Culture

What The Study Did: Using data from completed interventional vaccine trials from 2011 to 2020, researchers examined whether racial/ethnic minority groups, females and older adults were underrepresented in U.S.-based vaccine clinical trials.

Authors: Steven A. Pergam, M.D., M.P.H., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and Julie K. Silver, M.D., of Harvard Medical School in Boston, are the corresponding authors.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.37640)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Recreational hunting -- especially hunting of charismatic species for their trophies --raises ethical and moral concerns. Yet recreational hunting is frequently suggested as a way to conserve nature and support local people's livelihoods.

In a new article published in the journal One Earth, scientists from the University of Helsinki in Finland and Flinders University in Australia have reviewed more than 1,000 studies on recreational hunting -- the first such attempt to summarize the scientific literature examining the biodiversity and social effects of recreational hunting globally.

Co-lead author University of Helsinki Associate Professor Enrico Di Minin says while it might seem counterintuitive, there is evidence to suggest some recreational hunting can deliver environmental and social benefits.

University of Helsinki colleague and co-lead author Dr Hayley Clements says more analysis is needed to understand how and why recreational hunting can work for good, and those areas where it can be detrimental.

Flinders University Professor Corey Bradshaw says it's a paradox that goes to the heart of the pros and cons of recreational hunting.

"We determined the geographic spread and diversity of species hunted around the globe, and investigated and summarized the main topics surrounding recreational hunting to consider both the positive and negative implications of recreational hunting for nature conservation and the livelihoods and well-being of people" says Professor Bradshaw, who leads Flinders' Global Ecology Lab.

"On the one hand, recreational hunting can reduce the number of individual animals in a population, whereas on the other, diverting land from agricultural or other types of development to priority hunting areas can in fact benefit entire ecosystems", he says.

Hunting research has focused mainly on the behaviour and population dynamics of large mammals in North America, Europe and Africa.

Dr Clements says evidence is still lacking, however, to answer the pressing questions of why hunting contributes to sustainable conservation of biodiversity in some places and not others.

"Two-thirds of the hunting research is focussed on mammals. Red deer, white-tailed deer, wild boar, moose and lion are the most well-studied. Of these species, only the lion is of conservation concern, with many recommendations on how hunting can be made sustainable through quotas or seasonal limits", says Dr Clements.

"Far less research has tried to examine the broader impacts of hunting on ecosystem integrity and function, and how it affects the livelihoods of local people, or to document local people's perceptions about hunting", she continues.

For example, approximately 1,394,000 km2 of land is dedicated for trophy hunting in sub-Saharan Africa, yet there is little research on how effective these areas are in conserving ecosystems, and how local communities benefit from hunting.

Associate Professor Di Minin, who leads the Helsinki Lab of Interdisciplinary Conservation Science contends future research should focus on the contribution of recreational hunting towards meeting both biodiversity and social objectives.

"We have outlined a research agenda to assess the role of recreational hunting in diverse social-ecological systems, and to consider local people's values and needs.

The need for such evidence is urgent given declining numbers of recreational hunters in some regions and increasing opposition to trophy hunting in others", says Associate Professor Di Minin.

"We should also expand research beyond charismatic and common species to assess the impact of recreational hunting on threatened and less charismatic species", he concludes

Despite our great progress in understanding various cellular mechanisms over the last decades, many of them remain unclear. Such is the case for exosomes, small vesicles released by cells that contain genetic materials called "RNA" and various proteins. The roles of exosomes are believed to be very varied and important, both for normal bodily functions and also in the spreading of diseases like cancer. However, exosomes are so small that studying them is challenging and calls for costly and time-consuming techniques, such as electron microscopy (EM).

To tackle this issue, a team of undergraduate students from Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Korea, explored a different and promising method for analyzing exosomes. In their study, which was published in PLOS One, they focused on dynamic light scattering (DLS), a laser-based technique that can be used to easily determine statistical parameters about the sizes of a large number of vesicles. What was admirable, as per Prof Jung-Ah Cho (corresponding author of the study), was that "the undergraduate students independently conducted the whole study under DGIST's Undergraduate Group Research Program with no external help."

First, they compared the exosomes of two types of cancer cells: a well-studied breast cancer cell line and a mouse fibrosarcoma cell line. The exosomes secreted by cancer cells of the latter type had rarely been studied before. Thus, to bring more information to the table, the team also used EM and other analytical techniques (such as Western blot) in addition to DLS.

Aside from identifying proteins within the exosomes, the results helped clarify the advantages and disadvantages of EM and DLS. Overall, when used properly, DLS seems to be a reliable and convenient tool for studying exosomes, as Prof Cho explains: "DLS is an efficient technique that is comparatively inexpensive and simple; it can quickly and sensitively measure the size and purity of exosomes without technical difficulties. In contrast, EM is expensive and not suitable for daily or routine measurements."

Having a more accessible technique to study exosomes should help scientists all over the world get involved in exosome research. When asked about the exact implications of using DLS for this purpose, Prof Cho replied, "The many advantages of DLS for analyzing exosome extracts could speed up research on disease diagnosis, prognosis monitoring, and drug delivery systems using exosomes." From a more academic point of view, the results of this study provide some of the basic data needed to understand the biological activities of exosomes derived from fibrosarcoma.

This study represents a significant step towards a better understanding of exosomes and their roles, both in sickness and in health. With any luck, DLS will play its part to solve these mysteries.

