Earth

Scientists have identified specific brain regions that contribute to humans' sense of agency - the implicit sense that we control our actions and that they affect the outside world. The findings suggest that brain activity involved in planning our next move is crucial to this sense of agency, supporting a "constructive" hypothesis in which humans compare the predictions we make before we act with feedback afterwards to claim actions as our own. Laura Zapparoli and colleagues conclude that their findings contradict a "reconstructive" hypothesis in which the brain solely weighs ownership of actions by recreating them after the fact, since the frontoparietal and cerebellar network they identify (which includes the pre-supplementary motor area and the dorsal parietal cortex) is associated with motor planning and monitoring. Scientists have not yet clearly understood how sense of agency relates to expectations and feedbacks in the brain, or whether it can be manipulated in a laboratory setting. To explore this implicit perception of control, Zapparoli et al. used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity as they asked 25 adult participants to switch on a lightbulb by either pressing a button or by allowing an examiner to press their finger over the button. After each exercise, the participants shared how much time they perceived had passed between the action and its outcome. In line with a phenomenon known as intentional binding, in which it seems that less time passes between an action and its outcome when the action is voluntary, participants who pushed the button themselves perceived that less time passed before the bulb lit up. To test whether they could reduce participants' sense of agency, the researchers used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to alter the subjects' brain activity in the frontoparietal and cerebellar network during the exercise. This did, in fact, appear to interfere with the agency-related brain network, since participants who pushed the button now accepted a longer delay before the bulb lit up. Zapparoli et al. suggest that identifying specific processes associated with different levels of sense of agency may help scientists understand disorders that include delusions of control, such as schizophrenia.

The newly discovered exoplanet TOI 849 b offers the unique opportunity to peer inside the interior of a planet and learn about its composition. It orbits around a star about 730 light years away, which is very similar to our sun. The exposed core is the same size as Neptune in our solar system. The researchers assume that it is a gas giant that was either stripped of its gaseous atmosphere or that failed to fully form one in its early life due to special circumstances. The study by the team led by Dr David Armstrong from the University of Warwick's Department of Physics is published today in the journal Nature. PD Dr. Christoph Mordasini from the University of Bern Physics Institute led the theoretical interpretation of the discovery.

A year that is a mere 18 hours

TOI 849 b is an extremely unusual planet in the so-called "Neptune Desert" - a term used by astronomers for a region close to stars where we rarely see planets of Neptune's mass or larger. The lead author of the study, Dr. David Armstrong from the University of Warwick, says: "The planet is strangely close to its star, considering its mass. In other words, we don't see planets with this mass at these short orbital periods." TOI 849 b orbits so close to its host star that a year is a mere 18 hours and its surface temperature is around 1,500 °C.

Christoph Mordasini explains: "We have determined the planet's mass and radius. TOI-849b is about 40 times heavier than the earth, but its radius is just 3.4 earth radii." So the planet has a high density and therefore has to primarily consist of iron, rock and water, but only very little hydrogen and helium. "Such a small amount of hydrogen and helium is really astonishing for such a massive planet. We would expect a planet this massive to have accreted large quantities of hydrogen and helium when it formed."

David Armstrong adds: "The fact that we don't see those gases lets us know TOI 849 b is an exposed planetary core." This is the first time that an intact exposed core of a gas giant has been discovered around a star.

Bern's expertise in demand worldwide

The University of Bern has been continuously developing the "Bern Model of Planet Formation and Evolution" since 2003. Christoph Mordasini says: "In our model, we combine insights into the manifold processes involved in the formation and evolution of planets." Thanks to the world-renowned Bern model, discoveries such as those of the exoplanet TOI 849 b can be interpreted theoretically.

Based on the Bern model, two theories can be formulated which explain why TOI 849 b is not a typical gas giant but an exposed planetary core. "The first is that the exoplanet was once similar to Jupiter but lost nearly all of its outer gas through a variety of processes," Christoph Mordasini says. These could include tidal disruption, where the planet is ripped apart from orbiting too close to its star, or even a collision with another planet. Large-scale photoevaporation of the atmosphere could also play a role, but can't account for all the gas that has been lost.

Alternatively, TOI 849 b could be a "failed" gas giant. "Once the core of the gas giant formed then something very unusual could have happened and it never formed a massive atmosphere as normally. This could have occurred if there was a gap in the disk of dust and gas that the planet formed from due to gravitational interaction with the planet, or if the disk ran out of material right at the very moment when gas accretion normally follows," Mordasini adds.

David Armstrong says: "Our discovery proves that planets like this exist and we can track them down. We have the opportunity to look at the core of a planet in a way that we can't do in our own solar system."

How TOI 849 b was discovered and analyzed

TOI 849 b was found in a survey of stars by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), using the transit method: the satellite measures the brightness of a star. A dip in brightness indicates that a planet has passed in front of them.

