Earth

NASA's Aqua satellite focused an infrared eye on a very powerful Tropical Cyclone Fani as it approached landfall in northeastern India. Fani is a powerful Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

On May 2 at 3:29 a.m. EDT (0729 UTC), the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed cloud top temperatures of Tropical Cyclone Fani in infrared light. AIRS found cloud top temperatures of strongest thunderstorms as cold as or colder than minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 62 degrees Celsius) circling the eye and in a fragmented band of thunderstorms east of the center. Satellite data showed there is now a 16 nautical mile-wide round, symmetrical eye surrounded by a thick band of powerful thunderstorms. Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms that have the capability to create heavy rain.

On May 2 at 11 a.m. EST (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Cyclone Fani was located near latitude 17.6 degrees north and longitude 84.8 degrees east. That is about 87 miles east of Visakhapatnam, India. Fani was moving to the north and maximum sustained winds increased to 135 knots (155 mph/250 kph).

Fani is forecast to move to the north-northeast. The India Meteorological Department forecasts Fani to make landfall within 12 to 24 hours, then weaken rapidly and dissipate over northeastern India and Bangladesh.

A new study shows that vaccination may reduce the impact of white-nose syndrome in bats, marking a milestone in the international fight against one of the most destructive wildlife diseases in modern times.

"This is a significant step forward in developing control mechanisms to combat the devastating spread of white-nose syndrome in our important bat populations," said USGS Director Jim Reilly. "Being able to deliver an oral vaccine during hibernation could be a game changer in our ability to combat one of the deadliest wildlife diseases in modern times."

White-nose syndrome is caused by a fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans, or Pd, and has killed millions of North American bats since 2006. The disease is spreading rapidly and there is no cure. Recent studies by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, University of Wisconsin and Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources demonstrated that bats immunized against Pd were less likely to develop WNS or die from the disease in two initial scientific trials. Results were published today in the journal Scientific Reports.

"Insect-eating bats are incredibly valuable, saving the U.S. agricultural industry billions of dollars in pest control services every year," said USGS scientist Tonie Rocke, who led the team involved in vaccine development. "Our initial studies suggest that an effective vaccine could be a critical step towards conserving North America's bat populations."

During the trials, scientists administered several vaccine formulas to little brown bats prior to Pd exposure and hibernation. They found that bats vaccinated orally or by injection survived at a higher rate than unimmunized bats. The bats also developed specific anti-fungal immune responses. Although work is still progressing to select the best vaccine candidates, the findings suggest that vaccination could potentially protect bats or reduce the effects of white-nose syndrome by providing them with immunity against Pd.

"This work shows the importance of multi-disciplinary teamwork when dealing with devastating diseases such as white-nose syndrome," said professor Jorge Osorio from the School of Veterinary Medicine at UW-Madison, who has extensive experience in developing molecular vaccines. Other team members from UW include Dr. Bruce Klein, professor and world expert on human fungal diseases, and his staff.

In natural environments, vaccines could be applied to bats in a jelly-like substance that they would ingest as they groom themselves and each other. Bats would also transfer the vaccine-laden jelly to untreated bats. 

"These results represent an exciting step forward, not only for managing white-nose syndrome but for treating disease in wildlife," said Jeremy Coleman, National White-nose Syndrome Coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "Vaccine development is among multiple options the Service is funding to treat white-nose syndrome, but it is one that holds great promise for heavily affected bat species."  

White-nose syndrome is named for the fuzzy white appearance of Pd as it infects muzzles, ears and wings of hibernating bats. The disease is not known to affect humans, pets, livestock or other wildlife.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY - In a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Dr. Özdemir has studied two protein families named Rho GTPases and IQGAPs, which are known to play an important role in cancer metastasis. These two "suspicious" protein families have been studied by many researchers over the years, but the interaction between them had not previously been fully understood.

It is important to understand how metastasis, the spreading of cancer from its primary site to other organs, takes place, since preventing metastasis means keeping cancer under control. This is why Dr. Özdemir chose to study these proteins, which are known to activate metastasis.

Requiring a large amount of probabilistic calculation, the study was only made possible through computational simulation techniques with the help of very powerful computers. A simulation environment in which many such elements as the water density in the cell, the ions and the three-dimensional structure of the proteins were very precisely simulated. This made it possible to observe how exactly the two proteins interacted, the points at which they bound, and what morphological changes the bonding caused in the proteins.

The simulation of the structures that included the numerous bonding points to find the correct bonding took six months. The study observed how bonding points and sequence of the two proteins, and how the large protein found its match and how the two complex structures bound together. And it was established that the complex structures that formed, activated the mechanisms which triggered metastasis in cells.

