Earth

Climate change is accomplishing what centuries of exploration could not: opening the fabled Northwest Passage, a maritime shortcut from Europe to Asia via the Arctic Ocean.

Research led by the University of California, Riverside, could help ships navigating these freshly thawed routes avoid the Titanic's fate with a new way to forecast the motion of floating ice.

A group led by Monica Martinez Wilhelmus, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering in the Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, is the first to use moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer, or MODIS, satellite imagery to understand long-term ocean movements from sea ice dynamics.

MODIS sensors aboard NASA satellites have been collecting daily images of arctic ice floes -- large, flat sheets of floating ice -- for over 20 years, but using them to study how they move with ocean currents has been a laborious task. Clouds often obstruct the view and floes must be identified and marked by hand.

The engineers used image-processing algorithms to remove clouds, sharpen details, and separate individual floes. They then used image analysis algorithms to map the movement of floes over a period of days. The resulting ocean current maps were about as accurate as maps made using more labor-intensive traditional methods. Tracking sea ice will help scientists better understand the sources driving sea ice transport.

"No one had bothered before to use MODIS because the satellite is sensitive to clouds and it's hard to identify ice," Martinez said. "Our algorithm automatically filters clouds and uses other image processing algorithms that give the velocity and trajectory of the ice floes."

The analysis will help researchers quantify how the interactions between ocean currents, climate, and sea ice have changed in the last two decades. This will ultimately improve ocean models, which for the most part, do not resolve at the scales necessary to study these interactions.

"MODIS data is one of the longest records of earth ever compiled," said first author Rosalinda Lopez, a graduate student in Martinez's lab. "This means that we are able to expand our analysis to almost two decades to observe the variability of sea ice as dramatic changes transform the region."

The rate at which ice spreads apart affects how fast it melts. Ice that rapidly spreads away from other ice melts more quickly than ice that stays close together, similar to how a handful of ice cubes in a glass of water will melt more slowly than a handful of ice cubes in a bathtub.

This affects how fast and how much fresh water from the ice blends into the salty sea water, which in turn affects how the ocean current moves.

"Adding fresh water to the sea water affects its energetics, which affects the current," Martinez said. "We need to understand how ice interacts with the ocean."

With the Arctic melting faster than ever, it's important to learn how ocean currents are changing. Ocean currents are intimately associated with the climate, and a better understanding of long-term currents will help improve models of climate change.

"This is a new field," Martinez said. "No one knows how the ice is going to behave."

The altered currents will also affect Arctic communities that depend on hunting and fishing. As their economies falter, ships will need to find safe ways to deliver supplies to help them survive. Proposed oil drilling in the Arctic could also mean oil spills, and the UC Riverside technique could help predict how oil slicks would behave.

Fish permeate the culture of the Pacific Northwest (PNW). In particular, the iconic salmon has been an important part of the region for thousands of years, from ancient Native American trade routes and legends to modern fishing and sporting. In the area of the Salish Sea - inland waterways including Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca - the cultures, economies, and technologies there are all impacted and influenced by salmon. It is no wonder, then, that salmon are of high conservation interest and constitute a large proportion of hatchery-raised fish in the region.

A recent study in the Ecological Society of America's journal Ecosphere examines hatchery practices in regard to how the Chinook salmon that are released back into the natural waterways in the PNW are affecting wild populations.

In the face of changing climate, ocean conditions, freshwater habitat loss, and increased human consumption, many salmon populations in the PNW are depleted relative to historical abundance. A large salmon, for instance, is a prized and sought-after catch for a sport fisher. There is a growing demand for salmon hatcheries to provide food security and to bolster fish populations; many hatcheries release fish after they reach a certain age or size, with a goal of increasing opportunities for commercial, recreational, and indigenous fishers.

Salmon hatcheries in the PNW, however, seem to be releasing young fish when they are the desired size for predators to prey upon. In this case, bigger does not equal better for the salmon population's survival.

Chinook salmon - named for the native Chinookan peoples, also known as King salmon - is the largest Pacific salmon species. As juveniles, they migrate to the ocean in their first or second year of life and return to freshwater to spawn as adults 1-6 years later. It is as juveniles that populations are most vulnerable to predators. "Survival during the first year at sea has a large impact on the total lifetime survival and adult abundance of Chinook salmon in the Pacific Northwest," says lead author Benjamin Nelson. "This is a problem for other species that depend on them, like endangered killer whales, and for people who depend on them, such as Native American communities and commercial fishers."

Researchers analyzed more than 65 years of records and data on hatchery-origin Chinook salmon in the Salish Sea to examine long-term changes in hatchery release practices. It appears that hatcheries have progressively released juvenile fish at bigger sizes and they are currently releasing them in a larger size range preferred by fish, bird, and marine mammal predators. A 2017 study using GPS tags found that harbor seal feeding increased shortly after hatchery releases of large coho salmon, but interestingly, the seals did not respond to far more abundant but smaller-sized Chinook releases a few weeks later. Many predators show similar large-size (over 10cm) preference in studies over the years showing that smaller juvenile salmon encounter fewer predators. Thus, hatchery-origin chinook are more likely to be eaten before they have a chance to spawn.

