Culture

It will come as no surprise to anyone living in Phoenix, Arizona, that 2020 has been a record-breaking year for high temperatures. According to the National Weather Service, in 2020 the Phoenix area has surpassed all previous years for average high temperatures and excessive heat warnings.

With the combined oppressive heat and COVID-19 restrictions on travel and indoor activities like movies and restaurants, many people have turned to urban parks for outdoor recreation.

And while Phoenix area parks can serve as an oasis for residents, the irrigation needed to keep parks lush and cooler comes at a high cost of water consumption.

To determine this cost, a team of scientists led by hydrologist Enrique R. Vivoni of Arizona State University's (ASU) School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment spent a year collecting data on weather conditions, evapotranspiration and soil water at Encanto Golf Course in Phoenix. The results of their study have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Studying the Oasis Effect

Vivoni and his team identified that the park showed what meteorologists call the "oasis effect," which refers to the creation of a microclimate that is cooler than a surrounding dry area due to the evaporation of a water source.

"The word 'oasis' may conjure up the image of a pool of water surrounded by palm trees in a sandy desert," says Vivoni. "But this same effect occurs in urban parks when heat from the surrounding neighborhood is transported by winds into the park, increasing the evaporation rates."

To measure the oasis effect at Encanto Golf Course, Vivoni and his team used special sensors at a weather station located within the park. These sensors measured water and energy fluxes along with carbon dioxide exchanges depicting plant photosynthesis and respiration.

Vivoni and graduate students Mercedes Kindler, Zhaocheng Wang, and Eli Pérez-Ruiz worked together on the sensor deployment, data analysis and use of satellite-based products to monitor the park conditions.

"We set up at Encanto Park in February 2019 and all of our instruments were operational by the next month," says Kindler. "For a year, we conducted weekly or bi-weekly visits to the sites for data collection and station maintenance. It has been a great experience working on this research project, since it has allowed us to learn more about water and energy fluxes at an urban golf course."

Their notable findings were two-fold. First, the oasis effect led to unexpectedly high evaporative losses during the night. Second, the oasis effect was related to the evaporation of soil water and irrigation water, and not to the activity of plants and grasses in the park.

"Because of the oasis effect, when we irrigate our urban parks at night, we lose vast amounts of water and we see increased carbon dioxide emissions, which could lead to higher global warming potential," says Vivoni. "This has important implications for water conservation and greenhouse gas emission management in desert cities such as Phoenix."

While additional studies are needed to determine when during the day it would be preferable to irrigate, making this management change would decrease evaporative loss and the carbon dioxide emissions (which contribute to global warming) during hot, dry, windy days.

It also remains to be determined how widespread this effect is within Phoenix. Given the large number of parks and golf courses, however, it is anticipated that the results of this study will yield important regional consequences to be considered by state, county and city agencies.

Bacteria living symbiotically within the Hawaiian bobtail squid can direct the host squid to change its normal gene-expression program to make a more inviting home, according to a new study published in PLoS Biology by researchers at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

Nearly every organism and environment hosts a collection of symbiotic microbes--a microbiome--which are an integral component of ecological and human health. In bacteria, small RNA (sRNA) is a key element influencing gene expression in the microscopic organisms, however, there has been little evidence that beneficial bacteria use these molecules to communicate with their animal hosts.

In the new study, lead author Silvia Moriano-Gutierrez, a postdoctoral fellow in the Pacific Biosciences Research Center at SOEST, and co-authors found a specific bacterial sRNA that is typically responsible for quality control of the production of protein in the bacterium plays an essential role in the symbiosis between Vibrio fischeri and the squid.

The Hawaiian bobtail squid recruits V. fischeri to inhabit the squid's light-organ, as the bacterium are luminescent and camouflage the squid during its nighttime hunting.

Through RNA-sequencing, the scientists found in squid's blood sRNA sequences that were produced by bacteria inhabiting the light-organ and found a high concentration of a specific sRNA within the host cells lining the crypts where the bacteria live.

"The presence of this particular sRNA results in a 'calming' the immune reaction of the squid, which will increase the opportunity for the bacteria to persistently colonize the host tissue, and deliver their beneficial effects," said Dr. Moriano-Gutierrez. "This work reveals the potential for a bacterial symbiont's sRNAs not only to control its own activities but also to trigger critical responses that promote a peaceful partnership with its host."

The researchers, including co-author and UH Mānoa undergraduate Leo Wu, determined the bacteria load sRNA into their outer membrane vesicles, which are transported into the cells surrounding the symbiont population in the light organ--decreasing the squid's antimicrobial activities in just the right location.

"It was unexpected to find a common bacterial sRNA that had evolved for a house-keeping function in the bacterium to be specifically recruited into a bacterium-host communication during the initiation of symbiosis," said Dr. Moriano-Gutierrez.

"We anticipate that a host's recognition and response to specific symbiont sRNAs will emerge as a major new mode of communication between bacteria and the animal tissues they inhabit," said Dr. Moriano-Gutierrez. "Other symbiont RNAs that get into host cells remain to be explored."

Research from UCLA scientists and colleagues from other institutions finds that people with Parkinson's disease who lack meaningful social interactions may be at an increased risk for severe symptoms related to the disease.

The study, which was published in the journal NPJ Parkinson's Disease, evaluated not only the social and emotional life of patients, but also their nutrition and exercise habits.

Over a 5-year period, from 2014-2019, researchers at UCLA, the University of Washington and Bastyr University collected information from 1,500 people with Parkinson's disease. Study participants were surveyed most recently in December. Participants who reported being most lonely, also reported exercising less, were less likely to follow healthier diets and experienced a lower quality of life.

