Culture

A new study from Indiana University researchers finds that most high-school age youth are willing to wear masks to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, but that more education is needed on how to wear masks properly and on the importance of consistent commitment to public health guidelines.

The study, published today in the Journal of Adolescent Health looked at 1,152 youth's mask wearing and social distancing behaviors during five, in-person live-streamed high school graduations from one U.S. public school district in early July 2020. These broadcasts allowed the researchers to systematically document social-distancing behaviors throughout the ceremonies and mask-wearing as students crossed the graduation stage to receive their diplomas and as they posed for photos with the school principal.

Each graduation ceremony, which took place outdoors, included safety protocols approved by the local public health department. The district also provided students with free masks bearing their school's logo and had students seated in socially-distanced chairs.

"The key to preventing the spread of the COVID-19 virus relies on scientifically-backed best practices and buy-in from the public to engage in these safety protocols," said Anna Mueller, the Luther Dana Waterman Associate Professor in sociology at IU Bloomington and co-lead author on the study. "As schools navigate how to keep students safe, young people's participation in these protocols is vital. And the good news is that teens seem willing."

The study had several key findings:

Nearly 70 percent of students wore their masks properly while receiving their diploma

Almost 10 percent wore no mask

Nearly 20 percent struggled with mask fit - the masks kept slipping low on their nose, requiring students to repeatedly pull it back up

Mask wearing varied significantly across schools, with some doing better than others

All schools struggled with social distancing, except when students were seated in socially-distanced chairs

Student graduation speakers at all schools expressed altruistic concern for the safety and well-being of their community during the pandemic

The high rate of student mask wearing is particularly interesting since the school district is in a community with low rates of community mask-wearing and no local or state mask mandate at the time of these graduations. With additional public health interventions - in schools and in the community at large - it is likely that conformity would be even higher.

"We did find evidence that adults can influence youth's mask-wearing behaviors," said Sarah Diefendorf, the other co-lead author. "This was particularly evident during the graduation pictures. When teens approached their principal for their picture, all but one student took off their mask after an adult suggested they could. Most of these students [80 percent] were wearing their mask properly just seconds before."

The study also found that how stringently school staff role modeled or facilitated public health behaviors mattered. Schools with adults who consistently wore their own masks or where adults verbally encouraging students to keep their mask on had greater youth adherence to COVID-19 guidelines.

Visible differences in schools' conformity to COVID-19 guidelines also aligned with differences in how student graduation speakers discussed the pandemic and their senior year. At the three high schools with higher rates of mask-wearing, students talked about COVID-19 alongside broader social justice issues, including the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. However, across all five schools, students noted the seriousness of the pandemic and expressed concern for their communities.

"Students clearly cared about the health and wellbeing of their peers and their broader community, suggesting that they can be important allies in keeping schools open and as safe as possible given our circumstances," Mueller said. "But youth also learn from adults, in schools and out. So it's crucial that we make sure that parents, teachers, and other community adults get the message that masks and social-distancing are crucial to getting life back to normal and keeping schools open."

Coconut oil has increasingly found its way into German kitchens in recent years, although its alleged health benefits are controversial. Scientists at the University of Bonn have now been able to show how it is metabolized in the liver. Their findings could also have implications for the treatment of certain diarrheal diseases. The results are published in the journal Molecular Metabolism.

Coconut oil differs from rapeseed or olive oil in the fatty acids it contains. Fatty acids consist of carbon atoms bonded together, usually 18 in number. In coconut oil, however, most of these chains are much shorter and contain only 8 to 12 carbon atoms. In the liver, these medium-chain fatty acids are partly converted into storage fats (triglycerides). Exactly how this happens was largely unknown until now.

The new study now sheds light on this: "There are two enzymes in the liver for storage fat synthesis, DGAT1 and DGAT2," explains Dr. Klaus Wunderling of the LIMES Institute (the acronym stands for "Life & Medical Sciences") at the University of Bonn. "We have now seen in mouse liver cells that DGAT1 processes mainly medium-chain fatty acids and DGAT2 processes long-chain ones."

In their experiments, the researchers blocked DGAT1 with a specific inhibitor. The synthesis of storage fats from medium-chain fatty acids subsequently decreased by 70 percent. In contrast, blocking DGAT2 resulted in reduced processing of long-chain fatty acids. "The enzymes therefore seem to prefer different chain lengths," concludes Prof. Dr. Christoph Thiele of the LIMES Institute, who led the study and is also a member of the Cluster of Excellence Immunosensation.

Surprising side effect

Whether fatty acids in the liver are used at all to build up storage fat depends on the current energy requirement. When the body needs a lot of energy at a particular moment, the so-called beta oxidation is fired up - the fatty acids are "burned" straight away, so to speak. Medically, this metabolic pathway is of great interest. In diabetes, for instance, it might be useful to reduce beta-oxidation. This is because the body then has to meet its energy needs from glucose instead, causing blood glucose levels to drop, with positive implications for the disease.

As early as some 40 years ago, pharmaceutical researchers therefore developed a corresponding inhibitor, etomoxir. It binds to enzymes required for beta-oxidation, bringing it to a halt. However, it quickly became apparent that etomoxir had severe side effects.

The researchers in Bonn have now discovered a possible reason for this: They used etomoxir to inhibit the beta-oxidation of medium-chain fatty acids in mice, in anticipation of using it to boost the production of storage fat. "Instead, fat synthesis also decreased significantly, but only of storage fats with medium-chain fatty acids," Wunderling explains. "We therefore suspect that etomoxir also switches off the DGAT1 enzyme." In the future, he says, it will be necessary to pay attention to such effects when developing new inhibitors of beta-oxidation.

