Culture

Chronic kidney disease causes irreversible deterioration in renal function, often requiring dialysis or transplant surgery.

In children, genetic causes account for the greatest number of cases.

Published today in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology the research shows children with CKD are at greater risk of deficits in academic skills, visual and verbal memory, and executive function.

The analysis included 34 studies of over 3000 children and adolescents under the age of 21 years.

Key findings

"The IQ of children with CKD is low to average," says the study's lead author, Dr Kerry Chen of the University of Sydney's Centre for Kidney Research.

Compared to healthy children, children with CKD were on average 10 IQ points lower regardless of their stage of kidney disease.

The IQs of children who received a kidney transplant were 11 points lower than their healthy counterparts and for those on dialysis, their IQs were 16 points lower.

What can be done?

"Educational support programs should specifically aim to minimise deficits in attention, memory, and executive function as a preventative measure," said Dr Chen.

"Families, educators and health teams also need to work together to ensure that CKD treatments for children do not disrupt their schooling too much or too often. Developing a comprehensive dialysis and post-transplant rehabilitation program would help these children."

How might chronic kidney disease and dialysis affect IQ and educational outcomes

While the evidence is not conclusive, experts have some hunches about how chronic kidney disease might affect IQ and educational outcomes in children and young adults.

"Firstly, increased plasma levels of uremic solutes arising from kidney disease may impair synaptic development," says Chen. "Dialysis may also lead to cognitive impairment through rapid changes in blood pressure. Also, the pathological effects associated with end-stage kidney disease, such as anaemia, hypertension and malnutrition, may reduce cognitive function among children on dialysis compared to other CKD stages.

"On top of that, treatments for CKD may compromise academic achievement. Firstly, the frequency of sleep disturbances in children with CKD may result in poor concentration, excessive daytime sleepiness and lower academic performance.

"Secondly, the interactions of complex medication routines and strict dialysis cycles may decrease attentional control, working memory, and executive function-cognitive domains that are important to children's ability to acquire, understand, and retain information in social and educational environments.

"Finally, ongoing dialysis sessions and recovery from transplant surgeries may reduce the amount and regularity of time spent in the classroom, with chronic absenteeism potentially preceding loss of interest, withdrawal, and poor school progression."

Dr Kerry Chen holds appointments at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health, The Kids Research Institute and Westmead Hospital.

Creating the perfect wearable device to monitor muscle movement, heart rate and other tiny bio-signals without breaking the bank has inspired scientists to look for a simpler and more affordable tool.

Now, a team of researchers at UBC's Okanagan campus have developed a practical way to monitor and interpret human motion, in what may be the missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to wearable technology.

What started as research to create an ultra-stretchable sensor transformed into a sophisticated inter-disciplinary project resulting in a smart wearable device that is capable of sensing and understanding complex human motion, explains School of Engineering Professor Homayoun Najjaran.

The sensor is made by infusing graphene nano-flakes (GNF) into a rubber-like adhesive pad. Najjaran says they then tested the durability of the tiny sensor by stretching it to see if it can maintain accuracy under strains of up to 350 per cent of its original state. The device went through more than 10,000 cycles of stretching and relaxing while maintaining its electrical stability.

"We tested this sensor vigorously," says Najjaran. "Not only did it maintain its form but more importantly it retained its sensory functionality. We have further demonstrated the efficacy of GNF-Pad as a haptic technology in real-time applications by precisely replicating the human finger gestures using a three-joint robotic finger."

The goal was to make something that could stretch, be flexible and a reasonable size, and have the required sensitivity, performance, production cost, and robustness. Unlike an inertial measurement unit--an electronic unit that measures force and movement and is used in most step-based wearable technologies--Najjaran says the sensors need to be sensitive enough to respond to different and complex body motions. That includes infinitesimal movements like a heartbeat or a twitch of a finger, to large muscle movements from walking and running.

School of Engineering Professor and study co-author Mina Hoorfar says their results may help manufacturers create the next level of health monitoring and biomedical devices.

"We have introduced an easy and highly repeatable fabrication method to create a highly sensitive sensor with outstanding mechanical and electrical properties at a very low cost," says Hoorfar.

To demonstrate its practicality, researchers built three wearable devices including a knee band, a wristband and a glove. The wristband monitored heartbeats by sensing the pulse of the artery. In an entirely different range of motion, the finger and knee bands monitored finger gestures and larger scale muscle movements during walking, running, sitting down and standing up. The results, says Hoorfar, indicate an inexpensive device that has a high-level of sensitivity, selectivity and durability.

