers found clear evidence that a Nordic diet can lower blood sugar and cholesterol levels even without weight loss. In particular, they point to the composition of dietary fats as a possible explanation for the diet\'s positive effects.\n',1,27,'<li>Gözde Gürdeniz, Matti Uusitupa, Kjeld Hermansen, Markku J. Savolainen, Ursula Schwab, Marjukka Kolehmainen, Lea Brader, Lieselotte Cloetens, Karl-Heinz Herzig, Janne Hukkanen, Fredrik Rosqvist, Stine Marie Ulven, Ingibjörg Gunnarsdóttir, Inga Thorsdottir, Matej Oresic, Kaisa S. Poutanen, Ulf Risérus, Björn Åkesson, Lars Ove Dragsted. <strong>Analysis of the SYSDIET Healthy Nordic Diet randomized trial based on metabolic profiling reveal beneficial effects on glucose metabolism and blood lipids</strong>. <em>Clinical Nutrition</em>, 2022; 41 (2): 441 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2021.12.031\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.clnu.2021.12.031</a>\n</li>'),(453,'Lab-grown pig heart tissue could help replace live animals in heart disease research','lab-grown-pig-heart-tissue-could-help-replace-live-animals-in-heart-disease-research','2022-03-08 18:02:58.018484',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A new way to replicate what happens inside the heart after cardiac arrest could open new avenues for the study of heart regeneration whilst reducing the use of live animals in research, according to a study from the University of Surrey and King\'s College London.</p><p>Researchers have developed a process that involves obtaining and growing thin slices of pig heart tissue which include both the epicardium -- the most external layer of the heart that contains cells that can promote its recovery -- and underlying heart-muscle.</p><p>The team treated the epicardial slices with stimulating compounds, showing that cells become activated in a way that replicates what happens in the heart after a heart attack. The new process was able to reproduce observations typically obtained in live animal models.</p><p>Dr Paola Campagnolo, lead author of the study and Senior Lecturer in Molecular Cardiovascular Sciences at the University of Surrey, said:</p><p>\"This research typifies the One Health, One Medicine ethos at the University of Surrey, as our model could help us understand how to stimulate the repair process after heart attacks without the need to use live animals in the research. We are hopeful our model could lead to better health outcomes for humans and reduce the reliance on animal experiments in cardiovascular science.\"</p><p>According to the British Heart Foundation, there are around 7.6 million people living with heart or circulatory disease in the UK. This disease causes a quarter of all deaths in the UK.</p><p>The ability of the heart to recover after an injury is severely limited by the low number of regenerating cells within its tissue. The current research models and strategies aimed at improving the heart\'s repair process are mainly based on surgical procedures performed on laboratory animals.</p><p>Dr Davide Maselli, Postdoctoral Research Associate and first author of the paper, said:</p><p>\"This work provides an innovative tool to study the healing from a heart attack. We believe that our model could be useful to dissect the role of different cells in the reparative process. In our consideration, it is extremely important that every step forward in this field delivers a clinical perspective for the patients while reducing the burden on research animals.\"</p><p>The research, published in the journal <em>npj Regenerative Medicine,</em> proposes a system to study the regeneration of the heart in a laboratory dish and could therefore lead to a reduction in the number of small animals used in cardiovascular research.</p>','2022-03-08 18:02:58.018484','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Surrey','A new way to replicate what happens inside the heart after cardiac arrest could open new avenues for the study of heart regeneration whilst reducing the use of live animals in research, according to a new study.\n',1,27,'<li>D. Maselli, R. S. Matos, R. D. Johnson, C. Chiappini, P. Camelliti, P. Campagnolo. <strong>Epicardial slices: an innovative 3D organotypic model to study epicardial cell physiology and activation</strong>. <em>npj Regenerative Medicine</em>, 2022; 7 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41536-021-00202-7\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41536-021-00202-7</a>\n</li>'),(454,'Traces of life in the Earth\'s deep mantle','traces-of-life-in-the-earth\'s-deep-mantle','2022-03-08 18:03:02.401932',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">The rapid development of fauna 540 million years ago has permanently changed the Earth -- deep into its lower mantle. A team led by ETH researcher Andrea Giuliani found traces of this development in rocks from this zone.</p><p>It is easy to see that the processes in the Earth\'s interior influence what happens on the surface. For example, volcanoes unearth magmatic rocks and emit gases into the atmosphere, and thus influence the biogeochemical cycles on our planet.</p><p>What is less obvious, however, is that the reverse is also true: what happens on the Earth\'s surface effect the Earth\'s interior -- even down to great depths. This is the conclusion reached by an international group of researchers led by Andrea Giuliani, SNSF Ambizione Fellow in the Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich, in a new study published in the journal <em>Science Advances</em>. According to this study, the development of life on our planet affects parts of Earth\'s lower mantle.</p><p><strong>Carbon as a messenger</strong></p><p>In their study, the researchers examined rare diamond-​bearing volcanic rocks called kimberlites from different epochs of the Earth\'s history. These special rocks are messengers from the lowest regions of the Earth\'s mantle. Scientists measured the isotopic composition of carbon in about 150 samples of these special rocks. They found that the composition of younger kimberlites, which are less than 250 million years old, varies considerably from that of older rocks. In many of the younger samples, the composition of the carbon isotopes is outside the range that would be expected for rocks from the mantle.</p><p>The researchers see a decisive trigger for this change in composition of younger kimberlites in the Cambrian Explosion. This relatively short phase -- geologically speaking -- took place over a period of few tens of million years at the beginning of the Cambrian Epoch, about 540 million years ago. During this drastic transition, almost all of today\'s existing animal tribes appeared on Earth for the first time. \"The enormous increase in life forms in the oceans decisively changed what was happening on the Earth\'s surface,\" Giuliani explains. \"And this in turn affected the composition of sediments at the bottom of the ocean.\"</p><p><strong>From the oceans to the mantle and back</strong></p><p>For the Earth\'s lower mantle, this changeover is relevant because some of the sediments on the seafloor, in which material from dead living creatures is deposited, enter the mantle through plate tectonics. Along the subduction zones, these sediments -- along with the underlying oceanic crust -- are transported to great depths. In this way, the carbon that was stored as organic material in the sediments also reaches the Earth\'s mantle. There the sediments mix with other rock material from the Earth\'s mantle and after a certain time, estimated to at least 200-​300 million years, rise to the Earth\'s surface again in other places -- for example in the form of kimberlite magmas.</p><p>It is remarkable that changes in marine sediments leave such profound traces, because overall, only small amounts of sediment are transported into the depths of the mantle along a subduction zone. \"This confirms that the subducted rock material in the Earth\'s mantle is not distributed homogeneously, but moves along specific trajectories,\" Giuliani explains.</p><p><strong>The Earth as a total system</strong></p><p>In addition to carbon, the researchers also examined the isotopic composition of other chemical elements. For example, the two elements strontium and hafnium showed a similar pattern to carbon. \"This means that the signature for carbon cannot be explained by other processes such as degassing, because otherwise the isotopes of strontium and hafnium would not be correlated with those of carbon,\" Giuliani notes.</p><p>The new findings open the door for further studies. For example, elements such as phosphorus or zinc, which were significantly affected by the emergence of life, could also provide clues as to how processes at the Earth\'s surface influence the Earth\'s interior. \"The Earth is really a complex overall system,\" Giuliani says. \"And we now want to understand this system in more detail.\"</p>','2022-03-08 18:03:02.401932','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'ETH Zurich','The rapid development of fauna 540 million years ago has permanently changed the Earth - deep into its lower mantle. A team has now found traces of this development in rocks from this zone.\n',1,27,'<li>Andrea Giuliani, Russell N. Drysdale, Jon D. Woodhead, Noah J. Planavsky, David Phillips, Janet Hergt, William L. Griffin, Senan Oesch, Hayden Dalton, Gareth R. Davies. <strong>Perturbation of the deep-Earth carbon cycle in response to the Cambrian Explosion</strong>. <em>Science Advances</em>, 2022; 8 (9) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj1325\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1126/sciadv.abj1325</a>\n</li>'),(455,'Astronomers discover largest molecule yet in a planet-forming disc','astronomers-discover-largest-molecule-yet-in-a-planet-forming-disc','2022-03-08 18:03:07.320727',' <p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands have for the first time detected dimethyl ether in a planet-forming disc. With nine atoms, this is the largest molecule identified in such a disc to date. It is also a precursor of larger organic molecules that can lead to the emergence of life.</p><p>\"From these results, we can learn more about the origin of life on our planet and therefore get a better idea of the potential for life in other planetary systems. It is very exciting to see how these findings fit into the bigger picture,\" says Nashanty Brunken, a Master\'s student at Leiden Observatory, part of Leiden University, and lead author of the study published today in <em>Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics</em>.</p><p>Dimethyl ether is an organic molecule commonly seen in star-forming clouds, but had never before been found in a planet-forming disc. The researchers also made a tentative detection of methyl formate, a complex molecule similar to dimethyl ether that is also a building block for even larger organic molecules.</p><p>\"It is really exciting to finally detect these larger molecules in discs. For a while we thought it might not be possible to observe them,\" says co-author Alice Booth, also a researcher at Leiden Observatory.</p><p>The molecules were found in the planet-forming disc around the young star IRS 48 (also known as Oph-IRS 48) with the help of ALMA, an observatory co-owned by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). IRS 48, located 444 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus, has been the subject of numerous studies because its disc contains an asymmetric, cashew-nut-shaped \"dust trap.\" This region, which likely formed as a result of a newly born planet or small companion star located between the star and the dust trap, retains large numbers of millimetre-sized dust grains that can come together and grow into kilometre-sized objects like comets, asteroids and potentially even planets.</p><p>Many complex organic molecules, such as dimethyl ether, are thought to arise in star-forming clouds, even before the stars themselves are born. In these cold environments, atoms and simple molecules like carbon monoxide stick to dust grains, forming an ice layer and undergoing chemical reactions, which result in more complex molecules. Researchers recently discovered that the dust trap in the IRS 48 disc is also an ice reservoir, harbouring dust grains covered with this ice rich in complex molecules. It was in this region of the disc that ALMA has now spotted signs of the dimethyl ether molecule: as heating from IRS 48 sublimates the ice into gas, the trapped molecules inherited from the cold clouds are freed and become detectable.</p><p>\"What makes this even more exciting is that we now know these larger complex molecules are available to feed forming planets in the disc,\" explains Booth. \"This was not known before as in most systems these molecules are hidden in the ice.\"</p><p>The discovery of dimethyl ether suggests that many other complex molecules that are commonly detected in star-forming regions may also be lurking on icy structures in planet-forming discs. These molecules are the precursors of prebiotic molecules such as amino acids and sugars, which are some of the basic building blocks of life.</p><p>By studying their formation and evolution, researchers can therefore gain a better understanding of how prebiotic molecules end up on planets, including our own. \"We are incredibly pleased that we can now start to follow the entire journey of these complex molecules from the clouds that form stars, to planet-forming discs, and to comets. Hopefully with more observations we can get a step closer to understanding the origin of prebiotic molecules in our own Solar System,\" says Nienke van der Marel, a Leiden Observatory researcher who also participated in the study.</p><p>Future studies of IRS 48 with ESO\'s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), currently under construction in Chile and set to start operations later this decade, will allow the team to study the chemistry of the very inner regions of the disc, where planets like Earth may be forming.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 18:03:07.320727','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'ESO','Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers have for the first time detected dimethyl ether in a planet-forming disc. With nine atoms, this is the largest molecule identified in such a disc to date. It is also a precursor of larger organic molecules that can lead to the emergence of life.\n',1,27,'<li>Nashanty G. C. Brunken, Alice S. Booth, Margot Leemker, Pooneh Nazari, Nienke van der Marel, Ewine F. van Dishoeck. <strong>A major asymmetric ice trap in a planet-forming disk</strong>. <em>Astronomy &amp; Astrophysics</em>, 2022; 659: A29 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202142981\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1051/0004-6361/202142981</a>\n</li>'),(457,'Leaks an untapped opportunity for water savings','leaks-an-untapped-opportunity-for-water-savings','2022-03-09 05:30:24.196173','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Before a drop of treated water in California ever reaches a consumer\'s faucet, about 8% of it has already been wasted due to leaks in the delivery system. Nationally, the waste is even higher, at 17%. This represents an untapped opportunity for water savings, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.</p><p>The study, published in the journal<em> Environmental Research Letters</em>, is the first large-scale assessment of utility-level water loss in the United States. It found that leak reduction by utilities can be the most cost-effective tool in an urban water manager\'s toolkit, provided utility-specific approaches are used.</p><p>\"When I first heard about \'leaks\' I thought it sounded boring, but leaks are a huge component of our water systems and have a larger opportunity than many other water-saving methods to make an impact,\" said lead author Amanda Rupiper, a postdoctoral scholar with the UC Davis Center for Water-Energy Efficiency. \"As the first state to regulate its water losses, a lot of eyes are watching California, and this is an opportunity to impact policy here and elsewhere.\"</p><p>Amid a multiyear drought, the passage of Senate Bill 555 in 2015 made California the first in the nation and among the first in the world to require water utilities to regulate their water losses.</p><p><strong>Be specific</strong></p><p>Using data from more than 800 utilities across California, Georgia, Tennessee and Texas, the authors characterized water losses across the country. They developed a model to assess the economically efficient level of losses, and used that model to compare various water loss regulations and modeling approaches.</p><p>The study found that one-size-fits-all approaches to leak management are not effective, economical or equitable for utilities, which vary in size and resources. Uniform approaches could lead to the mismanagement of urban water losses. However, applying utility-specific performance standards can deliver a similar amount of water savings at a profit for both utilities and society.</p><p>\"Regulations that impose a uniform standard across all utilities will result in water reductions that are too stringent in some cases, too relaxed in others, and too costly overall,\" the paper concludes.</p><p><strong>Saving drips without draining utilities</strong></p><p>Ideally, no leaks would occur in a system. However, while some leaks are obvious and accessible, others can be harder and more cost-prohibitive for some utilities to find and repair. The authors\' model assessed when utilities could save the most water for their dollar to find and fix leaks in the system.</p><p>They found that for the median utility, it is economically efficient to reduce water losses by 34.7%, or 100 acre-feet per year. The median cost of water savings from leak management is $277 per acre-foot -- cheaper than most traditional water management tools, including conservation campaigns and rebate programs.</p><p>\"It\'s cost-competitive to do this and should be part of the profile of how we manage our water,\" Rupiper said. \"We tend to think of leaks as being a little drip, but leaks are not inconsequential. Drips add up to big flows, and we can\'t ignore them anymore.\"</p><p>The study\'s co-authors include Frank Loge, Joakim Weill and Katrina Jessoe of UC Davis, and Ellen Bruno of UC Berkeley.</p>','2022-03-08 18:03:34.989886','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of California - Davis','The first large-scale assessment of utility-level water loss in the United States found that leak reduction by utilities can be the most cost-effective tool in an urban water manager\'s toolkit, provided utility-specific approaches are used. California is among the first in the world to require water utilities to regulate their water losses.',1,18,'<li>Amanda Rupiper, Joakim Weill, Ellen Bruno, Katrina Jessoe, Frank Loge. <strong>Untapped potential: leak reduction is the most cost-effective urban water management tool</strong>. <em>Environmental Research Letters</em>, 2022; 17 (3): 034021 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac54cb\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1088/1748-9326/ac54cb</a>\r\n</li>'),(458,'Tiny mite triggers domino effect in the high Andes','tiny-mite-triggers-domino-effect-in-the-high-andes','2022-03-09 05:31:09.732493','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">The idea of food chains and food webs in the animal kingdom is simple: Remove a link or thread, and the system is broken. But nature is complex, and it\'s not always clear how the absence of one species may impact others.</p><p>Other times, the connection is devastatingly clear.</p><p>Argentina\'s wild vicuñas are close relatives of alpacas and llamas. For decades, vicuñas, pumas and condors have been intrinsically connected, sustaining the high Andes ecosystem of Argentina\'s San Guillermo National Park: Vicuñas grazed the grass. Pumas preyed extensively upon the vicuña. And condors depended on the pumas\' leftovers.</p><p>That is, until recent years, when one by one, each of these relationships unraveled across the landscape after a mange outbreak decimated the park\'s vicuña population in less than five years.</p><p>What happens when a disease disrupts a protected ecosystem so forcefully that cascading consequences are felt by nearly all wildlife and plants within it?</p><p>A study published in the journal<em> Ecology Letters </em>examines how the mange outbreak among vicuñas restructured tightly linked food-chain interactions that were previously driven by pumas, also called mountain lions or cougars.</p><p><strong>Remote chances</strong></p><p>It also illustrates how even remote parks are not fully safe from human impacts. A recent UC Davis study indicates the mange outbreak stemmed from domestic llamas introduced to private lands outside the park.</p><p>\"This preserve is about as remote as you can get, with very little human interaction, and yet it is still not safe from human activities occurring hundreds of miles away,\" said co-leading author Justine Smith, as assistant professor with the UC Davis Department of Wildlife, Fish and Conservation Biology. \"Pathogens can take hold quickly, leaving animals with little time to respond or adapt. We might see unintended consequences that we should be preparing for when managing at-risk populations of wildlife.\"</p><p><strong>Chain reactions</strong></p><p>Sarcoptic mange is a highly contagious disease in which parasitic mites burrow under the skin, making it too painful to move and forage. Many animals starve or become easy prey.</p><p>When the study\'s authors began to see mange rapidly spread through the park, they were already studying pumas and vicuñas there. They switched gears to study the chain reaction of the disease outbreak in 2015.</p><p>They tracked condors, pumas and vicuñas with GPS devices and used a combination of on-the-ground vegetation surveys and remote sensing data from satellites to analyze landscape changes. Researchers and field technicians also collected data on vicuña densities, mange prevalence and puma hunting behavior.</p><p>Their findings show that introduced disease can cause rapid and catastrophic changes to wildlife populations and their ecosystems.</p><p>\"The changes to the landscape were really evident even as we were collecting the data to confirm these patterns,\" said co-leading author Julia Monk, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale School of the Environment. \"We went from seeing condors daily to going months on end without encountering them, and the open plains that were practically bare when I started working in the park had exploded with vegetation by my next field season. \"</p><p><strong>Tiny mite, big changes</strong></p><p>Before the outbreak, pumas had been the biggest threat to vicuñas, whose grazing strategy was designed around avoiding them. But the tiny mite turned out to be the much bigger threat.</p><p>The study found that vicuñas plummeted from more than 17 individuals per square kilometer before the outbreak, to 1 per square kilometer by 2020. Condors, which were the primary scavengers and abundant in the system, eventually left the park entirely when their food source disappeared.