"That surprised us," says study author Dr. Indu Subramanian, a neurologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the Southwest Veteran Affairs Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Centers.

"One of the most detrimental things is actually being lonely," Subramanian says. The negative impact of loneliness on symptom severity, she says, was as large as the positive effect from exercise.

Millions of people have curtailed their social interactions to stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. While this is good practice for avoiding a virus, the resulting isolation and loneliness can create a health hazard that could be particularly hard on people with Parkinson's disease who sometimes limit interactions due to adverse disease symptoms such as tremor.

Subramanian and the rest of the team recently sent out a new survey to the study participants to collect data about how the pandemic has affected their symptoms.

Even patients who have happy family lives can suffer from loneliness, she adds, though that may seem counterintuitive.

People thrive in three spheres of social interaction: One is the intimate connection of a marriage or partnership; the next wider sphere is a circle of friends; and the third is belonging to a group with a shared sense of identity.

"For people with Parkinson's disease, they may be in a support group. It could even be something like a book club," Subramanian says.

To support that shared sense of identity during the pandemic, Subramanian started a virtual support group, which meets two to three times a week, for people with Parkinson's disease.

"It's called social prescribing, because you literally prescribe to your patients to be more socially connected," Subramanian says. "It's actually grown into an international group of patients. People have grown to enjoy and connect through it. Some people have told me it's the only social thing they do at all."

New Rochelle, NY, November 17, 2020--COVID-19 can directly cause neurologic symptoms and long-term neurological disease. Elevations of blood biomarkers indicative of brain injury have been reported in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid of COVID-19 patients. Clinical application of blood biomarkers to improve medical management of COVID-19 patients is reported in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neurotrauma. Click here (http://doi.org/10.1089/neu.2020.7332) to read the article now.

"The COVID-19 pandemic poses significant risks for acute and persistent neurological deficits, as well as possible increased risk for neurodegenerative diseases," state Ronald Hayes, PhD, Banyan Biomarkers, and coauthors. "The use of blood biomarkers of brain injury integrated with additional existing diagnostic tools with big dataset analytics could provide timely, cost effective approaches to address this increasingly urgent unmet medical need."

"Although presented in the context of a review article, the manuscript represents so much more," says John Povlishock, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Neurotrauma. "The paper concisely reviews the increased risks of the COVID-19 patient for persistent neurological deficits, psychiatric disorders, and potential neurodegenerative diseases, while describing mechanisms of the CNS penetrance and action of the virus. The paper provides not only an assessment of the challenges presented by the effects of COVID-19 on the brain, but also provides specific recommendations to address them. In all, this review masterfully argues that many of the technologies needed to probe the effects of the COVID-19 virus on the brain are in hand and can be rapidly applied."

A new study from researchers at the University of Bath and Natural History Museum looking at the diversity of dinosaurs shows that they were not in decline at the time of their extinction by an asteroid hit 66 million years ago.

The researchers say that had the impact not happened, dinosaurs might have continued to dominate the Earth.

Dinosaurs were widespread globally at the time of the asteroid impact at the end of the Late Cretaceous period, occupying every continent on the planet and were the dominant form of animal of most terrestrial ecosystems.

However, it is still contentious amongst paleobiologists as to whether dinosaurs were declining in diversity at the time of their extinction.

Statistical modelling

In order to address this question, the research team collected a set of different dinosaur family trees and used statistical modelling to assess if each of the main dinosaur groups was still able to produce new species at this time.

Their study, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, found that dinosaurs were not in decline before the asteroid hit, contradicting some previous studies. The authors also suggest that had the impact not occurred, dinosaurs might have continued to be the dominant group of land animals on the planet.

First author of the study, Joe Bonsor, is undertaking his PhD jointly at the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath and the Natural History Museum.

He said: "Previous studies done by others have used various methods to draw the conclusion that dinosaurs would have died out anyway, as they were in decline towards the end of the Cretaceous period.

"However, we show that if you expand the dataset to include more recent dinosaur family trees and a broader set of dinosaur types, the results don't actually all point to this conclusion - in fact only about half of them do."

Sampling bias

It is difficult to assess the diversity of dinosaurs due to gaps in the fossil record. This can be due to factors such as which bones are preserved as fossils, how accessible the fossils are in the rock to allow them to be found, and the locations where palaeontologists search for them.

The researchers used statistical methods to overcome these sampling biases, looking at the rates of speciation of dinosaur families rather than simply counting the number of species belonging to the family.

Joe Bonsor said: "The main point of our paper is that it isn't as simple as looking at a few trees and making a decision - The large unavoidable biases in the fossil record and lack of data can often show a decline in species, but this may not be a reflection of the reality at the time.

"Our data don't currently show they were in decline, in fact some groups such as hadrosaurs and ceratopsians were thriving and there's no evidence to suggest they would have died out 66 million years ago had the extinction event not happened."

Whilst mammal existed at the time of the asteroid hit, it was only due to the extinction of the dinosaurs that led to the niches being vacated, allowing mammals to fill them and later dominate the planet.

DALLAS, Nov. 17, 2020 — Patients who are hospitalized with heart failure can reduce their odds of requiring re-hospitalization, a heart transplant or death by repeatedly reviewing recorded audio messages about self-care at home, according to late breaking research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2020. The virtual meeting is Friday, November 13 – Tuesday, November 17, 2020, and is a premier global exchange of the latest scientific advancements, research and evidence-based clinical practice updates in cardiovascular science for health care worldwide.