New CHILD Study research has found that overweight and obese women are more like to have children who are overweight or obese by three years of age--and that bacteria in the gut may be partially to blame.

"We know that maternal overweight is linked to overweight in children," said Dr. Anita Kozyrskyj, the University of Alberta investigator who led the study. "What our study showed is that both the type of infant delivery--vaginal birth versus cesarean section birth--and changes in gut bacteria are also involved."

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that when an overweight woman delivered vaginally, the risk of overweight in her child was three times higher than normal. But the risk was five times higher than normal when the woman delivered via cesarean-section (C-section). This association persisted even after adjustment for multiple other factors.

"There seemed to be something about a C-section that increased the risk of childhood obesity," observed Kozyrskyj, senior author of the study and one of the world's leading researchers on the gut microbiome--the community of microorganisms or bacteria that live in the digestive tracts of humans. "We have shown in our previous research that an infant's gut microbiome is influenced by the type of delivery, so we wondered if this effect could be associated with obesity risk in early childhood."

To investigate further, Kozyrskyj and her research team studied over 930 mothers and their infants participating in AllerGen's CHILD Study, a national population-based birth cohort. DNA sequencing techniques performed in the laboratories of Drs James Scott and David Guttman at the University of Toronto provided information on the types and quantity of bacteria present in the infants' stool. An older analysis method not used in microbiome analyses--sequential mediation--was employed. The children's weights were assessed at one and three years of age.

"We found that an abundance of a family of bacteria called Lachnospiracae does in fact influence the relationship between maternal weight and child weight following vaginal and cesarean birth," said Dr. Hein Min Tun, who is the study's first author, a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alberta and an AllerGen Highly Qualified Personnel.

"Given that infant overweight and obesity are a major public health problem, our results reinforce increasing concerns over rising cesarean deliveries and affirm the role of the gut microbiota as a 'super organ' with diverse roles in health and disease," added Kozyrskyj.

Legalizing medical marijuana has not increased recreational use of the substance among U.S. adolescents, according to a new study conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The findings are published online in the journal Addiction.

"For now, there appears to be no basis for the argument that legalizing medical marijuana has increased teens' use of the drug," said Deborah Hasin, PhD, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia's Mailman School and senior author of the study. "However, we may find that the situation changes as commercialized markets for medical marijuana develop and expand, and as states legalize recreational marijuana use."

The researchers analyzed the results of eleven separate studies dating back to 1991 using data from four large-scale U.S. surveys: Monitoring the Future; National Longitudinal Survey of Youth; National Survey on Drug Use and Health; and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. No significant changes, increases or decreases, occurred in adolescent recreational use following enactment of medical marijuana laws.

In 1996, California became the first U.S. state to legalize marijuana use for medical purposes. Medical marijuana is now legal in 29 states. Opponents of medical marijuana have argued that such laws increase recreational marijuana use among adolescents.

Far fewer studies have examined the effects of medical marijuana laws among adults, according to Hasin, who is also a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. "Although we found no significant effect on adolescent marijuana use, existing evidence suggests that adult recreational use may increase after medical marijuana laws are passed." She continues, "The $8 billion cannabis industry anticipates tripling by 2025. Obtaining a solid evidence base about harmful as well as beneficial effects of medical and recreational marijuana laws on adults is crucial given the intense economic pressures to expand cannabis markets".

Hasin also points out that the intensity of marijuana use in teens has not been explored thoroughly. "This warrants additional consideration, especially with the decreasing national trend of risk perception among adolescents and as the current perception gives rise to more medical marijuana stores and commercial opportunities."

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Patients who suffer from a type of heart attack that affects mainly younger women, called spontaneous coronary artery dissection or SCAD, may benefit most from conservative treatment, letting the body heal on its own. This is according to a new scientific statement by a Mayo Clinic led team, published by the American Heart Association in its journal, Circulation.

MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video and audio are available for download on the Mayo Clinic News Network.

Most heart attacks occur when plaque builds up in arteries over a lifetime. The plaque ruptures, causing a blockage and a heart attack. In SCAD, a tear occurs inside an artery, and that can cause a blockage, leading to a heart attack.

"It may seem counterintuitive, but we discovered that treating SCAD the same way we treat heart attacks due to atherosclerosis can cause further tearing and damage to the vessel," says Sharonne Hayes, M.D., chair of the writing group for the new scientific statement and a Mayo Clinic cardiologist who founded its Women's Heart Clinic. "But the initial proper diagnosis is critical in guiding the care."