Dr. S?la Özdemir's study was tested and replicated on cancer cells in a laboratory setting by another research group at the National Institutes of Health in the United States (NIH), and the results showed an exact match: The experiment verified the data produced through the computer simulations. The most important outcome of this discovery will be its contribution towards the design of a drug that targets the mechanism in question.

Following its publication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, among the most prestigious journals in the field, Dr. Özdemir's research went on to be published as part of a special collection by the journal of the most influential papers of 2018.

To view the video, please go to https://www.dropbox.com/s/nvbkr7cuggbn4x5/cdcgrdace_center.mp4?dl=0

When spies meet, they use secret handshakes to confirm their identities, ensuring they are who they say they are. Now, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology, and colleagues, have solved a 15-year-old problem that allows handshake-style encryption to be used for time-delayed digital communications such as email - a challenge once thought to be impossible.

The work, led by Giuseppe Ateniese, David and GG Farber Endowed Chair in Computer Science, dramatically expands the technology's utility not just for intelligence agencies and Web-savvy spies, but for anyone with an interest in secure online communication, including journalists, financial workers, lawyers, medical professionals, and others for whom security and privacy are key priorities.

"The demand for tools like this is incredible," said Ateniese, whose work appears in arxiv.org and will be presented at Crypto 2019, one of the most competitive conferences in this research area. "Privacy is growing more and more important, and encryption is essential for almost everyone."

Digital handshakes, like in-person handshakes, use real-time interactions to verify participants' identities. That's fine for live communication like online chats, explained Ateniese. But it's a deal breaker for email-style communications, in which messages may need to be decoded long after they were originally sent.

Ateniese and his team, including Danilo Francati, a doctoral student at Stevens, as well as Daniele Venturi from Sapienza University of Rome and David Nuñez from Nucypher, a cryptography company, combined existing key-based cryptographic algorithms in a novel arrangement to create a system called matchmaking encryption, which simultaneously checks the identities of both sender and receiver before decrypting a message. Crucially, matchmaking encryption does away with the need for real-time interactions, allowing messages to be sent on a "dead drop" basis and read at a later date.

"A dead drop is like when a spy leaves a message behind a rock," said Ateniese. "It can be used when you need to send a message to someone who's not there at the moment, but will find it if he or she is the intended recipient.

To use matchmaking encryption, both sender and receiver create policies, or lists of traits, that describe the people with whom they are willing to communicate. Only when both policies are satisfied will a message actually be delivered and decrypted, ensuring that only the intended recipients can read the message without anyone else knowing they are communicating.

Matchmaking encryption can be used for individual-to-individual communication, but also allows users to designate classes of people with whom they are willing to communicate. An FBI agent in Philadelphia could make their messages accessible only to CIA agents in New York, for example; while CIA agents in New York could refuse to accept messages from anyone other than Philadelphia-based FBI agents. "It's a way to combine these two requests, from sender and receiver, into a single system," said Ateniese.

Messages that don't satisfy both users' policies aren't decrypted, with neither sender nor receiver receiving information about the other party. "This is important for intelligence -- I don't want to reveal to you that I'm an FBI agent, so I want assurances that you are who you say you are," said Francati. "Matchmaking encryption provides that assurance as well as a level of privacy that's stronger than anything else that's available."

As a proof of concept, Ateniese and his team created a matchmaking encryption bulletin board accessible via the Tor Browser, a web browser that anonymizes one's web traffic, making it easy to protect one's identity online. Users can scan the bulletin board for messages that match their policies and for which they match the sender's policy, and decrypt them in just a few milliseconds -- a sign that the matchmaking encryption system doesn't unduly strain computing resources, suggesting it is both effective and efficient.

Ateniese predicts that additional applications will quickly emerge as researchers explore the new technology, and find ways to make matchmaking encryption even more powerful for professions where security and privacy are key priorities.

"The work opens up new frontiers in secure communication, said Ateniese. "A very important result - a real and long-awaited breakthrough."

Scientists have discovered a new method for quickly and efficiently mapping the vast network of connections among neurons in the brain.

Researchers combined infrared laser stimulation techniques with functional magnetic resonance imaging in animals to generate mapping of connections throughout the brain. The technique was described in a study published in the journal Science Advances.

"This is a revolution in detecting connections in the brain," said senior author Anna Wang Roe, Ph.D., a professor in the Division of Neuroscience at OHSU's Oregon National Primate Research Center. "The ability to easily map connections in the living brain with high precision opens doors for other applications in medicine and engineering."

Roe led an international team of researchers in the United States and China. Roe splits her time between her lab at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, where she directs the Interdisciplinary Institute of Neuroscience and Technology.