At some point, microvehicles that are small enough to navigate our blood vessels will enable physicians to take biopsies, insert stents and deliver drugs with precision to sites that are difficult to reach, all from inside the body. Scientists around the world are currently researching and developing suitable microvehicles. In most cases, they are powered and controlled by acoustic and magnetic fields or using light. However, until now, propelling microvehicles against a fluid flow had proved to be a major challenge. This would be necessary for the micromachines to be able to navigate in blood vessels against the direction of blood flow. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed microvehicles that are manipulated by an external field and can swim against the flow.

In their lab experiment, the research team headed by Daniel Ahmed and Bradley Nelson, professors at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering of ETH Zurich, used magnetic beads made of iron oxide and a polymer with a diameter of 3 micrometres. A magnetic field induces these particles to cluster into a swarm with a diameter of between 15 and 40 micrometres. The scientists studied the behaviour of this swarm in a thin glass tube with liquid flowing through it. The glass tubes had a diameter of 150 to 300 micrometres, a similar size to the blood vessels in a tumour.

To propel the microswarm against the flow in the tube, the ETH researchers applied the same trick canoeists use on a river: they hug the riverbank to paddle upstream, because the friction of the bank makes the current slower there than in the middle of the river.

Using ultrasound at a specific frequency, the scientists first guided the cluster of microbeads close to the wall of the tube. Then the researchers switched to a rotating magnetic field to propel the swarm against the flow.

As their next step, the researchers intend to investigate how the microvehicles respond in the blood vessels of animals. "As both ultrasound waves and magnetic fields penetrate body tissue, our method is ideal for controlling microvehicles inside the body," says ETH Professor Ahmed.

Microsurgery, such as unclogging blocked blood vessels, is one of the future applications the researchers hope this method will serve. Moreover, the microvehicles could one day be used to deliver cancer drugs to tumours via the blood vessels and release them directly into the tumour tissue. Lastly, another area of application is transferring drugs from blood vessels into the tissues of the brain.

A research team led by Prof. QIAN Peiyuan, Head and Chair Professor from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)'s Department of Ocean Science and David von Hansemann Professor of Science, has published their cutting-edge findings of symbiotic mechanisms of a deep-sea vent snail (Gigantopelta aegis) in the scientific journal Nature Communications. They discovered that Gigantopelta snail houses both sulfur-oxidizing bacteria and methane-oxidizing bacteria inside its esophageal gland cells (part of digestive system) as endosymbionts. By decoding the genomes of both snail host and two symbionts, Prof. Qian's team disclosed a novel dual symbiosis system and the molecular adaptation to the extreme environment, gaining a new understanding of the origin of life on Earth.

Deep-sea hydrothermal vent is characterized as extremely high hydrostatic pressure and darkness, and they can release fluids overheated by the Earth's crust, with concentrated toxic heavy metals and chemical substances. These characteristics make hydrothermal vent one of the most uniquely extreme environments on our planet. In addition, the deep-sea hydrothermal vent environment is very similar to the earth's early environment, when life began to form. Unlike most ecosystems relying on photosynthesis-derived nutrients, fauna living in vents depend on chemosynthetic microbes that can utilize chemical energy to synthesize organic compounds, supporting dense and unique macro-organisms living there. However, how the organisms thrive and adapt to such an extreme environment remains a complex puzzle.

In April and May 2019, Prof. Qian's team undertook a deep-sea research expedition and explored Longqi vent filed on the Southwest Indian Ridge with a remotely operated vehicle. They found a dominant species, Gigantopelta snails, at the sea floor (approximate 2800 m depth). Prof. Qian's team discovered two types of symbiotic bacteria with dramatically different morphologies that live inside the esophageal gland cells of Gigantopelta snails, which was further identified as one sulfur-oxidizing bacteria and one methane-oxidizing bacteria.

The team further decoded the genomes of Gigantopelta snail, sulfur-oxidizing bacteria and methane-oxidizing bacteria, unveiling a novel dual symbiosis system that are highly versatile in utilizing the chemical energy for nutrient synthesis. The sulfur-oxidizing bacteria can utilize the chemical energy from hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, sulfate, sulfite and thiosulfate, while the methane-oxidizing bacteria can utilize hydrogen and methane. From the host side, there are more copies of pattern recognition receptors in Gigantopelta genome, and they specifically expressed in the symbiotic organ, which help Gigantopelta recognize and maintain a dual symbiosis system. Gigantopelta snails adopt a mutualistic metabolic relationship among multiple symbiotic partners and thus flourish in this vent ecosystem. These findings not only enable us to gain a better understanding of how animals thrive in such extreme environment, but also shed light on how such animals cope with microbes in a highly specialized way.

The latest observations from Insight-HXMT were published online in Nature Astronomy on Feb. 18. Insight-HXMT has discovered the very first X-ray burst associated with a fast radio burst (FRB) and has identified that it originated from soft-gamma repeater (SGR) J1935+2154, which is a magnetar in our Milky Way.

Insight-HXMT is the first to identify the double-spike structure of this X-ray burst as the high energy counterpart of FRB 200428. This discovery, together with results from other telescopes, proves that FRBs can come from magnetar bursts, thus resolving the longstanding puzzle concerning the origin of FRBs.

These results from Insight-HXMT also help explain the emission mechanism of FRBs, as well as the trigger mechanism of magnetar bursts.

This work was conducted by scientists from the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing Normal University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Tsinghua University and other institutions.

FRBs, first discovered in 2007, are a great mystery in astronomy. They release a huge amount of energy in only several milliseconds. About a hundred such events have been detected in different regions of our universe. Moreover, repeated FRBs have been found from the same direction.