The statement is an overview of what an international group of experts know about SCAD, including:

Risk factors

Its high rate of post SCAD chest pain and recurrence

Its association with women, pregnancy, and physical and emotional stress triggers

Its connection to other diseases of the arteries, such as fibromuscular dysplasia

The best diagnosis and treatment recommendations based on new evidence and experts' care of SCAD patients

Until 2010, little was understood about SCAD, which had been described as a rare and universally fatal cause of acute coronary syndrome, heart attack and sudden cardiac arrest in women during and shortly after pregnancy.

Over the past several years research has refuted these misunderstandings. Increased understanding of SCAD, availability of intravascular imaging techniques, development of SCAD specific angiographic classification, increased awareness among providers, and efforts by SCAD patients using social media suggest that SCAD is much more common than previously thought, especially in young women.

The average age of women with SCAD ranges from 45 to 53 years. SCAD occurs overwhelmingly in women, and among individuals who have few conventional cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels or smoking, the statement says.

"Even with what we have learned over the past several years, SCAD continues to be misdiagnosed and underdiagnosed," Dr. Hayes says. "And we know it is not rare. It is the No. 1 cause of heart attack during pregnancy and in the period right after giving birth, and the No. 1 cause of heart attack in women under age 50."

Misdiagnoses often happen because of a low suspicion of heart attack in younger women who do not have typical heart disease risk factors but arrive at an emergency room with classical heart attack symptoms, such as discomfort in the chest and the upper body, shortness of breath, nausea and light-headedness, Dr. Hayes says. Misdiagnoses also can happen if the patient is sent to the catheterization lab, where stents are often used to open blocked arteries. The statement provides expert consensus to help health care providers know how to best treat SCAD patients.

The statement shows that, in most patients who did not receive stents, the dissections healed on their own within weeks and months. For some, the healing began within days, Dr. Hayes says.

The statement also emphasizes the importance of tailored cardiac rehabilitation programs for SCAD patients. In addition, addressing mental health is critical, the authors say. "Anxiety and depression are common in SCAD survivors, and they often are being treated by health care providers who have little familiarity of the disease or in providing psychosocial support," Dr. Hayes says. "We've found that online support groups can be immensely helpful in addition to finding a care team that is responsive to patients' concerns," she says.

The cause of SCAD is believed to be a combination of factors, including diseases of the arteries, genetic factors, hormonal influences and, less commonly, connective tissue diseases. These factors can be compounded by environmental stressors.

The statement points to persistent gaps in knowledge of SCAD. Only recently have there been limited prospective studies, and most available data are retrospective and observational. Larger-scale prospective and epidemiological studies are needed to understand the disease and improve treatment, Dr. Hayes says.

Researchers have long wondered how glial cells, which help provide nutrition and maintain the immediate environment around nerve cells, modulate the activity of nerve cells.

Researchers led by Robert Paul Malchow, associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, have discovered that glial cells may modulate the release of neurotransmitters -- chemicals that relay signals between nerve cells -- by increasing the acidity of the extracellular environment. Their findings are reported in the online journal PLOS ONE.

Neurons communicate with one another both electrically - through action potentials that result in changes in cell membrane permeability -- and chemically through the release of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. Adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, is best known for its role in metabolism where it helps cells use energy, but is also a common neurotransmitter. Previous research has suggested that ATP might play a role in signaling between glial cells and nerve cells.

When the researchers applied ATP to retinal glial cells, they saw an immediate and massive release of acid from the cells. "We decided to further investigate ATP and glial cells because of this really strong response that raised acid levels in the environment right next to the glial cells more than 1000 percent," said Malchow.

In living organisms, ATP is released by neurons into the space between nerve cells called the synapse, when a nerve cell becomes excited. In other words, when the nerve cell is actively relaying a message to its neighbors.

The researchers determined that a rise in ATP outside the nerve cells causes adjacent glial cells to release hydrogen ions, which raise the acidity of the immediate extracellular environment. The hydrogen ions, in turn, bind to calcium channels in the nerve cell membranes, closing these channels off. The calcium channels, when open, allow for the release of neurotransmitters.

"Increases in acidity in the extracellular environment produced by the glial cells forms a feedback loop which prevents the release of too much neurotransmitter," said Malchow.

The researchers used ultrasensitive pH sensors developed at the Marine Biological Laboratory to measure the changes in pH levels around isolated retinal glial cells from a variety of organisms, including humans.

