Culture

Research has shown that joining a gang is associated with increased criminal behavior. A new study examined whether the intermittent nature of gang membership affects offending. Researchers sought to determine whether the association with increased offending was a consistent attribute or, since people enter and exit and re-enter gangs, whether the intermittent nature of membership affected members' likelihood of offending. The study found that first-time membership was associated with increases in criminal behavior from when gang members were not in gangs, and that joining for a second time significantly raised the likelihood of offending, including more violent behavior.

The study, by researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Maryland, appears in Criminology, a publication of the American Society of Criminology.

The results suggest that gang membership, whether as a new or a repeat experience, is a salient life event and that intermittency can disrupt individuals' offending profiles, according to coauthors Megan Bears Augustyn, associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Jean McGloin, professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland.

Augustyn and McGloin say that based on their documentation of changes in offending behavior that parallel changes in individuals' self-identification as gang members, interventions should take into account the intermittency of gang membership.

Although past researcher has acknowledged the intermittency of gang membership, studies have not investigated whether different stages of gang membership are associated with different offending patterns. In this study, researchers used data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, which examined the development of antisocial behavior among 1,000 youth who were representative of the seventh- and eighth-grade public school population of Rochester, NY, in 1988. The 177 youth included in this study self-reported gang membership; of these, 53 said they had joined a gang for the second time.

The youth were predominantly Black (67 percent), as well as Hispanic (17 percent) and White (16 percent). Most of the youth (73 percent) were male, only 36 percent lived with both biological parents at the start of the study, and most were economically disadvantaged. The average age of participants at the beginning of the study was 13.9 years old. Youth were interviewed up to nine times over about four and a half years.

Joining a gang for the first time was associated with increases in general offending behavior, as well as violence, property crime, and drug sales, when compared to pre-gang time periods. Joining a gang for the second time was also associated with significant increases in general offending, violence, and drug sales (though not property crime), when compared to time out of the gang after first-time membership.

The study also found that joining a gang for the second time had an indirect path to offending via delinquent peers, but not deviant values or drug use. Deviant values were measured as youth's level of agreement with 10 offenses (e.g., stealing something worth $100 or more). This path was not observed in first-time gang membership. This led the researchers to conclude that there are significant changes in individuals' offending behavior both when they first join a gang and when they later join a gang.

The authors note that the gang members they studied came from one urban jurisdiction and joined gangs during adolescence, raising questions about generalizability to other areas and other ages. In addition, the study lacked information from all nine interviews on a number of factors that could explain individuals' reasons for joining gangs. Finally, the study was unable to deconstruct joining a gang for the second time by whether an individual went back to the same gang or joined a different one.

The authors say their research underscores the importance of not only supporting youth's decision to leave a gang in the first place, but also preventing youth from rejoining a gang while navigating the disengagement process since this has significant implications for criminal behavior and the associated snares.

Planned missions to return humans to the Moon need to hurry up to avoid hitting one of the busiest periods for extreme space weather, according to scientists conducting the most in-depth ever look at solar storm timing.

Scientists at the University of Reading studied 150 years of space weather data to investigate patterns in the timing of the most extreme events, which can be extremely dangerous to astronauts and satellites, and even disrupt power grids if they arrive at Earth.

The researchers found for the first time that extreme space weather events are more likely to occur early in even-numbered solar cycles, and late in odd-numbered cycles - such as the one just starting. They are also more likely during busy periods of solar activity and in bigger cycles, mirroring the pattern for moderate space weather.

The findings could have implications for the NASA-led Artemis mission, which plans to return humans to the moon in 2024, but which could be delayed to the late 2020s.

Professor Mathew Owens, a space physicist at the University of Reading, said: "Until now, the most extreme space-weather events were thought to be random in their timing and thus little could be done to plan around them.

"However, this research suggests they are more predictable, generally following the same 'seasons' of activity as smaller space-weather events. But they also show some important differences during the most active season, which could help us avoid damaging space-weather effects.

"These new findings should allow us to make better space weather forecasts for the solar cycle that is just beginning and will run for the decade or so. It suggests any significant space missions in the years ahead - including returning astronauts to the Moon and later, onto Mars - will be less likely to encounter extreme space-weather events over the first half of the solar cycle than the second."

Extreme space weather is driven by huge eruptions of plasma from the Sun, called coronal mass ejections, arriving at Earth, causing a global geomagnetic disturbance.

Previous research has generally focused on how big extreme space weather events can be, based on observations of previous events. Predicting their timing is far more difficult because extreme events are rare, so there is relatively little historic data in which to identify patterns.

In the new study, the scientists used a new method applying statistical modelling to storm timing for the first time. They looked at data from the past 150 years - the longest period of data available for this type of research - recorded by ground-based instruments that measure magnetic fields in the Earth's atmosphere, located in the UK and Australia.

The Sun goes through regular 11-year cycles of its magnetic field, which is seen in the number of sunspots on its surface. During this cycle the Sun's magnetic north and south poles switch places. Each cycle includes a solar maximum period, where solar activity is at its greatest, and a quiet solar minimum phase.

Previous research has shown moderate space weather is more likely during the solar maximum than the period around the solar minimum, and more likely during cycles with a larger peak sunspot number. However, this is the first study that shows the same pattern is also true of extreme events.