TOI 849 b was then analyzed using the HARPS instrument built under Swiss leadership, at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. This utilizes the Doppler effect to measure the mass of exoplanets by measuring their 'wobble' - small movements towards and away from us that register as tiny shifts in the star's spectrum of light.

"Bern Model of Planet Formation and Evolution"

Statements can be made about how a planet was formed and how it has evolved using the "Bern Model of Planet Formation and Evolution". The Bern model has been continuously developed at the University of Bern since 2003. Insights into the manifold processes involved in the formation and evolution of planets are integrated into the model. These are, for example, submodels of accretion (growth of a planet's core) or of how planets interact gravitationally and influence each other, and of processes in the protoplanetary disks in which planets are formed. The model is also used to create so-called population syntheses, which show which planets develop how frequently under certain conditions in a protoplanetary disk. The world-renowned Bern model is also used for the theoretical interpretation of discoveries such as that of the TOI 849 b exoplanet.

Leading UK academic scientists are urging the government to introduce a statutory levy on gambling firms to deliver reductions in gambling harms.

In an open letter to the culture minister, Oliver Dowden and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, published by The BMJ today, they warn that the current voluntary system gives the industry too much influence on how the money is spent.

Their call comes as the Betting and Gaming Council's (BCG's) five largest members announced they will give £100m to the charity GambleAware to improve treatment services for problem gamblers. This funding was first promised to the charity Action Against Gambling Harms in August 2019.

Last week, the Advisory Board for Safer Gambling called for a statutory levy in their first progress report on the National Strategy to Reduce Gambling Harms. The House of Lords will also publish its report Gambling Harm - Time for Action on Thursday.

The letter says irrespective of which organisation funds are given to, the BGC's announcement "exemplifies the long-standing weakness of a funding system that allows the gambling industry to regulate the availability and distribution of vital funds to address gambling harms across our communities."

The authors argue that reducing harms "requires a dual focus on treatment but also preventing harms from occurring in the first place." Yet the BGC announcement "focuses on funding for treatment and says nothing about prevention."

They also believe that funds for research into gambling harms and their reduction should be distributed through recognised independent organisations, such as UK Research and Innovation and the National Institute for Health Research.

"Delivering an effective strategy to reduce gambling harms requires surety and certainty of funding to enable effective planning and delivery of long term objectives," they write. "A voluntary system, reliant on the good-will of the industry, is an inadequate way to develop such a system."

Instead, a statutory levy "provides an opportunity to deliver harm reductions by ensuring a fair, independent and trusted system for developing effective prevention activities," they explain. "Effective prevention in turn delivers societal benefits through reductions in the social costs associated with gambling harms and a levy creates an equitable system by which all members of the industry contribute to addressing the harms they generate," they add.

"We urge you, the Secretaries of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and for Health and Social Care, to review current funding arrangements and implement a statutory levy to deliver reductions in gambling harms," they conclude.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a computational model that helps users understand how changes in the nanostructure of materials affect their conductivity - with the goal of informing the development of new energy storage devices for a wide range of electronics.

Specifically, the researchers were focused on the materials used to make capacitors - which are energy storage devices used in everything from smartphones to satellites.

"You probably use thousands of capacitors in your day-to-day life, whether you know it or not," says Doug Irving, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State.

The material that a capacitor is made of affects its performance. So Irving and his collaborators set about developing a model to understand how structural characteristics in a material affect the material's conductivity.

"One of the things that we're pleased with is that this model looks at multiple spatial scales simultaneously - capturing everything that is happening from the device-level scale to the nanoscale," Irving says.

"For example, our model looks at things like defects and grain boundaries," Irving says. "Defects are things like missing atoms in a material's structure, or where the 'wrong' atoms are found in the structure. Grain boundaries are where different crystalline structures run into each other. Well, our model looks at how things like defects and grain boundaries affect the presence and movement of electrons through a material.

"Because different ways of processing a material can control the presence and distribution of things like defects and grain boundaries, the model gives us insights that can be used to engineer materials to meet the demands of specific applications. In other words, we're optimistic that the model can help us keep the cost of future capacitors low, while ensuring that they'll work well and last a long time."

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) is the largest telescope with the highest sensitivity in the world. Extragalactic neutral hydrogen detection is one of important scientific goals of FAST.  

Recently, an international research team led by Dr. CHENG Cheng from Chinese Academy of Sciences South America Center for Astronomy (CASSACA) observed four extragalactic galaxies by using the FAST 19-beam receiver, and detected the neutral hydrogen line emission from three targets with only five minutes of exposure each. This is the first publication for FAST to detect extragalactic neutral hydrogen.

The research paper was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics Letter. 

Neutral hydrogen gas is the most extended baryons in galaxies, while cold gas traced by CO is more concentrated to a galaxy center (red contour in Fig.1). "With dynamical measurements of neutral hydrogen and CO, we can estimate the mass distribution of galaxies at different radii," said Dr. CHENG, first author of the study.  

