Brain

The loss of a loved one can be a defining moment, even in the animal world. In chimpanzees, for example, individuals whose mothers die when they are young are smaller than their counterparts, reproduce less and are also more likely to die at a young age. But why? To find out, an international research team* led by a CNRS researcher** studied the short- and long-term effects of maternal loss on the stress levels of orphaned chimpanzees over a 19-year period. By comparing the levels of a stress hormone marker, cortisol, between young and adult orphans and non-orphans, the scientists found that young orphans were highly stressed; however, those who had lost their mothers for more than two years or who were adults at the time of the study were no more stressed than other chimpanzees whose mothers were still alive. This means that they do not suffer from chronic stress, unlike in humans, where children whose mothers die when they are very young are subject to chronic stress throughout their lives. According to the research team, chimpanzees often adopt young orphans, which could be one of several explanations why the stress of maternal loss does not persist. Since stress alone cannot explain the differences between orphans and non-orphans, the researchers now want to look at chimpanzee mothers to see whether they contribute to these differences, for example whether mothers offer protection to offspring that is not available to orphans. The results of this work were published in eLife on 16 June 2021.

Study Highlights

New research reveals how key proteins interact to regulate the body's response to stress

Targeting these proteins may help treat or prevent stress-related psychiatric disorders

The biological mechanisms behind stress-related psychiatric conditions, including major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are poorly understood.

New research now details the interplay between proteins involved in controlling the body's stress response and points to potential therapeutic targets when this response goes awry. The study, which was conducted by an international team led by investigators at McLean Hospital, appears in the journal Cell Reports.

"A dysregulated stress response of the body can be damaging for the brain and promote susceptibility to mood and anxiety disorders," said lead author Jakob Hartmann, PhD. Hartmann is an assistant neuroscientist in the Neurobiology of Fear Laboratory at McLean and an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

"A key brain region involved in the regulation of the stress response is the hippocampus," said Hartmann. "The idea for this study occurred to us when we noticed interesting distinctions in hippocampal localization of three important stress-regulating proteins."

The researchers' experiments in non-human tissue and postmortem brain tissue revealed how these proteins--the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR), and the FK506-binding protein 51 (FKBP5)--interact with each other.

Specifically, MRs, rather than GRs, control the production of FKBP5 under normal conditions. FKBP5 decreases GRs' sensitivity to binding stress hormones during stressful situations. FKBP5 appears to fine-tune the stress response by acting as a mediator of the MR:GR balance in the hippocampus.

"Our findings suggest that therapeutic targeting of GR, MR, and FKBP5 may be complementary in manipulating central and peripheral regulation of stress," said senior author Kerry J. Ressler, MD, PhD. Ressler is the chief scientific officer at McLean Hospital, chief of McLean's Division of Depression and Anxiety Disorders, and a professor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

"Moreover, our data further underline the important but largely unappreciated role of MR signaling in stress-related psychiatric disorders," added Ressler. "The findings of this study will open new directions for future research."

Peatlands are an important ecosystem that contribute to the regulation of the atmospheric carbon cycle. A multidisciplinary group of researchers, led by the University of Helsinki, investigated the climate response of a permafrost peatland located in Russia during the past 3,000 years. Unexpectedly, the group found that a cool climate period, which resulted in the formation of permafrost in northern peatlands, had a positive, or warming, effect on the climate.

The period studied, which began 3,000 years ago, is known as a climate period of cooling temperatures. The climate-related effect of permafrost formation brought about by the cooling was investigated particularly by analysing the ancient plant communities of the peatland, using similarly analysed peatland data from elsewhere in Russia, Finland and Sweden as a comparison.

"Our studies demonstrated that the effect of permafrost peatlands on the climate can be difficult to predict. Studies encompassing longer periods of time are valuable, as they help us to understand future change," says researcher Minna Väliranta from the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki.

The study linked data on ancient plant communities with information about how rapidly contemporary northern peatlands bind and sequester carbon, or how rapidly peat accumulates. In addition, data on carbon emissions to the atmosphere were utilised. These factors constitute what is known as the peatland's radiative forcing, which has either a warming effect on the climate when the peatland emits more carbon into the atmosphere than it binds from it, or a cooling effect when the peatland serves as a carbon sink and binds more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases into it.

Rather unexpectedly, the researchers found that a cool climate period, which resulted in the formation of permafrost in northern peatlands, had a warming effect on the climate. This was caused by the habitats of the plant communities living in the permafrost peatlands drying up, after which they no longer bound carbon from the atmosphere very effectively. In fact, a reverse process took place in which previously formed peat, which used to store carbon, was released back into the atmosphere as a result of accelerated decomposition and degradation.

Moreover, the permafrost processes even created bare peat surfaces entirely devoid of vegetation in the peatlands. Such surfaces emit, in addition to carbon dioxide, also nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, into the air. These emissions clearly increased the peatland's warming effect on the atmosphere.

Other typical peatland surfaces do not emit significant quantities of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, which is why such emissions have been considered insignificant. The study demonstrated that such bare peat surfaces have previously been much more prevalent. However, it appears that this type of surfaces have regained their plant cover over time, consequently reducing the extent of bare surfaces.

