Brain

The 2016 U.S. presidential election is considered a "game changer" for journalists covering the U.S. presidential elections by causing them to dramatically reconsider how they view their role -- either as neutral disseminators of information or impassioned advocates for the truth -- according to researchers at the University of Missouri's School of Journalism.

"The 2016 presidential election is considered a game changer because it introduced the issue of how journalists confront political candidates -- should they call out a lie and be more aggressive with checking the facts or do these actions violate the principles of journalistic neutrality," said Ryan J. Thomas, an associate professor of journalism studies. "While there are different views among the critics, the fact that this issue appeared in 2016 suggests there is something particular going on that hadn't been seen before."

A relatable example of this issue today can be found in the form of the presidential press conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic, Thomas said.

"In theory, these daily presidential press conferences about the COVID-19 pandemic ought to be a space for sharing critical public health information but instead they take the form of a political rally," he said. "News organizations have wrestled with the question of whether to run those press conferences live, with mixed results."

Thomas said this issue also highlights a broader debate about journalists' role in a democracy since the 2016 election.

"Journalism serves its democratic role through election coverage by providing the public with news they need to develop informed opinions that they can then use to cast their votes," he said. "With the 2016 presidential election, there was a shift towards self-advocacy in journalism. Rather than journalists assuming if they do their jobs, everything will be fine and their audience will trust them, now there is a lot of talk suggesting journalists need to self-advocate for their roles during a time when their work is being criticized as 'fake news' and they are being called 'enemies of the people.'"

Using a custom database funded by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, the researchers looked for patterns in ethical issues identified by press critics in over 300 press articles that covered the presidential elections between 2000-2016. They identified three common ethical issues over this period: failing to exercise independent judgment; failing to provide a representative picture of the electorate; and underestimating new and emerging technologies.

Thomas notes that while press critics have long reported about journalists facing criticism for their coverage of presidential elections, these common ethical issues highlight an important ongoing debate about election coverage within newsrooms: coverage of "the horse race," or who is winning or losing, or doing investigative and analytical reporting of candidates' policy issues. Thomas believes this is a structural problem within journalism.

"I don't believe we can pin all of the blame for this problem on journalists who are increasingly having to do more with less," Thomas said. "We suggest that the industry needs to look at economic incentives at the executive management or corporate level. Journalists themselves may not be on the right level to affect these changes."

Researchers at the Department of Infection and Immunity of the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) developed LIH383, a novel molecule that binds to and blocks a previously unknown opioid receptor in the brain, thereby modulating the levels of opioid peptides produced in the central nervous system (CNS) and potentiating their natural painkilling and antidepressant properties. Opioid peptides are small proteins that act as neuromodulators by interacting with four 'classical' opioid receptors on the surface of CNS cells, playing a key role in mediating pain relief but also emotions such as euphoria, anxiety, stress and depression. The molecule was developed by Dr Andy Chevigné, Head of Immuno-Pharmacology and Interactomics at LIH, and his team, based on their previous research that had identified the atypical chemokine receptor ACKR3 as a novel opioid receptor which binds to natural opioids and 'traps' them, thereby dampening their analgesic and antianxiety activity. These findings were published on June 19th in the prestigious international journal Nature Communications, carrying important implications for the development of a novel class of drugs for pain, depression and for brain cancer treatment.

Opioid-related disorders such as severe pain are currently predominantly treated through drugs that act on the opioid system. Opioid prescription drugs against pain -- including morphine, oxycodone and fentanyl -- work by targeting and activating opioid receptors, preventing the natural 'pain message' from being transmitted, altering pain perception and consequently resulting in painkilling effects. Despite their effectiveness, the use of these painkillers frequently leads to several side-effects, such as tolerance, dependence and respiratory disorders. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find new means to modulate the opioid system by using drugs with novel mechanisms of action and reduced complications, particularly given the current public health crisis, known as the "opioid crisis", linked to the growing abuse of and addiction to synthetic opioids.

In this context, the LIH research team led by Dr Chevigné developed and patented a novel molecule - LIH383 - that has the overall effect of increasing the availability of opioid peptides that bind to classical opioid receptors in the brain.

