Earth

NEWPORT, Ore. - Three years of "health check-ups" on Oregon's summer resident gray whales shows a compelling relationship between whales' overall body condition and changing ocean conditions that likely limited availability of prey for the mammals, a new study from Oregon State University indicates.

Researchers from the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory at OSU's Marine Mammal Institute used drones to monitor 171 whales off the Oregon Coast during the foraging season between June and October in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

They found that the whales' health declined following a period of relatively poor upwelling - an ocean condition that brings colder, nutrient-rich water closer to the surface - compared to previous years.

"What we see is this compelling relationship between the oceanographic processes that control the quality and quantity of available prey and whale health," said Leigh Torres, an assistant professor with the Marine Mammal Institute and the lab's director. "This research gives us an inclination that changes in ocean conditions might be causing skinny whales."

The findings may also provide insight into the unusual gray whale die-off event that occurred in 2019 along the Pacific Coast, Torres said. More than 200 gray whales were reported dead between Mexico and Alaska last year, including six in Oregon. Many of the deceased whales appeared to be in poor body condition, meaning they looked skinny.

The study was just published in the journal Ecosphere. The paper's lead author is Leila Soledade Lemos, who recently completed her doctorate at Oregon State and worked with Torres in the GEMM Lab.

Most gray whales migrate from breeding grounds in Mexico to feeding grounds in the Bering and Chukchi seas between Alaska and Russia, where they spend the summer. The Pacific Coast Feeding Group, as Oregon's gray whales are known, spend the summer months feeding in coastal waters of Oregon, as well as northern California, Washington and southern Canada.

Torres and her team conduct "health check-ups" on the whales using drones to capture images and nets to capture fecal samples - two methods that provide researchers a lot of information in a noninvasive way, reducing stress on the whales.

Lemos used images captured by the drones to calculate the whales' Body Area Index. The BAI is similar to the Body Mass Index, or BMI, in humans, because both allow for comparisons among individuals despite differences in length and height.

The Body Area Index is a measurement that allows researchers to compare changes in individual whales as well as the population as a whole during the course of the feeding season and from year to year. The fecal samples help researchers determine a whale's hormones, sex and diet.

Gray whales typically arrive on the foraging grounds on the skinny side, then in ideal conditions will bulk up over the course of the summer in preparation for migration and breeding.

"With this research, we're trying to understand more about the health of the whales and how it varies throughout the foraging season and from year to year," Torres said. "Once we establish a baseline for whale body condition, we can start to see what is healthy and what is not and why."

The researchers often encounter the same whales multiple times in a season, or from one year to another, and have gotten to know their markings and features well enough to spot the whales by the names they've been assigned, such as Spray, Knife and Clouds.

"The first year the whales looked really fat and healthy. But after 2016, the whales were really skinny. You could see their skeletons," Lemos said. "For these whales, body condition is strongly related to food availability. It is also related to when they invest in reproduction."

The researchers noted nine pairs of mothers and calves in 2016, but only one pair each in the two following years. Calves had the highest Body Area Index numbers, followed by pregnant females. Lactating females had the lowest BAI and the most depleted body condition.

Overall, the whales' body condition deteriorated after poor upwelling conditions between 2016 and mid-2018. In 2016, the whales' mean BAI was 40.82, while in 2017 it was 38.67; 2018 was similar to 2017, at 38.62.

The poor upwelling may have caused a shift in the availability or quality of zooplankton, the whales' primary prey. But the impact of the changing food supply really became noticeable a year after the poor upwelling condition began.

"There was a one-year lag, or carry-over, between the lack of prey in 2016 and the whales' body condition the next year," Torres said.

One of the whales that died during the 2019 event had been observed and catalogued in previous years by Oregon State researchers.

The study highlights the value of monitoring whale health over time, Torres said. The researchers now have four years of data on Oregon's resident whales and hope to continue monitoring them to better understand health patterns in the population and how they connect to changing ocean conditions.

A new poll finds that a majority of Americans say that the federal government should commit to reducing economic inequality in this country over the next year, considering the spread of coronavirus in the United States and its impact on the economy and the American people.

A national survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of Lehigh University of 2,018 Americans, conducted between April 7-9, 2020, finds that 78 percent of Americans agree that "considering the spread of coronavirus in the United States and its impact on the economy and the American people," it is "somewhat" or "very important" that "the U.S. government commit to reducing economic inequality" over the next year, through things like "raising the minimum wage" and "taxing households making more than $250,000 a year to guarantee health care coverage to all Americans who lack access." Only 22 percent feel reducing inequality through these actions is "not very important" or "not at all important."

As the polling data show, public attitudes on inequality reduction vary by income, age, and between renters and homeowners. Support for inequality reduction is highest among Americans, age 35-44 (88%, compared to 82% of 18-34, 80% of 45-54 ,74% of 55-64 and 67% of 65+), individuals with household incomes of less than $100,000 a year (81% compared to 73% of those with HHI of $100K+), and renters (84%, compared to 76% of homeowners).

