Culture

PHILADELPHIA (September 3, 2020) - Adolescence is a difficult period of development, made more complex for those with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). The challenges of managing multiple doses of daily insulin administration, blood glucose monitoring, dietary and exercise requirements, can make self-care difficult and complicate outcomes. Adolescents with T1DM often have poorer diabetes outcomes than others, indicating that glucose control is difficult for them to maintain.

Data show that 88 percent of teens own a cell phone and more than 50 percent text with friends daily. Therefore, mobile technolgoies could be a key to helping adolescents more fully engage with their T1DM self-care.

In an article in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, researchers outline their study combining text messaging with MyDiaText? and financial incentives designed to help improve outcomes for adolescents with T1DM. The study results showed persistent engagement with and potential for increase in self-care using this intervention. MyDiaText? was developed in 2012 by a collaboration with the School of Nursing, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"We have demonstrated that text messaging is a promising method by which to engage adolescents with T1D who have suboptimal control, in their self-care and deserves further investigation. There remains a need to develop a digital health intervention that significantly impacts glycemic control in this population" writes Terri H. Lipman, PhD, CRNP, FAAN, the Miriam Stirl Endowed Term Professor of Nutrition, Professor of Nursing of Children and Assistant Dean for Community Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (Penn Nursing). Lipman is the senior author of the article. The article, "A Text Messaging Intervention with Financial Incentive for Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes" is set for publicaiton this fall but is now available online here.

ITHACA, N.Y. - People enjoy witnessing extraordinary individuals - from athletes to CEOs -extend long runs of dominance in their fields, but they aren't as interested in seeing similar streaks of success by teams or groups, according to new research from Cornell University.

"Individual success inspires awe in a way that team success does not," said co-author Thomas Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell. "[Individual success] makes us hopeful that human potential isn't as limited as thought it was. If that height is reached by a team, its cause is seen as more diffuse and isn't as exciting."

In a new study, Gilovich and lead author Jesse Walker conducted nine studies involving 2,625 Americans. In one study, they examined people's view on the success of Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter who won the 100-meter dash in the last three Olympics. Bolt was also a member of a team that won the gold medal in the 4x100-meter relay at those same Olympic games.

Many more people reported they would prefer to see Bolt win the gold medal in the individual event in the next Olympics than in the relay event, results showed.

The preference for seeing individual streaks doesn't just apply to famous athletes in familiar sports. Studies showed people supported individual runs of dominance over team dominance in the British Quizzing Championship and in the best closure rates on homicide cases in U.S. police departments.

This preference has implications in the business world, as well. In one study, participants read about electronic components manufacturer AVnet, one of the 350 largest companies in America.

Participants who read that AVnet's success could be attributed to its CEO thought the company should command a greater share of the market than did the participants who were told the company's success was tied to a group of executives.

Other studies by the researchers looked at why people feel differently about individual versus team winning streaks. They found that people attributed individual streaks of success to the people themselves, while team success was attributed to situational factors.

"We're now looking at how this effect might influence people's reactions to economic inequality and policies designed to alleviate it," Gilovich said. "Are people less troubled by evidence of inequality expressed as big gaps between individuals than expressed as big gaps between groups?"

Adding noise to enhance a weak signal is a sensing phenomenon common in the animal world but unusual in manmade sensors. Now Penn State researchers have added a small amount of background noise to enhance very weak signals in a light source too dim to sense.

In contrast to most sensors, for which noise is a problem that should be suppressed, they found that adding just the right amount of background noise can actually increase a signal too weak for sensing by normal sensors, to a level that can reach detectability.

Although their sensor, based on a two-dimensional material called molybdenum disulfide, detects light, the same principle can be used to detect other signals, and because it requires very little energy and space compared to conventional sensors, could find wide adaptation in the coming Internet of Things (IoT). IoT will deploy tens of millions of sensors to monitor conditions in the home and factories, and low energy requirements would be a strong bonus.

"This phenomenon is something that is frequently seen in nature," says Saptarshi Das, an assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics. "For example, a paddlefish that lives in muddy waters cannot actually find its food, which is a phytoplankton called Daphnia, by sight. The paddlefish has electroreceptors that can pick up very weak electric signal from the Daphnia at up to 50 meters. If you add a little bit of noise, it can find the Daphnia at 75 meters or even 100 meters. This ability adds to the evolutionary success of this animal."

Another interesting example is the jewel beetle, which can detect a forest fire at 50 miles distance. The most advanced infrared detector can only detect at 10 to 20 miles. This is due to a phenomenon these animals use called stochastic resonance.

"Stochastic resonance is a phenomenon where a weak signal which is below the detection threshold of a sensor can be detected in the presence of a finite and appropriate amount of noise," according to Akhil Dodda, a graduate student in engineering science and mechanics and co-first author on a new paper appearing this week in Nature Communications.

In their paper, the researchers demonstrate the first use of this technique to detect a subthreshold photonic signal.

One possible use being considered is for troops in combat. Army personnel in the field already carry very bulky equipment. It is unfeasible to add the heavy, power-hungry equipment required to enhance a subthreshold signal. Their technique is also applicable in resource-constrained environments or beneath the ocean where people want to monitor very weak signals. It could also be used in volcanic locations or to monitor earthquakes in time to give an alarm.

"Who would have thought that noise could play a constructive role in signal detection? We have challenged tradition to detect otherwise undetectable signals with miniscule energy consumption. This can open doors to a totally unexplored and ignored field of noise enhanced signal detection," said Aaryan Oberoi, a graduate student from the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics and co-first author on the paper.

Their next step is to demonstrate this technique on a silicon photodiode, which would make the device very scalable. Any state-of-the art sensor can be enhanced by this concept, Das says.