Dynamical masses of these four galaxies estimated from the newly observed neutral hydrogen line were 10 times higher than the observed baryon masses, indicating contribution of dark matter.

On the other hand, dynamical masses estimated using previous CO observations were equivalent to their observed baryon masses. Therefore, the new FAST observation illustrated its ability of studying dark matter in galaxies using the neutral hydrogen 21cm emission line.

The FAST observation of these galaxies was an important part of an international research project, the Valparaíso ALMA Line Emission Survey (VALES), led by Prof. Edo Ibar from Valparaiso University in Chile.  

The VALES is a project of observing star forming galaxies using first-class international facilities such as Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), Herschel Space Observatory, Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope (APEX) and Very Large Telescope (VLT).

FAST, with the unpreceded sensitivity, provides a unique chance to observe the extra-galactic neutral hydrogen, and therefore has been added to the list of modern astronomical facilities used by this international collaboration.

A new study reveals that the common asthma drug salbutamol may offer potential as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting 47 million people worldwide and its prevalence is expected to triple to more than 130 million cases by 2050.

No effective treatments that cure the disease or slow down its progression have been discovered. However, this new early-stage study has revealed that repurposing an existing drug, salbutamol, offers significant potential as a low cost and rapid response option.

Extensive analytical in-vitro experiments conducted by the research team show that salbutamol is effective at reducing the accumulation of insoluble fibres of the tau protein - which is found in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease. These microscopic fibres accumulate into neurofibrillary tangles and can cause neuron destabilisation, brain cell death, and are a key characteristic of the disease's progression.

Much Alzheimer's disease research has focused on the build-up of amyloid plaques, caused by misfolding of the amyloid-β protein. However, because of disappointing results from numerous therapies targeting Aβ aggregation, more attention is shifting towards tau.

This study, led by researchers at Lancaster University, used a new automated 'high throughput' screening approach to study the structure of the misfolding tau protein with a special analytical technique called 'Synchrotron Radiation Circular Dichroism' (SRCD) at Diamond Light Source, the UK national synchrotron light source in Oxfordshire. With this powerful technique they were able to look at a selection of more than 80 existing compounds and drugs simultaneously to determine their effectiveness at preventing the formation of tau fibrils.

This method confirmed the compound epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline, was effective at stabilising the tau proteins and preventing the formation of tau tangles. However, our bodies do not easily absorb epinephrine and it rapidly gets metabolised, so the scientists then looked at a range of readily available compounds with similar chemical structures. This search revealed four current drugs as possible candidates - etamivan, fenoterol, dobutamine and salbutamol.

Etaminvan and fenoterol were found to have little effect on the assembly of tau tangles. Dobutamine, which is used for the rapid treatment of heart attacks and heart failure, was found to have some benefit. However, because its effects are very short-lived, and because it needs to be administered intravenously, it is not ideal as a basis for treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Further tests using a range of analytical techniques all revealed salbutamol could inhibit tau aggregation in vitro. Tests where salbutamol was added to solutions containing tau resulted in drastically reduced density of fibrous tau structures responsible for the tau neurofibrillary tangles.

The researchers believe that salbutamol interacts with an early stage of tau fibril formation, reducing their ability to form an initial nucleus which drives the aggregation process.

Because it is easily ingested, absorbed into the brain, and remains in the body for several hours, salbutamol has attractive properties as a research avenue for potential new treatment for Alzheimer's.

Dr David Townsend, of Lancaster university and lead author of the research, said: "Our work highlights the potential impact of repurposing drugs for secondary medical uses, by discovering a novel therapeutic strategy that impedes the molecular pathology of Alzheimer's disease, and which may have otherwise gone unstudied.

"Salbutamol has already undergone extensive human safety reviews, and if follow up research reveals an ability to impede Alzheimer's disease progression in cellular and animal models, this drug could offer a step forward, whilst drastically reducing the cost and time associated with typical drug development."

Professor David Middleton, co-author of the research, said: "This work is in the very early stages and we are some way from knowing whether or not salbutamol will be effective at treating Alzheimer's disease in human patients. However, our results justify further testing of salbutamol, and similar drugs, in animal models of the disease and eventually, if successful, in clinical trials."

Dr Rohanah Hussain, of Diamond Light Source, Senior Beamline Scientist and co-author said: "Diamond B23 beamline unique micro-collimated beam has made high throughput CD possible allowing the screening of many compounds through structural activity correlation crucial in drug discovery."

The researchers say that current asthma inhalers result in only a small amount of salbutamol reaching the brain and so, if further research is successful, a new delivery method would also need to be developed. They add that future research could also focus on other asthma drugs that are chemically similar to salbutamol, but which circulate in the bloodstream for much longer.