The researchers hypothesize that acid released by glial cells decreases the release of neurotransmitters from nerve cells. This is because the acid binds to and inhibits neuronal calcium channels, which control the release of neurotransmitters.

"We believe that this ATP-mediated release of protons by glial cells acts as an essential feedback mechanism throughout the nervous system to limit over-excitability of neurons," Malchow explained.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers at Duke University have created a framework for helping bioengineers determine when to use multiple lines of cells to manufacture a product. The work could help a variety of industries that use bacteria to produce chemicals ranging from pharmaceuticals to fragrances.

The research was published online the week of February 19, 2018 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Every cell in the world is constantly absorbing nutrients and raw materials and transforming them into something more useful. Often the process provides the cells with energy or some other vital vitamin or mineral, while leaving behind byproducts that can be beneficial for other cells. This is especially true in complex multicellular organisms and ecosystems, where several different types or species of cells can work together to generate a single complex final product.

Scientists have been harnessing these abilities since the 1970s to produce useful substances like human growth hormone, pharmaceuticals, fragrances and biofuels. Most of the time they rely on a single type of cell for such endeavors for the sake of simplicity. But sometimes the process becomes too complicated.

"Typically when people are modifying cells to produce something they use a single population, but when you only use one type of cell to do everything, there's an upper limit on what it can handle, which becomes a limitation to how sophisticated a compound you can ask the cell to make," said Ryan Tsoi, a graduate student studying biomedical engineering at Duke and first author of the paper. "Having multiple cell types dividing the labor has been explored, but only on a case-by-case basis. This is the first systematic look into what circumstances make multiple cell lines better than one."

In the study, Tsoi and his advisor, Lingchong You, the Paul Ruffin Scarborough Associate Professor of Engineering at Duke, put together a system of equations to model how important variables interact in these types of systems. For example, they can model the strain that complex tasks put on a single cell's growth rate or the inefficiencies introduced when cells must pass signals, enzymes and proteins back and forth in a division-of-labor scheme.

They put together more than 20 different variations of how these systems could be built and how they might interact. When they ran the simulations, they discovered that every trial boiled down to how the variables affected two factors -- how fast the cells are able to grow and how much efficiency is lost when two types of cells share resources while transporting molecules between them.

"It's comparable to when researchers are working together on a grant proposal or a paper," said You. "It's a balance between how easy it is to do by yourself, how efficient it will be in working with other collaborators, and how big of a payoff the collaboration will be at the end of the day."

Moving forward, Tsoi plans on using the new framework to develop the new bioengineered systems he is planning to study. He hopes others will do the same.

"All of these parameters are measurable and quantifiable," said Tsoi. "The idea is that for any system, you could obtain all of these parameters either through basic experiments or textbooks, throw them into this mathematical model, and not only obtain a basic answer of whether or not to use division of labor, but a measure of how much it would benefit your project."

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) developed a motility-reactivation method to help determine how light-responsive changes in flagellar waveform in Volvox rousseletii, a multicellular spheroidal alga, are regulated. These results advance current understanding of how flagellar motility increased in complexity as single-celled organisms evolved into multicellular forms.

As a photosynthetic alga, the spheroid Volvox rousseletii must move in a light-sensitive way to survive. It achieves this by beating numerous flagella toward its posterior end for swimming forward and turning via changing the direction of flagellar motion from back to front if it perceives light. Exactly how this movement is regulated remains unclear, and existing techniques for studying the mechanism underlying flagellar motility are more suitable for single-celled organisms. Drs. Ueki and Wakabayashi at Tokyo Tech modified them for use with V. rousseletii and developed a powerful method of removing cell membranes with a detergent. The scientists call the demembranated V. rousseletii "Detergent-Extracted Volvox (DEV)" or simply "Zombie Volvox". The motility of Zombie Volvox can be induced (reactivated) through the addition of an ATP buffer. Adding other substances can then allow the observation of their effects on motility.

Because calcium ions are a common modulator of flagella beating, the scientists tested its influence on Zombie Volvox. These "dead" organisms proceeded to move as if they were alive and photostimulated (i.e. stimulated owing to sudden change in light intensity); flagella beat toward the anterior direction, and swimming speeds decreased. In contrast, reactivation with ATP only (no calcium addition) caused flagellar beating toward the posterior end and faster swimming speeds, as is the case for live V. rousseletii under continuous light (i.e., no sudden change in light intensity).

