Brain

In early March 2020, the University of Washington became the first four-year U.S. university to transition to online-only classes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many researchers predicted severe consequences of these physical distancing measures. To understand how this change affected college students' mental health, UW researchers surveyed 147 UW students over the 2020 spring quarter, which began shortly after the university transitioned to online-only classes. The team compared the students' responses to a previous survey of 253 students in spring quarter 2019.

The researchers didn't see much change in average levels of students' depressive symptoms, anxiety, stress or loneliness between 2019 and 2020 or between the beginning and the end of spring quarter 2020. But these average values were masking large differences in students' individual pandemic experiences. In general, students who used more problem-focused forms of coping -- creating plans, focusing on positive aspects, etc. -- experienced fewer mental health symptoms than those who disengaged or ignored a situation that was bothering them.

The researchers published these findings June 28 in PLOS ONE.

"During the pandemic, the challenges of online learning were entwined with social isolation, family demands and socioeconomic pressures," said lead author Margaret Morris, an affiliate associate professor in the UW Information School. "There's not a simple answer to the question of how students were affected: Some experienced intense distress while others were unscathed."

For the past four years, this team has spent spring quarter studying what factors contribute to undergraduates' overall mental health and well-being. Students are invited to continue participating in each spring quarter study, and the researchers also recruit new students each time. In a previous paper, the researchers found that experiencing discrimination events altered student behavior, such as the amount of sleep or exercise a student got following the event.

For the 2020 cohort, the team used three different survey methods to monitor student health. First, they sent large surveys at the beginning and end of spring quarter. Then participants received two shorter surveys each week that asked them to reflect on how they felt -- in terms of stress, loneliness, depressive symptoms -- in the moment.

In general, students who reported more mental health symptoms at the beginning of the pandemic continued to experience elevated symptoms during the pandemic.

"Problem-focused coping protected students from the harmful effects of stress (anxiety and depression, for example), even though students who used more problem-focused strategies reported more stress," said co-author Kevin Kuehn, a UW doctoral student in clinical psychology.

"What these findings suggest is that students who coped by actively confronting their challenges, rather than avoiding them, still experienced highly stressful events over the course of the pandemic. However, they were protected from the mental health consequences," Kuehn said. "It may not always feel pleasant or easy to confront the challenges of daily life, particularly during a pandemic, but doing so is likely to be highly beneficial in terms of reducing anxiety and depressive symptoms."

Finally, at the end of spring quarter, the team conducted 90-minute in-depth interviews over Zoom with a subset of participants to gain deeper insight into their experiences.

The students described a range of challenges that interfered with learning:
? Decreased interaction with faculty and peers -- students mentioned that having fewer opportunities to interact with faculty and peers left them feeling less engaged. Some students said they felt like part-time students, even when they had full course loads
? No shared learning environments -- students spoke longingly of a table in a dorm or a spot in the library where they used to gather with classmates for impromptu study sessions
? Family needs -- family members' requests or noise often interrupted studying and even test-taking. Family needs, such as caregiving, were a particular challenge to learning for first-generation college students
? Interrupted autonomy -- some students felt "trapped" back at home and described difficult "power dynamics" with their parents
? Well-being and mental health -- many students described disrupted sleep, decreased motivation, and said that they felt depressed or anxious for periods of time. Students' feelings of detachment from school sometimes contributed to depression. Similarly, worry about grades sometimes cascaded into anxiety and insomnia that, in turn, made it harder to focus

Students also developed strategies to combat these challenges, including:
? Self-learning -- students used independent online research to figure out answers to their questions and made up their own experiments to explore what they were learning in class
? Structuring routines and environments -- many students created fixed schedules for studying or used physical calendars to mark timelines and assignments
? Learning with peers -- students created remote study groups and held informal remote co-working sessions that combined homework with personal conversations, which helped keep them on task
? Participating more in online spaces -- many students found it less daunting to ask questions in online classes than in large lecture halls, others found it easier to participate in online office hours and meetings with advisers
? Using communication platforms for emotional wellbeing -- some students used telehealth or meditation apps, but almost all of them used video communication to check in with their friends. Students emphasized that these connections were critical for their mental health

"On an optimistic note, students are emerging with critical skills for learning and maintaining connectedness with peers over a distance," Morris said. "These active coping skills, which include things such as initiating virtual co-working sessions, leveraging online functions to participate in class and checking in on friends in an emotionally sensitive way, will have continued value as we resume in-person and hybrid models of education."

The team plans to follow students through all four years of their time at the UW. The first study cohort graduated this year, and the second cohort will graduate in spring 2022.

Prof. DU Jiangfeng, Prof. RONG Xing, and their colleagues from the Key Laboratory of Micromagnetic Resonance, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), set the most stringent laboratory constraint on the exotic spin- and velocity-dependent interaction at the micrometer scale. This study was published in Physical Review Letters.

The search for dark matter, dark energy, and extra forces is important for the understanding of the existence of the matter that accounts for about a quarter of the universe, but little progress has been made. It is necessary to theoretically and experimentally find particles outside the Standard Model, a tradition model for microscopic particles excluding dark matter, as candidates for dark matter.

The exotic spin interaction can be induced by new bosons outside the Standard Model, such as axons, axon-like bosons, dark photons and Z-bosons. Since its proposition in 1984, a series of sophisticated experiments have been made to explore these exotic spin interactions.

In this study, the researchers carried out an experimental exploration of the velocity-dependent exotic spin interactions. They used the quartz tuning fork to drive the mass source to make simple harmonic motion in the direction perpendicular to the diamond surface.

Then, they designed the experimental sequence to convert the exotic interaction to be explored into the quantum phase information of the single-spin quantum sensor. This experiment gave the laboratory limit on a type of velocity-dependent spin interaction at the micrometer scale. The limit at 200 microns is four orders of magnitude stricter than the bound established in the previous results based on the atomic spectra of Cesium, Ytterbium, and Thallium.

