Culture

Research over the last decade has shown that loneliness is an important determinant of health. It is associated with considerable physical and mental health risks and increased mortality. Previous studies have also shown that wisdom could serve as a protective factor against loneliness. This inverse relationship between loneliness and wisdom may be based in different brain processes.

In a study published in the March 5, 2021 online edition of Cerebral Cortex, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine found that specific regions of the brain respond to emotional stimuli related to loneliness and wisdom in opposing ways.

"We were interested in how loneliness and wisdom relate to emotional biases, meaning how we respond to different positive and negative emotions," said Jyoti Mishra, PhD, senior author of the study, director of the NEATLabs and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

The study involved 147 participants, ages 18 to 85. The subjects performed a simple cognitive task of determining which direction an arrow was pointed while faces with different emotions were presented in the background.

"We found that when faces emoting anger were presented as distractors, they significantly slowed simple cognitive responses in lonelier individuals. This meant that lonelier individuals paid more attention to threatening stimuli, such as the angry faces."

"For wisdom, on the other hand, we found a significant positive relationship for response speeds when faces with happy emotions were shown, specifically individuals who displayed wiser traits, such as empathy, had speedier responses in the presence of happy stimuli."

Electroencephalogram (EEG)-based brain recordings showed that the part of the brain called the temporal-parietal junction (TPJ) was activating differently in lonelier versus wiser individuals. TPJ is important for processing theory of mind, or the degree of capacity for empathy and understanding of others. The study found it more active in the presence of angry emotions for lonelier people and more active in the presence of happy emotions for wiser people.

Researchers also noted greater activity to threatening stimuli for lonelier individuals in the left superior parietal cortex, the brain region important for allocating attention, while wisdom was significantly related to enhanced happy emotion-driven activity in the left insula of the brain, responsible for social characteristics like empathy.

"This study shows that the inverse relationship between loneliness and wisdom that we found in our previous clinical studies is at least partly embedded in neurobiology and is not merely a result of subjective biases," said study author Dilip V. Jeste, MD, senior associate dean for the Center of Healthy Aging and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

"These findings are relevant to the mental and physical health of individuals because they give us an objective neurobiological handle on how lonelier or wiser people process information," said Mishra. "Having biological markers that we can measure in the brain can help us develop effective treatments. Perhaps we can help answer the question, 'Can you make a person wiser or less lonely?' The answer could help mitigate the risk of loneliness."

The authors say next steps include a longitudinal study and an intervention study.

"Ultimately, we think these evidence-based cognitive brain markers are the key to developing better health care for the future that may address the loneliness epidemic," said Mishra.

In early 2016, an icy visitor from the edge of our solar system hurtled past Earth. It briefly became visible to stargazers as Comet Catalina before it slingshotted past the Sun to disappear forevermore out of the solar system.

Among the many observatories that captured a view of this comet, which appeared near the Big Dipper, was the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), NASA's telescope on an airplane. Using one of its unique infrared instruments, SOFIA was able to pick out a familiar fingerprint within the dusty glow of the comet's tail--carbon.

Now this one-time visitor to our inner solar system is helping explain more about our own origins as it becomes apparent that comets like Catalina could have been an essential source of carbon on planets like Earth and Mars during the early formation of the solar system.

New results from SOFIA, a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, were published in the Planetary Science Journal.

"Carbon is key to learning about the origins of life," said the paper's lead author, Charles "Chick" Woodward, an astrophysicist and professor in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Minnesota Institute of Astrophysics. "We're still not sure if Earth could have trapped enough carbon on its own during its formation, so carbon-rich comets could have been an important source delivering this essential element that led to life as we know it."

Frozen in Time

Originating from the Oort Cloud at the farthest reaches of our solar system, Comet Catalina and others of its type have such long orbits that they arrive on our celestial doorstep relatively unaltered. This makes them effectively frozen in time, offering researchers rare opportunities to learn about the early solar system from which they come.

SOFIA's infrared observations were able to capture the composition of the dust and gas as it evaporated off the comet, forming its tail. The observations showed that Comet Catalina is carbon-rich, suggesting that it formed in the outer regions of the primordial solar system, which held a reservoir of carbon that could have been important for seeding life.

While carbon is a key ingredient of life, early Earth and other terrestrial planets of the inner solar system were so hot during their formation that elements like carbon were lost or depleted. While the cooler gas giants like Jupiter and Neptune could support carbon in the outer solar system, Jupiter's jumbo size may have gravitationally blocked carbon from mixing back into the inner solar system.

Primordial Mixing

So how did the inner rocky planets evolve into the carbon-rich worlds that they are today?

Researchers think that a slight change in Jupiter's orbit allowed small, early precursors of comets to mix carbon from the outer regions into the inner regions, where it was incorporated into planets like Earth and Mars.

Comet Catalina's carbon-rich composition helps explain how planets that formed in the hot, carbon-poor regions of the early solar system evolved into planets with the life-supporting element.

"All terrestrial worlds are subject to impacts by comets and other small bodies, which carry carbon and other elements," Woodward said. "We are getting closer to understanding exactly how these impacts on early planets may have catalyzed life."

Observations of additional new comets are needed to learn if there are many other carbon-rich comets in the Oort Cloud, which would further support that comets delivered carbon and other life-supporting elements to the terrestrial planets. As the world's largest airborne observatory, SOFIA's mobility allows it to quickly observe newly discovered comets as they make a pass through the solar system.