Specifically, LIH383 works by targeting and blocking the atypical chemokine receptor ACKR3, which the LIH researchers had shown to be a new opioid receptor with negative regulatory properties. The scientists demonstrated that ACKR3 possesses a high affinity for a variety of opioids, namely those belonging to the enkephalin, nociceptin and dynorphin families. However, the interaction between ACKR3 and these opioids does not generate the typical pain-relief or tranquillising 'messages' that arise when opioids bind to the so-called 'classical' opioid receptors.

"Interestingly, we found that ACKR3 does not trigger the distinctive chain of molecular signalling events that results in painkilling effects. Instead, ACKR3 functions as a 'scavenger' that sequestrates the opioids that would otherwise bind to the classical receptors. In other words, ACKR3 is an atypical opioid receptor that traps the secreted opioid peptides and reduces the levels that can interact with traditional receptors, therefore mitigating their action and acting as a negative regulator of the opioid system", explains Max Meyrath, co-first author of the study.

"Our findings essentially brought forward a new and previously unknown mechanism to fine-tune the opioid system and modulate the abundance of natural opioids by manipulating the fifth member of the opioid receptor family, ACKR3. We therefore set about developing a molecule that would be able to tightly bind to and block ACKR3, with the aim of potentiating the natural beneficial effects of opioids on pain and negative emotions. This is how LIH383 was conceived", says Dr Martyna Szpakowska, co-first author of the publication. The team subsequently carried out a proof of concept of the efficacy of LIH383 in modulating ACKR3 activity and filed a patent application in April 2020.

These results open up alternative options for the treatment of chronic pain, stress, anxiety and depression, but also for cancer therapy. Indeed, aside from its newly-described role as an opioid receptor, ACKR3 was originally known as a chemokine receptor for its ability to also bind to chemokines -- small proteins secreted by immune cells which mediate immune responses but which have also been shown to be involved in tumour initiation and metastasis. Specifically, ACKR3 is expressed abundantly in tumours such as glioblastoma - a highly aggressive type of brain cancer - and breast cancer, and its presence correlates with increased tumour growth, metastasis, resistance to chemotherapy and poor prognosis. "As an ACKR3 modulator that interacts and 'interferes' with ACKR3, LIH383 therefore also holds promise for the treatment of metastatic cancers, leveraging on our remarkable discovery of the dual chemokine-opioid 'scavenging' activity of this receptor", underlines Dr Chevigné. "We expect LIH383 to act as a precursor for the development of a new class of drugs against pain and depression, thus offering an innovative and original therapeutic strategy to tackle the opioid crisis", he adds.

"This is a glaring example of the way fundamental research can be translated into concrete applications with tangible benefits for patients, leading to improved clinical outcomes", states Prof Markus Ollert, Director of the LIH Department of Infection and Immunity and co-author of the study. "The success of our work was only made possible by the generous and unwavering support of the Luxembourg National Research Fund, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, as well as the charitable initiative 'Télévie'", he concludes.

Overview

A research team from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Electronics-Inspired Interdisciplinary Research Institute at Toyohashi University of Technology has indicated that the relationship between attentional states in response to pictures and sounds and the emotions elicited by them may be different in visual perception and auditory perception. This result was obtained by measuring pupillary reactions related to human emotions. It suggests that visual perception elicits emotions in all attentional states, whereas auditory perception elicits emotions only when attention is paid to sounds, thus showing the differences in the relationships between attentional states and emotions in response to visual and auditory stimuli.

Details

In our daily lives, our emotions are often elicited by the information we receive from visual and auditory perception. As such, many studies up until now have investigated human emotional processing using emotional stimuli such as pictures and sounds. However, it was not clear whether such emotional processing differed between visual and auditory perception.

Our research team asked participants in the experiment to perform four tasks to alert them to various attentional states when they were presented with emotionally arousing pictures and sounds, in order to investigate how emotional responses differed between visual and auditory perception. We also compared the pupillary responses obtained by eye movement measurements as a physiological indicator of emotional responses. As a result, visual perception (pictures) elicited emotions during the execution of all tasks, whereas auditory perception (sounds) did so only during the execution of tasks where attention was paid to the sounds. These results suggest that there are differences in the relationship between attentional states and emotional responses to visual and auditory stimuli.

