Culture

The Barotse Floodplain in Zambia is one of Africa's largest wetlands, representing varied ecotypes and high biodiversity conservation value. However, the Lozi People who live in the region face an intense "hungry season" from November to January when accessibility to food is very limited. This means that year-round nutrition and food security are consistently top priorities.

Conventional intensive agriculture is not well-suited for the Barotse landscape. Over-expansion of agriculture would have cascading negative effects on local people, wildlife, downstream ecosystems, and economic sectors such as hydropower.

To help improve livelihoods through sustainable agricultural development and environmental protection, researchers from the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT worked with Lozi communities to identify locally relevant strategies. They published some of their findings in a recent study in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.

Why identify ecosystem services?

Ecosystem services encompass a plethora of benefits to humans that come from natural and managed lands. However, researcher and co-author Natalia Estrada-Carmona says, only a small fraction of these tend to be considered, valued, and measured (e.g., CO2 or crop yields) in economic and agriculture development agendas.

The research team used a gender-sensitive ecosystem services approach to work with three local communities. Focus group participants (separated into men and women) used 1,992 coded cards in English and the local language Silozi to assess 17 ecosystem services, from fishing to erosion control.

Questions such as "Where do you go to get water for consumption?" and "What eco-types are important for controlling floods?" identified services according to provisioning, regulating, and cultural uses and benefits.

"The activities carried out with the local communities helped to visualize all the benefits from the different eco-types present in the floodplain. It was very interesting to see that many of the most important ecosystem services for both women and men come from native vegetation eco-types," explains Estrada-Carmona. "Additionally, this exercise facilitated discussing and visualizing the trade-offs associated with converting natural vegetation to cultivated eco-types. Those trade-offs are often invisible in agriculture development agendas and programs. This research confirms that assuming that agricultural expansion can occur everywhere without consequences is a pretty biased perception."

Implications from applying a gender lens

The study suggests several differences between how men and women access their ecosystems: for example, women go to shallower river areas for smaller fish and cultivate diverse crops, including neglected and underutilized species (NUS), that complement household nutrition security.

The dynamic nature of the floodplain also translates into seasonal changes in human migration, and labor shortages. Estrada-Carmona elaborates: "Communities in the uplands are settling more as access to schools, roads, and electricity increases. Women tend to stay caring for kids, elders, and land during the dry season while men migrate to the plains in the hunt for fish and cash. Therefore, agricultural practices or activities that ignore women's reality in the uplands during the dry season would either add a burden or exclude them from implementing those practices or activities."

Agroecological intensification - multifunctional agricultural land

Although the study revealed that forests in the uplands and grasslands in the plains provide the bulk of ecosystem services, these fertile lands are often converted to agricultural land. The authors point out that rather than monocultures focused on cash crops, such as hybrid maize and rice, local food security and livelihoods would benefit most from agroecological intensification. Approaches such as multiple cropping, conservation agriculture, and agroforestry could restore and maintain the identified ecosystem services in cultivated lands while reducing the pressure on natural lands.

Local people and the Zambian government already recognize the value of crop diversity in mitigating environmental, food security, and market risks, with researchers finding that at least 17 NUS are currently being planted. However, maize is the most common crop, and there is a lack of support for experimentation and innovation that can identify the cultivation system best suited to ensure year-round, long-term production and other benefits.

"Agricultural land is seen as a source of yields or calories only," says Estrada-Carmona. "In reality, it is the most malleable land that can contribute to maintaining soil fertility, erosion or flood control, water quality, wildlife connectivity/habitat, etc. Hence, identifying the cropping systems and crop diversification strategies at the farm and landscape level that generate those multiple benefits is vital for sustainable and holistic development."

The study concludes: "The intertwined drivers of change and the complex trade-offs between ecosystem services demand looking beyond 'agriculture' and 'conservation' as two separate challenges... All stakeholders' agendas could be better articulated by integrating the traditional place-based knowledge for jointly planning a sustainable future of the Barotse Floodplain for livelihoods, well-being, and conservation."

(WASHINGTON, August 6, 2020) -- Today, ASH published new guidelines to help older adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and their health care providers make critical care decisions, including if and how to proceed with cancer treatment and the need for blood transfusions for those in hospice care.

Each year, nearly 20,000 people receive a diagnosis of AML. The disease generally develops in older people; the median age of diagnosis is 68. As the "baby boomer" generation ages and the average demographic age in the United States increases, evidence-based recommendations for the optimal treatment of older adults with AML take on greater urgency and importance.

The American Society of Hematology 2020 Guidelines for Treating Newly Diagnosed Acute Myeloid Leukemia in Older Adults, developed in partnership with the McMaster GRADE Centre, offer treatment recommendations for this vulnerable population based on rigorous, systematic reviews of all available evidence. The recommendations are guided by the principle that throughout a patient's disease course, optimal care involves ongoing discussions between clinicians and patients, continuously addressing goals of care and the relative risk-benefit balance of treatment. If appropriate based on an individual patient's treatment plan, the guidelines recommend chemotherapy or other treatments over supportive care, and more-intensive therapy over less-intensive when deemed tolerable, among other common critical questions patients and clinicians discuss upon diagnosis. Notably, they also outline the clinical benefit of palliative red blood cell transfusions for those who are no longer receiving antileukemic therapy, including those in end-of-life or hospice care. The guidelines are published in Blood Advances.