</p><p>The impact on pumas, the park\'s top carnivore, is less clear, as tracking collars were only operational through 2017. The authors know that at least one puma they monitored starved to death, though puma sightings remained common throughout the study. Anecdotally, the authors also observed animals switching prey to smaller items, such as an instance where a puma was hunting a tuco-tuco, a small rodent.</p><p><strong>Range anxiety</strong></p><p>The changes among the animals also brought massive change to the landscape. Bare ground became covered in grasses over huge expanses visible from space. Vegetation increased up to 900% in areas where vicuñas preferentially foraged to avoid becoming puma prey. There is some concern this growth could spark a population explosion of European hares, although more research is needed to verify those concerns.</p><p>\"We don\'t really know how or if these systems will recover,\" Smith said. \"Will they return to the system we knew, or will a new balance emerge from these dynamics? It\'s hard to predict.\"</p><p>The scientists say the study also highlights the importance of baseline monitoring, basic research and supporting the capacity of scientists outside the United States.</p><p>\"Continuing to support our colleagues in Argentina who have worked for decades to understand and protect this unique system will be vital for tracing the continuing effects of the disease and for promoting the ecosystem\'s recovery,\" Monk said.</p><p>Additional co-authoring institutions include Fundación Rewilding Argentina, INIBIOMA-CONICET in Argentina, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Smithsonian National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, Universidad Nacional de La Plata in Argentina, and UC Berkeley.</p><p>The research was supported by the National Geographic Society, Yale University, UC Berkeley, CONICET and other conservation organizations.</p>','2022-03-08 18:03:37.531044','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of California - Davis','What happens when a disease disrupts a protected ecosystem so forcefully that cascading consequences are felt by nearly all wildlife and plants within it? A study examines how the mange outbreak among vicuñas restructured tightly linked food-chain interactions that were previously driven by pumas.',1,98,'<li>Julia D. Monk, Justine A. Smith, Emiliano Donadío, Paula L. Perrig, Ramiro D. Crego, Martin Fileni, Owen Bidder, Sergio A. Lambertucci, Jonathan N. Pauli, Oswald J. Schmitz, Arthur D. Middleton. <strong>Cascading effects of a disease outbreak in a remote protected area</strong>. <em>Ecology Letters</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.13983\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1111/ele.13983</a>\r\n</li>'),(459,'New species of extinct vampire-squid-like cephalopod is the first of its kind with 10 functional arms','new-species-of-extinct-vampire-squid-like-cephalopod-is-the-first-of-its-kind-with-10-functional-arms','2022-03-09 05:40:07.343778','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">New research led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Yale shows that the oldest ancestors of the group of animals that includes octopuses and vampire squids had not eight but 10 arms. The study, which describes a new species of vampyropod based on a 328-million-year-old fossil that had not been previously described, pushes back the age of the group by nearly 82 million years. The details are published today in the journal <em>Nature Communications</em>.</p><p>\"This is the first and only known vampyropod to possess 10 functional appendages,\" said lead author Christopher Whalen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Museum\'s Division of Paleontology and a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in Yale\'s Department of Earth &amp; Planetary Sciences.</p><p>Vampyropods are soft-bodied cephalopods typically characterized by eight arms and an internalized chitinous shell or fin supports. Because they lack hard structures, Vampyropoda are not well represented in the fossil record. The new study is based on an exceptionally well-preserved vampyropod fossil from the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Originally discovered in what is now Montana and donated to ROM in 1988.</p><p>Whalen and coauthor Neil Landman, a curator <em>emeritus </em>in the Museum\'s Division of Paleontology, identified the fossil specimen as a completely new genus and species that dates to about 328 million years old, making it the oldest known vampyropod and extending the fossil record of the group by about 82 million years. In the new study, they also describe its 10 arms -- all with preserved suckers -- corroborating previous scientific arguments that the common ancestor of vampyropods had 10 arms as well.</p><p>\"The arm count is one of the defining characteristics separating the 10-armed squid and cuttlefish line (Decabrachia) from the eight armed octopus and vampire squid line (Vampyropoda). We have long understood that octopuses achieve the eight arm count through elimination of the two filaments of vampire squid, and that these filaments are vestigial arms,\" said Whalen. \"However, all previously reported fossil vampyropods preserving the appendages only have 8 arms, so this fossil is arguably the first confirmation of the idea that all cephalopods ancestrally possessed ten arms.\"</p><p>Two of the cephalopod\'s arms appear to have been elongated relative to the other eight arms, and its torpedo-shaped body is reminiscent of today\'s squids. The fossil was given the name <em>Syllipsimopodi bideni</em>. The genus name is derived from the Greek word \"syllípsimos\" for \"prehensile\" and \"pódi\" for \"foot\" -- because this is the oldest known cephalopod to develop suckers, allowing the arms, which are modifications of the molluscan foot, to better grasp prey and other objects. The species name is to honor the recently inaugurated (at the time of paper submission) 46th President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden.</p><p>\"<em>Syllipsimopodi</em> may have filled a niche more similar to extant squids, a midlevel aquatic predator,\" said Landman. \"It is not inconceivable that it might have used its sucker-laden arms to pry small ammonoids out of their shells or ventured more inshore to prey on brachiopods, bivalves, or other shelled marine animals.\"</p><p>Based on the age, characters, and phylogenetic position, the fossil challenges the predominant arguments for vampyropod origins, and the authors propose a new model for coleoid (internally shelled cephalopod) evolution.</p><p>This study was supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology Program (#2010822) and the Paleontological Society Student Research Grants Elis L. Yochelson Award.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 19:31:50.141654','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'American Museum of Natural History','New research shows that the oldest ancestors of the group of animals that includes octopuses and vampire squids had not eight but 10 arms. The study, which describes a new species of vampyropod based on a 328-million-year-old fossil that had not been previously described, pushes back the age of the group by nearly 82 million years.',1,132,'<li>Christopher D. Whalen, Neil H. Landman. <strong>Fossil coleoid cephalopod from the Mississippian Bear Gulch Lagerstätte sheds light on early vampyropod evolution</strong>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, Mar. 8, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28333-5\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41467-022-28333-5</a>\r\n</li>'),(460,'Hurricanes and other tropical cyclones linked to rise in U.S. deaths from several major causes','hurricanes-and-other-tropical-cyclones-linked-to-rise-in-us-deaths-from-several-major-causes','2022-03-09 05:42:44.602251','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Over recent decades, hurricanes and other tropical cyclones in the U.S. were associated with up to 33.4 percent higher death rates from several major causes in subsequent months.</p><p>This is the finding of research from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Colorado State University, Imperial College London, and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, published in the journal <em>JAMA</em>.</p><p>The study exemplifies how far-reaching and varied the hidden costs to life could be from climate-related disasters and climate change.</p><p>Until now, there had been a critical knowledge gap about cause-specific tropical cyclone mortality risks from a large-scale study covering the entire U.S. across multiple decades.</p><p>After collecting 33.6 million U.S. death records from 1988 to 2018, the researchers used a statistical model to calculate how death rates changed after tropical cyclones and hurricanes (a subset of the strongest tropical cyclones) when compared to equivalent periods in other years.</p><p>The researchers found the largest overall increase in the month of hurricanes for injuries (33.4 percent),with increases in death rates in the month after tropical cyclones for injuries (3.7 percent), infectious and parasitic diseases (1.8 percent), respiratory diseases (1.3 percent), cardiovascular diseases (1.2 percent), and neuropsychiatric conditions (1.2 percent).</p><p>Residents of 1206 counties, covering half of the entire U.S. population, experienced at least one tropical cyclone during the study period. Tropical cyclones were most frequent in eastern and south-eastern coastal counties.</p><p>\"Recent tropical cyclone seasons -- which have yielded stronger, more active, andlonger-lasting tropical cyclones than previously recorded -- indicate that tropical cyclones will remain an important public health concern,\" said Robbie Parks, PhD, post-doctoral research scientist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and first author. \"Our results show that tropical cyclones in the U.S. were associated with increases in deaths for several major causes of death, speaking to the \'hidden burden\' of climate-related exposures and climate change.</p><p>An outsized proportion of low-income and historically-disadvantaged communities in the United States reside in tropical cyclone-affected areas; understanding the public health consequences of climate-related disasters such as hurricanes and other tropical cyclones is an essential component of environmental justice.\"</p><p>Female injury death rate increases (46.5 percent) were higher than males (27.6 percent) in the month of hurricanes. Death rate increases were higher for those aged 65 years or older in the month after tropical cyclones (6.4 percent) when compared with younger ages (2.7 percent).</p><p>\"In the U.S., tropical cyclones, such as hurricanes and tropical storms, have a devastating effect on society, yet a comprehensive assessment of their continuing health impacts had been lacking,\"said Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, ScD, assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and senior author. \"Our study is a first major step in better understanding how cyclones may affect deaths, which provides an essential foundation for improving resilience to climate-related disasters across the days, weeks, months, and years after they wreak destruction.\"</p><p>Co-authors are: Jaime Benavides, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; G. Brooke Anderson, Colorado State University; Rachel Nethery, and Francesca Dominici, Harvard Chan School of Public Health; Majid Ezzati, Imperial College, London; and Ana Navas-Acien and Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health.</p><p>The study was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (grants K99 ES033742, R01 ES030616, R01 ES028805, R01 ES028033, R01 MD012769, R01 AG066793, R01 ES029950, R01 AG060232, RF1 AG071024, R21 ES028472, P30 ES009089, and P42 ES010349; Pathways to Equitable Healthy Cities grant from the Wellcome Trust (209376/Z/17/Z), the UK Medical Research Council (MR/S019669/1), and the British Heart Foundation Imperial College Centre for Research Excellence (RE/18/4/34215). Work on the U.S. mortality data is supported by a grant from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as part of the Center for Clean Air Climate Solution.</p>','2022-03-08 19:32:02.526021','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Columbia University\'s Mailman School of Public Health','Over recent decades, hurricanes and other tropical cyclones in the U.S. were associated with up to 33.4 percent higher death rates from several major causes in subsequent months. The study exemplifies how far-reaching and varied the hidden costs to life could be from climate-related disasters and climate change. Until now, there had been a critical knowledge gap about cause-specific tropical cyclone mortality risks from a large-scale study covering the entire U.S. across multiple decades.',1,172,'<li>Robbie M. Parks, Jaime Benavides, G. Brooke Anderson, Rachel C. Nethery, Ana Navas-Acien, Francesca Dominici, Majid Ezzati, Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou. <strong>Association of Tropical Cyclones With County-Level Mortality in the US</strong>. <em>JAMA</em>, 2022; 327 (10): 946 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2022.1682\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1001/jama.2022.1682</a>\r\n</li>'),(461,'How animal swarms respond to threats','how-animal-swarms-respond-to-threats','2022-03-09 05:44:03.576479','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A herd of antelope feeds peacefully on a meadow. Suddenly, a lion shows up, and the herd flees. But how do they manage to do so collectively? Konstanz physicist Chun-Jen Chen and Professor Clemens Bechinger, a member of the Cluster of Excellence \"Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour,\" asked themselves how animals must behave in order to initiate an efficient flight response. In a study using microrobots that act like a group of animals, the researchers demonstrate: A swarm of animals -- taken as a whole -- completes an optimum flight response, even if individual animals do not notice the threat or they react the wrong way. The study was published on 7 March 2022 in the <em>New Journal of Physics</em> (NJP).</p><p><strong>A microrobotic swarm</strong></p><p>The starting point for the researchers\' work was to consider a group of peacefully swirling animals and what would happen if it suddenly encountered a dangerous situation.</p><p>For their experiments, the researchers used a system of microrobots, which are comprised of glass balls that are programmable, active, and spread out finely within a certain area. When the beads are lit using a focused laser beam, one side of them warms up and causes them to move, like animals. \"We are able to target each individual bead and adjust its movement to fit that of its neighbours,\" explains Chen, who is completing his doctorate in Bechinger\'s research team and who was mainly responsible for completing the experiments. \"The robots in our swarm are programmed to avoid collisions. They also received the information that they were to orient their motion based on the location of the approximate middle of the group. With the help of these rules, the robots organized themselves into a swirl,\" and Bechinger adds: \"The microrobotic swarm reproduces the movements of real animal swarms surprisingly well.\"</p><p><strong>The flight behaviour of microrobots</strong></p><p>As soon as a predator appears, the microrobots change their movements, Bechinger says. However, the change in direction is only minimal and does not cause each member of the swarm to move directly away from the predator at any given time. It is striking, however, that the group as a whole moves in a straight line away from the predator. \"This feat in which individuals move in a way that is not ideal for each one of them, but where the group as a whole behaves optimally, is based on a collective decision-making process or \"swarm intelligence\" where information is constantly being exchanged between different members of a group,\" Bechinger states.</p><p>\"One direct consequence of this behaviour is that the efficiency of the flight response remains virtually unchanged, even if half of the microrobots -- or animals -- do not respond to the threat,\" Chen explains. \"This shows that missing or incomplete information from individual members of a group can be compensated by other members.\" The physicists think this could possibly be one of the reasons why animals organize themselves in herds, even though herds are significantly easier for predators to spot than individual animals.</p><p><strong>Animal behaviour relevant for other applications</strong></p><p>In addition to gaining a better understanding of the basis for decision-making in groups of animals, the research results are also relevant for applications in the field of microrobotics. At the moment, different scenarios are being discussed in which multiple autonomous robots complete a useful task together and in which disruptions to communication between the robots would automatically cause problems. With the knowledge gained from this study, a robotic swarm could work well even if, for example, the sensors in individual robots were to fail. Bechinger adds: \"The other microrobots would simply compensate for those with broken sensors, giving such systems a very high level of robustness.\"</p><p>Video on the microrobotic simulation of the animal flight response: <a href=\"https://youtu.be/01Fcau5wxII\">https://youtu.be/01Fcau5wxII</a></p><p><strong>Author background and funding </strong></p>','2022-03-08 19:33:06.270584','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Konstanz','With the help of microrobots, physicists decode how swarms of animals respond effectively to danger.',1,173,'<li>Chun-Jen Chen, Clemens Bechinger. <strong>Collective response of microrobotic swarms to external threats</strong>. <em>New Journal of Physics</em>, 2022; 24 (3): 033001 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/ac5374\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1088/1367-2630/ac5374</a>\r\n</li>'),(463,'Anticipation and accents: Talking like a southerner even if you\'re not','anticipation-and-accents-talking-like-a-southerner-even-if-youre-not','2022-03-09 06:49:52.310032','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Have you ever found yourself unintentionally imitating how a friend, television character, or media personality talks after listening to them for a while? This is a well-established phenomenon that linguists call <em>linguistic convergence</em>, which refers to temporary (and often subtle) shifts in speech to sound more similar to those around us.</p><p>A new study in the March 2022 issue of the journal <em>Language</em>, authored by Lacey Wade (University of Pennsylvania) shows that even our <em>expectations</em> about how other people might speak (rather than the speech itself) is enough to shape our own speech patterns.</p><p>The study reports the results of two experiments testing how participants\' pronunciations of certain words changed after hearing somebody with a strong southern US accent. Participants playing a word-guessing game started pronouncing the vowel in words like <em>ride </em>and<em> dine</em> with a southern-like pronunciation -- more like <em>rod</em> and <em>don</em> -- after hearing a southern-accented talker. But here\'s the interesting part: participants never actually heard how the southern talker produced this particular vowel. They simply inferred the talker\'s pronunciation based on their other accent features and imitated what they expected. Even participants who had never lived in the U.S. south converged, suggesting that people can make these inferences about -- and unintentionally imitate -- accents that are not their own.</p><p>The author suggests that a key reason participants were able to generate expectations in the first place was because this vowel is a particularly noteworthy feature that is stereotypically associated with the south. It is ubiquitous in media portrayals and caricatures of southern speech and people likely have strong associations between this feature and \"southernness.\"</p><p>These findings show that there are even more pressures shaping how we speak at any given time than we may have thought. Nobody has a single, static way of speaking -- we do not speak precisely the same way when giving a presentation to our colleagues as we do when we are chatting on the phone with a childhood friend -- and this new study suggests that yet another pressure may be at play: our expectations about others\' speech. Not only do we imitate what we <em>observe</em> from others, but we also actively <em>predict</em> what others will do and shift our own speech to match. This means that our expectations about others, even those that reflect stereotyped associations between accent features and the people who use them, influence not just the way we listen, but also the way we talk.</p>','2022-03-08 19:36:47.173035','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Linguistic Society of America','Linguistic convergence refers to temporary (and often subtle) shifts in speech to sound more similar to those around us. A new study shows that even our expectations about how other people might speak (rather than the speech itself) is enough to shape our own speech patterns.',1,166,'<li>Lacey Wade. <strong>Experimental evidence for expectation-driven linguistic convergence</strong>. <em>Language</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0257\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1353/lan.0.0257</a>\r\n</li>'),(465,'NASA\'s NICER telescope sees hot spots merge on a magnetar','nasas-nicer-telescope-sees-hot-spots-merge-on-a-magnetar','2022-03-09 06:52:01.462083','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">For the first time, NASA\'s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) has observed the merging of multimillion-degree X-ray spots on the surface of a magnetar, a supermagnetized stellar core no larger than a city.</p><p>\"NICER tracked how three bright, X-ray-emitting hot spots slowly wandered across the object\'s surface while also decreasing in size, providing the best look yet at this phenomenon,\" said George Younes, a researcher at George Washington University in Washington and NASA\'s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. \"The largest spot eventually coalesced with a smaller one, which is something we haven\'t seen before.\"</p><p>This unique set of observations, described in a paper led by Younes and published Jan. 13 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, will help guide scientists to a more complete understanding of the interplay between the crust and magnetic field of these extreme objects.</p><p>A magnetar is a type of isolated neutron star, the crushed core left behind when a massive star explodes. Compressing more mass than the Sun\'s into a ball about 12 miles (20 kilometers) across, a neutron star is made of matter so dense that a teaspoonful would weigh as much as a mountain on Earth.</p><p>What sets magnetars apart is that they sport the strongest magnetic fields known, up to 10 trillion times more intense than a refrigerator magnet\'s and a thousand times stronger than a typical neutron star\'s. The magnetic field represents an enormous storehouse of energy that, when disturbed, can power an outburst of enhanced X-ray activity lasting from months to years.