“My Recorded On-Demand Audio Discharge Instructions (MyROAD®)” is a re-playable audio card containing information for patients with heart failure who have been discharged from the hospital. The MyROAD audio card begins with a general statement and then has four sections about diet, physical activity, medication and self-monitoring behaviors specific to heart failure to help answer frequently asked questions about the condition and what to expect at home.

“Patients may be tired, confused and worried about being able to follow provider orders and/or without family members at the time they are discharged, so they may lack the ability to carefully hear, understand and ask questions about instructions for self-care at home. Handing out more paperwork may not be the answer. In addition, some patients have health literacy issues, poor eyesight or they do not have access to the internet to get heart failure information. We needed a new way to provide this potentially life-saving information,” says the study’s lead author Nancy M. Albert, Ph.D., C.C.N.S., C.H.F.N., C.C.R.N., N.E.-B.C., FAHA, associate chief nursing officer of the Office of Nursing Research and Innovation at the Cleveland Clinic Health System and a clinical nurse specialist at the Kaufman Center for Heart Failure at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Researchers performed a randomized controlled trial of about 1,000 patients (average age 72.8 years, 58.7% male) who were hospitalized with heart failure at four sites in Northeast Ohio. Upon discharge, patients either received usual care or the MyROAD audio card with a demonstration on how to operate it plus usual care. Patients were encouraged to keep the card visible and share it with family members. Researchers followed up at 30, 45, 90 and 180-day intervals after hospital discharge. Both patient groups were similar in demographics, medical history and heart failure factors.

Findings of the study indicate:

Patients who received MyROAD had a 27% decrease in the odds of visiting the emergency department for any cause one month after their initial hospital discharge and a 29% drop at the 45-day mark.
MyROAD users were 40% less likely to need a heart-assist device, receive a heart transplant or die from any cause at three months after discharge.
Patients in the MyROAD group were also nearly 50% less likely to die from heart failure at 90-days after discharge if they had received the MyROAD® card.
All causes of death dropped by more than 40% among the group of patients who received the MyROAD® card compared to the group who received usual care.

Researchers note that although the readmission rates among the MyROAD® group were lower at 30 and 45 days when compared with the usual care group, it was not a statistically significant difference. However, when they assessed all-cause hospitalization, emergency department visits or death, the odds of an event were reduced by 25% at 30 days and 30% at 45 days. Researchers believe there is an opportunity to improve outcomes by providing patients and family with clear, consistent messages (as was delivered with the audio card).

“It is important for patients who are discharged to home after a hospital stay to understand that by carrying out specific physical activity, diet, medication and self-monitoring behaviors, they may improve their lifespan and be less likely to require a future emergency department visit,” said Albert. “These results may spur innovative methods of enhancing discharge information and early home care. More research is needed to learn how we can optimize care to prevent post-discharge healthcare utilization.”

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 17, 2020) -- A study led by the Cedars-Sinai Department of Neurosurgery has identified certain regions in the retina - the lining found in the back of the eye - that are more affected by Alzheimer's disease than other areas. The findings may help physicians predict changes in the brain as well as cognitive deterioration, even for patients experiencing the earliest signs of mild impairment.

"These clues can occur very early on in the progression of Alzheimer's disease - several decades before symptoms appear," said Maya Koronyo-Hamaoui, PhD, associate professor of Neurosurgery and Biomedical Sciences and co-corresponding author of the study. "Detecting these signs can help diagnose the disease more accurately, allowing for earlier and more effective treatment intervention."

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, a group of brain disorders characterized by a general loss of mental abilities, including memory, judgment, language and abstract thinking.

The findings of the new study, published in the journal Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, were from a clinical trial involving people older than 40 who were showing signs of cognitive decline.

In the trial, investigators used a noninvasive technique known as sectoral retinal amyloid imaging to capture retinal images in participants. The retina, which is directly connected to the brain, is the only central nervous system tissue accessible for patient-friendly, high-resolution and noninvasive imaging.

The images were then analyzed using a new process that could identify certain peripheral regions in the retina that corresponded better to brain damage and cognitive status. In studying the images, scientists could detect patients with an increased buildup of retinal amyloid protein, signifying a higher likelihood of developing Alzheimer's disease or cognitive impairments.

These findings build upon pioneering research in 2010 in which Koronyo-Hamaoui and her team identified a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease, amyloid beta-protein deposits, in retinal tissues from deceased patients. The team then developed a methodology to detect retinal amyloid beta-protein plaques in living patients suffering from the disease.

In another research study, this one involving laboratory mice, that was recently published in the journal Aging Cell, Koronyo-Hamaoui, premed student Jonah Doustar and others on the research team, further validated the role of the retina in displaying hallmark signs of Alzheimer's disease and identified a potential treatment to combat the disease.

"We found that increased levels of retinal amyloid-beta peptides correlated with levels found in brain tissues, even in the latest stages of Alzheimer's disease," said Koronyo-Hamaoui. "We also suggested a particular type of immune-modulation therapy that may combat the disease by reducing toxic proteins and harmful inflammation in the brain and, in return, enhancing a protective type of immune response that preserved the connections between neurons, which are tightly connected to cognition."

Both studies show promise for diagnosing and treating Alzheimer's disease, a condition affecting more than 5.5 million people in the U.S., said Keith Black, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery

"This work may guide future brain and retinal imaging studies to detect Alzheimer's disease, assess disease progression and identify first-ever treatment options," Black said.

When it wants to promote democracy in other countries, the US has several options, ranging from foreign democracy aid and economic sanctions to military intervention. But, what do North Americans think about these different strategies for promoting democracy? What features of authoritarian countries determine their preferences when wanting one or another form of intervention?