"Traditionally, subjective questionnaires have been the most common method for assessing emotional states. However, in this study, we wanted to extract emotional states while some kind of task was being performed. We therefore focused on pupillary response, which is receiving a lot of attention as one of the biological signals that reflect cognitive states. Although many studies have reported about attentional states during emotional arousal owing to visual and auditory perception, there have been no previous studies comparing these states across senses, and this is the first attempt", explains the lead author, Satoshi Nakakoga, Ph. D. student.

Besides, Professor Tetsuto Minami, the leader of the research team, said, "There are more opportunities to come into contact with various visual media via smartphones and other devices and to evoke emotions through that visual and auditory information. We will continue investigating about sensory perception that elicits emotions, including the effects of elicited emotions on human behavior."

Future Outlook

Based on the results of this research, our research team indicates the possibility of a new method of emotion regulation in which the emotional responses elicited by a certain sense are promoted or suppressed by stimuli input from another sense. Ultimately, we hope to establish this new method of emotion regulation to help treat psychiatric disorders such as panic and mood disorders.

Researchers at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences have successfully established a universal synthetic design using porous organic polymers (POPs) for fuel cell electrolyte, according to an Editor's choice hot article published in the journal Materials Chemistry Frontiers.

Development of new materials for cost-effective technologies is urgent and necessary to bring about an environmentally sustainable society. Polymer electrolyte fuel cells have high expectations for a clean energy system that can support environmental protection. They must be able to split a molecule of hydrogen into positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. For this purpose, polymeric materials with high proton conductivity are needed. Electrons do not pass through the material, only protons pass through, so we can be extracted as electricity.

Research has shown simple, universal, and cost-effective synthetic strategy for gaining highly proton-conductive POPs as shown in Scheme 1. They show excellent proton conductivity of 10-2 to 10-1 S cm-1.

In the research so far, there were problems that the synthetic method using POPs was complicated and the skeleton was limited. In order to establish the synthetic strategy universal for practical applications, we were able to try various skeletons as POPs and established the synthetic method applicable to almost all aromatic-based materials, says materials scientist Yuki Nagao of JAIST, who has been researching proton-conducting materials for many years.

They divided the synthetic steps into two steps. First, a porous organic polymer was synthesized. Second, a post-sulfonation strategy was adopted which then introduced sulfonic acid groups through the pores. The catalyst used during synthesis causes deterioration of the material during fuel cell operation, but it could also be removed by using the pores. A remarkable conductivity of S-POP-TPM (Scheme 1) was recorded on 2.7 × 10-2 and 1.0 × 10-1 S cm-1 under 25 and 80 °C at 95% RH, respectively.

"Results of this study indicate that the structure of sulfonated POPs offers a simple and universal means for evolving structural design for highly proton-conductive materials.," explains Zhongping Li, who is the first author of this work. A step forward towards a hydrogen society.

As humanity expands its horizons beyond the Earth and begins to consider space missions with extended duration, sustainability necessitates the launch of more space vehicles, increasing the risk of collision with existing space debris. One method of clearing this debris involves a tug vehicle dragging it to a safe region. In a new paper published in EPJ Special Topics, authors Antônio Delson Conceição de Jesus and Gabriel Luiz F. Santos, both from the State University of Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil, model the complex rendezvous manoeuvres a tug vehicle clearing space debris would have to undergo to mitigate the risk of a collision that could cause irreparable damage at the moment of coupling.

As the authors point out, space missions occur in an environment populated by around 3,600 man-made satellites, of which under a third are operational. The non-operational units are subject to leakage, explosions and fragmentation further littering the region around the Earth - ?especially at Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). A botched collision could not only result in irreparable damage, but also the creation of more space debris that could hamper further missions. This makes towing operations to clear this debris desirable, but dangerous.

The duo studied the use of propulsion systems to control the objects' relative velocities and positions in a rendezvous manoeuvre performed around the Earth. Such operations require that tow vehicle and the debris have null velocities and relative position at the moment of connection. Examining the parameters of these operations through the solutions of a multivariable tensor equation, de Jesus and Santos found that encounter manoeuvres of a space-debris towing vehicle can be implemented in minimal time and with a simultaneity that arises from bringing the velocity and relative final positions of the two objects to zero at the same instant.