Opinions about the inequality divide are divided. Fifty-seven percent of Americans agree that "in a time of growing economic instability and rising unemployment claims, the U.S. is increasingly divided between the 'haves' and 'have-nots.'" By comparison, 43 percent agree that "recent economic troubles are only temporary, and the economy will soon bounce back, so it makes little sense to speak of 'haves' and 'have-nots.'" Groups that are most likely to agree that the U.S. is divided include younger Americans, aged 18-34 (64%, compared to 54% of 35-54, and 51% of 65+), individuals with household incomes of less than $50,000 a year (61%, compared to 53% of those with HHI of $100k+), and women (60%, compared to 54% of men).

Likes, shares, followers, and comments are the currency of online social networks. Posts with high levels of engagement are prioritized by content curation algorithms, allowing social network "influencers" to monetize the size and loyalty of their audience.

Yet not all engagement is organic, according to a team of researchers at New York University Tandon School of Engineering and Drexel University, who have published the first analysis of a robust underground ecosystem of "pods." These groups of users manipulate curation algorithms and artificially boost content popularity -- whether to increase the reach of promoted content or amplify rhetoric -- through a tactic known as "reciprocity abuse," whereby each member reciprocally interacts with content posted by other members of the group.

The researchers also developed a machine learning tool to detect posts with a high likelihood of having gained popularity through pod engagement. This tool could be deployed as part of content curation algorithms.

"One of the most surprising findings was how effective reciprocity abuse is at not only raising the visibility of a post, but in increasing real, organic engagement," said Rachel Greenstadt, associate professor of computer science and engineering at NYU Tandon and the lead author of the paper "The Pod People: Understanding Manipulation of Social Media Popularity via Reciprocity Abuse," published in the Proceedings of the The World Wide Web Conference. The team included NYU Tandon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Damon McCoy, Ph.D. student Janith Weerasinghe, and Drexel University researchers Bailey Flanigan and Aviel Stein.

The first characterization of distinguishing features, usage patterns, and rules of operation of a portion of the pod ecosystem, the project involved the analysis of 1.8 million Instagram posts belonging to 111,455 unique Instagram accounts, advertised across more than 400 Instagram pods hosted on Twitter's instant messaging service Telegram.

The team collected metadata from pod groups, gathered Instagram data associated with both the pods and control posts to train a classifier -- a machine learning function used to assign labels to particular data points -- to detect pod engagement, and then analyzed the efficacy of the pods to discover if using pods increases organic interaction.

The researchers used a machine learning model to predict with a high degree of precision whether or not an Instagram post was part of a pod, regardless of levels of interaction and engagement. By exploring how interactions with a post changed over time across users' profiles, they found that posting in pods boosted organic post interaction.

"The key observation driving our exploration was that pods are often advertised on the message boards of other pods, allowing us to search pod message boards to discover new pods," said Greenstadt. "There are likely a number of pods we did not observe that focus on special interest topics such as fashion, photography, or entrepreneurship, as well as pods with entry requirements based on the number of followers."

The researchers found that:

Seventy percent of users experienced a two-fold or greater increase in interaction level on control posts after they began posting in pods, and on average, these users saw a five-fold increase in comments

When users who had never posted in pods began posting 50% of their posts in pods, they saw a greater than five-fold increase in organic interaction with the posts that they did not post in pods

Each pod had, on average, about 900 users, though some had as many as 17,000 users

The barrier to entry is low: only 4% of the pods discovered required users to have a minimum number of followers before joining

Very active pods received more than 4,000 messages per day

"Most attempts to game the system have involved techniques such as automated bots and scripts, and social media companies have gotten better at mitigating these attacks," said Weerasinghe. "Pods, however, involve humans taking action manually, so they are harder to detect." He pointed out that the team was able to detect posts that had been amplified by pod interactions by the style of comments and interaction timing, not merely the level of engagement.

Weerasinghe explained that while the researchers' approach was as precise as their limited data set would allow, broader commercial application of their methods would need to be much more accurate.

"We did this with limited data, but social media companies, because they have a much richer data set, can use a similar approach and create even better models," he said.

The ease with which the team could discover pods via Google search, the low barrier to joining them, and their structural consistency all increase the potential for these groups to be rapidly adopted, according to Weerasinghe. "Already there is evidence of recently increasing adoption of this strategy: the pods we discovered have emerged at an accelerating pace over the last two years."

A RIKEN research team has established an optimized three-dimensional (3D) tissue-staining and observation technique based on existing tissue clearing technology. Published in Nature Communications, the study details how the new technique can be used to stain tissue and label cells in mouse brains, human brains, and whole marmoset bodies. This technique will allow detailed anatomical analysis and whole-organ comparisons between species at the cellular level.

Tissue clearing allows 3D observation of organs using an optical microscope. In 2014, a research team led by Etsuo Susaki and Hiroki Ueda at the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) in Japan developed a 3D tissue clearing technology called CUBIC, which can image the whole body at the single-cell level by making tissue transparent.

