Brain

An international team working at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used a unique X-ray instrument to learn new things about lithium-rich battery materials that have been the subject of much study for their potential to extend the range of electric vehicles and the operation of electronic devices.

The researchers focused their investigations on a material called lithium manganese oxide (Li2MnO3), the extreme example of so-called "lithium-rich" materials, containing the largest amount of lithium possible within this family of materials. A recently developed tenet of the battery community is that battery electrodes composed of lithium-rich materials could offer high-voltage, high-capacity operation because the oxygen in the material participates in reversible chemical "redox" reactions, in which oxygen atoms cyclically lose and gain electrons, helping the battery have a higher capacity to store and use electrical charge.

This work, however, showed that the reversible reactions don't, in fact, involve oxygen in Li2MnO3 during battery operation. Instead, further analysis on the other element in the material, manganese, revealed that the reason the material could be cycled is because of an unusual and complete switch to manganese-based reactions, with a relatively low capacity, right after the first charging. The finding paves the way to explorations of high-energy electrode materials outside the lithium-rich family.

Moreover, the research team was especially surprised to observe a "partially reversible" formation and disappearance of carbonate compounds on the surface of the material. These highly reactive surface properties suggest the material can function as a catalyst and could facilitate the reversible chemical reactions required for exotic next-gen batteries like lithium-air and lithium-carbon dioxide batteries. The carbonate compounds observed on the surface of Li2MnO3 contain carbon bonded to oxygen atoms, meaning lithium-rich materials could be effective catalysts for reactions involving carbon dioxide gas.

"What we all feel is exciting is that, through a fundamental spectroscopic study of this material, we not only clarified the reaction mechanism of this long-debated material, but also found a conceptually different use of it as a catalyst," said Wanli Yang, a senior scientist at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) who adapted a technique called resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) for this type of battery study. He also served as a study co-author, working as part of a large international collaboration. The study was published March 4 in the journal Joule.

"Some findings indicated that this material is actually more suitable as a catalyst due to its highly reactive surface. So our battery material collaborators tested it as a catalyst and found it indeed has superior performance for lithium-carbon dioxide and lithium-air batteries," he added.

The researchers noted in the study that the high-capacity carbonate cycling based on the Li2MnO3 catalyst has a superior reversibility compared to similar systems with typical oxide-based catalysts. The results also open the door for a whole class of alkali-rich materials to be used as catalysts for other applications, such as fuel cells.

The key to the study was a specialized beamline at the ALS that can essentially dissect chemical reactions one element at a time to find out which ones are - or are not - involved in reactions. The ALS is a synchrotron that can produce light in a range of "colors," or wavelengths, from the infrared to X-rays.

The researchers used RIXS to map the chemistry of the samples at different stages in the charge-discharge cycle. They found no evidence of the reversible oxygen redox reactions expected for this material by many scientists. Instead, they found oxygen is involved in only a one-way oxidation reaction, and in very active surface reactions.

Yang noted that the study overturns several popular models for understanding the oxygen redox activities in battery electrodes, but opens up new thinking about the types of low-cost materials that can utilize oxygen redox reactions, since researchers found that the behavior of the oxygen redox reaction in lithium-rich electrodes is actually the same as that of conventional electrodes in use today. Leveraging the oxygen redox reaction could potentially enable batteries with high-voltage, high-capacity performance.

The concentration of the radioactive element radon is known to change in the ground before and after earthquakes. Previous studies have shown elevated radon levels in the atmosphere before the mainshock of a large inland earthquake due to foreshock activity and slow slip.

But now, researchers from Tohoku University have revealed an anomaly in this phenomenon. Through the analysis of data before and after the 2018 Northern Osaka Earthquake, they discovered that the atmospheric radon concentration decreased.

The results of their research were published online in Scientific Reports on April 2, 2021.

"For the first time, we found a decrease in the atmospheric radon associated with seismic quiescence before the mainshock of an inland earthquake," said professor Jun Muto of the Graduate School of Science at Tohoku University. Muto, who led the research group with professor Hiroyuki Nagahama, collaborated with Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University and Kobe Pharmaceutical University.