The opinion of US citizens on foreign policy is very important because it often influences the type of tools that their leaders end up using when it comes to promoting democracy abroad and the type of state in which they are applied. This subject has been little studied, and often leads to major dilemmas within the US government and public controversy surrounding whether to intervene or not, and if so, how.

"In our work, we examine in what kind of autocracies North Americans are most likely to support the use of military force or economic sanctions and in what kind of regimes they are more likely to provide economic aid for democracy".

Research conducted by the researchers Abel Escribà-Folch and Toni Rodon, at the UPF Department of Political and Social Sciences, together with Laia H. Muradova, of the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), sheds light on these questions. "In our work, we examine in what kind of autocracies North Americans are most likely to support the use of military force or economic sanctions and in what kind of regimes they are more likely to provide economic aid for democracy", they explain.

The study by the authors who recently signed an article in the blog American Politics and Policy (USCenter, London School of Economics), based on their article published last August in Foreign Policy Analysis (Oxford University Press), was carried out based on a conjoint experimental survey. Its goal is to help determine what shapes these preferences of the North Americans and they conclude that the citizens of this country give greater support to coercive measures (military interventions and sanctions) in highly personalistic and consolidated autocratic, mostly Muslim countries, that do not hold elections and are not US allies. However, support for giving foreign aid is greater for autocracies with (strategic or financial) ties with the US and that hold multi-party elections.

However, the authors add that "experience shows that intervening in countries with these characteristics often leads to the growth and progress of democracy". In addition, the authors note that although the US has punished some countries after human rights abuse, by invading countries and imposing sanctions (e.g., Haiti, Iraq, Cuba), it has refrained from doing so in others, despite the presence of similar violence against human rights (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Russia).

A survey to determine North Americans' foreign policy preferences

The survey, conducted on a sample of nearly 1,500 US citizens, includes an experiment that randomly varies nine different characteristics of the potential targets and estimates the effects of each of these characteristics on people's opinions about the instruments for promoting democracy abroad. This design allows the authors to test the effect of an institutional feature (for example, a regime governed by a personalistic leader, such as the former leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein or Russian president, Vladimir Putin).

It was shown that these countries, whose regimes are a far cry from those that have civilian governments, elected by the citizens and with institutional balances (such as the US) are perceived as more threatening by US citizens, and would lead to adopting more coercive foreign policy instruments (military intervention and sanctions). And the opposite is true; countries that seem more legitimate, that hold elections with more than one party and have ties with the US, would be rewarded with a positive incentives, such as foreign democracy aid.

In addition to the institutional characteristics, the target country's alliance with the US and military force are important drivers of public support for war. US respondents responded that they would support a war when the regime is not an ally of the United States; and this support decreases significantly when the country is militarily strong.

The cases of Saudi Arabia and Egypt illustrate that despite having certain characteristics which, in theory, would push citizens to favour more coercive measures, both are US allies, which is an important attribute that, in itself, is capable of reducing support for punitive measures against these regimes.

"Our results show that people are more likely to support tough measures against personalistic autocratic regimes that do not hold elections and do not have ties to the US, such as Iraq and Libya. However, as we know from experience, these measures have proved ineffective, and have often not led to democracy but to civil war or state failure", the researchers conclude.

HOUSTON - (Nov. 17, 2020) - A new study from researchers at Rice University found that Americans' attitudes about gun ownership are impacted by the gender and race of firearms' potential owners.

"Race-gender bias in white Americans' preferences for gun availability" will appear in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Public Policy. The study is the first to examine how race and gender together shape attitudes toward gun availability.

The study was conducted by Matthew Hayes, an assistant professor of political science at Rice; David Fortunato, an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy; and Matthew Hibbing, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, Merced.

The researchers randomly assigned racially and gender-distinct names to study participants who were categorized by race, gender and political affiliation. Then they asked the survey subjects if they would support that person's right to own firearms to protect themselves and their family.

The survey not only found evidence of both racial and gender bias, it also showed Republicans were more likely to support gun rights than Democrats. White Democrats were much more willing to support a white woman's right to own a firearm than they were any other group. Republicans showed less support for a Black man owning a firearm than they did any other racial or gender group.

Hayes said he and fellow political scientists have long believed that gender and race should be considered together when evaluating opinions about gun ownership. The overall findings were not unexpected, he said, but there were some surprises, including how Democrats felt about white women owning guns, the first time those feelings have been conveyed in a scientific study.

Hayes and his fellow researchers also hope the study will shed light on biases among elected officials.

"I think these findings might help us get public policies that are better crafted for people who might be vulnerable or might tend not to get represented," he said. "The Republican Party, which has historically been stronger in protecting Second Amendment rights, needs to be aware of the racial and gender biases that exist regarding gun rights -- in theory, they should be just as willing to support the rights of African Americans as anyone else. As for Democratic lawmakers who are more likely to support gun control, they should be aware of how the restrictions they support will impact groups, such as women, who might want to be able to protect themselves.

"We know that a lot of firearm homicides in this country are related to domestic violence," Hayes continued. "The safety of women, who are much more likely to be victims of domestic violence, should factor into our gun control policymaking as well, absolutely."

A small drone takes a test flight through a space filled with randomly placed cardboard cylinders acting as stand-ins for trees, people or structures. The algorithm controlling the drone has been trained on a thousand simulated obstacle-laden courses, but it's never seen one like this. Still, nine times out of 10, the pint-sized plane dodges all the obstacles in its path.

This experiment is a proving ground for a pivotal challenge in modern robotics: the ability to guarantee the safety and success of automated robots operating in novel environments. As engineers increasingly turn to machine learning methods to develop adaptable robots, new work by Princeton University researchers makes progress on such guarantees for robots in contexts with diverse types of obstacles and constraints.

