Earth

DURHAM, N.C. -- As droughts become more frequent and intense, the fragmentation of water service in the U.S. among tens of thousands of community systems, most of which are small and rely on local funding, leaves many households vulnerable to water contamination or loss of service, a new Duke University analysis finds.

These vulnerabilities aren't distributed equally, the study shows. Households in low-income or predominantly minority neighborhoods are likely to face the highest risks.

Resolving this disparity and making sure the taps in these homes don't run dry will require a fundamental re-evaluation of how the nation's patchwork of community water systems (CWSs) is managed and funded.

"Small water systems already are at a disadvantage when it comes to protecting water security during drought, because of the financial constraints they face," said Megan Mullin, associate professor of environmental politics at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment, who wrote the analysis. "Underlying patterns of segregation can amplify these weaknesses along economic and racial lines."

Mullin published her peer-reviewed article April 17 in a special drought edition of Science.

Disparities in drinking water insecurity are rooted in segregation and the local political economy of public services, she explained. Because CWSs rely on user fees for their funding, they historically have extended service to neighborhoods or adjacent municipalities where residents are more able to pay. The result is that some communities get high-quality water service, while others - often rural communities or places where poverty is concentrated - get lower-quality service. Repairs or upgrades to pipes and other infrastructure are made less frequently, allowing leaks and increasing the potential risks of contamination. When drought arrives, these systems can't cope.

"Drought aggravates vulnerabilities for small, under-resourced water systems. The user fee finance model then limits options for drought response, because policies that conserve dwindling water resources reduce revenue for water systems and make it harder for residents to pay their water bills," Mullin said.

"Until now, people have tried to resolve these disparities through piecemeal approaches. We need to think more fundamentally about our reliance on user fees as a financial model for the delivery of such an essential service. States should consider equalizing resources across water systems to counter the legacy of racism and segregation, as we have done in public school funding," she said.

To do this, policymakers need to have a clearer understanding about the nature and extent of demographic disparities between water systems, she said. Recent efforts to develop maps of water system service areas in several states show promise, she said, and should be replicated nationwide and integrated with data on drinking water finance, infrastructure, and water supply and use.

Over the last year, Mullin has been leading a team of Duke students to produce such a map of North Carolina water systems, through a partnership with the state's Division of Water Resources.

"Of the 50,000+ community water systems delivering water year-round in the United States, more than 80% serve fewer than 3,300 people," Mullin said. "Systems this small face tremendous challenges in delivering safe drinking water even under normal conditions, and as droughts become more frequent and intense, the challenges are going to mount."

For these systems to become more resilient, they need to encourage and enforce water conservation. The strongest tools at their disposal for doing that are tiered pricing and mandatory use restrictions, but these reduce the water-use fees the systems depend on for funding and create an economic burden for low-income customers that could result in failure to pay and subsequent service shutoff.

Equalizing resources across water systems, as states already do for public schools, would circumvent many of these trade-offs and improve water security to millions of American homes.

What The Study Did: This study combined the results of 29 studies with nearly 12,000 black adolescents to examine the association between attending sexual health programs and outcomes such as sexual behavior (condom use, number of partners) or abstinence, contraction of sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy.

Authors: Reina Evans, B.S., of North Carolina State University in Raleigh, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.0382)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

The insides of living cells can be seen in their natural state in greater detail than ever before using a new technique developed by researchers in Japan. This advance should help reveal the complex and fragile biological interactions of medical mysteries, like how stem cells develop or how to deliver drugs more effectively.

"Our system is based on a simple concept, which is one of its advantages," said Associate Professor Takuro Ideguchi from the University of Tokyo Research Institute for Photon Science and Technology. The results of Ideguchi's team were published recently in Optica, the Optical Society's research journal.

The new method also has the advantages of not needing to kill the cells, damage them with intense light, or artificially attach fluorescent tags to specific molecules.

The technique combines two pre-existing microscopy tools and uses them simultaneously. The combination of these tools can be thought of simply as like a coloring book.

"We gather the black-and-white outline of the cell and we virtually color in the details about where different types of molecules are located," said Ideguchi.

Quantitative phase microscopy gathers information about the black-and-white outline of the cell using pulses of light and measuring the shift in the light waves after they pass through a sample. This information is used to reconstruct a 3D image of the major structures inside the cell.

Molecular vibrational imaging provides the virtual color using pulses of midinfrared light to add energy to specific types of molecules. That extra energy causes the molecules to vibrate, which heats up their local surroundings. Researchers can choose to raise the temperature of specific types of chemical bonds by using different wavelengths of midinfrared light.

Researchers take a quantitative phase microscopy image of the cell with the midinfrared light turned off and an image with it turned on. The difference between those two images then reveals both the outline of major structures inside the cell and the exact locations of the type of molecule that was targeted by the infrared light.

Researchers refer to their new combined imaging method as biochemical quantitative phase imaging with midinfrared photothermal effect.