TAMPA, Fla. - Lung cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women in the United States. It is also the leading cause of cancer death among both sexes, making up nearly 25% of all cancer deaths nationwide. This is why screening for lung cancer, especially among high risk groups like lifetime smokers, is so important. Screening with low dose computed tomography (CT) is associated with a 20% reduction in lung cancer death. However, low dose CT does have its limitations, such as over diagnosing slow-growing lung cancers that may never cause detriment to the patient. In a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports, Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have shown how the use of radiomics can improve lung cancer screening by identifying early stage lung cancer patients who may be at high risk for poorer outcomes, and therefore require aggressive follow-up and/or adjuvant therapy.

Radiomics is a growing area of cancer research that extracts non-invasive biomarkers from medical imaging. It has advantages over circulating and tissue-based biomarkers because radiomic features are calculated from standard-of-care imaging and reflect the entire tumor burden, not just a sample of the tumor.

For the study, the Moffitt researchers used data from the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), a study comparing two lung cancer screening methods - low dose CT and standard chest x-ray. They generated radiomic features from NLST patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer during their screening. Features, including as size, shape, volume and textural characteristics, were calculated from within (intratumoral) and around (peritumoral) their lung cancer tumors. Patients were then split into training and test cohorts, and an external cohort of non-screen detected lung cancer patients was used for further validation.

"Our goal was to use radiomic features to develop a reproducible model that can predict survival outcomes among patients who are diagnosed during a lung cancer screening," said Jaileene Pérez-Morales, Ph.D., lead study author and a postdoctoral fellow at Moffitt.

After analyses to remove redundant and non-reproducible radiomics features, the researchers were able to develop a model that can identify a vulnerable group of screen-detected, early stage lung cancer patients who are at high risk of poor survival outcomes. Specifically, the model uses two radiomic features, one peritumoral and one intratumoral, to stratify patients into three risk groups - low, intermediate and high. The high-risk patients may have more aggressive cancer that while caught early, could still require frequent follow up and/or adjuvant therapy.

"Identifying predictive biomarkers that detect aggressive cancers or those that may be slow developing and non-emergent are a critical unmet need in the lung cancer screening setting," said Matthew Schabath, Ph.D., associate member of the Cancer Epidemiology Department at Moffitt. "Additional research is needed to inform us on the potential translational implications of this model, but it could make a major impact on saving lives by identifying lung cancer patients with aggressive disease while also sparring others from unnecessary therapy."

Scientists from the USC Stem Cell laboratories of Neil Segil and Justin Ichida are whispering the secrets of a simpler way to generate the sensory cells of the inner ear. Their approach uses direct reprogramming to produce sensory cells known as "hair cells," due to their hair-like protrusions that sense sound waves. The study was published in the journal eLife.

"We've succeeded in directly reprogramming a variety of mouse cell types into what we're calling 'induced hair cell-like cells, or iHCs," said PhD student Louise Menendez, the study's lead author. "This allows us to efficiently generate large numbers of iHCs to identify causes and treatments for hearing loss."

The scientists successfully reprogrammed three different types of mouse cells to become iHCs. The first two types were embryonic and adult versions of connective tissue cells, known as fibroblasts. The third was a different type of inner ear cell, known as a supporting cell.

To achieve reprogramming, the scientists exposed fibroblasts and supporting cells to a cocktail of four transcription factors, which are molecules that help convey the instructions encoded in DNA. The scientists identified this cocktail by testing various combinations of 16 transcription factors that were highly active in the hair cells of newborn mice.

"The four key ingredients turned out to be the transcription factors Six1, Atoh1, Pou4f3, and Gfi1," said Menendez.

The resulting iHCs resembled naturally occurring hair cells in terms of their structure, electrophysiology, and genetic activity. The iHCs also possessed several other distinct characteristics of hair cells, including vulnerability to an antibiotic known to cause hearing loss.

"Hair cells are easy to damage, and currently impossible to repair in humans," said Segil, a professor in the Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, and the USC Tina and Rick Caruso Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, and one of the corresponding authors of the study. "Aging, loud noises, and certain chemotherapy drugs and antibiotics can all lead to the permanent loss of hair cells, which is the leading contributor to hearing loss worldwide."

iHCs have the potential to accelerate hearing loss research in at least two important ways, according to Ichida, who is the John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation Associate Professor of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at USC, and the other corresponding author of the study.

"In the near term, researchers can use iHCs to screen large numbers of drug candidates that might prevent or treat hearing loss," said Ichida, who is also a New York Stem Cell Foundation-Robertson Investigator. "And further in the future, it could become possible to directly reprogram supporting cells in the inner ear of a deafened individual, as a way to restore hearing."

A new study of wildlife consumption in northern Laos by San Diego Zoo Global researchers found widespread use of products made from sun bears, Asiatic bears and serows--goat-like mammals found throughout Asia--among other vulnerable species. The findings indicate that efforts are needed to reduce the unsustainable harvest of bears and serows, in particular, "before this demand becomes a significant conservation challenge," the authors wrote.