Additionally, the effects of calcium addition were stronger on flagella on the anterior region of the spheroid compared with flagella on the posterior end, indicating that the anterior part of V. rousseletii is more sensitive to calcium ions than the posterior part. The sensitivity gradient is critical for appropriate movement in response to light; when light is illuminated from the side, beating direction changes of all flagella will cause the organism to spin instead of orienting toward/away from the light. It is possible that the gradient also allows more fine-tuned, efficient light-responsive motility than what is possible in unicellular photosynthetic organisms.

The researchers highlight how differences in the anterior and posterior hemispheres in V. rousseletii affect the photobehavior of spheroids. Their findings contribute to understanding the evolution of multicellular organisms, specifically changes in their size which require division of labor for effective movement.

Key repeating moments in the film give viewers the information they need to understand the storyline. The scenes cause identical reactions in the viewer's brain. The results deepen our understanding of how the brain functions, how narratives work in film, and memory mechanisms impaired by conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.

In an Aalto University film study combining art and neuroscience, viewers were shown Christopher Nolan's early classic Memento (2000). The protagonist suffers from long-term memory loss and is unable to retain new memories for no longer than a few minutes. The events unfold in reversed chronological order. To provide the viewer means to piece together and understand the storyline, key scenes repeat at certain intervals throughout the film. These scenes work as clues: they give new information needed to understand the plot.

Every time they appear, the key moments make the same regions of the brain react in an identical fashion. Even the brains of different viewers show similar activity during the same vital scenes.

'Normally people make sense of a film's plot in their own individual ways. So far it has been difficult to capture indications of simultaneous understanding in the brains of several viewers with brain imaging methods. We have now, however, managed to identify brain activity connected to the story being reconstructed in the viewer's mind. The repeating key moments in Memento provide an opportunity to pinpoint viewers' cognitive activities: they react in a similar way to the information they get from the key moments', explains Professor Pia Tikka of Tallinn University, who leads the NeuroCine research group initially formed in Aalto University.

The research made use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) - which measures changes in the blood oxygen levels in the brain - and also multivariate analysis when comparing the brain activity of different viewers. The brain was divided into three-dimensional data points called voxels. Using multivariate analysis, the researchers studied the activation patterns of the voxels. The key moments in the film triggered similar and repeating patterns the researchers say are close to being "neural fingerprints".

'There is a total of 15 key moments in Memento that give the viewer opportunities to better understand the story - sort of "The Butler Did It"-types of revelations. While the activation of the voxels varies randomly during other parts of the film, at each of the 15 key moments certain voxels are in the same position for each viewer and form an identical fingerprint pattern,' describes Iiro Jääskeläinen, Aalto University professor in systems neuroscience.

The researchers observed the fingerprint patterns across large regions of the brain, especially in the prefrontal lobe and parietal lobe.

'What is astounding is that the change in the viewer's brain, and especially in the visual cortex, starts to occur already seconds before the key scene even begins. Clearly there are some kinds of clues in the film communicating to the brain that something worth noting is about to happen. This speaks of the brain's ability to anticipate and predict,' Jääskeläinen adds.

Viewers in the control group were shown the film's events in chronological order, where the key moments were not repeated. No fingerprint patterns emerged, and there was no anticipatory activity either.

Unprecedented in the setup was that the test subjects freely viewed a feature-length, 105-minute film in its entirety in the brain scanner.

'In brain research, it is more common to show test subjects short sections of the same film or from different films and seek answers for strictly predefined questions. Such a setup, however, does not allow the film's dramaturgy and characters' development to properly play out. We have taken a step forward in understanding both the functioning of the brain and the process of understanding film narratives, says professor Tikka, also a filmmaker herself.

The results help comprehend how the brain remembers things based on received or obtained clues.

'Memento simulates what it feels like to be a person who has suffered damage to the hippocampus that has obliterated the formation of long-term memories. Even short-term memories last only for a couple of minutes before they are gone. The hippocampus also gets damaged - albeit to a lesser extent - in cases of severe and protracted stress as stress hormones gnaw the brain. Our work also sheds more light on the neural basis of memory which is of great help when we wish to understand dementias such as Alzheimer's disease,' Jääskeläinen believes.

A bone marrow transplant is often the only therapy available to save leukaemia patients, but the risk of complications is high. In spite of devoting considerable time and effort to finding a suitable donor, nearly half of all patients experience an unwanted reaction of their immune system, which often attacks their skin and liver and in up to 50% of cases the intestines. Researchers at FAU (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) have succeeded in deciphering what causes this in some instances life-threatening inflammation of the intestines, possibly opening up new approaches for treatment. They have published the results of their research in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (DOI: 10.1172/JCI89242).