While tissue clearing can result in fantastical images, by itself it does not have much scientific value. In order for tissue clearing to be meaningful, scientists need to be able to stain and label specific tissues and cell types, which can then be studied. This requires a system that works with a wide range of staining agents and antibodies. Although several types of 3D staining and labeling methods have been attempted, none has been versatile enough.

Realizing that they needed a better understanding of body tissue, the team at BDR and their colleagues performed detailed physical and chemical analyses. They found that biological tissues can be defined as a type of electrolyte gel.

Based on the tissue properties they discovered, they constructed a screening system to examine a series of conditions using artificial gels that can mimic biological tissues. By analyzing the staining and antibody labeling of artificial gels with CUBIC, they were able to establish a fine-tuned, versatile 3D-staining/imaging method, which they named CUBIC-HistoVIsion. By using this optimized system with high-speed 3D microscopic imaging, they succeeded in staining and imaging the whole brain of a mouse, half a marmoset brain, and a square centimeter of human brain tissue. Whole-body 3D imaging of an infant marmoset was also successful. The system worked well with about 30 different antibodies and nuclear staining agents, making it useful for scientists in many different fields, from studying the brain to studying kidney function.

The system can be used for many purposes, one of which is to compare whole-organ anatomical features among species. CUBIC-HistoVIsion revealed that the overall distribution patterns of blood vessels in the brains of mice and marmosets are very similar and thus likely evolutionarily preserved. At the same time, they found that glia-cell distribution in the brain's cerebellum differed between humans, mice, and marmosets. The authors speculate that these differences in glia patterning could lead to the well-known structural differences in the cerebellum among species.

"The 3D staining method developed in our study surpasses the performance of the typical staining methods published so far and is the best method in the world at present," says Susaki. "It also provides a paradigm shift in the development of methods in tissue chemistry, such as the construction of staining protocols based on tissue properties. These results are expected to contribute to the understanding of biological systems at organ and organism scales, and to the improvement of the diagnostic accuracy and objectivity of 3D clinical pathology examination."

Poorer rural Amazonians are going hungry despite living in one of the most biodiverse areas on the planet - a new study reveals.

Massive seasonal floods mean many ribeirinhos, a marginalised social group who live alongside rivers in Brazil's Amazonian floodplain forests, struggle to catch enough fish to eat and can go hungry.

The Purus River, which flows towards the regional capital city of Manaus, undergoes one of the largest annual variations in water levels on the planet. When it floods, large areas of forest become submerged. River fish populations disperse making them much harder to catch.

The difficulty in catching fish during the floods might partially explain widespread malnutrition among vulnerable Amazonians, having serious lifelong health consequences, especially when affecting pregnant women and young children.

Policy makers and scientists had assumed that tropical areas containing very large forests contain enough food for the relatively sparse rural population.

Today, a team of scientists from Brazil and the UK are publishing the results of the first study linking food security for wildlife-dependent people in the Amazon with 'catch rates' - which is the amount of fish caught for each hour spent fishing.

Largely invisible to many policy makers and wider Brazilian society, the ribeirinhos, are some of the poorest people in Brazil, living in small communities dispersed over thousands of kilometres along Amazonian river systems. They often live far away from shops and lack electricity, refrigeration, or the ability to keep livestock. Therefore, ribeirinhos obtain a large proportion of their calories, macronutrients and micronutrients from catching fish.

During seasonal floods local people must spend around three times as long fishing compared to low water levels, using different techniques including more hooks, and fishing in different habitats - such as shallow flooded forests.

Despite their increased efforts fish catches fall by around half with catch rates reduced by 73 per cent.

This reduced food security during floods means families are forced to go without food for whole days, skip meals, or eat smaller portions.

Daniel Tregidgo, of the Federal University of Lavras in Brazil and Lancaster University in the UK is lead author on the study. He said: "The study highlights how the food security of marginalised rural communities living in a biologically rich area relies heavily on the stable supply of wildlife. Seasonal floods bring severe food insecurity among wildlife-reliant people by disrupting that supply despite being in an area of great natural wealth.

"This high prevalence of food insecurity seems paradoxical for Amazonian várzea forests which are biologically rich and have low human population densities but the population is highly dependent on this seasonally-transformed ecosystem.

"This study's findings indicates that we may be overlooking food instability in areas around the world where people are reliant on wildlife for food. This instability is potentially very common and dangerous for human health."

Researchers found that ribeirinhos also try to make up for their reduced fish catches by spending more time and effort hunting for bushmeat in the forests.

Paulo Pompeu from the Federal University of Lavras explains the potential implications of these findings across the Amazon: "Because the Amazon basin is experiencing a boom in construction of hydropower dams, such a major threat to fish stocks could lead to an increase in hunting pressure on land animals."

The findings that ribeirinhos both fish and hunt more when food security is reduced shows just how much they rely on wildlife.

The authors say that this evidence shows how effective management of river and forest wildlife populations is vital to ensure that remote rural communities can feed themselves in the high water season. Management of commercial fishing is particularly important, and the authors' previous research showed that fish stocks in the forest can be depleted by meeting the demand from large Amazonian cities, up to 1,000km away.