</p><p>On Oct. 10, 2020, NASA\'s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory discovered just such an outburst from a new magnetar, called SGR 1830-0645 (SGR 1830 for short). It\'s located in the constellation Scutum, and while its distance is not precisely known, astronomers estimate that the object lies about 13,000 light-years away. Swift turned its X-Ray Telescope to the source, detecting repeated pulses that revealed the object was rotating every 10.4 seconds.</p><p>NICER measurements from the same day show that the X-ray emission exhibited three close peaks with every rotation. They were caused when three individual surface regions much hotter than their surroundings spun into and out of our view.</p><p>NICER observed SGR 1830 almost daily from its discovery to Nov. 17, after which the Sun was too close to the field of view for safe observation. Over this period, the emission peaks gradually shifted, occurring at slightly different times in the magnetar\'s rotation. The results favor a model where the spots form and move as a result of crustal motion, in much the same way as the motion of tectonic plates on Earth drives seismic activity.</p><p>\"The crust of a neutron star is immensely strong, but a magnetar\'s intense magnetic field can strain it beyond its limits,\" said Sam Lander, an astrophysicist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom, and a co-author of the paper. \"Understanding this process is a major challenge for theorists, and now NICER and SGR 1830 have brought us a much more direct look at how the crust behaves under extreme stress.\"</p><p>The team thinks these observations reveal a single active region where the crust has become partially molten, slowly deforming under magnetic stress. The three moving hot spots likely represent locations where coronal loops -- similar to the bright, glowing arcs of plasma seen on the Sun -- connect to the surface. The interplay between the loops and crustal motion drives the drifting and merging behavior.</p><p>\"Changes in pulse shape, including decreasing numbers of peaks, previously have been seen only in a few \'snapshot\' observations widely separated in time, so there was no way to track their evolution,\" said Zaven Arzoumanian, the NICER science lead at Goddard. \"Such changes could have occurred suddenly, which would be more consistent with a lurching magnetic field than wandering hot spots.\"</p><p>NICER is an Astrophysics Mission of Opportunity within NASA\'s Explorers Program, which provides frequent flight opportunities for world-class scientific investigations from space utilizing innovative, streamlined, and efficient management approaches within the heliophysics and astrophysics science areas. NASA\'s Space Technology Mission Directorate supports the SEXTANT component of the mission, demonstrating pulsar-based spacecraft navigation.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 20:40:56.189693','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center','For the first time, NASA\'s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) has observed the merging of multimillion-degree X-ray spots on the surface of a magnetar, a supermagnetized stellar core no larger than a city.',1,56,'<li>George Younes, Samuel K Lander, Matthew G. Baring, Teruaki Enoto, Chryssa Kouveliotou, Zorawar Wadiasingh, Wynn C. G. Ho, Alice K. Harding, Zaven Arzoumanian, Keith Gendreau, Tolga Güver, Chin-Ping Hu, Christian Malacaria, Paul S. Ray, Tod E. Strohmayer. <strong>Pulse Peak Migration during the Outburst Decay of the Magnetar SGR 1830-0645: Crustal Motion and Magnetospheric Untwisting</strong>. <em>The Astrophysical Journal Letters</em>, 2022; 924 (2): L27 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ac4700\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.3847/2041-8213/ac4700</a>\r\n</li>'),(466,'Dementia patients struggle to cope with change because of damage to general intelligence brain networks','dementia-patients-struggle-to-cope-with-change-because-of-damage-to-general-intelligence-brain-networks','2022-03-09 06:53:40.458539','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">People with dementia struggle to adapt to changes in their environment because of damage to areas of the brain known as \'multiple demand networks\', highly-evolved areas of the brain that support general intelligence, say scientists at the University of Cambridge.</p><p>There are many different types of dementia, such as Alzheimer\'s disease and frontotemporal dementia (FTD), which are characterised by the build-up of different toxic proteins in different parts of the brain. This means that the symptoms of dementia vary, and can include problems with memory, speech, behaviour or vision. But one symptom seen across every type of dementia is a difficulty in responding to unexpected situations.</p><p>Dr Thomas Cope from the MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit and Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge said: \"At the heart of all dementias is one core symptom, which is that when things change or go unexpectedly, people find it very difficult. If people are in their own environment and everything is going to plan, then they are OK. But as soon as the kettle\'s broken or they go somewhere new, they can find it very hard to deal with.\"</p><p>To understand why this happens, Dr Cope and colleagues analysed data from 75 patients, all of whom are affected by one of four types of dementia that affect different areas of the brain. The patients, together with 48 healthy controls, listened to changing sounds while their brain activity was recorded by a magnetoencephalography machine, which measures the tiny magnetic fields produced by electrical currents in the brain. Unlike traditional MRI scanners, these machines allow very precise timing of what is happening in the brain and when. The results of their experiment are published today in the <em>Journal of Neuroscience</em>.</p><p>During the scan, the volunteers watched a silent film -- David Attenborough\'s <em>Planet Earth</em>, but without its soundtrack -- while listening to a series of beeps. The beeps occurred at a steady pattern, but occasionally a beep would be different, for example a higher pitch or different volume.</p><p>The team found that the unusual beep triggered two responses in the brain: an immediate response followed by a second response around 200 milliseconds -- a fifth of a second -- a later.</p><p>The initial response came from the basic auditory system, recognising that it had heard a beep. This response was the same in the patients and healthy volunteers.</p><p>The second response, however, recognised that the beep was unusual. This response was much smaller among the people with dementia than among the healthy volunteers. In other words, in the healthy controls, the brain was better at recognising that something had changed.</p><p>The researchers looked at which brain areas activated during the task and how they were connected up, and combined their data with that from MRI scans, which show the structure of the brain. They showed that damage to areas of the brain known as \'multiple demand networks\' was associated with a reduction in the later response.</p><p>Multiple demand networks, which are found both at the front and rear of the brain, are areas of the brain that do not have a specific task, but instead are involved in general intelligence -- for example problems solving. They are highly evolved, found only in humans, primates and more intelligent animals. It is these networks that allow us to be flexible in our environment.</p><p>In the healthy volunteers, the sound is picked up by the auditory system, which relays information to the multiple demand network to be processed and interpreted. The network then \'reports back\' to the auditory system, instructing it whether to carry on or to attend to the sound.</p><p>\"There\'s a lot of controversy about what exactly multiple demand networks do and how involved they are in our basic perception of the world,\" said Dr Cope. \"There\'s been an assumption that these intelligence networks work \'above\' everything else, doing their own thing and just taking in information. But what we\'ve shown is no, they\'re fundamental to how we perceive the world.</p><p>\"That\'s why we can look at a picture and immediately pick out the faces and immediately pick out the relevant information, whereas somebody with dementia will look at that scene a bit more randomly and won\'t immediately pick out what\'s important.\"</p><p>While the research does not point to any treatments that may alleviate the symptom, it reinforces advice given to dementia patients and their families, said Dr Cope.</p><p>\"The advice I give in my clinics is that you can help people who are affected by dementia by taking a lot more time to signpost changes, flagging to them that you\'re going to start talking about something different or you\'re going to do something different. And then repeat yourself more when there\'s a change, and understand why it\'s important to be patient as the brain recognises the new situation.\"</p><p>Although their study only looked at patients with dementia, the findings may explain similar phenomena experienced by people living with conditions such as schizophrenia, where brain networks can become disrupted.</p><p>The research was funded by the Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research, with additional support from Wellcome, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the James S McDonnell Foundation.</p><p>Dr Cope is a fellow at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge.</p>','2022-03-08 20:40:57.673128','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Cambridge','People with dementia struggle to adapt to changes in their environment because of damage to areas of the brain known as \'multiple demand networks\', highly-evolved areas of the brain that support general intelligence, say scientists.',1,14,'<li>Thomas E. Cope, Laura E. Hughes, Holly N. Phillips, Natalie E. Adams, Amirhossein Jafarian, David Nesbitt, Moataz Assem, Alexandra Woolgar, John Duncan, James B. Rowe. <strong>Causal evidence for the multiple demand network in change detection: auditory mismatch magnetoencephalography across focal neurodegenerative diseases.</strong>. <em>The Journal of Neuroscience</em>, 2022; JN-RM-1622-21 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1622-21.2022\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1622-21.2022</a>\r\n</li>'),(468,'New risk algorithm would improve screening for prostate cancer','new-risk-algorithm-would-improve-screening-for-prostate-cancer','2022-03-09 05:08:30.891522','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Calculating a person\'s risk of developing prostate cancer using results from two blood markers would improve the accuracy of screening for the disease, reports a new study led by a UCL researcher.</p><p>Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men, with more than 10,000 men dying from the disease every year in the UK, but there is currently no national screening programme.</p><p>That is partly because the current best first-line test -- a blood test that detects raised levels of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) -- is not wholly reliable, missing some harmful cancers as well as giving false positives. False positives include not just false alarms where there is no cancer but the discovery of harmless cancers that are unnecessarily treated.</p><p>In a new study, published in the <em>Journal of Medical Screening</em>, researchers developed an algorithm estimating a person\'s risk of developing prostate cancer based on age and the levels of two prostate cancer markers, PSA and hK2 (human kalliknein peptidase).</p><p>They tested how well the algorithm could predict prostate cancer by comparing blood samples of men who later died after a prostate cancer diagnosis with those who were never diagnosed with the disease.</p><p>They found that, by setting a risk threshold above which men are counted as \"screen positive,\" the approach would reduce the number of false positives by three quarters compared to a standard PSA test, while catching the same proportion of cancers.</p><p>Lead author Professor Sir Nicholas Wald (UCL Institute of Health Informatics) said: \"A key drawback of screening for prostate cancer using a PSA test alone is the higher risk of a false positive, which can lead to an unnecessary, invasive biopsy and the unnecessary treatment of a clinically insignificant cancer that would not have caused harm anyway.</p><p>\"Our study shows a different screening approach could reduce the number of false positives by three quarters. This would make screening for prostate cancer safer and more accurate, reducing overdiagnosis and overtreatment.</p><p>\"The next step is to test the feasibility of this approach in practice with a pilot project inviting healthy men for screening. If the project is successful, we believe this approach ought to be considered as part of a national screening programme for all men.\"</p><p>Co-author Jonathan Bestwick (Queen Mary University of London) said: \"The approach is innovative for cancer, as it screens people on the basis of their overall risk rather than the results of a single test. This is the same approach used in screening during pregnancy for certain fetal and maternal health conditions.\"</p><p>Professor Roger Kirby, President of the Royal Society of Medicine and Vice-President of Prostate Cancer UK, who was not involved in the study, said: \"This is a novel approach which utilises the levels of two prostate cancer markers, PSA and hK2 (human kallikrein peptidase) to refine prostate cancer screening. The use of PSA alone has significant drawbacks in terms of screening, but the addition of the hK2 marker in this context carries the genuine promise of significantly reducing the death rate from this most common cancer in men.\"</p><p>For the study, the researchers looked at data and blood samples from more than 21,000 men recruited into the prospective BUPA study over 40 years ago.</p><p>They analysed a number of prostate cancer markers in blood samples of 571 men who later died from or with prostate cancer, comparing these with a control group of 2,169 men who were never diagnosed with the disease.</p><p>They noted that while hK2 was a relatively weak marker for prostate cancer on its own, it was relatively independent of PSA so the two together yielded a more accurate test.</p><p>They categorised the results of the total PSA and hK2 tests based on how far away from average they were according to the participant\'s age. They also included age into their assessment of risk.</p><p>All men who were estimated to have a one in 20 or greater risk of developing prostate cancer in the next five years were counted as \"screen positive.\"</p><p>The researchers found that if men aged 55 and over were screened at least five yearly using this risk cut-off, 90% of cancer cases would be detected, with only 1.2% of cases being false positives.</p><p>If a PSA test had been used to screen for the disease on its own, in one scenario modelled by the researchers, an 86% detection rate would have been accompanied by a false positive rate of 2%. By comparison, if the risk-based approach had been adjusted to have a detection rate of 86%, the false positive rate would have been 0.5% -- a reduction of three quarters.</p><p>Professor Wald is one of a number of researchers at UCL seeking to improve how prostate cancer is detected and screened.</p><p>In 2019, findings from the PRECISION trial, led by Professor Caroline Moore (UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science), resulted in new National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidance that all men with a positive PSA result should have an MRI scan prior to biopsy. This step has been shown to preserve the detection of aggressive cancers whilst reducing over-diagnosis and unnecessary treatment of insignificant cancers.</p><p>In the latest study, researchers also found that men\'s PSA levels were significantly elevated up to 30 years before a prostate cancer diagnosis, suggesting that a cause of prostate cancer plays a role long before it is diagnosed. However, the levels of PSA are not elevated enough to be useful in screening this far ahead of disease diagnosis.</p><p>The study involved researchers at UCL, Queen Mary University of London and St George\'s, University of London.</p>','2022-03-08 20:41:51.564082','uploads/news/blood_test_stock_image-cropped.jpg',1,'University College London','Researchers developed an algorithm estimating a person\'s risk of developing prostate cancer based on age and the levels of two prostate cancer markers, PSA and hK2 (human kalliknein peptidase). They found that, by setting a risk threshold above which men are counted as \'screen positive\', the approach would reduce the number of false positives by three quarters compared to a standard PSA test, while catching the same proportion of cancers.',1,167,'<li>Nicholas J Wald, Jonathan P Bestwick, Joan K Morris. <strong>Multi-marker risk-based screening for prostate cancer</strong>. <em>Journal of Medical Screening</em>, Mar. 7, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09691413221076415\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1177/09691413221076415</a>\r\n</li>'),(471,'Treating heart attacks with a medium chain fatty acid','treating-heart-attacks-with-a-medium-chain-fatty-acid','2022-03-09 06:55:06.384054','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A medium-chain fatty acid found in energy drinks might one day help protect against heart attack injuries.</p><p>\"Heart attacks are still a leading cause of death worldwide, that often come with devastating complications,\" said Zhong Wang, Ph.D., an associate professor of cardiac surgery at the University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center, who is the senior author on a recent preclinical study in <em>eLife</em><em>.</em> \"Better options are needed to reduce injury to the heart after a heart attack, and even improve heart function. In this publication, we target the interplay between energy metabolism and epigenetics mediated by the medium chain fatty acid 8C.\"</p><p>Wang and colleagues were able to protect against heart attack injury in rat models with octanoic acid, an eight carbon (8C) medium chain fatty acid, as well as a few other metabolites. Those fatty acids produced acetyl-CoA, a building block for energy metabolism, which a stressed heart desperately needs.</p><p>The idea is that a physician would administer this therapy to a person once they arrive at the hospital after having a heart attack, to reduce further injury and improve heart function during recovery, he says.</p><p>\"Understanding the crosstalk between energy metabolism and epigenetics may not only provide an effective target for myocardial infarction, but also have broad implications in other ischemic injury-caused organ damage beyond cardiac diseases,\" said Ienglam Lei, Ph.D., from the Frankel CVC\'s Department of Cardiac Surgery and the University of Macau in China, who conducted the study\'s key experiments.</p><p>Wang says the next step would be to test this molecule in large animal models, followed by clinical trials. The research team has been studying the epigenetic regulation of heart attack for more than 10 years.</p>','2022-03-08 21:46:30.312036','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan','Heart attacks mean energy deprivation. Could a fatty acid found in energy drinks, then, help recovery? A preclinical study explores this question.',1,150,'<li>Wenbin Gao, Shuo Tian, Ienglam Lei, Liu Liu, Yijing Guo, Paul Tang, Eugene Chen, Zhong Wang. <strong>Acetyl-CoA production by specific metabolites promotes cardiac repair after myocardial infarction via histone acetylation</strong>. <em>eLife</em>, 2021; 10 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.60311\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.7554/eLife.60311</a>\r\n</li>'),(476,'Analysis suggests China has passed U.S. on one research measure','analysis-suggests-china-has-passed-us-on-one-research-measure','2022-03-09 05:15:50.181832','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">After decades of dominance by the United States, a new measure suggests that China edged the U.S. in 2019 on one important measurement of national research success.</p><p>Findings showed Chinese research ranked as high as or higher than U.S. work in the top 1% of scientific studies in 2019. This work is considered the most notable published science.</p><p>The new analysis, published recently in the journal <em>Scientometrics</em>, was done by three researchers: one from the United States, one from Europe and one from China. The measurement method used by the trio is different from what has traditionally been used -- and they say it is more appropriate to the task.</p><p>\"We feel strongly that we have a better way to measure the impact of research when comparing nation-to-nation output,\" said study co-author Caroline Wagner, an expert on science policy and R&amp;D investment and faculty member in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University.</p><p>\"Using our measurement, China now has a slight lead over the U.S. in terms of scientific impact.\"</p><p>Wagner conducted the study with Lin Zhang of Wuhan University in China and Loet Leydesdorff of the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands.</p><p>While there is no objective way of measuring the quality of research studies, scientists have traditionally used a proxy called citations. The more a study is mentioned (or \"cited,\" as it is called) by other researchers in subsequent papers, the more impact it is seen as having on the field and the more it is assumed to be of high quality.</p><p>The gold standard is reaching the top 1% -- those scientific papers that are cited more often than 99% of others.</p><p>\"These are the works that are seen as being in the class of Nobel Prize winners, the very leading edge of science,\" Wagner said. \"The U.S. has tended to rank China\'s work as lower quality. This appears to have changed.\"</p><p>The issue is that papers in some scientific fields are generally cited much more frequently than papers in other fields. For example, the top papers in virology are cited more often than the top papers in sociology.</p><p>So what researchers have traditionally done is \"field normalization,\" in which citation data are averaged in such a way as to allow the two fields to be compared side-by-side, taking into account statistically the differences in how citations are used in each of the fields.</p><p>When this method of measurement is used, the United States remains in the lead of producing top 1% papers.</p><p>But Wagner and her colleagues say weighting papers differently by scientific field makes no sense when you\'re comparing the research output of nations.</p><p>\"When you\'re comparing one scientific field with another, then weighting by field makes sense. But it doesn\'t make sense when you\'re measuring the overall impact of one nation\'s science versus another, and it in fact produces erroneous results,\" Wagner said.