Considering the narrow field of view of radio telescopes, the event rate of FRBs is very high: Every day thousands of such bursts reach Earth. However, before this discovery by Insight-HXMT and several other space X-ray instruments, no FRB radiation at any other wavelength had ever been detected, and all FRBs with fairly good localization were from distant extragalactic sources, whose identity and nature are yet unknown. The origin and mechanisms of such mysterious phenomena constitute one of the biggest questions in astronomy today.

Scientists have proposed many models to explain the physical origin of FRBs, such as the merger of two compact objects, the collapse of a compact star, magnetar bursts, the collision of a neutron star and an asteroid, or even signals from aliens. In recent years, more observations have revealed more properties of FRBs, intensifying the debate on their origin.

In order to understand the nature of FRBs, we need to answer two questions: What is the source of FRBs, and what do FRBs look like in other wavebands?

On April 28, 2020 at 14:34 GMT, the Canadian CHIME experiment and the STARE2 experiment in the U.S. independently detected a very bright FRB, which was named FRB 200428. It came from roughly the same direction as the Galactic magnetar SGR J1935+2154. Based on the FRB's dispersion measurement, the source of this FRB was located about 30,000 light-years away, which approximately agrees with the distance to SGR J1935+2154.

Magnetars are a group of neutron stars with extreme surface magnetic fields that are around 100 trillions of times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. When it's active, a magnetar can emit bright short X-ray bursts. Therefore, theorists speculate that magnetars can also emit FRBs. In mid-April 2020, SGR J1935+2154 entered a new active period and hundreds of X-ray bursts were released.

In response to this opportunity, Insight-HXMT changed its observation plan and began a very long-duration pointing observation of SGR J1935+2154. About 8.6 second before FRB 200428, Insight-HXMT detected a very bright X-ray burst from SGR J1935+2154. This X-ray burst was also detected by the European satellite INTEGRAL, the Russian detector Konus-Wind and the Italian satellite AGILE.

The time difference is consistent with the time delay of the radio signal due to the interstellar medium. This indicates that the X-ray and radio emissions are from the same explosion.

Furthermore, Insight-HXMT was well able to localize this bright X-ray burst based on the unique design of its collimators, thus proving that both the X-ray burst and FRB 200428 originated from magnetar SGR J1935+2154. This represents not only the first confirmed source of an FRB, but also the first FRB originating in our Galaxy. It is a milestone in understanding the nature of FRBs and magnetars. The discovery of FRB 200428 and related research were recognized as one of the top 10 discoveries of 2020 by Nature and Science magazines.

In comparison with observational data from other high energy satellites, the observational data on FRB 200428 from Insight-HXMT are the most statistically rich and cover the broadest energy band, thus providing the most detailed temporal and spectral information on the X-ray burst.

Insight-HXMT is one of two satellites that independently localized this X-ray burst, showing much greater accuracy than two radio telescopes that detected FRB 200428. Insight-HXMT also detected, in the light curve of this X-ray burst, two X-ray spikes very closely aligned temporally with the FRB, a result later confirmed by other satellite data.

Finally, Insight-HXMT is the only instrument providing data for detailed analysis of the spectral evolution of this X-ray burst. Specifically, the X-ray spectrum of these two spikes is significantly different from spectra from other parts of the burst as well as from the majority of X-ray bursts from magnetars. These results are critical to understanding the physical mechanism of FRBs.

In summary, Insight-HXMT has discovered that this X-ray burst is from magnetar SGR J1935+2154, the two spikes of this X-ray burst are the high energy counterpart of FRB 200428, and the spectrum of this X-ray burst is special. These observations also show that Insight-HXMT is very powerful as a space observatory.

Insight-HXMT is China's first X-ray observatory in space. It was first proposed by LI Tipei and WU Mei of IHEP in 1993. Insight-HXMT is funded by the China National Space Administration and CAS. IHEP is responsible for satellite payloads, the science data center and scientific research. The China Academy of Space Technology is the builder of the Insight-HXMT satellite platform. Tsinghua University, the National Space Science Center, Beijing Normal University and other institutes have also contributed to the Insight-HXMT mission. The calibration of the detectors on board Insight-HXMT was supported by the National Institute of Metrology, Ferrara University in Italy and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.

Since its launch on June 15, 2017, Insight-HXMT has successfully operated in orbit for more than 3.5 years. It has achieved a series of important scientific results on black holes, neutron stars and other phenomena.

As Insight-HXMT smoothly operates in orbit, the enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry (eXTP) space mission, developed by IHEP and many other domestic and international partner institutions, has entered phase-B (design phase), after more than 10 years of preliminary study and key technology development. It will increase the capacity for studying neutron stars and black holes by an order of magnitude or more, compared with other similar satellites.

eXTP will bring China and the eXTP international consortium to the frontier of high energy space astronomy. The high energy counterparts of extragalactic FRBs are very weak due to their great distance. eXTP will be an ideal instrument for detecting them.

Before life emerged on Earth, many physicochemical processes on our planet were highly chaotic. A plethora of small compounds, and polymers of varying lengths, made up of subunits (such as the bases found in DNA and RNA), were present in every conceivable combination. Before life-like chemical processes could emerge, the level of chaos in these systems had to be reduced. In a new study, LMU physicists led by Dieter Braun show that basic features of simple polymers, together with certain aspects of the prebiotic environment, can give rise to selection processes that reduce disorder.

In previous publications, Braun's research group explored how spatial order could have developed in narrow, water-filled chambers within porous volcanic rocks on the sea bottom. These studies showed that, in the presence of temperature differences and a convective phenomenon known as the Soret effect, RNA strands could locally be accumulated by several orders of magnitude in a length-dependent manner. "The problem is that the base sequences of the longer molecules that one obtains are totally chaotic", says Braun.