This study, as an interesting marriage of quantum sensing techniques and the test of fundamental interactions (traditionally in particle physics), is appealing to general physicists, and it provides an approach to probing new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Prof. DU's team has focused on research of the static exotic spin interaction. In 2018, it for the first time used nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond as a single-spin sensor to search for exotic spin interactions (Nature Communications), and later set the most optimized constraint at the time on the micrometer scale on the spin-dependent exotic interaction with the single-spin sensor (Physical Review Letters), demonstrating the ability of the single-spin quantum sensor made from the single nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond to explore new physical phenomena at the micro-nano scale.

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Some LGBTQ+ people want to be part of faith communities. And though they have concerns about inclusion, they hope to find a faith community that feels like a home, based on West Virginia University research.

Megan Gandy, BSW program director at the WVU School of Social Work, is a lesbian and former fundamentalist evangelical Christian whose personal experiences told a story that differed from research available in 2015 when she conceptualized her study.

Gandy said the existing research either focused on the positive impacts of faith communities (which excluded LGBTQ+ people) or highlighted the harms done by faith communities to LGBTQ+ people.

Gandy wanted to tell the whole story: that LGBTQ+ people can also benefit from faith communities. Her findings are published in Spirituality in Clinical Practice.

"I was interested in conducting peer-reviewed research that illuminated the gap of the healing stories about how LGBTQ+ people engaged in faith communities in ways that were beneficial to them," Gandy explained.

For the study, Gandy and her colleagues Anthony Natale and Denise Levy, interviewed 30 participants from the nonprofit Q Christian Fellowship, formerly known as the Gay Christian Network. Gandy and her team asked participants about their experiences in faith communities with the goal of exploring why they stay in those communities.

One major theme stood out to Gandy: The fear of rejection vs. the joy of inclusion. For those that stay, the sense of a inclusion is a feeling of indescribable joy and relief.

"This theme illustrated how much psychological stress is involved in the fear of rejection for LGBTQ+ people who choose to stay in faith communities," she said. "That fear can have detrimental effects on the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ people in the form of what's called 'minority stress.'"

The stress comes from a constant questioning of whether they are accepted or not, whether they will be asked to leave, if they will be "outed" in a harmful way and if they will have to start over with a new faith community, Gandy added.

"However, the joy of inclusion was a way to alter that stress, eliminate it and even heal from it," she said. "LGBTQ+ people who were completely included in their faith communities experienced joy that they didn't know was possible. It was a part of the research that really lifted up my spirits, and was even something that many participants wanted to share with other LGBTQ+ people who weren't involved in a faith community but who wanted to be."

Not all stories were feel-good ones.

One participant, identified with a pseudonym as "Olivia," lost her job as a priest because her church didn't have a policy that accepted transgender or gender-diverse leadership. Although, the church was in one of the more well-known denominations that has accepted gay and lesbian people for decades and allowed them to become ordained.

"If she came out as gay or lesbian, she would have kept her job, and much of the extreme difficulties associated with unemployment she has faced since would never have happened," Gandy said. "That felt like a gut-punch to me because sexual minorities don't often see themselves as privileged in the church, but compared to transgender and gender diverse people, apparently some do have more privileges than they realize."

Gandy emphasized that, although her study provides many interesting insights, it doesn't represent all LGBTQ+ individuals in faith communities.

However, the findings might be "transferrable" to other LGBTQ+ people, meaning that the study could be relatable to those not in the study, she said. Gandy hopes it is.

"They (the participants) wanted to send the message that it is possible to find a home and a family in a faith community, even if you've experienced rejection and shame from other faith communities," she said. "Those words of 'home' and 'family' were prominent in the stories that participants told, and held importance for how deep the connection felt for these LGBTQ+ people."

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought increasing attention to disparities in how police officers treat Black and white Americans. Now, research published by the American Psychological Association finds that disparity may exist even in subtle differences in officers' tone of voice when they address Black and white drivers during routine traffic stops.

In the study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers gathered short audio excerpts from police body camera footage and found that when officers spoke to Black men at traffic stops, their tone of voice conveyed less warmth, respect and ease than when they spoke to white men. The researchers also found that these subtle negative interactions can contribute to a cycle of mistrust between police and the Black community.

"Police officers are the human face of the law," said Nicholas Camp, PhD, an assistant professor of organizational studies at the University of Michigan and lead author of the study. "Cues as subtle as an officer's tone of voice can shape citizens' trust in the police as an institution."

To study these subtle interpersonal interactions, Camp and his colleagues extracted 250 audio clips of about 10 seconds each from body camera footage of routine traffic stops of male drivers in a mid-size U.S. city. The researchers removed the audio of the drivers' voices so that listeners could only hear the police officers' side of the conversation. Then, they edited out the highest audio frequencies in the recording, a technique that makes the content of conversation impossible to understand but leaves the officers' tone of voice intact.

In three experiments, the researchers asked 414 total participants (239 female, 175 male) to listen to the recordings and rate the officers' tone of voice. Across all three experiments - which included both college students and local drivers recruited at a department of motor vehicles - participants rated the officers' tone of voice as significantly less friendly, less respectful and less at ease in audio taken from traffic stops of Black drivers compared with traffic stops of white drivers, even though the participants did not know the race of the driver in each interaction.

The experiments included a diverse pool of white, Black, Latinx and Asian participants. The researchers found that their results held true regardless of participants' race, ethnicity or gender. The results also held true regardless of the race or gender of the police officers in the audio clips. The majority of the officers whose voices were used were men (105 male, 11 female).

The researchers also asked participants about their own previous encounters with police, and found that participants who felt they'd been treated unfairly in the past rated the officers' tone of voice in the clips as more negative, less respectful and less friendly on average than did participants who felt they'd been treated more fairly by police.

The results suggest that these negative interpersonal interactions contribute to a downward cycle in which police officers treat Black drivers with less respect, which then leads Black drivers to interpret subsequent interactions with police in an even more negative light.

In two further experiments, the researchers found evidence that these subtle negative interactions do in fact erode people's trust in police officers and police departments.