"These guidelines take providers through the conversations they have with newly diagnosed patients, almost in real-time," said Mikkael Sekeres, MD, chair of the ASH AML guideline panel and director of the Leukemia Program at Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute. "A discussion between patient and physician is instrumental to creating a personalized treatment plan, and these guidelines are unique in that they keep a patient's goals and wishes front and center in that conversation."

AML prognosis in older adults is poor. In fact, on average, a 75-year-old diagnosed with AML usually has a life expectancy measured in just months. The prognosis for those up to 10 years younger is only slightly better, with most dying in the year or two following their diagnosis. There is no single curative therapy, and while progress has been made in treating the disease, this population often has a high prevalence of comorbidities and age-related decline in organ function that can lead to a greater likelihood of treatment toxicities.

In addition to the paucity of curative treatment options and high prevalence of comorbidities complicating treatment in this patient population, some providers may be reluctant to recommend intensive therapies, or any therapy at all, because they fear toxicities in older patients. And some patients may not wish to spend their valuable remaining time in the hospital.

"We recognize the serious issues that patients face, including the side effects and risks of chemotherapy and time in the hospital. Weighing these issues against possible benefits, including remission and extended life, patients can decide what treatment is consistent with their goals," said Dr. Sekeres.

Many hospice organizations will not allow patients to receive blood product transfusions, often for economic reasons. For AML patients in end-of-life and hospice care, the guidelines recommend that blood transfusions should be considered standard supportive care, as they can address palliative needs related to breathlessness, bleeding, and profound fatigue, as well as improve overall quality of life. This guidance supports an ASH policy statement in support of ensuring Medicare hospice beneficiaries can access palliative transfusions.

The guidelines were developed by a panel of experts in leukemia, geriatric oncology, quality of life, end-of-life, and frailty. "We brought together this incredible spectrum of specialists to address every aspect of care so that people with AML can be empowered and informed as they decide," said Dr. Sekeres.

The AML guidelines are the most recent product of a larger guideline development initiative for ASH, which includes a commitment to the timely update of existing guidelines and the development of new ones on a range of hematologic conditions. In the coming months, resources to aid in the implementation of the guidelines will be added to the ASH website.

Consider it Earth's ultimate mirror selfie.

In a new study, a team led by astrophysicist Allison Youngblood at the University of Colorado Boulder set out to achieve something new in planetary photography: The group used the Hubble Space Telescope to try to view Earth as if it were an exoplanet--or a world orbiting a star many light years from our own.

It wasn't easy: To capture Earth as an alien world, the researchers had to use the moon as a giant mirror, recording sunlight that had passed through our planet's atmosphere, bounced off the lunar surface and come back.

"It's like what an astronaut might see standing on the surface of the moon," said Youngblood, a research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

Previous studies have taken a similar look at Earth as an exoplanet. But the new research, which appears August 6 in The Astronomical Journal, is the first to succeed in taking such a selfie using a combination of a space instrument and the moon. Youngblood said that the group's findings could one day help scientists to hone how they search distant planets for the possible fingerprints of life--in this case, ozone in the atmosphere.

"Ozone is what we call a biosignature," said Youngblood, who worked on the project as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's a byproduct of molecular oxygen, which can be a byproduct of life."

The search for life

Over the last several decades, scientists have confirmed the existence of more than 4,000 planets beyond Earth's solar system. Many of them were spotted using what researchers call the "transit" method--a planet passes in front of its host star, causing the light from that star to dim ever so slightly.

This approach has an added benefit, too, Youngblood said. Train a powerful enough telescope, such as Hubble, on an alien planet, and you can see how starlight filters through its atmosphere. Scientists, in turn, can analyze that starlight to identify the gases that are present in the atmosphere.

In the coming decades, one of the big targets that planet hunters will be looking for is ozone. It's created when ultraviolet light from the sun reacts with oxygen gas in the atmosphere--meaning that, at least on Earth, ozone is often connected to the activity of photosynthesizing organisms.

In the hunt for life, "one biosignature alone isn't enough," Youngblood said. "But if you, for example, saw ozone and methane together, that might indicate that there is life."

The problem is that ozone is also tricky to spot from the ground on Earth. To get around that limitation, Youngblood and her colleagues had to go to space.

Total eclipse

They got their chance in the wee hours of January 21, 2019. On that day, Earth's orbit brought the planet directly between the sun and the moon, leading to the first total lunar eclipse of the year. (The event also turned the moon an eerie blood-orange color, which gave it the nickname "super blood wolf eclipse.")

"During a total eclipse, all of the light you see reflected off the moon has already passed through Earth's atmosphere," Youngblood said.

To capture that reflection, and particularly the ultraviolet light shining off of the moon, the team pointed Hubble at the lunar surface--not something the telescope was designed for.

"I talked to colleagues and they said, 'Pointing Hubble at the moon is really challenging,'" Youngblood said. "The moon is too close."

Put differently, getting a stable image of the moon using Hubble is a bit like hitting the bullseye on a dart board while standing on a swaying cruise ship in the middle of a storm. But with a bit of luck and mathematical savvy, the team prevailed. Youngblood and her colleagues were able to detect the distinct ultraviolet signals of ozone in Earth's atmosphere.

The team's results aren't a perfect representation of what ozone might look like on a real-life exoplanet. For starters, Youngblood and her colleagues were able to peer much deeper into Earth's atmosphere than would be possible in a world many lightyears away.