"We were impressed when we first observed the molecular vibrational signature characteristic of proteins, and we were further excited when this protein-specific signal appeared in the same location as the nucleolus, an intracellular structure where high amounts of proteins would be expected," said Ideguchi.

Ideguchi's team hopes their technique might allow researchers to determine the distribution of fundamental types of molecules inside single cells. The quantitative phase microscopy outline of major structures could be virtually colored in using different wavelengths of light to specifically target proteins, lipids (fats) or nucleic acids (DNA, RNA).

Currently, capturing one complete image can take 50 seconds or longer. Researchers are confident that they can speed up the process with simple improvements to their tools, including a higher-powered light source and a more sensitive camera.

Collaborators at Osaka University, other departments at the University of Tokyo and the Japan Science and Technology Agency also contributed to this research.

Polynyas--areas of open water with reduced ice cover that persists--in the Antarctic play an important role in regional atmosphere-ice-ocean interactions and are considered to help generate the global deep ocean conveyer belt. Polynyas therefore have a potential impact on the Earth's climate in terms of the production of sea ice and high-salinity shelf water.

"Previous research has mostly focused on the forcing of winds on the Antarctic coastal polynyas. The relationship between those polynyas and the air temperature has not been fully investigated," explains Prof. Xiao Cheng from the College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University.

In a recently published study in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, Cheng and his team combined observations from automatic weather stations with reanalysis data to present a case study of the relationship between the Terra Nova Bay polynya in the Ross Sea and the surface air temperature. Reanalysis and observational data reveal interactive effects between air temperature and the area of the Terra Nova Bay polynya. Though the underlying mechanism of the relationship between the air temperature and the polynya area is uncertain, lead/lag correlations show that the air temperature seems to have a more significant effect on the polynya area.

The team investigated the specific relationship between the two by controlling the air temperature intervals (Fig. 1b) and found that "the polynya area shows increasing correlation coefficients with air temperature versus wind speed as temperature declines. The relationship of the polynya area with lower air temperature is significantly closer than that with wind speed."

Viruses are part of the human experience throughout our lives. They cause lots of different illnesses with the current coronavirus pandemic as just one example. While a vaccine does provide effective protection from viral infections, vaccines are only available for a select number of viruses. This is why antiviral drugs need to be found that can prevent or treat a viral infection.

One successful strategy involves special molecules to block viral proteins that would otherwise help the virus to attach to the host cell. Once a virus has attached to the cell surface, it can infect the cell with its genome and reprogram the cell for its own uses. However, many antiviral drugs lose their effect over time, as viruses mutate very quickly and thus often adapt to the medication/antiviral used.

The research team led by HHU Prof. Dr. Laura Hartmann from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry and Münster-based Prof. Dr. Mario Schelhaas from the Institute of Cellular Virology working together with Prof. Dr. Nicole Snyder from Davidson College in North Carolina, USA has used the approach of suppressing the initial contact between the virus and the cell in order to stop infection at the onset.

Viruses frequently use special proteins to bind to sugar molecules on the cell surface. Among others, these sugars include long-chain glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), which are strongly negatively charged. One of these GAGs is heparan sulfate. Researchers already knew that GAGs can reduce virus infections if they are added externally. However, natural polysaccharides may have side-effects that are attributed to their own biological function in the organism or to impurities.

The research team is now using the benefits of the GAGs but deactivates their disadvantages. The idea is to use molecules produced artificially and in a controlled fashion, so called 'glycomimetics', that are developed at HHU. They comprise a long synthetic scaffold with side chains with small sugar molecules attached. In Düsseldorf, both shorter chains with up to ten lateral sugars (known as 'oligomers') and long chains with up to 80 sugars (called 'glycopolymers') have been created. In order to simulate the highly charged state of natural GAGs, the chemists coupled sulfate groups to the sugars.

Prof. Schelhaas then used cell cultures to test the antiviral properties of these 'candy canes' of varying length at University Hospital Münster. Initially, his team used them against Human Papillomaviruses, which can trigger diseases such as cervical cancer. They discovered that both, the short and long-chain synthetic molecules, have an antiviral effect, but their mode of action is different. As expected, the more effective, long-chain molecules prevented the virus from attaching to cells. In contrast, the short-chain molecules displayed antiviral activity after attachment to the cell, giving rise to the assumption that these molecules are active in the organism for longer.

This is what Prof. Schelhaas has to say: "It is very likely that the long-chain molecules occupy the binding sites of the virus to the cell and thus block those sites. The short-chain molecules apparently do not block these sites. The next step is to test our hypothesis that these molecules prevent the redistribution of proteins in the virus particle so that the viruses cannot infect the cell."

Effectiveness was also confirmed for the Papillomaviruses in an animal model. The compounds were also active against four other viruses, including Herpes viruses, which can cause cold sores and encephalitis, and Influenza viruses, which cause the flu. Prof. Hartmann explains: "Glycomimetics are thus promising compound molecules that could potentially be used in the fight against a large number of different viruses. The next thing to do is to examine the precise way in which the glycomimetics work and how they can be further optimised."