In one experiment, they asked a group of participants to listen to either the 40 most positively rated or the 40 most negatively rated audio clips, and then to imagine what an officer in that department might look like.

Participants who listened to the negative-tone clips pictured an officer who was seen as more likely to treat citizens with disrespect and more likely to be accused of racial profiling, among other responses.

Finally, the researchers asked another group of participants to listen to a sampling of 20 audio clips randomly selected from either police stops of white drivers or of Black drivers, then asked the participants to answer questions measuring their trust in the police departments the officers came from. On average, people who heard the clips from stops with Black drivers indicated that the departments were less likely to care about their local community and to try to do right by the people living there, and were less likely to trust that the department's officers would treat them fairly in a routine stop.

Overall, the study shows that body camera footage can provide a more nuanced look at racial discrimination in policing than is often evident in things like official administrative records.

"Body camera footage offers a way of unpacking the differences in interactions that might look the same on paper," Camp says.

The study also suggests that programs that intervene to change these routine interactions could help to break the cycle of police-community mistrust, according to Camp. He and his colleagues are currently testing an officer training program that aims to reduce racial disparities in how police officers talk to the public, and they plan to use body camera footage to test whether the training works.

A research group including Kobe University's Professor TAKUMI Toru (also a Senior Visiting Scientist at RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research) and Assistant Professor TAMADA Kota, both of the Physiology Division in the Graduate School of Medicine, has revealed a causal gene (Necdin, NDN) in autism model mice that have the chromosomal abnormality (*1) called copy number variation (*2).

The researchers hope to illuminate the NDN gene's molecular mechanism in order to contribute towards the creation of new treatment strategies for developmental disorders including autism.

These research results were published in Nature Communications on July 1, 2021.

Main Points

The research group identified Ndn as a causal gene of autism by conducting a screening based on synaptic expression in an animal model of the disorder (15q dup mouse).

The Ndn gene regulates synapse development during the developmental stage.

Research Background

Even though the number of patients diagnosed with autism (autism spectrum disorder) has been greatly increasing, many aspects of this developmental disorder are still not well understood. Its causes are divided into genetic factors and environmental factors. Within these genetic factors, particular copy number variations have been found in autistic patients; for example, chromosome 15q11-q13 duplication. These abnormalities in the 15q11-q13 region are divided into maternally derived and paternally derived chromosomal duplication cases. It is understood that the Ube3a gene drives maternally derived chromosomal duplication. However, it is not known which gene is vital for paternally derived duplication.

This research group previously succeeded in developing a mouse model of 15q11-q13 duplication (15q dup mouse). Using this mouse model, they identified numerous abnormalities in paternally derived chromosomal duplication cases, including autism-like behaviors, and abnormalities in dendritic spine (*4) formation. However, the researchers were unable to identify which gene is responsible for autism-like behavior because this region contains many non-coding RNA molecules and genes that code proteins.

Research Methodology

In 15q dup mice, there are a great number of genes as the duplication extends to the 6Mb region. Previous research showed that behavioral abnormalities were not induced by maternally derived chromosomal duplication, therefore around 2Mb was excluded. As for the remaining 4Mb, the researchers first created a new 1.5Mb duplication mouse model and investigated behavior abnormalities. From the results, they were unable to identify any autism-like behavioral abnormalities in 1.5Mb duplication mice. Consequently, the researchers excluded this 1.5Mb, leaving them with three protein-encoding genes as possible candidates.

Next, these three genes were individually introduced into the cerebral cortex of mice via in utero electroporation (*5). The researchers measured the spine turnover rate (formation and elimination of dendritic spines over a 2 day period) in vivo using a two-photon microscope (*6) and discovered that the number of spines drastically increased when the Ndn gene was introduced (Figure 1A-C). Furthermore, morphology classification of these spines indicated that the majority were immature. This reveals that the Ndn gene regulates the formation and maturation of dendritic spines during the developmental stage (Figure 1D).

Using CRISPR-Cas9 (*7), the researchers subsequently removed the one copy of the Ndn gene from the 15q dup mouse model to generate mice with a normalized genomic copy number for this gene (15q dupΔNdn mouse). Using this model, they demonstrated that the abnormalities observed in 15q dup mice (abnormal spine turnover rate and decreased inhibitory synaptic input) could be ameliorated (Figure 2).

Lastly, the researchers investigated whether the previously observed autism-like behaviors in 15q dup mice (including increased anxiety in a new environment, reduced sociability and increased perseveration) were evident in 15q dupΔNdn mice. They showed that in the majority of behavioral test results for 15q dupΔNdn mice, abnormal behaviors related to sociability and perseveration were ameliorated (Figure 3).

Further Research

This research study revealed that in 15q dup autism model mice, the NDN gene does not only play an important role in autism-like behaviors, but also affects aspects such as excitation/inhibition imbalance in synaptic dynamics and the cerebral cortex. Next, the research team hopes to clarify the NDN gene's functions. By artificially regulating these functions or identifying and controlling their downstream factors, the researchers hope to understand the onset mechanism of developmental disorders like autism, and develop new treatment strategies.

Washington, DC (July 6, 2021) --The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was founded to regulate whaling. Today, it also increasingly focuses on the value of live whales for planetary health. A new workshop report confirms the great ecological value of whales to help mitigate climate change, transport nutrients, enhance marine productivity, and promote biodiversity in marine ecosystems.

The world's leading experts gathered for a three-day workshop in April that was co-hosted by the IWC and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). The meeting came in response to a 2016 IWC resolution, introduced by the government of Chile, to compile scientific information about the ecological roles of cetaceans (whales and dolphins).

The workshop discussions focused on a number of primary ecosystem functions of cetaceans: nutrient transport both in the water column and between their foraging and breeding grounds, the impact of "whale falls" (when whales die and sink to the seafloor) on biodiversity and carbon storage, and the role of cetaceans as predators and prey. A series of expert presentations provided compelling evidence of the multi-faceted and beneficial impacts of cetaceans on marine ecosystems, such as their contribution to ocean productivity through their excrement (which can impact fishing yields) and their large bodies acting as carbon sinks (which can contribute to combating climate change).