Climate change can drive the development of permafrost peatlands in unforeseen directions

"This was the first study in which the long-term development of bare peat surfaces was investigated. Consequently, further research is needed in order to better forecast the fate of such surfaces typical of permafrost peatland and the future development of permafrost peatlands in general," says Väliranta.

The climate effects of the greenhouse gas emissions of the peatlands studied were associated with changes in plant life, which, in turn, are determined by the peatland's hydrological balance. The researchers predict that the thawing of the permafrost may lead to rising peatland water levels and, therefore, substantial methane emissions that will warm the climate further. At the same time, global warming is thought to accelerate carbon intake from the atmosphere due to the intensification of the basic production processes of plants. In other words, photosynthesis is binding carbon dioxide from the air with increasing efficiency.

The death of a mother is a traumatic event for immature offspring in species in which mothers provide prolonged maternal care, such as in long-lived mammals, including humans. Orphan mammals die earlier and have less offspring compared with non-orphans, but how these losses arise remains under debate. Clinical studies on humans and captive studies on animals show that infants whose mothers die when they are young are exposed to chronic stress throughout their lives. However, such chronic stress, which has deleterious consequences on health, can be reduced or even cancelled if human orphans are placed in foster families young enough. How stressed orphans are in the wild and whether wild animal orphans are exposed to chronic stress over decades like in humans, remains unknown, especially in species where infants are dependent on their mother for at least the first 10 years of life, like in chimpanzees.

Young chimpanzees who lose their mother are highly stressed

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Institute of Cognitive Sciences, CNRS in Lyon investigated over 19 years the short- and long-term effects of maternal loss on the stress of orphan wild chimpanzees. Their study shows that immature orphan chimpanzees are highly stressed, especially when they were orphaned at a young age. However, orphans who lost their mother more than two years previously, or were now adult, were not more stressed than other individuals whose mother did not die.

"Our study provides an important test of how relevant theories are that try to explain the impact of early life adversity when they are drawn from human clinical studies. In particular we wanted to know how relevant they are for wild long-lived primates whose young, as in humans, are dependent on their mother for over a decade", says the first author Cédric Girard-Buttoz.

Adult chimpanzees often care for or even adopt orphans

"Our findings nicely contrast to human studies and show that young orphan chimpanzees recover over time from the initially stressful loss of their mother. Taï chimpanzees often care for or adopt orphans. They may carry orphans, share their food and their nest at night with them, or protect them from aggression. Whether orphan chimpanzees show stress recovery because of the support offered by other chimpanzees remains to be studied", Roman Wittig, a senior author and head of the Taï Chimpanzee Project points out.

"The stress experienced by orphan chimpanzees compared with non-orphans does not directly explain their shorter lives and fewer offspring, but may have an effect on other important factors such as growth during critical periods in development", says senior author Catherine Crockford. "In long-lived species where offspring stay with their mothers for many years, the next step is to unpick what mothers provide offspring that helps them get ahead of orphans. It might be that a mothers' presence results in nutritional gains or social advantages, such as providing buffering against aggression from others, or a mix of the two".

Today as they did 100 years ago, doctors diagnose cancer by taking tissue samples from patients, which they usually fix in formalin for microscopic examination. In the past 20 years, genetic methods have also been established that make it possible to characterize mutations in tumors in greater detail, thus helping clinicians select the best treatment strategy.

Even tiny tissue samples can be used to detect proteins

Now, a group of researchers from the Berlin-based Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC), the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) have succeeded in analyzing in detail more than 8,000 proteins in fixed samples of lung cancer tissue using mass spectrometers.

"Using the methods we have developed, it has become possible to conduct an in-depth analysis of molecular processes in cancer cells at the protein level - and to do so in archived patient samples that are collected and stored in large numbers in everyday clinical practice," says Dr. Philipp Mertins, head of the Proteomics Platform at the MDC and the BIH. "Even very small tissue samples, such as those obtained in needle biopsies, are sufficient for our experiments."

The study, published in the journal "Nature Communications", is considered a major success for the Multimodal Clinical Mass Spectrometry to Target Treatment Resistance (MSTARS) research project, which has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to the tune of around €5.7 million since 2020.

The team of researchers, led by Mertins and Professor Frederick Klauschen from the Institute of Pathology at Charité, has been able to show that proteins - unlike the frequently studied yet quite sensitive RNA molecules - remain stable in the samples for many years and can be precisely quantified. "In addition, the proteins that are present in the tumor tissue map disease progression especially well," says lead author Corinna Friedrich, a PhD student in the labs of Mertins and Klauschen. "This is because they provide information about such things as which of the genes that promote or inhibit tumor growth are particularly active in the cells."

The methods promise to help identify the best treatment for each tumor

The picture gained from the team's analysis of two forms of lung cancer - adenocarcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas - has also become so detailed because the researchers have not only uncovered a great many of the proteins present in the cell, but have also quantified more than 14,000 phosphosites. With the help of phosphorylation, a mechanism that regulates the reversible attachment of phosphate groups to proteins, the cell controls almost all biological processes by switching certain signaling pathways on or off.