Prof. Schelhaas adds: "Further research will focus on how fast viruses may adapt to this new class of compounds. With the short-chain molecules in particular, we are hopeful that viruses will find it harder to launch a counterattack."

WASHINGTON - (April 20, 2020) - Pain is one of the most common reasons for seeking emergency department (ED) care, yet is often poorly assessed and treated. In an effort to improve pain management among children, Monika Goyal, M.D., M.S.C.E., associate division chief of Emergency Medicine, director of Academic Affairs and Research at Children's National Hospital, led a study published in Pediatrics on racial and ethnic disparities in the management of pain among children presenting to the emergency department ED with fractures.

The study found that there were differences in both process and outcomes measures by race and ethnicity in the ED management of pain among children with long-bone fractures. Although minority children are more likely to receive analgesics and achieve greater than a 2 point reduction in pain, they are less likely to receive opioids and optimal pain reduction.

"When looking at optimal pain reduction, minority children were more likely to be discharged home in significant pain compared to their white counterparts," Dr. Goyal stated.

The compelling aspect surrounding Dr. Goyal's findings were identified when her team realized that if they had only investigated whether there were racial and ethnic disparities in the use of analgesia, they would have concluded that minority children are actually more likely to receive pain medication compared to non-Hispanic white children.

"We decided to take a deeper dive and examine the type of pain medication children were receiving," Dr. Goyal said. "We found that even after we adjusted for injury severity and pain intensity, minority children were less likely to receive opioids for the treatment of their fracture pain."

Interestingly enough, the researchers found that non-Hispanic white children with similar injury severity and pain scores tended to receive opioids, while minority children received medications like ibuprofen and acetaminophen. In addition to measuring process measures, like pain medication and administration, the team took their research a step further and investigated outcome measures, like pain reduction.

"We sought to understand whether these differences in the types of pain medication children were receiving made a difference," said Dr. Goyal. "At the end of the day, we don't want children to be in pain from their injuries. We asked are these differences in the types of pain medications we are using affecting how well a child's pain is managed?"

By taking this additional step, the investigators found that minority children were less likely to receive optimal pain management. Many were leaving the ED in considerable amounts of pain.

"We understood that if we hadn't had dug deeper into the research, the disparities in care would not have been uncovered," Dr. Goyal concluded.

Throughout the study, the eligible population included all patients less than 18 years of age who presented to the ED with a long-bone fracture, defined as a fracture of the clavicle, humerus, ulna, radius, femur, tibia or fibula.

The initial manuscript for the study was conceptualized, designed and drafted by Dr. Monika Goyal. Funding for the study was supported by the National Institute of Minority Health and Disparities Grant and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Grant. The PECARN infrastructure was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, NIH and the Emergency Medical Services for Children Network Development Demonstration Program under cooperative agreements.

Coumarin derivatives (coumarins) are a class of compounds with a wide range of biological activities, which have found their application in medicine, pharmacology, cosmetics and food industry. Coumarin is found in a number of plants such as tonka beans and vanilla grass, among others. The biological activity and potential application of coumarins is highly dependent on their structure. Therefore, many researchers have been performing the synthesis of coumarin derivatives on a daily basis. High demands for their synthesis often result in an increased generation of different waste chemicals. In order to minimize the utilization and generation of toxic organic substances, green synthetic methods are applied in this manner. These methods are receiving more attention in the last few decades.

Green chemistry methods include the use of ultrasound and microwaves, ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents, solvent-free synthesis, mechanosynthesis and multicomponent reactions. All typical condensation reactions for coumarin synthesis such as Knoevenagel, Perkin, Kostanecki-Robinson, Pechmann and Reformansky reactions, have been successfully performed using these green synthetic methods, which as the term suggests, are also environment friendly. This review presented by researchers from the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia, is a compilation of the green synthetic methods used in the synthesis of coumarin derivatives. "These methods reduce the utilization and generation of toxic chemicals, and they can also enhance the reaction performance in terms of product yields, purity, energy consumption and post-synthetic procedures when compared to the conventional methods.," says co-author Prof. Maja Molnar. This review provides a first full literature overview on the application of green synthetic methods in the coumarin synthesis, which according to the authors was prompted due to the significance of coumarins as biologically active systems and the recent demands of reducing toxic solvents, catalysts and energy consumption.

The review gives an overview of academic research between the years 1995-2019. "There are some reviews on the coumarin synthesis, but most of them cover only specific reactions on coumarin synthesis and none of them the whole range of green chemistry methods," adds Molnar. "The importance of this work is its comprehensive literature survey on a specific class of heterocyclic compounds, and those researchers working on the coumarin synthesis can find very useful information on the green synthetic approaches."