"It is meaningful that the commission embraced the principles of the resolution that we proposed in 2016 for the protection of these marine mammals," said Jose Fernandez, Chilean commissioner to the IWC. "It is a strong recognition -- of a permanent and visionary nature -- about the need and obligation of our society to strengthen an ethical imperative. Its effects will translate into an instrument of enormous effectiveness for the protection and sustainable use of marine resources and ocean ecosystems, as well as to tackle the harmful effects of climate change."

"Scientific evidence demonstrating the valuable role of cetaceans as ecosystem engineers, including their ability to sequester carbon and enhance biodiversity, is expanding each day," said Dr. Joe Roman, a conservation biologist at the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont and the lead author of a primary report prepared for the workshop. "It is critical that the IWC and its members consider this evidence as part of their ongoing efforts to manage and recover cetacean populations."

The workshop highlighted how commercial whaling has contributed to the slaughter of nearly 3 million whales in the 20th century alone, significantly diminishing the animals' ability to mitigate climate change. As some whale populations have recovered following decades of protection, they have resumed their role in helping fix and store carbon. However, that beneficial role continues to be hindered by other threats to cetaceans, particularly bycatch in fishing gear.

"Commercial whaling not only caused the extinction or near extinction of several whale populations, but it also resulted in the catastrophic loss of their ecosystem benefits," said Sue Fisher, marine animal consultant for the Animal Welfare Institute. "We must learn from the mistakes of the past and, for the sake of the whales and ocean health, end commercial whaling once and for all."

"As the world grapples with the dire consequences of climate change, it is imperative that all solutions -- large and small -- are considered to mitigate these threats," said Steven Lutz, senior program officer and blue carbon lead at GRID-Arendal, a United Nations Environment Programme partner based in Norway. "Protecting cetaceans is essential to promoting oceanic blue carbon as a nature-based solution to our changing climate, and it's time for the governments of the world to recognize this important value at the United Nations climate change conference in November."

"The decimation of cetacean populations over the last 200 years has knocked the marine ecosystem out of balance," said Astrid Fuchs, policy manager at Whale and Dolphin Conservation. "We now know that by helping whale and dolphin populations recover, they can help to heal the ocean as part of a nature-based solution to climate and ecological emergencies. For this to happen, the IWC and its member countries must urgently strengthen protections for cetaceans, reducing the risks from bycatch, whaling, pollution and ship strikes, and creating safe places for them to live and breed."

"During the last five decades (i.e., within a whale species' life expectancy), humans have come to learn about their intelligence, social complexities, and whale culture. Now, science reveals more and more about their important role for a healthy ocean and nature-based solution to climate change," said Fabienne McLellan, co-director of international relations at OceanCare focusing to end direct hunts. "While whales became THE symbol for the environmental movement in the 1970s, they should be truly treated as THE symbol for our ocean as our life-support system. We need to protect them with all our efforts, as our life depends on them."

A new study suggests sea discoloration data obtained from satellite images as a novel criterion in predicting if eruption looms for an underwater volcano.

There have been frequent eruptions of submarine volcanoes in recent years. The past two years alone recorded the explosions of Anak Krakatau in Indonesia, White Island in New Zealand, and Nishinoshima Island in Japan. Observing signs of volcanic unrest is crucial in providing life-saving information and ensuring that air and maritime travel are safe in the area.

Although predicting when a volcano will erupt can be difficult as each behaves differently, scientists are on the lookout for these telltale signs: heightened seismic activity, expansion of magma pools, increases in volcanic gas release, and temperature rises.

For submarine volcanoes, Yuji Sakuno, remote sensing specialist and associate professor at Hiroshima University's Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, proposed a new indicator -- sea color.

The relationship between the chemical composition of discolored seawater and volcanic activity has been known for a long time. Still, there have been very few quantitative studies that used remote sensing to explore it. And among these few studies, only the reflectance pattern of discolored seawater has been analyzed.

"This is an extremely challenging research result for predicting volcanic disasters that have frequently occurred in various parts of the world in recent years using a new index called sea color," Sakuno said.

"I was the first in the world to propose the relationship between the sea color information obtained from satellites and the chemical composition around submarine volcanoes."

The findings of the study are published in the April 2021 issue of the journal Water.

Sakuno explained that volcanoes release chemicals depending on their activity, and these can change the color of the surrounding water. A higher proportion of iron can cause a yellow or brown discoloration, while increased aluminum or silicon can stain the water with white splotches.

One problem, however, is that sunlight can also play tricks on sea color. The study looked at how past research that chromatically analyzed hot spring water overcame this hurdle and fixed brightness issues. A relational model between seawater color and chemical composition was developed using the XYZ colorimetric system.

Sakuno examined images of Nishinoshima Island captured last year by Japan's GCOM-C SGLI and Himawari-8 satellites. Himawari-8 was used to observe volcanic activity and GCOM-C SGLI to get sea color data. GCOM-C SGLI's short observation cycle -- it takes pictures of the ocean every 2-3 days -- and high spatial resolution of 250 m makes it an ideal choice for monitoring.

Using the new indicator, Sakuno checked satellite data from January to December 2020 and was able to pick up signs of looming volcanic unrest in Nishinoshima Island approximately a month before it even started.

"In the future, I would like to establish a system that can predict volcanic eruptions with higher accuracy in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the Maritime Security Agency, which is monitoring submarine volcanoes, and related research," he said.

Washington, DC, July 8, 2021 - A study in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP), published by Elsevier, reports that the type of one-on-one treatment plans delivered to toddlers, aged 12-30 months, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) did not lead to any significantly different outcomes. Neither the type of evidence-based intervention provided, nor the number of hours of therapy were shown to have an impact.

The treatments, or intervention methods, delivered by specialized staff to the very young, during the study were either the Early Intensive Behavioral Intervention (EIBI) or Early Start Denver Model (ESDM). The researchers found negligible overall effects on receptive or expressive language development, nonverbal abilities, or autism symptom severity after one year of direct intervention, which also included twice-monthly parental coaching.