The major finding, though, was that extreme space weather events are more likely to occur early in even-numbered solar cycles, and late in odd-numbered cycles, such as cycle 25, which began in December 2019.

The scientists believe this could be because of the orientation of the Sun's large-scale magnetic field, which flips at solar maximum so it is pointing opposite to Earth's magnetic field early in even cycles and late in odd cycles. This theory will need more investigation.

This new research on space weather timing allows predictions to be made for extreme space weather during solar cycle 25. It could therefore be used to plan the timing of activities that could be affected by extreme space weather, such as power grid maintenance on Earth, satellite operations, or major space missions.

The findings suggest that any major operations planned beyond the next five years will have to make allowances for the higher likelihood of severe space weather late in the current solar cycle between 2026 and 2030.

A major solar eruption in August 1972, between NASA's Apollo 16 and 17 missions, was strong enough that it could have caused major technical or health problems to astronauts had it occurred while they were en route or around the Moon.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. -- A new study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the USDA's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) and RTI International (RTI) projects that global chronic and hidden hunger will increase the overall years of life lost due to premature mortality and years lived with disability, also known as disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), globally by over 30 million by 2050 relative to 2010. Expected impacts of climate change on the availability and access to nutritious food will exacerbate this change in DALYs by almost 10 percent.

Researchers published the findings in an article in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, further indicating that policymakers could counteract at least the impacts of climate change with increased investments in food systems now.

"Investment in agricultural R&D, irrigation systems, market access and infrastructure are essential to counteract the effects of factors that increase DALYs in coming decades," said Robert Beach, Senior Economist and Fellow at RTI. "To meet the needs and nutrition requirements for society, it is important for policymakers to invest more broadly in food systems, rather than focusing on the production of calories. Strengthening food systems now, along with health, education and employment opportunities can reduce the effects of climate change and population growth on global hunger."

According to pre-pandemic estimates, 10 percent of the world's population is experiencing hunger or facing severe food insecurity. As climate change and population growth continue to disrupt food systems, researchers found that reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goal of "Zero Hunger" by 2030 is becoming an enormous challenge without extraordinary policy action.

"Improvements in food systems can significantly decrease hunger, but our projections show that population growth will outpace those improvements at current investment levels, especially in Africa south of the Sahara," Timothy Sulser, Senior Scientist at IFPRI. "Climate change exacerbates the pressures on food systems to deliver healthy diets to everyone but investing in food systems can reduce the years lost that we project, particularly in South and East Asia."

The scenarios examined in the study show that avoiding an increase in DALYs due to climate change requires a comprehensive investment strategy from policy and decision makers globally. An increased investment of $25.5 billion annually, would more than offset the negative impacts of climate change on DALYs according to the study.

Using DALYs as a metric is appealing due to its universally comparable nature across a broad range of potential health issues. Chronic hunger impacts are associated with protein-energy undernutrition while hidden hunger refers to micronutrient deficiencies.

The study used a model of the global food system developed by IFPRI and published relationships between regional food availability and DALYs to project the total number of DALYs caused by chronic and hidden hunger and exacerbated by climate change.

"It was exciting to work with this interdisciplinary team to get this innovative approach to analyzing the impacts climate change can have on our health and our lives" said Naomi Fukagawa, director of the Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center at the USDA. "Pulling together perspectives from economists and health/nutrition experts is important for understanding and addressing the complex issues facing the future of food systems."

Normally, mountain forests are among the most diverse habitats in alpine regions. Yet, as a team from the Alfred Wegener Institute discovered in the Tibetan Plateau, the higher, treeless areas are home to far more species. Their findings, which were just published in the journal Nature Communications, can help to predict how the biodiversity of alpine regions will decline in response to global warming - when the mountain forests spread to higher elevations.

As anyone who has ever hiked in the mountains knows, the landscape changes with the elevation. At first, for a long time, you trek uphill through forests, until they open up into the first meadows and pastures, where a wide range of plant species bloom in the spring. Farther up, the landscape becomes more barren. Only those plants that have adapted to the alpine climate can thrive here. In order to map the vegetation of the alpine world, biologists most often investigate plant diversity along so-called elevation levels. First they examine the plants in the sprawling forests, then in the alpine meadows, and then in the rocky upper reaches. No matter where researchers do so - in the Alps, the Caucasus or the Rocky Mountains - the results are always similar: the extensive forests are the most species-rich region. With increasing elevation, biodiversity steadily declines.

More species in treeless areas

A team led by biologist Prof Ulrike Herzschuh from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam has now concluded that this thesis isn't necessarily correct: forests by no means have to be the most diverse part of alpine regions. If the evolution of mountain ranges in the course of millennia is considered, it becomes clear that the landscape above the treeline contains many more species than the mountain forests. As Herzschuh and her colleagues report in the journal Nature Communications, they succeeded in reconstructing the evolution of plant diversity in the Tibetan Plateau over the past 17,000 years. What they found: when, in colder phases, the forests retreated to lower regions and the treeline followed suit, the alpine meadows and alpine landscape grew - and with them, the number of species. In warmer phases, the forests spread higher, and the number of species declined. "If we assume the same size, there are more species in the treeless higher areas than in the forests," says Herzschuh. "This also came as a surprise to us, since conventional studies, which always reflect the elevation levels, have always indicated just the opposite."