Researchers threaded a 200-micron optical fiber into the brains of research animals - in this case, cats and monkeys at Zhejiang and Vanderbilt, respectively - and stimulated specific areas of the brain. They were then able to view the cascading series of connections through ultra-high-field MRIs measuring blood oxygen levels in various areas.

Traditionally, researchers have mapped these kinds of connections in the brain through a laborious process in which they injected dyes directly into the brain and reconstructed the connections post-mortem.

"It's a very slow, expensive and time-consuming process," she said.

The new technique opens doors for systematic, large-scale study of connection patterns within single individuals repeatedly and efficiently. It also enables researchers to determine the direction of information flowing within the brain, an insight critical for understanding information processing in the brain.

Roe said she believes the technique will greatly expand scientists' ability to understand the brain and could accelerate development of artificial intelligence and technologies that use brain-machine interface.

"If we can understand the organizing patterns in the brain, this could lead to some understanding of the general rules of connectivity," she said.

Reconstruction of the most complete fossil lizard found in Australia, a 15 million year old relative of our modern blue tongues and social skinks named Egernia gillespieae, reveals the creature was equipped with a robust crushing jaw and was remarkably similar to modern lizards.

A new study lead by Flinders University PHD student Kailah Thorn, published in the journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, combined the anatomy of of living fossils with DNA data to put a time scale on the family tree of Australia's 'social skinks'.

"This creature looked like something in-between a tree skink and a bluetongue lizard. It would have been about 25 cm long, and unlike any of the living species it was equipped with robust crushing jaws," says Ms Thorn.

The results show that our Australia's bluetongue lizards split from Egernia as early as 25 million years ago.

"The new fossil is unusually well-preserved, with much of the skull, and some limb bones, all from a single individual. It belongs to the genus Egernia, a modern species in this group which are often called 'social skinks' and are known for living in family groups, sharing rocky outcrops and hollow tree stumps."

Remarkably similar to modern social skinks, E. gillespieae instead is equipped with rounded crushing teeth and a deep, thick jaw.

The fossils are from the Riversleigh World Heritage fossil deposits in northwest Queensland, and were named after Dr Anna Gillespie, a UNSW palaeontologist responsible for preparing many of the spectacular fossils from that area.

"I have been preparing the Riversleigh fossil material for quite a few years now and lizard bones are rare elements. When the jaw appeared and was quickly followed by associated skull elements, I had a good feeling it would be a significant addition to the Riversleigh reptile story," says Dr Gillespie.

Programming children watch on American TV shows systematic gender inequality, according to new research co-authored by Dafna Lemish of the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

In the newly released report, "The Landscape of Children's Television in the U.S. and Canada," Lemish, associate dean for programs and professor of journalism and media studies at SC&I, and co-author, Dr. Colleen Russo Johnson found startling new data revealing gender inequality in both the content children watch and in the industry creating the content.

Their research reveals that in television shows geared toward children aged two to 12, 64% of male characters are still dominant on the screen, particularly for non-human characters (72%) and female human characters were more racially diverse (46%) than male human characters (25%).

"The fact that female characters are more likely to be portrayed as persons of color suggests that some shows might be trying to 'check two boxes' with one casting," Lemish and Johnson wrote in the report.

Their findings are significant, Lemish said, because "television is a major socializing force in children's lives - they spend more time watching and interacting with screens than in any other activity and they learn from TV about societal values, who matters in society, what one can aspire to become etc. It also matters because U.S. continues to be the major producer and exporter of children's TV and thus it continues to disseminate such misguided values to the rest of the world."

In 1956, the Würzburg botanist Otto Ludwig Lange observed an unusual phenomenon in the Mauritanian desert in West Africa: he found plants whose leaves could heat up to 56 degrees Celsius. It is astonishing that leaves can withstand such heat. At the time, the professor was unable to say which mechanisms were responsible for preventing the leaves from drying out at these temperatures. More than 50 years later, the botanists Markus Riederer and Amauri Bueno from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) in Bavaria, Germany, succeeded in revealing the secret.

To understand what the two scientists discovered, one must know more about the somewhat complicated structure of a plant leaf. Plant leaves, for example, have a skin that is usually invisible to the human eye. "You can see the skin in the tomato," explains Professor Riederer, head of the JMU Chair of Botany II. Bioscientists speak of the "cuticle". It can be imagined as a very thin plastic foil. Without this foil, the leaf of the plant would dry out within a short time: "the water permeability of a cuticle is even lower than that of a plastic foil."

Constant trade-off: Open or close pores?