Also interesting is a finding published a few years ago by Austrian and Dutch scientists: They had studied patients suffering from chronic diarrheal diseases. In 20 of them, they found alterations in the DGAT1 gene that rendered it nonfunctional. "We now want to find out whether the impaired processing of medium-chain fatty acids is responsible for the digestive complaints," says Wunderling. This is because the DGAT1 enzyme is active not only in the liver but also in the intestine. Perhaps this is why its disorder causes diarrhea when sufferers consume medium-chain fatty acids. Wunderling: "In this case, they could possibly be helped quite simply - with an appropriate diet."

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Imperial and High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) Institute of Materials Structure Science, discover new Ba7Nb4MoO20-based materials with high oxygen-ion (oxide-ion O2-) conductivities--"the hexagonal perovskite-related oxides"--and shed light on the underlying mechanisms responsible for their conductivity. Their findings lead the way to uncovering other similar materials, furthering research on developing low-cost and scalable renewable energy technologies.

Over the past few years, fuel cells have become a focal point of research in eco-friendly technology because of their superior abilities to store and produce renewable energy and clean fuel. A typical type of fuel cell gaining ground is the oxide-ion-conducting fuel cell, which is primarily made of materials through which oxide ions (oxygen ions: O2-), can easily move. New materials with higher conductivity at low and intermediate temperatures, provide a number of advantages over commonly used fuel cells based on yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) electrolytes, such as higher power generation efficiency, longer lifetimes, and lower costs.

However, only a limited number of such materials are known and their application to developing fuel cells has largely remained at the laboratory scale. To truly achieve a sustainable energy economy, new oxide-ion conductors with high conductivity need to be discovered that can allow low-cost and efficient scaling up of these technologies.

Scientists from Tokyo Tech, Imperial and KEK set out to address this need, and in a recent study, identified a new oxide-ion-conducting material that may be a representative of an entire family of oxide-ion conductors.

The material in question has the chemical formula Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 and is classified as a "hexagonal perovskite-related oxide." Prof Masatomo Yashima, who led the study, explains: "Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 shows a wide stability range and predominantly oxide-ion conduction in the oxygen partial pressure range from 2x10-26 to 1 atm. Surprisingly, bulk conductivity of Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05, 5.8 × 10-4 S/cm, is remarkably high at 310 °C, and higher than bismuth oxide- and zirconia-based materials (Fig. 1)."* Prof Stephen Skinner comments that the fast oxide ion transport was unambiguously confirmed using the 18O tracer diffusion technique at Imperial.

Prof Yashima and his team note that the crystal structure of Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 contains oxygen-deficient layers (c' in Fig. 2a and Fig. 2c) and that its high oxide-ion conductivity is attributable to the oxide-ion migration on the c' layers. In fact, they succeed in experimental visualization of O1-O5 oxide-ion diffusion pathways by the neutron-diffraction measurements at a high temperature 800 oC with SuperHRPD diffractometer of Prof Takashi Kamiyama's group at KEK/J-PARC (Figs. 2b,d). Prof Yashima says that the oxide ions migrate via interstitialcy diffusion mechanism through interstitial octahedral O5 and lattice tetrahedral O1 oxygen sites and that the (tetrahedral)-(octahedral) diffusion pathways on the c' layer in Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 is the same as those in another hexagonal perovskite-related oxide Ba3MoNbO8.5-δ. Therefore, Prof Yashima and his team claim that "The common feature of the diffusion mechanism would be a guide for design of oxide-ion conductors with the hexagonal perovskite related structures and that the present finding of high oxide-ion conductivities in rare-earth-free Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 suggests the ability of various hexagonal perovskite related oxides as superior oxide-ion conductors".*

Prof Yashima and his team note that the crystal structure of Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 contains oxygen-deficient layers (c' in Fig. 2a and Fig. 2c) and that its high oxide-ion conductivity is attributable to the oxide-ion migration on the c' layers. In fact, they succeed in experimental visualization of O1-O5 oxide-ion diffusion pathways by the neutron-diffraction measurements at a high temperature 800 °C with SuperHRPD diffractometer of Prof Takashi Kamiyama's group at KEK/J-PARC (Figs. 2b,d). Prof Yashima says that the oxide ions migrate via interstitialcy diffusion mechanism through interstitial octahedral O5 and lattice tetrahedral O1 oxygen sites and that the (tetrahedral)-(octahedral) diffusion pathways on the c' layer in Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 is the same as those in another hexagonal perovskite-related oxide Ba3MoNbO8.5-δ. Therefore, Prof Yashima and his team claim that "The common feature of the diffusion mechanism would be a guide for design of oxide-ion conductors with the hexagonal perovskite related structures and that the present finding of high oxide-ion conductivities in rare-earth-free Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 suggests the ability of various hexagonal perovskite related oxides as superior oxide-ion conductors".*

Prof Yashima and his team note that the crystal structure of Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 contains oxygen-deficient layers (c' in Fig. 2a and Fig. 2c) and that its high oxide-ion conductivity is attributable to the oxide-ion migration on the c' layers. In fact, they succeed in experimental visualization of O1-O5 oxide-ion diffusion pathways by the neutron-diffraction measurements at a high temperature 800 °C with SuperHRPD diffractometer of Prof Takashi Kamiyama's group at KEK/J-PARC (Figs. 2b,d). Prof Yashima says that the oxide ions migrate via interstitialcy diffusion mechanism through interstitial octahedral O5 and lattice tetrahedral O1 oxygen sites and that the (tetrahedral)-(octahedral) diffusion pathways on the c' layer in Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 is the same as those in another hexagonal perovskite-related oxide Ba3MoNbO8.5-δ. Therefore, Prof Yashima and his team claim that "The common feature of the diffusion mechanism would be a guide for design of oxide-ion conductors with the hexagonal perovskite related structures and that the present finding of high oxide-ion conductivities in rare-earth-free Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 suggests the ability of various hexagonal perovskite related oxides as superior oxide-ion conductors".*