Researchers at Japan advanced institute of science and technology (JAIST) have successfully fabrication the suspended graphene nanomesh in a large area by the helium ion beam microscopy. 6nm diameter nanopores were pattern on the 1.2 um long and 500 nm wide suspended graphene uniformly. By systematically controlling the pitch (nanopore's center to nanopore's center) from 15 nm to 50 nm, a series of stable graphene nanomesh devices were achieved. This provides a practical way to investigate the intrinsic properties of graphene nanomesh towards the application for gas sensing, phonon engineering, and quantum technology.

Graphene, with its excellent electrical, thermal and optical properties, is promising for many applications in the next decade. It is also a potential candidate instead of silicon to build the next generation of electrical circuits. However, without a bandgap, it is not straightforward to use graphene as field-effect transistors (FETs). Researchers tried to cut the graphene sheet into a small piece of graphene nanoribbon and observed the bandgap opening successfully. However, the current of graphene nanoribbons is too low to drive the integrated circuit. In this case, the graphene nanomesh is pointed out by introducing periodical nanopores on the graphene, which is also considered as very small graphene nanoribbon array.

A research team led by Dr Fayong Liu and Professor Hiroshi MIZUTA has demonstrated in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) that large area suspended graphene nanomesh is quickly achievable by the helium ion beam microscopy with sub-10 nm nanopore diameter and well-controlled pitches. Comparing to slow speed TEM patterning, the helium ion beam milling technique overcomes the speed limitation, and meanwhile, provides a high imaging resolution. With the initial electrical measurements, it has found that the thermal activation energy of the graphene nanomesh increased exponentially by increasing the porosity of the graphene nanomesh. This immediately provides a new method for bandgap engineering beyond the conventional nanoribbon method. The team plans to continue exploring graphene nanomesh towards the application of phonon engineering.

"Graphene nanomesh is a kind of new 'brick' for modern micromachine systems. Theoretically, we can generate many kinds of periodical patterns on the original suspended graphene, which tunes the property of the device to the direction for a special application, in particular nanoscale thermal management" says Prof. Hiroshi Mizuta, the Head of MIZUTA Lab. The MIZUTA lab is currently developing the electrical and thermal properties of graphene-based devices for fundamental physics and potential applications such as gas sensors and thermal rectifier. The aim is to use graphene to build a green world.

Having detailed land cover information is important for a better understanding of our environment - for example, to estimate ecosystem services such as pollination or to quantify nitrate and nutrient inputs in water bodies. This information is increasingly obtained from satellite images with high temporal and spatial resolution. However, clouds often prevent the view from space to the earth's surface. The dynamic use of machine learning models can take this local cloud cover into account without resorting to commonly used interpolation methods. This is shown by UFZ scientists in a study published in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment. Their algorithm recognises 19 different types of crops, accurate to 88 percent.

"If we can determine the cultivated crop for each agricultural field, we can draw conclusions not only about nutrient requirements but also about the nitrate load of surrounding waters," explains Sebastian Preidl, scientist in the Landscape Ecology department at UFZ. The information could also be used, for example, to better initiate actions to protect wild bee populations. "We can only protect a region's biological diversity effectively if we have a clear picture of the spatial land cover distribution," explains Preidl.

Earth observation satellites of the Copernicus program founded by the European Space Agency (ESA) provide high-resolution data in time and space and enable continuous monitoring of the land surface on an ecologically relevant scale. Sentinel-2 satellite images captured at regular time intervals in 9 spectral bands formed the basis for Preidl's work. From these spectral time series, researchers can derive land cover information for their study area.

Cloud occurrence is a major challenge when dealing with time series of optical satellite data. Despite numerous satellite images, frequent cloud cover can lead to larger data gaps in the spectral time series. At the same time, a sufficient number of pixels (observations) is required for many plant growth phases to assign the recorded spectral signatures to the corresponding plant species.

These gaps are usually filled by artificially generated data that are interpolated from cloud-free image pixels. "Instead of doing this, we opt for a dynamic application of machine learning models. This means we are generating customised algorithms for every pixel," says Preidl. "Our algorithm automatically selects cloud-free pixels from the entire satellite image dataset and is not dependent on large-scale cloud-free scenes. To assign a specific crop type to each image pixel, the temporal sequence of cloud-free observations at pixel level is taken into account by a large number of models."

Based on information provided by the federal states, the crop type cultivated is known only for selected agricultural fields. This knowledge is used to train the UFZ models to distinguish between maize and wheat, for example. To determine land cover of the total agricultural area, the scientists have divided Germany into six landscape regions. "Different crops are grown in the 'Magdeburger Börde' than in the 'Rheingau'," explains Preidl. "Moreover, one and the same crop species grows differently in the 'Breisgau' than in the 'Uckermark'. Climate and altitude make a big difference." The result: the researchers' algorithm achieves an accuracy of 88% in identifying 19 different crop types. For the main crops, the success rate is over 90%. At first for the year 2016, they created a land cover map of Germany's agricultural area using around 7000 satellite images. In addition to this map, UFZ researcher can also provide information about the model performance, i.e. the accuracy with which the algorithm detects the plant species for a given pixel.