The plant skin is not a continuous layer that would extend over the whole leaf. It contains numerous pores, called stomata, which can open and close. The plant "feeds" through these stomata. Riederer: "it thereby uptakes the carbon dioxide the plant needs for photosynthesis."

The problem is that whenever the pores open to acquire carbon dioxide, water also evaporates. Therefore, desert plants, in particular, are continually undergoing a balancing process: do they uptake carbon dioxide to grow further, or do they close the pores to retain the precious water? According to Riederer, every desert plant decides a little differently.

Colocynths are water-spenders

The plant colocynth (Citrullus colocynthis), also known as bitter cucumber, a wild relative of the watermelon, opens its pores when exposed to heat in order to cool down the leaves by transpiration cooling. It "sweats" so to speak. "This makes colocynth a water-spender," explains the JMU professor of ecophysiology.

The plant can afford this because it has a very deep root. This enables the plant to tap water sources deep in the desert soil. As Otto Ludwig Lange found out during his experiments in the desert, the colocynth manages to make its leaf up to 15 degrees cooler than the desert air.

Date palms are water-savers

The date palm behaves quite differently. The second Würzburg experimental plant, like the colocynth, lives in oases and wadis - river valleys that dry up over long periods. "In contrast to the colocynth, it is a water-saver," says Riederer.

Because the palm does not "sweat", its leaves sometimes reach extremely high temperatures: they can be 11 degrees Celsius above the air temperature. How can it be that the leaves do not dry out at these high temperatures? This is what JMU biologist Amauri Bueno investigated in his doctoral thesis.

High-temperature wax for survival

His results, published in the Journal of Experimental Botany, revolve around the wax, which is embedded in the skin of plants and ensures their low permeability to water. After extensive laboratory tests, Bueno discovered that this wax differs between the colocynth and the date palm.

The date palm has a wax that can withstand high temperatures and therefore has a much more waterproof skin than the colocynth, even at extreme temperatures. Only because of this special wax the palm can survive in the desert. If the wax had a slightly different chemical composition, the leaves would dry very quickly, especially at high temperatures.

According to Riederer, these experiments were highly challenging because the wax embedded in the skin is very complicated from a chemical point of view. Not all secrets have been revealed yet. The bioscientists still do not understand why one plant skin is more permeable for water than the other.

Interesting for plant breeding

These current findings from JMU may be of importance for plant breeding. If one wants to cultivate crop plants in places where is very hot and dry or where climate change could make the surroundings hotter, one has to pay attention to the plant skin when searching for suitable plant varieties. If plants with certain cuticle waxes are selected for breeding, they have a better chance of survival in hot locations.

Biodegradable plastic bags are still capable of carrying full loads of shopping after being exposed in the natural environment for three years, a new study shows.

Researchers from the University of Plymouth examined the degradation of five plastic bag materials widely available from high street retailers in the UK.

They were then left exposed to air, soil and sea, environments which they could potentially encounter if discarded as litter.

The bags were monitored at regular intervals, and deterioration was considered in terms of visible loss in surface area and disintegration as well as assessments of more subtle changes in tensile strength, surface texture and chemical structure.

After nine months in the open air, all the materials had completely disintegrated into fragments.

However, the biodegradable, oxo-biodegradable and conventional plastic formulations remained functional as carrier bags after being in the soil or the marine environment for over three years.

The compostable bag completely disappeared from the experimental test rig in the marine environment within three months but, while showing some signs of deterioration, was still present in soil after 27 months.

Writing in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers from the University's International Marine Litter Research Unit say the study poses a number of questions.

The most pertinent is whether biodegradable formulations can be relied upon to offer a sufficiently advanced rate of degradation to offer any realistic solution to the problem of plastic litter.

Research Fellow Imogen Napper, who led the study as part of her PhD, said: "After three years, I was really amazed that any of the bags could still hold a load of shopping. For a biodegradable bag to be able to do that was the most surprising. When you see something labelled in that way, I think you automatically assume it will degrade more quickly than conventional bags. But, after three years at least, our research shows that might not be the case."

In the research, scientists quote a European Commission report in 2013 which suggested about 100 billion plastic bags were being issued every year, although various Governments (including the UK) have since introduced levies designed to address this.

Many of these items are known to have entered the marine environment, with previous studies by the University having explored their impact on coastal sediments and shown they can be broken down into microplastics by marine creatures.

Professor Richard Thompson OBE, Head of the International Marine Litter Research Unit, was involved in those studies and gave evidence to the Government inquiry which led to the introduction of the 5p levy. He added: "This research raises a number of questions about what the public might expect when they see something labelled as biodegradable. We demonstrate here that the materials tested did not present any consistent, reliable and relevant advantage in the context of marine litter. It concerns me that these novel materials also present challenges in recycling. Our study emphasises the need for standards relating to degradable materials, clearly outlining the appropriate disposal pathway and rates of degradation that can be expected."