Broader range of habitats

The study's authors don't yet have a definitive explanation for their discovery. "However, it's safe to assume that there are now more species in forest areas because they're more extensive than the more barren areas near mountain peaks," says Sisi Liu, first author of the study and member of the AWI's research section Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems. As a result, today there is much more forest available, which can contain various types of habitat, like glades and forest streams. If the alpine areas were larger instead, so Liu and her colleagues surmise, the result would be far more diverse habitats than those found in the forests - shady-moist and sunny-dry areas or sparsely vegetated, nutrient-poor areas and loamy soils - and therefore, a wide range of settings for diverse flora.

Ancient sediments from a Tibetan alpine lake

The southeast Tibetan Plateau is one of the most species-rich mountainous regions in the world, and a so-called biodiversity hotspot. Further, since the region is at such a high elevation, at the end of the last ice age it was heavily glaciated; it was only with the gradual warming of the planet that the forests reclaimed parts of the Plateau. In order to determine how biodiversity changed with the disappearance and return of the forests, Herzschuh and her team assessed the sediments from an ancient lake in the Hengduan Mountains of eastern Tibet. Since the lake was formed after the last ice age, sand, dust and plant remains had gathered there for over 17,000 years. The researchers extracted ancient fragments of DNA strands from the sediments, allowing them to identify which plants lived there at which times. They then combined these biological findings with analyses provided by a mathematical ice model, which can be used to reconstruct the glaciers' changing positions. According to Herzschuh: "With the aid of an ice model developed by our colleagues at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, we were able to precisely trace how the plant community changed with the elevation of the glacier and the shifting treeline."

More forest means less diversity

Interestingly, ca. 8,000 years ago there was a warm phase in which the forests 'migrated' farther uphill than today - and the number of species to be found in the sediment record declined significantly. The findings gleaned by Herzschuh, her PhD candidate Sisi Liu and other colleagues are important in terms of our ability to predict how the biodiversity of mountainous regions around the world could be impacted by climate change; what they learned about the situation in Tibet can also be applied to other alpine regions. "Our data could potentially help to develop new management strategies for combatting the loss of diversity," says Herzschuh. In any case, she claims, the stereotypical image of the mountain forest being the most species-rich type of region needs to be critically reconsidered.

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 20, 2021 - As Congress considers legislation to reform prescription drug pricing, a new analysis conducted by the West Health Policy Center and released by its Council for Informed Drug Spending Analysis (CIDSA) estimates that the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3) could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in lower commercial health insurance costs by 2030.These savings would come from a $195 billion reduction in employer costs and $98 billion in savings for workers.

The non-profit, non-partisan West Health Policy Center engaged the actuarial firm Milliman, to analyze the impact of the legislation on stakeholders. Using Milliman's analysis and other data sources West Health Policy Center researchers then quantified the dollar impact on employee and employer costs.

H.R. 3 would empower the Secretary of Health and Human Services to directly negotiate prices with drug manufacturers and make those same negotiated prices available to all Americans with private insurance. While the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the impact of H.R. 3 on federal direct spending, CBO has yet to estimate its effect on private health plans. The West Health Policy Center analysis is the first-of-its-kind to do so.

"For decades, American businesses have struggled to keep pace with ballooning prescription drug costs, and have had zero recourse to bring down prices," said Tim Lash, President of the West Health Policy Center. "For American employers to remain competitive, the market failures that have allowed drug costs to increase without interference must be addressed. It appears that H.R. 3 and the considerable savings the legislation could generate might very well be the solution we've been waiting for."

The price of prescription medications has skyrocketed in recent years. Between 2007 and 2018, list prices for branded pharmaceutical products increased by 159% and there are few signs of it slowing. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), spending on prescription drugs will grow faster than any other major medical good or service over the next several years.

Meanwhile, rising healthcare costs continue to be a top concern for American business. A recent study of executives at large employers found that 87% believe that the cost of providing health benefits to their employees will be unsustainable in 5 to 10 years, and 7 in 10 large employers agree that the government needs to negotiate prices for high-cost drugs and limit drug price increases.

"The savings from Medicare negotiation are not confined to federal spending or Medicare beneficiaries - businesses and workers alike stand to reap enormous benefits under the policy," said Sean Dickson, Director of Health Policy at the West Health Policy Center and CIDSA Chair, who conducted this analysis. "Employers are understandably frustrated with the limitations and failures of market approaches to constrain drug prices; they are increasingly open to federal interventions that will reduce their costs and increase their workers' take home pay."

Based on West Health Policy Center's analysis drug manufacturers would increase prices greater than current trends to make up for reduced profits under Medicare negotiation. Under this conservative assumption, employer-sponsored insurance savings would be allocated between $195 billion in lower employer premium costs, $53 billion in employee premium reductions, and $8 billion in lower employee cost-sharing. Workers covered under the Affordable Care Act would see another $36 billion in savings.

"There is no losing here. Even under the worst-case scenario, employers still come out ahead hundreds of billions of dollars and employees could expect greater take home pay," concluded Dickson.

To estimate dollar savings for individuals and employers from Milliman's overall savings estimates, West Health Policy Center used data from National Health Expenditures (NHE), the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits Survey (EHBS), and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS). The full dollar value assessment and methodology by West Health can be found here. Milliman's full assessment and white paper can be found here.