Evolved ribozymes (RNA-based enzymes) have a very specific base sequence that enable the molecules to fold into particular shapes, while the vast majority of oligomers formed on the Early Earth most probably had random sequences. "The total number of possible base sequences, known as the 'sequence space', is incredibly large," says Patrick Kudella, first author of the new report. "This makes it practically impossible to assemble the complex structures characteristic of functional ribozymes or comparable molecules by a purely random process." This led the LMU team to suspect that the extension of molecules to form larger 'oligomers' was subject to some sort of preselection mechanism.

Since at the time of the Origin of Life there were only a few, very simple physical and chemical processes compared to the sophisticated replication mechanisms of cells, the selection of sequences must be based on the environment and the properties of the oligomers. This is where the research of Braun's group comes in. For catalytic function and stability of oligomers, it is important that they form double strands like the well-known helical structure of DNA. This is an elementary property of many polymers and enables complexes with both double- and single-stranded parts. The single-stranded parts can be reconstructed by two processes. First, by so-called polymerization, in which strands are completed by single bases to form complete double strands. The other is by what is known as ligation. In this process, longer oligomers are joined together. Here, both double-stranded and single-stranded parts are formed, which enable further growth of the oligomer.

"Our experiment starts off with a large number of short DNA strands, and in our model system for early oligomers we use only two complementary bases, adenine and thymine", says Braun. "We assume that ligation of strands with random sequences leads to the formation of longer strands, whose base sequences are less chaotic." Braun's group then analyzed the sequence mixtures produced in these experiments using a method that is also used in analyzing the human genome. The test confirmed that the sequence entropy, i.e. the degree of disorder or randomness within the sequences recovered, was in fact reduced in these experiments.

The researchers were also able to identify the causes of this 'self-generated' order. They found that the majority of sequences obtained fell into two classes - with base compositions of either 70 % adenine and 30 % thymine, or vice versa. "With a significantly larger proportion of one of the two bases, the strand cannot fold onto itself and remains as a reaction partner for the ligation", Braun explains. Thus, hardly any strands with half of each of the two bases are formed in the reaction. "We also see how small distortions in the composition of the short DNA pool leave distinct position-dependent motif patterns, especially in long product strands," Braun says. The result surprised the researchers, because a strand of just two different bases with a specific base ratio has limited ways to differentiate from each other. "Only special algorithms can detect such amazing details," says Annalena Salditt, co-author of the study.

The experiments show that the simplest and most fundamental characteristics of oligomers and their environment can provide the basis for selective processes. Even in a simplified model system, various selection mechanisms can come into play, which have an impact on strand growth at different length scales, and are the results of different combinations of factors. According to Braun, these selection mechanisms were a prerequisite for the formation of catalytically active complexes such as ribozymes, and therefore played an important role in the emergence of life from chaos.

The major direct and indirect effects of covid-19 have forced the authorities to implement policies that strike a balance between minimizing the immediate health impact of the pandemic and containing the long-term damage to society arising from protective policies.

One parameter that is crucial for calculating how restrictive policies might be warranted is the mortality impact of covid-19, which has led to large-scale international collaborations in order to collect data that records deaths attributable to the pandemic.

Despite the limitations, each of these research avenues and associated health measures (infection rate, deaths and excess deaths) is important in order to inform the public and policymakers about the mortality impact of covid-19.

"Our results confirm that the mortality impact of covid-19 is large, not only in terms of numbers of deaths, but also in terms of years of life lost".

A study by a group researchers from several international universities and research centres, including lecturers from the UPF Department of Economics and Business Héctor Pifarré i Arolas (first author) and Guillem López Casasnovas, both researchers at the Centre for Research in Health and Economics (CRES-UPF), has estimated the premature mortality impact of covid-19. It has done so by calculating years of life lost (YLL) due to covid-19 compared to YLL for other common illnesses, such as the flu or cardiovascular diseases.

The research, published recently in the journal Scientific Reports (Nature Research), also involved the researchers Mikko Myrskylä, Enrique Acosta and Tim Riffe (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany); Adeline Lo (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), and Catia Nicodemo (University of Oxford) and has been co-funded by the "la Caixa" Foundation.

"Our results confirm that the mortality impact of covid-19 is large, not only in terms of numbers of deaths, but also in terms of years of life lost", assert the authors, who consider their study a snapshot of the situation of the pandemic in early 2021.

How many years of life have been lost due to covid-19? And in relation to other illnesses?

The years of life lost rate is the difference between an individual's age at death and their life expectancy. The researchers estimated YLL caused by covid-19 using data on more than 1,279,866 deaths in 81 countries. They also analysed data on life expectancy and made projections of total deaths from covid-19 by country.

The authors estimate that a total of 20,507,518 years of life have been lost due to covid-19 in the 81 countries included in this study.

The authors estimate that a total of 20,507,518 years of life have been lost due to covid-19 in the 81 countries included in this study, with an average of sixteen years per individual death. Of the total YLL, 44.9% occurred in individuals between 55 and 75 years of age, 30.2% among people under 55, and 25% in the over 75s. In the countries for which records of the number of deaths by sex were available, YLL was 44% higher in men than in women.

The life years lost rate due to the pandemic has been between two and nine times greater than the mean YLL rate associated with seasonal flu.

In the countries most affected by covid-19, and in relation to other global common causes of death, the life years lost rate due to the pandemic has been between two and nine times greater than the mean YLL rate associated with seasonal flu, and between 1/4 and 1/2 higher than the YLL rate attributable to heart disease.