Sophia Antipolis, 28 April 2019: Work stress and impaired sleep are linked to a threefold higher risk of cardiovascular death in employees with hypertension. That's the finding of research published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1

Study author Professor Karl-Heinz Ladwig, of the German Research Centre for Environmental Health and the Medical Faculty, Technical University of Munich, said: "Sleep should be a time for recreation, unwinding, and restoring energy levels. If you have stress at work, sleep helps you recover. Unfortunately poor sleep and job stress often go hand in hand, and when combined with hypertension the effect is even more toxic."

One-third of the working population has hypertension (high blood pressure). Previous research has shown that psychosocial factors have a stronger detrimental effect on individuals with pre-existing cardiovascular risks than on healthy people. This was the first study to examine the combined effects of work stress and impaired sleep on death from cardiovascular disease in hypertensive workers.

The study included 1,959 hypertensive workers aged 25-65, without cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Compared to those with no work stress and good sleep, people with both risk factors had a three times greater likelihood of death from cardiovascular disease. People with work stress alone had a 1.6-fold higher risk while those with only poor sleep had a 1.8-times higher risk.

During an average follow-up of nearly 18 years, the absolute risk of cardiovascular death in hypertensive staff increased in a stepwise fashion with each additional condition. Employees with both work stress and impaired sleep had an absolute risk of 7.13 per 1,000 person-years compared to 3.05 per 1,000-person years in those with no stress and healthy sleep. Absolute risks for only work stress or only poor sleep were 4.99 and 5.95 per 1,000 person-years, respectively.

In the study, work stress was defined as jobs with high demand and low control - for example when an employer wants results but denies authority to make decisions. "If you have high demands but also high control, in other words you can make decisions, this may even be positive for health," said Professor Ladwig. "But being entrapped in a pressured situation that you have no power to change is harmful."

Impaired sleep was defined as difficulties falling asleep and/or maintaining sleep. "Maintaining sleep is the most common problem in people with stressful jobs," said Professor Ladwig. "They wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning to go to the toilet and come back to bed ruminating about how to deal with work issues."

"These are insidious problems," noted Professor Ladwig. "The risk is not having one tough day and no sleep. It is suffering from a stressful job and poor sleep over many years, which fade energy resources and may lead to an early grave."

The findings are a red flag for doctors to ask patients with high blood pressure about sleep and job strain, said Professor Ladwig. "Each condition is a risk factor on its own and there is cross-talk among them, meaning each one increases risk of the other. Physical activity, eating healthily and relaxation strategies are important, as well as blood pressure lowering medication if appropriate."

Employers should provide stress management and sleep treatment in the workplace, he added, especially for staff with chronic conditions like hypertension.

Components of group stress management sessions:2

Start with 5 to 10 minutes of relaxation.

Education about healthy lifestyle.

Help with smoking cessation, physical exercise, weight loss.

Techniques to cope with stress and anxiety at home and work.

How to monitor progress with stress management.

Improving social relationships and social support.

Sleep treatment can include:3

Stimulus control therapy: training to associate the bed/bedroom with sleep and set a consistent sleep-wake schedule.

Relaxation training: progressive muscle relaxation, and reducing intrusive thoughts at bedtime that interfere with sleep.

Sleep restriction therapy: curtailing the period in bed to the time spent asleep, thereby inducing mild sleep deprivation, then lengthening sleep time.

Paradoxical intention therapy: remaining passively awake and avoiding any effort (i.e. intention) to fall asleep, thereby eliminating anxiety.

Obesity is linked with an increased risk of developing anxiety and depression in children and adolescents, independent of traditional risk factors such as parental psychiatric illness and socioeconomic status, according to new research being presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Glasgow, UK (28 April-1 May).

The nationwide study comparing over 12,000 Swedish children who had undergone obesity treatment with more than 60,000 matched controls found that girls with obesity were 43% more likely to develop anxiety or depression compared to their peers in the general population. Similarly, boys with obesity faced a 33% increased risk for anxiety and depression compared to their counterparts.

"We see a clear increased risk of anxiety and depressive disorders in children and adolescents with obesity compared with a population-based comparison group that cannot be explained by other known risk factors such as socioeconomic status and neuropsychiatric disorders", says Ms. Louise Lindberg from the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden who led the research. "These results suggest that children and adolescents with obesity also have an increased risk of anxiety and depression, something that healthcare professionals need to be vigilant about."