Observation in atmospheric radon concentration levels from the Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University showed a decline about one year before the earthquake, a trend that continued until June 2020. Seismic activity in the vicinity of the monitoring site also declined prior to the earthquake along with a reduced seismic activity after the mainshock for the entire Kansai region, excluding the aftershock area.

All of this suggests that radon levels did not increase after the earthquake. It also paints a more complicated picture of the radon and fluid movements that cause radon exhalation in the subsurface when large earthquakes occur.

"The discovery revealed that more processes are occurring before earthquakes than previously thought," said Muto. "Further analysis of other earthquakes will lead to a better understanding of the physiochemical processes at play and help us use atmospheric radon concentrations to clarify various crustal movements correlated with major earthquakes."

The research group has established atmospheric radon concentration measurement monitoring networks at radioisotope facilities across Japan. Monitoring is also expected be carried out at nuclear power plants.

Expansion of the monitoring network will help clarify the area and timing of radon anomalies, the geological characteristics that cause such anomalies, and the relationship with the different earthquake types. All of this will help realize a radon-based earthquake prediction system.

A new biosealant therapy may help to stabilize injuries that cause cartilage to break down, paving the way for a future fix or - even better - begin working right away with new cells to enhance healing, according to a new animal-based study by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Their research was published in Advanced Healthcare Materials.

"Our research shows that using our hyaluronic acid hydrogel system at least temporarily stops cartilage degeneration that commonly occurs after injury and causes pain in joints," said the study's senior author, Robert Mauck, PhD, a professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and the director of Penn Medicine's McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory. "In addition to pausing cartilage breakdown, we think that applying this therapy can present a surface that is 'sticky' for cells, such as stem cells that are routinely injected into joints to counteract injury. This reinforcing hydrogel could actually synergize with those cells to create a long-term solution."

Articular cartilage is the tissue that covers the ends of bones at joints. It keeps bones from painfully grinding together, and its density and resilience allow it to undergo a lot of forces amid human movement. Unfortunately, these routine yet complex stresses cause cartilage to wear down easily - particularly amid some form of injury - and is hard to replace or regrow. This means that it is especially important to keep the remaining cartilage strong and stable.

To that end, Mauck, study lead author Jay Patel, PhD, a former post-doctoral fellow in the McKay Lab and now assistant professor at Emory University, and their team developed a therapy to use a modified version of hyaluronic acid - a substance naturally produced by the body's connective tissue - that could be introduced to the injured cartilage site. They recognized that this therapy needed to follow a twofold key to preserving cartilage: reinforcement and sealing.

"We often relate this combined approach to treating a damaged deck in your backyard," Patel said. "To fortify the existing wood structure, you need something like a wood hardener, then you can apply a wood sealer to prevent future wear. In the same way, we applied a substance that seeps into the pores of the tissue and provides reinforcement, then 'sealed' it by guiding the behavior of injected stem cells towards forming a layer that caps the whole structure."

In a large animal model, the researchers introduced the biogel to damaged cartilage, showing that it intertwined with the cartilage's matrix structure to stabilize the cartilage. They also demonstrated that it was retained for at least one week in the joint environment. When living cartilage was tested in the lab, the researchers found that applying the hyaluronic acid biogel restored regular activity to chondrocytes, the cells within cartilage tissue. This meant that the microenvironment around the cells was now being reinforced.

Once reinforced, the researchers shifted to sealing the cartilage, so that further tissue loss at the injury site didn't erode the cartilage's structure. To that end, the team combined the hyaluronic acid hydrogel system with an injection of mesenchymal stem/stromal cells, to promote the formation of a thin "living" barrier on the cartilage surface to protect it from further wear. When the researchers compared models that received the treatment to ones that did not, the treatment models displayed a thicker layer of protective tissue that could protect the cartilage's structure and preserve function.

"We've shown that this is an innovative technology and methodology for potentially addressing the complexities of treating damaged cartilage tissue that traditionally have made it so difficult," said Patel. "Next, we hope to translate this technology to more large animal studies and to the clinic in the near future."

These findings led to a translational grant from Penn Health Tech, the interdisciplinary center that combines teams from Penn Medicine and Penn Engineering to create new medical technology. Further, the technology is at the heart of a new company (Forsagen LLC) spun out of Penn with support from the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) Ventures Program, which will attempt to spearhead the system's entry into the clinic. It is co-founded by both Mauck and Patel, along with study co-author Jason Burdick, a professor of Bioengineering at Penn, and Ana Peredo, a PhD student in Bioengineering.