Interpretation of the results in the context of an evolving pandemic

In 35 of the countries studied, the data coverage spans at least nine months; in these cases, this suggests that it will probably include the full impacts of the pandemic in 2020, or at least its first waves, while for other countries, these figures are still rising. The authors warn that "these results must be understood in the context of an ongoing, evolving pandemic; this study is a snapshot of the possible impacts of covid-19 on years of life lost on January 6, 2021".

"Estimates of years of life lost may be underestimated, due to the difficulty of accurately recording covid-19-related deaths".

Moreover, the authors suggest that "estimates of years of life lost may be underestimated, due to the difficulty of accurately recording covid-19-related deaths", since "both policies and practices about coding the deaths are only just being developed and standardized". In addition, they stress that the study is limited to analysing premature mortality, and that a full assessment of the impact of the pandemic on health should consider the burden of disability associated with the disease.

Semi-trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles are responsible for nearly half of road transportation carbon dioxide emissions in Europe, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. A team of researchers in Italy has proposed a plan to reduce the emissions without compromising priorities such as delivery times. They published their approach in IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica, a joint publication of the IEEE and the Chinese Association of Automation.

"Driving style, traffic and weather conditions have a significant impact on vehicle fuel consumption. Road freight traffic, in particular, contributes to significant increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said the author Maria Pia Fanti, professor of system and control engineering and chair of the Laboratory of Automation and Control at the University Polytechnic of Bari in Italy. "Our cloud platform can help the truck driver choose the eco-route that guarantees the minimum fuel consumption."

Dubbed the "Cloud Computing System," the platform is composed of two main components: a data management system that collects, fuses and integrates external data, such as road slope, speed limits and weather conditions; and a cloud optimizer that uses the collected data to determine the best eco-route. Importantly, Fanti noted, the shortest, fastest route is not always the most eco-friendly. A road with more curves requires more gear shifting, while a highway with a higher speed limit may have a significant slope--both of which necessitate more fuel use to compensate.

In simulations, the researchers saw fuel consumption reduced by anywhere from 3.3% to 9.3%, depending on the scenario. The researchers also completed a case study, in which two identical heavy-duty trucks with similarly experienced drivers transported goods from Turkey to Italy. The truck guided by the eco-route used 11% less fuel than the other truck while still delivering the payload within the expected time constraints.

"The next step is to create a collaboration between the vehicle on-board system and the cloud platform to increase the fuel consumption reduction," Fanti said, explaining that the platform is not restricted by special hardware. "The cloud platform can be used not only on innovative trucks equipped with communication devices, but also by 'normal' trucks with drivers equipped with smartphones."

Early Mars is considered as an environment where life could possibly have existed. There was a time in the geological history of Mars when it could have been very similar to Earth and harbored life as we know it. In opposite to the current Mars conditions, bodies of liquid water, warmer temperature, and higher atmospheric pressure could have existed in Mars' early history. Potential early forms of life on Mars should have been able to use accessible inventories of the red planet: derive energy from inorganic mineral sources and transform CO2 into biomass. Such living entities are rock-eating microorganisms, called "chemolithotrophs", which are capable of transforming energy of stones to energy of life.

Martian rocks as energy source for ancient life forms

"We can assume that life forms similar to chemolithotrophs existed there in the early years of the red planet," says astrobiologist Tetyana Milojevic, the head of Space Biochemistry group at the University of Vienna. The traces of this ancient life (biosignatures) could have been preserved within the Noachian terrains with moisture-rich ancient geological history and mineral springs that could have been colonized by chemolithotrophs. In order to properly assess Martian relevant biosignatures, it is crucially important to consider chemolithotrophs in Martian relevant mineralogical settings.

One of rare pieces of Mars' rocks was recently crushed to envisage how life based on Martian materials may look like. The researches used the genuine Noachian Martian breccia Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 (nicknamed "Black Beauty") to grow the extreme thermoacidophile Metallosphaera sedula, an ancient inhabitant of terrestrial thermal springs. This brecciated regolith sample represents the oldest known Martian crust of the ancient crystallization ages (ca. 4.5 Ga).

A specimen of "Black Beauty"

"Black Beauty is among the rarest substances on Earth, it is a unique Martian breccia formed by various pieces of Martian crust (some of them are dated at 4.42 ± 0.07 billion years) and ejected millions years ago from the Martian surface. We had to choose a pretty bold approach of crushing few grams of precious Martian rock to recreate the possible look of Mars' earliest and simplest life form," says Tetyana Milojevic, corresponding author of the study, about the probe that was provided by colleagues from Colorado, USA.

As a result, the researchers observed how a dark fine-grained groundmass of Black Beauty was biotransformed and used in order to build up constitutive parts of microbial cells in form of biomineral deposits. Utilizing a comprehensive toolbox of cutting edge techniques in fruitful cooperation with the Austrian Center for Electron Microscopy and Nanoanalysis in Graz, the researchers explored unique microbial interactions with the genuine Noachian Martian breccia down to nanoscale and atomic resolution. M. sedula living on Martian crustal material produced distinct mineralogical and metabolic fingerprints, which can provide an opportunity to trace the putative bioalteration processes of the Martian crust.

Analysing metabolic and mineralogical fingerprints

"Grown on Martian crustal material, the microbe formed a robust mineral capsule comprised of complexed iron, manganese and aluminum phosphates. Apart from the massive encrustation of the cell surface, we have observed intracellular formation of crystalline deposits of a very complex nature (Fe, Mn oxides, mixed Mn silicates). These are distinguishable unique features of growth on the Noachian Martian breccia, which we did not observe previously when cultivating this microbe on terrestrial mineral sources and a stony chondritic meteorite", says Milojevic, who recently received an ERC Consolidator Grant for her research further investigating biogenicity of Martian materials.