Not even the commercial fisheries benefit from hatcheries releasing larger fish. "Despite the fact that larger juvenile salmon are being released from some Salish Sea hatcheries," says Nelson, "the average size of the adult salmon captured by commercial fisheries has actually decreased along the west coast of North America. Some scientists have speculated these size trends could be because of poor ocean conditions, which may reduce the availability of food for growing salmon, while others believe that long-term size selectiveness by fisheries, or selective removals by predators (targeting larger, older fish) could play a role. It is likely that some combination of these factors is responsible."

Additionally, the researchers were surprised to find that hatchery Chinook are released in a narrow two-week window of time during May, while natural Chinook migrate to the ocean earlier in the year and over a much longer time frame. This could result in high survival if ocean conditions at that time are favorable,  but it could be detrimental when conditions are poor. Because ocean conditions change considerably from year-to-year, this could result in "boom or bust" dynamics.

"Just like a retirement portfolio," explains Nelson, "returns tend to be more stable when its assets are well-diversified. It is reasonable to believe this applies to salmon populations, as well. A more diverse group of hatchery releases could be more robust to changing environmental conditions, resulting in more stable returns of adult fish in the future."

With current marine survival rates at chronically low levels and with increasing demand for hatchery fish, understanding cumulative historical effects of hatcheries on ecosystems is essential for improving future hatchery practices and ensuring sustainable management. "Hatchery Chinook salmon in the Salish Sea have become increasingly similar over the last 50 years, in terms of both their size and the time at which they are released," remarks Nelson. "This loss of diversity could have several negative consequences, not just for salmon, but for other species that depend on them."

Why do some people learn music more quickly than others?

Intelligence could play a role, according to a Michigan State University study that investigated the early stages of learning to play piano.

Published in the journal Intelligence, the study may be the first to examine the relationship between intelligence, music aptitude and growth mindset in beginner pianists.

Growth mindset refers to whether students believe they can improve basic abilities, like piano ability.

"The strongest predictor of skill acquisition was intelligence, followed by music aptitude," said Alexander Burgoyne, a doctoral candidate in cognition and cognitive neuroscience. "By contrast, the correlation between growth mindset and piano performance was about as close to zero as possible."

In the study, 161 undergraduates were taught how to play "Happy Birthday" on the piano with the help of a video guide. After practice, the students performed the 25-note song multiple times. Three MSU graduate students judged the performances based on their melodic and rhythmic accuracy.

There were striking differences in the students' skill acquisition trajectories. Some learned quickly, earning perfect marks within six minutes of practice. Others performed poorly at first but improved substantially later. By comparison, some seemed to fade as if they had lost their motivation and others never figured it out, performing poorly throughout the study.

So why did some students fail while others succeeded?

To find out, the researchers gave the students tests of cognitive ability that measured things like problem-solving skills and processing speed, and tests of music aptitude that measured, for example, the ability to differentiate between similar rhythms. They also surveyed their growth mindset.

"The results were surprising, because people have claimed that mindset plays an important role when students are confronted with challenges, like trying to learn a new musical instrument," Burgoyne said. "And yet, it didn't predict skill acquisition."

That said, results will likely differ for those with greater skill.

"Our study examined one of the earliest stages of skill acquisition," Burgoyne said. "Early experiences can be formative, but I would caution against drawing conclusions about skilled musicians based on our study of beginners."

But applied generally, the study's findings may be helpful in education.

It follows a recent review of mindset research that found a weak relationship between growth mindset and academic achievement. Perhaps more concerning, that study found interventions designed to boost achievement by encouraging children to believe they can improve their basic abilities may be fruitless.

That is, when those interventions successfully altered students' mindsets, there wasn't a significant effect on academic achievement.

One might think that the primary cause of most genetically linked diseases comes from mutations in coding DNA -- alterations in coding regions of the genome that can lead directly to changes in the expression of particular proteins important for a healthy body. But the majority of human DNA is non-coding DNA -- regions of DNA that do not directly translate into functional proteins. These non-coding DNA regions contain functional elements, called enhancers, which can change the likelihood of a particular protein to be made.

Researchers are now finding particular genetic variations in some of these non-coding regulatory regions, called enhancers, determine whether or not proteins are expressed in specific cell types in the brain and may play a role in a person's risk of developing psychiatric or neurological conditions.

In a new study published November, 14, 2019 in Science, a team of researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies used healthy tissue isolated from six patients to isolate four different kinds of brain cells -- neurons, microglia, oligodendrocytes, and astrocytes -- then looked at genetic variation associated with disease in the non-coding enhancer regions of each cell type, searching for variations that might be linked to disease risk.

Using novel molecular techniques, they were able to further map the connections between enhancer regions and their target genes, providing insights into how variations in enhancer regions can affect downstream gene expression in specific cell types.

"The brain is very complex, with lots of different cell types in different brain regions," said co-first-author Inge Holtman, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego School of Medicine Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. "Currently, our understanding of the regulatory landscape in the brain is largely unclear. Past research has tried to generate a consensus regulatory landscape of the whole brain, but until now we didn't really know what it looked like in individual cell types. This work gives us a much better understanding of how genes are being regulated, which enhancers are there, and which enhancers are looping back to particular genes and affecting their expression, in particular cell types in the brain."