"Our results indicate the importance of identifying emerging trends in wildlife consumption, which can inform efforts to halt population declines before they become full-blown crises," said Elizabeth Oneita Davis, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate in Community Engagement at San Diego Zoo Global. She co-authored the study, published in April in the journal Animals, with Jenny Glikman, Ph.D., an associate director in Community Engagement at San Diego Zoo Global.

"The research presented here represents a critical first step towards a conservation management solution in northern Laos that incorporates the emerging threat of consumption of serow, which may be excluded from management plans directed at conserving more 'charismatic' fauna," said Davis.

Unsustainable wildlife consumption is widespread in Southeast Asia. Exports to neighboring China and Vietnam have led to the extirpation of tigers and Javan rhinos in Laos, the authors said. Less is known, though, about the demand for wildlife products within Laos. To learn more about use patterns, Davis and Glikman interviewed 100 adults in 18 villages, in the Luang Prabang region of the country.

The most commonly used substances, consumed by about a quarter of those interviewed, were derived from the bile or gallbladder of sun bears and Asiatic bears. While use of bear products in the region had been documented, this study suggests consumption may be more common than previously thought. The second most-consumed items, used by 7% of respondents, were derived from serows. Products derived from serows and bears are similar in form and use, often being made into topicals or consumables to treat bruises or fight fatigue. However, serow products are less expensive than comparable bear products.

Sun bears and Asiatic black bears are listed as Vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. The Chinese serow is listed as Near Threatened, but the IUCN is in the process of changing its status to the more-urgent Vulnerable, the study authors said.

Overall, interviewees reported they had used or knew someone who had used a wide variety of products derived from animals ranging from elephants to tigers, snakes, porcupines, monkeys and bats. Approximately half of respondents said they viewed wildlife products as a form of traditional medicine. A majority of the species consumed were listed as Vulnerable or Least Threatened on the Red List of Threatened Species.

"Our results of present and prevalent demand for wildlife in northern Laos indicate both that enforcement efforts are not working and that the Laos government's goals of reducing wildlife trade may be challenging to achieve," Davis said.

It isn't known if the current harvest of serows in Laos is sustainable. But it is possible that demand could increase sharply if those who consume bear products turn to less-pricey serow products instead. If that happens, the ungulates "may suffer a sudden, serious and rapid decline in the next decade," the authors wrote.

Researchers in Australia and China have proposed an innovative and cost-effective new method for creating silica beads, which have a number of key uses, ranging from nanomedicine and bioimaging to the production of paper and polished concrete.

The synthesis of silica particles for experimental and industrial uses began in the 1960s, and usually takes place in large batches, where controlled doping to induce functionality is difficult.

Control of the synthesis parameters can be achieved through costly and time-consuming small-scale microfluidic reactors that require photolithography, etching, bonding and injection moulding, which are prone to clogging.

Now, a surprisingly simple new approach has been demonstrated, and could be adopted for various applications at a low cost and with a high degree of reliability.

Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, based at The University of Melbourne, and working with colleagues at South China Normal University, constructed a flow synthesis device using a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) or 'Teflon' pipe wound around a rod and connected to two syringes.

The key to the success of this approach is a spiral channel which promotes vortex flow characteristics, and this type of fluid flow encourages extremely efficient mixing of the precursor fluids.

"When this happens you now have this very cheap and quite efficient chemical reactor," corresponding author Dr Eser Akinoglu said.

"Once you have the fluids in a tube that is spiralled, then due to these vortexes, they mix very quickly and ... the overall reaction is more homogeneous, the product is homogeneous, and the silica particles have a uniform size and shape."

While this new mechanism is unlikely to replace industrial-scale batch manufacturing for the creation of pure silica particles, it could well rival the microfluidic approach used in synthesising silica nanoparticles for specialised, niche applications, such as silica particles 'doped' with colourful dyes or encapsulating quantum dots for fluorescence.

"From a material costs perspective, it's very reasonable," Dr Akinoglu said.

"For the future, this flow synthesis method is ideal for the introduction of new components into the reaction ... you could put something else into this flow to mix together with the whole process and it will then be encapsulated in these silica particles."

It is estimated that 15 million different species live on our planet, but only 2 million of them are currently known to science. Discovering new species is important as it helps to protect them. Furthermore, new species can also produce compounds that could lead to the development of new medicine.

"Biodiversity is declining at an accelerating rate and, according to estimates, even a million organisms are in danger of becoming extinct in the next few decades. If we want to protect nature's biodiversity as efficiently as possible, we have to discover as many species as we can," says Professor of Biodiversity Research Ilari E. Sääksjärvi from the University of Turku, Finland.

Discovering new species enables, for example, studying their habits and defining their geographical distribution.