The observed multifaceted and complex biomineralization patterns of M. sedula grown on Black Beauty can be well stated by rich, diverse mineralogy and multimetallic nature of this ancient Martian meteorite. The unique biomineralization patterns of Black Beauty-grown cells of M. sedula emphasize the importance of experiments on genuine Martian materials for Mars-relevant astrobiological investigations. "Astrobiology research on Black Beauty and other similar 'Flowers of the Universe' can deliver priceless knowledge for the analysis of returned Mars samples in order to assess their potential biogenicity", concludes Milojevic.

How much personal information can our phone apps gather through location tracking? To answer this question, two researchers - Mirco Musolesi (University of Bologna, Italy) and Benjamin Baron (University College London, UK) - carried out a field study using an app specifically developed for this research. Through the app employed in the study - published in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies - researchers were able to identify which kind of personal information the app extracted and its privacy sensitivity according to users.

"Users are largely unaware of the privacy implications of some permissions they grant to apps and services, in particular when it comes to location-tracking information", explains Mirco Musolesi. "Thanks to machine learning techniques, these data provide sensitive information such as the place where users live, their habits, interests, demographics, and information about users' personalities".

This is the first extensive study shedding light on the range of personal information that can be inferred from location-tracking data. Consequently, the study also shows how collecting such information can represent a violation of the users' privacy. To this end, the researchers developed a mobile application - TrackingAdvisor - that continuously collects user location. From the location data, the app can extract personal information and asks users to give feedback on the correctness of such information as well as to rate its relevance in terms of privacy sensitivity.

69 users participated in the study and used TrackAdvisor for at least two weeks. TrackAdvisor tracked more than 200,000 locations, identifying approximately 2,500 places and collecting almost 5,000 pieces of personal information concerning both demographics and personality. Among the data gathered, the users find that the most sensitive pieces of information were the ones about health, socio-economic situation, ethnicity, and religion.

"We think it is important to show users the amount and quality of information that apps can collect through location tracking", continues Musolesi. "Equally important for us is to understand whether users think that sharing information with app managers or marketing firms is acceptable or deem it a violation of their privacy".

According to the researchers, analyses like this pave the way to designing targeted advertising systems that help users protect their privacy, especially with the data they deem more sensitive.

"Thanks to such systems, users interested - for example - in protecting information about their own health could receive a notification each time they go to a health clinic or hospital", confirms Musolesi. "But there is more. This could also lead to the development of systems that can automatically block the collection of sensitive data from third parties thanks to previously defined privacy settings".

Social identity is a factor linked to wellbeing and community participation. Various studies have demonstrated the link existing between ethnic identity and empowerment and that the interaction between both of them leads to a rise in the indices of wellbeing and community participation. However, the nature of these relationships may be determined by the fact that the individual perceives his or her own group as a minority one and/or one that is subject to discrimination. In fact, these relations emerge mostly in groups that find themselves in a minority situation and/or one of discrimination, but not in groups that are more hegemonic or in the majority.

To further this thesis, Jon Zabala, a member of the Culture, Cognition and Emotion consolidated research group at the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Psychology, conducted a transversal study "to explore the relationship that social identification (or identity fusion) and psychological collective empowerment have with personal wellbeing, social wellbeing and community participation of 748 Basque men and women".

As Zabala explained, "we saw that the individuals who feel closely identified or fused with Basques (or Basque speakers) and have a high degree of empowerment display high indices of personal and social wellbeing and community participation; in fact, they display indices higher than those of people who are not fused and who have a low degree of empowerment". Yet the results of the research suggest that "social identification balances the negative aspects arising out of perceiving the group as a linguistic minority", asserted the author. In addition, "we found that with respect to the wellbeing of individuals who regard being euskaldun (Basque speaking) as being in a minority in their environment, such as in cities or locations where the Basque language is more precarious, it is more important to feel identified with Basques".

Collective psychological empowerment

As the researcher pointed out, the advances achieved in cultural terms, and in particular in linguistic ones, are clearly consistent with the perception of the power of the Basque collective to change society and achieve its aims. However, "we still come across certain indicators of vulnerability, such as the precarious situation of the Basque language, and certain specific indicators of linguistic discrimination in certain situations, which may be regarded as a threat to the survival of Basque and, therefore, to Basque identity", said Zabala.

According to the theory of social identity, "when a collective is a minority one and perceives significant threats that may have to do with its identity, the identity is activated and may trigger empowerment processes," said the Faculty of Psychology researcher. "It may be that, despite the generally good socioeconomic position of this social group and the achievements reached in terms of the language, the awareness of being a linguistic minority, both in the world and within the population of the Basque country as a whole, contributes towards the fact that the degree of identification or identity fusion with Basque speakers and, especially, empowerment, act as particularly important factors for wellbeing."

The researchers perceived a strong link between collective empowerment and wellbeing. "We were surprised that a social factor like this should be so strongly associated with personal wellbeing," said Zabala. "Collective psychological empowerment was a highly significant factor and we need to further the research". The characteristics of the collective studied are not common in comparison with the studies carried out to date in this matter (the ethnic identity of African Americans has been studied above all). So the researchers assert that this work will be of use for other pieces of research that are conducted in this field worldwide.

Disorders of the cells' energy supply can cause a number of serious diseases, but also seem to be connected to ageing. More research is needed on mitochondrial function to find future treatments. A new study involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet shows how an important molecule inside the mitochondria affects their function in mice and fruit flies. The study, which is published in Science Advances, adds valuable knowledge on formerly relatively unexplored protein modifications.