But, she said, the study is a good proof-of-concept that it can be done. And that means that scientists may one day be able to locate the hints of living organisms on a planet far, far away.

Movie studios estimate that they lose billions of dollars to digital movie piracy. But a new marketing study from the University of Georgia finds that piracy can actually boost ticket sales in certain situations.

The reason: pirates talk.

Pirated movies circulated online after their theatrical release saw about 3% higher box office receipts because of the increase in word-of-mouth advertising, according to Neil Bendle, an associate professor of marketing at the Terry College of Business.

Bendle is quick to point out that prerelease piracy is still financially damaging for movie studios. But post-theatrical release piracy was connected to more word-of-mouth and higher ticket sales.

"We don't want to give the impression that piracy is a good thing, but there is something to the argument that piracy can increase markets," Bendle said. "We wanted to find out when that might be the case."

Bendle and his co-authors -- Shane Wang of the University of Western Ontario and Shije Lu of the University of Houston -- published their findings in a recent issue of Management Science.

They analyzed movie ticket sales, piracy rates and crowdsourced movie reviews between July 2015 and June 2017, using data from Russia, where authorities have blocked the popular Pirate Bay torrent since 2015.

Pirate Bay was one of the most significant digital piracy sites on the internet for several years between 2010 and 2020 but is now banned in many countries. The research team used activity on the site as a benchmark for piracy rates. They analyzed movie revenues before and during 2015, after a late 2014 law enforcement raid shut down the Pirate Bay website for about a year.

During Pirate Bay's hiatus, word-of-mouth and movie revenues both dipped.

"When the Pirate Bay was taken down by the Swedish police, we see a drop in word-of-mouth because people can't watch these movies on the Pirate Bay," Bendle said. "And then, we see a contemporaneous decline in ticket sales. When we see that associated fall in word-of-mouth, and then a decline in movie sales, it was a nice bit of evidence that we were moving in the right direction."

Though it sounds counterintuitive, Bendle's team connected the dips to a decline in movie fans talking about the titles online. With the reduction in online buzz, fewer people were interested in seeing the movies in theaters or streaming them legally.

"With post-theatrical release piracy, people who are super keen on it or would have gone anyhow have already gone," Bendle said. "People who are not going on the opening weekend can be drawn to it by people who have watched the movie and blogged about it. Bloggers don't have to produce their ticket before they write about it. Pirates can still give a useful, valid opinion for consumers."

Movies only benefitted from the boost in word-of-mouth advertising if the title was pirated and circulated after its theatrical release. Films that were pirated before their release dates saw an 11% decline in their overall revenue, despite increased word-of-mouth.

"There's a key distinction between pre- and post-release piracy," Bendle said. "We substantiate that prerelease piracy is very bad. It can undermine a film before it comes out."

The takeaway for movie studios is that they should target their anti-piracy efforts to prevent pirated copies of their movies from leaking onto the internet before their theatrical release, Bendle said.

"They've got limited resources to try to track down movie pirates," he said. "We're saying that the best use of those resources should be put toward controlling digital copies of the movie prerelease and not at who's pirating it after the theatrical release."

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Researchers demonstrated the success of a fully implantable wireless medical device called a stentrode brain-computer interface designed to improve functional independence in patients with severe paralysis. The abstract was presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery's (SNIS) 17th Annual Meeting.

The study, Motor Neuroprosthesis Implanted using Cerebral Venography Improves Activities of Daily Living in Severe Paralysis, is the first-in-human examination of the stentrode, an implantable brain- computer interface, conducted at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. The first patient to receive the device was a 75-year-old man with severe paralysis due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), who was totally dependent on his wife for care.

"The implantation procedure combined functional MRI coregistration with angiography to precisely place the stentrode over the motor cortex," said Professor Peter Mitchell, principal investigator and leader of the operative team.

Following implantation of the device, the patient increased independence and could perform essential activities, such as text messaging, online shopping and managing his finances.

"The results in this first human trial show promise that this device may restore voluntary motor function of personal computers and devices for patients with severe paralysis due to brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerve or muscle dysfunction," said Dr. Thomas Oxley, lead author of the study and Associate Professor in the Vascular Bionics Laboratory at the University of Melbourne. "We need to conduct additional research to confirm our preliminary results and prove the validity of this ground-breaking technology."

The stentrode brain-computer interface translates brain activity associated with attempted movements and digitally converts thoughts into command functions of external devices. The data shows successful control of devices that improve instrumental activities of daily living, which can include texting, emailing, online shopping and banking.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - How much of a treatment is mind over matter? It is well documented that people often feel better after taking a treatment without active ingredients simply because they believe it's real -- known as the placebo effect.

A team of researchers from Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Dartmouth College is the first to demonstrate that placebos reduce brain markers of emotional distress even when people know they are taking one.

Now, evidence shows that even if people are aware that their treatment is not "real" -- known as nondeceptive placebos -- believing that it can heal can lead to changes in how the brain reacts to emotional information.

"Just think: What if someone took a side-effect free sugar pill twice a day after going through a short convincing video on the power of placebos and experienced reduced stress as a result?", said Darwin Guevarra, MSU postdoctoral fellow and the study's lead author. "These results raise that possibility."

The new findings, published in the most recent edition of the journal Nature Communications, tested how effective nondeceptive placebos -- or, when a person knows they are receiving a placebo -- are for reducing emotional brain activity.