Researchers develop first-ever battery-free, energy-harvesting, interactive device

Looking and feeling like an 8-bit Nintendo Game Boy, the device can play games straight from their original cartridges

Ultimate goal of battery-free computing is to reduce society's reliance on batteries, which are costly, environmentally hazardous and end up in landfills

EVANSTON, Ill. -- A hand-held video game console allowing indefinite gameplay might be a parent's worst nightmare.

But this Game Boy is not just a toy. It's a powerful proof-of-concept, developed by researchers at Northwestern University and the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands, that pushes the boundaries of battery-free intermittent computing into the realm of fun and interaction.

Instead of batteries, which are costly, environmentally hazardous and ultimately end up in landfills, this device harvests energy from the sun -- and the user. These advances enable gaming to last forever without having to stop and recharge the battery.

"It's the first battery-free interactive device that harvests energy from user actions," said Northwestern's Josiah Hester, who co-led the research. "When you press a button, the device converts that energy into something that powers your gaming."

"Sustainable gaming will become a reality, and we made a major step in that direction -- by getting rid of the battery completely," said TU Delft's Przemyslaw Pawelczak, who co-led the research with Hester. "With our platform, we want to make a statement that it is possible to make a sustainable gaming system that brings fun and joy to the user."

The teams will present the research virtually at UbiComp 2020, a major conference within the field of interactive systems, on Sept. 15.

Hester is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. Pawelczak is an assistant professor in the Embedded Software Lab at TU Delft. Their team includes Jasper de Winkel and Vito Kortbeek, both Ph.D. candidates at TU Delft.

The researchers' energy aware gaming platform (ENGAGE) has the size and form factor of the original Game Boy, while being equipped with a set of solar panels around the screen. Button presses by the user are a second source of energy. Most importantly, it impersonates the Game Boy processor. Although this solution requires a lot of computational power, and therefore energy, it allows any popular retro game to be played straight from its original cartridge.

As the device switches between power sources, it does experience short losses in power. To ensure an acceptable duration of gameplay between power failures, the researchers designed the system hardware and software from the ground up to be energy aware as well as very energy efficient. They also developed a new technique for storing the system state in non-volatile memory, minimizing overhead and allowing quick restoration when power returns. This eliminates the need to press "save" as seen in traditional platforms, as the player can now continue gameplay from the exact point of the device fully losing power -- even if Mario is in mid-jump.

On a not-too-cloudy day, and for games that require at least moderate amounts of clicking, gameplay interruptions typically last less than one second for every 10 seconds of gameplay. The researchers find this to be a playable scenario for some games -- including Chess, Solitaire and Tetris -- but certainly not yet for all (action) games.

Although there is still a long way to go before state-of-the-art 21st century hand-held game consoles become fully battery-free, the researchers hope their devices raise awareness of the environmental impact of the small devices that make up the Internet of Things. Batteries are costly, environmentally hazardous and they must eventually be replaced to avoid that the entire device ends up at the landfill.

"Our work is the antithesis of the Internet of Things, which has many devices with batteries in them," Hester said. "Those batteries eventually end up in the garbage. If they aren't fully discharged, they can become hazardous. They are hard to recycle. We want to build devices that are more sustainable and can last for decades."

Leesburg, VA, September 3, 2020--According to ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), nearly half (47.7%) of the research articles published in major radiology journals declared funding--a proportion that has increased from 17% of articles in 1994 and 26.9% published between 2001 and 2010.

"Most funded articles received support from federal sponsors or nonprofit foundations, whereas only a minority of funded articles were supported by private industry," explained first author Rayan H.M. Alkhawtani from the department of radiology, nuclear medicine, and molecular imaging at University Medical Center Groningen in The Netherlands.

And as Alkhawtani et al. concluded, "funding was not associated with a higher citation rate."

The Dutch team included a total of 600 consecutive original research articles published between January and October 2016 in three large journals: AJR, Radiology, and European Radiology. Using linear regression analysis to ascertain the association between research funding and citation rate, adjustments were made for the following seven factors:

journal,

continent of origin of first author,

subspecialty,

study findings included in article title,

number of authors,

immediate open access publication,

time since publication online.

Finding that funding was declared in 286 of 600 (47.7%) included articles, the authors of this AJR "Original Research" article identified the six most significant funding sources:

federal sponsorship (29.4%),

nonprofit foundation (16.4%),

both federal sponsorship and nonprofit foundation (16.1%),

private industry (10.1%),

intramural institutional research funding (9.8%),

other combinations of funding sources (18.2%).

"Articles with first authors whose continent of origin was Europe (p

Meanwhile, the team noted that articles published in Radiology were significantly more frequently funded (p

Ultimately, citation rate was not significantly different between funded and unfunded articles (p = 0.166), and in the adjusted linear regression analysis, funding was not significantly associated with citation rate (β coefficient, ?0.31; 95% CI, ?3.27 to 2.66; p = 0.838).

Short-term flooding from extreme storm events poses a serious transportation challenge in U.S. cities. This problem--which is anticipated to grow over the next century with our global climate crisis--is often hardest on vulnerable populations, including low-income and minority neighborhoods. The latest report from the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC), led by Courtney Crosson of University of Arizona (UA), advances national research methods for assessing flood vulnerability and prioritizing transportation improvement investments to ensure that no community is left stranded when the next flood occurs.

Crosson and fellow researchers Daoqin Tong (Arizona State University) and Yinan Zhang (UA) conducted a flood vulnerability assessment of the City of Tucson, Arizona's multi-modal transportation system in low-income and minority neighborhoods. They identified priority locations for Tucson to invest in improvements to mitigate urban transportation system flooding, and are now working with city and regional agencies to implement those findings. This project also serves as a proof of concept to advance national research methods aimed at reducing the mobility impacts of chronic flooding.