Prof Yashima and his team note that the crystal structure of Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 contains oxygen-deficient layers (c' in Fig. 2a and Fig. 2c) and that its high oxide-ion conductivity is attributable to the oxide-ion migration on the c' layers. In fact, they succeed in experimental visualization of O1-O5 oxide-ion diffusion pathways by the neutron-diffraction measurements at a high temperature 800 °C with SuperHRPD diffractometer of Prof Takashi Kamiyama's group at KEK/J-PARC (Figs. 2b,d). Prof Yashima says that the oxide ions migrate via interstitialcy diffusion mechanism through interstitial octahedral O5 and lattice tetrahedral O1 oxygen sites and that the (tetrahedral)-(octahedral) diffusion pathways on the c' layer in Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 is the same as those in another hexagonal perovskite-related oxide Ba3MoNbO8.5-δ. Therefore, Prof Yashima and his team claim that "The common feature of the diffusion mechanism would be a guide for design of oxide-ion conductors with the hexagonal perovskite related structures and that the present finding of high oxide-ion conductivities in rare-earth-free Ba7Nb3.9Mo1.1O20.05 suggests the ability of various hexagonal perovskite related oxides as superior oxide-ion conductors".*

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Tohoku University, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Nippon Institute of Technology, demonstrated by experiment that a clean electrolyte/electrode interface is key to realizing high-capacity solid-state lithium batteries. Their findings could pave the way for improved battery designs with increased capacity, stability, and safety for both mobile devices and electric vehicles.

Liquid lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, being found in the majority of everyday mobile devices. While they possess a fair share of advantages, liquid-based batteries carry notable risks as well. This has become clear to the public in recent years after reports of smartphones bursting into flames due to design errors that caused the battery's liquid electrolyte to leak and catch fire.

Other disadvantages such as fabrication cost, durability, and capacity, led scientists to look into a different technology: solid-state lithium batteries (SSLBs). SSLBs comprise solid electrodes and a solid electrolyte that exchange lithium (Li) ions during charging and discharging. Their higher energy density and safety make SSLBs very powerful sources.

However, there are still many technical challenges preventing SSLBs' commercialization. For the current study, researchers conducted a series of experiments and gained insight that could take SSLBs' performance to the next level. Professor Taro Hitosugi from Tokyo Tech, who led the study, explains their motivation: "LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 (LNMO) is a promising material for the positive electrode of SSLBs because it can generate comparatively higher voltages. In this study, we showed battery operations at 2.9 and 4.7 V, and simultaneously achieved large capacity, stable cycling, and low resistance at the electrolyte/electrode interface."

Previous studies had hinted that producing a clean electrolyte/electrode interface was essential to achieve low interface resistance and fast charging in LNMO-based SSLBs. Scientists also noted that Li ions spontaneously migrated from Li3PO4 (LPO) electrolyte to the LNMO layer upon fabrication, forming a Li2Ni0.5Mn1.5O4 (L2NMO) phase in LNMO with unknown distribution and impact on battery performance.

The team investigated what the L2NMO phase was like, analyzing the changes in crystalline structure between the Li0Ni0.5Mn1.5O4 (L0NMO) and L2NMO phases during charging and discharging. They also studied the initial distribution of L2NMO at clean LPO/LNMO interfaces fabricated in a vacuum, as well as the effect of electrode thickness.

Strikingly, the clean interface facilitated the intercalation and deintercalation of Li during charging and discharging of the SSLBs. As a result, the capacity of SSLBs with a clean interface was twice that of conventional LNMO-based batteries. Moreover, this study marked the first time stable reversible reactions were found between the L0NMO and L2NMO phases in SSLBs.

Assistant Professor Hideyuki Kawasoko of Tohoku University and lead author of the study remarked, "Our findings indicate that the formation of a contamination-free, clean LPO/LNMO interface is key to increasing the capacity of SSLBs while ensuring low interface resistance for fast charging."

Aside from mobile devices, SSLBs could find a home in electric cars, for which cost and battery durability act as major barriers for widespread commercialization. The results of this study provide important insight for future SSLB designs and pave the way for a transition away from fossil fuels and towards more ecofriendly ways of transportation. Keep an eye out for the advent of SSLBs!

An extensive review of cephalopod fauna from the Northwest African Atlantic coast was performed by researchers from the University of Vigo (Spain) and the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO). The study was based on the collections gathered in 1,247 bottom trawl stations carried out during ten multidisciplinary surveys in the Canary Current Large Marine Ecosystem (CCLME).

The surveys were conducted by the IEO and the FAO --in the framework of their EAF-Nansen and CCLME projects-- along the continental shelf and slope off Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and Cabo Verde, between 2004 and 2012. In all these surveys, the EcoAfrik research team (UVIGO-IEO) led the development of a program focused on benthos intensive sampling. During these surveys a huge amount of quantitative biological data, environmental parameters of the water column and seabed, and important collections of benthic invertebrates were obtained.

After several years devoted to taxonomic study and the exhaustive review of the existing literature, an updated checklist of 138 cephalopods species was generated for the whole CCLME area. Besides, the known geographical distributions of several species have been expanded, as some deep-sea octopuses (such as Muusoctopus januarii, Bathypolypus valdiviae or Cirrothauma murrayi) and many oceanic squids (such as Abralia siedleckyi, Magnoteuthis magna or Chtenopteryx sicula), some recorded for the first time in the area.

The CCLME hosts one of the four major marine upwelling systems and is the third concerning primary productivity worldwide, supporting the largest fisheries of the Atlantic African coast, with an annual production of approximately 2-3 million tonnes. Among the main target commercial species are included some cephalopod groups as squids, cuttlefishes and octopuses.

Although most of the cephalopod species with commercial value in the region have been well-studied, many aspects of the systematic, distribution, biogeography and ecology of other cephalopods are practically unknown.

The EcoAfrik collections represent an exceptional source of information that will provide a global view on the biodiversity, composition and distribution of cephalopods from Northwest Africa.

Every living organism has DNA, and every living organism engages in DNA replication, the process by which DNA makes an exact copy of itself during cell division. While it's a tried-and-true process, problems can arise.