"Placebos are all about 'mind over matter," said Jason Moser, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at MSU. "Nondeceptive placebos were born so that you could possibly use them in routine practice. So rather than prescribing a host of medications to help a patient, you could give them a placebo, tell them it can help them and chances are -- if they believe it can, then it will."

To test nondeceptive placebos, the researchers showed two separate groups of people a series of emotional images across two experiments. The nondeceptive placebo group members read about placebo effects and were asked to inhale a saline solution nasal spray. They were told that the nasal spray was a placebo that contained no active ingredients but would help reduce their negative feelings if they believed it would. The comparison control group members also inhaled the same saline solution spray, but were told that the spray improved the clarity of the physiological readings the researchers were recording.

The first experiment found that the nondeceptive placebos reduced participants' self-reported emotional distress. Importantly, the second study showed that nondeceptive placebos reduced electrical brain activity reflecting how much distress someone feels to emotional events, and the reduction in emotional brain activity occurred within just a couple of seconds.

"These findings provide initial support that nondeceptive placebos are not merely a product of response bias - telling the experimenter what they want to hear -- but represent genuine psychobiological effects," said Ethan Kross, co-author of the study and a professor of psychology and management at the University of Michigan.

FAIRFAX, Va. -- Two new studies indicate that racial disparities related to outcomes exist among stroke patients, including one study that specifically examines stroke patients with COVID-19. The abstracts were presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery's (SNIS) 17th Annual Meeting.

The first study, Ischemic Stroke Associated with Covid-19 and Racial Outcome Disparity in North America,
finds mortality rates in African American stroke patients with COVID-19 are significantly greater than all other races combined in North America. Additionally, the study, which emanates from the North American Neurovascular COVID-19 (NAN-C) Consortium, shows that the mortality rate of COVID-19-positive stroke patients is greater than previously reported in patients who just have COVID-19 or stroke alone. The research analyzed 69 cases of acute stroke in patients positive for SARS-CoV-2, including 27 African Americans and 42 of other racial backgrounds.

"Clearly it is important to better understand the reasons for increased mortality in African Americans with COVID-19-associated stroke," said Dr. Adam A. Dmytriw, lead author of the study and Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. "It is our hope that further research will help us reduce racial disparities and prevent negative outcomes."

Another study released on the same day, Racial Disparities in Acute Stroke Thrombectomy Management and Outcomes in the United States: Evidence from the NVQI-QOD Registry, by lead author Vineeth Thirunavu found several racial disparities after stroke thrombectomy with respect to post-procedure management and outcomes. Specifically, minorities exhibited worse immediate post-procedural outcomes and a greater length of in-hospital and ICU stays. Although African Americans suffer less in-hospital mortality compared to Caucasians, the odds of increased favorable clinical outcome did not increase.

For the second study, researchers analyzed data from the NVQI-QOD registry and compared racial differences with respect to technical and functional outcomes of stroke thrombectomy in 3,281 African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, and Asian patients from 23 U.S. stroke centers across 17 states between January 2015 and March 2020.

"The study suggests disparities in how African American and Hispanic patients fare with regard to post-stroke recovery and hospital course after thrombectomy," said Dr. Sameer Ansari, senior author of the second study, Medical Director of the SNIS Patient Safety Organization, and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Radiology, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "We are just initiating our investigations and the research potential of the NVQI-QOD registry for uncovering racial disparities in stroke patients, and with this increased knowledge we can strive to ensure better outcomes for all patients, irrespective of their racial and genetic profile."

To receive a copy of either abstracts or to speak with the authors, please contact Maria Enie at menie@vancomm.com or 202-248-5454.

About the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery

The Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) is a scientific and educational association dedicated to advancing the specialty of neurointerventional surgery through research, standard-setting, and education and advocacy to provide the highest quality of patient care in diagnosing and treating diseases of the brain, spine, head, and neck. Visit http://www.snisonline.org and follow us on Twitter (@SNISinfo) and Facebook (@SNISOnline).

JUPITER, FL--Scripps Research chemists Hans Renata, PhD, and Alexander Adibekian, PhD, have discovered a way to efficiently create a synthetic version of a valuable natural compound called cepafungin I, which has shown promise as an anti-cancer agent.

Through this, they were able to understand how the bacterial secretion is able to block a piece of molecular machinery known as a proteasome--a strategy that many existing cancer medications use to destroy tumor cells. They found that cepafungin I bound to not one but two places on the proteasome, enacting a powerful result. Their report appears in the journal Cell Chemical Biology.

"Because cepafungin I is able to engage the proteasome in two ways, it allows for amplification of its effect," Renata says. "We showed that this compound elicits many similar downstream biological responses as the FDA-approved chemotherapy bortezomib, while also having certain qualities that may translate into fewer unwanted side effects for patients."

Recreating nature

Cepafungin I first intrigued researchers because of its usefulness as an antifungal substance, and later as a promising anti-cancer agent. It kills cells by acting on the proteasome, which is responsible for clearing away the "garbage" produced by cells. When the proteasome's function is blocked, cells are overcome with their waste and die.

But making enough of the compound to be able to study its activity or enable its eventual use a medication has proven challenging, due largely to its complex molecular structure. In the field of chemistry, scientists seek to create the desired structure in as few steps as possible, which leads to cost and time savings. But with complex compounds, that isn't an easy task.

The Scripps Research team was able to overcome these challenges and synthesize the compound in just nine steps. For comparison, a related compound known as glidobactin A was synthesized in 21 steps in 1992--and that was considered a landmark at the time.