The study also found food insecurity hits the poorest hardest. Only the least-poor minority of ribeirinhos are able to protect themselves from seasonal food scarcity.

Researchers say the results show that the solution to food insecurity in the high water season is poverty alleviation for rural households. This raises important policy debates, particularly around welfare and fishing closed-season payments. They say that reliable provision of school meals in rural areas will also help support the diets of children in vulnerable households during times of low fish catches.

The researchers interviewed residents from 22 rural communities at least 13km apart from each other covering a distance along the river of 1,267km.

The findings are presented in the paper 'Tough fishing and severe seasonal food insecurity in Amazonian flooded forests' which has been published in the journal People and Nature.

A study has tracked the shift from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to early farming that occurred in prehistoric Europe over a period of around 1,500 years.

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of York, analysed the molecular remains of food left in pottery used by the first farmers who settled along the Atlantic Coast of Europe from 7,000 to 6,000 years ago.

The researchers report evidence of dairy products in 80% of the pottery fragments from the Atlantic coast of what is now Britain and Ireland. In comparison, dairy farming on the Southern Atlantic coast of what is now Portugal and Spain seems to have been much less intensive, and with a greater use of sheep and goats rather than cows.

The study confirms that the earliest farmers to arrive on the Southern Atlantic coast exploited animals for their milk but suggests that dairying only really took off when it spread to northern latitudes, with progressively more dairy products processed in ceramic vessels.

Prehistoric farmers colonising Northern areas with harsher climates may have had a greater need for the nutritional benefits of milk, including vitamin D and fat, the authors of the study suggest.

Senior author of the paper, Professor Oliver Craig from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said: "Latitudinal differences in the scale of dairy production might also be important for understanding the evolution of adult lactase persistence across Europe. Today, the genetic change that allows adults to digest the lactose in milk is at much higher frequency in Northwestern Europeans than their southern counterparts".

The research team examined organic residues preserved in Early Neolithic pottery from 24 archaeological sites situated between Portugal and Normandy as well as in the Western Baltic.

They found surprisingly little evidence for marine foods in pottery even from sites located close to the Atlantic shoreline, with plenty of opportunities for fishing and shellfish gathering. An exception was in the Western Baltic where dairy foods and marine foods were both prepared in pottery.

Lead author of the paper, Dr Miriam Cubas, said: "This surprising discovery could mean that many prehistoric farmers shunned marine foods in favour of dairy, but perhaps fish and shellfish were simply processed in other ways.

"Our study is one of the largest regional comparisons of early pottery use. It has shed new light on the spread of early farming across Atlantic Europe and showed that there was huge variety in the way early farmers lived. These results help us to gain more of an insight into the lives of people living during this process of momentous change in culture and lifestyle - from hunter-gatherer to farming."

'Latitudinal gradient in dairy production with the introduction of farming in Atlantic Europe' is published in Nature Communications.

Bethesda, MD - Findings from a new study examining human and canine brain cancer cells suggest that cannabidiol could be a useful therapy for a difficult-to-treat brain cancer. Cannabidiol, or CBD, is a non-psychoactive chemical compound derived from marijuana.

The study looked at glioblastoma, an often-deadly form of brain cancer that grows and spreads very quickly. Even with major advancements in treatment, survival rates for this cancer have not improved significantly.

"Further research and treatment options are urgently needed for patients afflicted by brain cancer," said Chase Gross, a student in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine/Master of Science program at Colorado State University. "Our work shows that CBD has the potential to provide an effective, synergistic glioblastoma therapy option and that it should continue to be vigorously studied."

Mr. Gross was scheduled to present this research at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting in San Diego this month. Though the meeting, to be held in conjunction with the 2020 Experimental Biology conference, was canceled in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the research team's abstract was published in this month's issue of The FASEB Journal.

Mr. Gross and colleagues examined human and canine glioblastoma cells because the cancer shows striking similarities between the two species. They tested the effects of CBD isolate, which contains 100 percent CBD, and CBD extract, which contains small amounts of other natural occurring compounds such as cannabigerol and tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.

"Our experiments showed that CBD slows cancer cell growth and is toxic to both canine and human glioblastoma cell lines," said Mr. Gross. "Importantly, the differences in anti-cancer affects between CBD isolate and extract appear to be negligible."

The new work revealed that the toxic effects of CBD are mediated through the cell's natural pathway for apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death. The researchers also observed that CBD-induced cell death was characterized by large, swollen intracellular vesicles before the membrane begins to bulge and breakdown. This was true for all the cell lines studied.

The researchers believe that CBD's anti-cancer actions target mitochondria--the cell's energy producing structures--by causing the mitochondria to dysfunction and release harmful reactive oxygen species. Their experiments showed that cells treated with CBD exhibited significant decreases in mitochondrial activity.

"CBD has been zealously studied in cells for its anticancer properties over the last decade," said Mr. Gross. "Our study helps complete the in vitro puzzle, allowing us to move forward in studying CBD's effects on glioblastoma in a clinical setting using live animal models. This could lead to new treatments that would help both people and dogs that have this very serious cancer."