When stay-at-home orders were announced as one of the greatest tools in our arsenal against the COVID-19 pandemic, anyone who's vintage enough to have watched forward-looking shows and movies-- from "The Jetsons" to "Star Trek" to "Back to the Future" -- might have thought America was ready to embrace a world where video calling and other tech-heavy communication options reigned supreme.

But one year, dozens of Zoom meetings, hundreds of phone calls and text messages, thousands of online gaming hours, and millions of social media posts later, new research led by UNLV has found that the tech mediums we once thought were the way of the future actually don't stack up very well against old-fashioned face-to-face communication. At least not in the order we imagined.

"Connecting During COVID-19," a study slated for publication this month in the journal Human Communication & Technology, found that older technologies like voice calls and emails were more effective at easing pandemic loneliness and stress than newer options like video chats, social media, and interactive video games.

"Age, relationship status, and living situation were the three big factors that shifted how people were impacted by tech," said Natalie Pennington, a UNLV communication studies professor and social media expert, who collaborated on the study with University of Kansas professor Jeff Hall and Michigan State University associate professor Amanda Holmstrom. "There's other research out there that said young adults are the biggest concern because older adults are already used to some degree of social isolation. And our study mirrored that: 18- to 29-year-olds comprise the group that's struggling the most with isolation despite the availability of all these communication technologies."

In May 2020, researchers surveyed roughly 2,000 Americans across a wide range of geographic, age, racial/ethnic, educational, and socioeconomic backgrounds about how they use communication technology to meet their social and psychological well-being needs, as well as its impact on their relationships both inside and outside the home. Just barely a month into the pandemic, cell phone companies, internet providers, and video chat and social media platforms all reported huge spikes in traffic, according to data cited within the study.

"Technology can help us, but it does force us to be creative in ways that we might not think of right away," said Pennington, who also completed two solo studies on the topic. She will present her findings later this month at the Central States Communication Association conference. "One of the biggest things that helps is talking and thinking about and doing other things -- family game nights, family dinners, having fun with people during online Netflix parties, or just video chatting with people for a purpose and not talking about the pandemic."

Here, Pennington shares her top 10 most interesting findings from her research on social media and communication technology use during the pandemic.

Top 10 Takeaways

1. The most used and most important types of communication were phone calls and texting. This is consistent with what we know about phone calls during the early days of the pandemic: In April 2020, the number of daily voice calls was twice that of the peak traffic day in 2019.

"It's a nice pushback on our general expectations about video chat having risen up during the pandemic," Pennington said.

2. Phone calls were associated with decreases in stress, loneliness, and relationship maintenance difficulties.

"When I'm on a voice call, I can multitask, move around, and I might not be as stressed as I would if I were having to give 100% of my focus to a video chat," Pennington said. "At the same time, hearing someone's voice can help me feel connected in a way that I might not get from texting."

3. Video chats, on the other hand, were associated with increased levels of stress, loneliness, and relationship difficulties.

"On a theoretical level, you'd think that the richer the medium, the better it is because it can approximate face-to-face communication," Pennington said. "But because video chat tries to be face-to-face when it's not, I think it almost makes you even more sad that you can see the person yet they're not actually there; because you can't get those context clues, those haptics, those things that make us like being in a room with a person."

What's more: Think about the energy required for a video chat--you have to give your full focus, which can make them draining for those not used to the medium. It's no wonder people are talking about "Zoom fatigue." This stands as a good reminder to switch up modalities for what works best for you versus what you think you should be using.

Further study is needed, but Pennington hypothesizes that research will find video chat, while a helpful supplement, isn't a good replacement for in-person interactions.

4. Social media posting, commenting, and sharing was the modality most strongly associated with stress. Early research during the pandemic highlighted an increase in "doomscrolling," which Pennington hypothesizes is connected to her team's finding.

"Not talking about the pandemic is one of the biggest things to help people get through the pandemic," she said. "When you're stressed out, that fixation and rumination while posting and commenting and talking about that stress online can make it worse. Social media can also serve as a reminder of the things you are no longer able to do as you shelter in place, which can make you feel worse."

5. Those in a romantic relationship reported less loneliness and stress compared to those who were not. However, people in romantic relationships were also more likely to experience stress related to social media posting.

"Together, these findings help us see that the types of relationships we're sustaining can help us during the pandemic. But our modality choices, above and beyond, can flip us in the other direction," Pennington said. "The person who is least stressed is in a relationship but not using social media. But the person who's most stressed is in a relationship and is using social media. And the no-relationship, no-social media person is the middle zone."

6. Being sheltered in place created a greater perception of loneliness and stress, and more difficulty with relationship maintenance. This one tracks when you think about the state of the world. Being told you should limit gatherings and stay home, regardless of your usual habits, can lead to more stress, and cause feelings of loneliness when you think about the people you could have been spending time with. The increased difficulty managing relationships likely points to potential stress in the home--finding alone time is important to help balance needs and avoid difficulties.

"In a separate qualitative study I'm working on, it came up over and over that there's lots of tension in some households because suddenly there are multiple people in each other's space all the time. And," she added, "preliminary findings from another study suggest that it's leading to relational burnout for some people."

7. At the same time, living alone was unassociated with loneliness and maintenance difficulties, suggesting having someone in the house doesn't always help (especially since it was also associated with less stress).

"You can feel cooped up with people around you, once again pointing to the importance of some alone time," she said.

8. You've got mail!

Older and middle-aged adults were able to make use of email as a way to decrease loneliness, while young adults (under 29) experienced increased loneliness alongside the use of email. One reason for this may be familiarity with and preference for letter-writing: Younger generations may perceive email as a poor substitute for interaction, while older and middle-aged adults may find comfort in the nostalgic structure that email provides to connect with loved ones.