What The Study Did: This survey study uses self-reported data from a national study of veterans to assess the association of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder with posttraumatic psychological growth (these are positive psychological changes such as an appreciation of life and personal growth) among U.S. veterans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Authors: Robert H. Pietrzak, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.4972)

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

Calibration and validation (CAL/VAL) is a key technology for quantitative application of space-borne remote sensing data. However, the complex space environment can cause many uncertainties and degrade the calibration accuracy. In-flight calibration is always needed. The thermal emission of the Moon is stable over hundreds of years because there is no atmosphere and no significant physical or chemical change on its surface. The deep space view of the Microwave Humidity Sounder onboard NOAA-18 has viewed the Moon many times every year. Under solar illumination, the lunar surface shows stable and periodical variation in microwave brightness temperature (TB). The Moon is a potential calibration source for thermal calibration

The related work was published in Science China Earth Sciences with the name of "Calibration of the space-borne microwave humidity sounder based on real-time thermal emission from lunar surface". Based on the heat conductive equation, the temperature profiles of lunar regolith at different regions and local time are simulated numerically with the real-time solar radiance and angle of incidence. The simulated temperatures are validated with the infrared TBs measured by the Diviner infrared sounder onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The microwave TBs measured by China's "Chang'e 2" satellite were used to invert the loss tangents of lunar surface. The inverted loss tangents were applied to modelling the microwave TBs of lunar near side at microwave humidity sounder's channels. The simulated average microwave TBs are consistent with the observation of NOAA-18 microwave humidity sounder (Figure 1).

The analysis shows that microwave TB of lunar surface is related with the frequency. The microwave can penetrate the lunar regolith. Microwave TB is the cumulative contribution of the regolith thermal emission. The superficial temperature plays a dominate role in microwave TB at high frequency channels because of the small penetration depth. The superficial temperature of regolith drops significantly with depth at daytime, resulting in a high microwave TB at high frequency. While at night, the observed TB is low at high frequency because the superficial temperature of regolith increases with depth.

The digital counts of microwave humidity sounder were used to fit the full width at half maxima of the sounder when the deep space view scans across the Moon. The fitted full width at half maxima was applied in deriving the average lunar TB from the observed digital counts. The simulation analysis shows that the distance between the satellite and the lunar phase angle will influence the inverted full width at half maxima. According to the study of "Chang'e 2" microwave observation of the Moon, the average microwave TBs of the lunar near side at different frequencies and phase angles are modelled. The simulation can be taken as a supplemental reference for the calibration of microwave humidity sounder onboard NOAA-18. It can be taken as the calibration source of the microwave sounders onboard Geosynchronous satellites and CubeSats as well.

However, the microwave TB are measured by "Chang'e 2" satellites at nadir observation. The highest frequency is 37GHz. Specific observation of lunar surface at higher frequencies and large angles are needed for improving the modeling.

The rainfall over the Yangtze River Valley (YRV) in June 2020 broke the record since 1979 (Figure 1). As of June 28, the People's Daily Online reported that there were more than 12 million people affected by flood disasters related to this torrential rain, with deaths or disappearances of 78 persons and a direct economic loss of more than 25 billion CNY. Recently, scientists from South China Sea Institute of Oceanology (SCSIO), Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed the cause of the record-breaking rainfall over the YRV.

According to their study published in Science China Earth Sciences on March 19, 2021, all three oceans of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans contribute to the record-breaking rainfall over the YRV in June 2020, which is unique and different from previous studies.

"There are negative 200-hPa relative vorticity anomalies over North China (NC) and negative 850-hPa relative vorticity anomalies in the South China Sea (SCS) in June 2020 (Figure 2). The rainfall anomalies in the YRV are mainly controlled by the NC vorticity. However, the SCS vorticity provides favorable moisture conditions for the rainfall anomalies in the YRV", explained by Dr. Jiayu Zheng from SCSIO, leading author of the study. Atmospheric processes associated with these two vorticity anomalies are essential for the record-breaking rainfall over the YRV.