Next, the researchers plan to transition from cell cultures to animal models to test CBD's effects on glioblastoma. If the animal studies go well, the work could progress to clinical trials on dogs that are being treated for naturally occurring glioblastoma at the Colorado State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

Bethesda, MD - As the number of preterm births in the U.S. continues to rise, there is an increasing need for new approaches to prevent preterm labor from progressing to preterm birth. Researchers have discovered a common molecular pathway in women who experience preterm labor and are using this insight to develop new treatments for woman who experience early labor.

"We not only identified an abnormality in the uterus of women who experience preterm labor but also found that FDA-approved drugs historically used to treat other disorders can be used to target this problematic pathway and are extremely effective at halting contractions," said Scott Barnett, PhD, University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.

Dr. Barnett, a postdoctoral fellow in Iain Buxton's laboratory, was scheduled to present this research at the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics annual meeting in San Diego this month. Though the meeting, to be held in conjunction with the 2020 Experimental Biology conference, was canceled in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the research team's abstract was published in this month's issue of The FASEB Journal.

About 10 percent of all births in the U.S. occur preterm, defined as fewer than 37 weeks gestational age. Children born at 24 weeks of gestation have only a 50% chance of survival, and those who do survive will most likely have health complications. Today, there are no FDA-approved drugs to delay birth beyond 48-hours in women who experience preterm labor that is not induced.

"Most drugs used to treat preterm labor were not designed to specifically address the abnormalities in the uterus that cause preterm labor but rather to treat other muscle disorders," said Dr. Barnett. "A way to delay that birth, even by a matter of days or weeks, will significantly improve the outcome of the child."

The researchers identified four candidate drugs that target the problematic molecular pathway and tested them on small pieces of uterine muscle donated by women who had a cesarean section. These tissue samples were placed in a solution simulating conditions in the body and then stimulated to contract with oxytocin, a natural hormone that elicits contractions in pregnant women. Applying the candidate drugs to the bath solution allowed the researchers to observe how the drugs affected the contractions.

Although all four drugs decreased contractions, contractions were almost completely halted with combined administration of the FDA-approved beta blocker nebivolol and the small molecule N6022, which underwent clinical trials for the treatment of asthma. N6022 inhibits S-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO) reductase, a key regulator of smooth muscle tone and inflammation.

Dr. Barnett and his colleagues plan to further test the candidate drugs in an animal model of preterm labor to determine whether they affect birth timing and the health of the offspring. The researchers are also continuing to develop new compounds that target the pathway they identified.

Bethesda, MD - Scientists have identified a collection of biomarkers that together signal that a person's cancer treatment may be harming their heart. After further validation, the biomarkers could eventually allow doctors to assess cardiovascular side effects of chemotherapy with a simple blood test early in the treatment process.

Heart problems are a side effect of several cancer therapies. Anthracyclines, a family of chemotherapy drugs used to treat many types of cancer, carry a particularly high risk. For example, about 17% of patients receiving anthracycline for the most aggressive forms of breast cancer have to stop therapy due to cardiac complications.

Doctors typically use echocardiograms, an ultrasound of the heart, to look for signs of heart damage at various points during treatment. However, echocardiograms can be expensive, and they show problems only after damage has already occurred.

"Compared to the current standards for diagnosing chemotherapy-related cardiac dysfunction (CRCD), the biomarker panel we have suggested would be cost effective and easy to implement, but more importantly, would aid in earlier diagnosis, risk assessment and CRCD progression monitoring that would ultimately improve patient care and outcomes," said study author Hari Vishal Lakhani, a clinical research associate at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. "It is especially relevant to patients in rural, lower socioeconomic communities, who may not be have access to serial echocardiography as a means to diagnose CRCD."

Lakhani was scheduled to present the research at the American Society for Investigative Pathology annual meeting in San Diego this month. Though the meeting, to be held in conjunction with the 2020 Experimental Biology conference, was canceled in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the research team's abstract was published in this month's issue of The FASEB Journal.

The researchers compared blood samples from 17 healthy women with samples from 17 women undergoing anthracycline treatment for breast cancer. The women with breast cancer also received echocardiograms before beginning anthracycline and three months and six months after starting treatment.

The results revealed significant differences in the levels of a dozen biomarkers related to cardiovascular changes between the two groups. While no single biomarker was sufficient to predict CRCD on its own, in combination they provided a reliable predictor of heart toxicity as assessed with echocardiography. Many of the biomarkers showed detectable changes well before heart damage was visible on an echocardiogram.

The biomarkers include a variety of proteins as well as microRNAs (miRNAs), which affect gene expression. The particular miRNAs identified in the study have previously been implicated in cardiac dysfunction and the proteins have been linked with inflammation, damage to the heart muscle and other processes involved in heart disease.

"Our results support the clinical application of these serum biomarkers and circulating miRNAs to develop a panel for early diagnosis of chemotherapy-related cardiac dysfunction which will enable early detection of disease progression and management of irreversible cardiac damage," said Lakhani. "A biomarker panel may in fact be better than serial echocardiography, because the information gathered from a biomarker panel could allow appropriate intervention to be taken before any cardiac damage has occurred."