Break-induced replication (BIR) is a way to solve those problems. In humans, it is employed chiefly to repair breaks in DNA that cannot be fixed otherwise. Yet BIR itself, through its repairs to DNA and how it conducts those repairs, can introduce or cause genomic rearrangements and mutations contributing to cancer development.

"It's kind of a double-edged sword," says Anna Malkova, professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Iowa, who has studied BIR since 1995. "The basic ability to repair is a good thing, and some DNA breaks can't be repaired by other methods. So, the idea is very good. But the outcomes can be bad."

A new study led by Malkova, published Jan. 20 in the journal Nature, seeks to tease out BIR's high risk-reward arrangement by describing for the first time the beginning-to-end sequence in BIR. The biologists developed a new technique that enabled them to study in a yeast model how BIR operates throughout its repair cycle. Until now, scientists had only been able to study BIR's operations at the beginning and end stages. The researchers then introduced obstructions with DNA replication, such as transcription--the process of copying DNA to produce proteins--that are believed to be aided by BIR.

"Our study shows that when BIR comes to the rescue at these collisions, its arrival comes at a very high price," says Malkova, the study's corresponding author. "When BIR meets transcription, it can introduce even more instability, which can lead to even higher mutations. As a result, we think that instabilities that mainly were found at collisions between transcription and replication that have been suggested to lead to cancer might be caused by BIR that came to the rescue. It comes, it rescues, but it's kind of questionable how helpful it really is."

Scientists have known how BIR works at some stages. For example, they know the DNA repair apparatus forms a bubble of sorts around the damaged DNA, then moves forward, unzipping the DNA, copying intact segments, and finally transferring those copied segments to a new DNA strand.

But what remained elusive was following BIR throughout its entire repair cycle. Using a technique involving Droplet Digital PCR and a new DNA purification method developed by biology graduate student Liping Liu, the researchers were able to observe BIR from beginning to end.

"If you imagine this as a train, Liping installed a bunch of stations, and she watched how the train proceeded at each station, tracking the increase in DNA at each station, how much increase is occurring at each station, and thus, in aggregate, how the entire process unfolds," Malkova explains.

The team then intentionally introduced obstructions at some stations--transcription and another obstruction called internal telomere sequences--to observe how BIR responded to the obstacles. One finding: when transcription is introduced near the beginning of the BIR process, the repairs fail to commence, as if they're being suppressed. Also, the researchers found the orientation of the transcription with respect to BIR can affect the repair cycle and may be an important factor affecting instability that can promote cancer in humans.

"Scientists already know there's a lot of instability in places where high transcription meets normal replication," Malkova says. "What we did not know until now is where is it coming from and why is it happening."

The first author of the study, "Tracking break-induced replication shows that it stalls at roadblocks," is Liu, who is a sixth-year graduate student in Malkova's lab. Co-authors from Iowa include Beth Osia, Jerzy Twarowski, Juraj Kramara, Rosemary Lee, Hanzeng Li, and Rajula Elango (now at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School). Co-authors from the Baylor College of Medicine include Zhenxin Yan, Luyang Sun, Sandeep Kumar, Weiwei Dang, and Grzegorz Ira.

Quantum physics allows to make statements about the behaviour of a wide variety of many-particle systems at the atomic level, from salt crystals to neutron stars. In quantum systems, many parameters do not have concrete values, but are distributed over various values with certain probabilities. Often this distribution takes the form of a simple Gaussian bell curve that is encountered also in classical systems for example the distribution of balls in the Galton box experiment. However, not all quantum systems follow this simple behavior and some might deviate from the Gaussian distribution due to interactions.

Prof. Dr. Jens Eisert, who heads a joint research group on theoretical physics at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, argues that once interactions are reduced such deviations decay over time and become Gaussian distributed. Now he has been able to substantiate this presumption experimentally.

To do this, the Berlin team worked together with a group of experimental physicists led by Prof. Dr. Jörg Schmiedmayer at the Vienna University of Technology. Schmiedmayer and members of his group, in particular Dr. Thomas Schweigler, prepared a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate: this is a quantum system consisting of several thousand rubidium atoms, which were confined in a quasi-one-dimensional configuration with the help of magnetic fields and cooled near absolute zero (50 nanokelvin).

"The Vienna group created a synthetic quantum system in which the distribution of the phonons can be observed particularly sharply" explains Dr. Marek Gluza, coauthor of the study and postdoc with Jens Eisert. The measurement data initially represent the complex dynamics of the phonons. But the complexity is lost over time and the distribution takes on the shape of a Gaussian bell curve.

"In fact, we can see here how a Gaussian distribution emerges over time. Nature finds a simple solution, all by itself, through its physical laws" comments Jens Eisert.

What is unique about the performed experiment is that as time goes on the system swings back to the more complex distribution, demonstrating that the signatures of a complicated state can be retrieved again. "We know precisely why it swings back and what it depends on", Gluza explains. "This shows us something about the isolation of the system because the information about the signatures has never left the system ".

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Employees feel significantly less job distress if they work at companies that are open and transparent about the firm's finances, including budgets and profits, a new study found.

Researchers examining data from the U.K. found that at companies with more financial transparency, workers felt more secure in their jobs, more committed to their employers and - most significantly - said they had better relationships with their managers.

The link between greater transparency and lower job distress was strong and stood up even after accounting for a variety of other factors, including hours worked, income rank within the firm, gender, race and academic qualifications, said Hui Zheng, lead author of the study and associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.

"Transparency in disclosing financial information may substantially reduce job distress, particularly by smoothing relationships between workers and managers," Zheng said.

The study was published online recently in the journal Social Science Research and will appear in a future print edition.

The importance of financial transparency was particularly important for workers who weren't covered by collective bargaining agreements, said study co-author Vincent Roscigno, professor of sociology at Ohio State.