"Our paper thus provides a good basis for gaining a better understanding of disease progression in lung cancer and also in other types of cancer," says Klauschen, who, along with Mertins, is co-corresponding author of the study. Klauschen has since become director of the Institute of Pathology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, but continues to conduct research at Charité. "The methods we have developed will also enable us to better explain in the future why a very specific therapy works for some patients but not for others," adds the pathologist. This will, he says, make it easier, to find the best treatment option for each patient.

Methods also suitable for researching cardiovascular diseases

Mertins also hopes that the mass spectrometric analysis of the proteome in tissue samples will pave the way for the discovery of not only new biomarkers for therapeutic decisions and patient survival predictions, but also other molecular structures that could serve as targets for future drugs.

And, according to the researcher, there is yet another plus to the new approach: "Our methods are not only suitable for researching cancer, but can also be applied very broadly." For example, the Proteomics Platform has already successfully analyzed the proteome of fixed immune cells from COVID-19 patients. The authors have also provided guidelines on which mass spectrometric methods are best suited for different types of clinical studies.

Next on the agenda for the MDC platform is the mass spectrometric analysis of additional fixed immune cells as well as fixed cardiovascular tissue for the presence of proteins and phosphosites. "The aim here is to get a better understanding of infectious and cardiovascular diseases," explains Mertins, "so that one day it might be possible to treat these diseases in a much better way than has so far been the case."

MIAMI--In a new analysis on managed retreat--the climate adaptation response of moving people and property out of harm's way--researchers explore what it would take for managed retreat to be supportive of people and their priorities. A key starting point is considering retreat alongside other responses like coastal armoring and not just as an option of last resort.

In a new paper in the journal Science, University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science researcher Katharine Mach argues that managed retreat should be viewed as a proactive option that can support communities and livelihoods in the face of climate change.

"Managed retreat can be more effective in reducing risk--in ways that are socially equitable and economically efficient--if it is a proactive component of climate-driven transformations," said Mach, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UM Rosenstiel School. "It can be used to address climate risks, along with other types of responses like building seawalls or limiting new development in hazard-prone regions."

In the review paper, Mach and her colleague A.R. Siders from the University of Delaware reviewed the existing literature on the subject to argue that societies will be better prepared for intensifying climate change--such as more frequent and severe storms, flooding and sea-level-rise--if they consider the potential role of strategic and managed retreat.

"Communities, towns, cities and municipalities are making decisions now that affect the future," said Siders, a core faculty member in UD's Disaster Research Center and assistant professor in the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration and geography and spatial sciences. "If we're making these decisions now, we should also be considering all the options on the table right now, not just the ones that keep people in place."

Retreat is already happening in the U.S. and many parts of the world in the face of relatively moderate climate change and has happened throughout human history.

"Early conversations about managed retreat--and where, when, and why its use could be considered acceptable or not--substantially increase the likelihood that future climate retreat will promote societal goals," said Mach.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irKluVmSk4o

In a related study in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Mach and UM doctoral student Carolien Kraan conducted the first comprehensive overview of equity concerns that have been raised on voluntary property buyouts and provide policy options for addressing these concerns.

For example, they suggest that local governments involve residents in the buyout process from the start and provide homeowners with professional support to guide them through the process to reduce frustration.

"The article provides practitioners and researchers with a synthesis of policy options that are aimed at improving social justice outcomes in voluntary property buyout programs," said Kraan, a doctoral student at the UM Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy.

The surface of a material often has properties that are very different from the properties within the material. For example, a non-conducting crystal, which actually exhibits no magnetism, can show magnetisation restricted to its surface because of the way the atoms are arranged there. These distinct properties at interfaces and surfaces of materials often play a key role in the development of new functional components such as optoelectronic chips or sensors and are therefore subject to extensive research. An international research team from the University of Göttingen, the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry Göttingen and the National Research Council Canada has now succeeded in investigating the surfaces of transparent crystals using powerful irradiation from lasers. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications.

The researchers describe their method, which relies purely on light, to determine electrical and magnetic properties on surfaces. This new method could play an important role in the investigation of transparent, non-conductive materials, as established methods using electrons often experience experimental limitations due to low conductivity, among other difficulties. The use of light helps get around these limitations: when light rays hit a material surface, for example a glass pane, they are reflected at the interface, refracted and absorbed into the material. These effects, which can be observed in everyday life, are the result of the interaction of the weak light field with the atoms and electrons of the irradiated material. In the case of stronger light fields, which are achieved with lasers, further effects occur, which can, for example, generate higher light frequencies - known as high harmonic radiation. These effects are often dependent on the direction of oscillation of the light field relative to the atomic arrangement in the material.

"We take advantage of this dependence when generating high harmonic radiation to gain insights into the properties at and near the surface of transparent materials," says first author and PhD student Tobias Heinrich from the Faculty of Physics at Göttingen University. "The light field we use is composed of two laser pulses rotating in opposite directions at two different frequencies, and this results in a cloverleaf-shaped symmetrical field." These tailor-made light fields can be adapted to the atomic arrangement of the material to control the generation of the high harmonics.