Download the final report: https://ppms.trec.pdx.edu/media/project_files/NITC-SS-1262_Urban_Transportation_System_Flood_Vulnerability_Assessment_FZOGs2O.pdf

EFFECTIVE USE OF GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE IN LOW-INCOME NEIGHBORHOODS

Green infrastructure is a growing urban trend where stormwater is managed by expanding permeable areas of natural vegetation throughout a city. This approach to water management is intended to protect, restore, or mimic the natural water cycle. Crosson's research team found that building comprehensive neighborhood-scale green infrastructure in the right-of-way is effective at increasing multi-modal access in moderate flooding conditions.

This green infrastructure solution did not address the mobility issues that result from extreme flooding. Rather than municipalities selecting areas that have the highest volumes of flooding or the highest volume of resident complaints, funds for green infrastructure should be invested in low-income neighborhoods subject to moderate flooding in order to achieve the greatest improvement of multimodal access.

Of the areas studied, 93% were part of census tracts with median household incomes below the Tucson average. Researchers intentionally focused on low-income neighborhoods, since too often people living in those areas are hardest hit by the impacts of natural disasters. Previous research in this area has focused heavily on the vulnerability of the transportation infrastructure alone, largely ignoring the people in the communities. A NITC project funded in 2020 will develop a new methodology that incorporates community socioeconomic vulnerability in the evaluation of transportation infrastructure vulnerabilities for cities and regions facing hazards.

RESEARCH METHOD FOR ASSESSING FLOOD VULNERABILITY IN TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Stage One - Estimate Flood Conditions in Low-Income Neighborhoods: Researchers estimated flood conditions for a 5-year, 1-hour storm event (meaning a flood from a rainstorm lasting one hour, of a size that occurs roughly every five years) using FLO-2D flood modeling software and a digital elevation model constructed using LiDAR data. This hydrological analysis was performed both at the city-scale and at a 20-foot grid resolution.

Stage Two - Identify Multimodal Transportation Priorities: The team then analyzed neighborhood transportation vulnerability. Using the results from their flood model, they looked at overall transportation system performance across three modes (driving, bicycling and transit). Data from the most recent 10 years of vehicular counts, bicycle counts, and bus stop ridership were used to identify the top ten priority locations for flood mitigation, based where usage was highest for each of the three modes.

Stage Three - Perform Green Infrastructure Scenario Analyses: Lastly, they took those top ten sites for each of the three modes of transportation and performed thirty green infrastructure scenario analyses. They wanted to see the change in transportation network accessibility after the same flood conditions, but with comprehensive neighborhood-scale green infrastructure in place. To do this, they used ArcGIS Hydrology Analysis to find the "pour points," or places where water flows out of the area. Then they altered their model to include roadside basins (following design standards from NACTO and Pima County) to control this flow.

Based on these model results, researchers identified five key green infrastructure design performance priorities.

FIVE KEY DESIGN PRIORITIES FOR GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE TO MAXIMIZE MULTIMODAL ACCESSIBILITY

These five principles can be used by transportation planners and engineers, hydrologists, flood managers, and urban designers when approaching and evaluating project sites and investments to maximize the impact on increased multimodal accessibility.

Prioritize Upstream Mitigation - Across the thirty scenarios, the priority segments with the greatest improved transportation access were in areas that had substantial upstream mitigation. This suggests that green infrastructure should not only be implemented directly adjacent to priority transit locations, but also (and sometimes more importantly) implemented upstream of the priority segment.

Prioritize Moderate Flooding - Across the thirty scenarios, the greatest impacts on improved transportation access were in areas that received moderate flooding, in comparison to areas of extreme flooding. Often municipalities and transportation agencies are motivated to place green infrastructure installations in rights-of-way adjacent to areas where there are the greatest flooding concerns and highest volume of resident complaints. But to help with extreme flooding, larger implementations (such as underground stormwater piping or large basins) would need to be implemented in concert with smaller investments. When budget is limited to neighborhood-scale investments, in order to visibly show an impact on reducing flooding and increasing accessibility to the multimodal network, moderately flooded sites are the best candidates.

Prioritize Network Gains - When selecting project sites, it is critical to consider the network gains that can be accomplished by concentrating the green infrastructure within an area. By addressing the flooding issue in one street or sidewalk segment, other downstream flooding concerns may be helped as well.

Prioritize Large Right-of-Way Areas - Across the thirty sites and segments, the largest impacts often occurred when there was a substantial amount of right-of-way available for implementation of green infrastructure. Taken into consideration with the other design principles, the area (and corresponding volume) of the available right-of-way can make a large difference in total flood reduction success.

Prioritize Pedestrian Travel Locations - The greatest impacts of green infrastructure on accessibility were in pedestrian access to bus stops. The width of these designated areas to mitigate were smaller in the pedestrian cases compared to bicycle and vehicle cases. Acting as a buffer between road and pedestrian walking areas, the green infrastructure most successfully supported greater access.

IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

The research expects direct outcomes on future planning decisions made by the City of Tucson Department of Transportation, Tucson Water, Planning & Development Services, and Pima County Regional Flood Control District (RFCD). The NITC researchers on this project have met with the Director of Tucson Department of Transportation and RFCD, and the leadership of both agencies have expressed great interest in the research findings for upcoming decision-making around the allocation of green infrastructure funds for roadway flooding mitigation.