"Some people love it, some people hate it, and I think age has something to do with that," Pennington said, "because younger people tend to associate email with work. So, trying to make use of it in a social way, especially when it's one of the leanest forms of communication that just relies on text, means it's not for everyone."

9. Online gaming was associated with greater stress and more relational maintenance challenges. The survey didn't delve into the reasons why. But Pennington posits that it may be that in people's attempts to escape their pandemic realities via online gaming, they left their emotional needs and social connections unattended. As a result, they perhaps felt more challenges in their day-to-day communication with other people.

The correlations surrounding online gaming were especially interesting given that gaming consoles sold out during the early days of the pandemic, said Pennington: "There was a drive to do these things, but connecting online seemed to make people more stressed."

10. Face-to-face communication wins out.

Nothing can really replicate face-to-face interactions -- or at least not the modes of communication analyzed in Pennington's study. Across the board, her team found that people who engaged in face-to-face interactions were the least stressed and lonely.

"This is a good reminder and encouragement that in order to get our social needs met, we want to take active steps to be safe and smart, and stop the spread of COVID-19," Pennington said, "so that meeting in person is a viable option going forward."

The global population is aging, and so are their eyes. In fact, the number of people with vision impairment and blindness is expected to more than double over the next 30 years.

A meta-analysis in The Lancet Global Health, consisting of 48,000 people from 17 studies, found that those with more severe vision impairment had a higher risk of all-cause mortality compared to those that had normal vision or mild vision impairment.

According to the data, the risk of mortality was 29% higher for participants with mild vision impairment, compared to normal vision. The risk increases to 89% among those with severe vision impairment.

Importantly, four of five cases of vision impairment can be prevented or corrected. Globally, the leading causes of vision loss and blindness are both avoidable: cataract and the unmet need for glasses.

The study's lead author, Joshua Ehrlich, M.D., M.P.H., sought to better understand the association between visual disabilities and all-cause mortality.

The work compliments some of Ehrlich's recent research, also in The Lancet Global Health Commission on Global Eye Health, that highlighted the impact of late-life vision impairment on health and well-being, including its influence on dementia, depression, and loss of independence.

"It's important these issues are addressed early on because losing your vision affects more than just how you see the world; it affects your experience of the world and your life," says Ehrlich. "This analysis provides an important opportunity to promote not only health and wellbeing, but also longevity by correcting, rehabilitating, and preventing avoidable vision loss across the globe."

HOUSTON - (March 5, 2021) - Even a small effort up front can boost the abilities and confidence of girls as they anticipate taking challenging science courses.

A long-running summer program at Rice University and elsewhere that trains high school girls in basic physics concepts has proven successful in helping them thrive when they take on full courses the next year.

When leaders of Rice's two-week day camp looked at similar programs beyond Houston, they found participants scored 3% better in high school physics than their counterparts who did not have the equivalent summer experience.

"That doesn't seem like a lot, but it's really hard to move the needle on student outcomes, so 3% is significant," said Carolyn Nichol, an assistant research professor in the Department of Chemistry and director of the Rice Office of STEM Engagement (R-STEM).

The results are detailed in an open-access study by Nichol, lead author Ericka Lawton, and co-authors Carrie Obenland and Matthew Cushing of R-STEM and Christopher Barr of the Rice Office of Research in the American Physics Society journal Physical Review Physics Education Research.

The study is one of two led and recently released by Nichol. The other analyzes the effect of long-term professional development for teachers in engineering education. That study by Nichol, lead author Christina Crawford of R-STEM and co-author Obenland appears in the Journal of STEM Outreach.

The high school study collected years' worth of generalized data from participating districts for students who studied chemistry but did not participate in a camp, and the same data for those who did. That gave researchers a baseline to compare results for the same set of students after they all took high school physics.

"There wasn't a self-selection bias where people could say, 'Oh, girls who go to a physics camp in June already like physics,'" she said, noting Rice and its counterparts typically recruit students from underserved schools. "The girls who were part of the study were matched so their chemistry scores were the same. We didn't base this on girls who were already accelerating in science."

The study was based on a philanthropic effort by Rice alumna and trustee Wanda Gass '78, an engineer who helped develop the first commercially viable digital signal processor during her career at Texas Instruments. She subsequently founded the nonprofit Design Connect Create to encourage girls to pursue STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) studies.

Design Connect Create runs summer camps for multiple school districts across Texas. Nichol said the study is great validation for the physics program that will ideally lead to similar courses in other science-oriented topics.

"When I talk to these girls at Rice, and often they really don't want to be here," she said. "They're very quiet at the start because for the most part, they are being forced to come by their parents. But by the end, they form really wonderful bonds with the other girls. Within two weeks, they are sharing skills and become trusting of each other.

"I think that's the real reason they go back and are successful in physics," Nichol said. "They just get this confidence that they can do it."

The second study sought to show the value of professional development for teachers whose coursework touches on engineering topics but who are not, themselves, engineers. The researchers followed up with teachers who took the 45-hour graduate level course at Rice in 2018 and 2019 to see how they incorporated engineering into their classrooms.

The study found that, based on a set of attributes for adult self-motivation, teachers showed significant improvement in overall self-efficacy -- the belief in their own ability to succeed -- in engineering instruction.

"I'm an engineer because my dad was an engineer," said Nichol, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering. "We want engineering in K-12 classrooms because a lot of kids don't have role models, and we want them to understand that an engineer is somebody who designs and creates new things."