In each cell of the body is an organ called the mitochondrion, which converts nutrients in our food to energy. Mitochondria are an essential part of the metabolism, and when things go wrong we can develop serious diseases.

Mitochondrial dysfunction is the hallmark of a group of rare genetic disorders but can also be observed in common diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases and the normal ageing process.

More research is needed on mitochondria and how they communicate with the rest of the cell if scientists are to find new therapeutic approaches to improve mitochondrial function.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, the Max-Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne and the University of California San Diego have now studied how the methylation of proteins affects different mitochondrial processes.

Methylation is a chemical modification in which a methyl group (CH3) is added to a molecule, thereby potentially affecting its function. S-Adenosylmethionine (SAM), also known as AdoMet, is the main methyl group donor within the cell, including inside of mitochondria.

"We're interested in studying this particular molecule since the production of SAM changes in cancer and when we age," says Anna Wredenberg, researcher at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet.

By completely removing SAM from the mitochondria of fruit flies and mice, the researchers have been able to study which processes in the mitochondria are dependent on methylation.

"Earlier studies have shown that both SAM and cellular energy levels drop during ageing. Our study suggests a link between these two pathways by demonstrating that low SAM levels can influence mitochondrial energy production."

The study has identified which of the mitochondrial proteins are methylated and how methylation affects them, and how these modifications might affect mitochondrial function. The researchers also demonstrate the physiological consequences of the lack of such changes. However, several questions still need answering.

"Our study has provided an indication that some modifications can be modulated by diet, but we need to continue examining if we can change the pathological process for the better," says Anna Wredenberg. "So far we've only looked at protein changes, but other molecules can also be modified by intra-mitochondrial SAM. We have to study these modifications to get a better understanding of the role it plays."

The mating process is one of the most important mechanisms for maintaining genetic variation in natural populations. The emergence of sexual reproduction turned out to be the most important evolutionary innovation that facilitated the evolution of eukaryotes. Paramecium is a well-known genus of ciliated protists with a complex system of 'sexes', or mating types. Paramecium reproduces asexually, by binary fission, which is not related to the mating process. During conjugation, Paramecium of compatible mating types exchange haploid nuclei, equivalent to gametes. The nuclei of each organism then fuse to form a diploid genome. This genome is stored in germline micronuclei of the exconjugants. It then undergoes large-scale rearrangements in the somatic macronucleus, including the elimination of virtually all non-coding DNA. Thus, there are two Paramecium cells before the formation of a conjugating pair, as well as after conjugation: no offspring are produced. However, by the time the two cells go their separate ways, both of them will have changed. Firstly, now they will have become genetically identical, and, secondly, they will both have acquired a new genetic identity, different from their 'parental' genotype.

'I will draw an analogy with humans, whose sexual activity is not always associated with procreation as well. It is as if after sexual intercourse the two partners became identical twins. Moreover, the transformation is so radical that they change directly into their own offspring, as if being reincarnated in the same body but genetically different,' explains one of the authors of the study, professor in the Department of Microbiology of St Petersburg University, Dr. Alexey Potekhin.

For several years, the scientists have studied mating-type systems in five closely related species of the ciliate Paramecium. They sought to find out how mating-type polymorphism is maintained in organisms that do not exhibit any sexual characteristics. 'Ciliates are unorthodox about sex. For example, different Paramecium species have multiple, as well as binary mating types systems. The multitude of mating types significantly expands the choice of mating partners. Most importantly, mating occurs between cells of different genotypes, i.e. of different mating types. As for the binary systems, they are what we humans call "bisexual". As practice has shown, two sexes are quite enough,' says Alexey Potekhin.

Some species of Paramecium have two mating types, O (Odd) and E (Even), which might be broadly called representatives of different 'sexes', since conjugation occurs only between cells of different mating types. However, the mechanisms of sex, or mating-type, determination remained unknown for a long time. Previous work in Paramecium tetraurelia revealed the key role of the mtA gene. It encodes a transmembrane protein that is specifically expressed in sexually reactive cells of type E. The mtA protein is directly involved in the species-specific recognition of type O reactive cells. For E expression, the mtA protein requires two other proteins, mtB and mtC, which encode factors that are necessary for mtA transcription in E reactive cells. All three proteins are specifically required for type E expression, whereas no gene is specifically required for type O expression.

To reconstitute functional genes in the somatic genome, ciliates rely on the programmed genome rearrangements, which include the excision of the unnecessary elements from coding sequences in the macronucleus. This excision event depends on a special class of small RNAs that scan the parental macronuclear genome to identify missing sequences and correlate it with the new one, which is to be formed after conjugation. Consequently, all DNA sequences that are absent from the parental macronucleus are eliminated. The parental macronucleus is then destroyed, and the new functional macronucleus is formed. 'Meanwhile, the new macronuclear genotypes differ from the parental one, as it is expected to be as a result conjugation,' notes Alexey Potekhin.

The mating type of Paramecium tetraurelia is inherited maternally by programmed genome rearrangements. In other words, each progeny acquires the mating type of its cytoplasmic parent. 'A type O cell has an mtA gene that is inactivated during development, because the DNA segment, containing the mtA promoter (its transcription start site) and elements directly downstream, is reminiscent of transposons. The latter are also known as transposable elements, or jumping genes. They make up a large fraction of the non-coding DNA and can be eliminated from the macronuclear genome as unnecessary. In such case, this fragment will always be deleted in the next generations during macronuclear development. After all, it has already been lost from the "template". Thus, the mtA gene is inactivated, and the progeny inherits the mating type O,' explains Alexey Potekhin.