The team was able to speed up the process by using certain enzymes that enabled construction of one of the compound's key building blocks, an amino acid. Then they developed other creative chemistry methods to simplify construction of other parts of the molecule, including a branched lipid portion that was subsequently found to contribute to the compound's potent activity.

"Our approach saved us many steps in synthesizing the final compound compared with using classical chemical approaches," says Alexander Amatuni, a graduate student at Scripps Research.

A good sign for safety

After creating the compound, the chemists discovered that in addition to being exceptionally selective at targeting two sites on the proteasome, it didn't show any undesired cross-reaction with other proteins in cells, a feature that could make it a better drug candidate.

Three proteasome inhibitors--bortezomib, carfilzomib and ixazomib--have already been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of multiple myeloma. "But those medications have some potentially serious side effects, and cancer cells may develop resistance to them over time," says co-author Adibekian, associate professor of chemistry at Scripps Research. "There is a need for alternative, more specific proteasome inhibitors."

Graduate student Anton Shuster noted that the team's discoveries were made possible by a close collaboration of labs with different expertise

"By combining the two complementary technological platforms--chemoenzymatic synthesis from the Renata lab and chemoproteomics from the Adibekian lab--we were able to succeed," Shuster says. "Having the opportunity to work with scientists with divergent research background is what makes working at Scripps Research particularly exciting."

Going forward, the scientists plan to continue structure-guided design of similar molecules with alternative structural features in search of useful compounds with superior anti-cancer activity.

The methods they developed will enable them to change various parts of the structure with relative ease, Amatuni says, allowing for further investigation of biological activity. "The emphasis on translational research at Scripps Research enables this discovery," Adibekian says. "We're excited about developing the molecule further."

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 6, 2020 - New research by neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh and University of California San Francisco (UCSF) revealed that a simple, earbud-like device developed at UCSF that imperceptibly stimulates a key nerve leading to the brain could significantly improve the wearer's ability to learn the sounds of a new language. This device may have wide-ranging applications for boosting other kinds of learning as well.

Mandarin Chinese is considered one of the hardest languages for native English speakers to learn, in part because the language -- like many others around the world -- uses distinctive changes in pitch, called "tones," to change the meaning of words that otherwise sound the same. In the new study, published today in npj Science of Learning (a Nature partner journal), researchers significantly improved the ability of native English speakers to distinguish between Mandarin tones by using precisely timed, non-invasive stimulation of the vagus nerve -- the longest of the 12 cranial nerves that connect the brain to the rest of the body. What's more, vagus nerve stimulation allowed research participants to pick up some Mandarin tones twice as quickly.

"Showing that non-invasive peripheral nerve stimulation can make language learning easier potentially opens the door to improving cognitive performance across a wide range of domains," said lead author Fernando Llanos, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in Pitt's Sound Brain Lab.

"This is one of the first demonstrations that non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation can enhance a complex cognitive skill like language learning in healthy people," said Matthew Leonard, Ph.D., an assistant professor, Department of Neurological Surgery, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, whose team developed the nerve stimulation device. Leonard is a senior author of the new study, alongside Bharath Chandrasekaran, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of research, Department of Communication Science and Disorders, Pitt School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, and director of the Sound Brain Lab.

Researchers used a non-invasive technique called transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS), in which a small stimulator is placed in the outer ear and can activate the vagus nerve using unnoticeable electrical pulses to stimulate one of the nerve's nearby branches.

For their study, the researchers recruited 36 native English-speaking adults and trained them to identify the four tones of Mandarin Chinese in examples of natural speech, using a set of tasks developed in the Sound Brain Lab to study the neurobiology of language learning.

Participants who received imperceptible tVNS paired with two Mandarin tones that are typically easier for English speakers to tell apart showed quick improvements in learning to distinguish these tones. By the end of the training, those participants were 13% better on average at classifying tones and reached peak performance twice as quickly as control participants who wore the tVNS device but never received stimulation.

"There's a general feeling that people can't learn the sound patterns of a new language in adulthood, but our work historically has shown that's not true for everyone," Chandrasekaran said. "In this study, we are seeing that tVNS reduces those individual differences more than any other intervention I've seen."

"This approach may be leveling the playing field of natural variability in language learning ability," added Leonard. "In general, people tend to get discouraged by how hard language learning can be, but if you could give someone 13% to 15% better results after their first session, maybe they'd be more likely to want to continue."

The researchers now are testing whether longer training sessions with tVNS can impact participants' ability to learn to discriminate two tones that are harder for English speakers to differentiate, which was not significantly improved in the current study.

Stimulation of the vagus nerve has been used to treat epilepsy for decades and has recently been linked to benefits for a wide range of issues ranging from depression to inflammatory disease, though exactly how these benefits are conferred remains unclear. But most of these findings have used invasive forms of stimulation involving an impulse generator implanted in the chest. By contrast, the ability to evoke significant boosts to learning using simple, non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation could lead to significantly cheaper and safer clinical and commercial applications.

The researchers suspect tVNS boosts learning by broadly enhancing neurotransmitter signaling across wide swaths of the brain to temporarily boost attention to the auditory stimulus being presented and promote long-term learning, though more research is needed to verify this mechanism.