She said the program that best exemplifies what Rice offers is the NanoEnvironmental Engineering for Teachers course, which gives participants rigorous hands-on experience working on water sustainability projects. The course, a collaboration with the Rice-based and National Science Foundation-backed Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Center, is also offered at Arizona State and the University of Texas at El Paso.

Lawton is associate director for educational leadership and STEM initiatives, Obenland is a lecturer and associate director for outreach and research, Crawford is associate director for science and engineering and Cushing is executive director of R-STEM. Barr is director of assessment and evaluation of STEM programs in the Office of Research.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- It looks like science fiction: A machine dips into a shallow vat of translucent yellow goo and pulls out what becomes a life-sized hand.

But the seven-second video, which is sped-up from 19 minutes, is real.

The hand, which would take six hours to create using conventional 3D printing methods, demonstrates what University at Buffalo engineers say is progress toward 3D-printed human tissue and organs -- biotechnology that could eventually save countless lives lost due to the shortage of donor organs.

"The technology we've developed is 10-50 times faster than the industry standard, and it works with large sample sizes that have been very difficult to achieve previously," says the study's co-lead author Ruogang Zhao, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering.

The work is described in a study published Feb. 15 in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials.

It centers on a 3D printing method called stereolithography and jelly-like materials known as hydrogels, which are used to create, among things, diapers, contact lenses and scaffolds in tissue engineering.

The latter application is particularly useful in 3D printing, and it's something the research team spent a major part of its effort optimizing to achieve its incredibly fast and accurate 3D printing technique.

"Our method allows for the rapid printing of centimeter-sized hydrogel models. It signi?cantly reduces part deformation and cellular injuries caused by the prolonged exposure to the environmental stresses you commonly see in conventional 3D printing methods," says the study's other co-lead author, Chi Zhou, PhD, associate professor of industrial and systems engineering.

Researchers say the method is particularly suitable for printing cells with embedded blood vessel networks, a nascent technology expected to be a central part of the production of 3D-printed human tissue and organs.

Powerful new genetic engineering methods have given scientists the potential to revolutionize several sectors of global urgency.

So-called gene drives, which leverage CRISPR technology to influence genetic inheritance, carry the promise of rapidly spreading specific genetic traits throughout populations of a given species. Gene-drive technologies applied in insects, for example, are being designed to halt the spread of devastating diseases such as malaria and dengue by preventing mosquito hosts from becoming infected. In agricultural fields, gene-drives are being developed to help control or eliminate economically damaging crop pests.

But along with the capacity to alter populations, concerns have been raised regarding the long-term effects of these transformative new technologies in the wild. Researchers and ethicists have voiced questions about how gene drives, once turned loose in a regional population, could be held in check if necessary.

Now, researchers at the University of California San Diego, Tata Institute for Genetics and Society (TIGS) at UC San Diego and their colleagues at UC Berkeley have developed a new method that provides more control over gene drive releases. Details of the new "split drive" are published March 5 in the journals Nature Communications and eLife.

The most common gene drives employ a two-component system that features a DNA-cutting enzyme (called Cas9) and a guide RNA (or gRNA) that targets cuts at specific sites in the genome. Following the Cas9/gRNA cut, the gene drive, along with the cargo it carries, is copied into the break site through a DNA repair process.

While classic gene drives are designed to spread autonomously, the newly developed system is designed with controls that separate the genetic implementation processes. The split-drive system consists of a non-spreadable Cas9 component inserted into one location in the genome and a second genetic element that can copy itself--along with a beneficial trait--at a separate site. When both elements are present together in an individual, an "active gene drive" is created that spreads the element carrying the beneficial trait to most of its progeny. Yet, when uncoupled, the element carrying the beneficial trait is inherited under typical generational genetics rules, or Mendelian frequencies, rather than spreading unrestrained.

As described in the Nature Communications paper, by creating slight fitness costs that eventually eliminate the Cas9 enzyme from the population, the split-drive system vastly increases control and safety of the genetic deployments.

"Studying drives in essential genes is not a novel idea, per se, but we observed that certain split situations were able to spread a cargo effectively upon a first introduction while leaving no trace of Cas9 after a few generations, as well as few mistakes in the DNA repair process that got rapidly diluted out," said Gerard Terradas, first author in the Nature Communications paper and a postdoctoral scholar in the UC San Diego Division of Biological Sciences.

The Nature Communications paper also spells out advantages on how gene drives are perceived by the public, as efforts to alter wild populations could be flexibly designed in a variety of ways per the desired outcome.

The new split-drive system follows research announced in September in which UC San Diego researchers led the development of two new active genetics neutralizing strategies that are designed to halt or inactivate gene drives released in the wild.

"We hope that the flexible design features we have developed will be broadly applicable by enabling tailored approaches to controlling insect vectors and pests in diverse contexts," said UC San Diego Distinguished Professor Ethan Bier, senior author of the Nature Communications study and science director for TIGS-UC San Diego.

"These seminal papers reflect a tremendous effort, and fruitful cross-UC collaborations, to demonstrate novel gene drive architectures for mitigating the formation of resistant alleles while providing a safe confinable means for modification of wild populations," said UC San Diego Associate Professor Omar Akbari, senior author of the eLife study.

Egg cells are by far the largest cells produced by most organisms. In humans, they are several times larger than a typical body cell and about 10,000 times larger than sperm cells.

There's a reason why egg cells, or oocytes, are so big: They need to accumulate enough nutrients to support a growing embryo after fertilization, plus mitochondria to power all of that growth. However, biologists don't yet understand the full picture of how egg cells become so large.