"Our results should reassure parents who do not have access to the exact treatment type or the number of treatment hours that they would ideally like their recently diagnosed toddlers to receive," said Sally Rogers, PhD, lead author of the study and Professor Emeritus at the UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the MIND Institute. "Given the lack of differences across these four groups, it may well be that it's the common elements rather than the differences that are resulting in children's similar progress."

Eighty-seven toddlers with ASD, aged between 12-30 months, were enrolled and randomized into one of four groups: Early Intensive behavioral intervention (EIBI) for 15 hours per week; EIBI for 25 hours per week; Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) for 15 hours per week; or ESDM for 25 hours per week. The children's overall developmental skills and autism severity were assessed at enrollment, and their expressive and receptive language skills, nonverbal abilities, and autism symptoms were examined three more times, at 6- and 12-months after enrollment (at which point intervention ended). Only three children dropped out of the study. The analyses included data from all enrolled children at all four time points regardless of the extent to which they participated in the study after enrollment - an intent-to-treat design - that adds additional rigor to the design and the findings.

Children also received intervention at home (or in other care settings) by a highly-trained team of paraprofessionals monitored and supervised by professional experts in the interventions and overseen by intervention developers. The researchers measured staff performance regularly to assure the quality of intervention. They also measured the extent to which the treatment delivery was modified over time in ways that varied from the core nature of the intervention.

"We found that all four groups of children made significant gains in language and nonverbal abilities, and significant improvements in autism symptom severity, over the two years of the study," Dr. Rogers added. "We also found that intervention style - EIBI or ESDM - had no significant effects on a child's progress in language, nonverbal abilities and autism severity over time. And, contrary to what we expected, a child's initial severity of developmental delay and autism symptoms did not differentially affect their progress in EIBI compared to ESDM in terms of language, nonverbal abilities, or improved autism symptoms over the year."

The findings are based on the multisite TADPOLE study, conducted from 2012-2019 by research teams at the MIND Institute, University of California Davis, Vanderbilt University, University of Washington, and supported by an independent data coordinating center at the University of California Los Angeles.

Why were the outcomes so similar? While there are widespread public (and professional) opinions about the number of intervention hours and the styles of intervention that are best for young children with ASD, there have been no studies conducted previously that tested the number of hours experimentally. Even though the two interventions seem so different, there are many commonalities that may explain their effects.

Several commonalities in the interventions:

They used tested, evidence-based, comprehensive interventions.
Children's learning targets addressed both developmental and behavioral progress.
Interventions were delivered consistently in terms of total hours and the model being followed.
There was ongoing frequent review, supervision and training of the interventionists by well trained professional supervisors.
Parents received ongoing coaching by the supervisors, allowing them to incorporate child learning into everyday activities at home and across multiple environments, materials, and adults.
Attention was paid to the quality of the child's experience, including a focus on positive relationships with interventionists and their ability to engage in activities they enjoyed, either in learning activities (ESDM) and/or in breaks during their sessions (EIBI).

"These commonalities, and the child's progress, may be why the parents in our study were so pleased with the intervention they received, regardless of the group to which they were assigned," said Dr. Rogers.

The researchers note that there is still much to learn about the core mechanisms which support child growth and change. "I firmly believe that ongoing, one-on-one caregiver coaching should be part of all early interventions for children with ASD, regardless of style or intensity. We have demonstrated effects on family support, self-efficacy, and family endorsement of the benefits of ongoing coaching as well as direct child intervention," said Rogers.

Newborn infants and babies aged up to three months should be stimulated to manipulate objects and observe adults performing everyday tasks. This incentive helps their social, motor and cognitive development, researchers note in an article published in the May 2021 issue of the journal Infant Behavior & Development.

According to the authors, from the earliest age babies watch adults carrying out activities such as handling utensils and putting them away in drawers or closets. They should themselves have frequent contact with objects to develop the ability to hold things and reach out for them. Through social interaction, even newborns can learn to use their own bodies functionally and to perceive the links between their movements and their surroundings.

“We present evidence that neonatal imitation and manipulation activities are connected, and therefore propose stimulation practices based on seminal experimental designs where infants should be positioned in favorable postures to observe others acting in the world. This will have an impact on the way that early infants understand the social world and the chain of actions possible in this environment,” they argue in the article.

The study was supported by FAPESP in partnership with the Maria Cecília Souto Vidigal Foundation (FMCSV).

For Priscilla Ferronato, a professor at the Health Sciences Institute of Paulista University (UNIP) in São Paulo, Brazil, and first author of the article, the study innovated by evidencing the link between social imitation and the motor system underlying manipulation. “Research published since 1970 has shown that babies can copy facial expressions as soon as they’re born. We suggest they imitate manipulative motor actions just as much as expressions. When babies see adults using their hands, they copy the movements, and this helps them use their own hands,” she said.

Babies are unable to reach for objects in the first three months of life. “Carers usually stimulate them to use their hands only after they learn the reaching movement,” she said. “We propose the opposite: encouraging them to reach out before they can do so of their own accord.”

In the article, the researchers present a review of the scientific literature on the subject and advocate a novel approach to the understanding of imitation and manual activities. The suggestions are based on the reproduction of scenarios that replicate experimental situations in classic studies of child development but are simple and easily adapted.

One of the exercises proposed consists of placing the baby’s hands first on a smooth surface and then on an object with a rough surface to induce an awareness of the difference involved in terms of grasping and holding. Another is offering a finger for the baby to hold and smiling to reinforce the association between touch and visual stimulus.

A third proposal entails shining a flashlight or smartphone in a dimly lit room just above the baby’s chest to stimulate use of the arms as the baby tries to seize the beam of light.

“We want this information to be made available to professionals in daycare centers for practical application, and also to parents because at this early age babies are usually at home. Many parents have no idea babies are capable of learning in the first two or three months of their lives,” Ferronato said.