The findings showed that while many genes are expressed in many different cell types, the enhancer regions differ between cells -- and that disease risk is often linked to specific enhancer regions in specific cell types.

"Focusing on genetic variation associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), we show preferential enrichment in disease risk variants in enhancers that are selectively active in microglia, the major immune cell in the brain," said senior author Christopher Glass, MD, PhD, professor of cellular and molecular medicine and professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "This finding substantially extends prior studies linking microglia to late-onset Alzheimer's disease."

Beyond identifying genetic risk variants, the researchers validated their findings using pluripotent human stem cells. By targeting a particular enhancer region close to BIN1, a gene that has previously been linked to AD, they found that deleting that enhancer region led to a dramatic reduction in expression of BIN1 in microglia, but not in neurons or astrocytes, indicating that this BIN1-associated risk allele lies within a microglia-specific enhancer region.

"Often, it's hard to know in what cell type particular genes are important because they're expressed in all cell types in the brain," said co-first-author Nicole Coufal, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pediatrics, UC San Diego School of Medicine. "In Alzheimer's disease, it was previously assumed that BIN1 was most important in neurons, but this study indicates that it may actually be more important to understand the role of BIN1 in microglia."

Researchers say their findings will help inform future studies investigating genetic risk variants in many different neurological conditions. "In the immediate future, this work gives new targets, and tells us which cells to study them in," said co-first-author Alexi Nott, PhD, assistant project scientist in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a member of Glass' lab. "Going forward, our data sets can be used by others interested in studying many different brain disorders."

Nott said the research team plans to continue using the approach to generate even more targets of inquiry. "Because we studied healthy tissue, we may be missing some regulatory regions that are important in disease contexts. It may be that some of these elements are only altered in disease contexts. We also want to look at more cell types. But this work is a great starting point for furthering our understanding of how these cell-specific regulatory regions may be important for understanding disease risk."

Glass said the study represented a complex, massive team effort, with input from diverse scientists. "This breakthrough could not have been achieved without the application of a combination of multidisciplinary approaches and collaborative interactions involving neuroscientists, immunologists, stem cell biologists, geneticists, genomic scientists and neurosurgeons at UC San Diego, the Salk Institute and Rady Children's Hospital," he said.

"This is an exciting time in neuroscience because we are developing tools to understand the brain's remarkable complexity in entirely new ways," said co-author Fred "Rusty" Gage, PhD, professor and president of the Salk Institute. "The insights into brain health and disease gained from this study underscore the value of taking a multidisciplinary approach to biological research."

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Nov. 14, 2019 -- Following a nearly 25-year search across three continents, parents of a pair of sisters -- who as children slowly became paralyzed from the waist down -- finally have a diagnosis, according to researchers at University of Southern California (USC) and Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope.

These findings were reported today in the scientific journal Human Mutation.

Thanks to a chance viewing on French TV of a story about another physically disabled child who regained her mobility after being diagnosed at TGen's Center for Rare Childhood Disorders (the Center), the parents of the two sisters contacted TGen, hoping to end their decades-long diagnostic odyssey.

"The girls' parents were one of the many who emailed me after seeing the TGen interview on French TV," recalled Dr. Matt Huentelman, Professor of TGen's Neurogenomics Division, Scientific Director of the Center, and one of the paper's authors. "I can still remember the pain, desperation and hope expressed in those emails."

Using multiple analyses of the sisters' and family members' genomic sequencing, TGen and USC investigators found that an "extremely rare" genetic variant in the gene AP4S1 was the likely culprit that left the girls, by age 5, paralyzed from the waist down.

Twenty years later, following a physical exam at ages 24 and 25, their physician noted that the sisters were "pleasant and happy," but remained shy, unable to talk, and still in need of their motorized wheelchairs. The sisters have required multiple foot surgeries associated with their condition, have no bladder or bowel control, and require daily assistance with bathing, feeding and dressing.

"This family literally went all over the world in search for a diagnosis," said Newell Belnap, Clinical Research Coordinator at the Center, and one of the study's authors.

Quoting from one of the mother's emails: "I took them everywhere, to any doctor, any neurologist who could diagnose the disease."

Originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in east Africa, the family eventually traveled to Paris, France; Geneva, Switzerland; and elsewhere in Europe before arriving in the U.S. in 1999, all the time in search of a doctor who could provide a diagnosis.

In 2014, the parents saw a story featured on France 2, the French national television channel, about a young girl who after being diagnosed and treated at the Center, was able to discard her wheelchair, stand and walk -- and even dance.

Eventually, after finding their way to the Center, the sisters, other siblings and their parents had their DNA sequenced. Initially, TGen and USC researchers could not find a cause for their disabilities.

"Given the lack of evidence for a causative variant, we performed RNA sequencing and compared the resulting gene expression profiles to a broader group of more than 150 other pediatric patients enrolled under our research protocol," said Dr. Vinodh Narayanan, the Center's Medical Director and one of the study's authors.

Using these precision medicine techniques, the team was able to pinpoint the "extremely rare" variant -- one that had been skipped over by researchers in the past -- in the AP4S1 gene.