"Workers covered by collective bargaining agreements may expect that their union representatives are looking out for their best interests, so they don't have to pay as much attention to what the company reveals," Roscigno said.

"But if your workplace is not unionized, workers feel more stress if their companies don't disclose financial information. They may be worried about getting laid off if the company is not doing well financially or wonder if they're being treated fairly as far as their wages are concerned."

The researchers used a unique data set with measures generally not available for workplaces in the United States or elsewhere that allowed them to uncover the link between how companies communicate about their finances and worker stress.

The data came from the Worker and Employment Relation Study and included 15,747 workers from about 2,500 workplaces throughout Britain.

Job-related distress was measured by asking workers how often in the past few weeks that their job had made them feel tense, depressed, worried, gloomy, uneasy and miserable. They rated this on a five-point scale from "all of the time" to "never."

Workers rated how well managers at their workplace did at keeping employees informed about financial matters, including budget or profits. Workers rated this on a five-point scale from "very good" to "very poor."

Zheng said it was remarkable how powerful financial transparency was at lessening job distress, even after taking into account other factors known to impact stress.

"Workers at companies with the highest levels of financial transparency had stress level scores about 15 percent lower than workers at companies with the lowest levels of transparency," Zheng said. "That was a bigger effect on stress than gender or income."

Workers reported feeling more commitment to their company and feeling more secure in their jobs when they worked at firms that revealed more about their finances.

But those effects were relatively small compared to how transparency was linked to improved relationships with managers, Roscigno said.

"Even though financial transparency is about disclosing budgets, profits or other financial matters, the way it reduces job distress is not mainly about the money. It is about the relationships, especially with managers," he said.

The results have important implications for the workplace, Zheng said.

"The workplace is a major source of stress in modern society. Our findings show an important way that companies can reduce some of this distress and improve manager-employee relations," he said.

"It comes down to being more transparent about financial information."

January 25, 2021 - What care do veterans need when recovering after suicide attempts? The answer may be different for women compared to men veterans, reports a qualitative study in Medical Care, part of a special issue devoted to new research on suicide risk and prevention in women. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

"The paths to recovery after a suicide attempt may vary by gender, especially among veterans," according to the new research by Lauren M. Denneson, PhD, of the HSR&D Center to Improve Veteran Involvement in Care (CIVIC) at VA Portland (Ore.) Health Care System. "Our data suggest that women emphasize relatedness whereas men emphasize competence." Their study appears in a supplement dedicated to "Advancing Knowledge of Suicide Risk and Prevention Among Women."

Women and men veterans have differing recovery needs after suicide attempts

Dr. Denneson and colleagues conducted in-depth interviews with 50 veterans with recent suicide attempts: 25 women and 25 men. "We asked participants what has been helpful, as well as what would be helpful, in their recovery from their suicide attempts," the researchers write.

While some responses were similar between groups, thematic analysis suggested some gender-related differences in recovery needs:

Women veterans prioritized their connections with others. "They tended to find strength in helping others, despite being over-burdened themselves," Dr. Denneson and coauthors write. The women expressed a wish for mutually supportive relationships in which they could give as well as receive emotional support, as well as sharing knowledge and experiences.
The women wanted to repair their self-worth through self-knowledge and development - they wanted to know "why they do, think, or feel the things they do." Women veterans stated a desire to feel "more secure and clear in their sense of self...related to a desire to increase their sense of self-worth."
By comparison, men veterans were strongly focused on trying to live and do 'right' during their recovery. "It seemed as though the men had an idea in their mind of what living "right" meant to them personally, and they were striving towards this ideal," according to the authors.
Although relationships were important to men as for women veterans, the men were motivated by feeling needed and accountable to others. They discussed the need to be there for their families or to contribute to "something bigger, outside themselves."
Regardless of gender, the veterans expressed the desire for a stronger sense of purpose. Some felt the need for a clearer direction in their lives, or the importance of having and achieving goals. Many veterans talked about regaining some of the structure and purpose they felt during their military service.

The findings have implications for working with veterans recovering after a suicide attempt, Dr. Denneson and coauthors believe. For example, women might be more interested in groups or activities that connect them to others with similar experiences, or educational programs to help them better understand themselves or others. In contrast, men might benefit from goal-oriented approaches that set them up for successful experiences or make them feel accountable to a group.

The supplement, developed by the VA's Health Services Research and Development Service and Women's Health Research Network, presents 13 new research papers relevant to women's risk of suicide. "Suicide prevention among women has become especially important within the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, as higher rates of suicide among women veterans has been observed compared to women nonveterans," according to an introduction by Dr. Denneson and other supplement guest editors.

Broad topics include challenges and breaking barriers in gender and suicide prevention, identifying risk and facilitating recovery among women, and considering suicide risk across the lifespan. The guest editors conclude: "We look forward to seeing how investigators build upon the work published here; how healthcare operations, community partners, and policy leadership use these new findings to bolster prevention efforts; and how this work will elevate awareness of suicide among women with clinical providers and others."

X-rays are usually difficult to direct and guide. X-ray physicists at the University of Göttingen have developed a new method with which the X-rays can be emitted more precisely in one direction. To do this, the scientists use a structure of thin layers of materials with different densities of electrons to simultaneously deflect and focus the generated beams. The results of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.

To generate X-rays in ordinary X-ray tubes, electrons that have been accelerated by a high voltage, collide with a metal anode. The atoms in the metal deflect and slow down the electrons on their path, or the electrons excite the metal atoms to emit radiation as they bump into each other. Both the deceleration of the electrons and the excitation of the metal atoms result in X-ray radiation being emitted. Unfortunately, the radiation is emitted equally in all directions and is then difficult to direct into a focused beam. In addition, the wavefront of the emitted X-rays is completely random and disordered.