A new study in fruit flies, by a team of MIT biologists and mathematicians, reveals that the process through which the oocyte grows significantly and rapidly before fertilization relies on physical phenomena analogous to the exchange of gases between balloons of different sizes. Specifically, the researchers showed that "nurse cells" surrounding the much larger oocyte dump their contents into the larger cell, just as air flows from a smaller balloon into a larger one when they are connected by small tubes in an experimental setup.

"The study shows how physics and biology come together, and how nature can use physical processes to create this robust mechanism," says Jörn Dunkel, an MIT associate professor of physical applied mathematics. "If you want to develop as an embryo, one of the goals is to make things very reproducible, and physics provides a very robust way of achieving certain transport processes."

Dunkel and Adam Martin, an MIT associate professor of biology, are the senior authors of the paper, which appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study's lead authors are postdoc Jasmin Imran Alsous and graduate student Nicolas Romeo. Jonathan Jackson, a Harvard University graduate student, and Frank Mason, a research assistant professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, are also authors of the paper.

A physical process

In female fruit flies, eggs develop within cell clusters known as cysts. An immature oocyte undergoes four cycles of cell division to produce one egg cell and 15 nurse cells. However, the cell separation is incomplete, and each cell remains connected to the others by narrow channels that act as valves that allow material to pass between cells.

Members of Martin's lab began studying this process because of their longstanding interest in myosin, a class of proteins that can act as motors and help muscle cells contract. Imran Alsous performed high-resolution, live imaging of egg formation in fruit flies and found that myosin does indeed play a role, but only in the second phase of the transport process. During the earliest phase, the researchers were puzzled to see that the cells did not appear to be increasing their contractility at all, suggesting that a mechanism other than "squeezing" was initiating the transport.

"The two phases are strikingly obvious," Martin says. "After we saw this, we were mystified, because there's really not a change in myosin associated with the onset of this process, which is what we were expecting to see."

Martin and his lab then joined forces with Dunkel, who studies the physics of soft surfaces and flowing matter. Dunkel and Romeo wondered if the cells might be behaving the same way that balloons of different sizes behave when they are connected. While one might expect that the larger balloon would leak air to the smaller until they are the same size, what actually happens is that air flows from the smaller to the larger.

This happens because the smaller balloon, which has greater curvature, experiences more surface tension, and therefore higher pressure, than the larger balloon. Air is therefore forced out of the smaller balloon and into the larger one. "It's counterintuitive, but it's a very robust process," Dunkel says.

Adapting mathematical equations that had already been derived to explain this "two-balloon effect," the researchers came up with a model that describes how cell contents are transferred from the 15 small nurse cells to the large oocyte, based on their sizes and their connections to each other. The nurse cells in the layer closest to the oocyte transfer their contents first, followed by the cells in more distant layers.

"After I spent some time building a more complicated model to explain the 16-cell problem, we realized that the simulation of the simpler 16-balloon system looked very much like the 16-cell network. It is surprising to see that such counterintuitive but mathematically simple ideas describe the process so well," Romeo says.

The first phase of nurse cell dumping appears to coincide with when the channels connecting the cells become large enough for cytoplasm to move through them. Once the nurse cells shrink to about 25 percent of their original size, leaving them only slightly larger than their nuclei, the second phase of the process is triggered and myosin contractions force the remaining contents of the nurse cells into the egg cell.

"In the first part of the process, there's very little squeezing going on, and the cells just shrink uniformly. Then this second process kicks in toward the end where you start to get more active squeezing, or peristalsis-like deformations of the cell, that complete the dumping process," Martin says.

Cell cooperation

The findings demonstrate how cells can coordinate their behavior, using both biological and physical mechanisms, to bring about tissue-level behavior, Imran Alsous says.

"Here, you have several nurse cells whose job it is to nurse the future egg cell, and to do so, these cells appear to transport their contents in a coordinated and directional manner to the oocyte," she says.

Oocyte and early embryonic development in fruit flies and other invertebrates bears some similarities to those of mammals, but it's unknown if the same mechanism of egg cell growth might be seen in humans or other mammals, the researchers say.

"There's evidence in mice that the oocyte develops as a cyst with other interconnected cells, and that there is some transport between them, but we don't know if the mechanisms that we're seeing here operate in mammals," Martin says.

The researchers are now studying what triggers the second, myosin-powered phase of the dumping process to start. They are also investigating how changes to the original sizes of the nurse cells might affect egg formation.

An international team of researchers has identified the CNNM4 protein as a key regulator of magnesium in the liver and potential therapeutic target for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, according to a study published in the Journal of Hepatology.

Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, a form of fatty liver disease characterized by inflammation and liver fibrosis, is associated with obesity and has a worldwide prevalence of 1.7 billion people.

Unhealthy nutritional habits and dietary imbalances are recognized as causes of many diseases. Magnesium is widely available in both plant and animal foods; most vegetables, legumes, peas, beans, and nuts are rich in magnesium, as are some seafood and spices. In recent years, there has been growing concern about inadequate magnesium intake in the general population. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), 79% of U.S. adults do not meet the recommended intake of magnesium.

In the Journal of Hepatology study--led by Malu Martínez Chantar, principal investigator of the Liver Disease Laboratory at Spain's CIC bioGUNE and CIBER de Enfermedades Hepáticas y Digestivas (CIBEREHD), and Jorge Simon, first author of the publication--the researchers found a higher expression of the CNNM4 protein in both patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and mouse models of the disease. CNNM4 facilitates transport of magnesium out of the liver and is responsible for the imbalance in the levels of magnesium that ends in the development of liver disease.