Dr. Chunzai Wang, corresponding author of this study, added: "Atmospheric circulation anomalies are strongly influenced by sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The purpose of our study is to detect which ocean's SSTs are responsible for the atmospheric circulation and rainfall anomalies in June 2020 over the YRV."

In their study, they revealed that the positive SST anomalies in May over the western North Atlantic induce positive geopotential height anomalies in June over the mid-latitude North Atlantic, which affect the rainfall anomalies in the YRV by changing the NC vorticity via Atlantic-induced atmospheric wave train activity across Europe. The Indian Ocean and tropical North Atlantic, as capacitors of Pacific El Niño events, affect the SCS vorticity associated the anomalous anticyclone over the SCS and also facilitate the YRV rainfall by providing favorable moisture conditions. Thus, all three oceans make contributions to the rainfall over the YRV in June 2020, but the Atlantic plays a dominant role.

Dr. Wang concluded: "Previous studies focused on relationships of the Pacific or Indian Oceans with the rainfall in China. In our study, we found that the three oceans have a combined influence on the rainfall in China." These results indicate that it is of importance to investigate extreme weather and climate events from the view of three oceans. Further research is needed to advance our understanding of three-ocean interactions and extreme weather and climate events.

Data collected from 337 cities across 18 countries show that even slight increases in ambient carbon monoxide levels from automobiles and other sources are associated with increased mortality.

A scientific team led by Yale School of Public Health Assistant Professor Kai Chen analyzed data, including a total of 40 million deaths from 1979 to 2016, and ran it through a statistical model. The research, published today in The Lancet Planetary Health, also found that even short-term exposure to ambient carbon monoxide (CO) -- at levels below the current air quality guidelines and considered safe -- had an association with increased mortality.

Overall, a 1 mg/m³ increase in the average CO concentration of the previous day was associated with a 0.91% increase in daily total mortality, the study found. This suggests considerable public health benefits could be achieved by reducing ambient CO concentrations through stricter control of traffic emissions and other measures.

Chen and colleagues also discovered that the exposure-response curve was steeper at daily CO levels lower than 1 mg/m³, indicating greater risk of mortality per increment in CO exposure, and this persisted at daily concentrations as low as 0.6 mg/m³ or less. The findings reveal that there is no evidence for a threshold value below which exposure to ambient CO can be considered "safe."

The U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standard for ambient CO (approximately 7 mg/m³ for the daily average) was established in 1971 and has not been revisited for the past five decades. The same air quality guideline for CO has been applied in other regions such as Europe, whereas a lower value of 4 mg/m³ was established as China's air quality standard.

The study's findings strongly suggest the need to revisit global and national air quality guidelines for CO and, in addition to single-pollutant standards, policies should also be expanded to address traffic-related air pollution mixtures.

"These findings have significant public health implications," Chen said. "Millions and millions of people live in environments with elevated CO levels and in environments where the CO levels are within the current guidelines considered 'safe range.'"

The international study is believed to be the largest epidemiological investigation on mortality and short-term CO exposure. Professor Michelle Bell of the Yale School of the Environment is a co-author of the paper.

Chen collaborated with 37 other scientists from the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network. The senior authors of this paper are Alexandra Schneider of the Helmholtz Zentrum München in Munich, Germany, and Antonio Gasparrini of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Boulder, Colo., USA: Gale Crater's central sedimentary mound (Aeolis Mons or, informally, Mount Sharp) is a 5.5-km-tall remnant of the infilling and erosion of this ancient impact crater. Given its thickness and age, Mount Sharp preserves one of the best records of early Martian climatic, hydrological, and sedimentary history.

In this paper, published today in Geology, William Rapin and colleagues present the first description of key facies in the sulfate-bearing unit, recently observed in the distance by the rover, and propose a model for changes in depositional environments.

The basal part of this sedimentary sequence is ahead of the Curiosity rover traverse and was recently analyzed with unprecedented resolution by the rover cameras. The telescopic imager of the ChemCam instrument was used here in particular, and its images show sedimentary structures that reveal evolution of environments on Mars during the Hesperian age (3.7-2.9 billion years ago).