Physicists at the Institute for X-ray Physics at Göttingen University have now observed a novel effect when the anode is replaced by a suitable structure of thin layers of materials with different densities of electrons. The thickness of the "sandwich structure" must be a few millionths of a millimetre. If a particular sequence of layers is chosen, the X-rays can be guided. "When the accelerated electrons hit this sandwich structure, the angular spectrum of the generated X-rays changes," says Malte Vassholz, first author of the paper. He goes on to say, "The X-rays are preferentially generated and directed parallel to the layers, which act as a waveguide, similar to an optical fibre."

Detailed numerical calculations allow the results to be reproduced in a model and calculated for a given choice of structure. "According to our calculations, the effect could be further enhanced by optimising the structure. This would enable us to generate X-ray radiation with higher brilliance," adds Professor Tim Salditt. The hope is that X-ray measurements, which have so far only been possible at large accelerators such as the electron synchrotron in Hamburg, can also be brought 'into the laboratory' to some extent. "Applications of X-ray imaging for microscopically small and low-contrast objects - such as soft biological tissues - are particularly interesting," says Salditt.

Nature is full of colour. For flowers, displaying colour is primarily a means to attract pollinators. Insects use their colour vision not only to locate the right flowers to feed on but also to find mates. The evolutionary interaction between insects and plants has created complex dependencies that can have surprising outcomes. Casper van der Kooi, a biologist at the University of Groningen, uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the interaction between pollinators and flowers. In January, he was the first author of two review articles on this topic.

Bees and other insects visit flowers to feed on nectar and pollen. In exchange for these goodies, they assist the reproduction of these plants by pollinating their flowers. That is the simple and slightly romantic view of pollination. The reality, however, is full of deception, chemical warfare and biomechanical trickery. 'The combination of chemistry and physics with evolutionary biology has broadened our view of pollination,' says Van der Kooi.

Anatomy

He is the first author of a review article on the evolution of colour vision in insects, which was published in the January 2021 volume of Annual Review of Entomology, and of a second review on the 'arms race' between plants and pollinators, which appeared on 25 January in Current Biology.

'For many insect families, we know very little about how they see colours,' says Van der Kooi. Bees have been studied in great detail but much less is known about colour vision in flies, even though many of their families, such as hoverflies, are very important pollinators. 'They are difficult to study and to keep in the lab and the anatomy of their eyes is more complicated,' explains Van der Kooi. 'Furthermore, some long-standing ideas on fly vision have recently been overturned.'

Pigments

Van der Kooi and his co-authors tabulated which wavelengths can be seen by different insect species. 'Basically, insect colour vision occurs at wavelengths between 300 and 700 nanometres. Most photoreceptors in insect eyes detect ultraviolet, blue and green light but there is great diversity.' Insects evolved colour vision before the first flowers appeared. 'The pigments in flowers appear to be fine-tuned to be visible to pollinators. But of course, insects have subsequently co-evolved.'

Apart from colour, plants use scent to attract insects to the food that they provide. As production of nectar and pollen is costly, plants need to protect themselves from robbers, which eat the food but do not pollinate the flowers. This is the topic of the second review paper. 'This paper shows a huge diversity in the relationship between plants and pollinators, from real mutualism to outright abuse.' Some plants do not provide any food at all. 'Others have pollen or nectar that is toxic to most bee species. Only specific species can actually digest this food.'

Biomechanics

Pollinators also have their own agenda. 'One particular plant is pollinated by moths in early spring. The moth also lays eggs on the plant and later in the year, the caterpillars will eat parts of it. Around that time, the main pollinators for this plant are flies.' This is one example of the complex relationship between plants and pollinators. 'There can be seasonal differences but the relationship can also be different in different locations - there is variation in time and space and through different biological interactions,' says Van der Kooi.

The review focuses on different aspects of the complex relationship using views from chemical biology (e.g. the nutrient content of nectar or pollen), biomechanics (e.g. the barriers that flowers use to ward off unwanted insects or to make sure that pollen are dispersed by them) and sensory biology (e.g. the ways in which insects detect and recognize flowers).

Vibration

Some plants, for example, many species in the potato family, have evolved the method of 'buzz-pollination', where the pollen are stored in tubes and insects need to vibrate on the flowers to release them. 'Honeybees, flies and butterflies cannot get to them but other bees such as bumblebees can shake the pollen free using their strong flight muscles.' The stiffness of the tubes, the stickiness of the pollen and the vibration frequency of the buzzing bees all play a part in this process. 'You really need tools from physics to understand their relationship.' The interdisciplinary study of insect-plant interactions is what Van der Kooi loves. He started his career using optics techniques. 'That is in part because I really like physics. But every new approach will show us new aspects of this complex relationship.'

A recent development in the field is the realization that plants are different in different geographic locations. 'A cornflower in the Netherlands is not necessarily the same as a cornflower in Italy. For example, the chemical composition of the pollen or the nectar may be different, which affects the interaction with insects.'

Insect havens

This has serious ramifications for attempts to boost insect numbers by creating insect havens, explains Van der Kooi: 'Sometimes, the seed mixtures for flowering strips are not sourced locally but from other countries. In that case, there may be a mismatch with the local insects, which may even harm insect numbers.' Insect havens are therefore best created using local seeds.

Both review articles stress how complicated the relationship between plants and pollinators can be. So why do plants bother? Why are they not all using wind dispersal of their pollen? 'Those are good questions,' says Van der Kooi. 'The efficiency of wind pollination is low but that is also true for animal pollination. Yet, roughly 90 per cent of plant species use the latter method, so it is a huge success.' But even this is complicated: 'Grasses use wind pollination, and in some ways, they are successful groups too. Like nearly everything in biology, the answer so often is "it depends..."'

Linguists from RUDN University found out how Russian speakers differentiate between similar consonants of the Greek language and associate them with Russian sounds. The results of the study were published in the Speech Communication journal.