By meta-analysis, experimentally determined COVID-19 virus T cell epitopes were compared with sequences of common cold coronaviruses (CCCoVs). Only one CCCoV-matching epitope was repeatedly identified as highly immunogenic, namely the CD8+ T cell epitope VYIGDPAQL ("VYI" peptide) if presented by the MHC class I allele HLA-A*24:02. Approximately 60% of Japanese individuals carry this allele, which in combination with previous CCCoV infections might help explain the surprisingly low prevalence of COVID-19 in Japan.

Protective immune memory--through B cells, which make antibodies, and/or T cells, which in the case of CD8+ T cells can kill virus-infected cells--can be induced by identical but also by related viruses. Related to the COVID-19 virus SARS-CoV-2, there are four common cold coronaviruses (CCCoVs) that together cause ~20% of common cold infections: OC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63. Most adults have been infected with CCCoVs multiple times in their lives. Whether or not meaningful CCCoV-induced anti-SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies exist remains a matter of debate. Meanwhile, the generation of T cell memory should depend on the genetic make-up of the infected individual. Namely, immune recognition by T cells depends on the presentation of peptides ("epitopes") by polymorphic major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules, and different MHC alleles (variants between individuals) present different peptides from the same pathogen.

In their recent publication in F1000Research [1], Dijkstra, Frenette, and Dixon provided the first systematic search for SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitope sequences that were experimentally determined in one or more of >15 studies and are identical to at least one of the four CCCoVs. They found that such epitopes are rare. The only such epitope that was repeatedly identified as immunogenic by independent research groups was the peptide VYIGDPAQL, which is also named "VYI" after its first three amino acids. This peptide is a fragment of the virus helicase and identical between SARS-CoV-2 and the CCCoVs OC43 and HKU1. The VYI peptide was found to bind MHC class I allele HLA-A*24:02 and to efficiently stimulate CD8+ T cells from at least some--and sometimes the majority--of investigated HLA-A*24:02+ COVID-19 (convalescent) patients in each study that addressed this matter. This finding was confirmed in two recent studies that were not part of the Dijkstra et al. analysis [1]: Saini et al. 2021 (https://immunology.sciencemag.org/content/6/58/eabf7550.long) and Francis et al. 2021 (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.29.441258v1).

For explaining these findings, Dijkstra et al. [1] conservatively assumed that infections with OC43 or HKU1 had primed the anti-VYI T cells, which then were restimulated upon infection with SARS-CoV-2. The authors also speculated that the surprisingly low prevalence of COVID-19 in Japan may in part be explained by such anti-VYI T cell immune memory, since in this country ~60% of the individuals carry the allele HLA-A*24:02 and in recent years there were OC43 outbreaks. However, it is important to realize that, for now, this remains speculation only, since (i) experimental evidence for CCCoV-induced anti-VYI memory still needs to be provided, and (ii) immune memory does not necessarily mean immune protection. Nevertheless, currently, the VYI/HLA-A*24:02/Japan hypothesis put forward by the authors is one of the most plausible models for genetically explaining differences in resistance against COVID-19 between populations. Dijkstra et al. described how even a small impact on virus replication levels may have a significant impact on the spread of the virus through a population. Their article is also an interesting read on the COVID-19 situation in Japan.

Furthermore, Dijkstra et al. [1] pointed out that the similarity between the spike (S) proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and CCCoVs is low, which suggests that the sequence conservation of this protein is relaxed. Accordingly, the authors subscribe to the fear as expressed by others that SARS-CoV-2 may mutate its S protein to escape the immune protection that is induced by the current generation of S-only vaccines. The inclusion in future vaccines of parts of the virus that are more highly conserved between SARS-CoV-2 and CCCoVs may reduce the risk of such escape. For populations in which HLA-A*24:02 is prevalent, like in Japan, the VYI peptide is a prime candidate for such inclusion.

Orangutans are closely related to humans. And yet, they are much less sociable than other species of great apes. Previous studies have showed that young orangutans mainly acquire their knowledge and skills from their mothers and other conspecifics. Social learning in orangutans occurs through peering, i.e. sustained observation of other members of the species at close range.

An international team led by the University of Zurich (UZH) has now studied peering behavior in young orangutans at two research stations on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. The data was collected by researchers from the Department of Anthropology of UZH, the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Constance, the Universitas Nasional in Jakarta and Leipzig University, who observed more than 3,100 individual peering situations in 50 young animals over a period of around 13 years.

Sex-specific role models

The findings of the study reveal significant differences in the role models of young male and female orangutans. As they get older, young male orangutans increasingly prefer immigrant adult males or immigrant male and female juveniles as role models. In contrast, young females exhibit a consistently high interest in their mother's behavior. When attending to non-mother role models, immature females prefer local adult females and local juveniles of both sexes.

Interestingly, these differences develop at a stage when the immature orangutans are still in constant association with their mothers. The mothers, in turn, show no differences in their patterns of association, which provides male and female immatures with the same opportunities for learning. "Young male and female orangutans simply use these opportunities differently," explains last author Caroline Schuppli from the University of Zurich and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. "The differences in role models are also reflected in the immatures' socially learned knowledge. Females thus develop feeding behaviors that are similar to those of their mothers, whereas males acquire a greater share of their knowledge from animals other than their mothers."