"We show that this control can be used to study magnetisation at the surface of magnesium oxide," explains Dr Murat Sivis, the study lead. Depending on the direction of rotation of the light field - also called chirality - the generated ultraviolet light is absorbed to different degrees at the interface. "For various materials that do not actually exhibit magnetisation or electrical conductivity, these properties at the surface have been predicted in theory," Sivis said. "In our study, we show that it is now possible to investigate such phenomena using just optical methods, probably even at very short time scales." The researchers also hope to gain new insights into the electronic properties of other chiral materials, as the study shows using the example of the helical crystal structure of quartz. The sensitivity to chiral phenomena on surfaces could potentially open up new opportunities for research into innovative functional materials.

Young people with poor mental health took a turn for the better during the pandemic but those with good mental health saw a considerable decline, new research reveals.

The first nationally representative evidence regarding the diverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescent mental health in the UK was led by researchers at Lancaster University working with the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Adolescents (aged 10 to 16) with better than average mental health before the pandemic experienced an increase in their emotional and conduct problems, hyperactivity, and problems interacting with their peers and friends, but a decrease in their prosocial tendencies such as being caring and willing to share and help others during the pandemic.

In contrast, adolescents with lower than average mental health pre-pandemic experienced opposite changes, possibly, says the research, because more time at home under parental supervision prevented behaviour such as fighting or bullying.

Published in the July edition of the ‘Journal of Adolescent Health’, the official journal of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, the study also flags considerable disparities in the impact across social, demographic, and economic groups.

Young people from vulnerable one-parent, one-child, and less well-off families experienced a much greater mental health decline during COVID than before.

And those living in one-parent households experienced a sharper decline in social wellbeing which was reflected in a greater increase in problems interacting with peers and friends as well as feeling lonely.

The presence of other children in the household helped protect the teenagers from the pandemic’s adverse impact on their emotional and social wellbeing.

The pandemic’s impact on adolescent mental health also varied with parents’ socioeconomic positions. Young people with high-earning parents experienced a bigger reduction in conduct problems and a smaller increase in hyperactivity and problems interacting with their peers and friends, compared with those in low-income families.

The research also found, while adolescents are unlikely to contract COVID-19 or become severely ill as a result of catching the coronavirus, family members’ COVID-19 symptoms and illness took their toll on adolescents’ social wellbeing.

The study suggests the linked self-isolation, social distancing and stigmas might make them susceptible to being bullied and socially marginalised.

The findings, says the study, underline the need to go beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and adopt tailored mental health support for adolescents and targeted measures to mitigate inequalities in the mental health impact of the pandemic.

The research ‘COVID-19 and Adolescent Mental Health in the UK’ was carried out by Sociologists Dr Yang Hu, of Lancaster University, and Dr Yue Qian at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

They analysed data from the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Understanding Society COVID-19 Survey—a sample comprising 886 adolescents aged 10 to 16, who were surveyed both before and during the pandemic.

The research fills a gap in research examining adolescents’ mental health compared with growing research on the impact of adults’ mental health.

“Adolescents are at a critical stage of their lives and the detrimental impact of the pandemic on their mental health can undermine their immediate wellbeing and harm their long-term development,” said Dr Hu.

“It is clear from our findings that efforts should be made to mitigate the mental health impact of the pandemic on children and adolescents – an issue that has not yet been featured in key public health and policy conversations.”

Dr Qian said: “Our findings urge policymakers to mitigate disparities in the pandemic’s impact on adolescent mental health, interrogate how these disparities are rooted in pre-pandemic socioeconomic inequalities, and intervene in future inequalities that may arise.”

DOI

10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.04.005

For many of us, our smartphone has become our ever-present companion and is usually far more than just a phone. Thanks to the constant availability of online content as well as our reachability through messenger services and social networks via our smartphone, this everyday object's potential to distract us is high - at work too. This is why many employers view the use of smartphones during work time with suspicion, and countermeasures taken range from asking staff to refrain voluntarily from using them to banning smartphones in the workplace through an internal agreement. But do such measures actually work and, if so, how?

This is the question now being examined by an interdisciplinary team of economists and a social scientist from the universities of Konstanz, Lüneburg and Vechta in the framework of a comprehensive field experiment and accompanying surveys on the topic. The study, which has been published in the journal Experimental Economics, shows that the benefits of smartphone bans in the workplace depend on the type of work: In the case of standard routine tasks, there was a measurable increase in efficiency as a result of "soft" smartphone bans, that is, bans that are not sanctioned if they are disregarded. By contrast, they did not notably improve the execution of more complex tasks. As possible success factors for soft bans, the study identified that they can change people's perception of social norms, that freedom of choice remains with staff and that these show understanding for the measures.

Corporate managements disagree on effectiveness

Many companies find the distraction of staff through the use of private smartphones in the workplace problematic. However, since smartphones are private property, a strict ban on their use is difficult to enforce and can hardly be controlled, especially in times where people are working more and more from home. That is why the measures taken by companies frequently do not go beyond so-called "soft", non-monitored bans - if any at all - the disregard of which has no consequences. An example of a soft ban would be a written appeal to staff not to use their smartphone during work time. However, there is much disagreement among employers about the effectiveness of such soft bans.