</p><p>Instead of weighting citation results differently for papers in separate fields, Wagner and her colleagues simply combined papers in all fields and then calculated how nations compared using the raw citation data.</p><p>The researchers used the Web of Science database, which provides comprehensive citation data for studies in a wide variety of scientific disciplines. Using their measurement method, they found that China passed the United States for the top position in 2019, after passing the European Union in 2015.</p><p>In 2019, 1.67% of scientific articles with Chinese authors were in the top 1% of the most highly cited articles, compared to 1.62% of articles with U.S. authors. The U.S. was slightly ahead in 2018.</p><p>Even measurements using field normalizations have shown China to be improving rapidly in quality, even if they don\'t show China ahead of the United States. For example, in 2000, 1.77% of U.S articles were in the top 1%, compared to only 0.37% of Chinese articles, according to a report by the National Science Board.</p><p>But by 2016, that gap had closed considerably according to the field-normalized statistics: In that year, 1.88% of U.S. articles were in the top 1% and China was closing in with 1.12% in the highest ranks.</p><p>Overall, it has been widely recognized that China\'s total research output has been growing quickly in the past decade or more, Wagner said.</p><p>\"But many experts had been saying that China was still lagging in quality, so there was no need for Western countries to worry. We don\'t think that gap exists anymore,\" she said.</p><p>\"In an incredibly short time, China has advanced from far behind to producing research at the leading edge of science in some fields.\"</p><p>These new results showing China in the lead should help inform decisions on how the United States funds science, Wagner said.</p><p>\"In the United States, we rely on science and technology for our national security, for our economy and for our health care,\" she said. \"Being the world leader has been critically important to our economic success. A change in this position needs scrutiny.\"</p>','2022-03-08 21:50:29.035731','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Ohio State University','After decades of dominance by the United States, a new measure suggests that China edged the U.S. in 2019 on one important measurement of national research success.',1,169,'<li>Caroline S. Wagner, Lin Zhang, Loet Leydesdorff. <strong>A discussion of measuring the top-1% most-highly cited publications: quality and impact of Chinese papers</strong>. <em>Scientometrics</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-022-04291-z\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1007/s11192-022-04291-z</a>\r\n</li>'),(484,'Global warming projected to increase health burden from hyponatremia','global-warming-projected-to-increase-health-burden-from-hyponatremia','2022-03-09 05:16:42.522422','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Global warming is likely to increase the number of people requiring hospitalization due to critically low sodium levels in the blood, a condition known as hyponatremia. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden projects that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius would increase the burden on hospitals from hyponatremia by almost 14 percent. The findings are published in <em>The</em> <em>Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism</em>.</p><p>\"Our study is the first to provide precise estimates of how temperature influences the risk of hyponatremia, findings that could be used to inform healthcare planning for adapting to climate change,\" says Buster Mannheimer, adjunct senior lecturer at the Department of Clinical Science and Education, Södersjukhuset, Karolinska Institutet and the study\'s first author.</p><p>Climate change is expected to trigger a rise in average global temperatures in the coming decades, resulting in a myriad of heat-related consequences for human health. One of those is hyponatremia, which can occur from a variety of diseases such as heart, renal and liver failure as well as from excessive sweating or fluid intake that dilute the sodium concentration in the blood.</p><p>Our bodies need sodium to maintain normal blood pressure, support the function of nerves and muscles and regulate the fluid balance in and around our cells. If blood sodium levels drop, it can lead to nausea, dizziness, muscle cramps, seizures and even coma.</p><p>It is well known that hyponatremia cases increase in the summer months. Still, data on temperature thresholds above which risks amplify have been lacking, complicating clinical planning and predictions of health burden in future climate scenarios.</p><p><strong>Women and elderly at risk</strong></p><p>In the current study, the researchers linked data on Sweden\'s entire adult population to information on 24-hour mean temperatures over a nine-year period. In that time, more than 11,000 were hospitalized with a principal diagnosis of hyponatremia, most of whom were women with a median age of 76. Average daily temperatures ranged from -10 to 26 degrees Celsius.</p><p>The researchers found an almost tenfold increased risk for hospitalization due to hyponatremia on the hottest days compared with the coolest periods. Women and elderly carried the greatest risk, with individuals 80 years or older 15 times more likely to be hospitalized for hyponatremia during heat waves. The incidence of hyponatremia was largely stable from -10 to 10 degrees Celsius but increased rapidly at temperatures above 15.</p><p>When the researchers applied the data to a prognostic model forecasting global warming of 1 or 2 degrees Celsius, in line with IPCC climate projections for 2050, they found that hospital admissions due to hyponatremia could be expected to increase by 6.3 percent and 13.9 percent, respectively.</p><p><strong>Increased health burden</strong></p><p>\"We believe these estimates are quite conservative seeing as we didn\'t account for secondary diagnoses of hyponatremia, extreme weather events or an aging population,\" says Jonatan Lindh, associate professor at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and co-last author of the study. \"Without adaptive measures, this suggests that over the next decades rising global temperatures alone will increase the burden of hyponatremia on healthcare systems.\"</p><p>It should be noted that Sweden is in the continental climate zone, with buildings adapted mostly for cold temperatures. Therefore, the thresholds observed in this study may be representative for cool temperate regions only.</p><p>The study was partially funded by Cebix incorporated. Two authors report previous consultancy fees from Otsuka Pharma Scandinavia AB, outside the submitted work.</p>','2022-03-08 21:51:00.017477','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Karolinska Institutet','Global warming is likely to increase the number of people requiring hospitalization due to critically low sodium levels in the blood, a condition known as hyponatremia. A new study projects that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius would increase the burden on hospitals from hyponatremia by almost 14 percent.',1,127,'<li>Buster Mannheimer, Alin Sterea-Grossu, Henrik Falhammar, Jan Calissendorff, Jakob Skov, Jonatan D Lindh. <strong>Current and future burdens of heat-related hyponatremia - a nationwide register-based study</strong>. <em>The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology &amp; Metabolism</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1210/clinem/dgac103\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1210/clinem/dgac103</a>\r\n</li>'),(487,'Engineered light waves enable rapid recording of 3D microscope images','engineered-light-waves-enable-rapid-recording-of-3d-microscope-images','2022-03-09 05:17:19.097722','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A newly proposed technique enables rapid 3D image acquisition. One-scan is a technique involving an elongated light spot that resembles a \"needle\" which captures three-dimensional (3D) images of a specimen.</p><p>The new method, which was developed by researchers from Tohoku University and Osaka University, can rapidly take 3D images without moving the observation plane -- something necessary in conventional laser scanning microscopes.</p><p>Light microscopy is ubiquitous and vital for various fields including life science and medical diagnosis. As many biological cells or tissues are structurally complex, 3D observation is crucial. Laser scanning microscopy is a representative and well-established approach that enables 3D observation by scanning a focal spot on the sample. One major issue is its time-consuming procedure because it involves repeated 2D image acquisition that requires changing the observation plane.</p><p>The researchers used a laser spot elongated along the axial direction, referred to as \"light needle,\" as illumination in laser scanning microscopy. In general, the use of such a light needle is a common approach that produces deep-focus images capturing the extended depth range of specimens without blurring. However, this approach only provides a 2D image, which does not include any depth information of a specimen.</p><p>The solution proposed by the researchers was manipulating fluorescence signals emitted from specimens through a technique based on computer-generated holography (CGH). They devised a hologram to be applied to fluorescence emitted from different depth positions inside the sample. This hologram was designed to produce laterally shifted and spatially separated images at the detector plane depending on the depth position of objects. With this technique, the depth information can be recorded as the lateral information simultaneously, allowing for the construction of 3D images without changing the observation plane.</p><p>Using this principle, the researchers developed a microscope system equipped with a spatial light modulator, a computer-controlled apparatus to project the CGH. The developed microscope system constructed a 3D image from a single 2D scanning of a light needle for the depth range of 20 microns. This system recorded 3D movies of dynamical motions of micron-sized beads suspended in water, something rarely achieved by existing laser scanning microscopes.</p><p>The researchers also demonstrated the prompt 3D image acquisition for thick biological samples with a speed more than ten times as fast as the conventional technique. The proposed technique will notably speed up image acquisition in various research and industrial fields, where the 3D image observation and evaluation are essential. The researchers are now planning to further extend the applicability of the proposed method to downsized systems, targeting its use in practical applications.</p><p><strong>Story Source:</strong></p>','2022-03-08 21:51:10.683258','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Tohoku University','Researchers have developed a new method for rapid 3D imaging. Instead of having to scan repeatedly in 2D, the researchers proposed a one-scan technique that uses a light needle to process at depth and laterally.',1,97,'<li>Yuichi Kozawa, Tomoya Nakamura, Yuuki Uesugi, Shunichi Sato. <strong>Wavefront engineered light needle microscopy for axially resolved rapid volumetric imaging</strong>. <em>Biomedical Optics Express</em>, 2022; 13 (3): 1702 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/BOE.449329\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1364/BOE.449329</a>\r\n</li>'),(488,'New research demonstrates high value \'injurious weeds\' can bring to pollinators','new-research-demonstrates-high-value-injurious-weeds-can-bring-to-pollinators','2022-03-09 05:18:10.293935','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A new study by researchers at the University of Sussex, funded by Rowse Honey Ltd, has demonstrated that weeds are far more valuable in supporting biodiversity than we give them credit for.</p><p>Dr Nicholas Balfour and Professor Francis Ratnieks compared the biodiversity value of plants classified as \'injurious weeds\' with those stipulated by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) for pollinator targeted agri-environmental options, such as red clover and wild marjoram.</p><p>Their findings, published in the <em>Journal of Applied Ecology,</em> show that the abundance and diversity of pollinators visiting weed species are far higher than DEFRA recommended plants.</p><p>In the UK, five species of native wildflowers are classified as \"injurious\" in the 1959 Weeds Act. Three of them are frequently visited by many species of bees and other insects -- ragwort (<em>Jacobaea vulgaris</em>) and two thistles (<em>Cirsium arvense, C. vulgare</em>). The other two are docks (<em>Rumex crispus</em> and <em>R. obtusifolius</em>), whose flowers are mainly wind-pollinated.</p><p>Dr Balfour and Professor Ratnieks conducted a field study in East Sussex where they quantified and identified insects visiting three of these species -- the flowers of ragwort, thistles, and other wildflowers, including those recommended by DEFRA -- growing in six pasture or ex-pasture sites.</p><p>Their results, which found that pollinators were visiting weed species in higher numbers than DEFRA recommended plants, were mirrored by a subsequent analysis of scientific literature.</p><p>In the Database of Pollinator Interactions, four times as many pollinator species and five times more conservation-listed species have been recorded visiting the three insect-pollinated weeds. Of the 387 plant species analysed in the database, in terms of pollinator species recorded, the weeds were ranked 4th (<em>C. arvense</em>), 6th (<em>J. vulgaris</em>), and 13th (<em>C. vulgare</em>). Similarly, the Database of Insects and their Food Plantsshowed that twice as many herbivorous insect species are associated with the five weed species.</p><p>Dr Nicholas Balfour, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex, said: \"There now exists a substantial body of evidence which shows that weeds are a vitally important resource for pollinators.</p><p>\"The three insect-pollinated species have open flowers that allow access to a wide variety of pollinator species, and they produce, on average, four times more nectar sugar than the DEFRA recommended plant species.</p><p>\"Pollinators are crucial to maintaining global biodiversity, ecosystem resilience and agricultural output. However, there are significant concerns about pollinator declines and the long-term decline of flowers in our landscapes is considered a key factor.</p><p>\"We appreciate that agricultural weeds can cause yield losses in arable and pastureland. However, we\'ve shown that they can also be of great value to both flower-visiting and herbivorous insects -- and shouldn\'t be underestimated when it comes to supporting our natural biodiversity.\"</p><p>Freedom of information requests to public bodies such as councils, Natural England and Highways England indicated that circa £10 million per year is spent controlling injurious weeds.</p><p>The majority of local councils indicated that they actively control ragwort, thus classing it in the same bracket as invasive, non-native species such as Japanese knotweed (<em>Reynoutria japonica</em>), likely due to the Ragwort Control Bill 2003.</p><p>Dr Balfour added: \"It is alarming that the many public bodies are using tax-payers\' money and volunteers to actively remove ragwort. This plant was found to support the most conservation-listed insect species in our study.</p><p>\"The implementation of the Ragwort Control Bill probably deserves greater scrutiny, especially given that the evidence underpinning it is questionable.</p><p>\"Our results clearly show that weeds have an underappreciated value in supporting our natural biodiversity. Unfortunately, current UK agricultural policy encourages neither landsparing for, nor landsharing with, weeds.\"</p><p>Francis Ratnieks, Professor of Apiculture at the Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex said: \"Many common native plant species valuable to wildlife conservation are, unfortunately, underappreciated. Here we show the importance of ragwort and thistles to flower-visiting insects. Previously LASI has shown the importance of bramble and ivy, plants which are often referred to in negative terms such as thugs or parasites.\"</p><p>The authors are now calling for policymakers to take another look at how existing policies are implemented and reconsider the role of weeds in future agri-environmental policy. The Environmental Land Management Scheme, which is to be rolled out for English farmers by the end of 2024, will largely replace the schemes currently available under the EU Common Agricultural Policy. The authors are hopeful that this policy will provide sufficient directives and financial incentives to persuade land managers to tolerate injurious weeds, while taking into account the challenges facing different stakeholders and the balance of practicality and cost, as well as the benefits to the natural world of tolerating weeds.</p><p>Rowse Honey Ltd.provided funding.</p>','2022-03-08 21:51:13.229642','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Sussex','New research compares the biodiversity value of plants classed as \'injurious weeds\' against those stipulated by DEFRA for pollinator targeted agri-environmental options. The findings show that the abundance and diversity of pollinators visiting weed species are far higher than DEFRA recommended plants.',1,54,'<li>Nicholas J. Balfour, Francis L. W. Ratnieks. <strong>The disproportionate value of ‘weeds’ to pollinators and biodiversity</strong>. <em>Journal of Applied Ecology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14132\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1111/1365-2664.14132</a>\r\n</li>'),(489,'Ancient Mexican city endured for centuries without extremes in wealth and power','ancient-mexican-city-endured-for-centuries-without-extremes-in-wealth-and-power','2022-03-09 05:19:52.920452','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Location, location, location -- it\'s the first rule of real estate. For a long time, it\'s been widely assumed that being close to resources drives settlement patterns, with cities generally founded near water and fertile land for growing crops. But a new paper by a husband-and-wife archaeological team questions that idea, using the example of an ancient city in what\'s now southern Mexico. The researchers argue that Monte Albán, the largest city in its region for more than a thousand years, wasn\'t situated near especially good farmland. But what it did have from the city\'s foundation was a defendable hilltop location and a more collective form of government that attracted people both to the settlement and its surrounding area.</p><p>\"We wanted to understand why Monte Albán was founded where it was,\" says Linda Nicholas, the first author of the study in <em>Frontiers in Political Science</em> and an adjunct curator at the Field Museum.</p><p>Monte Albán lies in the Valley of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. It was founded in 500 BC, grew rapidly, and endured as the region\'s main metropolis for 1,300 years, longer than most, if not all, other prehispanic Mesoamerican cities. \"We\'ve been working in the Oaxaca Valley for 40 years, and we and our colleagues have wondered what drew so many people to move to Monte Albán and its surrounding area, and what allowed the city to sustain itself for so long,\" says Gary Feinman, the Field Museum\'s MacArthur curator of anthropology and co-author of the study. \"Over the years, a few competing ideas have been advanced.\"</p><p>One hypothesis to explain the rapid growth at Monte Albán is coercion -- the idea that powerful rulers forced people move there. Another possible explanation was that people went there because the land was good for farming. To examine the validity of these possible explanations, Nicholas and Feinman went back over decades of research covering both Monte Albán and the surrounding Valley of Oaxaca.</p><p>To evaluate the argument that Monte Albán attracted people because of the quality of its farmland, the researchers drew on studies of modern land use in the valley to map out different land classes based on the availability and permanence of water, the most important factor for crop yields in the valley. Good, well-watered land was patchily distributed across the valley, so that some areas had much higher potential yields than others. While pre-Monte Albán settlements were more heavily concentrated in the most productive parts of the valley, Monte Albán was not. Land quality was less a factor in settlement decisions at the time of Monte Albán\'s foundation, both for the city and nearby settlements.</p><p>\"Linda\'s analysis of land use shows very clearly that Monte Albán wasn\'t located near the richest land. Whether you just look at the land itself, or whether you figure in the labor to work it, agrarian productivity cannot explain the location of Monte Albán,\" says Feinman.</p><p>So the hypothesis about fertile land doesn\'t hold up for Monte Albán. Feinman and Nicholas also investigated the possibility that people were forced to come to the region. This part of the project relied on decades of archaeological survey work.</p><p>\"In the 1960s, archaeologists started to ask different questions about ancient societies beyond just collecting and categorizing artifacts,\" says Nicholas. \"When you excavate a site, you only get a picture of a very small part, and also it\'s both destructive and expensive.\"</p><p>\"If you\'re trying to answer questions about how early cities formed and how long they lasted, excavation with its limited portal into the past doesn\'t answer them,\" says Feinman. \"If you want to learn about the city of Chicago, excavating one house, a block, or even one neighborhood wouldn\'t give you information about the growth of downtown in relationship to the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, or how it relates to a broader network of settlements in northern Illinois and beyond. It\'s the same way with ancient cities -- you need a more macro-level vantage to understand how their growth and decline compared to the areas around them.\"</p><p>To get at this broader picture of where people lived and how their settlement patterns shifted over time, Feinman and Nicholas collaborated with Richard Blanton and Stephen Kowalewski in Oaxaca to survey one of the largest contiguous study regions in the world.</p><p>\"For our systematic survey, we used aerial photographs and maps to guide us as we walked across the entire valley. When we found archaeological sites, we made notes of what we found and where and took collections to determine the periods of occupation,\" says Nicholas. \"We and our colleagues wound up covering thousands of square kilometers in the Oaxaca Valley and adjacent areas.\" This research over the years has been supplemented with more in-depth excavations by many scholars at key sites.