Analysis of the structures shows that on top of the ancient lake deposits currently explored by the rover (Murray formation), vast aeolian deposits were formed by a dune field during a prolonged dry climatic episode. Yet, higher up, the stratigraphy reveals the resumption of wetter climatic conditions.

The climate of Mars appears therefore to have fluctuated several times at high order between dry conditions and wet conditions in the Hesperian age, a period during which Mars' environment is thought to have changed globally due to the gradual loss of its atmosphere to space.

Scientists could be a step closer to finding a way to reduce the impact of traumatic memories, according to a Texas A&M University study published recently in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The report details a study by researchers from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Institute for Neuroscience. Stephen Maren, professor of psychological and brain sciences, said the group's findings suggest that procedures used by clinicians to indirectly reactivate traumatic memories render a window whereby those memories can be altered, or even erased completely.

In therapy, imaginal reminders are often used to safely retrieve traumatic memories of experiences. For example, Maren said a military veteran wounded by an improvised explosive device may be asked to re-experience trauma cues - like the lights and sounds of the explosion - without the negative consequences. The idea is that the fear responses can be dampened through this exposure therapy.

"The one major challenge is when you do the extinction procedures, it doesn't erase the original trauma memory," Maren said. "It's always there and can bubble back up, which is what causes relapse for people who re-experience fear."

With this in mind, the researchers hoped to answer whether they could isolate a memory and drive fear responses by reactivating it artificially - and potentially disrupt the original memory itself. Maren said their findings suggest that procedures currently used by clinicians to indirectly reactivate traumatic memories create an opportunity to change or eliminate them.

To do this, the researchers used a conditioning procedure in which a cue becomes indirectly associated with a fearful event. When the cue is presented later, it indirectly reactivates a memory of the event and increases activity in the hippocampus, a brain area important for memory.

The study showed that indirectly reactivating a contextual fear memory through re-exposure to the cue can make the memory vulnerable to disruption. Maren said further research is needed to answer if scientists can produce a permanent loss of the traumatic information.

Eliminating racist and anti-LGBTQ policies is essential to improving the health of Black gay, bisexual and other sexual minority men, according to a Rutgers-led research team.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examined the impact that U.S. state-level structural racism and anti-LGBTQ policies have on the psychological and behavioral health of Black and white sexual minority men.

"Our results illuminate the compounding effects of racist and anti-LGBTQ policies and their implementation for Black gay, bisexual, and queer men. To improve mental and physical health and support their human rights, these oppressive policies must be changed," said lead author Devin English, an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Public Health.

The researchers surveyed a U.S. nationwide sample of 1,379 Black and 5,537 white sexual minority men who were over age 16, identified as male (including cisgender and transgender men), were HIV-negative or unaware of their status, and reported on their psychological health (e.g. anxiety symptoms) and behavioral health, (e.g. heavy drinking and HIV testing frequency).

The study measured structural racism based on an index assessing state-level Black-white inequities in incarceration rates, educational attainment, economic indicators, employment status and residential segregation. It measured anti-LGBTQ policies using the Human Rights Campaign State Equality Index that grades each state based on how its laws affect LGBTQ communities, like permitting hate crimes, conversion therapy and discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations. The states with the worst LGBTQ-policy grades were those in southern and upper midwestern states that continue to limit access or criminalize experiences of LGBTQ people, such as restricting access to bathrooms that match the gender identity of transgender and gender expansive communities. States with the worst structural racism scores were predominantly those with large metropolitan areas in northern states with legacies of redlining, systematic disinvestment and other forms of racism.

Black sexual minority men living in states with high levels of both structural racism and anti-LGBTQ policies were exponentially more likely to see themselves as a burden to others and engage in heavy drinking than those living in states with lower levels of structural oppression.
Additionally, Black participants had higher rates of anxiety in states with high levels of structural racism and anti-LGBTQ policies, and lower rates of HIV testing in states with anti-LGBTQ policies.

The study found that structural racism compounded the effects of anti-LGBTQ policies and vice versa. In contrast, the study did not find an association between either form of structural oppression and health outcomes for white sexual minority men.

"The finding that anti-LGBTQ policies were associated with negative psychological and behavioral health outcomes among Black, but not white, sexual minority men suggests this oppression disproportionately affects Black sexual minority communities," English said. "To effectively combat the negative health effects of structural oppression for Black sexual minority men, clinicians, researchers and policymakers must advocate for the passage of anti-oppression laws, like the Equality Act, that protect these men from interpersonal and institutional discrimination."