"These patients have an altered magnesium export machinery that increases the vulnerability of their liver to suffer inflammatory processes, development of fibrosis and fat deposition," explains Martínez Chantar. "This study also presents a novel therapeutic approach based on GalNac-siRNA technology that specifically targets the liver by modulating CNNM4 levels. The CNNM4 molecule developed from Silence Therapeutics' proprietary mRNAi GOLD™ (GalNAc Oligonucleotide Discovery) Platform effectively protects from liver pathology in preclinical models of steatohepatitis."

This molecule opens an unexplored therapeutic window in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

"The study underscores the importance of magnesium balance for supporting liver health. With insight into how this essential metal affects lipid metabolism at the cellular level, possible therapeutic targets for this and other liver pathologies start emerging," says Daniela Buccella, associate professor of chemistry at New York University and a study co-author.

An exquisitely detailed global ocean model simulation from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has given scientists rare insight into where baby sea turtles may go in their "lost years" after they scramble off the sandy beaches where they are born and swim into the open ocean.

This look at a critically important period in the life cycle of endangered loggerhead turtles could help inform more comprehensive conservation efforts that encompass regions of the open ocean where young turtles grow, and not just the nesting beaches. It also pinpoints regions of the ocean that are important to study to better understand how to protect sea turtles.

"To understand where sea turtle hatchlings are being swept to when they enter the open ocean -- and how favorable that habitat is to turtle survival -- we need to simulate smaller scale ocean features, the jets and eddies that transport these younglings," said Cheryl Harrison, a researcher at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, who led the study. "The models typically used to simulate global ocean movement are too coarse for us to resolve these important features. The really exciting thing about this study is we were able to use a high-resolution, eddy-resolving model to track where turtles are traveling."

The ocean simulation used for the new study, published in the journal Royal Society Interface, was run using the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model at a resolution that is an order of magnitude higher than standard global modeling runs. The model also contains complex biogeochemistry, which allowed the researchers to estimate food availability along the turtles' path.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR's sponsor, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Harrison began work on the study as a postdoctoral researcher at NCAR, working with oceanographer Matthew Long, who co-authored the study. Harrison is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Finding the lost years

Loggerhead turtles nest on specific beaches scattered around the globe, often where strong currents come close to land. After hatching, the baby turtles head for the ocean, where they spend the next several years as they mature. Once they reach sexual maturity decades later, the turtles eventually return to the beach where they were born to mate and lay their own eggs before the cycle begins again.

For the new study, Harrison and her colleagues studied how hatchlings are likely to disperse during the first year of their lives from nesting sites on the coasts of Japan, Florida, Cape Verde, Oman, west Australia, east Australia, Brazil, and South Africa. Because the baby sea turtles must stay near the surface of the ocean to breathe -- and because they are not yet able to swim for significant periods -- the researchers were able to emulate their possible journeys using a method known as particle tracking, which follows how particles "released" into the model move with simulated water trajectories over time.

The results show that at many of the nesting sites, strong nearby currents -- including the Kuroshio, Gulf Stream, Brazil, and Agulhas currents -- sweep the turtles poleward to a region of ocean where two circular ocean currents (known as gyres) come together. This boundary between the subpolar and subtropical gyres is warm enough for the hatchlings to survive and also rich with zooplankton and other food that turtles depend on to survive.

The study results help demarcate the regions where turtles from each beach are going in their "lost years" when ecologists cannot easily keep tabs on them. For example, turtles born in southeastern Florida travel with the Gulf Stream all the way to the Azores, a productive and warm ocean habitat perfect for nurturing them.

At other nesting sites, such as the one on the coast of Oman, the hatchlings do not hitch a ride on a strong current to far-off ocean habitats. Instead, they use a local current that disperses them relatively nearby because the area waters are already suitable for the young turtles. This understanding of where the turtles go allows scientists to better understand what threats the turtles may be facing.

"Sea turtle hatchlings are very difficult to track and observe as they have high mortality rates and grow out of tags quickly," Harrison said. "Modelling studies help us close this observational gap and predict where they are going in the 'lost years.' Identifying ocean habitat helps us understand what factors are important for their survival in this life stage."

Digital solutions including remote monitoring can help chronic pain sufferers manage their pain and reduce the probability of misuse of prescription opioids.

For chronic pain sufferers an app may be just the tool they need to manage their pain. In a UHN-led study that used the app "Manage My Pain" enrolled patients saw clinically significant reductions in key areas that drive increased medical needs, potential abuse of prescription opioids and of course, pain.

Toronto (March 4, 2021) - For the first time, an app has been shown to reduce key symptoms of chronic pain. A UHN-led study evaluated the impact of Manage My Pain (MMP), a digital health solution developed by ManagingLife, on patients seen at the Iroquois Falls Family Health Team, and the Toronto Western and Toronto General Hospitals.

Published today in JMIR mHealth, a leading peer-reviewed journal focused on health and biomedical applications, the study showed patients who used the MMP app saw a clinically significant reduction in anxiety and pain catastrophizing, two key areas that drive increased medical needs and potential abuse of prescription opioid.

"Manage My Pain has helped our patients tell their story," says Dr. Hance Clarke, Director Pain Services, Medical Director of The Pain Research Unit, Toronto General Hospital, UHN. "As a result, this has empowered them to engage in discussions that enabled us to come up with patient-centered treatment plans to help manage their pain."