</p><p>This wider-ranging look at life in Monte Albán and its surrounding areas, drawn from both surveys and excavations, gave the researchers new insights over the years. \"We learned that at Monte Albán and other settlements in prehispanic Oaxaca, the bulk of the residents lived on flattened terraces, which were constructed on the slopes of the hills. From the excavations that we and others conducted, we gained a perspective on terrace life, where people lived in individual houses with multiple rooms around a patio. Domestic units often shared a front retaining wall, and drains generally separated residences,\" says Feinman. \"People not only lived very close together, but they also must have been highly cooperative from one domestic unit to another, because if part of the retaining wall collapsed or the drain got clogged, they\'d have to work together to fix it.\"</p><p>The residents of Monte Albán also were economically interdependent, exchanging craft goods and food in the risky environment for agriculture where they lived. Although no large food storage facilities have been found, there are indications that the city\'s residents participated in marketplace exchanges, which may have buffered the region\'s unpredictable rainfall. Cooperative defense and economic opportunity drew people from afar to early Monte Albán.</p><p>The high degrees of cooperation between households at Monte Albán was echoed to some extent in the political organization of Monte Albán as a whole. \"Compared to more autocratic societies, like the Classic-period Maya, Monte Albán seems to have had a more collective form of governance,\" says Nicholas. Autocratic societies -- ones ruled by despots, where a small group of people wielded all the power -- tended to have architecture that reflected their form of rule, with big, fancy palaces and elaborate burial sites for the rich and powerful. Despotic rulers serve as the billboards for their regimes, often marked by aggrandizing and personalized monuments. Monte Albán, however, is characterized by non-residential public buildings, temples, and large, relatively open, shared plazas. Given the longevity of the site, the number of monuments that feature rulers is small.</p><p>Although defense was a key factor in the foundation and location of Monte Albán, there is no indication that the early occupants were coerced to move to this dense hilltop location where their agricultural prospects were somewhat risky, interpersonal efforts were needed to sustain their residences, and residential settlement was densely packed. Nevertheless, health measures indicate that the inhabitants of Monte Albán were generally better off than the residents of other prehispanic cities, and the institutions established at Monte Albán contributed to their well-being, drawing people from afar despite these challenges.</p><p>Since people probably weren\'t forced to come to Monte Albán, and they didn\'t come for the productive farmland, that leaves the question: why <em>did </em>Monte Albán grow so quickly and stay large and important for so long?</p><p>\"We think we have a frame that draws more on cooperation,\" says Nicholas. Based on the work of other scholars like Margaret Levi and Richard Blanton, Feinman hypothesizes that \"it\'s a kind of mutual relationship between people who have power and people that don\'t. In this case, the powerful may have coordinated defense, helped organize marketplace exchange, and conducted ritual activities that enhanced community solidarity. On the other hand, the bulk of the city\'s populace produced food and other goods that sustained the settlement and, through taxes, supported governance. It was a collaborative process that relied on compliance.\"</p><p>Feinman notes that the architecture of the city might include clues about this cooperative relationship between the classes that led people to Monte Albán. \"From the very founding of the site, there was a big main plaza where people could get together and express their voice, at least sometimes. People may have been encouraged to move there for defense and economic opportunity,\" he says. \"But on the other hand, in order to underpin and support these new institutions, farmers probably had to give over some of their surplus. So, it\'s kind of a give and take.\"</p><p>While Feinman and Nicholas note that this study is just one case, about one city, it does have some lessons for us today. \"Monte Albán was a city where a new social contract was written at its foundation. It was somewhat more equitable and less elite-centric than what had gone on before,\" says Feinman. \"And with its collective and relatively equitable government, it endured for more than a millennium. Yet when it collapsed, the city\'s population declined drastically and many of its institutions dissolved, ushering in a period of more autocratic rule.\"</p>','2022-03-08 21:51:21.080188','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Field Museum','An ancient Mexican city, Monte Albán, was the biggest settlement in the region and lasted for more than a thousand years. Some hypotheses for the city\'s success are that people were drawn to fertile farmland in the area, or were forced to move there by powerful rulers. This new study challenges those ideas by showing that the land isn\'t especially good for farming, and the society didn\'t have the highly concentrated wealth and power that would come with a powerful ruler forcing people to move there. Instead, the city had a more collective form of government that could have attracted people to the city.',1,170,'<li>Linda M. Nicholas, Gary M. Feinman. <strong>The Foundation of Monte Albán, Intensification, and Growth: Coactive Processes and Joint Production</strong>. <em>Frontiers in Political Science</em>, 2022; 4 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2022.805047\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.3389/fpos.2022.805047</a>\r\n</li>'),(490,'Reading builds resilience among at-risk kids','reading-builds-resilience-among-at-risk-kids','2022-03-09 05:29:13.646169','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">As children settle back into a new school year, families are being encouraged to read to their children at home, as new research from the University of South Australia shows that reading aloud can triple a child\'s resilience at school, particularly for children at-risk.</p><p>Focussing on early primary-aged children who had suffered abuse or neglect, the study explored factors that could modify the negative effects of adverse life circumstances, finding that one of the biggest predictors of resilience in both boys and girls in struggling families was being read to at home.</p><p>While reading to children at home has long been associated with school readiness and scholastic outcomes, this is the first study that has shown the benefits of reading to mitigate some of the detrimental trajectories of child maltreatment.</p><p>In Australia in 2021, nearly 300,000 children aged 0-17years had one or more child protection notifications with 105,000 the subject of an investigation and nearly 50,000 the subject of substantiated abuse or neglect.</p><p>The study found that victims of child maltreatment are generally more developmentally vulnerable than their peers at the start of school.</p><p>Lead researcher, Professor Leonie Segal says there is an acute need to support these children and their families, before the children start school, with reading being a key factor for success.</p><p>\"A good start to school is predictive of later outcomes, so it\'s vital that we not only identify those at risk early on, but also find ways to support children\'s emotional, social and physical development, before they start school,\" Prof Segal says.</p><p>\"Reading out loud can create many positive outcomes for children. As a shared experience between parent and child, it encourages connection, while also directly contributing to child development through exposure to words and stories.</p><p>\"Children in families that are struggling to create a nurturing environment will especially benefit from reading with a parent or carer, improving their resilience and keeping them developmentally more on track, despite their adversity exposure.\"</p><p>The study analysed data covering 65,083 children who had completed the Early Australian Development Census (AEDC) at 5 to 6 years old, when starting primary school, identifying 3414 high-risk children who had experienced maltreatment.</p><p>Boys were found to be developmentally behind girls, particularly those who had been exposed to abuse or neglect.</p><p>Prof Segal says the education sector must look at strategies to better support boys in early learning environments.</p><p>\"Our study found that boys had a much higher risk of being developmentally behind than girls, as did children living in remote or rural areas, and those with a physical, sensory, or learning disability. All these groups need far greater supports,\" Prof Segal says.</p><p>\"Paying particular attention to boys, especially those who are victims of child maltreatment is critical. Encouraging parents to read to their boys while valuable, is not enough, the onus is on the education sector to identify other mechanisms to support boys.\"</p><p>\"This could include recruiting more male educators into early childhood settings and ensuring learning approaches are sensitive to the specific needs of boys.\"</p><p>\"Males currently make up less than five per cent of the early childhood education workforce, with their presence in primary schools also declining. Boosting the gender balance among educators could be an important step to helping boys.\"</p><p>\"Understanding which attributes can help young children to be more resilient -- or conversely which factors can put them at greater risk -- can form the basis of interventions for child victims of maltreatment to improve life trajectories.\"</p><p>\"Every child deserves the chance for a bright future. We must not overlook those most at risk.\"</p>','2022-03-08 21:51:26.901567','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of South Australia','New research from the shows that reading aloud can triple a child\'s resilience at school, particularly for children at-risk.',1,171,'<li>Jason M. Armfield, Lesley-Anne Ey, Carole Zufferey, Emmanuel S. Gnanamanickam, Leonie Segal. <strong>Educational strengths and functional resilience at the start of primary school following child maltreatment</strong>. <em>Child Abuse &amp; Neglect</em>, 2021; 122: 105301 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105301\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105301</a>\r\n</li>'),(494,'Biologists observe a molecular \'hand-off\' that plays a key role in reproduction','biologists-observe-a-molecular-hand-off-that-plays-a-key-role-in-reproduction','2022-03-09 05:32:11.434378','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Nearly 20 percent of couples in the United States fail to conceive naturally after one year of trying, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In species with internal fertilization, such as humans, the ability for a female to become pregnant and carry a pregnancy to term is dependent upon effective interactions between sperm and the female reproductive tract (FRT). When those interactions are defective, the result can be a failed pregnancy. Therefore, understanding the factors that contribute to sperm viability between copulation and fertilization is crucial.</p><p>A research team from the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences\' Department of Biology and Cornell University, led by Steve Dorus, associate professor of biology at Syracuse University, have been studying the life history of fruit fly (<em>Drosophila melanogaster</em>) sperm to better understand molecular continuity between male and female reproductive tracts. In other words, how the male and female reproductive tracts provide support to keep the sperm viable before fertilization. Their results, published on March 7, 2022 in the journal <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA</em> (PNAS), shed light on important events that may play a role in infertility that up until now have been poorly understood.</p><p>The team, which includes members from Syracuse University\'s Center for Reproductive Evolution, explored the compositional changes in fruit fly sperm, beginning shortly after they leave the testis, following insemination and finally after protracted storage within the FRT. Fruit flies are powerful model organisms for investigations such as this one because they are easy to culture in the laboratory, have a short generation time and their genetics are richly understood. In their study, the group uncovered that the proteome, or protein makeup, of the sperm undergoes substantial changes after being transferred to the FRT.</p><p>For species with internal fertilization, a sperm\'s developmental \'journey\' -- on the way to its final destination of fertilizing an egg and beginning a new life -- transcends both male and female reproductive tracts. After leaving the testis, sperm travel through the male\'s seminal vesicles and descend through the ejaculatory duct, where they mix with seminal fluid proteins. The team found that many of these seminal proteins are progressively lost after sperm migrate beyond the site of insemination within the FRT. Conversely, female-derived proteins that may help the sperm with functions such as energy metabolism, begin to associate with the sperm immediately after mating, signifying a changing of the guard of proteins. After several days of storage within the FRT, the research team was surprised to discover that nearly 20% of the sperm\'s proteins had been replaced by female-derived proteins. The female contributions support sperm viability during the prolonged period between copulation and fertilization. This \"hand-off\" in the maintenance of sperm viability from males to females means that sperm are materially the product of both sexes, and this may be a crucial aspect of reproduction in all internally-fertilizing species, including humans.</p><p>By studying the intimate ways in which sperm interact with the FRT during the final stages of functional maturation, the team\'s research advances understanding of animal fertility and the contributions of each sex to reproductive success.</p><p>In addition to Dorus and Pitnick, other co-authors from Syracuse University included former postdoctoral researcher Erin McCullough and doctoral graduate Emma Whittington. Co-authors from Cornell University were Professor Mariana Wolfner and postdoctoral researcher Akanksha Singh. The team\'s research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and a gift from Mike and Jane Weeden to Syracuse University.</p>','2022-03-08 21:51:40.692379','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Syracuse University','Novel research on the life history of fruit fly sperm demonstrates molecular continuity between the male and female reproductive tracts.',1,59,'<li>Erin L. McCullough, Emma Whittington, Akanksha Singh, Scott Pitnick, Mariana F. Wolfner, Steve Dorus. <strong>The life history of            Drosophila            sperm involves molecular continuity between male and female reproductive tracts</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (11) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2119899119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2119899119</a>\r\n</li>'),(495,'Stress damages the movement centers in the brain','stress-damages-the-movement-centers-in-the-brain','2022-03-09 05:33:50.435992','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Stress seems to have a negative effect on the learning of movements -- at least in mice. This is the conclusion of a recent study at the University of Bonn. According to the study, the neurons of rodents lose some of their contacts with other neurons after stress. The animals also developed motor deficits. The results may be useful for earlier diagnosis and improved therapy of stress-related diseases such as depression. They also document that stress leaves traces in the brain -- possibly permanent ones. The study appeared in the journal <em>Translational Psychiatry.</em></p><p>Chronically stressed people often show abnormalities in their motor skills, such as poorer fine motor control. However, how these symptoms occur has hardly been studied so far. \"We investigated this question in our study,\" explains Prof. Dr. Valentin Stein from the Institute of Physiology II at the University of Bonn.</p><p>The researchers used mice as experimental animals, some of which they exposed to a stressful situation for a few days. Meanwhile, they used a special microscopy method to take pictures of the rodents\' brains. They focused on parts of the cerebral cortex responsible for motor control and learning new movements.</p><p>\"With our method, it is possible to observe one and the same neuron at different points in time,\" says Dr. Anne-Kathrin Gellner, a physician at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Bonn University Hospital. \"We can therefore see whether and how it changes as a result of stress.\"</p><p><strong>Stressed mice lose synapses</strong></p><p>In fact, the researchers came across a conspicuous feature: after the stressful situation, the neurons studied lost some of their synapses -- these are the contacts to other nerve cells. During learning processes, new synapses are usually formed or existing ones are strengthened. Instead, the stressed rodents lost up to 15 percent of their contacts.</p><p>At the same time, the animals developed motor learning deficits. For example, they had to try to grasp a food pellet with one paw and transport it into their mouths. In the wild, mice use both paws to do this, so they had to relearn this skill. The non-stressed control group achieved a success rate of 30 percent after five days. The stressed rodents, however, only managed to take the food in every tenth attempt.</p><p>Mice vary in their sensitivity to stress. Some of them hardly develop any abnormalities after a few days of stress -- they are considered resilient. Surprisingly, these robust animals had similar difficulties as their more sensitive peers in learning to grasp with one hand. \"It is therefore possible that motor tests are very suitable for detecting stress-related disorders such as depression before other symptoms become apparent,\" hopes Prof. Valentin Stein.</p><p><strong>Even resilient animals are not immune</strong></p><p>Even in resilient animals, moreover, the number of synapses decreased after the stress event. Unlike their stress-sensitive peers, however, the affected neurons recovered: after one and a half weeks, the number of synapses was again similar to that before the stress event and comparable to that in non-stressed control animals. \"Nevertheless, it may well be that psychological stress also leaves permanent traces on them if it is too long or too frequent,\" worries Stein, who is also a member of the Transdisciplinary Research Area (TRA) \"Life and Health.\"</p><p>The researchers also have clues as to what triggers the loss of synapses: Certain immune cells, the microglia, were activated in the rodents\' brains. They belong to the so-called phagocytes and can, for example, digest pathogens or defective cells. It is possible that they are \"switched on\" by stress and then attack the contact sites.</p><p>The research group also examined the fluid that washes around the brain and spinal cord. They found certain proteins that can normally be detected there in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson\'s or Alzheimer\'s. \"We therefore believe that stress-related psychiatric diseases such as depression are also associated with the degradation of neurons,\" says Dr. Gellner. \"Accordingly, long-term stress -- to which children are increasingly exposed -- can potentially cause serious damage to the brain.\"</p><p>The Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Hospital Bonn, the Institute of Nutritional Research of the University of Potsdam, the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Institute of Molecular Psychiatry, and the Institute of Physiology II (all University of Bonn) were involved in the study. Dr. Anne-Kathrin Gellner was supported by the BONFOR program of the Faculty of Medicine.</p>','2022-03-08 21:51:46.297371','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Bonn','Stress seems to have a negative effect on the learning of movements - at least in mice. This is the conclusion of a recent study. According to the study, the neurons of rodents lose some of their contacts with other neurons after stress. The animals also developed motor deficits. The results may be useful for earlier diagnosis and improved therapy of stress-related diseases such as depression. They also document that stress leaves traces in the brain - possibly permanent ones.',1,39,'<li>Anne-Kathrin Gellner, Aileen Sitter, Michal Rackiewicz, Marc Sylvester, Alexandra Philipsen, Andreas Zimmer, Valentin Stein. <strong>Stress vulnerability shapes disruption of motor cortical neuroplasticity</strong>. <em>Translational Psychiatry</em>, 2022; 12 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41398-022-01855-8\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41398-022-01855-8</a>\r\n</li>'),(496,'Single protein prompts mature brain cells to regenerate multiple cell types','single-protein-prompts-mature-brain-cells-to-regenerate-multiple-cell-types','2022-03-09 05:34:23.290110','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A single protein can reverse the developmental clock on adult brain cells called astrocytes, morphing them into stem-like cells that produce neurons and other cell types, UT Southwestern researchers report in a PNAS study. The findings might someday lead to a way to regenerate brain tissue after disease or injury.</p><p>\"We\'re showing that it may be possible to reprogram the fate of this subset of brain cells, giving them the potential to rebuild the damaged brain,\" said study leader and co-corresponding author Chun-Li Zhang, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biology and an Investigator in the Peter O\'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute.</p><p>During development, mammalian stem cells readily proliferate to produce neurons throughout the brain and cells -- called glia -- that help support them. Glia help maintain optimal brain function by performing essential jobs like cleaning up waste and insulating nerve fibers. However, the mature brain largely loses that stem cell capacity. Only two small regenerative zones, or niches, remain in the adult brain, Dr. Zhang explained, leaving it with extremely limited capacity to heal itself following injury or disease.</p><p>Recent research has suggested that glia can be prompted to produce neurons in some models of brain injury or after genetic manipulation. Although these findings are promising, regenerating healthy brain tissue will require production of multiple cell types, rather than only neurons, said Dr. Zhang.</p><p>Looking for a way to spur this \"multipotent\" regeneration, Dr. Zhang and his colleagues used a genetic engineering technique in adult mouse brains to induce astrocytes, a subset of glia, to produce different transcription factors, proteins pivotal for controlling cell identity. These experiments showed that a single transcription factor -- a protein known as DLX2 -- appeared to reprogram astrocytes into neural stem-like cells capable of producing neurons and multiple subtypes of glial cells.