Settling versus migrating

These differences stem from the acquisition of ecologically relevant knowledge as well as from sex-specific behavior. When male orangutans reach sexual maturity, they leave the area where they were born and migrate across different areas for several decades. Since food sources differ from one area to the next, acquiring a diverse set of knowledge is an advantage for males.

Female orangutans, on the other hand, remain in the area where they were born, and thus benefit from as deep a knowledge of the local area as possible. "We also suspect that young males learn sex-specific ecological behavior from adult males. Adult male orangutans are not only significantly larger than females, they also differ in their foraging and feeding behaviors," says evolutionary biologist Schuppli.

Social learning crucial for human development

The findings highlight the importance of social learning for the development of immature orangutans. The fact that social learning is crucial in the development of the semi-solitary orangutans indicates that this is likely also the case for other great apes. It follows from this that the human capacity for social learning is a continuously evolved trait. The findings could also be relevant for developing sustainable strategies for wildlife conservation, especially when it comes to releasing orphaned orangutans raised by humans back into the wild.

Do we have free choice or are our decisions predetermined? Is physical reality local, or does what we do here and now have an immediate influence on events elsewhere? The answers to these questions are sought by physicists in the Bell inequalities. It turns out that free choice and local realism can be skilfully measured and compared. The results obtained reveal surprising relationships of a fundamental and universal nature, going far beyond quantum mechanics itself.

Causality, locality, and free choice are related by a few simple formulas known as Bell's inequalities. The sophisticated experiments in quantum optics over the past few decades have unquestionably proved that these inequalities are broken. Today, physicists are faced with a dilemma: should we accept a vision of the real world in which we question the assumption about the free choice of the experimenter, or reject the assumption of locality of the experiments? Scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow (IFJ PAN), the British City University of London (CUL) and the German Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen in Giessen (THM) have confronted this problem. The results of their research that go far beyond physics alone are discussed in an article just published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

"Realism is a physical concept in which we describe the world in terms of cause-and-effect relationships. Locality means that actions cannot disseminate instantaneously. So if physical reality is to meet the requirements of local realism, the result of the experiment will be influenced only by what is in its immediate vicinity, and not by what is happening right now in a distant galaxy," explains Dr. Pawel Blasiak, the first author of the article.

Free choice, an apparently typically philosophical concept, can also be treated as a physical or even mathematical problem. In this approach, free choice refers to the variables that describe the parameters of an experiment, i.e. what we measure in the laboratory. We assume that we can choose these variables freely, regardless of what has happened in the past.

As part of a vision of the world in which local realism and free choice apply, one can derive Bell's inequalities and then conduct an experiment to verify them. The main ideas can be illustrated as follows. Alice and Bob work in laboratories at opposite ends of the galaxy. One day each of them receives a box. They place the boxes on their tables and at a certain point, open them carefully. A spinning coin bursts out of the box, which each of the experimenters presses down on the table with their palms. Alice and Bob now note whether the coin has landed heads up or tails up. Soon, more similar shipments arrive. After a while, Alice and Bob have a long list of observations in which they press down the coins in various ways. Neither sees anything unusual in their data: heads and tails appear on their lists in a purely random manner.

The situation changes dramatically when Alice and Bob meet at the Intergalactic Science Congress. They compare their data and suddenly it turns out that in the same observations, when Alice's coin landed tails up, Bob's coin always landed heads up - and vice versa. So, they both assume that it is not a coincidence and that the correlations they observe must be attributed to some common cause lurking in the past of both objects sent from the same source. The mysterious shipper of the boxes could have simply instructed each coin how to land when pressed against the table in a given way. If that were really so, Alice and Bob could guess this instruction and announce a spectacular discovery. Unfortunately, their efforts come to nothing!

Desperate, Alice and Bob ask the genius theoretician John for help. He first asks what assumptions the two scientists have adopted in their work as true and certain. "We believe that the correlations we observed should be explicable by a series of causes and effects propagating over time," says Alice. Bob clarifies, "We also think that no cause immediately affects the experiment if it is far enough away from the laboratory." They both firmly believe that the way they open the boxes is not imposed on them in any way and they are absolutely convinced that they are the ones making the decision about how they press down on the coin. To their great surprise, John calmly explains that all these assumptions cannot be reconciled with the correlations they observe.

In fact, Bell's inequalities were discovered by the Northern Irish physicist John Stewart Bell in 1964. He was inspired by the famous problem of "spooky-action-at-a-distance", posed by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen in 1935. In physical experiments, where the role of the coins is played by photons and heads and tails are their polarizations observed in various directions, these inequalities are indeed broken. Contemporary physics, therefore, has a fundamental dilemma: is it better to abandon the idea of local realism, or perhaps question the free choice of scientists? Few physicists are willing to question realism that presupposes causation in line with the arrow of time. So either something is "not quite right" with the assumption of local realism or with the free choice of the experimenters.

"The fact that reality is breaking Bell's inequality provokes us to ask intriguing questions. For example: how often, while maintaining full locality, would we have to break free choice to recreate the correlations observed in the experiments? With each measurement, most of the time, or maybe just sometimes? Similarly, if we retain free choice, how often would we have to break locality?" wonders Dr. Blasiak.