Knowing a patient is showing signs of heart problems could lead doctors to adjust the chemotherapy type or dosage, or prescribe medications for heart failure. Giving doctors the information they need to take such steps earlier in the treatment process could substantially reduce the number of cancer patients who suffer illness or death as a result of chemotherapy-related heart problems, Lakhani said.

Bethesda, MD - Researchers report evidence that the compounds in e-cigarette liquid could potentially cause the body's tissue repair process to go haywire and lead to scarring inside the lungs. The new study, conducted in cell cultures, also suggests that inhibiting a certain nicotinic receptor could help promote the death of overactive fibroblast cells and thus slow scar formation, called fibrosis, in affected individuals.

"Prior studies strongly and consistently suggest that vaping is harmful for human health and linked to development of various types of human diseases," said lead study author Richard Nho, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine and graduate faculty in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota. "Our study further supports the concept that the use of e-cigarettes is not safer than smoking conventional cigarettes and that vaping is a potential risk factor to promote lung fibrosis."

Nho was scheduled to present the research at the American Society for Investigative Pathology annual meeting in San Diego this month. Though the meeting, to be held in conjunction with the 2020 Experimental Biology conference, was canceled in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the research team's abstract was published in this month's issue of The FASEB Journal.

Vaping is known to cause lung tissue injuries. While the study was not designed to uncover the mechanisms behind the serious lung injuries and deaths that have been linked with vaping, the findings shed light on how e-cigarettes may affect the crucial cell type that repairs lung injuries when they occur.

Nho and colleagues studied lung tissue samples from 14 people, including seven people without lung fibrosis and seven people with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that causes severe scarring in the lungs. They examined the activity of fibroblasts, a type of cell that repairs damaged tissue. In normal conditions, fibroblasts activate and proliferate when they are needed to heal a wound and then die off when no longer needed. In the case of lung fibrosis, fibroblasts become overactivated and then fail to die off, leading to a damaging buildup of scar tissue.

In the first set of experiments, the researchers treated fibroblasts with e-cigarette aerosol and tobacco smoke extracts. They found that when fibroblasts were exposed to e-cigarette aerosol extract, they were significantly more viable than those exposed to smoke extracts, suggesting that vaping--to a greater extent than tobacco smoking--could contribute to fibrosis by helping fibroblasts stay alive for an abnormally long time.

The researchers then experimented with e-liquids containing different amounts of nicotine, an active component of e-cigarettes. In those studies, fibroblasts exposed to nicotine-free e-liquids underwent cell death while those exposed to nicotine-containing e-liquids showed increased viability, with higher concentrations of nicotine leading to a greater increase in viability. These cells also super-charged their expression of a protein that binds to nicotine, called the alpha 7-nicotinic acetylcholine receptor.

Taken together, these findings suggest that e-cigarettes containing nicotine can potentially cause lung fibroblasts to become overactive and ultimately create scarring. The results further suggest this can happen both in healthy people and in people whose fibroblasts already have a tendency to grow out of control, such as those with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

"These results imply that the exposure to e-cigarette vapor may initiate the fibrotic process in people who do not have lung fibrosis, and that the exposure to e-cigarette vapor in patients with lung fibrosis may worsen the outcomes," said Nho.

Because the overactive fibroblasts were found to also increase the expression of a certain nicotinic receptor, Nho said finding a way to inhibit the pathological functions of the receptor that is abnormally regulated by nicotine in e-cigarettes could help to de-activate the fibroblasts and reduce scar formation. Further research can help to test this idea and determine whether different e-cigarette brands or components have different effects on fibroblast activity.

Though the Experimental Biology (EB) 2020 meeting was canceled in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, EB research abstracts are being published in the April 2020 issue of The FASEB Journal.

Explore the journal for the latest findings in anatomy, biochemistry, molecular biology, investigative pathology, pharmacology and physiology. Discover exciting research highlights below and in our Virtual Newsroom.

Vaping

Is It Safe to Vape While Breastfeeding?
Animal study suggests maternal nicotine exposure during breast feeding can affect offspring

Can Vaping Scar Your Lungs? New Insights and a Possible Remedy
E-cigarette liquid found to affect lung tissue repair process; inhibiting nicotine receptors may help

Say No to Vaping: Blood Pressure, Heart Rate Rises in Healthy, Young Nonsmokers

Infectious Disease

"Dirty" Mice Could Help Make a More Effective Flu Vaccine
Study suggests standard laboratory mice may lead scientists to overestimate vaccine efficacy

Scientists Uncover How Zika Virus Can Spread through Sexual Contact
Virus finds hospitable environment in the cells that line the vagina

Treatment Innovations

Light Helps Arthritis Treatments Target Joints
New drug delivery method could reduce side effects from rheumatoid arthritis drugs

Earbud-like Nerve Stimulator Shows Promise for Relieving Indigestion
Non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation helps stomach expand and empty properly