"A survey we conducted in collaboration with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Berlin showed that about 20 percent of the companies interviewed already work with soft smartphone bans," reports Dr Adrian Chadi, junior professor for personnel economics and human resource management at the University of Konstanz and one of the authors of the current study. In turn, about half of these 20 percent considered the measures to be successful, but the other half doubted that workforce performance is positively influenced by soft smartphone bans.

Telephone study as field experiment

To gain more clarity in this regard, the researchers carried out a large-scale field experiment: Over 100 students were assigned the task of phoning lists of telephone numbers as part of a real side job and conducting interviews with volunteers for a university research project independent of this study. In this context, a soft ban was imposed on some of the students on using their smartphones during work time, while for the others the private use of smartphones was not expressly forbidden.

A comparison of the two groups' performance showed that the students banned from using their private smartphones made about ten percent more calls per hour than the students without a ban. However, the ban did not have a clear effect on the number of successfully completed interviews, which suggests that the success of a smartphone ban in the workplace depends on the specific type of work. "In the case of less demanding routine tasks, such as working through a long list of phone numbers, it's helpful not to be distracted by a private smartphone. With more complex, creative tasks, such as convincing strangers to participate in a survey, on the other hand, occasional use of a private smartphone between calls seems to be less detrimental," says Chadi, going into more detail.

The secrets of success of "soft" bans

In the framework of further surveys, the researchers looked deeper into the reasons for the effectiveness of soft smartphone bans. One consideration here was that they might change employees' perceptions as to what is socially appropriate. "Social norms play an important role in the context of bans. Soft bans could lead to staff themselves seeing it as less appropriate to use their smartphones during work time - due to perceived social pressure," explains Chadi. "This means that companies might hope to increase productivity in the workforce with soft bans - and without penalties and monitoring leading to distrust, rejection or a negative impact on productivity as a result of declining motivation."

Indeed, the evaluation of follow-up interviews with the students involved in the field experiment revealed that the group with a soft ban on the use of smartphones used them far less frequently during work time than the group without a smartphone ban, indicating that they respected the ban voluntarily. This can explain the difference in productivity described. At the same time, job satisfaction in both groups was very high. "This probably means that it's precisely the voluntary nature of observing rules which is one of the secrets of success of soft bans," assumes Chadi.

Understanding as a further factor

As a further factor for the success of the soft smartphone ban in the study, the follow-up interviews identified that staff could understand their employer's concern and that the ban therefore also made sense from their point of view. Here, the researchers can even see a transferability of their results to other contexts. "The perceived meaningfulness of a ban as well as retaining the right to make autonomous decisions about your own behaviour are with great probability determining success factors not only in the workplace context and are therefore more expedient than enforcing bans by means of coercion and surveillance," says Chadi.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago have successfully used graphene -- one of the strongest, thinnest known materials -- to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in laboratory experiments. The researchers say the discovery could be a breakthrough in coronavirus detection, with potential applications in the fight against COVID-19 and its variants.

In experiments, researchers combined sheets of graphene, which are more than 1,000 times thinner than a postage stamp, with an antibody designed to target the infamous spike protein on the coronavirus. They then measured the atomic-level vibrations of these graphene sheets when exposed to COVID-positive and COVID-negative samples in artificial saliva. These sheets were also tested in the presence of other coronaviruses, like Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS-CoV.

The UIC researchers found that the vibrations of the antibody-coupled graphene sheet changed when treated with a COVID-positive sample, but not when treated with a COVID-negative sample or with other coronaviruses. Vibrational changes, measured with a device called a Raman spectrometer, were evident in under five minutes.

Their findings are published in the journal ACS Nano.

"We have been developing graphene sensors for many years. In the past, we have built detectors for cancer cells and ALS. It is hard to imagine a more pressing application than to help stem the spread of the current pandemic," said Vikas Berry, professor and head of chemical engineering at the UIC College of Engineering and senior author of the paper. "There is a clear need in society for better ways to quickly and accurately detect COVID and its variants, and this research has the potential to make a real difference. The modified sensor is highly sensitive and selective for COVID, and it is fast and inexpensive."

"This project has been an amazingly novel response to the need and demand for detection of viruses, quickly and accurately," said study co-author Garrett Lindemann, a researcher with Carbon Advanced Materials and Products, or CAMP. "The development of this technology as a clinical testing device has many advantages over the currently deployed and used tests."

Berry says that graphene -- which has been called a "wonder material" -- has unique properties that make it highly versatile, making this type of sensor possible.

Graphene is a single-atom-thick material made up of carbon. Carbon atoms are bound by chemical bonds whose elasticity and movement can produce resonant vibrations, also known as phonons, which can be very accurately measured. When a molecule like a SARS-CoV-2 molecule interacts with graphene, it changes these resonant vibrations in a very specific and quantifiable way.

"Graphene is just one atom thick, so a molecule on its surface is relatively enormous and can produce a specific change in its electronic energy," Berry said. "In this experiment, we modified graphene with an antibody and, in essence, calibrated it to react only with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Using this method, graphene could similarly be used to detect COVID-19 variants."