Doublespeak, or the use of euphemisms to sway opinion, lets leaders avoid the reputational costs of lying while still bringing people around to their way of thinking, a new study has found.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo found that the use of agreeable euphemistic terms biases people's evaluations of actions to be more favourable. For example, replacing a disagreeable term, "torture," with something more innocuous and semantically agreeable, like "enhanced interrogation."

"Like the much-studied phenomenon of 'fake news,' manipulative language can serve as a tool for misleading the public, doing so not with falsehoods but rather with the strategic use of euphemistic language," said Alexander Walker, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in cognitive psychology at Waterloo. "The avoidance of objectively false claims may provide the strategic user of language with plausible deniability of dishonesty, thus protecting them from the reputational cost associated with lying."

As part of a series of studies investigating the effectiveness, consequences and mechanisms of doublespeak in a psychological context, the researchers investigated whether the use of language characteristic of doublespeak can be used to influence peoples' evaluations of actions.

The researchers identified doublespeak as the strategic manipulation of language to influence the opinions of others by representing the truth in a manner that benefits one's self. To do this, the researchers assessed whether substituting an agreeable term--for example, "working at a meat-processing plant" in place of a semantically related disagreeable term like "working at a slaughterhouse"--has an impact on how a person's actions are interpreted.

The researchers' results confirmed that peoples' evaluations of an action can be biased in a predictable, self-serving way when an individual employs the strategic use of more or less agreeable terms when describing an action.

"Our study shows how language can be used strategically to shape peoples' opinions of events or actions," Walker said. "With a lower level of risk, individuals may be able to utilize linguistic manipulation, such as doublespeak, often without correction."

If relatives of people with mental illness become better at accepting the difficult emotions and life events they experience - which is what training in compassion is about - their anxiety, depression and stress is reduced. These are the results of a new study from the Danish Center for Mindfulness at Aarhus University.

Being a relative of a person with a mental illness can be very burdensome. It can feel like a great responsibility, and many people struggle with feelings of fear, guilt, shame and anger. A new study from the Danish Center for Mindfulness shows that eight weeks of training in compassion can significantly improve the well-being of relatives.

Compassion is a human quality that is anchored in the recognition of and desire to relieve suffering. In other words, compassion occurs when we come into contact with our own or others' suffering and feel motivated to relieve our own or others pain.

"After completing the course, the relatives had increased their well-being on several parameters. They could deal with the illness in a new and more skillful way, and we saw that the training reduced their symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress," says psychologist and PhD student Nanja Holland Hansen, who is behind the study.

And the positive results were maintained after a six month follow-up.

Trying to fix what is difficult

"The relatives learned that the more they turn towards what is difficult, the more skillful they may act. For example, relatives often try to 'fix' the problem or the challenge - so as to relieve their loved ones of what is difficult. That's a huge pressure to constantly deal with, and very few people can bear it," says Nanja Holland Hansen.

Living with chronic fear

She goes on to explain that training in compassion helps people to find the strength and courage to bear pain and suffering when life is difficult. It may seem both sensible and intuitive to guard yourself from the confrontation or avoid what is difficult and unpleasant. But this is the paradox of the training, explains the researcher. Because it is precisely actions and thoughts like these that shut down our compassion and thereby maintain the suffering.

"Fear and grief are emotions that take up a lot space for relatives of people with mental illness. For example chronic fear, which is a real fear that parents of a child with schizophrenia have about whether their child is going to commit suicide, or whether a child with autism will ever enjoy a 'normal life'," explains Nanja Holland Hansen and continues:

"Our suffering is maintained inside of us when we don't work with it. To avoid feeling pain, we may resort to behaviour such as working too much or buying things that we don't need. It's therefore in all these everyday actions that our compassion training becomes important and can be used to help alleviate what is difficult," she says.

No one escapes

The purpose of training in compassion is thus more than just feeling empathy or worrying about another person.