The successful connection between objects in space can, of course, be applied in more scenarios than just the shifting of space debris. Connecting vehicles could become a vital part of the development of a sustainable long-term space mission.

An article published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation presents a new five-step protocol to mitigate the mortality of birds of prey due to accidents with infrastructures (power lines, ponds, etc.) and other unnatural causes (direct hunting). The protocol that could also be applied to the conservation of other terrestrial vertebrates -even marine species-is a new scientific contribution from the Conservation Biology Group , led by the lecturer Joan Real, from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona.

The study covers a wide spectrum of demographical, ecological and populational factors of the affected species by unnatural deaths, and it unifies criteria on the actions to take sequentially -at multi-spatial scales- to prioritize the areas efficiently as well as the populations and infrastructure that need mitigation efforts. Other authors of the study are the experts Antonio Hernández Matías, Santi Mañosa, Àlex Rollan and Rafael Bosch (UB-IRBio).

Five steps to mitigate mortality due to unnatural causes

Most of the animal populations are divided into subpopulations that contribute differently to the populational dynamics. Some local populations behave as demographical sources -they bring individuals to other local populations- and others are considered to be sink (they would extinct if it weren't for the clear entrance of animals from other populations).

The new protocol enables researchers to identify the local populations on which they should focus their most efficient actions to reduce unnatural-caused deaths. "The first phase of the protocol would be to identify the sink populations, which show a higher death rate than birth rate due to the threat we want to mitigate", notes Joan Real, director of the Conservation Biology Group (UB-IRBio).

"Conservation of these populations -he continues- does not only affect the populations but the whole species, since it could prevent the sink species from extinguishing like other neighbouring local populations which act as demographical sources".

In the next phase, researchers should identify the most frequented areas by the individuals (nesting, feeding, etc.) in the areas with more sink populations. Then, the protocol determines the infrastructures that are a threat due to their features (ponds without ramps to prevent animals from drowning, roads without elements to avoid accidents, etc.) or their location in the chosen habitat by the studied species.

The last phase includes all the obtained data with the information related to the infrastructures where the episodes that caused the death of these animals were registered.

Power lines: a threat to all birds worldwide

Bird electrocution is a global threat which is affecting a higher number of species every time. Some of the most affected birds are emblematic species such as the Bonelli's eagle (Aquila fasciata), the Spanish imperial eagle (Aquila adalberti), the eastern imperial eagle (Aquila heliacal), the bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus), the Eurasian eagle-owl (Bubo bubo), the Cape vulture (Gyps coprotheres), the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the Andean condor (Vultur gryphus), the martial eagle (Polemaetus bellicosus) or the bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).

In order to mitigate the frequency of unnatural risks, the protocol presents the Bonelli's eagle as a reference, a threatened eagle around Europe. "Focusing the protocol on specific species is justified when these are considered highly threatened, therefore, it seems a priority to promote actions to improve the conservation of their species", notes Hernández-Matías, lecturer at the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences of the UB, and first author of the study.

The expert adds that "in case of considering the mitigation of threats (accidents, collisions, electrocution, drowning), in the whole series of affected species and under a situation of limited budgets, we could make a great effort to mitigate threats in areas that are relevant for the most common species and not for the most threatened ones".

A protocol with multi-spatial scale action criteria

In Catalonia and the rest of the peninsula, accidents with power lines and human persecution activity cause most of the deaths of the Bonelli's eagle. The new protocol would enable researchers to improve the viability of the Bonelli's eagle in the long run, with higher survival rates and larger self-sustaining populations -regulated by natural factors. "The highest positive impact will be reached through electrocution episodes in the scupper territories and populations. Once these are identified, we need to apply the spatial and danger criteria for the infrastructures to improve the efficiency of conservation actions", notes Hernández-Matías.

Finding the differential use of the area a species does and the level of the risk of different power supports is essential in a natural space where a few birds of prey nest. "The study reveals that there can be about seven couples of Bonelli's eagle in one area with 15,428 supports, and only 229 -a 1.4%- represent a higher threat and should be a priority correction.

When the geographical area is large, we need to consider the demographical heterogeneity of the population to optimize the actions since the contribution to the viability of the species is not the homogeneous in all populational groups.