But the UFZ approach can be exploited in many other ways. In a project with the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN), instead of wheat and maize, Preidl's algorithms also distinguish spruce, beech and other tree species. In this way he is investigating how the nature conservation value of forests can be determined using satellite data. "If we know which tree species predominate in a forest area over time, the effects of storm events, drought damage or pest infestation can be better assessed. A resilient forest is economically and ecologically highly relevant in terms of the sustainable development goals," says Preidl.

"Our methodology can be applied to other regions within and outside Europe, and to other years, by taking into account the respective relevant temporal sequence of cloud-free observations and land use," says Dr Daniel Doktor, head of the Remote Sensing working group of the Department Computational Landscape Ecology at the UFZ, outlining the next steps. "If this methodology is combined with other models - for example on phenology or ecology - statements can be made not only on species-specific vulnerability to extreme events such as droughts, but also on the future behaviour of ecosystems as carbon sources or sinks," explains Doktor.

AMES, Iowa -- New research shows that a visitor's garden designed and built by Iowa State University students and incarcerated individuals at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women is helping to strengthen connections between the women and their children.

Researchers interviewed incarcerated women and their visitors in the visitor's garden at the institution in Mitchellville.

Ninety percent of those interviewed said the garden made their visit better.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, was co-authored by Julie Stevens, associate professor of landscape architecture in the ISU College of Design; Barb Toews, assistant professor in the University of Washington's School of Social Work and Criminal Justice; Amy Wagenfeld, lecturer in the Boston University post-professional occupational therapy doctoral program; and Carissa Shoemaker, ISU graduate student in landscape architecture.

The design and construction of the visitor's garden occurred in spring 2018 during an interdisciplinary option studio led by Stevens. The students worked side by side with incarcerated women and prison staff from the outset to learn more about the challenges of visitation and to gather their ideas for the space. The garden was completed in June 2018.

The garden includes a looped walking path, an open grassy area, plants and shade trees, playground equipment, musical instruments and comfortable seating. It is enclosed with an attractive fence, in which chalkboard panels are installed. Previously the outdoor visiting space was a brick and concrete patio with chain-link and razor wire fencing.

The study found that the garden is impacting visitation in four ways:

Creation of a child-friendly visit: Visits are now more conducive to "kids being kids."

Improved affective experience: Visits are less stressful or boring. Interviewees used words such as "cozy," "calm" and "fun" to describe their experience in the garden.

Home-like visiting environment: The "backyard" feel to the garden facilitates natural play and conversations between the incarcerated women and their visitors.

Improved parent-child relationship: Child visitors are experiencing more visits, longer visits, improved quality of time together, better activities and improved quiet time.

"A recurring theme that we found was the women saying that the garden feels like home or a neighborhood park," Stevens said. "I can't imagine too many people have said that prison feels like home, so this was an encouraging finding that I believe is a result of a design process that truly honored the needs of the incarcerated women and their loved ones.

"While this may lead some to wonder if people will want to stay in prison, I can confidently say that no incarcerated individual I have met wants to be in prison, no matter how nice it is."

Previous research shows that helping those who are incarcerated improves their relationships with loved ones - particularly their children - improves reentry to the community and reduces recidivism. Common comments from visitors who participated in the study were that they looked forward to their next visit, stayed longer and had improved communication with their loved ones.

"For a few hours, they can shed their identity as a prisoner and become mom or grandma," Stevens said. "Obviously, a garden isn't solving everything, but it's doing something that the rest of the prison environment is unable to do."

Some children spend many hours in a car going to the prison and back to their homes. Previously, the only outdoor option was to sit at a table or bench. Now, with the garden, the children can run around and play, just as they might do in their backyard or at a park.

From the beginning of the design process, several incarcerated women involved said they wanted the garden to feel like a backyard or a park. They understood what the garden needed to be.

This thinking fed into the design of the garden, every aspect of which was done intentionally and grounded in research on therapeutic gardens and attachment theory.

"We're not looking at people as numbers," Stevens said. "They're real people, they have real stories and they have real children who need the love and support of their mom. This garden helps to nourish fractured mother-child relationships."

In nature, certain species are able to regulate the cycling of soil nutrients and vegetation diversity and dynamics. A team of ecologists and agronomists* led by Thierry Dutoit, a CNRS researcher at the Mediterranean Institute of Biodiversity and Marine and Continental Ecology (CNRS/Avignon Université/IRD/Aix-Marseille Université) studied the impact of the Messor barbarus harvester ant on Mediterranean dry grasslands on the plain of La Crau. The study shows that these invertebrates accelerated the resilience of plant communities in these degraded grasslands by facilitating their recovery. Over a period of 5 to 10 years, these ants have improved soil fertility; ensured the transport, redistribution and storage of seeds, and also significantly increased the plant biomass next to their nests. This work, published online in the journal Biological Conservation (15 April 2020), demonstrates the potential key role of ants as ecological engineers for the conservation and restoration of Mediterranean dry grasslands in the medium term.