Among species with cytoplasmic inheritance of mating types, there are several species of the Paramecium aurelia complex: P. biaurelia, P. sexaurelia, P. septaurelia, P. octaurelia, P. decaurelia, and P. dodecaurelia. In the new study, the scientists have shown that these sibling species use the same mechanism, but different modes of mating-type determination. Several species use the same regulation mechanism as P. tetraurelia - an epigenetically inherited deletion of the fragment containing the mtA promoter and the elements directly downstream from the start site. Conversely, in P. sexaurelia, it is the last of the base pairs of the coding sequence of the mtA gene that undergo correction during genome rearrangements. In two other Paramecium species, P. biaurelia and P. septaurelia, the mtB gene was found to be rearranged differently - some fragments of the mtB gene may get deleted leading to the mtB deficiency. Due to the absence of functional mtB, the mtA gene cannot function properly. Thus the absence of functional mtB is what determines mating type O in these species.

'When I was a student 25 years ago, I was amazed that within a small group of ciliates there are three different modes of mating-type determination and inheritance. Such evolutionary plasticity of mating-type systems is unique and cannot be found in multicellular organisms. At the time, it was an absolute mystery, because then no one had an idea of genome scanning, nor of mating-type genes. Our research team has been able to make a great contribution to the study of this phenomenon, and I am pleased with the scientific results we have achieved. It has been a real scientific quest,' stresses Alexey Potekhin.

In Paramecium tredecaurelia, mating types are not inherited cytoplasmically, but follow a classical pattern of Mendelian inheritance. It has been shown that in that species, O and E mating types are genetically determined by the loss of a single nucleotide in the mtA promoter in type E clones. The genome of P. tredecaurelia contains no functional mtB gene; therefore, another transcription factor plays its role. The conducted experiments enabled the scientists to establish that the transcription factor binding site is located in the promoter region with a discovered one nucleotide deletion, while the mtA gene is activated by such a promoter. If there is no deletion, then the site is not recognised and the mtA gene is not expressed during sexual reactivity. The same binding site in the mtA promoter is also observed in three more species of the Paramecium aurelia complex, with all of them lacking the mtB gene.

'This implies that in the evolution of these sibling species, there occurred several evolutionary transitions between mating-type determination systems. Despite different molecular solutions, the result was always the same: in a natural population, there will be cells of both mating types. The evolutionary history of the Paramecium aurelia illustrates that any regulation mechanism for maintaining mating-type polymorphism in cell populations can take hold, involving mating-type biased gene expression and programmed genome rearrangements. This shows how important the mating process is even for unicellular organisms,' notes Alexey Potekhin.

HSE University researchers Yuri Markov and Natalia Tyurina discovered that when people visually estimate the size of objects, they are also able to consider their distance from the observer, even if there are many such objects. The observers rely not only on the objects' retinal representation, but also on the surrounding context. The paper was published in the journal Acta Psychologica.

Multiple studies in visual 'ensemble statistics' have proven that humans are able to visually estimate the statistical characteristics of multiple objects in a fast and rather precise manner. As an observer fixes the eye on a group of objects for a split second, they can estimate both the simple features of this set (mean size of set of circles) and the complex ones (mean emotion of people in the photo or mean price of a group of goods).

One feature that is most often looked in such studies is the size of objects. But in laboratory conditions, objects are displayed on a flat screen, while in real life, objects have a certain context, which, among other things, can characterize the distance from the observer.

There are two different representations of size in the visual system: 'retinal size' - the physical projection of an object on the retina, and 'perceived size' - the rescaled size of objects taking into account the distance to them. For example, the retinal sizes of two cups of tea placed at different distances from the observer will be different. Meanwhile, their perceived sizes will be the same, since we know that the reason for the difference in size is the distance rather than the difference between the cups.

It is still unknown what size is used to estimate the statistical features of an ensemble - 'retinal' or 'perceived'. In other words, is the visual system able to rescale the sizes of an ensemble of objects considering the distance before estimating their mean size?

To investigate this, the researchers carried out experiments with objects displayed at different depths. In the first experiment, the researchers demonstrated objects at different depths using a stereoscope - a device that uses mirrors to deliver images in different eyes with a small shift, which provides depth to the images (similar technology is used at 3D cinemas).

The second experiment used the Ponzo illusion, which also allows depth to be manipulated.

In both experiments, the scholars demonstrated differently sized objects at different depths and asked the respondents to estimate the variance of objects on the screen. In some samples, small objects were closer and big ones farther (positive size-distance correlation), while in the other samples it was the opposite (negative correlation).If 'retinal size' is used to estimate the variance in circle sizes, there will be no difference in answers to positive-correlation and negative-correlation samples. But if 'perceived size' is used for estimation, the circles in positive correlation (such as on the left picture) will be seen as those having higher variance due to the Ponzo illusion effect.

The results of both experiments confirmed that estimation is made according to 'perceived sizes': the respondents stated that in samples with positive correlation, circles had higher variance of sizes as compared to those with negative correlation.

These results prove that the visual system is able to estimate statistical characteristics of ensemble of objects quickly and automatically after rescaling them according to the distance.

'It seems that object rescaling by their distance happens very fast and very early in the visual system,' commented Yuri Markov, one of the study's authors. 'The information on the image is processed in high-level brain structures and, with the use of top-down feedback, regulates the activity of neurons responsible for object size assessment at earlier stages of processing. Only after that ensemble summary statistics are calculated.'

In addition to fundamental academic value, this conclusion can also help in better designing complicated VR/AR environments where the information may be presented for the user at varied distances.