"This in-depth case study demonstrates the utility of whole-blood mRNAseq -- even when genes are expressed at very low levels -- in identifying a variant not previously considered likely pathogenic," said Dr. David Craig, a former TGen researcher who now is Co-Director of the USC Institute of Translational Genomics at the USC Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Craig is the senior author of this study.

Key research and analysis for this study were provided by: Carmel McCullough, a Research Assistant II at USC's Keck School of Medicine, and a former member of Helios Scholars at TGen; and by Dr. Szabolcs Szelinger, a Research Assistant Professor in TGen's Neurogenomics Division. McCullough and Dr. Szelinger are co-lead authors of this study.

"Given that DNA and RNA can be obtained at the same time -- and integrative analytical frameworks, such as ours, can gather additional evidence -- these approaches have the promise to improve clinical diagnosis, especially in some diseases where most patients remain undiagnosed even after genome or exome sequencing," Dr. Szelinger said.

Millions of people are suffering from malnutrition despite some of the most nutritious fish species in the world being caught near their homes, according to new research published in Nature.

Children in many tropical coastal areas are particularly vulnerable and could see significant health improvements if just a fraction of the fish caught nearby was diverted into their diets.

As well as omega-3 fatty acids, fish are also a source of important micronutrients, for example Iron, Zinc, and Calcium. Yet, more than 2 billion people worldwide suffer from micronutrient deficiencies, which are linked to maternal mortality, stunted growth, and pre-eclampsia. For some nations in Africa, such deficiencies are estimated to reduce GDP by up to 11%.

This new research suggests enough nutrients are already being fished out of the oceans to substantially reduce malnutrition and, at a time when the world is being asked to think more carefully about where and how we produce our food, fishing more may not be the answer.

Lead author Professor Christina Hicks of Lancaster University's Environment Centre said: "Nearly half the global population lives within 100km of the coast. Half of those countries have moderate to severe deficiency risks; yet, our research shows that the nutrients currently fished out of their waters exceeds the dietary requirements for all under 5 year olds within their coastal band. If these catches were more accessible locally they could have a huge impact on global food security and combat malnutrition-related disease in millions of people."

The Lancaster University-led research team, collected data on the concentration of seven nutrients in more than 350 species of marine fish and developed a statistical model for predicting how much nutrition any given species of fish contains, based on their diet, sea water temperature and energy expenditure.

This predictive modelling, led by Aaron MacNeil of Dalhousie University, allowed researchers to accurately predict the likely nutrient composition of thousands of fish species that have never been nutritionally analysed before.

Using current fish landings data, they used this model to quantify the global distribution of nutrients available from existing marine fisheries. This information was then compared with the prevalence of nutrient deficiencies around the world.

Their results showed important nutrients were readily available in the fish already being caught but they were not reaching many local populations, who were often most in need.

For example, the amount of fish currently caught off the West African coast - where people suffer from high levels of zinc, iron and vitamin A deficiencies - was sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of the people living within 100km of the sea.

Parts of Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean were just some of the other coastal regions showing a similar pattern of high malnutrition despite sufficient fish nutrients in the local catch.

Researchers say that a complex picture of international and illegal fishing, trade in seafood - along with cultural practices and norms - are standing between malnourished people and the more-than-adequate fish nutrients caught on their doorstep.

Dr Andrew Thorne-Lyman, a nutritionist and co-author from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said: "Fish is thought of by many as a 'protein' but our findings suggest that it's actually an important source of many vitamins, minerals and fatty acids that we often see are missing in the diets of poor populations throughout the world. It's time that food security policymakers acknowledge the nutrient-rich food swimming right under their noses and think about what can be done to increase access to fish by those populations."

Dr Philippa Cohen of WorldFish said: "Our research clearly shows that the way fish are distributed needs to be carefully looked at. Currently many of the World's fisheries are managed to get the most revenue, often by directing our fishing effort towards catching the highest-priced species and shovelling fish landings towards the mouths of the rich in cities or feeding pets and livestock in wealthier countries. It is slipping through the hands of small-scale fishers and malnourished people. We need to find a way to put human nutrition at the core of fisheries policies."

The study highlights the need for fish policies which are focused on improving nutrition rather than simply increasing volumes of food produced or the revenues generated from fish exports.

Associate Professor Aaron MacNeil, of the Ocean Frontier Institute at Dalhousie University, said: "As demand for ocean resources has increased up to the limit of what can be harvested sustainably, projects like this show that there are opportunities to fish strategically to address fundamental challenges to human health and wellbeing.

"This global research shows how interdisciplinary marine science can be used to directly address threats to human health at local scales. The ability for local people to solve local problems using local resources is huge, and we could not have done it without such a diverse team of researchers working together."

What The Study Did: With data from nearly 25,000 patients who underwent weight-loss surgery in Western Australia over 10 years, this study examined the association between bariatric surgery and the use of outpatient, emergency department and inpatient mental health services.

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

Authors: David J.R. Morgan, M.B.B.S., St. John of God Subiaco Hospital, Perth, Western Australia, is the corresponding author.

(doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2741)

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

#  #  #

Media advisory: The full study is linked to this news release.