This research can serve as a proof of concept for a larger, long-term project to advance national research methods to reduce the impact of chronic flooding on the multi-modal transportation network. Future research should assess impact across time durations (rather than simple peak event calculations) and work to optimize green infrastructure implementation across multiple benefits for multiple modes of transportation (rather than individual modes).

By systematically prioritizing these projects in the right-of-way, cities can move toward increased transportation network accessibility and expanded equity.

This research was funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities, with additional support from Pima County Flood Control and Tucson Water.

The National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) is one of seven U.S. Department of Transportation national university transportation centers. NITC is a program of the Transportation Research and Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University. This PSU-led research partnership also includes the Oregon Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, University of Oregon, University of Texas at Arlington and University of Utah. We pursue our theme -- improving mobility of people and goods to build strong communities -- through research, education and technology transfer.

HOUSTON - (Sept. 3, 2020) - Nature's speed limits aren't posted on road signs, but Rice University physicists have discovered a new way to deduce them that is better -- infinitely better, in some cases -- than previous methods.

"The big question is, 'How fast can anything -- information, mass, energy -- move in nature?'" said Kaden Hazzard, a theoretical quantum physicist at Rice. "It turns out that if somebody hands you a material, it is incredibly difficult, in general, to answer the question."

In a study published today in the American Physical Society journal PRX Quantum, Hazzard and Rice graduate student Zhiyuan Wang describe a new method for calculating the upper bound of speed limits in quantum matter.

"At a fundamental level, these bounds are much better than what was previously available," said Hazzard, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and member of the Rice Center for Quantum Materials. "This method frequently produces bounds that are 10 times more accurate, and it's not unusual for them to be 100 times more accurate. In some cases, the improvement is so dramatic that we find finite speed limits where previous approaches predicted infinite ones."

Nature's ultimate speed limit is the speed of light, but in nearly all matter around us, the speed of energy and information is much slower. Frequently, it is impossible to describe this speed without accounting for the large role of quantum effects.

In the 1970s, physicists proved that information must move much slower than the speed of light in quantum materials, and though they could not compute an exact solution for the speeds, physicists Elliott Lieb and Derek Robinson pioneered mathematical methods for calculating the upper bounds of those speeds.

"The idea is that even if I can't tell you the exact top speed, can I tell you that the top speed must be less than a particular value," Hazzard said. "If I can give a 100% guarantee that the real value is less than that upper bound, that can be extremely useful."

Hazzard said physicists have long known that some of the bounds produced by the Lieb-Robinson method are "ridiculously imprecise."

"It might say that information must move less than 100 miles per hour in a material when the real speed was measured at 0.01 miles per hour," he said. "It's not wrong, but it's not very helpful."

The more accurate bounds described in the PRX Quantum paper were calculated by a method Wang created.

"We invented a new graphical tool that lets us account for the microscopic interactions in the material instead of relying only on cruder properties such as its lattice structure," Wang said.

Hazzard said Wang, a third-year graduate student, has an incredible talent for synthesizing mathematical relationships and recasting them in new terms.

"When I check his calculations, I can go step by step, churn through the calculations and see that they're valid," Hazzard said. "But to actually figure out how to get from point A to point B, what set of steps to take when there's an infinite variety of things you could try at each step, the creativity is just amazing to me."

The Wang-Hazzard method can be applied to any material made of particles moving in a discrete lattice. That includes oft-studied quantum materials like high-temperature superconductors, topological materials, heavy fermions and others. In each of these, the behavior of the materials arises from interactions of billions upon billions of particles, whose complexity is beyond direct calculation.

Hazzard said he expects the new method to be used in several ways.

"Besides the fundamental nature of this, it could be useful for understanding the performance of quantum computers, in particular in understanding how long they take to solve important problems in materials and chemistry," he said.

Hazzard said he is certain the method will also be used to develop numerical algorithms because Wang has shown it can put rigorous bounds on the errors produced by oft-used numerical techniques that approximate the behavior of large systems.

A popular technique physicists have used for more than 60 years is to approximate a large system by a small one that can be simulated by a computer.

"We draw a small box around a finite chunk, simulate that and hope that's enough to approximate the gigantic system," Hazzard said. "But there has not been a rigorous way of bounding the errors in these approximations."

The Wang-Hazzard method of calculating bounds could lead to just that.

"There is an intrinsic relationship between the error of a numerical algorithm and the speed of information propagation," Wang explained, using the sound of his voice and the walls in his room to illustrate the link.

"The finite chunk has edges, just as my room has walls. When I speak, the sound will get reflected by the wall and echo back to me. In an infinite system, there is no edge, so there is no echo."

In numerical algorithms, errors are the mathematical equivalent of echoes. They reverberate from the edges of the finite box, and the reflection undermines the algorithms' ability to simulate the infinite case. The faster information moves through the finite system, the shorter the time the algorithm faithfully represents the infinite.
Hazzard said he, Wang and others in his research group are using their method to craft numerical algorithms with guaranteed error bars.

"We don't even have to change the existing algorithms to put strict, guaranteed error bars on the calculations," he said. "But you can also flip it around and use this to make better numerical algorithms. We're exploring that, and other people are interested in using these as well."

There are good reasons to be worried about indoor air quality right now, in light of COVID-19. In addition to transmitting infectious agents, indoor spaces can also be a source of harmful chemicals in consumer products. A new analysis of indoor spaces on college campuses finds dust in classrooms and lecture halls harbors high levels of toxic flame retardants used in furniture raising health concerns from everyday exposures.

"The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that indoor spaces have an enormous impact on people's health," says lead author Kathryn Rodgers, MPH, a staff scientist at Silent Spring Institute. "So, it's critical that we find ways to reduce harmful exposures and create the healthiest indoor environments we can."