</p><p>The researchers confirmed these findings both using a technique called lineage tracing, in which they followed progeny of the altered astrocytes as they multiplied, as well as marker analysis that showed that these new cells had the expected identities of neurons or glia. Working with the team of co-corresponding author Gary Hon, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and in the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Reproductive Biology Sciences and the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics, global gene expression analysis showed that prompting astrocytes to produce DLX2 appeared to reprogram them into stem-like cells with features of both immature brain cells found earlier in development and cells found in the regenerative niches of the adult brain.</p><p>Dr. Zhang and his colleagues suggest that DLX2 might someday be used as a tool to treat traumatic brain injuries, strokes, and degenerative conditions such as Huntington\'s disease. Researchers in the Zhang lab are planning to study this approach in animal models.</p><p>Current UT Southwestern researchers who contributed to this study include Sergio Cananzi, Lei-Lei Wang, and Yuhua Zou. Other participants include co-lead authors Boxun Li, now at Duke University; Yunjia Zhang, now at the Beijing Genomics Institute, China; Chuanhui Han, now at Peking University, China; and Yang-Xin Fu, now at Tsinghua University, China.</p><p>This research was supported by funding from The Welch Foundation (I-1724 and I-1926-20170325), the Decherd Foundation, the Texas Alzheimer\'s Research and Care Consortium (TARCC2020), the Kent Waldrep Foundation Center for Basic Research on Nerve Growth and Regeneration, the National Institutes of Health (NS099073, NS092616, NS111776, NS117065, NS088095, DP2GM128203, and UM1HG011996), the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) (RR140023 and RP190451), the Department of Defense (PR172060), the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (1019804), the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Green Center for Reproductive Biology.</p><p>Dr. Zhang is a W.W. Caruth, Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research at UT Southwestern. Dr. Hon is a CPRIT Scholar.</p>','2022-03-08 21:51:49.309418','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'UT Southwestern Medical Center','A single protein can reverse the developmental clock on adult brain cells called astrocytes, morphing them into stem-like cells that produce neurons and other cell types, UT Southwestern researchers report in a new study. The findings might someday lead to a way to regenerate brain tissue after disease or injury.',1,29,'<li>Yunjia Zhang, Boxun Li, Sergio Cananzi, Chuanhui Han, Lei-Lei Wang, Yuhua Zou, Yang-Xin Fu, Gary C. Hon, Chun-Li Zhang. <strong>A single factor elicits multilineage reprogramming of astrocytes in the adult mouse striatum</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (11) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2107339119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2107339119</a>\r\n</li>'),(497,'Toward ever-more powerful microchips and supercomputers','toward-ever-more-powerful-microchips-and-supercomputers','2022-03-09 05:35:52.429760','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">The information age created over nearly 60 years has given the world the internet, smart phones and lightning-fast computers. Making this possible has been the doubling of the number of transistors that can be packed onto a computer chip roughly every two years, giving rise to billions of atomic-scale transistors that now fit on a fingernail-sized chip. Such \"atomic scale\" lengths are so tiny that individual atoms can be seen and counted in them.</p><p><strong>Physical limit</strong></p><p>With this doubling now rapidly approaching a physical limit, the U.S. Department of Energy\'s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has joined industry efforts to extend the process and develop new ways to produce ever-more capable, efficient, and cost-effective chips. Laboratory scientists have now accurately predicted through modeling a key step in atomic-scale chip fabrication in the first PPPL study under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Lam Research Corp., a world-wide supplier of chip-making equipment.</p><p>\"This would be one little piece in the whole process,\" said David Graves, associate laboratory director for low-temperature plasma surface interactions, a professor in the Princeton Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and co-author of a paper that outlines the findings in the <em>Journal of Vacuum Science &amp; Technology B</em>. Insights gained through modeling, he said, \"can lead to all sorts of good things, and that\'s why this effort at the Lab has got some promise.\"</p><p>While the shrinkage can\'t go on much longer, \"it hasn\'t completely reached an end,\" he said. \"Industry has been successful to date in using mainly empirical methods to develop innovative new processes but a deeper fundamental understanding will speed this process. Fundamental studies take time and require expertise industry does not always have,\" he said. \"This creates a strong incentive for laboratories to take on the work.\"</p><p>The PPPL scientists modeled what is called \"atomic layer etching\" (ALE), an increasingly critical fabrication step that aims to remove single atomic layers from a surface at a time. This process can be used to etch complex three-dimensional structures with critical dimensions that are thousands of times thinner than a human hair into a film on a silicon wafer.</p><p><strong>Basic agreement</strong></p><p>\"The simulations basically agreed with experiments as a first step and could lead to improved understanding of the use of ALE for atomic-scale etching,\" said Joseph Vella, a post-doctoral fellow at PPPL and lead author of the journal paper. Improved understanding will enable PPPL to investigate such things as the extent of surface damage and the degree of roughness developed during ALE, he said, \"and this all starts with building our fundamental understanding of atomic layer etching.\"</p><p>The model simulated the sequential use of chlorine gas and argon plasma ions to control the silicon etch process on an atomic scale. Plasma, or ionized gas, is a mixture consisting of free electrons, positively charged ions and neutral molecules. The plasma used in semiconductor device processing is near room temperature, in contrast to the ultra-hot plasma used in fusion experiments.</p><p>\"A surprise empirical finding from Lam Research was that the ALE process became particularly effective when the ion energies were quite a bit higher than the ones we started with,\" Graves said. \"So that will be our next step in the simulations -- to see if we can understand what\'s happening when the ion energy is much higher and why it\'s so good.\"</p><p>Going forward, \"the semiconductor industry as a whole is contemplating a major expansion in the materials and the types of devices to be used, and this expansion will also have to be processed with atomic scale precision,\" he said. \"The U.S. goal is to lead the world in using science to tackle important industrial problems,\" he said, \"and our work is part of that.\"</p><p>This study was partially supported by the DOE Office of Science. Coauthors included David Humbird of DWH Consulting in Centennial, Colorado.</p>','2022-03-08 22:14:52.099203','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'DOE/Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory','A look at the process to extend \'Moore\'s law,\' which has doubled the number of transistors that can be packed on a microchip roughly every two years, and develop new ways to produce more capable, efficient, and cost-effective chips.',1,68,'<li>Joseph R. Vella, David Humbird, David B. Graves. <strong>Molecular dynamics study of silicon atomic layer etching by chorine gas and argon ions</strong>. <em>Journal of Vacuum Science &amp; Technology B</em>, 2022; 40 (2): 023205 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/6.0001681\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1116/6.0001681</a>\r\n</li>'),(498,'Intermingling between populations may contribute to HIV spread','intermingling-between-populations-may-contribute-to-hiv-spread','2022-03-09 05:36:24.593922','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Sexual partnerships between individuals from different communities may help explain why some community-based HIV prevention efforts were moderately effective, shows a study published in<em> eLife.</em></p><p>The findings may help explain the results of some community-based prevention studies and help scientists develop better ways to track and prevent the spread of HIV.</p><p>Early identification and treatment of HIV can help prevent transmission of the virus. However, large studies of community-based universal HIV testing and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa have not been as effective as mathematical models predicted at curbing new infections.</p><p>\"To stem the spread of new HIV infections, we need to better understand patterns of HIV transmission in the region,\" says first author Lerato Magosi, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, US.</p><p>Magosi and colleagues set out to learn more about HIV transmission patterns in Botswana, Africa. The team genetically sequenced HIV samples collected from 5,114 individuals in 30 communities who participated in an HIV prevention trial. This trial, called the Botswana Combination Prevention Project or Ya Tsie trial, compared HIV transmission in communities that were randomised to receive universal HIV testing and linkage to treatment with communities that did not receive such an intervention.</p><p>By identifying samples of HIV that were closely related genetically, the team was able to track how the virus spread within and between these communities. They found that most HIV transmission occurred between individuals who were about the same age and among individuals living in the same community or neighbouring communities, rather than distant communities. Viral spread from communities that did not receive the universal HIV testing and treatment intervention into communities that received the intervention was more likely to occur than vice versa.</p><p>\"Our results suggest that community-based HIV testing and treatment initiatives are powerful tools to reduce HIV transmission, but will need to be supported by targeted studies aimed at closing age and sex gaps in uptake of testing and treatment,\" Magosi explains.</p><p>The authors suggest that genetic sequencing may be a valuable tool to help identify geographic HIV transmission patterns. They also recommend widely distributing HIV testing and treatment interventions in communities that are likely to intermingle. \"Population mobility patterns are central to understanding HIV transmission dynamics and should be considered when designing and testing HIV control strategies,\" concludes senior author Marc Lipsitch, Professor of Epidemiology and Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics.</p>','2022-03-08 23:19:41.381249','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'eLife','Sexual partnerships between individuals from different communities may help explain why some community-based HIV prevention efforts were moderately effective, shows a new study.',1,88,'<li>Lerato E Magosi, Yinfeng Zhang, Tanya Golubchik, Victor DeGruttola, Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen, Vladimir Novitsky, Janet Moore, Pam Bachanas, Tebogo Segolodi, Refeletswe Lebelonyane, Molly Pretorius Holme, Sikhulile Moyo, Joseph Makhema, Shahin Lockman, Christophe Fraser, Myron Max Essex, Marc Lipsitch. <strong>Deep-sequence phylogenetics to quantify patterns of HIV transmission in the context of a universal testing and treatment trial – BCPP/Ya Tsie trial</strong>. <em>eLife</em>, 2022; 11 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72657\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.7554/eLife.72657</a>\r\n</li>'),(499,'Migrating through small spaces makes cancer cells more aggressive','migrating-through-small-spaces-makes-cancer-cells-more-aggressive','2022-03-09 05:37:10.107965','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Squeezing through tight spaces makes cancer cells more aggressive and helps them evade cell death, shows a study published today in <em>eLife.</em></p><p>The findings reveal how mechanical stress makes cancer cells more likely to spread, or metastasise. While metastasis is the cause of most cancer deaths, there are currently no available cures. However, the new results may help scientists develop novel approaches to treat or prevent metastasis.</p><p>It can be a tight squeeze for cancer cells to escape their tumour or enter tiny blood vessels, called capillaries, to spread through the body. The cells must collapse and change their shape to do this, in a process called confined migration. As they spread, the cells must also avoid detection and destruction by the immune system.</p><p>\"Mechanical stress can cause cancer cell mutations, as well as an uncontrolled increase in cell numbers and greater tissue invasion,\" explains first author Deborah Fanfone, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cancer Research Center of Lyon, France. \"We wanted to know if the mechanical stress of confined migration makes cancer cells more likely to metastasise, and how this happens.\"</p><p>To answer these questions, Fanfone and colleagues forced human breast cancer cells through a membrane with tiny, three-micrometre-sized holes to simulate a confined migration environment. After just one passage through the membrane, they found that the cells became more mobile and resistant to anoikis -- a form of programmed cell death that occurs when cells become detached from the surrounding network of proteins and other molecules that support them (the extracellular matrix). The cells were also able to escape destruction by immune natural killer cells.</p><p>Further experiments showed that increased expression of inhibitory-of-apoptosis proteins (IAPs) increased the resistance of cancer cells to anoikis. Treating the cancer cells with a new type of cancer drug called a SMAC mimetic, which degrades IAPs, removed this protection.</p><p>The team then studied how breast cancer cells that had undergone confined migration behave when administered to immune-suppressed mice. They found these mice developed more lung metastases than mice that were administered with breast cancer cells that had not been exposed to confined migration.</p><p>\"By mimicking confined migration, we\'ve been able to explore its multifaceted effects on cancer aggressiveness,\" says senior author Gabriel Ichim, who leads the Cancer Cell Death team at the Cancer Research Center of Lyon. \"We\'ve shown how the process boosts survival in cancer cells and makes them more prone to forming deadly metastases.\"</p><p>The authors add that these results may lead to additional studies of potential metastasis treatments, such as therapies that soften tumours to reduce mechanical stress on cancer cells, or that block IAPs. These include SMAC mimetics, which are currently being tested in clinical trials as a possible new treatment approach.</p>','2022-03-08 23:19:42.571857','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'eLife','Squeezing through tight spaces makes cancer cells more aggressive and helps them evade cell death, shows a new study.',1,89,'<li>Deborah Fanfone, Zhichong Wu, Jade Mammi, Kevin Berthenet, David Neves, Kathrin Weber, Andrea Halaburkova, François Virard, Félix Bunel, Catherine Jamard, Hector Hernandez-Vargas, Stephen WG Tait, Ana Hennino, Gabriel Ichim. <strong>Confined migration promotes cancer metastasis through resistance to anoikis and increased invasiveness</strong>. <em>eLife</em>, 2022; 11 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.73150\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.7554/eLife.73150</a>\r\n</li>'),(500,'Self-administered screening can provide benefits for patients and providers','self-administered-screening-can-provide-benefits-for-patients-and-providers','2022-03-09 05:37:54.024949','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Have you ever felt uncomfortable when asked about depression or any other sensitive personal issue when checking in for a medical visit?</p><p>You\'re not alone.</p><p>Doctors at Wake Forest School of Medicine wondered if patients might be more forthcoming with honest information by completing a self-administered questionnaire on a tablet computer instead of responding verbally to nursing staff.</p><p>Seems they were right.</p><p>In a recent study, the tablet screening detected twice as many people with depression, fall risk or intimate partner violence compared to usual in-person screening by nursing staff, according to the study\'s principal investigator, David Miller, M.D., professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine. The study is published in the March 8 issue of <em>JAMA Network Open</em>.</p><p>\"We think using an iPad provides more privacy for patients and gives us more accurate health information than when nurses verbally do the screening as part of the check-in process for clinic visits,\" Miller said. \"It also saves nursing staff time since they don\'t have to ask the questions while checking a patient\'s vitals and updating their medical information.\"</p><p>For this non-randomized controlled trial, the screening questions for depression, fall risk and intimate partner violence that are asked at every primary care visit were programmed into the mPATH app, which was developed by Miller\'s team in 2018 to assist patients with colorectal cancer screening.</p><p>Miller\'s team evaluated data from six primary care practices (three family medicine and three internal medicine) to determine if more patients with depression, fall risk or intimate partner violence were identified in the two months after the practice started using the tablet as compared to the two months before, when nursing staff were asking the same screening questions verbally. All 23,026 patients included in the study were 18 years or older and were seen from June 2019 to February 2020.</p><p>Patients in the study\'s participating practices were asked to complete the mPATH questionnaire while in the waiting room and then return the tablet to the reception desk. When nursing staff called the person in to check their vitals and place them in an exam room, a nurse simply clicked a button that automatically imported all the information to the patient\'s electronic medical record.</p><p>If a patient screened positive for a fall risk, a real-time alert popped up on the patient\'s electronic record, prompting the nursing staff to implement appropriate safety measures. If a patient screened positive for severe depression or having thoughts of self-harm, an automatic alert popped up in the health record so the doctor had that information before seeing the patient and could evaluate whether immediate clinical attention was needed.</p><p>The accuracy of in-person screening of primary care patients for depression, injurious falls or intimate partner violence is hampered by time pressures, staff discomfort and patients\' reluctance to disclose sensitive information, Miller said. Self-administered screening on a tablet device may lessen these factors and improve the detection of at-risk patients, he said.</p><p>\"What is new about our study is that practices employed mPATH as part of their usual care, so we could see how tablet-based screening works in the real world,\" Miller said. \"A few prior studies examined tablet-based screening in the context of research studies, but what is seen in a research environment doesn\'t always translate into medical practice.\"</p><p>Limitations of the study include the single health system setting with a predominantly white population and its non-randomized design.</p><p>The Wake Forest School of Medicine research team is currently conducting a cluster randomized implementation-effectiveness study of the mPATH app in community-based practices with an anticipated completion date in March 2023.</p><p>Funding for the study was provided by grant RO1 CA218416 from the National Cancer Institute.</p><p>Miller, Wake Forest School of Medicine co-author, Ajay Dharod, M.D., and Wake Forest University Health Sciences have ownership interest in the mPATH technology used to conduct this research.</p>','2022-03-08 23:19:48.383911','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center','Doctors wondered if patients might be more forthcoming with honest information by completing a self-administered questionnaire on a tablet computer instead of responding verbally to nursing staff. In a recent study, the tablet screening detected twice as many people with depression, fall risk or intimate partner violence compared to usual in-person screening by nursing staff.',1,5,'<li>David P. Miller, Kristie L. Foley, Richa Bundy, Ajay Dharod, Elena Wright, Mark Dignan, Anna C. Snavely. <strong>Universal Screening in Primary Care Practices by Self-administered Tablet vs Nursing Staff</strong>. <em>JAMA Network Open</em>, 2022; 5 (3): e221480 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.1480\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.1480</a>\r\n</li>'),(502,'Astrocyte networks in the mouse brain control spatial learning and memory','astrocyte-networks-in-the-mouse-brain-control-spatial-learning-and-memory','2022-03-09 05:40:49.246257','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">In the brain, neurons and astrocytes work together to process information and enable complex behavior and cognitive abilities. Astrocytes have many functions like controlling the blood-brain barrier, providing nutrients to the nervous tissue, and supporting its repair. An interesting feature of astrocytes is that they form large networks of connected cells. These couplings are made of specific membrane pores that are formed by a group of proteins called connexins. And through these connections, astrocytes can communicate with each other by exchanging various ions and small molecules.</p><p><strong>Switching off astrocyte coupling disrupts spatial memory formation</strong></p><p>A team of neuroscientists led by Aiman Saab and Bruno Weber at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the University of Zurich (UZH), has revealed that in the adult brain of mice astrocyte coupling contributes to neural functioning in the hippocampus, a brain region that is involved in spatial memory formation. \"We found that in adulthood an intact astrocyte network is essential for neural homeostasis, synaptic plasticity and spatial cognitive abilities of this brain region,\" says Aiman Saab, last author of the study.</p><p>To elucidate the functional relevance of the astrocyte network, the researchers generated a mouse model in which the two key connexins responsible for linking astrocytes together can be selectively inactivated. Once the corresponding genes were turned off, the astrocytes lost their ability to maintain intercellular networks and astrocyte-to-astrocyte coupling was disrupted within a few weeks.