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2741?guestAccessKey=13d2181c-aae0-4464-9062-d34c16e6be41&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=092519

Teenagers got 43 more minutes of sleep a night after a four-week intervention that reset their body clocks and helped them go to bed earlier, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has shown.

The treatment had two components: brief, early morning flashes of bright, broad-spectrum white light to reset the teens' circadian clocks, and cognitive behavioral therapy that motivated them to try earlier bedtimes. The findings will be published online Sept. 25 in JAMA Network Open.

"Using a passive light therapy during sleep, we can help teens get an extra 43 minutes of sleep every single night," said senior author Jamie Zeitzer, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

The light was delivered by a device in the teens' bedrooms that was programmed to deliver 3-millisecond flashes of light every 20 seconds during the last few hours of sleep. The brief flashes of light did not wake the teens. Zeitzer's previous research on jet lag had shown that exposure to short flashes of light can trick the brain into adjusting to a new time zone, even during sleep.

Chronic sleep deprivation is common in teenagers, Zeitzer said. The body's circadian clock, which controls daily rhythms of when we sleep and when we're awake, is naturally set later in teens than in children or in adults, meaning that teens often don't feel sleepy until late at night. Teens might also stay up late because of such social influences as homework and electronic device use. Early school start times often require them to wake up before they're fully rested, further contributing to sleep deprivation.

Prior studies tested whether cognitive behavioral therapy alone could help teens go to sleep earlier. Successes were modest: After the treatments, teens went to sleep 10 to 15 minutes sooner, on average. But these interventions might have put participants at odds with their own body clocks, asking them to try to fall asleep before they were tired, a behavior that is difficult to sustain, Zeitzer said.

"We have a biological drive to stay awake in the hours before we normally go to sleep," he said. "So our team wondered if we could adjust the circadian timing, having the teens essentially move their brains to Denver while they're living in California."

In the first four-week portion of the new study, researchers tested light therapy alone in a group of 72 teenagers. For four weeks, half the participants were exposed to the frequent brief light flashes during the final three hours of their normal sleep period. The remaining participants received a sham light therapy treatment, consisting of three bright flashes of light per hour -- too little to reset their body clocks.

Although the light therapy caused the teens who were exposed to it to feel more tired earlier at night, they still stayed up late. Using the light alone was not enough to increase the amount of time they slept.

"We had to convince teens to try to go to sleep earlier," Zeitzer said.

So, in the second four-week phase of the study, researchers recruited 30 teens; half of them received light therapy during their final two hours of sleep, and half had sham light therapy.

But in this phase of the study, all of the teens also participated in four one-hour sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy to encourage them to go to sleep earlier. Therapists worked with each teen to identify areas of their lives they cared about that would be better if they had more sleep -- such as academics, physical appearance or athletic performance -- and used these to help motivate the teens. The cognitive behavioral therapy also included giving them information about the body clock, sleep hygiene and strategies for waking up earlier on weekends.

In addition to the extra sleep, participants who received both light therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy went to bed an average of 50 minutes earlier than participants who had only cognitive behavioral therapy. In addition, the participants receiving both therapies were six times more successful than those receiving only cognitive behavioral therapy at maintaining consistent bedtimes.

Prior studies of light therapy for resetting the circadian clock have shown that the early morning flashes of light must continue daily to be effective, Zeitzer said. "The cool part, for an intervention teens would potentially have to live with for years, is that it is completely passive. We set up the flashing light in the person's bedroom and put it on a timer; they don't have to wear a device, remember to turn it on, or do anything else."

The flashing light used in the study was a programmable bridge beacon; it is not marketed as a sleep aid, Zeitzer said.

The next step, he said, is to figure out the best way to deliver brief cognitive behavioral therapy for improving sleep duration to large numbers of people.

In the quest for a more youthful appearance, many people slather ointments on their skin or undergo injections of dermal fillers. But topical treatments often aren't very effective because they don't penetrate deep within the skin, whereas the results from injections typically last for only a few months and can be painful. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Nano have developed a needle-free "exosome" treatment that reduces wrinkles in UV-exposed mice.

As skin cells age, they lose their ability to multiply and to produce collagen, which is the main structural protein in skin. Recently, scientists discovered that treating human skin cells in a dish with exosomes from stem cells boosted the amount of collagen and caused other youthful changes. Exosomes are membranous vesicles containing protein and RNA that cells release to communicate with each other. Ke Cheng and colleagues wondered if treating mouse skin with exosomes from human dermal fibroblasts could reduce wrinkles and restore youthful characteristics. To avoid having to inject the exosomes, the researchers tested a needle-free device that uses a jet of air to deliver medications deep into the skin.

The researchers exposed mice to ultraviolet B (UVB) light, which accelerates aging and causes wrinkles to form. After 8 weeks of UVB exposure, the researchers administered exosomes from human dermal fibroblasts to some of the mice with the needle-free injector. Three weeks later, the treated mice showed significantly thinner and more superficial wrinkles than untreated mice or those that received topical retinoic acid, a standard anti-aging medication. Skin from the exosome-treated mice was thicker and showed reduced inflammation and enhanced collagen synthesis compared with skin from untreated mice.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A satellite on schedule to launch in 2021 could offer a more comprehensive look at flooding in vulnerable, under-studied parts of the world, including much of Africa, South America and Indonesia, a new study has found.