So far this year, the researchers of the Biodiversity Unit at the University of Turku have described 17 new spider species, 23 insects, one bristly millipede, and one monitor lizard. The new species have been discovered from the Amazon, Europe, India, the Middle East, and the Pacific islands. In addition to the species, the researchers have also described four new genera previously unknown to science.

The Amazing Beauty of Spiders

In one of the most recent studies from the Biodiversity Unit, Doctoral Candidate Alireza Zamani described a new spider species Loureedia phoenixi from Iran.

"The discovery was amazing as the new species belongs to the genus of velvet spiders, of which only few species have been known so far. They are very shy in their habits so discovering a new species was a great and welcome surprise. The species in this genus are amazingly beautiful and colourful so I wish this new discovery can make people understand the beauty and importance of spiders. We discovered the species from an area that is about 1,500 kilometres outside the known geographical distribution of the Loureedia genus," describes Zamani.

Zamani and Sääksjärvi say that the Loureedia phoenixi spider was named after actor Joaquin Phoenix. The colourful pattern on its back resembles the face paint of the movie character Joker.

The researchers of the Biodiversity Unit have also described tropical parasitoid wasps belonging to the Acrotaphus and Hymenoepimecis genera. These wasps are parasitic on spiders and manipulate the host in complicated ways. The parasitoid wasp lays its egg on the spider and then manipulates it into spinning a special web instead of a normal web for catching prey. The wasp's pupa nests safely inside this special web while developing into adulthood.

Species Discoveries Support Conservation Efforts

New discoveries increase our information about the history of species and can therefore affect their conservation in the future. A good example is the Varanus bennetti monitor lizard described this year, as the importance of the species' conservation was concluded only after close field and laboratory studies.

"The monitor lizard species that was first considered an invasive species to Micronesia turned out to be two separate species native to the islands. We described one of these as new to science," say researchers Valter Weijola and Varpu Vahtera who discovered the species.

Discovering, classifying, and describing a new species is a long process. New discoveries often require challenging field studies in remote places. Before conducting the field study, the researcher has to make sure that the required permits for collecting specimens and taking them out of the country are in order. The studies are conducted together with local scientists as often as possible.

After the field study, the other research work begins: the species is examined in a laboratory, described, named, and classified and then the research article is published in an international journal.

In the last few years, the Biodiversity Unit of the University of Turku has profiled itself especially in describing the biodiversity of unknown ecosystems. Each year, the unit describes dozens of new species which is a great amount even by international standards.

"Our goal is to discover new species and tell their story to the world. At the moment, we are in the process of describing even more new species and genera. Many of these animals live in areas that might transform or even disappear in the next few years. Describing new species to science is a race against the clock. We hope that our research draws people's attention to the life of these unique species and thus promotes the conservation of biodiversity," conclude Sääksjärvi and Zamani.

Discourse in and about Spanish was present on both sides of the political spectrum, more so leading up to the 2016 presidential election than in previous cycles, according to research conducted by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

As the 2020 presidential election approaches, Kirschen said that Spanish will continue to be a very present part of our national politics.

"This study helps shed light on the ways in which candidates speak of and to this very important part of the electorate," said Bryan Kirschen, assistant professor of Spanish linguistics at Binghamton University. "Especially should they want to secure their votes - and interests - in the future."

According to Kirschen's research, the reaction to the candidates' uses of Spanish in 2016 depended on both their party affiliation and whether they were Latino or non-Latino. One example is the case of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine.

"Tim Kaine added to this discussion, as he often gave speeches in Spanish, a language he developed proficiency in as early as the 1980's, while on a mission in Honduras," Kirschen said. "While Latino candidates were apparently considered as well, their Spanish was often assumed, but never praised."

Kirschen also said that Spanish played a prominent role in the Republican primary.

"Before [Donald] Trump became the GOP candidate to represent his party, numerous hopefuls were proficient in Spanish. Jeb Bush often used Spanish...but Trump dismissed his use of the language, like when he said in an interview 'I like Jeb. He's a nice man, but he should really set the example of speaking English while in the United States.'"

Kirschen concluded that in the Republican Party, Spanish has been framed as a language in competition with and of threat to English, while in the Democratic Party, it is often embraced. He also poses another question that crosses party lines.

"Why do we, as a society, encourage bilingualism - especially among Anglo Americans - when others are discouraged and forced to give up their own heritage languages?"

At the time of the research, there were more than 55 million Latinos in the United States, most of whom are speakers of Spanish.

In their search for what triggers the damaging side-effects caused by acute psychological stress, Yale researchers found an answer by doing a fat check.

In the face of psychological stress, an immune system response that can significantly worsen inflammatory responses originates in brown fat cells, the Yale team reports June 30 in the journal Cell.

Since the hormones associated with stress, cortisol and adrenaline, generally decrease inflammation, it has long puzzled researchers how stress can worsen health problems such as diabetes and autoimmune disease as well as depression and anxiety.