How do top athletes talk about doping when they themselves are using performance-enhancing drugs? Or do they just avoid the issue? A new study by the University of Göttingen reveals that any decision to use drugs almost inevitably means the decision to engage in deceptive communication such as lying or omitting information. Those using drugs, for example, regularly describe anti-doping policies as being more intense than ever or overly restrictive, play down the extent of the doping problem, or portray themselves as victims. The results were published in the European Journal for Sport and Society.

Dr Marcel Reinold, Head of Sport and Health Sociology at the Institute of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Göttingen University, analysed autobiographies of professional cyclists for the study. All of these autobiographies were written at a time before the cyclists were exposed as having used performance-enhancing drugs. The best-known examples are the two best-selling autobiographies by Lance Armstrong, former seven-time Tour de France winner, written in the early 2000s. In them, Armstrong portrays himself as "clean", although investigations by the US Anti-Doping Agency some ten years later revealed otherwise. "The main goal of this research is to identify the techniques of deceptive communication about doping - that is, typical communication strategies and statements that drug-users routinely employ to manipulate information and conceal doping," says Reinold.

Previous research on this subject has mainly emphasised that drug cheats adhere to a "law of silence". In effect, they usually simply ignore the subject of doping. This comparative analysis of the autobiographies shows, however, that prominent cyclists are under enormous social pressure to talk about the darker side of their sport in order to avoid suspicion of concealing drug use. Their writing, therefore, showed that they went beyond the relatively trivial technique of staying silent, instead using more complex techniques of deceptive communication. For instance, the doping control system is regularly described as more intense than ever before, as well as being overly restrictive. At the same time, they play down just how widespread doping can be. The clear intention is to suggest - despite evidence to the contrary - that in a "strictly controlled" and largely "drug-free" environment, there is simply no reason to use performance-enhancing drugs.

"The aim is clearly to convince the public that everything about the cyclist concerned is indeed honest and open," says Reinold. "These techniques help deceivers to present themselves as compliant with the anti-doping system and also to appear credible in their commitment against drugs. Furthermore, it helps to allay suspicion, prevent others discovering the lies and generally control the flow of incriminating information in such a way that prevents leaks or detection."

An innovative underwater robot known as Mesobot is providing researchers with deeper insight into the vast mid-ocean region known as the "twilight zone." Capable of tracking and recording high-resolution images of slow-moving and fragile zooplankton, gelatinous animals, and particles, Mesobot greatly expands scientists' ability to observe creatures in their mesopelagic habitat with minimal disturbance. This advance in engineering will enable greater understanding of the role these creatures play in transporting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the deep sea, as well as how commercial exploitation of twilight zone fisheries might affect the marine ecosystem.

In a paper published June 16 in Science Robotics, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) senior scientist Dana Yoerger presents Mesobot as a versatile vehicle for achieving a number of science objectives in the twilight zone.

"Mesobot was conceived to complement and fill important gaps not served by existing technologies and platforms," said Yoerger. "We expect that Mesobot will emerge as a vital tool for observing midwater organisms for extended periods, as well as rapidly identifying species observed from vessel biosonars. Because Mesobot can survey, track, and record compelling imagery, we hope to reveal previously unknown behaviors, species interactions, morphological structures, and the use of bioluminescence."

Co-authored by research scientists and engineers from WHOI, MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute), and Stanford University, the paper outlines the robot's success in autonomously tracking two gelatinous marine creatures during a 2019 research cruise in Monterey Bay. High-definition video revealed a "dinner plate" jellyfish "ramming" a siphonophore, which narrowly escaped the jelly's venomous tentacles. Mesobot also recorded a 30-minute video of a giant larvacean, which appears to be nearly motionless but is actually riding internal waves that rise and fall 6 meters (20 feet). These observations represent the first time that a self-guided robot has tracked these small, clear creatures as they move through the water column like a "parcel of water," said Yoerger.

"Mesobot has the potential to change how we observe animals moving through space and time in a way that we've never been able to do before," said Kakani Katija, MBARI principal engineer. "As we continue to develop and improve on the vehicle, we hope to observe many other mysterious and captivating animals in the midwaters of the ocean, including the construction and disposal of carbon-rich giant larvacean 'snot palaces.'"

Packaged in an hydrodynamically efficient yellow case, the hybrid robot is outfitted with a suite of oceanographic and acoustic survey sensors. It may be piloted remotely through a fiberoptic cable attached to a ship or released from its tether to follow pre-programmed missions or autonomously track a target at depths up to 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). This autonomous capability will one day enable Mesobot to follow a target animal for over 24 hours without human intervention, which is enough time to observe its migration from the midwater twilight zone to the surface and back. Future studies with Mesobot could provide researchers with valuable insight into animal behavior during diel vertical migration, known as "the greatest migration on Earth" because of the vast number and diversity of creatures that undertake it each night.