The results of the Polish-British-German group's research bring a surprising answer. It turns out that in order to recreate the recorded correlations, whilst maintaining free choice locality should be broken just as often as free choice whilst maintaining locality. For some (unknown) reason, nature does not favour either locality or free choice in the slightest.

The scientists managed to derive formulas to calculate how often Alice and Bob would have to break locality or free choice to recreate the observed correlations (in quantum mechanics and not only). In particular, it turns out that the formalism of quantum mechanics enforces that with maximum entanglement between photons, the breaking of locality or free choice occurs with each measurement (which generalizes the previous results concerning locality itself).

"The most interesting thing is that Bell's theorem is not a statement of quantum mechanics at all, but of the theory of probability, so it has a universal character. The theorems proved by us are also not limited to quantum physics itself, but apply to all situations dealing with correlations concerning separable systems," emphasises Dr. Blasiak.

"Apart from physics in the strict sense, the breaking of locality or free choice does not have to be dramatic. In research on human behaviour, it would be enough for Alice to whisper something to Bob to violate locality," notes Prof. Emmanuel Pothos, a psychologist at CUL. Another example is given by Prof. Christoph Gallus, economist at THM: "If Alice and Bob are players on the stock market, their choices may be correlated simply by using certain public information."

The universality of the dependencies found opens the door to very practical applications, such as the study of the mechanisms of information flow in complex systems. It is worth emphasizing that the general nature of these sorts of considerations comes from the very nature of the question about the causes of the observed correlations, which is fundamental and common to the whole of science.

The genome is tightly organised (packaged) within the cell nuclei. This three-dimensional (3D) genome organisation is fundamental, given that it regulates gene expression.

A study led by scientists at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) now demonstrates using mice models that the 3D organisation of the genome is extremely dynamic during the formation of male germ cells (precursors of spermatozoa) and that alterations in this structure can affect fertility.

The research, published in Nature Communications, describes the 3D genome organisation in germ cells of wild populations of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) with chromosomal rearrangements, alterations in the genome which change the structure of chromosomes. The study represents a significant advance in research into mechanisms generating and regulating the structure and function of the genome during the formation of gametes (oocytes and sperm).

Sexually-reproducing organisms produce haploid gametes (with one single set of chromosomes) through two consecutive cell divisions preceded by one only round of genome replication. During this process (called meiosis), the organisation of the genome is tightly regulated to allow for recombination, a fundamental mechanism that maintains the genetic diversity of the organism through the exchange of the progenitors' homologous chromosomes, while at the same time allowing the resulting chromosomes to be transmitted integrally, with no alterations in their structure and/or number, to the next generation.

"The study shows that both the dynamics of the genome organisation during the formation of gametes and the recombination is affected by the presence of chromosomal rearrangements", explains Aurora Ruiz-Herrera, Associated Professor at the Department of Cellular Biology, Physiology and Immunology and the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (IBB) of the UAB, and head of the research. "We detected that these chromosomal rearrangements affect chromosome folding within the nucleus of the germ cells, thus altering the pairing pattern of homologous chromosomes and meiotic recombination. These results will pave the way for new investigations into the genetic mechanisms responsible for infertility."

"The results point to the importance of the three-dimensional genomic context in which the recombination takes place, where factors such as chromosomal reorganizations can shape the genomic makeup of a given species", explains Covadonga Vara, member of the research group coordinated by Aurora Ruiz-Herrera and co-author of the paper.

According to scientists, determining the mechanisms regulating the structure and function of the genome during the formation of gametes is fundamental, given that the deregulation of this process can cause disorders such as infertility and an alteration in the number of chromosomes, such as trisomy-21.

An international team, led by researchers from Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in Barcelona, Spain, David Andreu and Rafael Maldonado, has developed a peptides family that allows delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main component of Cannabis sativa, to fight pain in mice without side effects. The study, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, was carried out together with researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ??the University of Barcelona, and the University of Lisbon.

At present, there are two main types of pain relievers prescribed based on the severity of the pain. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs, such as ibuprofen or paracetamol) are often used to treat mild pain, while opioids are used for severe pain. These, although effective, have significant addictive potential. A therapeutic window is not covered between these extremes, as there is a lack of safe and effective drugs to treat moderate chronic or neuropathic pain (such as that caused by nerve damage for people with diabetes or herpes). In this scenario, cannabis-derived drugs have an excellent opportunity to provide relief, but their therapeutic use is limited by their side effects, including problems with memory and other cognitive functions.

THC produces analgesia by binding to cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptors. However, these receptors interact with the serotonin receptor 5HT2A, and this interaction causes memory loss when THC is present. To address this problem, the interaction between the two receptors must be avoided. That is why scientists from the Proteomics and Protein Chemistry Research Group and the Neuropharmacology-Neurophar Laboratory have designed and produced peptides that interrupt the interaction between the two receptors, so the THC can ease pain without activating the serotonin receptor.

In a previous study, when researchers injected a peptide into the brains of mice, the memory problems caused by THC decreased. Based on molecular dynamics simulations and current pharmaceutical chemistry strategies, the researchers have optimized the original prototype by developing a smaller peptide with high stability, allowing oral administration while increasing its ability to cross the blood-brain barrier to access and act on brain cells.