Anxiety and depression are reported to be more common in children with obesity than in children of normal weight, but it is unclear whether the association is independent of other known risk factors. Previous studies are hampered by methodological limitations including self-reported assessment of anxiety, depression, and weight.

To provide more evidence, researchers from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden conducted a nationwide population-based study to investigate whether obesity is an independent risk factor for anxiety or depression. 12,507 children aged 6-17 years from the Swedish Childhood Obesity Treatment Register between 2005 and 2015 were compared to 60,063 controls from the general population matched for sex, year of birth, and living area.

The research team adjusted for a range of factors known to affect anxiety and depression including migration background, neuropsychiatric disorders, parental psychiatric illness, and socioeconomic status. A total of 4,230 children and adolescents developed anxiety or depression over an average of 4.5 years.

Obesity was clearly linked with higher risk of anxiety and depression in childhood and adolescence. Girls (11.6% vs 6.0%) and boys (8.0% vs 4.1%) with obesity were more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression than those in the general population over the study period.

In further analyses, excluding children with neuropsychiatric disorders or a family history of anxiety or depression, the risks were even higher. In particular, boys with obesity were twice as likely to experience anxiety or depression as their normal-weight peers--whilst girls with obesity were 1.5 times more likely.

"Given the rise of obesity and impaired mental health in young people, understanding the links between childhood obesity, depression and anxiety is vital", says Ms. Lindberg. "Further studies are needed to explain the mechanisms behind the association between obesity and anxiety/depression."

The authors acknowledge that this is an observational study and cannot prove that obesity causes depression or anxiety but only suggests the possibility of such an effect. They point to several limitations including that there is no weight and height data in the comparison group; unmeasured confounding may have influenced results; and that rates of anxiety and depression may be underestimated since a large proportion of individuals suffering from these conditions do not seek medical care.

BALTIMORE - High rates of firearm fatalities in the U.S. are principally due to elevated rates of homicide among black, non-Hispanic and Hispanic males age 20-40 years and suicide among white, non-Hispanic males age 70-85+, according to a new study. Findings from the study will be presented during the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) 2019 Meeting, taking place on April 24 - May 1 in Baltimore.

Each day, over 100 firearm deaths occur in the U.S. In 2016, there were over 3,000 pediatric deaths (0-19 years). Over the past decade, total fatalities from firearms increased by 25% and are now the leading cause of death in young adults (15-24 years). Few studies have explored the interaction of urbanicity, sex and race/ethnicity in firearm fatalities across the spectrum of age.

Researchers analyzed firearm fatalities over a 26-year period as reported in the Centers for Disease Control's Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System. There were 897,026 firearm fatalities in the U.S., including 97,366 pediatric deaths, that occurred during the study period.

Though all-intent total firearm fatality rates peaked in the early 1990s, over the past decade, maximum and average rates have trended upward especially via suicide among females and in non-metropolitan areas. Marked disparities in rates of firearm fatalities exist by sex and race. Suicide rates were highest among white, non-Hispanic males age 70-85+, and rates of homicide were highest among black, non-Hispanic males and Hispanic males age 20-40. Unintentional deaths peaked among black and Hispanic males age 20-40 and 70-85+ in the 1990s, but then decreased over time. Males have higher rates of suicide, homicide and unintentional deaths compared to females. Black males had maximum and average homicide rates an order of magnitude higher compared to all females. Non-metropolitan areas had high rates of suicide and unintentional deaths, while metropolitan areas had high rates of homicide. The study concluded that public health approaches to firearm violence need to consider underlying demographic trends and differences by intent.

A related study found that child access prevention (CAP) laws could save lives and the passage of negligence laws across all states has the potential to reduce firearm fatalities in children up to age 17. Over 50,000 pediatric firearm fatalities have occurred since 1990. Researchers examined the association between state CAP firearm laws and total and intent-specific firearm death rates in children 0-17 years old from 1991 to 2007. Since 1989, nine states have passed recklessness laws and 16 states have passed negligence laws.

The study found that recklessness laws were not associated with significantly lower firearm death rates for any intent in any age group and were associated with an increase in unintentional fatalities among 14 to 17-year-olds. Negligence laws were associated with significantly lower firearm death rates overall, by homicide, and by unintentional intent, but not by suicide across age groups. The broadest negligence laws reduced unintentional deaths by up to 69% in children 10 to 13 years of age and firearm homicide deaths up to 36%.