The severe immune reaction is triggered by a special form of the donor's immune cells. These so-called T-lymphocytes recognise that the recipient's cells are foreign and attack them. Researchers at FAU were able to show that this particular form of T-lymphocytes are controlled by a protein named BATF ('basic leucin zipper ATF-like transcription factor'). 'The BATF protein acts as a central switch in the donor's T-lymphocytes,' explains Prof. Dr. Kai Hildner from the Department of Medicine 1 - Gastroentrology, Pneumology and Endocrinology. 'If the protein is turned on, it can lead to highly aggressive immune cells being developed, which massively increase inflammatory processes, interacting with other immune cells to cause extensive damage in the intestines after a stem cell transplant.'

The group led by Professor Hildner in cooperation with the Department of Medicine 5 and working groups from Frankfurt, Regensburg and Würzburg were also able to demonstrate another connection: T-lymphocytes from the donor which migrate into the intestines release a messenger substance (GM-CSF - granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor) which triggers the inflammatory reaction in the intestines. When researchers used medication to prevent these specialised T-lymphocytes from developing and functioning, the inflammation in the intestines disappeared.

The scientists hope that the discovery of this molecular mechanism will lead to new therapies being developed to influence inflammation in the intestines after transplants, further increasing patients' chances of survival after a stem cell transplant.

The enzyme that produces DNA building blocks plays an important role when cells divide. In a new study, researchers have discovered for the first time that the so-called master switch of the enzyme can change locations - while still performing the same task.

Regardless of whether you are human, a worm or a bacterium, all beings need to create new cells in order to grow or to replace old cells. But before a cell can divide, it must copy its entire genome, that is, its DNA. This is where the enzyme in question comes into play.

The enzyme, RNR, produces the building blocks required for DNA replication. When copying DNA, it is important to have precisely the right amount of the four different types of building blocks. Too much or too little of either of them causes mutations that may eventually lead to cancer.

The so-called master switch is the specific part of the enzyme that regulates the number of different building blocks. When a sufficient number of building blocks for DNA copying or repair has been produced, the enzyme is switched off with the help of the master switch. Without this function, the enzyme would constantly be working to produce more building blocks.

The protein module functions something like a molecular epoxy glue, since it has the inbuilt capacity to stick the proteins together but can only do so when the "hardener", one of the DNA building blocks, is present in high enough concentration. This acts as a signal that the enzyme needs to be switched off.

The researchers have now investigated this enzyme in a marine bacterium and, for the first time, discovered that the on/off switch of the enzyme was in a different location.

"The switch has genetically jumped from one subunit to another, yet it continues to perform the exact same task. This was a major surprise to us and demonstrates nature's ability to use existing components in completely new ways", says Derek Logan, senior lecturer in Chemistry at Lund University in Sweden.

The researchers conducted a detailed study of how the master switch works when switching on and off. By closing and opening, the subunits literally stick together or let go.

Derek Logan studied the switch function together with colleagues from universities in Stockholm, Uppsala, Umeå and Tel Aviv. The researchers show how the RNR enzyme continues to regulate the number of different building blocks, despite its unusual location.

Although the study concerns a marine bacterium, the researchers believe it is generally interesting that this type of basic regulation can take different evolutionary paths. The research findings may prove useful in the future for developing new antibiotics and in industrial contexts where it is important to be able to switch enzymes on and off in the production of chemicals.

"This function could potentially be used to stick other unrelated proteins together to prevent them from working if needed", concludes Derek Logan.

ATLANTA--Carbon monoxide can improve the effectiveness of antibiotics, making bacteria more sensitive to antibiotic medication, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

Researchers paired carbon monoxide with the antibiotic metronidazole and found carbon monoxide enhanced the efficacy of the antibiotic against H. pylori, a type of bacteria that infects the stomach and causes peptic ulcers. The findings are published in the journal Organic Letters.

"We found that if you administer carbon monoxide together with an antibiotic called metronidazole, it can sensitize bacteria toward the same antibiotic by 25-fold," said Dr. Binghe Wang, Regents' Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Diagnostics & Therapeutics at Georgia State and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Drug Discovery. "It makes the bacteria much, much more sensitive to the antibiotic.