The study, published last month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that the satellite also will likely improve flood modeling around the world, even in areas that are already studied extensively, especially in the United States and Canada. That could mean more accurate flood plain maps and better predictions about which areas are likely to flood after snowmelt, hurricanes, ice jam breakup and others.

"The flood maps -- the 100-year, 500-year flood plains -- they are only as good as our understanding of the terrain," said Renato Frasson, lead author of the study and senior research associate at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University. "And land use changes, rivers migrate, sometimes naturally, other times due to human activity. However, in some areas of the world, the best available maps are not updated often enough. With this mission, we will be able to go in and correct that old data."

The study found that the radar installed in the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (or SWOT) mission will collect more detailed looks at large-scale floods in parts of the world where flooding historically has not been studied as well.

To reach that conclusion, Frasson combined data from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory at the University of Colorado with the expected path of the SWOT mission. The database uses news reports and other publications to collect information on flood locations, severity and impact, and dates back to 1985.

What Frasson found is that the mission is likely to catch about 55 percent of floods worldwide, and that the mission is also more likely to capture more detailed images of severe, long-lasting floods than quicker, less-severe floods.

"At first, it might not seem that exciting -- just 55 percent of floods," Frasson said. "But what is really worth knowing is that, because we had this data from the Dartmouth Flood Observatory, we were able to see that the more intense the flood, the larger number of people who were displaced, and the more likely SWOT is to see those floods. And because SWOT is flying over areas of the world that have very little monitoring, it is likely to capture more floods than we would have otherwise known about."

Flooding is a crisis in many parts of the world, where climate change has led to more severe, more frequent storms. In the United States alone, including Puerto Rico, flooding has killed thousands of people over the last three years, and caused billions of dollars in damage.

"Some regions do not have time to recover before the next rains come," Frasson said.

The U.S. river-and-stream monitoring system is fairly robust, but still leaves major gaps, especially in rural areas. And in other parts of the world -- including the Bahamas, where earlier this year Hurricane Dorian killed at least 43 people -- satellites are some of the best options for scientists and aid workers to see damage.

"The first images of Dorian this year to really show how much of the island was under water came from scientists in Luxembourg, who analyzed and made visuals of data from existing satellites," Frasson said.

The SWOT mission, a combined effort by NASA and the French national space agency Centre National D'etudes Spatiales, along with support from the national space agencies in the United Kingdom and Canada, is important for geologists, hydrologists and others interested in the state of Earth's water. The mission is the first-ever global survey of our planet's surface water, and will allow scientists to measure how water bodies, including the world's oceans, change over time.

And while monitoring floods is not the mission's primary purpose, the data the mission will collect will likely be used by scientists for a number of things.

Frasson, who was born and raised in a flood-prone area of Brazil and who was a graduate and PhD student at the University of Iowa during major floods in Iowa City, said the mission should make it easier to predict and react to floods, and to get help to people who need it after a severe flood.

"Instead of making a guess about where the water will be, the SWOT mission could offer the data needed to predict when and where floods will happen, giving more time to locals and aid workers to start working on protections, on putting up sandbags, and on evacuation if necessary," he said.

Water and nutrient uptake by plants involves dynamic and complex interactions of roots with the surrounding soil. "The tomographic method makes it possible to track 3D water paths from soil into roots over time," says Dr. Christian Toetzke, who heads the research team at the University of Potsdam. "These insights can help to develop strategies for more efficient and sustainable use of water and fertilizer in crop cultivation."

Neutrons are sensitive mainly to light elements such as hydrogen, lithium and their compounds. Neutron tomography can therefore be used to precisely map water content non-invasively, both in the roots and in the surrounding soil of a sample. How plants can take up water and nutrients depends largely on the properties of the rhizosphere, a few millimetres thick soil layer surrounding the roots. This region not only delivers the mineral and organic components from soil to roots, but is also influenced by root exudates and microbial activity.

Until now, the acquisition of 3D neutron images took at least ten seconds per tomogram. This still resulted in a limitation to study rapid processes such as the infiltration of the root system with water. To enable more images in a shorter time, a team led by HZB expert Dr. Nikolay Kardjilov optimized the method at NeXT-Grenoble, a recently opened tomography instrument of the Laue-Langevin Institute (ILL), which is supplied with cold neutrons by a 60 Megawatt research reactor. By exploiting the much more intense neutron beam, it has been possible to reduce the recording time per tomogram to almost one second. "The result even exceeded our expectations," explains Toetzke: "The achieved acquisition rate was higher than assumed beforehand. Nevertheless, the signal-to-noise ratio and the spatial image resolution could be improved also".

Now that the technical capabilities of ultrafast neutron tomography have been demonstrated, Kardjilov and his team are working on further improving the method and establishing its application in other research areas. Since the Berlin neutron source of the HZB will cease operation in December, the fast imaging set-up will be integrated into the NeXT instrument in Grenoble in order to be able to investigate fast transport processes in other materials in the future. For example, high-speed neutron tomography could provide new insights into the hydraulic fracturing of porous rock formations or could be used to investigate ion transfer during fast charging and discharging of lithium batteries in order to increase the safety, capacity and durability of such energy storage systems.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Jerry and provided forecasters with a view of its structure that helped confirm it is now post-tropical.