"By leveraging the data we've collected using Mesobot, and other data that we've been curating for 30-plus years at MBARI, we hope to integrate smarter algorithms on the vehicle that uses artificial intelligence to discover, continuously track, and observe enigmatic animals and other objects in the deep sea," Kakani said.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Human-caused wildfire ignitions in Central Oregon are expected to remain steady over the next four decades and lightning-caused ignitions are expected to decline, but the average size of a blaze from either cause is expected to rise, Oregon State University modeling suggests.

Scientists including Meg Krawchuk of the OSU College of Forestry and former OSU research associate Ana Barros, now of the Washington Department of Natural Resources, say the findings can help local decision-makers understand how a changing climate might affect natural and human-caused fire regimes differently and inform fire staffing, preparedness, prevention and restrictions.

"The significance of these results lies in what we can collectively do about it as a society and in our individual actions," Barros said. "For lightning-ignited fires, depending on where and when they happen, it can be an opportunity. Where safe for firefighters, communities and highly valued resources, we can use these ignitions to accomplish important forest restoration work."

Findings of the study, which involved 3.3 million hectares on the east slope of the Cascade Range, were published in Environmental Research Letters.

"In the United States, two-thirds of the area burned by wildfires is from fires started by lightning, but human-caused blazes make fire seasons longer and result in fires reaching areas where they wouldn't naturally occur," said Krawchuk, a fire ecologist who oversees the College of Forestry's Landscape Fire and Conservation Science lab group. "People are the primary cause of large fires in both the eastern and western U.S., and while climate is the primary driver of how much area burns, the human footprint is a close second."

Wildfire is casting an increasingly large shadow globally, including in the American West, as the climate continues to become warmer and drier. Eight of the 10 largest California wildfires on record have occurred in the last seven years, and in 2020, multiple huge fires tore through the west side of the Cascade Range in Oregon, consuming more than 1 million acres.

Barros notes that in the lower 48 U.S. states, 29 million people live where there is potential for extreme wildfire, including 12 million considered "socially vulnerable."

"Census tracts that are majority Black, Hispanic or Native American are associated with the greatest vulnerability to wildfire," she said. "That means climate change is expected to exacerbate social inequalities unless ecosystems and communities do a good job of adapting to a changing climate and more fires in an equitable way."

Barros, Krawchuk, OSU faculty research assistant Rachel Houtman and collaborators from the U.S. Forest Service and the University of California, Merced looked at ignition data for the study area from 1992 through 2015. There were more than 15,000 ignitions, most of which did not result in a big blaze. Just 400 of the ignitions ended up burning an area greater than 10 hectares, but those fires accounted for 99% of the area that burned.

Melding those data with multiple global climate projections, the scientists developed statistical models for when and where fires could potentially occur between 2031 and 2060, and how much area they would burn, for lightning- and human-caused ignitions. The models included predictions for the number of fires and the frequency of extreme wildfire events, or EWEs.

The models, which include a metric for daily fuel dryness known as energy release component or ERC, predicted no significant change in the number of human-caused fire ignitions and a 14% reduction in lightning-caused ignitions, with the number of lightning fires per season burning more than 10 hectares staying about the same.

But mean fire sizes were 31% larger for fires caused by humans and 22% bigger for fires caused by lightning; predicted increases in area burned were driven by increases in mean fire size resulting from more extreme wildfire events.

"All but one of the climate models we considered projected increased frequency of record-breaking events, with the largest future fires being about twice as big as those of the contemporary period," Barros said.

The scientists note that historically, lightning ignitions in Central Oregon have been more likely on days with moderate fuel dryness and less likely on days with higher ERC. That's possibly because in the region, lightning-caused fires tend to happen after light precipitation such as that from cold fronts that can cause ERC to drop.

"When it comes to human-caused fires, the key word is prevention because any ignition can become that record-breaking event," Barros said. "The takeaway here is that large fires are coming our way. What we do about it between now and then will determine our success in mitigating negative consequences and even accomplish positive outcomes."

Collaborating with Krawchuk and Barros were Michelle Day, Alan Ager and Haiganoush Preisler of the Forest Service and John Abatzoglou of the University of California, Merced.

"Extreme wildfires are increasingly becoming a reality in many parts of the world, but how we respond to these fires and how we prevent them depends on a lot on how they start," Day said. "In our study we showed that historical records for fire size will continue to be broken. And the timing of these fires will differ depending on cause, with more human-caused ignitions happening in late summer and fall."

WASHINGTON (June 15, 2021)--Malicious COVID-19 online content -- including racist content, disinformation and misinformation -- thrives and spreads online by bypassing the moderation efforts of individual social media platforms, according to new research published in the journal Scientific Reports. By mapping online hate clusters across six major social media platforms, researchers at the George Washington University show how malicious content exploits pathways between platforms, highlighting the need for social media companies to rethink and adjust their content moderation policies.

Led by Neil Johnson, a professor of physics at GW, the research team set out to understand how and why malicious content thrives so well online despite significant moderation efforts, and how it can be stopped. The team used a combination of machine learning and network data science to investigate how online hate communities sharpened COVID-19 as a weapon and used current events to draw in new followers.