Last year the foundation published a book on interaction between parents or carers and infants (Primeiríssima Infância – Interações: Comportamentos de pais e cuidadores de crianças de 0 a 3 anos), according to which 21% of parents interviewed said children start learning after the age of 6 months, while the same percentage thought the threshold was 1 year. Most of the 58% who answered that babies learn in the womb or start learning shortly after birth had a university degree and were relatively well-off.

Developing skills

Early childhood is defined in Brazilian law as the first six years of a person’s life (Lei 13257/2016). Researchers and organizations often define infancy as the first three years of life. Around 10 million children can be classed as infants under this definition, according to data from the 2019 Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) conducted by IBGE, Brazil’s national census bureau.

The first 1,000 days, from conception to the child’s second birthday, are considered the most important from the standpoint of physical and mental development. What happens in this period can determine countless factors in adulthood. Sometimes referred to as the “golden days”, they are also crucial for learning because of the brain’s plasticity.

In February, FAPESP launched the Brazilian Center for Early Child Development in partnership with FMCSV. The Center is hosted by INSPER, a business school in the city of São Paulo. Its goals include conducting research on early childhood and child development, integrating data on the subject from different sources, and offering courses and workshops (more at: agencia.fapesp.br/35199).

Physical relaxation through yoga or other practices can help reduce work-related stress, according to an analysis of studies conducted in healthcare staff.

The analysis, which is published in the Journal of Occupational Health, included 15 randomized clinical trials with a total of 688 healthcare workers. The studies examined the effects of yoga, massage therapy, progressive muscle relaxation, and stretching on alleviating stress and improving physical and mental health.

Overall, the physical relaxation methods reduced measures of occupational stress compared with no intervention. More detailed analyses indicated that only yoga and massage therapy were more effective than no intervention, with yoga being the best method.

"Work-related stress has been linked with cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, and other serious causes of morbidity. Our results suggest that physical relaxation methods are helpful in reducing occupational stress," said lead author Michael Zhang, MD, of the Southern Nevada Health District. "Yoga is particularly effective and can be delivered virtually, making it convenient for employers to offer distance options to promote worker health."

A genetic map of an aggressive childhood brain tumour called medulloblastoma has helped researchers identify a new generation anti-cancer drug that can be repurposed as an effective treatment for the disease.

This international collaboration, led by researchers from The University of Queensland's (UQ) Diamantina Institute and WEHI in Melbourne, could give parents hope in the fight against the most common and fatal brain cancer in children.

UQ lead researcher Dr Laura Genovesi said the team had mapped the genetics of these aggressive brain tumours for five years to find new pathways that existing drugs could potentially target.

"These are drugs already approved for other diseases or cancers but have never been tested in paediatric brain tumours," Dr Genovesi said.

"In this study, we predicted a drug called Ixabepilone, typically used to treat breast cancer, would block tumour growth and significantly extend the survival rate in preclinical models."

Associate Professor Melissa Davis, joint senior author from WEHI, said the chemotherapy drug had a 'dramatic survival benefit', with very little sign of any remaining tumour following treatment.

"This is the second drug that we have identified using the genetic map that's highly effective in treating this type of childhood brain cancer," Associate Professor Davis said.

"The impact of this drug in our model systems gives hope for children diagnosed with highly aggressive forms of medulloblastoma.

"But even more promising, is the potential to use our genetic map to find other treatments for this disease."

Associate Professor Davis likened their work to a street map.

"Like a map shows streets connecting places, the genetic map shows connections between different genes that contribute to more aggressive brain tumours," she said.

Dr Genovesi said drugs that could block these connections were more likely to be effective in treating the cancer, giving researchers a head start on the best possible treatment options.

"We're really using biology to define the next round of drugs that will hopefully have a fantastic benefit for children with this condition," Dr Genovesi said.

"This gives us the best chance to identify drugs that will have the least impact on the normal developing brain, an important consideration for paediatric brain cancers.

"At the moment, the side-effects of treatment can be almost impossible for families to live with.

"Short-term, we are looking at existing drugs that can target certain overlapping areas on the genetic map.

"But long-term, we now have an entire list of proteins and pathways that new therapeutics could target that we know would kill cancer cells, and we want to work with drug companies to try and develop these life-saving medications."

Opioid prescribing preferences and practices among surgical residents and faculty differ, according to a new study published in the journal Surgery.

The study, titled “Evaluation of opioid prescribing preferences among surgical residents and faculty,” was based on a survey of 56 residents and 57 faculty within the University of Colorado School of Medicine Department of Surgery. In the survey, participants were asked how many oxycodone tablets they would prescribe for 14 common surgical procedures.

Answers were compared between residents and faculty, as well as against the Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network (OPEN) guidelines and actual opioids prescribed (pulled from electronic medical records).

“The opioid epidemic is a huge problem,” says Sarah Tevis, MD an assistant professor of surgery in Breast Surgical Oncology and the study’s principal investigator. “We know that more than two thirds of the prescriptions that surgeons prescribe aren't used in the immediate post-operative period by patients and that one in 16 patients who are prescribed opioids for surgery end up having chronic opioid use.”

“It's been very well established that post-operative opioid prescribing varies across the board,” continues Victoria Huynh, MD, a third-year resident in the department and first author on the study. “We wanted to look at how we're doing as a department in terms of opioid prescribing.”

Comparing resident and faculty opioid prescribing habits

The results showed that faculty preferred to prescribe more opioid tablets than suggested by OPEN in five of the 14 surgical procedures, while residents did so in nine of the procedures.

“In some instances, faculty and residents prescribed more than suggested for certain surgical procedures. So that’s certainly an opportunity for improvement,” Huynh says. “But I think the most striking aspect of the study was just how much faculty and resident prescribing preferences differ from each other.”

Tevis said one of the reasons providers may prescribe more than suggested by the OPEN guidelines is CU’s large catchment area.

“We have patients coming from hours away and from other states for surgery. So, one factor may be that prescribers are worried that patients are going to drive eight hours home and then not have enough pain medicine,” Tevis says.