"Over the last decade or so, there's been a tremendous amount of excitement and progress around machine learning in the context of robotics, primarily because it allows you to handle rich sensory inputs," like those from a robot's camera, and map these complex inputs to actions, said Anirudha Majumdar, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton.

However, robot control algorithms based on machine learning run the risk of overfitting to their training data, which can make algorithms less effective when they encounter inputs that differ from those they were trained on. Majumdar's Intelligent Robot Motion Lab addressed this challenge by expanding the suite of available tools for training robot control policies, and quantifying the likely success and safety of robots performing in novel environments.

In three new papers, the researchers adapted machine learning frameworks from other arenas to the field of robot locomotion and manipulation. They turned to generalization theory, which is typically used in contexts that map a single input onto a single output, such as automated image tagging. The new methods are among the first to apply generalization theory to the more complex task of making guarantees on robots' performance in unfamiliar settings. While other approaches have provided such guarantees under more restrictive assumptions, the team's methods offer more broadly applicable guarantees on performance in novel environments, said Majumdar.

In the first paper, a proof of principle for applying the machine learning frameworks, the team tested their approach in simulations that included a wheeled vehicle driving through a space filled with obstacles, and a robotic arm grasping objects on a table. They also validated the technique by assessing the obstacle avoidance of a small drone called a Parrot Swing (a combination quadcopter and fixed-wing airplane) as it flew down a 60-foot-long corridor dotted with cardboard cylinders. The guaranteed success rate of the drone's control policy was 88.4%, and it avoided obstacles in 18 of 20 trials (90%).

The work, published Oct. 3 in the International Journal of Robotics Research, was coauthored by Majumdar; Alec Farid, a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering; and Anoopkumar Sonar, a computer science concentrator from Princeton's Class of 2021.

When applying machine learning techniques from other areas to robotics, said Farid, "there are a lot of special assumptions you need to satisfy, and one of them is saying how similar the environments you're expecting to see are to the environments your policy was trained on. In addition to showing that we can do this in the robotic setting, we also focused on trying to expand the types of environments that we could provide a guarantee for."

"The kinds of guarantees we're able to give range from about 80% to 95% success rates on new environments, depending on the specific task, but if you're deploying [an unmanned aerial vehicle] in a real environment, then 95% probably isn't good enough," said Majumdar. "I see that as one of the biggest challenges, and one that we are actively working on."

Still, the team's approaches represent much-needed progress on generalization guarantees for robots operating in unseen environments, said Hongkai Dai, a senior research scientist at the Toyota Research Institute in Los Altos, California.

"These guarantees are paramount to many safety-critical applications, such as self-driving cars and autonomous drones, where the training set cannot cover every possible scenario," said Dai, who was not involved in the research. "The guarantee tells us how likely it is that a policy can still perform reasonably well on unseen cases, and hence establishes confidence on the policy, where the stake of failure is too high."

In two other papers, to be presented Nov. 18 at the virtual Conference on Robot Learning, the researchers examined additional refinements to bring robot control policies closer to the guarantees that would be needed for real-world deployment. One paper used imitation learning, in which a human "expert" provides training data by manually guiding a simulated robot to pick up various objects or move through different spaces with obstacles. This approach can improve the success of machine learning-based control policies.

To provide the training data, lead author Allen Ren, a graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering, used a 3D computer mouse to control a simulated robotic arm tasked with grasping and lifting drinking mugs of various sizes, shapes and materials. Other imitation learning experiments involved the arm pushing a box across a table, and a simulation of a wheeled robot navigating around furniture in a home-like environment.

The researchers deployed the policies learned from the mug-grasping and box-pushing tasks on a robotic arm in the laboratory, which was able to pick up 25 different mugs by grasping their rims between its two finger-like grippers -- not holding the handle as a human would. In the box-pushing example, the policy achieved 93% success on easier tasks and 80% on harder tasks.

"We have a camera on top of the table that sees the environment and takes a picture five times per second," said Ren. "Our policy training simulation takes this image and outputs what kind of action the robot should take, and then we have a controller that moves the arm to the desired locations based on the output of the model."

A third paper demonstrated the development of vision-based planners that provide guarantees for flying or walking robots to carry out planned sequences of movements through diverse environments. Generating control policies for planned movements brought a new problem of scale -- a need to optimize vision-based policies with thousands, rather than hundreds, of dimensions.

"That required coming up with some new algorithmic tools for being able to tackle that dimensionality and still be able to give strong generalization guarantees," said lead author Sushant Veer, a postdoctoral research associate in mechanical and aerospace engineering.

A key aspect of Veer's strategy was the use of motion primitives, in which a policy directs a robot to go straight or turn, for example, rather than specifying a torque or velocity for each movement. Narrowing the space of possible actions makes the planning process more computationally tractable, said Majumdar.

Veer and Majumdar evaluated the vision-based planners on simulations of a drone navigating around obstacles and a four-legged robot traversing rough terrain with slopes as high as 35 degrees -- "a very challenging problem that a lot of people in robotics are still trying to solve," said Veer.

In the study, the legged robot achieved an 80% success rate on unseen test environments. The researchers are working to further improve their policies' guarantees, as well as assessing the policies' performance on real robots in the laboratory.

Some pharmaceutical companies have received criticism for engaging in illegal activities, such as providing kickbacks and bribes, knowingly shipping adulterated or contaminated drugs to pharmacies, and marketing drugs for unapproved uses. This study examined financial penalties for illegal activities among large pharmaceutical firms in relation to annual revenues.