Scientists at Ames Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the University of Alabama Birmingham have discovered a light-induced switching mechanism in a Dirac semimetal. The mechanism establishes a new way to control the topological material, driven by back-and-forth motion of atoms and electrons, which will enable topological transistor and quantum computation using light waves.

Just like today's transistors and photodiodes replaced vacuum tubes over half a century ago, scientists are searching for a similar leap forward in design principles and novel materials in order to achieve quantum computing capabilities. Current computation capacity faces tremendous challenges in terms of complexity, power consumption, and speed; to exceed the physical limits reached as electronics and chips become hotter and faster, bigger advances are needed. Particularly at small scales, such issues have become major obstacles to improving performance.

"Light wave topological engineering seeks to overcome all of these challenges by driving quantum periodic motion to guide electrons and atoms via new degrees of freedom, i.e., topology, and induce transitions without heating at unprecedented terahertz frequencies, defined as one trillion cycles per second, clock rates," said Jigang Wang, a senior scientist at Ames Laboratory and professor of physics at Iowa State University. "This new coherent control principle is in stark contrast to any equilibrium tuning methods used so far, such as electric, magnetic and strain fields, which have much slower speeds and higher energy losses."

Wide-scale adoption of new computational principles, such as quantum computing, requires building devices in which fragile quantum states are protected from their noisy environments. One approach is through the development of topological quantum computation, in which qubits are based on "symmetry-protected" quasiparticles that are immune to noise.

However, scientists who study these topological materials face a challenge--how to establish and maintain control of these unique quantum behaviors in a way that makes applications like quantum computing possible. In this experiment, Wang and his colleagues demonstrated that control by using light to steer quantum states in a Dirac semimetal, an exotic material that exhibits extreme sensitivity due to its proximity to a broad range of topological phases.

"We achieved this by applying a new light-quantum-control principle known as mode-selective Raman phonon coherent oscillations--driving periodic motions of atoms about the equilibrium position using short light pulses," says Ilias Perakis, professor of physics and chair at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "These driven quantum fluctuations induce transitions between electronic states with different gaps and topological orders."

An analogy of this kind of dynamic switching is the periodically driven Kapitza's pendulum, which can transition to an inverted yet stable position when high-frequency vibration is applied. The researcher's work shows that this classical control principle - driving materials to a new stable condition not found normally - is surprisingly applicable to a broad range of topological phases and quantum phase transitions.

"Our work opens a new arena of light wave topological electronics and phase transitions controlled by quantum coherence," says Qiang Li, Group leader of the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Advanced Energy Materials Group. "This will be useful in the development of future quantum computing strategies and electronics with high speed and low energy consumption."

The spectroscopy and data analysis were performed at Ames Laboratory. Model building and analysis were partially performed at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Sample development and magneto-transport measurements were performed at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Density functional calculations were supported by the Center for the Advancement of Topological Semimetals, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center at Ames Laboratory.

Death rates from prostate cancer are predicted to fall in 2020 in the EU, largely due to better diagnosis and treatment, according to new research published in the leading cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Monday).

In the latest predictions for cancer deaths in the EU for 2020, researchers led by Carlo La Vecchia (MD), Professor at the School of Medicine, University of Milan (Italy), show that since 2015 there has been a 7% reduction in deaths from prostate cancer, with a predicted age standardised rate for 2020 of 10 men per 100,000 of the population [2]. A total of 78,800 men are predicted to die from the disease this year.

Poland is the only EU country where death rates from prostate cancer are not falling; instead the researchers predict a rise of 18% since 2015: an age standardised death rate of 15 per 100,000 men, with 6,100 men predicted die from it by the end of 2020.

Prof La Vecchia said: "Poland started with the lowest death rate from prostate cancer between 1970 to 1974, but then rates increased up to the year 2000, stabilised for a while and then rose again up to 2020. So Polish prostate cancer death rates are now the highest predicted. This is difficult to explain. It is possible that the recent relatively high rates are due to delayed adoption of modern diagnosis and treatment.

"Across the EU as a whole, the key message from these prostate cancer death rates is to adopt up-to-date surgery and radiotherapy techniques, together with newer androgen deprivation therapy. This may have a relevant impact on prostate cancer mortality even in the absence of cure, since a proportion of elderly men may survive long enough to die from other causes. The prostate specific antigen test, PSA, may also play a role, but it is difficult to quantify this at present. It has major impact on incidence, but an unquantified impact on death rates."

Although prostate cancer death rates are declining, the actual numbers of men dying from the disease are predicted to increase due to the EU's aging populations. In 2015 74,998 died from the disease, compared to 78,800 predicted to die in 2020.