"We always hear about the discussions of drug resistance. When we have drug resistance, it's not because these bacteria will not respond to antibiotics anymore. Most of the time, it means there is decreased sensitivity. If you can resensitize bacteria or sensitize them, then that would allow you to either use a smaller amount of antibiotic or use the same amount that would kill many, many more bacteria."

Carbon monoxide is infamous for its toxicity at high concentrations, but it also has promising potential as a medical gas. Produced naturally in the human body, carbon monoxide is essential for survival and plays an important role in reducing inflammation, promoting cell proliferation and regulating cellular immune response to pathogens. Studies have found carbon monoxide has antimicrobial effects.

In this study, the researchers developed a prodrug system that releases three components: carbon monoxide, an antibiotic (metronidazole) and a fluorescent molecule used to monitor the release of carbon monoxide. A prodrug is the precursor of a drug and must undergo a chemical conversion before becoming an active pharmacological agent. This prodrug system has a three-reaction sequence and becomes active when placed in water, which sets the reaction in motion.

They studied H. pylori bacteria in a culture dish and compared the effect of only the antibiotic metronidazole against the bacteria versus the prodrug system with metronidazole and carbon monoxide combined.

Finding a solution to the causes and impacts of marine litter is now widely recognised as one of the major environmental challenges of our time. And one of the key elements required to address the issue is encouraging people of all ages to move away from the current throwaway culture.

Now research led by the University of Plymouth has revealed that designing systematic and innovative education tools to teachers and students can make a significant and positive contribution to their understanding of the problem - and their willingness to do something about it.

The study, published in Marine Policy, was a collaboration with the Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development in Greece and the Coastal and Marine Union in The Netherlands.

It is the first quantitative assessment of European students' and educators' attitudes to marine litter before and after participating in an online educational project designed to raise awareness and inspire action in the younger generation.

Dr Sabine Pahl, Associate Professor (Reader) in Psychology at the University of Plymouth, said: "It is clear that the education sector represents an important agent of social change in society. This study shows that working with educators and school students has much potential to facilitate greater public understanding of complex environmental issues and to make them part of the solutions. It has important implications for marine policy, and demonstrates that, beyond providing mere knowledge and facts, employing creative tools and techniques can enable action."

For the study, academics enrolled 120 educators from 18 countries across Europe in an online training course about marine litter, asking them to complete a series of assessments to ascertain how it changed their attitudes.

The results showed the educators had high intentions of implementing the materials in their teaching, and planned to encourage others in their network, which may lead to the training and resources to be distributed more widely.

They also invited 341 students aged seven to 18 from 12 European countries to take part in a video competition through which they were encouraged to make a two-minute video on the problem's potential sources, impacts and solutions.

After taking part, they said they were more concerned about the problem and perceived greater negative impacts and causes. They also reported performing more waste reduction behaviours.

The study builds on the University's interdisciplinary research into marine litter, with previous such studies showing marine litter can undermine the benefits of coastal environments and that the public's love of the seas could be the key to solving plastic pollution.

Professor Richard Thompson OBE, Head of the International Marine Litter Research Unit at the University and one of the study's authors, added: "Over recent years, the world has really woken up to the global threat posed by marine litter. But while recognising the problem is one thing, increasing knowledge and changing behaviours are a far greater challenge. This research demonstrates educators can play a lead role in that, and it is essential to educate young people now so that they and future generations can live in a world without the threat of plastic pollution."

A basic building block of modern technology, inductors are everywhere: cellphones, laptops, radios, televisions, cars. And surprisingly, they are essentially the same today as in 1831, when they were first created by English scientist Michael Faraday.

The particularly large size of inductors made according to Faraday's design are a limiting factor in delivering the miniaturized devices that will help realize the potential of the Internet of Things, which promises to connect people to some 50 billion objects by 2020. That lofty goal is expected to have an estimated economic impact between $2.7 and $6.2 trillion annually by 2025.

Now, a team at UC Santa Barbara, led by Kaustav Banerjee, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has taken a materials-based approach to reinventing this fundamental component of modern electronics. The findings appear in the journal Nature Electronics.

Banerjee and his UCSB team -- lead author Jiahao Kang, Junkai Jiang, Xuejun Xie, Jae Hwan Chu and Wei Liu, all members of his Nanoelectronics Research Lab -- worked with colleagues from Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China to exploit the phenomenon of kinetic inductance to demonstrate a fundamentally different kind of inductor.

All inductors generate both magnetic and kinetic inductance, but in typical metal conductors, the kinetic inductance is so small as to be unnoticeable. "The theory of kinetic inductance has long been known in condensed-matter physics, but nobody ever used it for inductors, because in conventional metallic conductors, kinetic inductance is negligible," Banerjee explained.