Methods

We collected data on financial penalties for pharmaceutical firms listed on the Global 500 or Fortune 1000 lists using procedures similar to Almashat et al.1 Consistent with prior research,2 we analyzed all firms that met inclusion criteria and appeared on the list for 7 years or more. All instances of financial penalties from state and federal settlements between January 2003 and December 2016 were obtained from the US Department of Justice, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and states' attorneys general. Each settlement included the penalty amount and described the scope, type, and duration of the associated illegal activity. We secured missing data through Freedom of Information Act requests. Financial penalties were attributed to the settlement year.

To adjust for inflation, we calculated the cumulative dollar value of each firm's financial penalties for each year and applied the Bureau of Economic Analysis' Gross Domestic Product Deflator to convert the cumulative amount to 2016 dollars. When firms merged with or were acquired by other firms during the study period, we attributed all penalty settlements, both before and after acquisition, to the firm that engaged in the illegal activity. We calculated the mean penalty amount by dividing the total dollar value of each company's financial penalties by the total number of penalties levied during the study period. We calculated the total dollar value of each company's financial penalties as a percentage of their total revenues during the study period using data from Compustat, Mergent Online, Edgar Direct, and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We provided the mean duration of illegal activity for penalties settled during the study period. We used content analysis to classify each settlement into 1 or more types of illegal activity and summarized the frequency by firm and illegal activity type.

Results

Among 26 firms in our sample, 22 (85%) had financial penalties for illegal activities. The combined dollar value of financial penalties totaled $33 billion for 2003 to 2016. Eleven firms with financial penalties exceeding $1 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars accounted for $28.8 billion (88%) of the total penalties (Table 1). The firms with the highest penalties as a percentage of revenues (ie, >1%) were Schering-Plough, GlaxoSmithKline, Allergan, and Wyeth; the number of penalties for these firms varied between 1 (Allergan) and 27 (GlaxoSmithKline). Four firms had financial penalties that totaled less than $80 million and no more than 2 penalty settlements (Actavis [Watson], Roche Group, Genzyme, and Perrigo). All but 1 firm (Perrigo) engaged in illegal activities associated with penalties for 4 or more years. An additional 4 firms received no financial penalties for illegal activities during this period. The most common types of illegal activity involving penalties (Table 2) were pricing violations, off-label marketing, and kickbacks. The firms with the greatest variety in the types of illegal activities involving penalties were GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Merck. Three firms (Actavis, Allergan, and Perrigo) had penalties limited to a single violation type.

Discussion

Among the large pharmaceutical companies included in this study, 85% had evidence of financial penalties for illegal activities. Given the scope and nature of the illegal activities involving financial penalties, physicians and regulators should exhibit vigilance over the activities of large pharmaceutical firms. Four firms were not found to have penalties for illegal activities during the sample period. This may indicate an ability for illegal activity to be undetected, although these firms may instead have effective ethics and compliance programs.3,4

Limitations of the study include focus on the largest firms, exclusion of class-action settlements and penalties by non-US governments, and the possibility that some settlements were missed. Also, only settlements from a limited time period were examined; whether these data reflect current activities of pharmaceutical companies or whether financial penalties for illegal activities have increased or decreased more recently could not be determined. Other industries also engage in illegal activities, but a comparative analysis is beyond the scope of this study.

Oil droplets can be made to act like predators, chasing down other droplets that flee like prey. The behavior, which is controlled by chemical signaling produced by the droplets, mimics behavior seen among living organisms but, until now, had not been recreated in synthetic systems. This tunable chemical system could potentially serve a model to help understand interactions in many-body systems such as schools of fish, bacterial colonies, or swarms of insects.

An international team of researchers led by Penn State scientists describe the system in a paper published November 16, 2020 in the journal Nature Chemistry.

"By controlling the chemistry of the oil droplets, we can create a system in which the droplets behave actively and communicate with each other through chemical gradients," said Lauren Zarzar, assistant professor of chemistry at Penn State and the leader of the research team. "The exciting thing that we found is that you can design a system of droplets that exhibit 'non-reciprocal' interactions. One droplet is attracted to the other, while the other is repelled, similar to the behavior of predator and prey."

The researchers place microscale droplets of the two different oils into a solution of water and a surfactant--a compound commonly found in soaps that lowers the surface tension of liquids. One of the oils dissolves more easily in the surfactant solution causing those droplets to emit a chemical gradient of oil molecules into its surroundings. Droplets are repelled by the dissolved oil.

"Initially this cloud of oil around the droplets is basically symmetrical and the droplets don't move," said Caleb Meredith, a graduate student at Penn State and co-first author of the paper. "But what we discovered is that the prey droplets can actually uptake some of the oil released by the predator droplets, setting up a source-sink exchange of oil between the droplets. When the droplets get close enough, it creates an asymmetry in the chemical gradient between the two droplets and causes the predator droplet to move towards the prey, setting up a chase."

The asymmetry of the oil chemical gradient generated by the source and sink causes a difference in the surface tension across the surface of both the predator and prey droplets. The gradient causes the predator droplet (source) to move toward the prey droplet (sink). Similarly, due to the effect of the predator's emitted chemical gradient, the prey is repelled by the approaching predator.

"One of the surprising results is that the two oil droplets don't need to be very different chemically from each other to elicit this behavior," said Zarzar. "We looked at a wide variety of chemical compositions for the oils and surfactant, which allowed us to establish a set of rules that govern these interactions. We can use these rules to tune the strength of the interactions by controlling the compositions of the droplet oils or surfactant."

The research team also developed a model, which based on measurements of the speeds of chasing between individual pairs of droplets, was able to accurately simulate the motion of many droplets and show how they organize into larger clusters that move in a variety of fashions.