246 participants with chronic pain were enrolled in the study and more than 70 per cent of the group agreed to use the app along with their medication, psychological therapy, and physiotherapy, the other 30 per cent were the control group. The app allowed them to track their pain, create reports that facilitated better communication with their care providers, and through a virtual portal, give clinicians the ability to remotely monitor their patients and use advanced analytics to spot any negative trends weeks and months in advance.

"Prior to Manage My Pain, our clinic was dependent on paper-based questionnaires to understand a patient's pain experience and response to treatment," says Dr. Anuj Bhatia, Site Director, Anesthesia - Interventional Pain Service, Toronto Western Hospital, UHN. "The app allows us to capture even more information than we had previously, while doing so digitally and remotely. The app also allowed us to study trends in intensity of pain and its impact on the patients' lives."

Patients were prompted daily to record their reflections in the app. In less than a minute, they could input the activities they were able to accomplish and rate the pain they felt. In return, they received charts and graphs that highlighted patterns and trends that could increase their self-awareness, and provide insight into triggers and interventions.

For the rural patients involved in this study, the benefits of MMP were remarkably clear from the beginning. Lacking a speciality pain centre, patients in Iroquois Falls must rely on their primary caregivers and the app made the communication between the patient-clinician easier and more productive.

"Chronic pain isn't like a broken arm," says Dr. Auri Bruno-Petrina, rural Physician, Iroquois Falls. "It can be invisible to the naked eye, so people who suffer from it can find it very frustrating to explain how they are feeling and how much it is impacting their lives. This app strengthened my ability to help my patients because we had more nuanced data and we could really dig into the details."

For both rural and urban patients suffering from chronic pain, the use of MMP encouraged tracking and reflecting, both of which are important components of most self-management programs. The ease of adoption also presents a positive opportunity for engaging with patients during significant challenges like the one presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us how essential it is for patients to have a role in managing healthcare conditions," says Dr. Clarke. "Digital tools like Manage My Pain are a great way to empower self-management in patients, which is one of the hallmarks of successful clinical care."

The human genome contains roughly three million letters. On average, the genome sequences of any two people differ from each other by about one in every 1,000 letters. Yet different variants occur, from substituted letters to entire missing sections of DNA. Scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and the Regensburg Center for Interventional Immunology (RCI) have teamed up with Icelandic researchers to develop software that reliably and quickly identifies large deletions in ten-thousands of genomes simultaneously. The researchers have now published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

The human genome contains roughly three million letters and is distributed over 46 chromosomes. Yet the genetic variation from person to person is very small: the genome sequences of any two people differ from each other by about one in every 1,000 letters. Sometimes single letters are exchanged in the genome, while other times whole sections are moved around. "Many of these differences go unnoticed, because they do not affect the structure of the proteins encoded in the genome and do not cause any diseases," says Birte Kehr, a junior group leader at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) who was recently appointed professor at the Regensburg Center for Interventional Immunology (RCI). The bioinformatician is working on so-called structural variants, in which larger segments of the genome are deleted, duplicated or even swapped between chromosomes.

Large structural changes have a big impact

"Large structural changes are much rarer than changes in single letters," Kehr explains, "but they often have a bigger impact and are also harder to detect." To learn more about these bigger changes, it is helpful to use large databases to search for them. That's where the collaboration with the Icelandic company deCODE Genetics came in, whose database contains some 50,000 human genome sequences and where Kehr formerly worked as a postdoc. "We always planned to search for deletions in the data, but we didn't have a program capable of reliably and quickly processing such huge amounts of data." When Kehr joined the BIH in Berlin, she gave this task to her first Ph.D. student, Sebastian Niehus.

Data is valuable only if it is used

The programs previously available for identifying structural variants such as deletions could only process data from a few individuals at a time. For large data sets, such as those in the deCODE genome database, the results then had to be combined, which was a cumbersome and error-prone process. "We first wanted to develop a statistical model that would enable us to evaluate information from all genomes simultaneously," Niehus reports. "To do this, the program had to be designed so that a computer could quickly sift through huge quantities of data. We also had to compress the files to 1 to 2 percent of their original size to be able to work with them at all."

Faster and more accurate than other software

Once a prototype was developed, the PopDel program had to prove itself against other programs in various scenarios. These included simulated sequence data from up to 1,000 "individuals"; sequence data from 49 parent-child trios, which allowed a thorough analysis of whether inheritance patterns were reconstructed correctly; sequence data from 150 individuals of different ethnicities, which made it possible to evaluate population structures; and finally the approximately 50,000 genomes from the Icelandic cooperation partner deCODE Genetics.

"We were able to show that PopDel produced good results in a quick, reliable and resource-efficient way, both with data from a single person and with data from the largest cohorts," Niehus reports with pride. Kehr adds: "PopDel only needed two days to analyze the genomes of 150 individuals where other programs had taken four weeks. And PopDel's results were better."

Rare gene variant discovered

The highlight for the researchers was the discovery of a rare, previously unknown gene variant in only one family out of the 50,000 Icelanders analyzed. "The gene for the LDL receptor showed a larger deletion, or gap, in these family members. This was coupled with very low levels of cholesterol in these individuals," explains Kehr. Her collaborators at deCODE Genetics have since been able to show that the change in the LDL receptor gene is indeed responsible for the low cholesterol levels in affected individuals. "One affected individual died at the age of 85, while six other affected individuals aged 35 to 65 are all very healthy with their low cholesterol levels," says Kehr. "The results are therefore also very interesting from a medical point of view, because we seem to have discovered a genetic variant that contributes to healthy lipid metabolism."