Improving the efficiency of mitigation actions in the natural environment

Half of the north of the Peninsula and Catalonia are geographical areas where mitigation actions should be prioritized in order to protect the populations of Bonelli's eagle. The effectiveness of the corrections will depend on how ideal the presented actions and prioritization of the areas is, as well as the support with a higher negative impact, authors say. The lack of uniformity in the criteria and systems to correct dangerous supports and the lack of centralized information on the correction operations make it harder for these mitigation actions to work out in power lines.

"Mitigation of the electrocution impact on birds is not easy, and the process to get the necessary information is long and expensive. The amount of supports we need to correct and its high economic cost is the first conditioning factor to reduce this threat in Catalonia, where about 60% of the areas show low survival levels for this species", note the authors.

The correction method is the second conditioning factor. The most efficient system is to modify the original structure of this support to make a low-risk design that removes this problem for good. In some cases, this works by making some relatively simple operations; in others, the most effective results are more expensive (power lines under the floor, removal of some spots, etc.). However, these actions require a long-term monitoring to guarantee this support does not become dangerous again.

In a context of environmental and economic sustainability, "the developed protocol provides a reference framework to quantify the financial cost of corrections in infrastructures and obtain the expected benefit in the population of the threatened species", conclude the authors.

More than 8 in 10 Americans (83%) say the future of our nation is a significant source of stress, according to the American Psychological Association's most recent survey report, Stress in AmericaTM 2020: Stress in The Time of COVID-19, Volume Two. The previous high was 69%, reported in 2018 as part of APA's annual Stress in America survey.

Following protests over racial injustice sparked by the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police -- all set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic -- more than 7 in 10 (72%) Americans say that this is the lowest point in the country's history that they can remember.

The report includes findings from two recent surveys conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of APA: Wave 2 of the COVID Tracker conducted from May 21 to June 3, 2020, among 3,013 adults age 18+ who reside in the U.S. and an additional poll about the current civil unrest conducted from June 9 to 11, 2020, among 2,058 adults age 18+ who reside in the U.S.

"We are experiencing the collision of three national crises -- the COVID-19 pandemic, economic turmoil and recent, traumatic events related to systemic racism. As a result, the collective mental health of the American public has endured one devasting blow after another, the long-term effects of which many people will struggle with for years to come," said Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, APA's chief executive officer. "We don't have to be passive players in mitigating the rapidly increasing stress Americans are facing and its consequences on our health."

The proportion of black Americans who say discrimination is a significant source of stress has increased significantly in the past month, with 55% of black adults saying discrimination is a significant source of stress in Wave 2 of the COVID Tracker. At the beginning of May, only 42% said the same in Wave 1. In the most recent civil unrest poll, more than 7 in 10 Americans (71%) say police violence toward minorities is a significant source of stress. But most Americans (67%) say the current movement against systemic racism and police brutality is going to lead to meaningful change in America.

"America has an ongoing racism pandemic that continues to devastate the lives and livelihoods of our black communities," Evans said. "The majority of Americans are finally coming to terms with the reality people of color have known all too well for all too long and that research has documented: Racism poses a public health threat and the psychological burden is immense. We have a lot of healing to do as a nation. Increased access to psychological supports is one way to move us more in the right direction."

In a continued focus on pandemic-related stress through the COVID Tracker, the report also shows nearly 2 in 3 adults (66%) say the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a significant source of stress. Of those, 84% say the federal government response is a significant source of stress, followed by state (72%) and local governments (64%).

Overall, more than 6 in 10 Americans (63%) agree that the thought of the U.S. reopening causes them stress, but just over 7 in 10 adults (72%) say they are confident they can protect themselves from coronavirus once the U.S. reopens. At the same time, 65% say they wish they had more information about what they should do as their community reopens.

Stress in AmericaTM 2020: Stress in the Time of COVID-19, Volume Two plus downloadable graphics are available in the Stress in America Press Room. APA also offers resources for the public on mental health during the time of COVID-19, including resources for parents and on racial equity and health disparities.