"They really look to me like they're alive sometimes," said Meredith. "When multiple droplets get together into clusters they can start to rotate, stop-and-go, move in spirals, and even split apart into smaller clusters."

The researchers say that by understanding the types of rules that govern these interactions, their system could eventually be used for experimentally modeling many-body systems ranging from the behavior of large numbers of animals to the interactions that might have played a role in the evolution of early life.

"What we are doing is really basic, fundamental research where the motivation is to understand the processes at work that can control the activity of inanimate things like the oil droplets," said Zarzar. "But, these ideas could find application in other areas, like self-assembly, group behaviors, and even in thinking about the origins of life on Earth where mixtures of simple chemical components had to somehow organize into non-equilibrium structures. Clearly, we are not looking at the same chemicals, but we may be able to establish parameters or conditions that, for example, give rise to similar types of interactions that occurred."

KANSAS CITY, MO--In a new study, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified a handful of variations in an amino acid sequence critical for retaining the ancestral function of a gene over the course of 600 million years of evolution.

The breakthrough discovery detailed in an article published online November 12, 2020, in Genes and Development, offers important insight into the evolution of the gene regulatory networks that drive diversity among organisms, and shows that small differences in key protein sequences can lead to important evolutionary changes.

"It's generally understood that gene duplication and divergence allow genes to take on new functions, while essential genes are conserved and remain unchanged during evolution," says Stowers Investigator Robb Krumlauf, PhD. "But how variation in proteins, the building blocks of life, affects this process has been unclear."

The Krumlauf Lab at the Stowers Institute used a cross-species functional analysis of the labial Hox gene in the fruit fly and related genes in the mouse to explore this question.

The study used modern gene editing technologies, including CRISPR/CAS9, to replace the labial Hox gene in the fruit fly with the three related genes in the mouse--HOXA1, B1, and D1. The researchers found that replacing labial function with HOXA1 in fruit flies restores its original function, but B1 and D1 do not, suggesting that A1 retains an ancestral function, while B1 and D1 have diverged.

"In 600 million years of evolutionary time, only one gene has retained the ancestral activity," says Narendra Pratap Singh, PhD, a senior research associate in the Krumlauf Lab and first author of the article. "The other genes evolved and have taken on a new function. This was a great surprise."

The researchers pinpointed a six amino acid sequence critical for the ancestral function of A1, which is important for modulating interactions with other proteins. Also surprising was the fact that the sequence makes up only 2% of total amino acids in the protein, suggesting that tiny differences in certain key regions can have a big impact on protein function.

"Subtle and seemingly innocuous differences in protein sequence can profoundly impact the course of evolution," says Stowers Investigator Kausik Si, PhD, an author on the study. "Also, in the evolution of protein function, we tend to focus on what is conserved. This study suggests we should start paying attention to small differences, because some of the most interesting biology is hidden in the tiny differences."

In mice, HOXB1 appears to have evolved to have a new function in vertebrates to allow for greater diversity in facial expression and feeding behavior not found in invertebrates. Mutations in B1 in mice and humans affect facial morphology, neuronal development, and nerve function. In humans, Mobius syndrome, a neurological condition that results in lack of facial expressions, is sometimes associated with B1 mutations.

The study builds on more than three decades of work on Hox genes, a family of "master planner" genes that control the layout of the developing embryo from head to tail. Krumlauf's seminal discovery that Hox genes are essentially the same in mice and fruit flies helped establish the idea that there is a common genetic tool kit and that many organisms have surprisingly similar genes. The lab's comparative studies in mouse, chick, and zebrafish, and more recently sea lamprey, continue to provide critical information on how different species use the same genetic toolkit to form diverse structures. Hox transcription factors are well-suited for investigations into gene duplication and divergence because of their expansion from invertebrates to mammals.

The work paves the way for additional studies on the evolution of protein activity as well as further exploration into the role of conserved toolkit genes following gene duplication and divergence.

"I think we are poised to exploit the emerging strengths of structural biology, functional analyses, and genome engineering," Krumlauf says. "We can really ask, 'Is this role preserved in other invertebrates? Is this gene or protein really doing the same thing or has it evolved completely new functions?' I think there's a new era of analysis now feasible because of the power of gene editing."

Additional contributors to the study include Bony De Kumar, PhD, Ariel Paulson, Mark E. Parrish, PhD, Ying Zhang, PhD, Laurence Florens, PhD, and Joan Conaway, PhD. This work was funded by the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

Lay Summary of Findings

In a new study, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research have identified tiny differences in a key protein sequence that can have an important impact on how species evolve. The breakthrough discovery, detailed in an article published online November 12, 2020, in Genes and Development, sheds light on the evolution of the gene regulatory networks that drive diversity among organisms.

The study from the laboratory of Robb Krumlauf, PhD, used modern gene editing technologies to replace the labial Hox gene in the fruit fly with the three related genes in the mouse--HOXA1, B1, and D1. The researchers found replacing labial function with HOXA1 in fruit flies restores its original function, but B1 and D1 do not, suggesting that A1 retains an ancestral function that has survived 600 million years of evolution, while B1 and D1 have diverged. The researchers pinpointed a six amino acid sequence critical for the ancestral function of A1, which is important for modulating interactions with other proteins. The work paves the way for additional studies on the evolution of protein activity as well as further exploration into the role of toolkit genes in gene duplication and divergence.

AMHERST, Mass. - Among seismologists, the geology of Alaska's earthquake- and volcano-rich coast from the Aleutian Islands to the southeast is fascinating, but not well understood. Now, with more sophisticated tools than before, a University of Massachusetts Amherst team reports unexpected new details about the area's tectonic plates and their relationships to volcanoes.