Another concern is patient satisfaction. Tevis says providers may be worried that a patient who runs out of pain medicine will be less satisfied with their care or need to call back or even go to the emergency room for more pain medication.

As for why residents seem to prefer prescribing more opioids than faculty, Huynh thinks it may be at least partially due to the limited interaction residents have with patients after surgery.

“We often see patients pre-op and immediately post-op, and we help take care of them in the immediate post-operative period while they're in the hospital,” Huynh says. “But as far as the post-operative follow-up care, we're not as involved as the attendings are.”

Tevis agrees. “When I call patients with their pathology results about a week after surgery, I also ask them about their pain control. But the residents miss out on a lot of that feedback.”

The study also assessed the frequency with which faculty communicate prescribing preferences to residents and the desire among all participants for feedback and transparency in prescription practices.

Both residents (80%) and faculty (75%) were open to seeing regular reports of personal opioid prescription practices, and most of those were also open to seeing how their numbers compared with their peers.

Education and assessment: initiatives to address post-operative opioid over-prescription

Since studies show that most prescription opioid abusers get medication from family and friends, the challenge is learning how to adequately treat post-operative pain while limiting opportunities for misuse and diversion.

“For us, that means limiting the excessive opioids that we prescribe,” Huynh says.

As a result of their research, Huynh and some of her co-residents are setting up ongoing initiatives within the Department of Surgery to address over-prescription of opioids. For instance, they have been developing a dashboard that will allow anyone who prescribes opioids to receive regular feedback about how much they're prescribing and how their prescribing practices compare with their peers. They recently sent it out to a handful of faculty to get feedback on the functionality and features.

“We're hoping that once we get that worked out, we can send it out to the entire department so that everybody can use it,” Huynh says.

Tevis, one of the faculty members who has started using the dashboard, says it is already proving effective. “Surgeons are competitive people,” she says. “So, when we get that email every month, my partners and I immediately start emailing back and forth about how we did compared to last month, how we’re all doing compared to each other. I think people are really liking that feedback, and it's influencing what they're doing.”

In addition to the dashboard, Huynh and her colleagues have built pathways (called Enhanced Recovery after Surgery protocols) that providers can follow through a patient’s electronic medical record. The pathways recommend which pain medications to order before and after surgery, including how many opioids to prescribe for certain procedure based on the national guidelines.

Tevis predicts the pathways will be especially helpful for residents who periodically rotate between different services.

“If you haven't been on the breast service for three years, how are you going to remember how many pills you should prescribe after a lumpectomy?” she asks. “If it's built into this pathway, it becomes very clear.”

The clinicians have also developed a protocol to utilize multimodal pain management to try to decrease the need for opioids after surgery, as well as instituted an educational program for interns around opioid prescribing.

“It's really impressive what Tori has accomplished in just two years in the research lab,” Tevis says. She's examined this problem from multiple angles, and her work has already led to big changes in the Surgery Department.”

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that changes in Earth's orbit may have allowed complex life to emerge and thrive during the most hostile climate episode the planet has ever experienced.

The researchers - working with colleagues in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Curtin University, University of Hong Kong, and the University of Tübingen - studied a succession of rocks laid down when most of Earth's surface was covered in ice during a severe glaciation, dubbed 'Snowball Earth', that lasted over 50 million years. Their findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

"One of the most fundamental challenges to the Snowball Earth theory is that life seems to have survived," says Dr Thomas Gernon, Associate Professor in Earth Science at the University of Southampton, and co-author of the study. "So, either it didn't happen, or life somehow avoided a bottleneck during the severe glaciation."

The research team ventured into the South Australian outback where they targeted kilometre-thick units of glacial rocks formed about 700 million years ago. At this time, Australia was located closer to the equator, known today for its tropical climates. The rocks they studied, however, show unequivocal evidence that ice sheets extended as far as the equator at this time, providing compelling evidence that Earth was completely covered in an icy shell.

The team focused their attention on "Banded Iron Formations", sedimentary rocks consisting of alternating layers of iron-rich and silica-rich material. These rocks were deposited in the ice-covered ocean near colossal ice sheets.

During the snowball glaciation, the frozen ocean would have been entirely cut off from the atmosphere. Without the normal exchange between the sea and air, many variations in climate that normally occur simply wouldn't have.

"This was called the 'sedimentary challenge' to the Snowball hypothesis," says Professor Ross Mitchell, professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China and the lead author. "The highly variable rock layers appeared to show cycles that looked a lot like climate cycles associated with the advance and retreat of ice sheets." Such variability was thought to be at odds with a static Snowball Earth entombing the whole ocean in ice.

"The iron comes from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor," added Gernon. "Normally, the atmosphere oxidizes any iron immediately, so Banded Iron Formations typically do not accumulate. But during the Snowball, with the ocean cut off from the air, iron was able to accumulate enough for them to form."

Using magnetic susceptibility - a measure of the extent to which the rocks become magnetised when exposed to a magnetic field - the team made the discovery that the layered rock archives preserve evidence for nearly all orbital cycles.

Earth's orbit around the sun changes its shape and the tilt and wobble of Earth's spin axis also undergo cyclic changes. These astronomical cycles change the amount of incoming solar radiation that reaches Earth's surface and, in doing so, they control climate.

"Even though Earth's climate system behaved very differently during the Snowball, Earth's orbital variations would have been blissfully unaware and just continued to do their thing," explains Professor Mitchell.

The researchers concluded that changes in Earth's orbit allowed the waxing and waning of ice sheets, enabling periodic ice-free regions to develop on snowball Earth.

Professor Mitchell explained, "This finding resolves one of the major contentions with the snowball Earth hypothesis: the long-standing observation of significant sedimentary variability during the snowball Earth glaciations appeared at odds with such an extreme reduction of the hydrological cycle".

The team's results help explain the enigmatic presence of sedimentary rocks of this age that show evidence for flowing water at Earth's surface when this water should have been locked up in ice sheets. Dr. Gernon states: "This observation is important, because complex multicellular life is now known to have originated during this period of climate crisis, but previously we could not explain why".