Methodology

Wave 2 of the COVID Tracker was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association between May 21 and June 3, 2020, among 3,013 adults age 18+ who reside in the U.S. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Data were weighted to reflect their proportions in the population based on the 2019 Current Population Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau. Weighting variables included age by gender, race/ethnicity, education, region, household income and time spent online. Hispanic adults also were weighted for acculturation taking into account respondents' household language as well as their ability to read and speak in English and Spanish. Country of origin (U.S./non-U.S.) also was included for Hispanic and Asian subgroups. Weighting variables for Gen Z adults (ages 18 to 23) included education, age by gender, race/ethnicity, region, household income and size of household. Propensity score weighting was used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

The Civil Unrest Survey was conducted online within the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association between June 9 and 11, 2020, among 2,058 adults age 18+ who reside in the U.S. Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, household income, education, marital status and size of household where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

Neither online survey is based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including subgroup sample sizes, or methodologies for historical data referenced, contact sbethune@apa.org.

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes nearly 121,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.

Researchers from Sechenov University and the University of Pittsburgh compared the properties of two groups of extracellular vesicles. Either present in a liquid phase or attached to the fibres of the extracellular matrix, these vesicles facilitate metabolism and cell-cell communication. A better understanding of their structure, production and movement can help create new bioengineered materials and repair damaged tissues more quickly. Findings are published in Science Advances.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) fills the space within tissues, creating a scaffold for separate cells and a dynamic environment for cells, organelles and molecules to move in. Varying in composition and consistency from tissue to tissue, it performs several key functions such as mechanical support of tissues, division of different types of cells and transportation of substances, including signalling molecules.

Tissue engineering utilises materials derived from the ECM, making it critical to preserve its structure and functions. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are tiny vesicles released by cells and involved in the transfer of part of their content, such as proteins, lipids, enzymes and microRNAs. Several years ago, researchers discovered that some of the vesicles are attached to the ECM fibres, terming them matrix-bound vesicles (MBVs). Their composition and membrane structure have not been studied so far.

The authors decided to compare the structure and properties of liquid-phase EVs and MBVs. In order to rule out the differences linked to their provenance from different tissues, the researchers used a cell culture environment to control the cell type and medium.

Both groups showed a similar size of no more than 200 nanometres (typical of most of the extracellular vesicles in general), but a different composition of proteins, lipids and microRNAs they transport. MBVs, just like parent cells, contained a much greater share of cardiolipin, which is almost exclusively found in mitochondrial membranes - an indication that mitochondria and MBVs can have a common origin. Liquid-phase EVs, meanwhile, revealed a higher level of lipoxin ?4, which inhibits inflammation and stimulates tissue regeneration (through the activation of immune cells). The study also highlighted differences in the contents of vesicles obtained from different tissues, although the set of lipids and microRNAs in MBVs is rather consistent.

The findings suggest that the future behaviour of the vesicles (whether they will move in a liquid medium or stay attached to the matrix) is determined during their production stage. The fact that MBVs are embedded within a dense network of fibres shows that cells are most likely to release them when tissues are built or the damaged matrix is repaired.
Due to consistency of their lipids and microRNAs, MBVs can be used for both diagnostic and therapeutic purposes as well as the manufacture of new biomaterials.

Human appetites have transformed the tomato - DNA and all. After centuries of breeding, what was once a South American berry roughly the size of a pea now takes all sorts of shapes and sizes, from cherry-like to hefty heirloom fruit.

Today, scientists are teasing out how these physical changes show up at the level of genes - work that could guide modern efforts to tweak the tomato, says Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Zachary Lippman.

He and colleagues have now identified long-concealed hidden mutations within the genomes of 100 types of tomato, including an orange-berried wild plant from the Galapagos Islands and varieties typically processed into ketchup and sauce.

Their analysis, described June 17, 2020, in the journal Cell, is the most comprehensive assessment of such mutations - which alter long sections of DNA - for any plant. The research could lead to the creation of new tomato varieties and the improvement of existing ones, Lippman says. A handful of the mutations his team identified alter key characteristics, like flavor and weight, the researchers showed.

Previous studies have long shown that these mutations exist in plant genomes, says Lippman, a plant geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. "But until now, we didn't have an efficient way to find them and study their impact," he says.

A window into the genome

Mutations, or changes, in the four types of DNA letters carried within an organism's cells can alter its physical characteristics. Scientists studying plants have generally focused on a small, tractable kind of mutation, in which one DNA letter is swapped for another.