Eric Fleegler, MD, MPH, one of the authors of the studies, will present findings from "Evolution of the firearm epidemic in the United States, 1990 - 2016" on Monday, April 29 at 3:30 p.m. Dr. Fleegler will present "Firearm Child Access Prevention Laws and Firearm Death Rates among Children, 1991-2016" on Sunday, April 28 at 1 p.m. EDT. Reporters interested in an interview with Dr. Fleegler should contact PAS2019@piercom.com. Please note that only the abstracts are being presented at the meeting. In some cases, the researchers may have additional data to share with media.

The PAS 2019 Meeting brings together thousands of pediatricians and other health care providers to improve the health and well-being of children worldwide. For more information about the PAS 2019 Meeting, please visit http://www.pas-meeting.org.

When the landmass that is now the Indian subcontinent slammed into Asia about 50 million years ago, the collision changed the configuration of the continents, the landscape, global climate and more. Now a team of Princeton University scientists has identified one more effect: the oxygen in the world's oceans increased, altering the conditions for life.

"These results are different from anything people have previously seen," said Emma Kast, a graduate student in geosciences and the lead author on a paper coming out in Science on April 26. "The magnitude of the reconstructed change took us by surprise."

Kast used microscopic seashells to create a record of ocean nitrogen over a period from 70 million years ago -- shortly before the extinction of the dinosaurs -- until 30 million years ago. This record is an enormous contribution to the field of global climate studies, said John Higgins, an associate professor of geosciences at Princeton and a co-author on the paper.

"In our field, there are records that you look at as fundamental, that need to be explained by any sort of hypothesis that wants to make biogeochemical connections," Higgins said. "Those are few and far between, in part because it's very hard to create records that go far back in time. Fifty-million-year-old rocks don't willingly give up their secrets. I would certainly consider Emma's record to be one of those fundamental records. From now on, people who want to engage with how the Earth has changed over the last 70 million years will have to engage with Emma's data."

In addition to being the most abundant gas in the atmosphere, nitrogen is key to all life on Earth. "I study nitrogen so that I can study the global environment," said Daniel Sigman, Princeton's Dusenbury Professor of Geological and Geophysical Sciences and the senior author on the paper. Sigman initiated this project with Higgins and then-Princeton postdoctoral researcher Daniel Stolper, who is now an assistant professor of Earth and planetary science at the University of California-Berkeley.

Every organism on Earth requires "fixed" nitrogen -- sometimes called "biologically available nitrogen." Nitrogen makes up 78% of our planet's atmosphere, but few organisms can "fix" it by converting the gas into a biologically useful form. In the oceans, cyanobacteria in surface waters fix nitrogen for all other ocean life. As the cyanobacteria and other creatures die and sink downward, they decompose.

Nitrogen has two stable isotopes, 15N and 14N. In oxygen-poor waters, decomposition uses up "fixed" nitrogen. This occurs with a slight preference for the lighter nitrogen isotope, 14N, so the ocean's 15N-to-14N ratio reflects its oxygen levels.

That ratio is incorporated into tiny sea creatures called foraminifera during their lives, and then preserved in their shells when they die. By analyzing their fossils -- collected by the Ocean Drilling Program from the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and South Atlantic -- Kast and her colleagues were able to reconstruct the 15N-to-14N ratio of the ancient ocean, and therefore identify past changes in oxygen levels.

Oxygen controls the distribution of marine organisms, with oxygen-poor waters being bad for most ocean life. Many past climate warming events caused decreases in ocean oxygen that limited the habitats of sea creatures, from microscopic plankton to the fish and whales that feed on them. Scientists trying to predict the impact of current and future global warming have warned that low levels of ocean oxygen could decimate marine ecosystems, including important fish populations.

When the researchers assembled their unprecedented geologic record of ocean nitrogen, they found that in the 10 million years after dinosaurs went extinct, the 15N-to-14N ratio was high, suggesting that ocean oxygen levels were low. They first thought that the warm climate of the time was responsible, as oxygen is less soluble in warmer water. But the timing told another story: the change to higher ocean oxygen occurred around 55 million years ago, during a time of continuously warm climate.

"Contrary to our first expectations, global climate was not the primary cause of this change in ocean oxygen and nitrogen cycling," Kast said. The more likely culprit? Plate tectonics. The collision of India with Asia -- dubbed "the collision that changed the world" by legendary geoscientist Wally Broecker, a founder of modern climate research -- closed off an ancient sea called the Tethys, disturbing the continental shelves and their connections with the open ocean.

"Over millions of years, tectonic changes have the potential to have massive effects on ocean circulation," said Sigman. But that doesn't mean climate change can be discounted, he added. "On timescales of years to millenia, climate has the upper hand."

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Scientists for the first time have tracked how much energy from plants and animals at the surface of the open ocean survives as particles drop to the seafloor more than two miles below, where they say a surprisingly robust ecosystem eagerly awaits.