CBD

CBD Shows Promise for Fighting Aggressive Brain Cancer
Study shows that CBD isolate and extract can slow growth and kill cancer cells

What's the Best Way to Identify Male Hemp Seedlings?
More accurate sex determination could increase yields and lower price of CBD

Environment

Tube Worm Slime Displays Long-Lasting, Self-Powered Glow
Marine organism's bioluminescence could inspire new eco-friendly, long-lasting light sources

Scientists Use Bacteria to Help Plants Grow in Salty Soil
Method could be scaled up to help farmers improve crop yield in areas with increased soil salinity

Women's Health

Researchers Identify Drugs that Could Halt Preterm Labor
New approach targets problematic molecular pathway to prevent preterm labor and birth

Breathing During Exercise Is Harder for Women Than Men
With smaller airways, overcoming resistance takes more work

Heart Disease

Scientists Trace Path from PTSD to Heart Disease
Young adults with post-traumatic stress disorder show changes in small blood vessels

Researchers Weave Human Tissue into New Blood Vessels
Versatile tissue engineering approach could aid in repairing damage for many tissues and organs

Blood Test Offers Early Warning of Chemotherapy-Related Heart Problems
Accessible, cost-effective method could help doctors intervene before heart damage occurs

Insights into Why Loud Noise is Bad for Your Health
Mouse studies reveal how noise exposure affects heart health and can lead to cancer-related DNA damage

Brain Health

High-fat Diet Consequences Include Mental Fatigue, Researchers Say
Cognitive abilities were impaired in obese rats

Reducing Early Brain Inflammation Could Slow Alzheimer's Progression
Animal study targets Alzheimer's disease before symptoms are apparent

Less Addictive Form of Buprenorphine May Help Curb Cocaine Relapse
Mouse study shows buprenorphine analog is more effective with reduced potential for abuse

3D Tissue Models Provide Unprecedented Insight into Human Brain Function and Disease
Brain-region specific spheroids can be connected to study complex developmental processes

COLUMBIA, Mo. - While current events have increased stress for all families, parents of children with autism report higher levels of stress on average than parents of typically developing kids. Feeling overwhelmed and overburdened by various responsibilities, some parents turn to pets as a source of comfort and support.

Now, research from the University of Missouri has found that pets lead to strong bonds and reduced stress for both children with autism and their parents.

Gretchen Carlisle, a research scientist with the Research Center for Human-Animal Interaction in the MU College of Veterinary Medicine, surveyed more than 700 families from the Interactive Autism Network on the benefits and burdens of having a dog or cat in the family. She found that despite the responsibility of pet care, both children with autism and their parents reported strong bonds with their pets. Pet ownership was not related to parent stress, and parents with multiple pets reported more benefits.

"Given that the characteristics of autism spectrum disorder are so broad, it can be difficult to identify interventions that are widely beneficial," Carlisle said. "Some of the core challenges that children with autism face include anxiety and difficulty communicating. As pets can help increase social interaction and decrease anxiety, we found that they are not only helpful in providing comfort and support to children with autism, but to their parents as well."

For parents considering adding a pet into their family, Carlisle recommends including the child in the decision and making sure the pet's activity level is a good match with the child's.

"Some kids with autism have specific sensitivities, so a big, loud dog that is highly active might cause sensory overload for a particular child, while a quiet cat may be a better fit," Carlisle said. "My goal is to provide parents with evidence-based information so they can make informed choices for their families."

The manuscript on which this press release is based has an associated correction, which can be found here: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.0c04676 . The last paragraph of the press release should now read as follows:

“A fan blew the aerosol across various cloth samples, and the team measured the number and size of particles in air before and after passing through the fabric. One layer of a tightly woven cotton sheet combined with two layers of polyester-spandex chiffon — a sheer fabric often used in evening gowns — filtered out the most aerosol particles (80–99%, depending on particle size). Substituting the chiffon with natural silk or flannel, or simply using a cotton quilt with cotton-polyester batting, produced similar results. The researchers point out that fabrics with tighter weaves, such as cotton with a higher thread count, can act as mechanical barriers to particles, whereas fabrics that hold a static charge, like natural silk, can possibly provide electrostatic filtering effects. However, a 1% gap reduced the filtering efficiency by half or more, emphasizing the importance of a properly fitted mask.”

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people wear masks in public. Because N95 and surgical masks are scarce and should be reserved for health care workers, many people are making their own coverings. Now, researchers report in ACS Nano that a combination of cotton with natural silk or chiffon can effectively filter out aerosol particles -- if the fit is good.

SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is thought to spread mainly through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes, speaks or breathes. These droplets form in a wide range of sizes, but the tiniest ones, called aerosols, can easily slip through the openings between certain cloth fibers, leading some people to question whether cloth masks can actually help prevent disease. Therefore, Supratik Guha at the University of Chicago and colleagues wanted to study the ability of common fabrics, alone or in combination, to filter out aerosols similar in size to respiratory droplets.