The mutations Lippman's team studied are much bigger - they modify DNA's structure by copying, deleting, inserting, or moving long sections of DNA elsewhere in the genome. These mutations, also called structural variations, occur throughout the living world. Studies in humans, for example, have linked these variations to disorders such as schizophrenia and autism.

Scientists can identify mutations by reading out the letters of DNA using a technique known as genetic sequencing. Limitations in this technology, however, have made it difficult to decode long sections of DNA, Lippman says. So researchers haven't been able to capture a complete picture of structural mutations in the genome.

Even so, plant geneticists have suspected that these mutations contribute significantly to plants' traits, says Michael Purugganan, who studies rice and date palms at New York University and was not involved in the new study. "That's why this paper is so exciting," he says. Lippman's team not only found these mutations in tomato and its wild relatives, but also determined how they function within the plants, he says.

A guide for future tomatoes

The new study, a collaboration with Michael Schatz at Johns Hopkins University and others, identified more than 200,000 structural mutations in tomatoes using a technique called long-read sequencing. Lippman likens it to looking through a panoramic window at large sections of the genome. By comparison, more conventional sequencing offered only a peephole, he says.

The majority of the mutations they found do not change genes that encode traits. But what's clear, Lippman says, is that many of these mutations alter mechanisms controlling genes' activity. One such gene, for instance, controls tomato fruit size. By modifying DNA structure ¬- in this case, the number of copies of the gene - Lippman's team was able to alter fruit production. Plants lacking the gene never made fruit, while plants with three copies of the gene made fruit about 30 percent larger than those with just a single copy.

Lippman's team also demonstrated how DNA structure can influence traits in an example he calls "remarkably complex." They showed that four structural mutations together were needed for breeding a major harvesting trait into modern tomatoes.

These sorts of insights could help explain trait diversity in other crops and enable breeders to improve varieties, Lippman says. For instance, perhaps adding an extra copy of the size gene to tiny ground cherries, a close relative of the tomato, could increase their appeal by making them larger, he says.

"One of the holy grails in agriculture is to be able to say, 'If I mutate this gene, I know what the output will be,'" he says. "The field is making important steps toward this kind of predictable breeding."

UConn's Associate Dean for Research and Industrial Partnerships, S. Pamir Alpay, and Yomery Espinal '18 PhD (ENG) have published a paper on a novel portable pyroelectric technology in Cell Reports Physical Science with support from the Army Research Laboratory.

Pyroelectric energy research is focused on how to generate energy from heat that would otherwise be wasted in a catalytic chemical reaction.

When pyroelectric materials are heated, their polarization changes, leading to an electron flow that generates energy. These materials are commonly used in household devices like motion sensor lights, which detect body heat to determine when someone is near.

Anytime there is a catalytic reaction, heat is generated. These devices harness that heat and use it as energy. For example, a combustion engine in a car produces heat that, with this kind of technology, could be used to power the electrical functions of the car that otherwise rely on battery power.

The Army Research Lab (ARL) is particularly interested in this technology because it can provide more power with less weight, which is important for soldiers carrying heavy bags.

While scientists have been experimenting with pyroelectric power for decades, the technology proposed in this paper is completely novel.

"Something like that doesn't exist," Alpay says. "It would give you the opportunity to recover some things that just go to waste."

The technology proposed in this publication is portable and has an extended lifetime. It uses on-chip combustion of methanol, a high-energy fuel, to harness energy from the reaction. The pyroelectric material converts waste heat from the reaction to usable power.

Vapor of a high-energy fuel, in this case methanol, is combusted on a thin, 440 nanometer film on platinized silicon wafers. The device converts the heat from this reaction into pyroelectric power.

Nanostructured iridium oxide is the top electrode and combustion catalyst. Iridium is a dense, corrosion and heat-resistant metal making it an excellent candidate for this application. Iridium oxide is first activated at temperatures as low as 105 degrees Celsius and fully catalyzes methanol to carbon dioxide at 120 degrees Celsius.

This is an advantage compared to platinum-based catalysts, which do not achieve full conversion until 150 degrees Celsius. This means less heat must be applied to the device for it to be fully effective.

This on-chip combustion technology has a 90% combustion efficiency rate.

This technology would be significantly more powerful than lithium-ion batteries, the common rechargeable batteries used in electronics. The energy density of methanol is 22 times greater than a lithium-ion battery.