"We're showing robust learning effects in a completely non-invasive and safe way, which potentially makes the technology scalable to a broader array of consumer and medical applications, such as rehabilitation after stroke," Chandrasekaran said. "Our next step is to understand the underlying neural mechanism and establish the ideal set of stimulation parameters that could maximize brain plasticity. We view tVNS as a potent tool that could enhance rehabilitation in individuals with brain damage."

Scientists from Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago discovered that a set of genes with decreased expression in individuals with Down syndrome may lead to clinical abnormalities in this population, such as poor muscle development and heart valve problems. Impairment in these same genes may also protect people with Down syndrome from developing solid tumors. Their findings were published in Scientific Reports.

"Our promising preliminary data carries strong potential for ultimately developing gene-targeted therapies to inhibit solid tumor growth in the general population," says co-lead author Yekaterina Galat, BS, Research Associate at the Manne Research Institute at Lurie Children's. "Our findings may also provide gene targets for therapies aimed at alleviating the clinical abnormalities in people with Down syndrome."

Down syndrome is a congenital genetic disorder that is associated with cognitive impairment, reduced muscle tone, heart defects, and other clinical anomalies. At the same time, individuals with Down syndrome have lower prevalence of solid tumor formation.

The study used skin samples from two patients with Down syndrome to create induced pluripotent stem cells that were then differentiated into endothelial cells, which build blood vessels and the vascular system, and mesodermal cells, which are responsible for connective tissues and muscle development. During the process of differentiation, in the progenitor phase, Manne Research Institute scientists discovered down-regulated genes that appear to be involved in the abnormal muscle development and heart problems that are common in people with Down syndrome.

By studying the role of these genes in biochemical pathways relevant to solid tumor development, they found that the decreased expression of such genes interferes with the processes needed for solid tumor formation and growth. These genes produced impeded cell movement, slower proliferation and reduced inflammatory response - creating a microenvironment that is not conducive to solid tumors. Genome-wide analyses was then performed to confirm these findings, using publicly available data from 11,000 patients.

"When we performed genomic analyses comparing mesodermal and endothelial cell lines, we were surprised to find that trisomy 21 impacted gene expression across the entire genome. Furthermore, the decreased expression of the genes we studied was consistent, and the large extent of their down-regulation was notable as well," says co-lead author Mariana Perepitchka, BA, Research Associate at the Manne Research Institute at Lurie Children's. "This significant down-regulation potentially creates conditions that are opposite of what solid tumors would need to take hold. So in a way, Down syndrome provides us with a non-traditional lens to study cancer development."

"We still need to validate our findings in an animal model," says senior author Vasil Galat, PhD, Director of Human iPS and Stem Cell Core at Manne Research Institute at Lurie Children's and Research Assistant Professor of Pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "The potential for gene-targeted therapies is very exciting, especially since it could help individuals born with Down syndrome and the general population battling cancer."

Tropical oceans and fisheries are threatened by climate change, generating impacts that will affect the sustainable development of both local economies and communities, and regions outside the tropics through 'telecoupling' of human-natural systems, such as seafood trade and distant-water fishing, says a scientific review from UBC and international researchers.

Seafood is the most highly traded food commodity globally, with tropical zone marine fisheries contributing more than 50 per cent of the global fish catch, an average of $USD 96 billion annually. Available scientific evidence consistently shows that tropical marine habitats, fish stocks and fisheries are most vulnerable to oceanic changes associated with climate change. However, the scientific review highlights that telecoupling, or linkages between distant human-natural systems, could generate cascades of climate change impacts from the tropics that propagate to other 'extra-' tropical natural systems and human communities globally.

"Telecoupling interactions between two or more linked areas over distance between tropical fisheries and elsewhere include distant-water fishing, the international seafood supply chain, transboundary fisheries resources and their governance would allow benefits derived from tropical fisheries to transfer to the people in the extratropical regions," said Vicky Lam, lead author and research associate in the UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. "Although these linkages could enable the flow of benefits, including food, livelihoods and government revenue, from tropical fisheries to extratropical locations, their dependence on tropical fisheries also exposes them to the negative consequences of climate change in tropical regions. The effects of climate change on tropical fisheries also affect the profitability and employment opportunities of fish-processing industries in extratropical regions."

"Pacific Island countries and territories, for example, are expected to see a redistribution of skipjack and yellowfin tuna - their two most exported fish species - that could see decreased catches of between 10 and 40 per cent by 2050 in many countries such as Palau and the Solomon Islands, while catches are expected to increase by 15 to 20 per cent in Kiribati and the Cook Islands. This will have a tremendous effect on the economies of these small island developing states," said Rashid Sumaila, co-author and professor at UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. "There are similar projections in African nations, where climate-related changes are expected to decrease the value of landed catch by approximately 20 per cent by 2050, as well as reduce fisheries-related jobs by 50 per cent."

To reduce the effect of climate change on the benefits derived from tropical fisheries, both locally and in extra-tropical regions, the root causes of climate-driven problems in tropical fisheries need to be recognized and rectified. Effective and practical adaptation and mitigation solutions with stakeholder commitment and involvement, as well as supporting policies, are therefore necessary in the tropics.

"We already see that there are close linkages between the tropical regions and the extra-tropical nations through trade and distant-water fishing" said William Cheung, co-author and professor at UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. "Solving climate change impacts in the tropics will benefit the whole world; this provides an additional argument for non-tropical countries to support climate mitigation and adaptation in tropical countries."