In the next step, the researchers want to develop the program further. They are continuing to work on it themselves, but have also deposited PopDel's source code on an open server so that anyone can view, use and improve it. "PopDel can so far only detect deleted DNA segments, but there are also genetic variants where segments have been duplicated, inverted or translocated. We would now like to find all of them with PopDel as well," says Niehus, looking to the future. And Kehr hopes that, in the long run, the findings will lead to the development of new therapies and treatment approaches -in keeping with BIH's motto of "Turning Research into Health."

Japanese researchers have developed a simulation method to theoretically estimate the performance of heterogeneous catalyst by combining first-principles calculation (1) and kinetic calculation techniques. Up to now, simulation studies mainly focused on a single or limited number of reaction pathways, and it was difficult to estimate the efficiency of a catalytic reaction without experimental information.

Atsushi Ishikawa, Senior Researcher, Center for Green Research on Energy and Environmental Materials, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), performed computation of reaction kinetic information from first-principles calculations based on quantum mechanics, and developed methods and programs to carry out kinetic simulations without using experimental kinetic results. Then he applied the findings to the oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) reaction, which is an important process in the use of natural gas. He could successfully predict the yield of the products, such as ethane, without experimental information on the reaction kinetics. He also predicted changes in yield depending on the temperature and partial pressure, and the results reproduced faithfully the existing experimental results.

This research shows that the computer simulation enables the forecasting the conversion of reactant and the selectivity of products, even if experimental data are unavailable. The search for catalytic materials led by theory and calculation is expected to speed up. Furthermore, this method is highly versatile and can be applied not only to methane conversion catalysts but also to other catalyst systems such as for automobile exhaust gas purification, carbon dioxide reduction and hydrogen generation, and is expected to contribute to the realization of a carbon-free society.

The speed at which we produce facial expressions plays an important role in our ability to recognise emotions in others, according to new research at the University of Birmingham.

A team in the University's School of Psychology carried out research which showed that people tend to produce happy and angry expressions more rapidly, while sad expressions are produced more slowly.

The team found that our ability to form judgements about people's facial expressions has close links with the speeds at which those expressions are produced and is also closely related to the ways in which we would produce those expressions ourselves. The study is published in Emotion.

"Being able to recognise and interpret facial expressions is a vital part of social interaction," explained lead author Dr Sophie Sowden. "While we understand the spatial characteristics of an expression - the way the mouth moves in a smile, for example - the speeds at which expressions are produced are often overlooked. The ability to pick up on and rapidly interpret these cues could also help people to judge facial expressions even when mask-wearing might limit other visual cues."

Dr Sowden added: "Better understanding how people interpret this important visual cue, could give us new insights into the diagnosis of conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder or Parkinson's Disease. This is because patients with these conditions often recognise facial expressions differently, or exhibit expressions differently."

In the study, the team asked people to create facial expressions directed at a camera, and used an opensource software programme called OpenFace to track their facial movement. They measured the speed of movement in regions of the face known to be important in producing expression, including around the eyebrows, the nose and the mouth, as well as across the face as a whole.

In the first part of the experiment, the researchers investigated the average speed at which participants produced different expressions. They were asked to produce 'posed expressions', as well as expressions during speech, and spontaneous expressions were recorded in response to emotion-inducing videos. Interestingly, they showed differences in speed across emotions depends on the region of the face and the 'type' of expression being considered.

In a second phase of the study, the team investigated what would happen if they captured schematic versions of facial expressions being produced, and manipulated the speeds involved. In this experiment, the researchers found that as the act of expression was speeded up, people would get better at recognising it as happy or angry, whereas if it was slowed down, people would more accurately identify it as sad.

As well as being important for early diagnosis of autism and Parkinson's disease, the researchers believe the work could also be useful in a range of artificial intelligence applications such as facial recognition software.

The vegan diet is on trend. How this type of diet affects health is the subject of scientific studies. In a new study from the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), the bone health of 36 vegans as well as 36 people following a mixed-food diet was determined with an ultrasound measurement of the heel bone. The result: on average, people following a vegan diet had lower ultrasound values compared to the other group. This indicates poorer bone health.

In the study, the scientists also determined biomarkers in blood and urine. This aims to identify nutrients that might be related to diet and bone health. Out of 28 parameters of nutritional status and bone metabolism, it was possible to identify twelve biomarkers most strongly associated with bone health - for example, the amino acid lysine and vitamins A and B6. The results show that in most cases, the combination of these biomarkers was present in lower concentrations in vegans. This could be a possible explanation for the poorer bone health. "A vegan diet is often considered health-conscious. However, our scientific findings indicate that a vegan diet does affect bone health," says BfR President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel.

Link to publication:
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/13/2/685/htm

Nutrition plays an important role in bone health. This was more closely investigated in the BfR's cross-sectional "Risks and benefits of a vegan diet" study. 72 men and women participated in the study. The bone health of all participants was assessed at the heel bone using ultrasound measurements. Information on age, smoking status, education, body mass index, physical activity and alcohol consumption was also collected. By using a statistical model, the BfR was able to identify a pattern of twelve biomarkers that play an important role in bone health from 28 nutrition- and bone-relevant parameters from blood or urine. It was shown that in combination vitamins A and B6, the amino acids lysine and leucine, omega-3 fatty acids, selenoprotein P, iodine, thyroid-stimulating hormone, calcium, magnesium and α-Klotho protein were positively associated with bone health. Conversely, lower concentrations of the hormone FGF23 were observed at higher ultrasound levels in this pattern.

Taking into account other scientific studies, the results indicate that vegans intake fewer nutrients that are relevant for the skeleton and are mainly found in food of animal origin. Further studies are needed for clarification.