On Sept. 25 at 12:48 p.m. EDT (1806 UTC), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a visible image Jerry. The VIIRS image showed the storm as swirls of clouds with no organized deep convection/developing strong thunderstorms. NOAA's National Hurricane Center or NHC said since around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) yesterday [Sept. 24], that lack of strong thunderstorms was seen in earlier satellite imagery, including from NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. As a result, Jerry was designated as a post-tropical cyclone.

A Post-Tropical Storm is a generic term for a former tropical cyclone that no longer possesses sufficient tropical characteristics to be considered a tropical cyclone. Former tropical cyclones that have become fully extratropical, subtropical, or remnant lows, are three classes of post-tropical cyclones. In any case, they no longer possesses sufficient tropical characteristics to be considered a tropical cyclone. However, post-tropical cyclones can continue carrying heavy rains and high winds.

A Tropical Storm Warning was in effect for Bermuda for Sept. 25. At 8 a.m. EDT (1200 UTC), the center of Post-Tropical Cyclone Jerry was located near latitude 32.0 degrees north and longitude 67.4 degrees west. The post-tropical cyclone is moving toward the northeast near 7 mph (11 kph). Maximum sustained winds are near 45 mph (75 km/h) with higher gusts.

On the forecast track, the center of Jerry is expected to pass near Bermuda later today. Jerry is expected to produce 1 inch or less of rainfall across Bermuda through tonight. Swells generated by Jerry will continue to affect Bermuda during the next few days. Gradual weakening is expected during the next few days.

WASHINGTON -- Researchers have developed a new laser-based system that offers an efficient and low-cost way to detect fires in challenging environments such as industrial facilities or large construction sites. With further development, the system could eventually detect fires that are more than a kilometer away.

"Our new system makes it possible to detect fire in dusty areas prone to fires, where current systems show limited performance or can't operate," said Senior Scientist Mikael Lassen from Danish Fundamental Metrology A/S, a member of the research team. "It could be used in a variety of industries such as waste management facilities, power supply plants, food processing factories and textile factories."

A multi-institutional group of researchers describes the new system in the Optical Society journal Applied Optics. The system detects a fire or change in temperature by using inexpensive optical components to create and detect changes in a speckle pattern.

"Speckle pattern analysis is a completely new solution for detecting fire and heat changes," said Lassen. "It is not only fast and relatively low cost, but also works in large, harsh environments."

The research is part of a Eurostars project that aims to develop a system that can identify small temperature increases to provide early and reliable detection of fire. In addition to Danish Fundamental Metrology, the project included researchers from Elotec A/s in Norway and LAP-Sikkerhed ApS and The Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology, all in Denmark.

Preventing false alarms

Most fire detection and prevention systems used today do not work well for harsh industrial sites or for large areas. Standard smoke detectors often give false alarms because of the dust and pollutants in these environments and cannot detect the submicron particulate matter released during early stages of fire.

Although optical detection systems based on measuring amplitude changes in an optical signal are more advanced, they are also sensitive to vibrations and cannot always detect fires through dust and steam. For sensors that detect radiation emitted by flames, radiation from other sources such as sunlight, artificial light, welding or other non-dangerous sources can give rise to false alarms.

In the new work, Lassen and his colleagues applied a completely different optical approach to detect fires by measuring dynamic speckle patterns. These changing patterns are produced by interference when laser light hits a rough surface. When a fire is occurring, the heat flow makes the laser beam jitter in a way that is detectable when the laser light is reflected to a detector at the laser source. The researchers used statistics and machine learning to analyze the noise pattern of the dynamic speckle pattern created by that laser light. The presence of broadband white noise indicated a fire while noise sources confined to a narrow range of wavelengths could be ruled out as a mechanical influence such as vibration.

Waste plant testing

To validate the new fire detection system, the researchers tested a remotely operated proof-of-concept prototype at the Energnist I/S waste plant in Kolding, Denmark. Due to the extremely harsh, noisy and dusty environment, the plant normally has three to four false alarms per month.

"The system detected fires with an accuracy of 91 percent, which is a very good result taking into account the harsh environment," said Lassen. "Because it doesn't rely on the absolute intensity of the light beam, it is robust to general attenuation due to dust and smoke."

Converting the prototype into a finalized product will require additional product development such as completing the housing, optimizing electronics and algorithms, and designing the user interface. The researchers also plan to upgrade the optical detector and the laser to a more powerful one to increase sensitivity and expand the sensing range first to 500 to 600 meters and eventually to over 1 kilometer.

Expanding Medicaid to more low-income adults helped many of them feel healthier, and do a better job at work or a job search, in just one year after they got their new health coverage, a University of Michigan study finds.

But people with behavioral health conditions, including mental health disorders such as depression or addiction to alcohol or drugs, got an especially big boost in many health and work-related measures, the study shows. Half of the sample of Medicaid enrollees in the study had at least one such condition.