Efficient learning of a foreign language depends on a student's mother tongue and similarities between the sounds of the two languages. If they have a lot of similar sounds, foreign speech is perceived better, and if a student's mother tongue has no or few sounds similar to those of a foreign language, the progress will be slower. For example, it could be quite difficult for a Russian speaker to learn Greek, as some Greek consonants don't have Russian analogs. Linguists from RUDN University were the first to conduct a comprehensive study of these consonants and to identify what sounds Russian speakers associate them with.

"Our study covered several Greek consonants that do not have direct analogs in the Russian language. Our goal was to find out what Russian sounds they are usually associated with. Moreover, we assessed the ability of Russian speakers to differentiate between similar Greek sounds and perceive them in syllables that begin either with a consonant or a vowel," said Georgios Georgiou, Ph.D., a postdoc, and a researcher at the Institute of Modern Languages, Intercultural Communication and Migration at RUDN University.

Unlike Greek, the Russian language doesn't have fricative sounds [θ] and [ð], palatal plosive [?], or palatal fricative [ç]. For their study, the team chose 16 Russian-speaking students that never learned Greek before. The students were asked to listen to a recording with fragments of Greek words, specifically, syllables containing the sounds [θ], [t], [ð], [d], [?], [g], [ç], [x]. After that, the students were asked to match the Greek sounds with Russian ones that could potentially be used to replace them. Also, the students stated the acoustical differences between the sounds in the pairs [θ]-[t], [ð]-[d], [?]-[g], and [ç]-[x].

The students were quite successful in differentiating between similar Greek sounds regardless of the types of syllables they were used in. Traditionally, scientists believe that Russian speakers find the Greek sound [θ] similar to Russian [t]. However, the majority of participants decided it was similar to [f]. As for the sound [ð], the participants found it similar to [z] both vowel and consonant initially.

"Previously, we thought that in the Russian language [θ] was most likely to be replaced with [t], and [ð] with [d]. This is because this occurs in some linguistic borrowings from Greek to Russian, such as the word "????????????????" - "orthodoxy". It is still unknown why the experiment showed a different result. It may be due to the fact that in addition to Russian the participants spoke basic English which gave an additional dimension to their perception of foreign sounds. Another possibility is that some of the participants came from regions of Russia and initially spoke Russian dialects that were quite different from the literary norm. Regardless of the reason, this is an interesting result, and we plan to study this issue further," added Georgios Georgiou from RUDN University.

When it launches in the mid-2020s, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will explore an expansive range of infrared astrophysics topics. One eagerly anticipated survey will use a gravitational effect called microlensing to reveal thousands of worlds that are similar to the planets in our solar system. Now, a new study shows that the same survey will also unveil more extreme planets and planet-like bodies in the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, thanks to their gravitational tug on the stars they orbit.

"We were thrilled to discover that Roman will be able to offer even more information about the planets throughout our galaxy than originally planned," said Shota Miyazaki, a graduate student at Osaka University in Japan who led the study. "It will be very exciting to learn more about a new, unstudied batch of worlds."

Roman will primarily use the gravitational microlensing detection method to discover exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system. When a massive object, such as a star, crosses in front of a more distant star from our vantage point, light from the farther star will bend as it travels through the curved space-time around the nearer one.

The result is that the closer star acts as a natural lens, magnifying light from the background star. Planets orbiting the lens star can produce a similar effect on a smaller scale, so astronomers aim to detect them by analyzing light from the farther star.

Since this method is sensitive to planets as small as Mars with a wide range of orbits, scientists expect Roman's microlensing survey to unveil analogs of nearly every planet in our solar system. Miyazaki and his colleagues have shown that the survey also has the power to reveal more exotic worlds - giant planets in tiny orbits, known as hot Jupiters, and so-called "failed stars," known as brown dwarfs, which are not massive enough to power themselves by fusion the way stars do.

This new study shows that Roman will be able to detect these objects orbiting the more distant stars in microlensing events, in addition to finding planets orbiting the nearer (lensing) stars.

The team's findings are published in The Astronomical Journal.

Astronomers see a microlensing event as a temporary brightening of the distant star, which peaks when the stars are nearly perfectly aligned. Miyazaki and his team found that in some cases, scientists will also be able to detect a periodic, slight variation in the lensed starlight caused by the motion of planets orbiting the farther star during a microlensing event.

As a planet moves around its host star, it exerts a tiny gravitational tug that shifts the star's position a bit. This can pull the distant star closer and farther from a perfect alignment. Since the nearer star acts as a natural lens, it's like the distant star's light will be pulled slightly in and out of focus by the orbiting planet. By picking out little shudders in the starlight, astronomers will be able to infer the presence of planets.

"It's called the xallarap effect, which is parallax spelled backward. Parallax relies on motion of the observer - Earth moving around the Sun - to produce a change in the alignment between the distant source star, the closer lens star and the observer. Xallarap works the opposite way, modifying the alignment due to the motion of the source," said David Bennett, who leads the gravitational microlensing group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

While microlensing is generally best suited to finding worlds farther from their star than Venus is from the Sun, the xallarap effect works best with very massive planets in small orbits, since they make their host star move the most. Revealing more distant planets will also allow us to probe a different population of worlds.

Mining the core of the galaxy

Most of the first few hundred exoplanets discovered in our galaxy had masses hundreds of times greater than Earth's. Unlike the giant planets in our solar system, which take 12 to 165 years to orbit the Sun, these newfound worlds whirl around their host stars in as little as a few days.

These planets, now known as hot Jupiters due to their giant size and the intense heat from their host stars, weren't expected from existing planetary formation models and forced astronomers to rethink them. Now there are several theories that attempt to explain why hot Jupiters exist, but we still aren't sure which - if any - is correct. Roman's observations should reveal new clues.

Even more massive than hot Jupiters, brown dwarfs range from about 4,000 to 25,000 times Earth's mass. They're too heavy to be characterized as planets, but not quite massive enough to undergo nuclear fusion in their cores like stars.