"Not a single person can completely avoid experiencing painful things in their life. In this way we're all the same. But what isn't the same for everyone is our ability to deal with the pain and suffering we experience. Training programmes in compassion have been developed because the research shows that we can train and strengthen our mental health. With systematic training of compassion, we generate more attention - and understanding of - our own thoughts, feelings and behaviour. And this helps us to develop the tools and skills to engage in healthier relations with ourselves and others," she explains.

A total of 161 relatives of people with mental illness participated in the study. This makes the study one of the largest of its kind in the world, and also the first scientific randomised clinical trial carried out with relatives in Denmark. The relatives were between 18 and 75 of age and were family members to people with various psychiatric disorders such as e.g. ADHD, schizophrenia and depression.

Meditation as homework

The relatives met once a week in groups of twenty participants over an eight-week period. Each session lasted two hours and was structured with small group exercises, large group discussions, instruction in the theme of the week and meditation. The homework consisted of twenty minutes of daily meditation.

"There is definitely a shortage of offers for these relatives. They're often told that they should remember to take care of themselves, but they haven't learned how to. We found that those who were involved in the study received the tools for precisely this," says Nanja Holland Hansen.

The results have just been published in the scientific journal JAMA.

"My hope is that local authorities and regions can offer this type of intervention for relatives. It should be an option and could easily be incorporated into our healthcare system. Economically and socially, a healthy person going on sick leave solely because he or she is a relative is a huge loss," says the researcher.

[Billedtekst:]: "Up to fifty percent of relatives of people with mental illness risk becoming ill themselves. That's why it's important that we also keep them and their well-being in mind," says Nanja Holland Hansen.

Muons, particles akin to electrons, have kepts physicists' heads spinning for more than a decade, because an experimental measurement of their magnetic properties (1) disagrees with theory. Could this be caused by unknown particles or forces?

A new theoretical calculation of this parameter, involving CNRS physicists and published in the journal Nature, has reduced the discrepancy with the experimental measurement. The debate nevertheless continues.

--

For over 10 years, measurement of the magnetic properties of the muon (an ephemeral cousin of the electron) has exhibited disagreement with theoretical predictions. This suggests a possible gap in the standard model of particle physics (2), possibly providing a glimpse of a more exotic physics. The first results of Fermilab's "Muon g-2" experiment, which measures one of these properties known as the muon "magnetic moment," will be revealed on 7 April 2021.

While France is not directly participating in this experiment, a CNRS team (3) played a decisive role in calculating the theoretical prediction used as a reference,(4) without which no conclusion would have been possible. To determine the effect of hadronic vacuum polarization, which currently limits the accuracy of calculations, the team used measurements made with electron-positron colliders. This exact approach, which depends exclusively on the precision of these measurements, has been developed and improved by this team for 20 years, leading to the disagreement with the experimental measurement of the muon's magnetic moment.

A different method was recently used by a team including CNRS researchers(5), whose result for the calculation of this contribution is being published in the journal Nature. This result notably reduces the discrepancy with the current experimental value. Thus, the standard model may yet have the last word! To achieve this result, the scientists calculated this contribution ab initio, which is to say using the standard model's equations with no additional parameter. With approximately one billion variables involved, multiple massively parallel European supercomputers (6) were needed to meet this great challenge. This is the first time an ab initio calculation has rivalled the precision of the reference approach, which predicts values for the muon magnetic moment that differ from the measured value to a greater degree.

To settle the matter once and for all, scientists will have to wait for the results of this new theoretical calculation to be confirmed by other teams, and determine what causes the differences between the two theoretical approaches. CNRS teams are currently working together to meet this challenge. They hope to obtain, by combining approaches, a new theoretical reference prediction that is accurate enough to decide the fate of the standard model in coming years, which will see the publication of the final results from Fermilab's "Muon g-2" experiment, as well as those from another experiment with similar objectives in Japan.

In Norway, all newborn children are tested for 25 rare genetic diseases through the Newborn Screening program, and the most common of these is phenylketonuria (abbreviated to PKU), known as Folling Disease.

Every year, between 3-7 children are born in Norway with PKU, and this diagnosis has a great impact on the rest of their lives. People with PKU must follow a very strict diet all their lives, where they must avoid almost all foods that contain proteins.

"Failure to implement the diet from birth may result in irreversible physical problems and brain damage, and optimal brain function requires life-long adherence", explains Professor Aurora Martinez at the Department of Biomedicine, University of Bergen.