Scientists have long raised concerns about the use of flame retardants in products because the chemicals are linked with a range of health problems including thyroid disease, infertility, decreased IQ, and cancers. What's more, the chemicals don't stay put. Studies show flame retardants migrate out of furniture, accumulate in dust, and end up in people's bodies.

Reporting September 3 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, Rodgers and her colleagues collected dust from classrooms and lecture halls on four college campuses in New England. Some of the spaces adhered to older, outdated standards for furniture flammability (TB117 and TB133), which resulted in manufacturers adding large amounts of flame retardants to furniture. Others followed the more recent updated standard (TB117-2013) that allows for furniture free of toxic chemicals.

The researchers detected 43 different types of flame retardants and found the composition of flame retardants varied from space to space based on the flammability standard the different schools followed. Overall, flame retardant levels were significantly higher in spaces with outdated furniture meeting TB117 and/or TB133 than in spaces meeting the newer TB117-2013 standard.

In older TB133 classrooms, levels of a phased-out flame retardant and its replacement (BDE 209 and DBDPE) were three and eight times higher, respectively, than the highest levels previously reported in indoor spaces in the United States. That report came from an earlier study by Silent Spring that looked at dust in college dorm rooms.

The team also detected the carcinogen TDCIPP and a structurally similar flame retardant called TCIPP in rooms meeting the newer standard, likely due to the chemicals' widespread use in many other materials such as plastics, rubber, and textiles.

"This is an important study and the first to evaluate the impact of the new TB117-2013 standard on flame retardant levels in dust," says Arlene Blum, executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute. "It shows that updating an obscure fire standard leads to lower levels of harmful flame retardants and healthier indoor spaces."

Despite evidence that flame retardants do not improve fire safety, independent standard-setting organizations and some industry groups maintain their necessity in furniture. Yet, there are other ways of achieving fire safety without resorting to toxic chemicals, says Rodgers. Non-chemical methods, such as automatic sprinklers, smoke detectors, smoking bans, and the use of inherently less-flammable materials are effective and don't impact human health, she says.

In recent years, TB117-2013 has become the de facto national standard across the U.S. As a result, furniture free of flame retardants is now widely available and some schools have begun replacing their furniture with healthier products. However, given furniture's long lifespan, on the order of 10 to 15 years, these changes can take time and not every school has the means to make the switch.

"For schools with fewer resources, replacing all their furniture may not be an option," says co-author Robin Dodson, ScD, an environmental exposure scientist at Silent Spring. "Still, there are steps staff and students can take to limit their exposure to flame retardants on campus."

Keeping dust levels low, vacuuming regularly with a vacuum that has a HEPA filter, drawing fresh air from the outside into the building, and washing hands frequently especially before eating, are effective at reducing harmful exposures and maintaining a healthy environment, says Dodson.

Findings from the study are not just relevant to colleges, the researchers note, but other spaces as well such as offices, libraries, and hospitals. "Large institutions fill their spaces with lots of furniture, so it's important for these groups to be mindful of how their choices in furniture can affect people's health," says Rodgers.

The new study is part of a larger initiative called the Healthy Green Campus project, which educates colleges on the health risks posed by everyday toxic chemicals in products and offers guidance on how schools can reduce their chemical footprint.

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 3, 2020 - Especially in settings where personal protective equipment, or PPE, is in short supply, intubation -- inserting a breathing tube down a patient's throat -- poses a major risk of SARS-CoV-2 exposure for doctors and nurses as viral particles are released into the air.

Researchers from UPMC and the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory (CCDC-ARL) created an individual biocontainment unit, or IBU, to keep front line health care workers safe while they provide life-saving care. The device is described in a study published today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Earlier attempts to minimize exposure to health care workers involved placing a plexiglass intubation box over a patient's head and shoulders. Clinicians slip their hands through two large holes in the box to intubate the patient inside. While such a device may contain the worst of the splatter, it can't keep aerosols from leaking out.

The IBU is designed to suck contaminated air out of the box with a vacuum and trap infectious particles in a filter before they seep into the room.

Simulating a COVID-19 patient, the researchers placed a mannequin inside the IBU as well as in a commercially available intubation box. Near its mouth, they piped in an oil-based aerosol which formed tiny droplets in the air, similar in size to the SARS-CoV-2 particles in breath that spread COVID-19.

The IBU trapped more than 99.99% of the simulated virus-sized aerosols and prevented them from escaping into the environment. In contrast, outside of the passive intubation box, maximum aerosol concentrations were observed to be more than three times higher than inside the box.

"Having a form of protection that doesn't work is more dangerous than not having anything, because it could create a false sense of security," said study co-lead author David Turer, M.D., M.S., a plastic surgeon who recently completed his residency at UPMC.

Because of concerns about the potential of airborne viruses to leak from the plexiglass boxes, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently revoked their Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for these enclosures.

Several months ago, Turer and colleagues submitted an EUA application for the IBU and are preparing to manufacture the devices for distribution.

"It intentionally incorporates parts from outside the medical world," said Turer, who now is at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "So, unlike other forms of PPE, demand is unlikely to outstrip supply during COVID-19 surge periods."

Besides protecting providers during intubation, the IBU also can provide negative pressure isolation of awake COVID-19 patients, supplying an alternative to scarce negative pressure hospital isolation rooms, as well as helping isolate patients on military vessels.

"The ability to isolate COVID-19 patients at the bedside is key to stopping viral spread in medical facilities and onboard military ships and aircraft," said study co-lead author Cameron Good, Ph.D., a research scientist at the CCDC-ARL.

Devices similar to IBUs were first used in practice by military personnel in the Javits Center field hospital in New York City when local hospitals were overrun with COVID-19 patients during the first wave of the pandemic.