After administering mice with the peptide orally, along with an injection of THC, they assessed pain threshold and memory capacity. Mice treated with both THC and the optimized peptide obtained the benefits of THC in relieving pain and also showed better memory compared to those treated with THC alone. "Our results suggest that the optimized peptide is an ideal candidate for reducing the cognitive side effects of pain treatment with cannabis derivatives," says Rafael Maldonado, Professor of Pharmacology in the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS) at UPF.

"Given the results obtained so far, the team is motivated to advance in the development of this promising candidate discovered," explains David Andreu, UPF Professor of Chemistry.

"The INNOValora programme will allow us to partially cover the proof-of-concept experiment in chronic pain that we need to ensure investors' participation in the project," says Maria Gallo, a PhD student from the Proteomics and Protein Chemistry group at the DCEXS-UPF, whose doctoral thesis recapitulates much of the project's experimental work.

"We envision the use of the peptide in combination with THC as the first drug approved by the EMA / FDA for the treatment of chronic pain," concludes Rafael Maldonado.

These results have been the basis for an international patent application that is expected to be transferred to the pharmaceutical sector once the preclinical and clinical validation experiments required by drug regulations are completed.

The high-power and long-pulse operation of tokamak will cause excessive particle flux and heat load on the divertor target plate. The surface of the target plate will be subject to intense sputtering, and the thermal load of the target plate will exceed the material/component limit.

The sputtered atoms generated by the damage of the target plate may be transported to the core plasma, degrading the quality of the fusion plasma and increasing the difficulty of plasma stability control.

Recently, the EAST group of Institute of Plasma Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), reported their new findings about the influence of different impurity gases (Ar and Ne) seeding on the divertor plasma state and the core plasma confinement.

Their study was published in Nuclear Fusion on April 29.

"We conducted the experiment with the upper single null configuration with ITER-like tungsten divertor, and achieved stable partial energy detachment around the upper outer strike point," said YANG Zhongshi, a specialist in nuclear physics, "whether we seeded Ne or Ar from the upper outer divertor target, the result was prominent." In this way, they also observed that the material sputtering was well suppressed.

However, there was no detachment on the upper inner divertor with Tet around strike point remaining > 10 eV with either Ar or Ne seeding from the upper outer divertor. Ar seeding always causes confinement degradation in the partial energy detachment state. "There is a slight confinement improvement with Ne seeding." Said YANG.

These results provide a feasible physical experiment program for realizing and maintaining the steady-state plasma under the conditions of the tungsten divertor, solving the problem of steady-state thermal load and sputtering of the target plate, and ensuring the stable operation of the EAST under high-power long-pulse conditions.

"Pretty" parrots are more likely to be snatched up for Indonesia's illegal wildlife trade, a new study reveals.

The findings not only expose the key drivers behind the country's illegal trade in these birds, but offer lessons for the potential emergence and spread of infectious diseases that jump from animals to humans - like COVID-19 and avian flu.

The study, involving researchers from The Australian National University (ANU), analysed two decades worth of data on the illegal trade of parrots in Southeast Asia.

The researchers found some key reasons parrots were at risk of being poached - with a bird's attractiveness and the ability to sell it on legal markets being two main motivations.

"High demand for parrots as pets, and their removal from the wild for the trade have significantly contributed to their severe decline worldwide," co-author Professor Rob Heinsohn from ANU said.

"One-third of the nearly 400 parrot species are threatened by extinction today.

"But while the trade is vast, not every parrot species is at equal risk of being traded."

The team used a popular criminological model to analyse the factors associated with traded parrots in Indonesia, the country shown to be most in need of parrot conservation.

They found several key factors were good indicators of trade variation: whether it was possible to legally export the parrot species; the attractiveness of the species, including its colour, brightness, size and ability to mimic sounds; and whether the species lived in an area of high human population density.

"This suggests that demand and opportunity-based factors together can partially explain the illegal parrot trade in Indonesia," lead author, Professor Stephen Pires from Florida International University, said.

"It indicates people are targeting attractive species that are easier to sell in licit markets, and that there is a cross-cultural preference for particular parrot species, especially ones that have been historically overexploited."

The overlap between the domestic and international trade of certain Indonesian parrot species suggests a high number of wild-caught birds are mislabelled as 'captive-bred' so they can be legally exported.

"More efficient law enforcement is needed urgently," Professor Heinsohn said.

"Further strategies to reduce the trade of parrots could take the form of nest protection, as well as educational campaigns targeting children and consumers."

The study has been published in Biological Conservation.

Microfluidic chips hold great promise for unparalleled applications in pathogen detection and cancer diagnosis. Such devices often require nanoscale thin films for the filtering of liquid samples, as well as power devices or chemical stimulus that control its flow direction. However, many challenges still remain with most precedent mechanisms, including complicated fabrication processes, limitations of materials, and undesired damage on samples.

A research team, led by Professor Taesung Kim in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UNIST presented the evaporation-driven transport-control of small molecules in gas-permeable and low-aspect-ratio nanoslits, wherein both the diffusive and advective mass transports of solutes are affected by solvent evaporation through the nanoslit walls.

Unlike the existing method, the new technique has drawn considerable attention as a multi-functional core technology that enables the active and versatile control of small molecules, such as valving, concentrating, pumping, and filtering abilities on a chip, without damaging samples.