A new study published this week in Nature Communications documents how little energy survives. Most of it is lost in the upper water column to bacteria, which scour any particulate matter for food. But some diatoms - a particular type of single-celled algae - are sufficiently heavy that they sink like a proverbial rock after they die, reaching the seafloor before bacteria have a chance to leach out all the nutrients and energy.

These dead, but rich, diatoms arrive at the ocean floor with most of their energy supply intact and form a food web that includes tubeworms, small crabs and other small organisms, living in a "feast-or-famine" existence.

"Diatoms represent only about 3% to 5% of the phytoplankton at the surface, but provide most of the energy that makes it to the ocean floor," noted Ricardo Letelier, an Oregon State University marine ecologist and co-author on the study. "These large diatoms have silica shells that make them heavy and allow them to sink before they become depleted.

"Energy can be a funny thing. You can eat a doughnut or a piece of coal, and they both may contain about the same amount of carbon. But you can't get much energy from eating the coal. We usually measure the amount of carbon in organisms, not the amount of energy they provide. This study is one of the first to focus on energy and the results are surprising."

A few years ago, the researchers, who focused their study on the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, found another aspect that contributes to the "feast-or-famine" existence of organisms at the bottom of the ocean. There is a huge peak in diatom production during the last two weeks of August, creating a sharp spike in food production for that environment.

"You can set your calendar by it - the last couple of weeks in August is diatom season," Letelier said. "The organisms that are two-plus miles below the surface can gorge themselves for a short period of time, and then they have to survive on not very much food for the rest of the year. Luckily, it's a cold-water environment and thus they have a low metabolism, so they probably don't need much."

The study is important because there isn't a complete understanding of how the ocean meets the energy demands for all of the organisms that live there. Phytoplankton production at the surface is a huge source, but there is still uncertainty on how close it comes to supply all the energy needed to support all the life observed in the deep regions of the ocean. Other sources include hydrothermal vents, methane seeps, ethane, and different atmospheric and terrestrial carbon sources.

"We are still very far from being able to achieve full understanding of the level of energy needs and sources," Letelier said.

Treatment options for patients with CKD are limited and often determined by the aetiology of the CKD. RAAS blockade (ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers) has so far been the only therapeutic intervention which has been shown to significantly affect CKD disease progression. However, SGLT2 inhibitors provide a much needed breakthrough in the management of diabetic nephropathy. "We are glad that we now have evidence that we can help our patients with this medication", explains Professor Carmine Zoccali, President of the ERA-EDTA. "850 million people worldwide are affected by kidney disease- a worrying figure, and one that continues to rise. In about one third of these patients, around 280 million people, diabetes is the cause of kidney failure. For these patients we now have an effective therapy, the CREDENCE study [1] provides evidence that SGLT2 inhibitors add to the armamentarium for the treatment of diabetic nephropathy"

In the double-blind CREDENCE trial patients with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease with albuminuria already on standard renin-angiotensin-aldosterone blockade and baseline diabetic therapy were randomized to receive canagliflozin, an oral SGLT2 inhibitor or placebo. All the patients had an estimated glomerular filtration rate (GFR) of 30 to 300 to 5000). The primary outcome was a composite of end-stage kidney disease (dialysis, transplantation, or a sustained estimated GFR of

The trial had to be stopped earlier than planned, because the study medication showed such an overwhelming beneficial effect. At that time, 4401 patients had undergone randomization, with a median follow-up of 2.62 years. The relative risk of the renal-specific composite of end-stage kidney disease, a doubling of the creatinine level, or death from renal causes was lower by 34% (HR 0.66; 95% CI, 0.53 to 0.81; p

"Many people do not know that patients with chronic kidney disease are at a particularly high risk of many other health outcomes, especially dangerous cardiac complications. It is good to know that there is finally a treatment which not only reduces the risk of becoming dialysis-dependent, but which also results in an improved cardiovascular prognosis and survival", comments Professor Zoccali.

Only a day before the SONAR study [2] had shown that the risk of renal events in patients with diabetes and chronic kidney disease could be significantly reduced by atrasentan (an endothelin-receptor antagonist) in selected patients (those who had shown a response to the medication before they were enrolled into the study). A risk reduction of 35% in the composite renal outcome of end-stage kidney disease and doubling serum creatinine could be reached (HR; 0.65 [95% CI 0.49-0.88]; p=0.0047).

"All in all these two studies are fantastic news for patients with diabetic nephropathy. For years no new treatment option has proved to be safe and effective and thus no new drug could be introduced into clinical practice. Now we have two new treatments with different therapy targets, which we might even combine."