As more states embark on new Medicaid expansions, and others change eligibility for existing Medicaid expansion programs, the researchers say those with behavioral health conditions may have the most to gain or lose.

In a new paper in the journal Psychiatric Services, a team from the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation documents the results from a survey of a representative sample of more than 4,000 adults at or near the poverty level who had coverage under the Healthy Michigan Plan -- Michigan's Medicaid expansion program -- for at least one year.

As a group, enrollees with behavioral health conditions were more likely to also have chronic physical illnesses, poor overall health and lower incomes, and were more likely to be unemployed, than those without.

Improvements in health & work

When the researchers asked the respondents about their health and employment over the time since they'd enrolled in the Healthy Michigan Plan, a high percentage of both groups reported improvement. But the gains were larger for those with behavioral health conditions.

For instance, 51% of those with behavioral health conditions said their physical health had improved in their first year of coverage, and 45% said their mental health had improved, compared with 45% and 32% of those without behavioral health conditions.

"These rates of improvement are encouraging, especially because behavioral health conditions can affect people's ability to maintain their physical health," says Renuka Tipirneni, M.D., M.Sc., the lead author of the new study and an assistant professor of internal medicine at Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center.

Such conditions can also interfere with people's ability to work or perform well at a job. So Tipirneni and her colleague were especially interested in what Healthy Michigan Plan enrollees reported on that front.

In all, 76% of those with a behavioral health condition who were employed said their Medicaid coverage had improved their ability to perform well at work, compared with 64% of those who did not have a mental health condition and were employed.

Those who said their health had improved, whether or not they had a behavioral health condition, were more likely to say they were doing better at their job.

Those with behavioral health conditions reported they were missing fewer days of work than they had a year before. But the two groups didn't differ on whether Medicaid coverage helped them find a job, or find a better job if they'd been looking.

Another key finding: people with behavioral health conditions were four times as likely as those without such conditions to say they were unable to work.

Implications for Medicaid policy

The new findings could inform Medicaid policymaking, especially for people with behavioral health conditions.

"It is important for states to determine how enrollees with behavioral health conditions will be identified when work requirements go into effect," says Tipirneni. "The needs of those with behavioral health conditions can vary over time. The loss of Medicaid coverage could mean loss of access to health care services that can help these conditions."

In Michigan, Healthy Michigan Plan participants will have to complete and report their participation in jobs, education or training, or other 'community engagement' activities each month starting in early 2020. The new policy includes exemptions for people determined to be medically frail, including people with chronic substance use disorder.

But for those who don't qualify for an exemption, failure to meet the law's requirements could mean loss of their Medicaid coverage, which could mean losing access to medications and health care services that help address the symptoms of their conditions.

"The prevalence of behavioral health conditions in the United States is high, but we do not talk enough about it," says Tipirneni,. "It touches all of society -- without respect to age, race, gender and so on -- and can impact quality of life and health in many ways, including work."

Using a new technique that can identify genetic profiles of individual cells, University of Notre Dame researchers modeled a breast cancer tumor's potential resistance to a drug, and then identified a drug combination that reversed that resistance.

Siyuan Zhang, the Dee Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Notre Dame, and his team used a new profiling process to make the discovery, published in Nature Communications.

"The new technology allows us to do sequencing on each individual cell," Zhang said, adding that his lab worked with Notre Dame's Genomics and Bioinformatics Core Facility to apply the new technology, called high-throughput single-cell profiling, on campus.

Until recently, finding patterns of gene expression for cancer tissue has been performed using whole tumor tissue, a process called bulk sequencing. Unfortunately, cancer cells are embedded in a matrix of other cells, making it difficult to distinguish the true signatures of individual cells. The new single-cell profiling technique makes the task of discerning the nature of each cell possible.

In this study, researchers observed how a particular new drug works for shrinking tumors in an aggressive type of cancer, HER2-positive breast cancer. The drug, called a CDK 4/6 inhibitor -- used to block a specific type of enzyme -- works rapidly. But most drugs start out working well, before the tumor eventually changes and becomes resistant to the treatment. Researchers then look at the resistant tumors and start to develop new drugs to overcome resistance, but by then it's too late. "By the time we find a new drug, the tumor has shifted into something different," said Zhang.

Zhang decided to investigate predicting the potential for drug resistance. Running tests in tandem with the clinical trial for the CDK 4/6 drug, and using the single-cell profiling technology, his team discovered a type of tumor-infiltrating immune-suppressive cells that led to resistance. The team then added another already-FDA-approved drug to target the immune-suppressive cells. The combination reversed the resistance.

"The new combination of drugs shows that the resistant tumor can be treated, and can maintain and control the tumor size for a pretty long period of time," Zhang said. Given the effectiveness of the additional drug, clinicians could begin the combination therapy even before resistance occurs, Zhang noted. Because the drug is already FDA-approved, clinicians may choose to try the protocol now.

Single-cell profiling could lead to additional discoveries, said Michael Pfrender, director of the Genomics and Bioinformatics Core Facility and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences.

"The applications of single-cell approaches to human disease and development are profound," he said. "This technology is rapidly becoming an essential feature in the biomedical research tool kit."