This pattern is seen in the predicted death rates and actual numbers of deaths for all cancers in the EU and for the ten major cancers analysed in more detail. The researchers predict that death rates from all cancers will decline by 5% in men and 4% in women between 2015 and 2020, giving death rates of 130 per 100,000 and 82 per 100,000 respectively; but the predicted numbers of deaths will increase by 5%, reaching 1,428,000 by the end of this year: 798,700 in men and 630,100 in women.

The researchers looked at cancer death rates in the EU 28 Member States [3] as a whole and also in the six largest countries - France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK - for all cancers, and, individually, for stomach, intestines, pancreas, lung, breast, uterus (including cervix), ovary, prostate, bladder and leukaemias for men and women [4]. This is the tenth consecutive year the researchers have published these predictions. Prof La Vecchia and his colleagues collected data on deaths from the World Health Organization from 1970 to 2016.

Prof La Vecchia said: "Overall cancer death rates in Poland are predicted to be 28% higher than the EU average for men and 21% for women. This gap between central-eastern and western Europe is due to patterns in tobacco consumption, but also to a slower adoption of up-to-date prevention, disease management and treatment.

"In the EU as a whole, cancer death rates for men are falling. More than half of this is due to declines in death rates from tobacco-related cancers. These include not only lung cancer, which accounts for over a third of the decline, but also cancers such as head and neck and bladder cancers. In other words, it is due to fewer European men smoking, which started a few decades ago."

However, death rates are rising in women for cancers of the lung and pancreas; there is a predicted increase of 6% in death rates for lung cancer between 2015 and 2020 (15.1 deaths per 100,000 and about 100,000 deaths) and an increase of 1.2% in pancreatic cancer (5.6 deaths per 100,000 and 46,200 deaths). Death rates from lung cancer among women overtook those from breast cancer in 2016 and this trend is continuing. The researchers predict the death rate from breast cancer this year will be 13.5 per 100,000 (95,900 deaths), down 7.3% from 2015.

Prof La Vecchia said: "Death rates from lung cancer in women have been increasing persistently in the EU over the past decade, although the rate of increase is now slowing. Between 2010 and 2020 female lung cancer rates in the EU increased from about 13 to over 15 per 100,000. In the absence of effective intervention on tobacco smoking in women, the overall rate will probably reach 16 or 17 per 100,000 in 2030 and only level off in the subsequent decade."

Co-author, Dr Eva Negri, a senior researcher at the University of Milan, said: "There are some differences between countries in female lung cancer death rates. For instance, French and Spanish rates are rising more than British or Italian ones. This again reflects smoking habits in different generations of women in various countries and underlines the importance of convincing women to give up smoking, not only in Poland or the UK, which now have the highest rates, but also in France or Spain, which still have relatively low overall rates. This will help to control the persistent epidemic of lung and other tobacco-related cancers in women.

"Tobacco remains the main cause of cancer mortality in Europe, accounting for around 20% of total predicted cancer deaths; the marked decline in the deaths in men compared to women reflects the differences in past smoking habits between the two sexes."

The researchers predict that compared to a peak rate of cancer deaths in 1988, over 5.7 million cancer deaths will be avoided in the EU in the 32-year period up to 2020. In 2020 alone, a total of 406,000 deaths from cancer are predicted to be averted (282,000 in men and 124,000 in women). For prostate cancer, 462,000 deaths will have been prevented over the 32-year period and 40,000 in 2020 alone.

Co-author, Fabio Levi (MD), Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne (Switzerland), said: "Pancreatic cancer trends remain unfavourable across Europe. Control of tobacco and action on overweight, obesity and diabetes could improve such trends. No relevant advances have been observed in the diagnosis and treatment of this cancer, which has a particularly poor prognosis. Therefore, greater investment in research is required."

Researchers from CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, have unveiled a new approach to analysing the genetic codes - or the blueprint - of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

The findings will help researchers better understand how strains of the virus evolve and help identify new clusters of the virus.

Analysing global data on the published genome sequences of this novel coronavirus will help fast track our understanding of this complex disease.

The researchers developed a novel visualisation platform, underpinned by bioinformatics algorithms originally used to analyse the human genome, to pinpoint differences among the thousands of genetic sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall said knowing the genetic code was vital.

"The more we know about this virus, the better armed we'll be to fight it," Dr Marshall said.

"This highly complex analysis of the genome sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has already helped to determine which strains of the virus are suitable for testing vaccines underway at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong - the only high biocontainment facility of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere."

CSIRO's Bioinformatics Team Leader Dr Denis Bauer said as the virus evolves, this blueprint becomes increasingly important, effectively because it holds instructions about the behaviour of the virus and what kind of disease it can cause.

"Globally there is now a huge amount of individual virus sequences," said Dr Bauer, who is also Honorary Associate Professor at Macquarie University, Australia.

"Assessing the evolutionary distance between these data points and visualising it helps researchers find out about the different strains of the virus - including where they came from and how they continue to evolve."