Plate tectonics - the constant underground movement of continental and ocean shelves, is often characterized by "subduction zones" where plates clash, one usually sliding under another. Many are prime earthquake- and volcano-prone regions.

Lead author Xiaotao Yang says, "For a long time, the whole central Alaska region was thought to have one simple subduction plate. What we discovered is that there are actually two major subduction slabs. It's a surprise that we see differences between these two slabs and the associate mantle materials." Overall, Yang says the new research shows, "there are many more subtleties and variations that we had not seen before."

Yang, who did this work at UMass Amherst with co-author Haiying Gao, is now on the faculty at Purdue University. Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, they point out that central Alaska is "an ideal place to investigate subduction segmentation and its correlation with volcano distribution" because "it is not clearly understood what controls the distribution of arc volcanoes."

Yang says their study highlights how complex a subduction zone can be and how this complexity may control volcano distribution. It also helps to clarify a long-standing question in seismology: what determines whether volcanoes are present and whether they are in a linear arc, or in clusters. Yang says it depends in part on whether rocks deep in the mantle above the subducting slab melt into magma, and how magma is stored in the crust.

For their investigations, Yang and Gao used a powerful seismic imaging technique that Yang says is similar to a medical CAT scan of the Earth. With it, they constructed a detailed seismic velocity model of the Aleutian-Alaska margin from crust to the uppermost mantle. Seismic velocity refers to the rate at which a seismic wave travels through a material such as magma or crust. Waves travel more slowly through low-density, low-velocity material compared to surrounding rocks, for example, he says.

The researchers' new model reveals multiple downgoing slabs, with various seismic velocities, thicknesses and dip angles, they write. Yang adds, "Once we got to look at the two central Alaska volcanoes for the first time in a really precise way, what we see is a much more complicated subduction system than we knew before. This new information about the complexity helps us to understand the distribution of volcanoes in Alaska. It's all more complicated than the tools could show us before," he adds.

Their findings help to explain why there is a break in the arc of volcanoes called the Denali Volcanic Gap, Yang says. Below it is a wedge-shaped region of high seismic velocity material above the subduction plate but below the mantle. It is relatively cold and dry with no melting, which explains why there is no volcano in the region.

By contrast, the cluster of volcanoes in the Wrangell Volcanic Field do not have the same signature, he adds. The Wrangell volcanoes have distinctly low seismic velocity material in the crust. It's a rather large magma reservoir that may explain why they're in a cluster instead of an arc, Yang says, though "the fact that it's there helps to explain where the magma came from for past eruptions."

This study was made possible by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) array of seismic sensors in Alaska, part of its EarthScope Transportable Array program (http://www.usarray.org), Yang notes. His co-author Gao had startup funding from UMass Amherst and an NSF CAREER grant. They also used computational resources at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke.

Yang says that their work adds to seismologists' understanding of volcano distribution in the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest, South America and the south Pacific. He hopes to follow up with more detailed analyses of magma reservoirs in the crust, how volcanoes are fed and particularly, whether Aleutian volcanoes have magma in the crust.

Nov. 17, 2020 - The latest clinical practice guideline on home oxygen therapy addresses long-term and ambulatory oxygen therapy for adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and interstitial lung disease (ILD) and includes the most comprehensive review of the evidence of any oxygen guideline to date.

The guideline from the American Thoracic Society was posted online, ahead of print in the Nov.15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The new guideline was borne out of the 2017 ATS workshop on Optimizing Home Oxygen Therapy data, which "identified the lack of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for appropriate use of home oxygen as a critical gap," wrote the guideline panel.

Further rationale for new guidance came out of "a summary of results from an online survey of almost 2,000 oxygen users in the U.S. describing the multiple problems they had in accessing and using their oxygen," said Susan S. Jacobs, MS, RN, co-chair of the guideline committee and a research nurse manager in Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at Stanford University.

"Oxygen is a common, yet burdensome, equipment-laden therapy, so if we are going to prescribe it, there should be enough evidence that we can tell our patients what they should expect in terms of improving their symptoms, and the quality and quantity of their lives," noted Jacobs.

To that end, the multidisciplinary panel used the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach to formulate their recommendations summarized below:

COPD Recommendations

In adults with COPD who have severe chronic resting room air hypoxemia, we recommend prescribing Long Term Oxygen Therapy (LTOT) at least 15 hours per day (strong recommendation, moderate quality evidence).

In adults with COPD who have moderate chronic resting room air hypoxemia, we suggest not prescribing LTOT (conditional recommendation, low quality evidence).

In adults with COPD who have severe exertional room air hypoxemia we suggest prescribing ambulatory oxygen (conditional recommendation, moderate quality evidence).

ILD Recommendations

For adults with ILD who have severe chronic resting room air hypoxemia we recommend prescribing LTOT at least 15 hours per day (strong recommendation, very low quality evidence).

For adults with ILD who have severe exertional room air hypoxemia we suggest prescribing ambulatory oxygen (conditional recommendation, low quality evidence).

Liquid Oxygen Recommendation

In patients with chronic lung disease who are mobile outside of the home and require continuous oxygen flow rates of >3L/minute during exertion, we suggest prescribing portable liquid oxygen (conditional recommendation, very low quality evidence).

The guidelines also include a 'best-practice statement' that describes a minimum standard of oxygen education and training for all oxygen users.

The ATS has published nearly 20 clinical practice guidelines on various conditions, ranging from allergy and asthma to TB and other pulmonary infections. For ATS guideline implementation tools and derivatives, go here.