</p><p><strong>Intact astrocytic network is key for brain functioning of adult mice</strong></p><p>Disruption of the astrocyte network altered the excitability of the neurons in the hippocampus and their signal transmission at the synapses. Moreover, the strengthening of these specialized neuronal connections needed to store synaptic information was also compromised. This was accompanied by significant deficits in spatial learning and memory of the animals. \"Astrocyte functions are known to be involved in shaping cognitive abilities. Our study now shows that an intact astrocyte network is critical for spatial memory formation in adult mice,\" says Ladina Hösli, first author of the study.</p><p><strong>Striking similarities to neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychiatric disorders</strong></p><p>Furthermore, the primary immune cells of the brain are also affected by the loss of astrocyte coupling. The activation of these so-called microglia observed in the mice are similar to changes documented in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer\'s disease and neuropsychiatric disorders like depressions. \"Astrocytes and microglia not only changed their morphology, we also found alterations in specific markers that are characteristic to disease-associated microglia,\" says Hösli.</p><p>Since normal brain aging is also associated with changes in astrocytic coupling, these glial changes might contribute to the age-related decline in learning and memory. \"Our study shows that in the adult brain the functioning of astrocytic connexins and an intact glial network may be important for the way astrocytes and microglia work together to maintain neural homeostasis,\" says Aiman Saab. In a next step, the researchers aim to understand how microglial functions are altered when astrocyte coupling is perturbed.</p>','2022-03-08 23:19:54.425300','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Zurich','Astrocytes form large networks of interconnected cells in the central nervous system. When these cell-to-cell couplings are disrupted in the brain of adult mice, the animals are no longer able to store spatial information. The astrocytes network is thus essential for spatial learning and memory formation, as neuroscientists now show.',1,92,'<li>Ladina Hösli, Noemi Binini, Kim David Ferrari, Laetitia Thieren et. al. <strong>Decoupling astrocytes in adult mice impairs synaptic plasticity and spatial learning</strong>. <em>Cell Reports</em>, March 8, 2022 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110484\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110484</a>\r\n</li>'),(505,'Placenta plays active part in transferring vitamin D to fetus during pregnancy','placenta-plays-active-part-in-transferring-vitamin-d-to-fetus-during-pregnancy','2022-03-09 06:48:08.432772','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">Scientists have shed new light on the role of the placenta in managing the relationships between maternal vitamin D and fetal development, according to a study published today in eLife.</p><p>The findings demonstrate a complex interplay between vitamin D and the placenta, and could help inform future interventions using vitamin D to support fetal development and maternal adaptations to pregnancy.</p><p>As vitamin D is unable to be produced by a fetus, it must be transferred across the placenta. This is important for both fetal and lifelong health. Maternal vitamin D concentrations are positively associated with fetal bone growth and birth weight, and these associations continue into postnatal life.</p><p>Previous work has suggested that maternal vitamin D transfers passively across the placenta, but the current study challenges this idea.</p><p>\"Research in kidneys has questioned the role of passive diffusion in the uptake of vitamin D. It has instead shown that this uptake is driven primarily by endocytosis of vitamin D, where the vitamin is bound to the binding protein albumin and introduced into the organ tissue cells,\" explains Dr Claire Simner, Research Assistant at the University of Southampton, UK. Simner is a co-first author of the study alongside Dr Brogan Ashley, who was also at the University of Southampton at the time the work was carried out. \"We proposed that a similar endocytic mechanism exists in the placenta, suggesting that this organ plays an active role in the delivery of vitamin D to the fetus.\"</p><p>To explore this idea further, the team designed a study to find out how maternal vitamin D is taken up, metabolised and mediates gene expression within the human placenta. They used a perfusion model -- involving the use of human placental samples collected from term pregnancies immediately after delivery -- and placental fragment cultures to study the behaviour of the organ tissue. These methods contrast with cell-model approaches of previous research into how vitamin D transfers across the placenta.</p><p>To determine the mechanisms of placental vitamin D uptake, the team incubated fresh term human placental fragments with vitamin D alongside albumin for eight hours. They then analysed the gene expression of the fragments using a technique called quantitative rtPCR. Their analysis revealed a significant increase in the expression of the CYP24A1 gene -- which is involved in controlling the amount of vitamin D in the body -- in the fragments following incubation, compared to fragments that were incubated with vitamin D only. This suggests that albumin might enable vitamin D uptake.</p><p>\"These findings show that endocytosis may play an important role in the uptake of vitamin D into the human placenta, as previously seen in the kidneys,\" says Dr Jane Cleal, Lecturer in Epigenetics at the University of Southampton, and a co-senior author of the study alongside Professor Nicholas Harvey, Professor of Rheumatology and Clinical Epidemiology at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, University of Southampton.</p><p>Additionally, the team demonstrated that vitamin D exposure leads to rapid effects on the full set of messenger RNA molecules (the transcriptome) and of proteins (the proteome) expressed by the placenta. Their results revealed that the underlying epigenetic landscape of the placenta -- the interaction between the genes and the environment -- helps to dictate this transcriptional response to vitamin D treatment.</p><p>\"This is the first quantitative study demonstrating the active transfer and metabolism of vitamin D by the human placenta, with widespread effects on the placenta itself,\" Dr Cleal concludes. \"As our data are generated from term placenta only, additional studies are needed to determine how our findings relate to earlier stages of gestation. Together, the insights from our work and future research will be helpful for identifying potential new options for targeted interventions to improve pregnancy outcomes.\"</p>','2022-03-08 23:21:08.553084','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'eLife','Scientists have shed new light on the role of the placenta in managing the relationships between maternal vitamin D and fetal development, according to a new study.',1,174,'<li>Claire Simner, Brogan Ashley, Antigoni Manousopoulou, Carl Jenkinson, Felicity Hey, Jennifer M Frost, Faisal I Rezwan, Cory H White, Emma M Lofthouse, Emily Hyde, Laura DF Cooke, Sheila Barton, Pamela Mahon, Elizabeth M Curtis, Rebecca J Moon, Sarah R Crozier, Hazel M Inskip, Keith M Godfrey, John W Holloway, Cyrus Cooper, Kerry S Jones, Rohan M Lewis, Martin Hewison, Spiros DD Garbis, Miguel R Branco, Nicholas C Harvey, Jane K Cleal. <strong>Placental uptake and metabolism of 25(OH)vitamin D determine its activity within the fetoplacental unit</strong>. <em>eLife</em>, 2022; 11 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71094\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.7554/eLife.71094</a>\r\n</li>'),(506,'Distinct biological ages across individuals’ various organs and systems','distinct-biological-ages-across-individuals-various-organs-and-systems','2022-03-09 06:48:51.457830','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">It\'s common to say that someone looks either younger or older than their chronological age, but aging is more than skin deep. Our various organs and systems may have different ages, at least from a biological perspective. In a study published March 8 in the journal <em>Cell Reports</em>, an international team of investigators used biomarkers, statistical modeling, and other techniques to develop tools for measuring the biological ages of various organ systems. Based on their findings, the researchers report that there are multiple \"clocks\" within the body that vary widely based on factors including genetics and lifestyle in each individual.</p><p>\"Our study used approaches that can help improve our understanding of aging and -- more importantly -- could be used some day in real healthcare practice,\" says co-corresponding author Xun Xu of the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) and China National GeneBank (CNGB) in Shenzhen, China. \"We used biomarkers that could be identified from blood and stool samples plus some measurements from a routine body checkup.\"</p><p>The concept of evaluating people\'s biological aging rates has been around since the 1970s, but earlier studies were focused either on developing methods for estimating one centralized aging index or studying the molecular aging biomarkers using tissues and cell cultures outside the body.</p><p>\"There has been a lack of practical applications in a population-based sample for precisely estimating the aging rates of live people\'s organs and systems,\" says co-corresponding author Xiuqing Zhang, also of BGI and CNGB. \"So we decided to design one.\"</p><p>To do this research, the investigators recruited 4,066 volunteers living in the Shenzhen area to supply blood and stool samples and facial skin images and to undergo physical fitness examinations. The volunteers were between the ages of 20 and 45 years; 52% were female and 48% were male. \"Most human aging studies have been conducted on older populations and in cohorts with a high incidence of chronic diseases,\" says co-corresponding author Brian Kennedy of the National University of Singapore. \"Because the aging process in young healthy adults is largely unknown and some studies have suggested that age-related changes could be detected in people as young as their 20s, we decided to focus on this age range.\"</p><p>In total, 403 features were measured, including 74 metabolomic features, 34 clinical biochemistry features, 36 immune repertoire features, 15 body composition features, 8 physical fitness features, 10 electroencephalography features, 16 facial skin features, and 210 gut microbiome features. These features were then classified into nine categories, including cardiovascular-related, renal-related, liver-related, sex hormone, facial skin, nutrition/metabolism, immune-related, physical fitness-related, and gut microbiome features.</p><p>Because of the difference in sex-specific effects, the groups were divided into male and female. The investigators then developed an aging-rate index that could be used to correlate different bodily systems with each other. Based on their findings, they classified the volunteers either as aging faster or aging slower than their chronological age.</p><p>Overall, they discovered that biological ages of different organs and systems had diverse correlations, and not all were expected. Although healthy weight and high physical fitness levels were expected to have a positive impact, the investigators were surprised by other findings. For example, having a more diverse gut microbiota indicated a younger gut while at the same time having a negative impact on the aging of the kidneys, possibly because the diversity of species causes the kidneys to do more work.</p><p>The investigators also used their approach to look at other datasets, including the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey, which includes data on more than 2,000 centenarians with matched middle-aged controls. In addition, they looked at single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to determine whether differences could be explained by genetic factors. There, they did find certain pathways that could be associated with aging rates.</p><p>The researchers plan to regularly follow up with the study participants to track the development of aging and validate their findings. Future studies will use additional approaches for classifying features of aging and studying the interactions between organ systems.</p><p>They also plan to use single-cell technology to look at programmed aging in more detail. \"It\'s important to capture the cell-to-cell variation in an aging individual, as this will tell us important information about the heterogeneity within cell types and tissues and provide important insights into aging mechanisms,\" says co-corresponding author Claudio Franceschi of Lobachevsky State University in Russia.</p>','2022-03-08 23:21:11.434970','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Cell Press','It\'s common to say that someone looks either younger or older than their chronological age, but aging is more than skin deep. Our various organs and systems may have different ages, at least from a biological perspective. Investigators used biomarkers, statistical modeling, and other techniques to develop tools for measuring the biological ages of various organ systems. Based on their findings, the researchers report that there are multiple \'clocks\' within the body that vary widely based on factors including genetics and lifestyle in each individual.',1,155,'<li>Nie, Li, and Li et al. <strong>Distinct biological ages of organs and systems identified from a multi-omics study</strong>. <em>Cell Reports</em>, 2022 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110459\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1016/j.celrep.2022.110459</a>\r\n</li>'),(509,'Research advances understanding of DNA repair','research-advances-understanding-of-dna-repair','2022-03-09 06:56:16.566564','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A Florida State University College of Medicine researcher has made a discovery that alters our understanding of how the body\'s DNA repair process works and may lead to new chemotherapy treatments for cancer and other disorders.</p><p>The fact that DNA can be repaired after it has been damaged is one of the great mysteries of medical science, but pathways involved in the repair process vary during different stages of the cell life cycle. In one of the repair pathways known as base excision repair (BER), the damaged material is removed, and a combination of proteins and enzymes work together to create DNA to fill in and then seal the gaps.</p><p>Led by Eminent Professor Zucai Suo, FSU researchers discovered that BER has a built-in mechanism to increase its effectiveness -- it just needs to be captured at a very precise point in the cell life cycle.</p><p>The study appears in the current issue of <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</em></p><p>In BER, an enzyme called polymerase beta (PolyB) fulfills two functions: It creates DNA, and it initiates a reaction to clean up the leftover \"chemical junk.\" Through five years of study, Suo\'s team learned that by capturing PolyB when it is naturally cross-linked with DNA, the enzyme will create new genetic material at a speed 17 times faster than when the two are not cross-linked. This suggests that the two functions of PolyB are interlocked, not independent, during BER.</p><p>The research improves the understanding of cellular genomic stability, drug efficacy and resistance associated with chemotherapy.</p><p>\"Cancer cells replicate at high speed, and their DNA endures a lot of damage,\" Suo said. \"When a doctor uses certain drugs to attack cancer cells\' DNA, the cancer cells must cope with additional DNA damage. If the cancer cells cannot rapidly fix DNA damage, they will die. Otherwise, the cancer cells survive, and drug resistance appears.</p><p>This research examined naturally cross-linked PolyB and DNA, unlike previous research that mimicked the process. Prior to this study, researchers had identified the enzymes involved in BER but didn\'t fully understand how they work together.</p><p>\"When we have nicks in DNA, bad things can happen, like the double strand breaking in DNA,\" said Thomas Spratt, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University College of Medicine who was not a part of the research team. \"What Zucai found provides us with something we didn\'t understand before, and he used many different methods to reach his findings.\"</p><p>In addition to revealing PolyB\'s functional dynamics, the team proposed a modified BER pathway and is testing the pathway in human cells.</p><p>\"We have been able to dig deeper into a fundamental pathway for which the pioneer Tomas Lindahl shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2015,\" Suo said.</p><p>Suo began the research as a professor of biochemistry at The Ohio State University, but the main body of work was performed since his arrival at FSU. Co-authors are Adarsh Kumar, a former postdoctoral researcher in the FSU College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Sciences; OSU graduate students Andrew J. Reed and Walter J. Zahurancik; and Sasha M. Daskalova and Sidney M. Hecht with the BioDesign Center for BioEnergetics and School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University.</p><p>The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health under award number R01GM122093.</p>','2022-03-08 23:31:23.281017','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Florida State University','A researcher has made a discovery that alters our understanding of how the body\'s DNA repair process works and may lead to new chemotherapy treatments for cancer and other disorders. Researchers discovered that base excision repair has a built-in mechanism to increase its effectiveness -- it just needs to be captured at a very precise point in the cell life cycle.',1,123,'<li>Adarsh Kumar, Andrew J. Reed, Walter J. Zahurancik, Sasha M. Daskalova, Sidney M. Hecht, Zucai Suo. <strong>Interlocking activities of DNA polymerase β in the base excision repair pathway</strong>. <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>, 2022; 119 (10) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2118940119\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1073/pnas.2118940119</a>\r\n</li>'),(511,'New dental tool prototype can spot the acidic conditions that lead to cavities','new-dental-tool-prototype-can-spot-the-acidic-conditions-that-lead-to-cavities','2022-03-09 06:57:37.659258','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">You and your dentist have a lot of tools and techniques for stopping cavities, but detecting the specific chemical conditions that can lead to cavities and then preventing them from ever getting started is much harder. Now, in a new study, University of Washington researchers have shown that a dental tool they created can measure the acidity built up by the bacteria in plaque that leads to cavities.</p><p>The O-pH system is a prototype optical device that emits an LED light and measures the reactions of that light, the fluorescence, with an FDA-approved chemical dye applied to teeth. The O-pH then produces a numerical reading of the pH, or acidity, of the plaque covering those teeth. Knowing how acidic the plaque is can tell dentists and patients what area of a tooth is most at risk of developing a cavity.</p><p>\"Plaque has a lot of bacteria that produce acid when they interact with the sugar in our food,\" said Manuja Sharma, lead author and a doctoral student in the UW Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. \"This acid is what causes the corrosion of the tooth surface and eventually cavities. So, if we can capture information about the acidic activity, we can get an idea of how bacteria are growing in the dental biofilm, or plaque.\"</p><p>Sharma explained that not all bacteria in that biofilm are bad or will lead to cavities, so measuring the acidity of the environment can tell a dentist what they need to know about the threat of developing problems. That can limit the need to test for specific harmful bacteria, of which there can be a multitude.</p><p>To test their device, the researchers recruited 30 patients between the ages of 10 and 18, with a median age of 15, in the UW School of Dentistry\'s Center for Pediatric Dentistry. The researchers chose kids for their study in large part because the enamel on kids\' teeth is much thinner than that of adults, so getting early warning of acid erosion is even more important. To perform the measurements with the O-pH device, the researchers also recruited second- and third-year students in the dentistry school, who were supervised by a faculty member.</p><p>The test is non-invasive. While the dye is applied to the teeth, at the end of a length of cord is the probe that transmits and collects light while hovering over the surface of a tooth (see photos). The collected light travels back to a central box that provides a pH reading. The conditions on the patients\' teeth were read several times before and after sugar rinses and other condition changes, such as pre- and post-professional dental cleaning.</p><p>Eric Seibel, senior author and research professor of mechanical engineering in the UW College of Engineering, said the idea for adding the acidity test as a new clinical procedure came from envisioning that when a patient first sits in the dental chair, before their teeth get cleaned, \"a dentist would rinse them with the tasteless fluorescent dye solution and then get their teeth optically scanned to look for high acid production areas where the enamel is getting demineralized.\"</p><p>The study was published in February in <em>IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering</em>. The research team reported that one limitation to their study was being unable to consistently measure the same location on each tooth during each phase of testing. To address this limitation, in particular, the researchers are evolving their device to a version that produces images for dentists that instantly show the exact location of high acidity, where the next cavity may occur.</p><p>\"We do need more results to show how effective it is for diagnosis, but it can definitely help us understand some of your oral health quantitatively,\" said Sharma. \"It can also help educate patients about the effects of sugar on the chemistry of plaque. We can show them, live, what happens, and that is an experience they\'ll remember and say, OK, fine, I need to cut down on sugar!\"</p><p>Co-authors include Lauren Lee, UW Department of Microbiology; Matthew Carson, UW Human Photonics Laboratory; David Park, Se An, Micah Bovenkamp, Jess Cayetano, Ian Berude, Zheng Xu, Alireza Sadr, UW School of Dentistry; and Shwetak Patel, UW Electrical and Computer Engineering, Paul. G. Allen School of Computer Science. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, Oral Health Monitor, Institute of Translational Health Sciences; and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.