"In the clinic, we have all seen super-stressful events that make inflammatory disease worse, and that never made sense to us," said Dr. Andrew Wang, assistant professor of internal medicine and immunobiology, and corresponding author of the study.

Cortisol and adrenaline, hormones released in the classic "flight or fight" stress response, generally suppress the immune system, not activate it. These hormones also initiate a massive metabolic mobilization that provides fuel to the body as it addresses threats.

The scientists found that it was an immune system cell -- the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) -- that triggers inflammation in times of stress. IL-6 has also been shown to play a role in autoimmune diseases, cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression and anxiety.

Wang and colleagues began to study the role of IL-6 in stress after a simple observation: When the researchers drew blood from mice, a very stressful procedure, the blood showed elevated levels of the cytokine.

In a series of experiments in mice, designed by Hua Qing and Reina Desrouleaux in Wang's lab, the researchers found that IL-6, which is usually secreted in response to infections, was induced by stress alone and worsened inflammatory responses in the stressed animals.

And to their surprise, they found that in times of stress IL-6 was secreted in brown fat cells, which are most known for their roles in regulating metabolism and body temperature. When signals from the brain to brown fat cells are blocked, stressful events no longer worsened inflammatory responses.

"This was a completely unexpected finding," said Qing, a postdoctoral associate at Yale School of Medicine.

The researchers reasoned that IL-6 must play another role in the "fight or flight" response besides triggering inflammation. They learned it also helps prepare the body to increase production of glucose in anticipation of threats. The brown fat cell response causes IL-6 levels to peak well after the metabolic production of glucose and the release of cortisol and adrenaline. This may explain why stress can trigger inflammation even while immune-suppressing hormones are being released, the researchers said.

Blocking IL-6 production not only protected stressed mice from inflammation, it also made them less agitated when placed in a stressful environment.

Wang and his team also suspect IL-6 may play a role in mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety. Wang observes that many of symptoms of depression, such as loss of appetite and sex drive, mimic those caused by infectious diseases such as the flu -- so-called "sickness behaviors" -- that can be triggered by IL-6.

Existing drugs designed to treat autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis block the activity of IL-6. Preliminary findings suggest these drugs may help alleviate symptoms of depression, the authors note. There is also preliminary evidence that IL-6 may also play a role in diabetes and obesity as well.

"There is an ever-growing literature on the role of IL-6 outside of immunity. Our work is exciting because it contributes to shortening that gap of knowledge," said Desrouleaux, a graduate student in biology and biomedical science.

Do children have to wait until age 8 to recognise - spontaneously and without instructions - the same emotion of happiness or anger depending on whether it is expressed by a voice or on a face? A team of scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences (CISA) has provided an initial response to this question. They compared the ability of children age 5, 8 and 10 years and adults to make a spontaneous link between a heard voice (expressing happiness or anger) and the corresponding emotional expression on a natural or virtual face (also expressing happiness or anger). The results, published in the journal Emotion, demonstrate that children from 8 years look at a happy face for longer if they have previously heard a happy voice. These visual preferences for congruent emotion reflect a child's ability for the spontaneous amodal coding of emotions, i.e. independent of perceptual modality (auditory or visual).

Emotions are an integral part of our lives and influence our behaviour, perceptions and day-to-day decisions. The spontaneous amodal coding of emotions - i.e. independently of perceptual modalities and, therefore, the physical characteristics of faces or voices - is easy for adults, but how does the same capacity develop in children?

In an attempt to answer this question, researchers from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences - together with members of the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences - led by Professor Edouard Gentaz, studied the development of the capacity to establish links between vocal emotion and the emotion conveyed by a natural or artificial face in children age 5, 8 and 10 years, as well as in adults. Unlike more usual studies that include instructions (generally verbal in nature), this research did not call on the language skills of children. It is a promising new method that could be used to assess capacities in children with disabilities or with language and communication disorders.

Exposed for 10 seconds to two emotional faces

The research team employed an experimental paradigm originally designed for use with babies, a task known as emotional intermodal transfer. The children were exposed to emotional voices and faces expressing happiness and anger. In the first phase, devoted to hearing familiarisation, each participant sat facing a black screen and listened to three voices - neutral, happy and angry - for 20 seconds. In the second, visual discrimination phase, which lasted 10 seconds, the same individual was exposed to two emotional faces, one expressing happiness and the other anger, one with a facial expression corresponding to the voice and the other with a facial expression that was different to the voice.

The scientists used eye-tracking technology to measure precisely the eye movements of 80 participants. They were then able to determine whether the time spent looking at one or other of the emotional faces - or particular areas of the natural or virtual face (the mouth or eyes) - varied according to the voice heard. The use of a virtual face, produced with CISA's FACSGen software, gave greater control over the emotional characteristics compared to a natural face. &laquoIf the participants made the connection between the emotion in the voice they heard and the emotion expressed by the face they saw, we can assume that they recognise and code the emotion in an amodal manner, i.e. independently of perceptive modalities», explains Amaya Palama, a researcher in the Laboratory of Sensorimotor, Affective and Social Development in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at UNIGE.