"Our study points to the existence of ice-free 'oases' in the snowball ocean that provided a sanctuary for animal life to survive arguably the most extreme climate event in Earth history," Dr Gernon concluded.

East Hanover, NJ. July 7, 2021. A team of researchers identified nine meaningful reasons that prevent people with disabilities from seeking employment. Their findings provide a much-needed understanding of this population's motives for remaining unemployed, which can inform programs and policies that promote labor force participation of people with disabilities. The article, "Understanding Persons with Disabilities' Reasons for Not Seeking Employment" (doi: 10.1177/00343552211006773) was published in Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin on April 15, 2021.

The authors are Denise C. Fyffe, PhD, Anthony H. Lequerica, PhD, and John O'Neill, PhD, of Kessler Foundation; Courtney Ward-Sutton, PhD, and Natalie F. Williams, PhD, of Langston University; and Vidya Sundar, OT, PhD, of the University of New Hampshire. Drs. Fyffe, Lequerica, and O'Neill also have academic appointments in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

In 2016, just 26 percent of people with disabilities were employed, versus 72 percent of people without a disability. Unraveling the socioeconomic, medical, and personal reasons for the chronic low employment rate among people with disabilities is a difficult task, in part because there is a scarcity of studies utilizing a nationally representative sample that includes narrative data. However, learning why people living with disabilities are not seeking or returning to work is critical to developing targeted employment interventions.

To gain a more precise understanding of unemployment among people with disabilities, a team of researchers analyzed responses to an open-ended question about employment from 3,013 participants in the 2015 Kessler Foundation National Employment and Disability Survey, the first nationally validated survey of the work experiences and perspectives of individuals with disabilities. The participants were adults of working age (18 to 64), representing 50 states and the District of Columbia. The majority identified as striving to work, defined as working, actively preparing for employment, searching for jobs, seeking more hours, or overcoming barriers to finding and maintaining employment. This analysis focused on 1,254 respondents who self-identified as being unemployed or not seeking employment and having one or more disabilities.

The results revealed a broad range of meaningful reasons why people with disabilities did not see themselves working in the near future. The most common reasons for not striving to work related to their perceptions about their medical conditions, functional limitations, or disability, which contributed to concerns about being able to find and keep a job. Other common responses cited problems related to bodily functioning and health issues, household responsibilities and educational conflicts, fear of losing disability benefits, and concerns about workplace culture, accessibility, and acceptance.

Participants' reasons for opting not to work differed across demographic and sociodemographic characteristics, pointing to the pitfalls in relying on such characteristics as the framework for employment strategies rather than focusing on the underlying reasons for not striving to join the workforce.

Countering negative perceptions, which are often associated with diverse demographic and sociodemographic characteristics, is essential to developing successful return-to-work or employment interventions, according to lead author Dr. Fyffe, senior research scientist in the Centers for Spinal Cord Injury Research and Outcomes & Assessment Research at Kessler Foundation. "Our results are important," asserted Dr. Fyffe, "because they empower rehabilitation counselors, policy makers, and families to support, set, and manage realistic employment goals while encouraging sensitivity to the negative perceptions that people hold about their illness or return to work."

The principle that form follows function does not only apply to design and architecture. It also applies to biology. Every organism is a universe that lives thanks to the activities of tens of thousands of nanomachines, whose functions depend on their forms. Biologists say macromolecular complexes instead of nanomachines and structure instead of form, but the idea is the same: know the form and you will understand the function. Now, a group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) has helped determine the structure of a nanomachine essential for the functioning of another, mTOR, which plays fundamental roles in cancer and nutrition, ageing and other vital processes in the body.

The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, was carried out by the groups of Laurence H. Pearl and Chrisostomos Prodromou from the Genome Damage and Stability Centre at the University of Sussex (UK), in collaboration with Óscar Llorca, Director of the Structural Biology programme and Head of the Macromolecular Complexes in DNA Damage Response Group at the CNIO.

The golden age of structures

The finding comes in the middle of the golden age of structural biology. Researchers speak of the structural revolution: in recent years, the shape of an increasing number of molecular nanomachines has been solved, at a much faster rate than was typical a decade ago. The change is due to high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy, a technique that has made spectacular progress and now allows proteins to be visualised in atomic detail.

Knowing the structure of proteins helps in the search for new drugs. Proteins interact by fitting together, as in a tiny three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle; knowing the shape of one piece allows us to try to design another one that matches it and blocks it, thereby inhibiting it.

The importance of understanding how mTOR works

The mTOR protein acts as a sensor that alerts the cell to the presence of nutrients. Since its discovery in the 1990s, it has been observed to be involved in a wide range of pathologies, including cancer, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. It is estimated that at least 60% of tumours show some form of modification in mTOR or proteins that interact with it.

It is, therefore, crucial to understand in detail how it works. But mTOR is not a protein that works alone: it is part of a macromolecular complex, a cluster of several proteins that join to work together like the parts of a complex (nano-) machine. As Llorca explains, "mTOR alone does nothing; it is part of a giant structure that contains other proteins, which allows it to behave in a complex way."

An assembly line of proteins

As with many other large macromolecular structures, the construction of the mTOR complex needs the help of other nanomachines that, "like an assembly line, add and assemble the elements of the final large structure," explains Llorca. If this large structure is not assembled, "mTOR is not able to decide whether the cells should grow or not."

The functioning of the proteins that make up this mTOR assembly army is not yet well understood.

The study carried out by Mohinder Pal, a researcher of the Pearl and Prodromou groups at the University of Sussex (UK) in collaboration with Llorca, helps to shed further light on this by determining the structure of part of the assembly machinery and the mechanisms by which it can recognise and manipulate mTOR.

The significance of the result is not merely fundamental. As Llorca points out, "as our understanding of the mechanisms that control mTOR grows, new possibilities are opening up to interfere with these processes for therapeutic purposes."