VANCOUVER, Wash. - Despite common perceptions that big cities have more violence, women living in small towns are most at risk of violence from current or former spouses and partners, according to a recent study by Washington State University criminologist Kathryn DuBois.

For the study, published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, DuBois analyzed the responses of more than 570,000 women from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1994 to 2015. She found that women from small towns were 27% more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence than women from the center of big cities and 42% more likely than suburban women.

"In criminology, we often have this urban bias. We assume big cities are the worst and paint other places as idyllic," said DuBois, associate professor at WSU Vancouver. "We tend to think in a continuum from urban to suburban to rural, but for intimate partner violence, it's actually the suburban areas that are the safest, and small towns that have the highest risk."

The National Crime Victimization Survey collects information through a large sample of interviews about a range of personal crimes committed every year. Part of the intent of the survey is to uncover the "dark figure" of crime, DuBois said, those crimes that may not be reported to police.

While the survey defines many locations as simply urban or rural, DuBois analyzed the data by population density to delineate urban, suburban, small town and rural areas. Small towns were defined as urbanized portions of non-metropolitan counties with populations up to 50,000. They are distinct from suburban areas that exist just outside of big cities.

"Many surveys assume that everyone in those nonmetropolitan counties are the same, but there's a lot more heterogeneity across them," Dubois said.

DuBois originally undertook the study to try and reconcile the inconsistency between national surveys, which typically find rural areas have less or similar rates of intimate partner violence to urban areas--and ethnographic research, in-depth qualitative studies that have indicated that rural isolation can exacerbate gender-based violence.

While the study data cannot reveal the reasons behind the violence, the finding about the high rate of intimate partner violence in small towns indicates that there may be a different set of factors at play, DuBois said.

"Small towns have populations large enough to have the difficult problems of a big city, while at the same time these are some of the hardest hit areas economically, so they don't have specialized services and policing needed to deal with family violence," DuBois said.

Resource fishes--species targeted for human consumption--play a key role in reef ecosystems long before they end up on the dinner table. In Hawai?i, subsistence and recreational fishing of local resource fish represent more than half of the share of annual reef seafood consumption, while also playing a vital role in indigenous cultural life.

These same fishes also help reefs to stay healthy by removing algae from coral surfaces, which in turn, help coral recover from bleaching. Given the beneficial relationship between resource fishes and corals, determining how local pressures impact resource fish biomass is necessary for improving reef conservation and management.

In a new study investigating human impacts on resource fish biomass on the Island of Hawai?i, researchers from the Arizona State University Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science (GDCS) and Hawai'i Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR) observed an alarming 45% decrease in fish biomass over a decade of surveys. The scientists proposed actionable solutions to mitigate future losses. The study was published today in Ecological Applications.

The researchers investigated the influence of local factors on the nearshore resource fisheries of West Hawai'i Island and compared the impact of distinct types of marine protections. They considered a range of factors including commercial and non-commercial fishing as well as nitrogen pollution from sewage disposal systems and golf courses. They also used ASU's Global Airborne Observatory to map the 3-D reef habitat to assess how it affects fish diversity, abundance, and biomass. The researchers analyzed extensive fish survey data collected by DAR between 2008 and 2018 at more than 300 sites spanning 180 km of coastline.

"Resource fish have been greatly reduced over the past decade in West Hawai'i. We see that negative impacts of nitrogen pollution can outweigh other habitat and land-use stresses on resource fish," said Dr. Shawna Foo, a postdoctoral researcher at GDCS and lead author of the study. Nitrogen effluent from sewage and golf courses contaminates nearshore waters, creating stress for corals and were a major driver of resource fish declines documented in the study.

Despite the long-term decline, the researchers also found that different types of management resulted in different levels of fish biomass. They found significantly greater fish abundance and biomass in areas that banned spearfishing compared to areas that did not, likely due to the fact that four of the five most common species from the surveys are primarily caught by spears. This finding was particularly true for ?scrapers' such as parrotfish.

The researchers also found that marine management areas with multiple bans on spearfishing, aquarium collection, and lay nets had the highest overall fish biomass compared to other managed or unmanaged areas, especially for herbivorous fish. Their findings are supported by a recent global analysis of marine management led by the University of Leeds, which reported higher fish biomass in areas where gear was limited to pole and line fishing. Those researchers recommended specific gear restrictions as a relevant management strategy to attain the dual objectives of supporting resource fish biomass recovery and satisfying stakeholders.

Greg Asner, GDCS director and co-author of the study noted, "These results are among the clearest to emerge for Hawai?i. Based on the long-term monitoring efforts of our Hawai?i DAR partners, we were able to ascertain unequivocal evidence for a decline in shallow reef fish populations along the famous Kona coast of Hawai?i Island. We were also able to connect both the decline and the remaining fish stocks to specific actions that can be taken now to enhance the fishery and protect reefs. This is a triple win for science, management, and the fisher community."

The study reinforces the urgent need to protect reef ecosystems from increasing threats of habitat degradation and climate change. Last year alone, ocean temperatures reached near-record levels, ushering in a coral bleaching event that resulted in coral loss across the Hawaiian archipelago. To protect resource fish biomass and aid reef resilience and recovery, regional management of multiple stressors is greatly needed. The researchers proposed to mitigate such future losses by banning and/or restricting specific fishing gear types and more aggressive management of land-based pollution.