Other planet-hunting missions have primarily searched for new worlds relatively nearby, up to a few thousand light-years away. Close proximity makes more detailed studies possible. However, astronomers think that studying bodies close to our galaxy's core may yield new insight into how planetary systems evolve. Miyazaki and his team estimate that Roman will find around 10 hot Jupiters and 30 brown dwarfs nearer to the center of the galaxy using the xallarap effect.

The center of the galaxy is populated mainly with stars that formed around 10 billion years ago. Studying planets around such old stars could help us understand whether hot Jupiters form so close to their stars, or are born farther away and migrate inward over time. Astronomers will be able to see if hot Jupiters can maintain such small orbits for long periods of time by seeing how frequently they're found around ancient stars.

Unlike stars in the galaxy's disk, which typically roam the Milky Way at comfortable distances from one another, stars near the core are packed much closer together. Roman could reveal whether having so many stars so close to each other affects orbiting planets. If a star passes close to a planetary system, its gravity could pull planets out of their usual orbits.

Supernovae are also more common near the center of the galaxy. These catastrophic events are so intense that they can forge new elements, which are spewed into the surrounding area as the exploding stars die. Astronomers think this might affect planet formation. Finding worlds in this region could help us understand more about the factors that influence the planet-building process.

Roman will open up a window into the distant past by looking at older stars and planets. The mission will also help us explore whether brown dwarfs form as easily near the center of the galaxy as they do closer to Earth by comparing how frequently they're found in each region.

By tallying up very old hot Jupiters and brown dwarfs using the xallarap effect and finding more familiar worlds using microlensing, Roman will bring us another step closer to understanding our place in the cosmos.

"We've found a lot of planetary systems that seem strange compared with ours, but it's still not clear whether they're the oddballs or we are," said Samson Johnson, a graduate student at Ohio State University in Columbus and a co-author of the paper. "Roman will help us figure it out, while helping answer other big questions in astrophysics."

A new approach to mapping viral mutations that "escape" leading clinical antibodies has revealed mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that allow it to evade treatments, including a single amino-acid mutation that fully escapes Regeneron's antibody cocktail. These maps, say the authors, demonstrate that prior characterization of escape mutations was incomplete. They will also help to enable immediate interpretation of the effects of the mutations cataloged by viral genomic surveillance, say the authors. Several antibodies are in use or under development as therapies to treat COVID-19. As new SARS-CoV-2 variants emerge, it is important to predict whether they will remain susceptible to antibody treatment. Most leading anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies target the viral receptor-binding domain (RBD), which facilitates binding to the ACE2 receptor on host cells. Tyler Starr and colleagues recently developed a scanning method to map how mutations to the RBD affect its recognition by antibodies. Here, Starr and colleagues leveraged this approach to show how mutations to SARS-CoV-2's RBD affect binding by the antibodies in the REGN-COV2 cocktail and by Eli Lilly's antibody LY-CoV016. The authors focused on mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 RBD that do not strongly disrupt binding to the host receptor (ACE-2), to map how these mutations impact binding to the three anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The maps identified mutations that escape antibody binding, including, surprisingly, a single mutation that escapes both antibodies in the Regeneron antibody cocktail. To determine if the escape maps could inform analysis of viral evolution in infected humans, the authors examined deep sequencing data from a persistently infected patient who was treated with REGN-COV2 at day 145 after diagnosis with COVID-19. The analysis identified resistance mutations that arose in this patient. Three of the four escape mutations identified by Starr and team had not been identified in Regeneron's viral cell-culture selections, say the authors, illustrating an advantage of complete maps as used here. The complete maps also permitted the researchers to assess what escape mutations are already present among circulating SARS-CoV-2. After examining all human-derived SARS-CoV-2 sequences available as of 11 January 2021, they report a substantial number of RBD mutations that escaped one or more of the antibodies are in circulation.

Researchers have engineered an antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-2 with a potency that "rivals" current lead SARS-CoV-2 clinical neutralizing antibodies, and that also broadly neutralizes a range of clade 1 sarbecoviruses. Their antibody, ADG-2, studied in mice, represents a "promising candidate" for the prevention and treatment of not only COVID-19, they say, but also of future respiratory diseases caused by SARS-related coronaviruses. Although two vaccines and two monoclonal antibody (mAb) therapies have been authorized for emergency use by the FDA, it is unknown whether these vaccines and treatments will provide broad protection against new emerging SARS-CoV-2 strains that originate in humans or animal reservoirs; this is partly because epitopes recognized by most of these approaches are highly variable among other clade 1 sarbecoviruses, limiting their utility and increasing their susceptibly to antibody escape mutations. Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) are a promising opportunity for a therapy to prevent or mitigate future outbreaks of SARS-related CoVs. To investigate whether bnAbs can be engineered and provide broad protection in vivo, C. Garrett Rappazzo and colleagues started with antibodies from the memory B cells of a 2003 SARS survivor that cross-neutralize multiple SARS-related viruses with modest potency. They selectively engineered the binding affinities of several of these bnAbs, creating improvements in their abilities to bind the virus. Then the researchers studied the engineered antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing activity in mouse cell lines. All engineered bNabs displayed greater neutralization ability than controls, they report. In further studies of these antibodies against sarbecoviruses including SARS-CoV and two bat SARS-related viruses, one engineered antibody, ADG-2, was particularly effective. In further studies, it showed broad binding activity to more than a dozen sarbecoviruses receptor binding domains. It could also bind to naturally circulating viral variants. In mouse models of SARS and COVID-19, the authors tested the ability of ADG-2 to provide broad in vivo protection. In mice treated prophylactically with ADG-2, viral replication was prevented. Mice given the antibody after viral challenge also fared better - showing significant reduction in viral loads. Structural and biochemical studies demonstrated that ADG-2 recognizes a highly conserved epitope. The authors say this epitope represents an "Achilles' heel for clade 1 sarbecoviruses" and is an attractive target for the design of "pan-SARS" vaccines that aim to elicit similar broadly protective antibodies.