In this study, the research team experimentally characterized the effect of evaporation flux on the mass transport of small molecules in various nanoslit-integrated micro/nanofluidic devices. Their findings showed that the transport of small molecules along the nanoslit was largely governed by the evaporation flux and nanoslit length. They also performed numerical simulations to theoretically support the experimental results with the advection and diffusion model, thereby enabling the description of the transport with the nondimensionalized diffusion coefficient and evaporation flux.

They further demonstrated that evaporation-driven transport control in nanoslit-based micro/nanofluidic devices can be used as a molecule-valve, -concentrator, -pump, and -filter, showing remarkable potential for a variety of applications in micro/nanofluids.

Researchers also employed their previous cracking-assisted photolithography to fabricate a global, evaporation-controlled, micro/nanofluidic device (GECMN) integrated with a gas-permeable, PDMS-based nanoslit, which permitted diffusive mass transport but suppressed pressure-driven flow via high hydraulic resistance.

Their findings have been published in the online version of Nature Communications on February 26, 2021. This study has been supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant, funded by the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT).

Everything from the production of fertilisers and plastics, to liquid fuels and pharmaceuticals require an important chemical reaction known as hydrogenation. This is a process involving the addition of hydrogen to unsaturated chemical bonds. Enhancing the rate of hydrogenation can lead to higher yields for industries and lower environmental impacts.

Now, a team of scientists, led by Associate Professor Yan Ning from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has come up with a method to increase the rate of ethylene hydrogenation by more than five times compared to typical industrial rates.

The team achieved this using a radically different approach. Unlike most current hydrogenation processes that use a static solid catalyst to speed up the reaction, the technique developed by NUS researchers applies oscillating electric potentials to a commercial hydrogenation catalyst, which then dramatically increased the hydrogenation rate of ethylene to ethane.

"Such enhancements in the rates or selectivity of chemical reactions are instrumental in making a chemical process more efficient. Our work demonstrates a more direct and cost-effective way of optimising catalyst performance that is beyond conventional methods," Assoc Prof Yan said.

The team's groundbreaking work was published in JACS Au on 14 April 2021.

Enhancing hydrogenation catalysis with oscillating electric potentials

Most hydrogenation catalysts have been developed over many centuries, but the development of new catalysts has been typically limited to conventional material design approaches. A few studies have shown that catalysis can be promoted by applying electric potentials to the catalyst. While these methods have already improved the selectivity and activity of heterogeneous catalysts under static conditions, the use of dynamic external stimuli has been underexplored.

The new findings by the NUS team offer an advanced engineering tool using oscillating electric potentials to promote the rate of chemical reactions without the development of new catalytic materials.

To achieve this, the NUS team carried out experiments using a commercial palladium catalyst in a laboratory-scale electrochemical reactor, and observed a rate enhancement of five times under optimal dynamic conditions. They managed to correlate the rate enhancement with the double-layer capacitance - an indicator of the local electric field strength at the catalyst-electrolyte interface - by using different electrolyte solutions. The properties of the catalyst changed periodically and continuously, which sped up the steps involved in the ethylene hydrogenation reaction.

The researchers conducted further kinetic experiments, which suggested that the enhancement could be related to the partial removal of strongly adsorbed hydrogen from the catalyst surface at a negative potential, and the subsequent adsorption and hydrogenation of ethylene at a positive potential.

The team's findings illustrate the feasibility of using oscillating potentials to improve the catalytic rate of a relatively simple hydrogenation reaction. A similar approach could be extended to control the activity and selectivity of a wide range of catalytic reactions.

Next steps

The NUS team is conducting more studies to improve their understanding of the fundamental principles behind their new technique. They are also looking to further develop their approach into a general strategy for enhancing catalysts beyond their 'static optimum'.

Great tits living in cities are genetically different from great tits in the countryside. This is what researchers have found in a unique study, where they examined populations of great tits in nine large European cities.

The researchers compared the city bird genes with the genes of their relatives in the countryside. It did not matter if the great tits lived in Milan, Malmö or Madrid: in order to handle an environment created by humans, the birds evolved in a similar way.

Different gene types linked to important biological functions such as cognition and various behaviours regulated by serotonin, including aggression and circadian rhythms, were found to have been selected and passed on from generation to generation. In rural populations, these behaviours are also important, however, the gene types that control them are different.

"This indicates that these behaviours, and cognition, are very important in order to live in urban environments with a lot of stress in the form of noise pollution, lights at night, air pollution and constant proximity to people", says Caroline Isaksson, Senior Lecturer at Lund University, who led the study together with her former doctoral student Pablo Salmon.

The study is the largest that has been done on how urban environments affect the genome, and thus the genetic material of the animals that live there. In total, 192 great tits were examined among populations in Malmö, Gothenburg, Madrid, Munich, Paris, Barcelona, Glasgow, Lisbon and Milan. For each urban population, the researchers had a control group of great tits living nearby, but in a rural environment. Blood samples have been taken from all of the birds and analysed genetically.

"We have analysed more than half a million single-nucleotide polymorphisms (snips) spread over the entire genome. There were a handful of genes that had clearly changed in response to the urban environment", says Caroline Isaksson.

Great tits are common throughout Europe, and it has long been known that they are quite similar genetically. Despite this, researchers have now identified clear genetic differences between great tits in the city and great tits in the countryside.

"That we see such a clear urban selection across the board, in an otherwise genetically similar European great tit, is surprising", concludes Caroline Isaksson.