"The collaboration with our partners at GDCS provides an incredible opportunity to combine state-of-the-art seascape level mapping with DAR's long-term coral reef monitoring to understand the links between marine and land management and coral reef health.", noted Brian Neilson, Administrator in charge of the Hawai?i Division of Aquatic Resources. "This study is critical for informing statewide management strategies to maintain important resource fish stocks and resilient reefs, as we face unprecedented climate-driven threats."

The quality of audit services suffers when an audit firm has clients from many different industries, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.

If an audit office has a diversified client portfolio, it is more difficult to audit a particular type of client, according to "Audit Office Industry Diversity and Audit Quality," forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance from Erik Beardsley, assistant professor of accountancy at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, along with Nathan Goldman at North Carolina State University and Tom Omer at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The study examined financial statement restatement rates for clients of audit offices from 2002 to 2015. Each firm they examined had data from a varying number of years, for a total of 35,265 observations in the dataset. "When the financial statements must be restated because of a material error, this means the audit team missed the error before statements were issued, indicating lower audit quality," Beardsley explained.

"Prior studies have examined different characteristics of audit firms or offices, but they have not considered the industry diversity of the client portfolio as a whole," he said. "For example, even if an audit office has a lot of clients in one industry, the overall industry diversity of the portfolio can harm the audit quality of all clients in the portfolio. This is likely because auditing a lot of different industries forces the auditor to spread their resources to a variety of different engagements rather than focus on particular types."

The study found that having an industry-diverse client base can harm audit quality for both small and large audit offices. Though a small office may not have many clients, if each is in a different industry, audit quality suffers. Likewise, even a large office with more resources is less effective at allocating those resources when the clients are more industry-diverse.

The study also determined that having a diverse client base can harm audit quality for industry specialists and non-industry specialists, where specialization is based on market share.

"An office could have a large market share in one industry, often due to one or two high-profile clients," Beardsley explained, "but still be considered industry-diverse if it also audits clients in a variety of other industries. We observed the adverse effect of industry diversity even among offices with large market share, meaning that having a large market share is not enough to counter balance the negative effects of industry diversity.

"However, we did not find the negative effect when there were clusters of three or more clients in the same industry," he continued, "suggesting that sufficient industry knowledge can occur from clusters of three or more clients in an industry."

The study could prove helpful for audit firms in making resource allocation and client retention decisions, as well as for audit committees to assess which auditor is their best fit.

AMHERST, Mass. - In an unexpected new finding, biochemists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report observing that a damage-containment system in stressed bacteria can become overrun and blocked, but that this leads to cells responding by turning on very different pathways to make sure that normal growth continues.

Rilee Zeinert, a doctoral student in the Molecular and Cell Biology Program and his advisor, professor Peter Chien, report on their recent experiments and discovery about how bacteria switch gears to respond to different stresses but still maintain normal cell functions like DNA replication in the recent issue of the Cell journal, Molecular Cell. Other contributing authors include Benjamin Tu and Hamid Baniasadi at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Chien says that because all cells must maintain normal growth even during stressful conditions and all cells contain clean-up proteases that degrade used proteins and other waste, similar regulation may be at work in other biological responses. He suggests, "Cancer cells also are constantly growing under protein stress conditions, so understanding how cells in general take advantage of protease competition to respond to stress leads to tempting speculations that we can inhibit similar pathways to block uncontrolled growth."

In bacteria, a protease known as Lon destroys damaged proteins to protect cells from their toxic consequences and degrades normal signaling proteins, as well. Stress that is toxic to proteins - causing misfolding, for example - prompts the bacteria not only to try to keep removing these damaged proteins, but to maintain processes like replicating DNA for normal growth. Zeinert studied the Lon protease and pathways it uses during cell stress, such as antibiotic attacks or extreme heat, to accomplish this.

In their new paper, the authors show that when bacteria are stressed, the increase in damaged proteins ends up temporarily swamping the Lon protease. This results in stabilization of signaling proteins that would normally be degraded by Lon, which sets off a cascade of responses, Chien explains.

He adds, "The misfolded proteins are canaries in the coal mines. When they build up so much that Lon is now blocked, the cells respond by turning on pathways needed to ensure growth." In particular, the cells increase the amount of deoxynucleotides - the 'DN' of DNA - building blocks that are needed for DNA replication."

Zeinert, Chien and colleagues discovered this new pathway unexpectedly when they were exploring the essential character of different genes that depend on the Lon protease. Chien recalls, "Rilee was using a new approach that looks at the fitness cost of each gene in different mutant backgrounds. Surprisingly, he found that loss of a normally essential deoxynucleotide synthesis gene was now tolerated in cells missing the Lon protease."

This meant that by decreasing Lon activity, cells would compensate by making more deoxynucleotides, a result the researchers confirmed with metabolomics, a procedure that measures hundreds of chemicals in a cell at once, he adds.

Chien explains, "The metabolomics told us that there was a substantial shift in all the building blocks for DNA synthesis when Lon activity was compromised. At the same time, we had seen that when cells are stressed they also seem to make more of these molecules." That connection led the researchers to determine that it was the damaged proteins arising from the stress causing a block of Lon activity that resulted in this response.

Chien, who is director of the Models to Medicine Center in the Institute of Applied Life Sciences at UMass Amherst, points out that this work was funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in the form of a MIRA grant to Chien and the Chemistry-Biology Training Program, which also supported Zeinert. The MIRA program does not fund individual projects, but broad programs of basic discovery research, to encourage researchers to propose more long-term, innovative, creative projects and to worry less about short-term goals and results.