"Until now, slowing the spread of malicious content online has been like playing a game of whack-a-mole, because a map of the online hate multiverse did not exist," Johnson, who is also a researcher at the GW Institute for Data, Democracy & Politics, said. "You cannot win a battle if you don't have a map of the battlefield. In our study, we laid out a first-of-its-kind map of this battlefield. Whether you're looking at traditional hate topics, such as anti-Semitism or anti-Asian racism surrounding COVID-19, the battlefield map is the same. And it is this map of links within and between platforms that is the missing piece in understanding how we can slow or stop the spread of online hate content."

The researchers began by mapping how hate clusters interconnect to spread their narratives across social media platforms. Focusing on six platforms -- Facebook, VKontakte, Instagram, Gab, Telegram and 4Chan -- the team started with a given hate cluster and looked outward to find a second cluster that was strongly connected to the original. They found the strongest connections were VKontakte into Telegram (40.83% of cross-platform connections), Telegram into 4Chan (11.09%), and Gab into 4Chan (10.90%).

The researchers then turned their attention to identifying malicious content related to COVID-19. They found that the coherence of COVID-19 discussion increased rapidly in the early phases of the pandemic, with hate clusters forming narratives and cohering around COVID-19 topics and misinformation. To subvert moderation efforts by social media platforms, groups sending hate messages used several adaptation strategies in order to regroup on other platforms and/or reenter a platform, the researchers found. For example, clusters frequently change their names to avoid detection by moderators' algorithms, such as vaccine to va$$ine. Similarly, anti-Semitic and anti-LGBTQ clusters simply add strings of 1's or A's before their name.

"Because the number of independent social media platforms is growing, these hate-generating clusters are very likely to strengthen and expand their interconnections via new links, and will likely exploit new platforms which lie beyond the reach of the U.S. and other Western nations' jurisdictions." Johnson said. "The chances of getting all social media platforms globally to work together to solve this are very slim. However, our mathematical analysis identifies strategies that platforms can use as a group to effectively slow or block online hate content."

Based on their findings, the team suggests several ways for social media platforms to slow the spread of malicious content:

Artificially lengthen the pathways that malicious content needs to take between clusters, increasing the chances of its detection by moderators and delaying the spread of time-sensitive material such as weaponized COVID-19 misinformation and violent content.

Control the size of an online hate cluster's support base by placing a cap on the size of clusters.

Introduce non-malicious, mainstream content in order to effectively dilute a cluster's focus.

"Our study demonstrates a similarity between the spread of online hate and the spread of a virus," Yonatan Lupu, an associate professor of political science at GW and co-author on the paper, said. "Individual social media platforms have had difficulty controlling the spread of online hate, which mirrors the difficulty individual countries around the world have had in stopping the spread of the COVID-19 virus."

Going forward, Johnson and his team are already using their map and its mathematical modeling to analyze other forms of malicious content -- including the weaponization of COVID-19 vaccines in which certain countries are attempting to manipulate mainstream sentiment for nationalistic gains. They are also examining the extent to which single actors, including foreign governments, may play a more influential or controlling role in this space than others.

WASHINGTON, June 15, 2021 -- Optical cloaking allows objects to be hidden in plain sight or to become invisible by guiding light around anything placed inside the cloak. While cloaking has been popularized in fiction, like in the "Harry Potter" books, researchers in recent years have started realizing cloaks that shield objects from view by controlling the flow of electromagnetic radiation around them.

In the Journal of Applied Physics, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Toyota Research Institute of North America examined recent progress of developing invisibility cloaks that function in natural incoherent light and can be realized using standard optical components, part of ongoing research over the last two decades.

Invisibility cloaks potentially have a broad array of applications in sensing and display devices in warfare, surveillance, blind spot removal in vehicles, spacecraft, and highly efficient solar cells. The researchers examined blind spots that occur in vehicles, such as the windshield pillars, the stanchions that frame windshields.

"We are always looking for ways to keep drivers and passengers safe while driving," said author Debasish Banerjee. "We started exploring whether we could make the light go around the pillar so it appeared transparent."

Advances in metamaterials, engineered complexes of metals and dielectrics for manipulating electromagnetic waves, have opened up the possibility for realizing optical cloaks around an object by making incoming light bypass it.

Perfect optical cloaking requires the total scattering of electromagnetic waves around an object at all angles and all polarizations and over a wide frequency range, irrespective of the medium. This has not yet been achieved.

However, by simplifying the invisibility requirements, innovative work with spherical transformation cloaks, carpet cloaks, plasmonic cloaks, and mantle cloaks in narrowband microwave, infrared, and optical wavelengths has been accomplished over the last two decades.

"One of the real challenges is that we have to optimize optical elements around an object so that phase relationships are preserved," said Banerjee.

For optimization, artificial intelligence and machine learning may help resolve certain challenges. Algortihms can help solve the necessary inverse design problem in the context of practical cloaking devices.

These can be powerful tools to predict and analyze the optical responses of these devices or detectors without time-consuming and expensive simulations, which may raise the possibility of intelligent invisibility that is adaptive to movements, shapes, and the environment.

With the fast development of both AI-aided design and additive manufacturing capabilities, it is foreseeable that flexible cloaks that could function effectively at all incident angles with a high cloaking ratio and a wide field of view could be realized and mass-produced at low cost and high efficiency.