CSIRO's Dangerous Pathogens Team Leader Professor S.S. Vasan, who is leading the SARS-CoV-2 virus work and vaccine evaluation studies and is the corresponding author of the paper, said the first 181 published genome sequences from the current COVID-19 outbreak were analysed to understand how changes in the virus could affect its behaviour and impact.

"This RNA virus is expected to evolve into a number of distinct clusters that share mutations, which is what we have confirmed and visualised," said Professor Vasan, who holds an honorary chair at the University of York, UK.

"At this time, we do not expect it will affect the development and evaluation of COVID-19 vaccines, therapies and diagnostics, but it is important information to monitor as preclinical and clinical studies progress.

"To enable this, we are calling on the international research community to share de-identified details of case severity and outcome, and other relevant meta-data such as co-morbidities and smoking status, alongside the genomic sequences of the virus."

CSIRO's Australian e-Health Research Centre CEO David Hansen said the work shows the importance of cross-collaboration between the established and emerging disciplines of bioinformatics, genomics, vaccinology and virology.

"Following the scientific process of peer-reviewed open publication such as this one is a vitally critical component of the CSIRO's response." Dr Hansen said.

"The advantage of the data visualisation platform is that it highlights evolving genetic mutations of the virus as it continues to change and adapt to new environments," said Dr Bauer, who is the first author of this paper.

"The more informed we are about the genetic differences and their likely consequences on the progression of the disease, the better we can tackle the disease with diagnostics and treatments."

New research due to be presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID)* reveals that raw-type dog foods contain high levels of multidrug-resistant bacteria, including those resistant to last-line antibiotics. The potential transfer of such bacteria between dogs and humans is an international public health risk, conclude the authors who include Dr Ana Raquel Freitas and colleagues from the Faculty of Pharmacy, UCIBIO/REQUIMTE, University of Porto, Portugal.

Enterococci are opportunistic pathogens - so they are part of our normal internal microbiota but cause can cause infections (for example in patients who are immunosuppressed or hospitalised).

Raw-food-based diets for dogs have grown popularity recently as a healthier choice. Increasing controversy regarding their safety is emerging, with some scientific evidence showing their role as vehicles for transmission of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In addition, dogs have been described as reservoirs of clinically-relevant ampicillin-resistant (AmpR) Enterococcus faecium, but the source remains unknown.

In this study, the authors analysed enterococci obtained from processed (both dry and wet types) and non-processed (raw-frozen) foods of the main brands commercialised in Portugal. The study included 46 samples (22 wet, 15 dry, 9 raw-frozen) from 24 international brands, sourced from 8 supermarkets and one veterinary clinic. Samples were obtained during September to November, 2019. Raw-frozen samples were mainly constituted of salmon, chicken, turkey, calf, deer or duck, being a mixture of different meat types, fruits and vegetables.

Samples were cultured and then tested with a range of antibiotics. Enterococci (n=163) were identified in 19/46 (41%) of the samples: 8 of 15 (53%) in the dry foods; 2 of 22 (9%) of the wet samples, and 9 of 9 (100%) in the raw-frozen samples, and identified as the Enterococcus species E. faecium (91 isolates), E. faecalis (59 isolates) or other species (13 isolates).

Across the 9 raw-frozen meat samples, there were 30 E. faecium and 30 E. faecalis recovered. All nine carried multidrug-resistant (MDR) enterococci (20 E. faecium and 22 E. faecalis), including those resistant to a wide range of antibiotics, while only one MDR- E. faecium (resistant to erythromycin/tetracycline/gentamicin) was detected in one of the wet food samples and none in the dry food samples.

Resistance was found to the antibiotics ampicillin, ciprofloxacin, erythromycin, tetracycline, streptomycin and chloramphenicol in all 9 raw-type samples; seven of nine contained enterococci resistant to the last line antibiotic linezolid (78%), and six of nine contained enterococci resistant to gentamicin or quinupristin-dalfopristin. Resistance to clinically-relevant antibiotics such as linezolid, ampicillin or ciprofloxacin was only detected in raw-frozen samples.

The authors conclude: "Our study demonstrates that raw-frozen-foods for dogs carry MDR enterococci including to last-line antibiotics (linezolid) for the treatment of human infections. The close contact of pets with humans and the commercialisation of the studied brands in different EU countries pose an international public health risk if transmission of such strains occurs between dogs and humans. There is strong past and recent evidence that dogs and humans share common multidrug-resistant strains of E. faecium, and thus the potential for these strains to be transmitted to humans from dogs."

Dr Freitas adds: "These raw-frozen foods are supposed to be consumed after being thawed and could at least be cooked, to kill these drug-resistant and other bacteria. Although these foods seem to be regulated regarding their microbiological safety by EU authorities, risk assessment of biological hazards should also include antibiotic-resistant bacteria and/or genes besides only establishing the presence of bacterial pathogens, such as Salmonella."