Once the EUA is granted, hospitals and military units will be able to use the IBU to protect health care workers caring for COVID-19 patients.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been empirical and anecdotal reports of declines in both emergency and ambulatory medical visits. However, little research has been conducted to identify why these declines have occurred. New research now shows a strong association between mental health symptoms and medical care avoidance.

Among a sample of over 73,000 U.S. adults from the Household Pulse Survey, a weekly survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau that aims to collect data on the social and economic impacts of COVID-19, researchers found that adults who experienced four common symptoms of anxiety and depression have upwards of two times greater risk of delaying medical care or not receiving needed non-coronavirus medical care amidst the pandemic.

"The results from our study are alarming given that delaying medical care can have significant adverse short- and long-term health outcomes, depending on the condition," said Kyle T. Ganson, PhD, MSW, assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and lead author on the study. "We need to increase access to telehealth, and in the U.S., health insurance policies must be expanded to cover telehealth services that address non-emergency medical concerns."

The study, published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine,, found that in the four weeks prior to participating in the survey in June, 41% of the sample delayed medical care. In addition, nearly one third of the Americans surveyed did not receive necessary non-coronavirus medical care.

"Patients with chronic medical conditions or new symptoms that they are concerned about need to continue to seek medical advice," says senior author Jason M. Nagata, MD, MSc, assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco's Department of Pediatrics. "As the pandemic continues, it remains vitally important that the public have accurate and updated information on the risks and benefits of seeking medical care."

The study also found that symptoms of anxiety and depression were overwhelmingly common among the sample. In the seven days prior to the survey, 65% reported being nervous, anxious or on edge, 56% reported not being able to stop or control worrying, 53% reported having little interest or pleasure in doing things, and 52% reported feeling down, depressed, or hopeless.

"More people are experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression during the pandemic, which can often be addressed through telepsychiatry and telemental health services. As a clinical social worker, I have seen how effective and accessible teletherapy can be in addressing these symptoms," says Dr. Ganson.

The study's authors say that their findings also have important implications for clinical practice. "Medical professionals, social workers, and clinicians need to proactively take steps to help clients work through symptoms of anxiety and depression," Dr. Ganson says. "This will help to improve the likelihood that they will seek the medical care they need."

TORONTO (Sept. 3, 2020) -- The use of tear gas -- particularly CS gas -- as a riot control agent, cannot be reconciled with respect for fundamental human rights and should therefore be banned entirely in international law, the University of Toronto's International Human Rights Program (IHRP) says in a report released today. Lawmakers at all levels of government should act to put forward legislation that bans use of the chemical weapon, eliminates existing stockpiles and prohibits import, export and manufacture.

The use of tear gas has increased worldwide, quickly becoming a weapon of choice for policing assemblies from Iran to Hong Kong to the United States. The boom in its use by law enforcement for protests and crowd control has resulted in a corresponding expansion of the largely unregulated global market for its trade, demand for which is expected to continue growing.
Used as an area weapon, tear gas is inherently indiscriminate and is frequently abused when deployed against peaceful assemblies, in enclosed spaces, in excessive quantities and against vulnerable populations. It cannot distinguish between the young and the elderly, the healthy and the sick, the peaceful and the violent. Its deployment can also cause myriad health harms, including severe injuries and death.

"Tear gas is not a relatively benign method of crowd control. Its deployment effectively crushes the right to freedom of protest and assembly," said Vincent Wong, William C. Research Associate at the IHRP and co-author of the report. "Studies are showing that long-term exposure in the form that we are seeing with protest policing leave those affected at higher risk for a host of illnesses, including contracting respiratory illnesses such as COVID-19."

The report, "The Problematic Legality of Tear Gas Under International Human Rights Law," explores the deficient legal underpinnings and detrimental practical implications of the state of international human-rights law with respect to use and abuse of tear gas. Although tear gas is banned in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an exemption for the use of riot control agents for law enforcement purposes was negotiated during the drafting process in order to secure a greater number of ratifying state parties.

"While international guidance governing the use of tear gas exists, these soft law instruments have shown to be largely ineffective in constraining misuse of tear gas or in protecting fundamental rights," said Maija Fiorante, IHRP Summer Fellow and co-author. "Under international law, any use of force by law-enforcement authorities must abide by the principles of necessity and proportionality, but tear gas is hardly ever used in accordance with such principles."

In addition, there are no international agreements governing the trade and manufacture of tear gas. Consequently, the global market for tear gas is largely unregulated and outside the scope of accountability. There are no common standards for the composition of tear gas. Canisters come in different shapes and sizes and contain an array of toxic chemicals. In many cases, it is difficult to know what combination of chemicals is inside, its level of toxicity, and whether its safety has been tested prior to sale.

The report also tracks how international norms are starting to shift with respect to tear gas. Increased efforts are being made by international rights groups and the United Nations and European Union to restrict the use and trade of tear gas. Countries are passing legislation to ban exports to other jurisdictions where tear gas is being frequently abused to crack down on protests in a punitive fashion and efforts are being made to pass legislation and moratoriums to ban the use of tear gas by police forces domestically. Regional courts have also made rulings that use of riot-control agents in certain circumstances may violate prohibitions on torture and cruel and inhumane or degrading treatment.

In Canada, MP Matthew Green has sponsored a petition calling for a nationwide ban on the use of tear gas, the destruction of stocks of tear gas currently owned by the police and armed forces, prioritization on de-escalation tactics over dispersal and arrest tactics in crowd control, and an investigation into the May 31, 2020 use of tear gas by police in Montreal on an anti-Black racism demonstration.