The researchers used an aerosol mixing chamber to produce particles ranging from 10 nm to 6 μm in diameter. A fan blew the aerosol across various cloth samples at an airflow rate corresponding to a person's respiration at rest, and the team measured the number and size of particles in air before and after passing through the fabric. One layer of a tightly woven cotton sheet combined with two layers of polyester-spandex chiffon -- a sheer fabric often used in evening gowns -- filtered out the most aerosol particles (80-99%, depending on particle size), with performance close to that of an N95 mask material. Substituting the chiffon with natural silk or flannel, or simply using a cotton quilt with cotton-polyester batting, produced similar results. The researchers point out that tightly woven fabrics, such as cotton, can act as a mechanical barrier to particles, whereas fabrics that hold a static charge, like certain types of chiffon and natural silk, serve as an electrostatic barrier. However, a 1% gap reduced the filtering efficiency of all masks by half or more, emphasizing the importance of a properly fitted mask.

Heart attack patients who take part in a lifestyle improvement programme feel better - especially when they do additional physical activity. That's the finding of a large study presented today on ACVC Essentials 4 You, a scientific platform of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

"Exercise improves fitness, which has both physical and mental health benefits," said study author Dr. Ben Hurdus of the University of Leeds, UK. "If you're more able to participate in activities that bring you happiness, then you're more likely to have a better quality of life."

Heart attack patients are typically offered lifestyle classes - called cardiac rehabilitation - unless they have a particular reason why it's not suitable for them. Classes include exercise, smoking cessation, advice on diet and stress management, and the importance of taking medications.

This study investigated the impact of those classes on how heart attack patients feel about their physical and mental health (collectively termed 'health-related quality of life'). Heart attacks have a detrimental effect on quality of life, including problems with mobility, self-care, and daily activities which many people take for granted such as work and leisure.

Previous research has shown a link between cardiac rehabilitation and improved quality of life in heart attack patients. However, most of these studies were conducted prior to modern drugs and procedures such as statins to lower 'bad' cholesterol and stents to open clogged arteries.

The EMMACE-3 study recruited 4,570 patients who were admitted to 48 hospitals across England with suspected heart attack in 2011 to 2013. Patients completed a questionnaire while in hospital and then at 1, 6, and 12 months after discharge. Questions included whether they attended cardiac rehabilitation, their perceived quality of life, and their physical activity levels.

Patients who attended cardiac rehabilitation had a higher quality of life at all time points compared to those who did not. Patients who went to cardiac rehabilitation and exercised 150 minutes or more per week had even higher quality of life scores compared to those who did neither.

Dr. Hurdus said: "Cardiac rehabilitation involves not only exercise but also advice on lifestyle and medications which likely all contribute to making people feel better. There are also the added social benefits such as being around other people in a similar situation and having that shared sense of community. People who also do more than the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of activity per week report even higher quality of life."

Professor Chris Gale, senior author from the University of Leeds concluded: "All heart attack patients should be referred for cardiac rehabilitation unless their healthcare professional advises against it. If it isn't discussed, speak to your local healthcare professional to see if is suitable for you."

Solitons are self-reinforcing particle-like wave packets enabled by the balance between dispersion and nonlinearity. Occurring in hydrodynamics, lasers, cold atoms, and plasmas, solitons are generated when a laser field is confined in a circular resonator with ultra-low loss, which produces multiple solitons travelling around the resonator.

Normally, these solitons travel with the same speed, so they rarely get close to each other. However, when solitons do collide into each other, they can reveal important fundamental physics of the system, including the properties of the host resonator and its nonlinearity. What this means is that demonstrating and controlling soliton collisions in optical microresonators is a major goal for researchers in nonlinear dynamics and soliton physics.

Published in Physical Review X, researchers at Tobias Kippenberg's lab at EPFL have now developed a novel and effective method for generating soliton collisions in microresonators. The approach uses two lasers to generate two different soliton species - each species has a unique traveling speed - in a crystalline whispering gallery mode resonator.

The researchers input two laser fields in the microresonator, driving two soliton species whose speed mismatch can be flexibly controlled. As a result, solitons with different speeds collide into each other.

Depending on the difference between the solitons' speeds, different solitons can either bind with each other after they collide or cross each other. Since each collision happens in a very short time, conventional techniques cannot resolve individual soliton behaviors.

Here the researchers used a pulse train produced by high-speed modulators to probe the solitons. The interference between the pulses and the solitons generates electronic signals that can be recorded and analyzed, allowing the researchers to compare the results with theoretical simulations that accurately predict the experimental observations.

This phenomenon shows how robust these solitons in optical microresonators can be. "During the soliton collision an individual soliton's shape can be significantly distorted, and its energy exhibits dramatic vibrations," explains Wenle Weng, the paper's first author. "Yet, they can survive the strong impact from the collision, and they can unite with or disengage from each other after the collision."

The work introduces a convenient yet powerful platform to study complex soliton interactions and transient nonlinear dynamics. But it can also have help generate synchronized frequency combs and soliton-based optical telecommunications. The collision and binding mechanisms can be utilized to construct frequency combs with unconventional structures for optical metrology, and to enhance the bandwidth of frequency combs in general.