The results show that after a control phase (without a voice or a neutral voice), there is no difference in the visual preference between the happy and angry faces. So, after the emotional voices (happiness or anger), participants looked at the face (natural or virtual) congruent with the voice for longer. More specifically, the results showed a spontaneous transfer of the emotional voice of joy, with a preference for the congruent face of joy from the age of 8 and a spontaneous transfer of the emotional voice of anger, with a preference for the congruent face of anger from the age of 10.

Revealing unsuspected abilities

These results suggest a spontaneous amodal coding of emotions. The research was part of a project designed to study the development of emotional discrimination capacities in childhood funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) obtained by Professor Gentaz. Current and future research is trying to validate whether this task is suitable for revealing unsuspected abilities to understand emotions in children with multiple disabilities, who are unable to understand verbal instructions or produce verbal responses

With literally the thickness of one carbon atom and electrical properties that can surpass those of standard semiconductor technologies, graphene nanoribbons promise a new generation of miniaturized electronic devices. The theory, however, remains far ahead of reality, with current graphene nanoribbons falling short of their potential. A new collaborative study seen in Communications Materials by a project of CREST, JST Japan including Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and Fujitsu Ltd., and the University of Tokyo reports the first ever 17-carbon wide graphene nanoribbon and confirms it has the smallest bandgap seen to date among known graphene nanoribbons prepared by a bottom-up manner.

Large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs) that use silicon semiconductors are used in a wide range of electronic devices, anywhere from computers to smartphones. They are actually supporting our lives and almost everything else these days. However, although LSIs have improved device performance by reducing the size of the devices, LSI miniaturization is approaching its limit. At the same time, commercial demand continues to put pressure on companies to make higher performing smartphones at smaller sizes, while industry pressure is demanding large-scale manufacturing with smaller equipment.

Other methods and/or materials are definitely needed to solve these problems, says the group leader Dr. Shintaro Sato, Fujitsu Ltd.

"Silicon semiconductors are giving us better performance at smaller sizes. However, we are reaching the limit in how small we can make devices. Thus, we have high expectations for the performance of graphene nanoribbons, which have semi-conducting properties that are only one atom thick - a 2D material," he notes.

Graphene nanoribbons are honeycomb-like structures and, compared to graphene and carbon nanotubes, are the lesser known carbon-based semiconductor family member. Graphene nanoribbons exhibit unique electronic and magnetic properties that do not appear in two-dimensional graphene.

"Interestingly, the electronic and magnetic properties of graphene nanoribbons are widely tuned as a function of the width and edge structure." says Prof. Hiroko Yamada at NAIST.

Armchair-type graphene nanoribbons, which are promising type of nanoribbon for device application, display width-dependent band gap. They can be classified into three subfamilies (3p, 3p + 1, 3p + 2), their band gaps being inversely proportional to the width of those families. Basically, wider armchair-edge graphene nanoribbons belonging to the 3p + 2 subfamily have the smallest bandgaps among different graphene nanoribbons, having considerable potential to be exploited in GNR-based devices.

So far, 13-armchair graphene nanoribbons belonging to the 3p + 1 subfamily with a band gap of more than 1 eV have been reported, but Sato, Yamada and colleagues show the synthesis of a 17-graphene nanoribbon belonging to the 3p + 2 subfamily, which have even smaller bandgaps.

The graphene nanoribbon synthesis was based on the bottom-up approach, called "on-surface synthesis," and a dibromobenzene-based molecule was used as a precursor for on-surface graphene nanoribbon synthesis.

"There are many methods to synthesize graphene nanoribbons, but to produce atomically precise graphene nanoribbons, we decided to use the bottom-up approach. The important point is that the structure of the precursor can define the ultimate structure of graphene nanoribbons if we use the bottom-up approach," explains NAIST's Dr. Hironobu Hayashi, who also contributed to the study.

Scanning tunnel microscopy and spectroscopy by Dr. Junichi Yamaguchi at Fujitsu. Ltd. and non-contact atomic force microscopy by Dr. Akitoshi Shiotari and Prof. Yoshiaki Sugimoto at The University of Tokyo confirmed the atomic and electronic structure of the acquired 17-armchair graphene nanoribbons. Additionally, the experimentally obtained bandgap of 17-armchair graphene nanoribbons was found to be 0.6 eV, and this is the first demonstration of the synthesis of graphene nanoribbons having a band gap smaller than 1 eV in a controlled manner.

"We expect these 17-carbon wide graphene nanoribbons to pave the way for new GNR-based electronic devices," says Sato.