"The assumption has always been that tear gas is necessary to avoid use of more lethal weapons," said Natasha Williams, IHRP Summer Fellow and co-author. "But this is a red herring. Banning tear gas under international law will force police to redouble their de-escalation efforts, as well as less harmful and less indiscriminate crowd control strategies."

(Vienna, 03 September 2020) Studies have indicated that people who dye their hair regularly may have a higher risk of cancer, especially bladder cancer and breast cancer. Hair dyes contain certain chemicals that have been held responsible for these relationships. In the largest study to date, which followed 117,200 women from the USA over 36 years, this could not be confirmed. A research team led by Eva Schernhammer, Head of the Department of Epidemiology at the Medical University of Vienna, showed in a specific analysis of the data from a cohort study of American nurses that regular hair colouring had no significant effect on most types of cancer - with a few exceptions. This study was published in the British Medical Journal.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO), has classified occupational exposure (e.g. hairdressers) to hair dyes as a probable human carcinogen, while personal use of hair dyes could not be classified. However, as current epidemiological evidence is far from conclusive, there is concern about the carcinogenic potential of personal use of permanent hair dye, especially those that are particularly aggressive and most commonly used.

Hardly an increased risk for most types of cancers - with exceptions

The current study - the largest prospective study on this topic to date - found no link between personal use of permanent hair dye and the risk of most cancers or cancer-related mortality.

However, it did find a positive association for the risk of basal cell carcinoma, hormone receptor-negative breast cancer (ER-, PR- and ER-/PR-), and ovarian cancer. Further, the study also found evidence for heterogeneity due to natural hair colour: an increased risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma was only observed in women with naturally dark hair, and a higher risk of basal cell carcinoma was especially observed in women with naturally light hair.

Eva Schernhammer: "The present prospective cohort study offers some reassurance against concerns that personal use of permanent hair dyes may be associated with an increased risk of cancer or mortality. Nevertheless, we also found a positive correlation for the risk of some cancers."

Current findings are limited to US white women and may not extend to other populations.

"Our results justify further prospective validation," explains Schernhammer. "This depends on different populations and countries, different susceptibility genotypes (e.g. NAT1 or NAT2), cancers if different genotypes and molecular genetic phenotypes, different exposure settings (personal use vs. occupational exposure), different time points and different colours of the permanent hair dyes used (dark dyed vs. light dyed), with refined exposure estimates and should be interpreted in the light of the totality of the evidence."

In the past century, neuroscientists have discovered various functional classes of neurons that are relevant to cognitive functions of the brain. These include orientation selective cells, place cells, grid cells and fear memory engram cells.

These specific functional classes of neurons have been regarded as cornerstones of the cognitive map of the brain. Recently, scientists from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with collaborators at home and abroad, presented the discovery of "holistic bursting" cells, a novel functional class of cortical neurons that represent learned complex objects as wholes rather than parts.

A consortium of interdisciplinary researchers performed a set of highly challenging experiments using cutting-edge technology, including the combination of two-photon Ca2+ imaging of neuronal populations and loose-patch recording of single neurons in behaving mice. The researchers found that in mice that had received an auditory association training, there existed a special subset of neurons in layer 2/3 of auditory cortex, each of which, reliably exhibited a unique mode of high-rate, prolonged burst firing response (instantaneous firing rate ~ 100 Hz, firing duration 100 - 250 ms) to the trained sound in each trial.

In contrast, neurons with such strong and reliable burst firing responses were almost absent in the auditory cortices of untrained animals, where the typical neuronal responses were unreliable singlet firings. A set of chronic imaging experiments revealed that the bursting response property emerged due to the associative training but occurred only in a sparse subset (~5%) of neurons in the auditory cortex.

Of particular interest, the researchers found that mice could be trained with different chords, each consisting of multiple pure-tones. The behavioral response showed a "holistic" character, i.e., the mice exhibited a reliable behavioral response exclusively to the trained chords but not to any of the constituent pure tones, even though all sounds were played at nearly the same volume.

In the animals trained with chords, a special class of neurons was found, referred to as holistic bursting (HB) cells, each of which reliably exhibited a bursting response exclusively to a trained chord, but not to other chords or to individual constituent tones. The experimental precision was sufficient to show that, for these HB cells, the response strength to the preferred chord was significantly larger than the sum of individual response strengths to the four tones that constituted the chord.

Dr. Israel Nelken, a renowned neuroscience expert in the auditory system and a key contributing author of this paper said, "the groundbreaking finding of this paper is the emergence of few neurons which respond, very powerfully, to a stimulus as a whole, rather than to its components, in contradistinction to most neurons surrounding them. These very few holistic bursting neurons could not be detected before the deployment of the combined technology of two-photon imaging and single-cell electrophysiology."

For patients who receive a heart transplant in the near future, the old adage, "Good things come in small packages," may become words to live by. In a recent study, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) demonstrated in mice that they can easily deliver a promising anti-rejection drug directly to the area surrounding a grafted heart by packaging it within a tiny three-dimensional, protein gel cocoon known as a hydrogel. Best of all, the researchers say that the release of the drug is spread out over time, making it highly regulatable and eliminating the need for daily medication to keep rejection in check.

The findings are presented in the Aug. 18, 2020, issue of the journal Small.

Preventing the rejection of a transplanted heart has often been a Catch-22 situation. If you give an organ recipient large amounts of immune suppression drugs, there may be serious side effects, including kidney damage, hypertension, blood sugar imbalances and even lymphomas. Lowering the dose may be safer for general health but increases the risk that rejection will not be properly controlled and the grafted heart will be lost.