</p>','2022-03-08 23:31:26.348674','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'University of Washington','Researchers have shown that a dental tool they created can measure the acidity built up by the bacteria in plaque that leads to cavities.',1,12,'<li>Manuja Sharma, Lauren K. Lee, Matthew D. Carson, David S. Park, Se W. An, Micah G. Bovenkamp, Jess J. Cayetano, Ian A Berude, Zheng Xu, Alireza Sadr, Shwetak N. Patel, Eric J. Seibel. <strong>O-pH: Optical pH Monitor to Measure Oral Biofilm Acidity and Assist in Enamel Health Monitoring</strong>. <em>IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering</em>, 2022; 1 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TBME.2022.3153659\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1109/TBME.2022.3153659</a>\r\n</li>'),(512,'Earthquake fracture energy relates to how a quake stops','earthquake-fracture-energy-relates-to-how-a-quake-stops','2022-03-09 06:58:46.672097','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">By examining earthquake models from a fresh perspective, Cornell University engineers now show that the earthquake fracture energy -- once thought to relate to how faults in the Earth\'s crust weaken -- is related to how quakes stop.</p><p>This modeling revelation could help science inch closer to making accurate earthquake forecasts.</p><p>\"We realized that observations we thought were related to how faults weaken are actually data related to how an earthquake stops,\" said Greg McLaskey, assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, in the College of Engineering. \"We\'ve observed that earthquake fracture energy is more related to the overall rupture style -- such as crack-like or pulse-like rupture -- instead of a specific slip-weakening relationship (the way the crust weakens when plates slide past each other).\"</p><p>The work, \"Earthquake Breakdown Energy Scaling Despite Constant Fracture Energy,\" was published Feb. 22 in <em>Nature Communications</em>. In addition to McLaskey, the lead author was Chun-Yu (Huey) Ke, Ph.D. \'21, and David S. Kammer at the Institute for Building Materials, ETH Zu?rich, Switzerland. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.</p><p>Research over the past 25 years has focused on earthquake fracture energy or breakdown energy usually estimated from ground shaking, McLaskey said.</p><p>That research had linked earthquake fracture energy to the way the Earth\'s crust weakens during an earthquake. But by studying large-scale rock experiments -- at the Bovay Laboratory Complex -- between two two-ton granite slabs, the researchers at Cornell found that those models may have been slightly askew.</p><p>The lab\'s computer models suggested that those seismic observations are not directly related to fracture energy, but instead, the new research indicated, the seismic observations depend on how the earthquake ends, as related to either a pulse-like or crack-like rupture style.</p><p>For a pulse-like rupture, the fault resembles an inchworm moving along a surface. The inchworm doesn\'t jump, McLaskey said, and only a little bit moves at a time. In a crack-style rupture, the fault resembles a zipper.</p><p>Seismologists have been measuring the fracture energy (sometimes called breakdown energy) of earthquakes. \"That parameter of an earthquake should not be interpreted as a weakening of the crust,\" he said, \"but whether the earthquake rupture is a pulse or a crack.\"</p><p>When earthquakes do occur, they end. The slipped part of the fault tapers off and eventually merges with part of the crust that is not ruptured. \"Think of a car approaching a stop sign,\" he said. \"You don\'t stop abruptly. You see the sign and you apply the brakes -- but the factor we\'ve introduced is whether you\'re coming to a stop sign going uphill, downhill or on a flat surface.\"</p><p>The engineers found that when they slammed on the experimental brakes, they could not get the ruptures to stop. \"The only way we could get our ruptures in the lab to stop is by making \'a hill,\' so to speak,\" McLaskey said. \"We introduced that factor into our model and it began to make sense.\"</p><p>Earthquakes are unpredictable, he said, discussing early warning technology used around the world in Japan and Mexico, and now being developed in California.</p><p>\"If you get a 1-second warning because of sensors that there will be an earthquake -- maybe a 10-second warning -- you\'ll be lucky,\" he said.</p><p>\"One of the reasons why it is difficult to predict earthquakes is because scientific modeling equations don\'t always add up,\" McLaskey said. \"This paper is a step in the right direction. We\'re getting a better understanding of these models -- hopefully leading to an ability to predict earthquakes.\"</p><p>McLaskey is a faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.</p>','2022-03-08 23:31:32.243621','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Cornell University','By examining earthquake models from a fresh perspective, engineers now show that the earthquake fracture energy -- once thought to relate to how faults in the Earth\'s crust weaken -- is related to how quakes stop.',1,33,'<li>Chun-Yu Ke, Gregory C. McLaskey, David S. Kammer. <strong>Earthquake breakdown energy scaling despite constant fracture energy</strong>. <em>Nature Communications</em>, 2022; 13 (1) DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28647-4\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1038/s41467-022-28647-4</a>\r\n</li>'),(513,'Student researchers discover genes unique to humans in search for source of our evolutionary distinctiveness','student-researchers-discover-genes-unique-to-humans-in-search-for-source-of-our-evolutionary-distinctiveness','2022-03-09 07:00:02.142349','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">A team of student researchers from John Jay College of Criminal Justice has discovered human microRNA genes not shared with any other primate species and which may have played an important role in the unique evolution of the human species. The students, under the direction of John Jay Professors Dr. Hunter R. Johnson and Dr. Nathan H. Lents, found at least three families of microRNA genes on chromosome 21.</p><p>The team utilized genome alignment tools to compare the most recent drafts of human and chimpanzee genomes, meticulously scanning for novel genetic elements unique to humans. Beginning with the smallest human chromosome, chromosome 21, the researchers were surprised to find a large region of human-unique DNA, called 21p11, that harbors several orphan microRNA genes.</p><p>Although the team found that the long arm of human chromosome 21 aligns well with that of other extant ape species, the short arm aligned poorly, suggesting that this region of the human genome has recently and substantially diverged from that of other primates.</p><p>According to their analysis of prehistoric human genomes, these changes predate the divergence of Neanderthals and modern humans. The genes also show little to no sequence-based variation within the modern human population. The team therefore theorized that the microRNA (miRNA) genes found in that region [<em>miR3648 </em>and <em>miR6724</em>] likely evolved in the time since the chimpanzee and human lineages split, sometime in the last seven million years, and are specific to humans.</p><p>Using computational tools, the team discovered with a high degree of likelihood that the predicted gene targets of the relevant miRNAs are related to embryonic development. Both <em>miR3648 </em>and <em>miR6724 </em>have been detected in tissues throughout the human body, including the brain, and may conceivably play a role in the evolution of humankind\'s most unique organ. The findings point to the intriguing idea that these microRNA genes contributed to the distinct evolution of our species and the uniqueness of humankind.</p><p>\"Understanding the genetic basis for human uniqueness is an important undertaking because, despite sharing nearly 99% of our DNA sequences with the chimpanzee, we\'re remarkably different organisms,\" said student researcher José Galván. \"Small post-transcriptional regulatory elements like miRNAs and siRNAs [small interfering RNA] are under-appreciated and often misunderstood in the effort to understand our genetic differences.\"</p><p>Thanks to their small size and structural simplicity, miRNA genes have fewer barriers to <em>de novo </em>creation than other gene types. MicroRNA genes can be extremely prolific in their regulation of other genes, meaning that modest changes to DNA sequence can result in wide-ranging impacts to the human genome. The creation of <em>miR3648 </em>and <em>miR6724 </em>serve as excellent examples of this process. This study revealed a new possible mechanism for the creation of new miRNA genes through duplications of rRNA genes, which calls for further research on how general this phenomenon may be.</p><p><em>The study\'s co-authors include Dr. Nathan H. Lents, Professor of Biology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Dr. Hunter Johnson, Associate Professor of Mathematics at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a team of undergraduate student researchers: Jessica A. Blandino, Beatriz C. Mercado, Jos</em><em>é A. Galv</em><em>án, and William J. Higgins. </em></p>','2022-03-08 23:31:35.159502','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'The City University of New York','A team of student researchers has discovered human microRNA genes not shared with any other primate species and which may have played an important role in the unique evolution of the human species. The students found at least three families of microRNA genes on chromosome 21.',1,123,'<li>Hunter R. Johnson, Jessica A. Blandino, Beatriz C. Mercado, José A. Galván, William J. Higgins, Nathan H. Lents. <strong>The evolution of de novo            human‐specific microRNA            genes on chromosome 21</strong>. <em>American Journal of Biological Anthropology</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24504\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1002/ajpa.24504</a>\r\n</li>'),(514,'Physical activity may protect your brain as you age','physical-activity-may-protect-your-brain-as-you-age','2022-03-10 19:37:47.422916','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">We all know we should exercise and eat healthy. But doing that isn\'t just good for maintaining your figure as you age.</p><p>New research from the University of Georgia shows that physical activity could help protect your cognitive abilities as you age. And it doesn\'t have to be intense exercise to make an impact.</p><p>\"This finding isn\'t saying, \'If you\'re older, you need to go out there and start running marathons,\'\" said Marissa Gogniat, lead author of the study and a recent doctoral graduate in psychology from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. \"This is saying if you get more steps, if you\'re moving around your environment a little bit more, that can be helpful to your brain health and keep you more independent as you age.\"</p><p><strong>Exercise improves brain function </strong></p><p>Published in <em>Sport Sciences for Health</em>, the study followed 51 older adults, tracking their physical activity and fitness measurements. The participants performed tests specifically designed to measure cognitive functioning and underwent MRIs to assess brain functioning.</p><p>They also wore a device that measured the intensity of the wearer\'s physical activity, number of steps taken and distance covered. The researchers assessed fitness through a six-minute walking test, during which participants walked as quickly as they could to cover the most distance possible within the time limit.</p><p>\"We\'ve always been told it\'s good to exercise, but I think this is some evidence that exercise can actually change your brain,\" Gogniat said. \"And that impacts the way you\'re able to function in your daily life.\"</p><p><strong>Brain networks improve with physical activity</strong></p><p>The brain is made up of a bunch of distinct networks. Those networks are in constant communication, sending information to each other.</p><p>But different parts of the brain are active at different times. The network that is active when the body is at rest, for example, flips off when a person starts trying to complete a task. At that time, another network kicks on.</p><p>While one of these networks is active, the other should be shut off. If it\'s not, that\'s a sign that a person\'s brain isn\'t functioning as well as it should be.</p><p>These networks are the key to being able to perform basic tasks in daily life, such as remembering important information and exhibiting self-control. But as people age, these tasks often become more difficult.</p><p>This study was the first to examine how these networks interact with physical activity and fitness to impact how the brain functions.</p><p>\"This paper is exciting because it gives us some evidence that when people whose brain networks aren\'t functioning optimally engage in physical activity, we see improvement in their executive function and their independence,\" Gogniat said. \"We\'re not saying you need to radically change your life.</p><p>\"Maybe just take the stairs on the way to work. Stand up and walk around a little bit more. That\'s where you get the most bang for your buck, not crazy, high-intensity exercise.\"</p><p>The study was co-authored by Talia Robinson, Kharine Jean and Stephen Miller, from UGA\'s Department of Psychology.</p>','2022-03-08 23:31:38.113101','uploads/news/physical_activity-sixteen_nine.jpeg',1,'University of Georgia','We all know we should exercise and eat healthy foods. But doing that isn\'t just good for maintaining your figure as you age. New research shows that physical activity could help protect your cognitive abilities as you age. And it doesn\'t have to be intense exercise to make an impact.',1,22,'<li>Marissa A. Gogniat, Talia L. Robinson, Kharine R. Jean, L. Stephen Miller. <strong>Physical activity and fitness moderate the association between executive function and anti-correlated networks in the aging brain</strong>. <em>Sport Sciences for Health</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11332-021-00887-9\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1007/s11332-021-00887-9</a>\r\n</li>'),(515,'The ‘equal-opportunity jerk’ defense: Rudeness can obfuscate gender bias','the-equal-opportunity-jerk-defense-rudeness-can-obfuscate-gender-bias','2022-03-10 19:39:35.308881','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">If you\'re an \"equal-opportunity jerk,\" does that mean you can\'t also be sexist? New research shows that many people think so -- and consider men to be gender blind when they\'re rude, condescending, and berating to women and men equally. </p><p>To highlight the common view that men aren\'t deemed sexist when they\'re rude to both men and women, researchers asked subjects to share their perceptions of tweets from former President Donald Trump lambasting men and women, fictitious stories of managers\' treatment of male and female employees, and surveys of sexist behavior. </p><p>According to the study, being a jerk to men creates \"an illusion of impartiality, giving sexist perpetrators plausible deniability.\" This can lead people to falsely conclude that gender bias doesn\'t underlie rude behavior, making them less likely to recognize sexism. </p><p>\"We found that a man does not seem sexist if he treats everyone -- both men and women -- poorly,\" said Peter Belmi, associate professor of leadership and organizational behavior at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and lead author of the study. \"This is problematic because sexism and rudeness are not mutually exclusive. Men who are sexist can be -- and often are -- rude toward other men.\"</p><p>The research shows that gender blindness can be exploited to refute accusations of sexism, he added. For example, perpetrators may highlight instances in which they\'ve been rude to men as evidence that they aren\'t sexist. </p><p>A popular understanding of sexism is discrimination toward women based solely on their sex. Under this definition, a man would not be sexist if he were a jerk to both sexes. The researchers defined sexism more broadly, however, as attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors that reflect, foster, or promote negative or pejorative stereotypes about women.</p><p>\"Men may believe that rather than \'supporting women,\' an alternative solution to creating gender parity is to \'treat everyone horribly,\'\" Belmi added. </p><p>He emphasized that previous research has focused on gender blindness\'s benefit in fostering workplace gender diversity and inclusion. The current study highlights the shortcomings of this ideology. </p><p>The researchers conducted a series of studies, using online participants and students from professional schools, to determine whether sexism is tougher to recognize when men express rudeness to other men as well as women. </p><p>A two-part survey of about 1,100 employed men measured their self-reported rudeness toward male and female colleagues at work and their attitudes and beliefs about women. </p><p>Another study asked participants to read tweets written by Trump during his presidency that contained sexist comments about women; some participants also read tweets that berated men. </p><p>Next, the researchers asked participants to read a series of stories, some about managers making sexist comments to female workers and others about managers speaking rudely to male subordinates, too. Participants were also asked to identify whether those managers needed gender-bias and anger-management training. </p><p>In each experiment, participants failed to recognize sexism when the perpetrator was rude or berating to men. However, they identified sexist behavior when only women were treated poorly. In other words, \"equal-opportunity jerks\" were viewed as gender blind. Also, the more participants perceived an offender being a jerk to other men, the more they diminished the need for gender-bias training. </p><p>\"When a sexist manager is rude toward men, it may appear as though he is not sexist,\" Belmi said. \"Thus, women victimized by his behavior will have a more difficult time proving that he is sexist. Rudeness can therefore protect perpetrators.\"</p><p>The findings show that rudeness across genders creates a barrier to addressing sexism. The researchers suggested that future studies should examine whether rudeness can conceal other types of discrimination -- for example, by creating illusions of colorblindness or authenticity.</p><p>\"Blatant, unambiguous, and obvious forms of sexist conduct continue to exist,\" Belmi said. \"Our findings suggest that one reason for their persistence is that observers may not recognize that everyday acts of rudeness can serve as a convenient mask for bias against women.\" </p>','2022-03-08 23:31:47.841561','uploads/news/logo.jpg',1,'Association for Psychological Science','If you\'re an \'equal-opportunity jerk,\' does that mean you can\'t also be sexist? New research shows that many people think so -- and consider men to be gender blind when they\'re rude, condescending, and berating to women and men equally.',1,177,'<li>Peter Belmi, Sora Jun, Gabrielle S. Adams. <strong>The “Equal-Opportunity Jerk” Defense: Rudeness Can Obfuscate Gender Bias</strong>. <em>Psychological Science</em>, 2022; 095679762110404 DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09567976211040495\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1177/09567976211040495</a>\r\n</li>'),(565,'Historically \'redlined\' urban areas have higher levels of air pollution','historically-redlined-urban-areas-have-higher-levels-of-air-pollution','2022-03-10 19:42:24.332872','<p class=\"lead\" id=\"first\">In the wake of the Great Depression, the federally sponsored Home Owners\' Loan Corporation (HOLC) drew maps of neighborhoods in U.S. cities that characterized their desirability for mortgage lending. Many neighborhoods with Black and immigrant communities received the worst grade, restricting access to federally backed loans and favorable mortgage terms. Now, researchers reporting in ACS\' <em>Environmental Science &amp; Technology Letters</em> have found that these \"redlined\" areas have higher levels of air pollution 80 years later.</p><p>In the U.S., people of color, particularly Black and Hispanic Americans, at every income level are exposed to higher-than-average amounts of air pollution. The reasons are complex and partly rooted in historical patterns of discrimination, experts say. Beginning in the 1930s, the HOLC rated neighborhoods in U.S. cities on a four-point scale: \"A\" (most desirable), \"B\" (still desirable), \"C\" (definitely declining) and \"D\" (hazardous for mortgage appraisal; \"redlined\"). Historical records indicate that many neighborhoods were given the \"D\" characterization because they had Black and immigrant communities. This designation limited residents\' ability to build wealth through home ownership, and it also influenced later government land use decisions to place hazardous industries in or near \"D\" neighborhoods. Joshua Apte of the University of California, Berkeley and colleagues wanted to examine associations between historical redlining and air pollution levels in the year 2010, which had the most recent census data available at the time of the study.</p><p>The researchers focused on two key air pollutants -- nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2</sub>; a short-lived gas emitted by traffic, industry and other sources), and fine particulate matter (PM<sub>2.5</sub>; longer-lived, tiny particles found in dust, soot, smoke and other emissions, and also formed in the atmosphere). The team compared 1930s-era HOLC maps with 2010 air pollution levels and census demographics for 202 U.S. cities that are home to 65% of the urban population. They found that pollution levels were consistently linked with HOLC grade, especially for NO<sub>2</sub>, which was 50% higher in \"D\" neighborhoods than in \"A\" ones. At the national level, air pollution disparities were larger by HOLC grade than they were by race and ethnicity. However, within each grade, racial and ethnic disparities were observed, with lower exposure levels to NO<sub>2</sub> and PM<sub>2.5</sub> for white people than for people of color. Overall, the authors emphasize that present-day air pollution disparities in part reflect decisions made generations ago.</p><p>The authors acknowledge funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.</p>','2022-03-09 16:41:57.354965','uploads/news/redlining-pollution-superJumbo.jpg',1,'American Chemical Society','In the wake of the Great Depression, the federally sponsored Home Owners\' Loan Corporation drew maps of neighborhoods in U.S. cities that characterized their desirability for mortgage lending. Many neighborhoods with Black and immigrant communities received the worst grade, restricting access to federally backed loans and favorable mortgage terms. Now, researchers have found that these \'redlined\' areas have higher levels of air pollution 80 years later.',1,76,'<li>Haley M. Lane, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Julian D. Marshall, Joshua S. Apte. <strong>Historical Redlining Is Associated with Present-Day Air Pollution Disparities in U.S. Cities</strong>. <em>Environmental Science &amp; Technology Letters</em>, 2022; DOI: <a href=\"http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c01012\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">10.1021/acs.estlett.1c01012</a>\r\n</li>'),