Higher oxidative stress in mutated mice

The enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase (PAH) breaks down the amino acid phenylalanine (Phe). People with PKU have mutations in PAH, which results in misfolded, dysfunctional PAH. This leads to the accumulation of toxic levels of Phe in the blood and brain and a Phe-free diet is initiated immediately after diagnosis.

Aurora Martinez's leads a group of researchers that have extensive experience in working with genetic diseases associated with misfolding mutations, especially PKU.

To better understand the disease, they have made a model with mice with one of the most common human mutations of PAH (Pah-R261Q).

Mutated mice and their wild-type siblings were compared in several test, and in many of these the results were very similar for both mice groups.

"The first difference we found was an increase in the weight of the mutated male mice, and together with differences in metabolite profile (measured by Bevital) the results indicated that these mice had an altered lipid metabolism", says Martinez.

Together with studies in metabolism cages, where all mice were given the same standard food, it was shown that at rest wild-type mice used mainly carbohydrates, while the mutated Pah-R261Q mice used more fat and protein as metabolic fuel source.

"These differences pointed to a higher oxidative stress in the mutated mice, and this was not expected based on the customary understanding of PKU", Martinez explains.

Can explain some of the comorbidities found in adult PKU patients

The cause of the oxidative stress was a mystery for a while, but the explanation came when the group examined the livers of the Pah-R261Q mice.

"Mutated PAH enzymes are known to form small and readily degradable aggregates. But what was found here were unexpectedly large aggregates of mutant PAH. The burden of breaking down such large aggregates is a known cause of oxidative stress", says Martinez.

Previously, PKU has only been seen as a disease in which the PAH mutations led to the enzyme losing its catalytic function (the breakdown of Phe), but the results provide an additional understanding of how some mutations also provide a harmful property to PAH, through the formation of large aggregates.

"This may be a possible explanation for some of the comorbidities found in adult PKU patients. In the past, these have been attributed to the high Phe level or as a side effect of being on the strict Phe-free diet, but now there is an additional explanation based the large PAH aggregates and the oxidative stress they inflict on the hepatic cells", Martinez explains.

Going forward, the researchers will see if the findings in this mouse model are also found in human patients with the same mutation by analyzing their blood for markers of oxidative stress and use these markers during testing of specific therapies.

Sutures are used to close wounds and speed up the natural healing process, but they can also complicate matters by causing damage to soft tissues with their stiff fibers. To remedy the problem, researchers from Montreal have developed innovative tough gel sheathed (TGS) sutures inspired by the human tendon.

These next-generation sutures contain a slippery, yet tough gel envelop, imitating the structure of soft connective tissues. In putting the TGS sutures to the test, the researchers found that the nearly frictionless gel surface mitigated the damage typically caused by traditional sutures.

Conventional sutures have been around for centuries and are used to hold wounds together until the healing process is complete. But they are far from ideal for tissue repair. The rough fibers can slice and damage already fragile tissues, leading to discomfort and post-surgery complications.

Part of the problem lies in the mismatch between our soft tissues and the rigid sutures that rub against contacting tissue, say the researchers from McGill University and the INRS Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications Research Centre.

Inspired by the tendon

To tackle the problem, the team developed a new technology that mimics the mechanics of tendons. "Our design is inspired by the human body, the endotenon sheath, which is both tough and strong due to its double-network structure. It binds collagen fibers together while its elastin network strengthens it," says lead author Zhenwei Ma, a PhD student under the supervision of Assistant Professor Jianyu Li at McGill University.

The endotenon sheath not only forms a slippery surface to reduce friction with surrounding tissues in joints, but it also delivers necessary materials for tissue repair in a tendon injury. In the same way, TGS sutures can be engineered to provide personalized medicine based on a patient's needs, say the researchers.

Personalized wound treatment

"This technology provides a versatile tool for advanced wound management. We believe it could be used to deliver drugs, prevent infections, or even monitor wounds with near-infrared imaging," says Li of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

"The ability to monitor wounds locally and adjust the treatment strategy for better healing is an exciting direction to explore," says Li, who is also a Canada Research Chair in Biomaterials and Musculoskeletal Health.