Unlike magnetic inductance, kinetic inductance does not depend on the surface area of the inductor. Rather, kinetic inductance resists current fluctuations that alter the velocity of the electrons, and the electrons resist such change according to Newton's law of inertia.

Historically, as the technology of transistors and interconnects that link them has advanced, the elements have become smaller. But the inductor, which in its simplest form is a metallic coil wound around a core material, has been the exception.

"On-chip inductors based on magnetic inductance cannot be made smaller in the same way transistors or interconnects scale, because you need a certain amount of surface area to get a certain magnetic flux or inductance value," explained lead author Kang, who recently completed his Ph.D. under Banerjee's supervision.

The UCSB team designed a new kind of spiral inductor comprised of multiple layers of graphene. Single-layer graphene exhibits a linear electronic band structure and a correspondingly large momentum relaxation time (MRT) -- a few picoseconds or higher compared to that of conventional metallic conductors (like copper used in traditional on-chip inductors), which ranges from 1/1000 to 1/100 of a picosecond. But single-layer graphene has too much resistance for application on an inductor.

However, multilayer graphene offers a partial solution by providing lower resistance, but interlayer couplings cause its MRT to be insufficiently small. The researchers overcame that dilemma with a unique solution: They chemically inserted bromine atoms between the graphene layers -- a process called intercalation -- that not only further reduced resistance but also separated the graphene layers just enough to essentially decouple them, extending the MRT and thereby increasing kinetic inductance.

The revolutionary inductor, which works in the 10-50 GHz range, offers one-and-a-half times the inductance density of a traditional inductor, leading to a one-third reduction in area while also providing extremely high efficiency. Previously, high inductance and reduced size had been an elusive combination.

"There is plenty of room to increase the inductance density further by increasing the efficiency of the intercalation process, which we are now exploring," said co-author Jiang.

"We essentially engineered a new nanomaterial to bring forward the previously 'hidden physics' of kinetic inductance at room temperature and in a range of operating frequencies targeted for next-generation wireless communications," Banerjee added.

Astronomers reveal a new high resolution map of the magnetic field lines in gas and dust swirling around the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Galaxy, published in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The team, led by Professor Pat Roche of the University of Oxford, created the map, which is the first of its kind, using the CanariCam infrared camera attached to the Gran Telescopio Canarias sited on the island of La Palma.

Black holes are objects with gravitational fields so strong that not even light can escape their grasp. The centre of almost every galaxy appears to host a black hole, and the one we live in, the Milky Way, is no exception. Stars move around the black hole at speeds of up to 30 million kilometres an hour, indicating that it has a mass of more than a million times our Sun.

Visible light from sources in the centre of the Milky Way is blocked by clouds of gas and dust. Infrared light, as well as X-rays and radio waves, passes through this obscuring material, so astronomers use this to see the region more clearly. CanariCam combines infrared imaging with a polarising device, which preferentially filters light with the particular characteristics associated with magnetic fields.

The new map covers a region about one light year on each side of the supermassive black hole. The map shows the intensity of infrared light, and traces magnetic field lines within filaments of warm dust grains and hot gas, which appear as thin lines reminiscent of brush strokes in a painting.

The filaments, several light years long, appear to meet close to the black hole (at a point below centre in the map), and may indicate where orbits of streams of gas and dust converge. One prominent feature links some of the brightest stars in the centre of the Galaxy. Despite the strong winds flowing from these stars, the filaments remain in place, bound by the magnetic field within them. Elsewhere the magnetic field is less clearly aligned with the filaments. Depending on how the material flows, some of it may eventually be captured and engulfed by the black hole.

The new observations give astronomers more detailed information on the relationship between the bright stars and the dusty filaments. The origin of the magnetic field in this region is not understood, but it is likely that a smaller magnetic field is stretched out as the filaments are elongated by the gravitational influence of the black hole and stars in the galactic centre.

Roche praises the new technique and the result: "Big telescopes like GTC, and instruments like CanariCam, deliver real results. We're now able to watch material race around a black hole 25,000 light years away, and for the first time see magnetic fields there in detail."

The team are using CanariCam to probe magnetic fields in dusty regions in our galaxy. They hope to obtain further observations of the Galactic Centre to investigate the larger scale magnetic field and how it links to the clouds of gas and dust orbiting the black hole further out at distances of several light years.