"What was needed was a drug delivery method that would get the anti-rejection medication only where needed; protect the drug from premature degradation; and maintain a high concentration for the period of time needed to retrain the immune system," says study co-author Giorgio Raimondi, M.Sc., Ph.D., assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

"Two earlier studies used the hydrogel method to successfully deliver conventional immunosuppressive drugs to other sites, and this prompted us to try it out for transplanted hearts," Raimondi explains. "Additionally, work by a team at the NCI Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research under Joel Schneider [Ph.D., a study co-author] showed that hydrogel-drug packages can be administered by syringe."

The drug these researchers wanted to supply to transplanted hearts is tofacitinib, an inhibitor of the process by which cells alert their receptiveness to binding with inflammation-inducing proteins called cytokines. In normal immune responses to foreign invaders within the body, cytokines play a critical role in alerting specialized white blood cells -- T lymphocytes -- to attack and remove the threatening bacteria or viruses. However, cytokines in the presence of a transplanted heart can direct the immune system to destroy the graft.

To see if a hydrogel courier could be used to deliver tofacitinib, the researchers first grafted mouse hearts into the necks of recipient mice to create an animal model of a human transplant. Next, they mixed tofacitinib with a solution of small protein fragments that assembled themselves around the drug during a 24-hour incubation process that Raimondi likens to the "make your own crystal" kits popular with children.

"We found that making tofacitinib into a crystal best controlled how the drug spreads out from the hydrogel," says study lead author Poulami Majumder, Ph.D., former NCI at Frederick postdoctoral fellow. "The resulting 'microcrystalline tofacitinib hydrogel,' or MTH, was extremely stable, preserved the encapsulated drug in pristine condition and could be injected at the transplantation site simply by using a syringe."

The researchers tested the MTH delivery system in their mouse model in tandem with a second immunosuppressant drug, CTLA4-Ig, which was injected separately. This was the first time that this specific combination therapy had been tried.

To determine if the location of MTH delivery was important, the researchers injected the packaged medicine locally, at the transplant site, and distantly, near the mouse's tail. As expected, only the group of mice with local injections showed a significant increase of graft survival time.

"The average survival of the grafted hearts in the locally injected group was approximately 125 days compared with just 35 days for mice injected with MTH far from the transplant," Raimondi says. "We also tested the plasma of the former group and found only minimally detectable traces of tofacitinib -- meaning that MTH delivery keeps the drug close to the transplant site and enables it act synergistically with CTLA4-Ig to provide enhanced and lasting protection of the organ."

Without the tofactinib/CTLA4 treatment, Raimondi says, the transplanted mouse hearts stopped beating within 10 days.

Raimondi says that among the advantages to using MTH as a drug-delivery system are that the hydrogel releases its content slowly, over a period of 5 to 20 days, and does not cause other complications because it is biocompatible, noninflammatory and biodegradable. He and his colleagues believe that using crystal engineering to further improve the hydrogel capsule, more control over the release rate can be obtained -- a critical goal to meet before human trials can be attempted -- or, the capsule can be made "tunable" to deliver drug only when the grafted heart is attacked by the immune system.

The researchers also feel that with additional research and testing, the MTH delivery system could be applied to fighting rejection of transplanted organs other than the heart and in the treatment of autoimmune diseases.

A new species of freshwater Crustacea has been discovered during an expedition of the desert Lut, known as the hottest place on Earth.

The newly identified species belongs to the genus Phallocryptus of which only four species were previously known from different arid and semiarid regions.

Dr Hossein Rajaei from the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History and Dr Alexander V Rudov from Tehran University made the discovery during an expedition of Lut to better understand the desert's ecology, biodiversity, geomorphology and paleontology.

Further scientific examinations of the specimens by co-author Dr Martin Schwentner, Crustacea specialist from the Natural History Museum of Vienna, stated that they belong to a new species of freshwater Crustacea.

Publishing their findings in Zoology in the Middle East, the biologists name the new species Phallocryptus fahimii, in honor of the Iranian conservation biologist, Hadi Fahimi, who took part in the 2017 expedition and sadly died in an airplane crash in 2018.

Dr Rajaei, an entomologist from State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, who actually found the species in a small seasonal lake in southern part of the desert says the discovery is "sensational".

"During an expedition to such an extreme place you are always on alert, in particular when finding water. Discovering crustaceans in this otherwise hot and dry environment was really sensational."

The team's study explains how Phallocryptus fahimii differs in its overall morphology and its genetics from all other known Phallocryptus species.

Dr Schwentner, who has worked with similar crustaceans from the Australian deserts in the past, adds: "These Crustaceans are able to survive for decades in the dried-out sediment and will hatch in an upcoming wet season, when the aquatic habitat refills. They are perfectly adapted to live in deserts environments. Their ability to survive even in the Lut desert highlights their resilience."

The Lut desert - also known as Dasht-e Lut - is the second largest desert in Iran.

Located between 33° and 28° parallels and with its 51,800 km2 larger than Switzerland, this desert holds the current record for the highest ever-recorded surface temperature. Based on 2006 satellite measurements, the NASA reported a record surface temperature of 70.7°C, which more recently has been increased to even 80.3°C. Dark pebbles that heat up are one of the causes of these record temperatures. Mean daily temperatures range from -2.6°C in winter to 50.4°C in summer with annual precipitation not exceeding 30 mm per year.

Almost deprived of vegetation, the Lut desert harbors a diverse animal life, but no permanent aquatic biotops (such as ponds).

After rain falls, non-permanent astatic water bodies are filled including the Rud-e-Shur river from north-western Lut.

Here a diverse community of Archaea has been described but aquatic life in the Lut remains highly limited, which makes this find particularly rare.