While this study only provided researchers with a preliminary version of this technology, it can have far-reaching applications.

Pyroelectric power is a clean alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear energy, which still constitute more than 80% of the United States's power. Thus, this technology has broad energy applications on large and small scales.

Brendan Hanrahan, Ph.D., a staff materials engineer at ARL, led this effort on ARL's side of the partnership. Hanrahan operated as a critical hinge to bring the ARL and UConn researchers together for this project.

Espinal earned her Ph.D. at UConn and was awarded the Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship in 2013, which supports members of underrepresented groups in STEM. She began working at the Army Research Lab with Hanrahan during her time in the program and spent two years there. Immediately after graduation, she was offered a position with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Over the past few years, UConn and ARL have fostered a productive partnership that will likely continue for years to come.

"The key to our successful collaboration is that we play off each other's strengths," says Hanrahan,. "Without one another [Alpay's] theories would remain theories and we're just shooting in the dark. So that's why it's such a great partnership."

A new study by the University of Leeds and University of Oxford has examined spatial biodiversity patterns across the Permo-Triassic mass extinction event. (c. 252 million years ago). The Permo-Triassic mass extinction represents the most catastrophic event in the last 500 million years of evolutionary history and caused the loss of up 95% of species because of a cocktail of volcanic effects including extreme greenhouse warming.

Examination of the global distribution of tetrapods -- amphibians, reptiles and their relatives -- reveals that biodiversity was consistently higher at temperate latitudes, both before and after the mass extinction. This is in strong contrast to the modern day, where the greatest levels of biodiversity are found in the low latitudes of the tropics, near the equator.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows how patterns of biodiversity can respond when temperatures in tropical regions become too extreme to support high levels of biodiversity. Examining the responses of organisms to rapid climatic changes in the distant past can offer a window into the potential impact of future global warming.

Study lead author Bethany Allen, PhD researcher at the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: "Higher equatorial diversity has been recognised for over 200 years, but the consistency of this pattern throughout Earth history has been uncertain.

"The Late Permian to Middle Triassic is an ideal time interval to examine biodiversity trends. It is characterised by large-scale volcanic episodes, extreme greenhouse temperatures, and the most severe mass extinction event in Earth's history.

"Our study shows that the regions we now associate with some of the richest and most diverse ecosystems on Earth were once too hot to support communities of large animals, likely reaching over 40°C. In the face of a rapidly warming planet, this window into our past could offer a glimpse into the future of those regions and the very real risk to the species that live there if we do not act to curb our carbon emissions and limit global warming."

The Arctic Ocean will take up more CO2 over the 21st century than predicted by most climate models. This additional CO2 causes a distinctly stronger ocean acidification. These results were published in a study by climate scientists from the University of Bern and École normale supérieure in Paris. Ocean acidification threatens the life of calcifying organisms - such as mussels and "sea butterflies" - and can have serious consequences for the entire food chain.

The ocean takes up large amounts of man-made CO2 from the atmosphere. This additional CO2 causes ocean acidification, a process that can already be observed today. Ocean acidification particularly impacts organisms that form calcium carbonate skeletons and shells, such as molluscs, sea urchins, starfish and corals. The Arctic Ocean is where acidification is expected to be greatest.

A study that was recently published in the scientific journal Nature by Jens Terhaar from Bern and Lester Kwiatkowski and Laurent Bopp from the École normale supérieure in Paris shows, that ocean acidification in the Arctic Ocean is likely to be even worse than previously thought. The results show that the smallest of the seven seas will take up 20% more CO2 over the 21st century than previously expected, under the assumption that the atmospheric CO2 concentrations continue to increase. "This leads to substantially enhanced ocean acidification, particularly between 200 and 1000 meters", explains Jens Terhaar, member of the group for ocean modeling at the Oeschger-Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern. This depth range is an important refuge area for many marine organisms.

Consequences for the food chain

Ocean acidification negatively impacts organisms that build calcium carbonate skeletons and shells. In sufficiently acidic waters, these shells become unstable and begin to dissolve. "Our results suggest that it will be more difficult for Arctic organisms to adapt to ocean acidification than previously expected", says co-author Lester Kwiatkowski. A loss of these organisms is likely to impact the entire Arctic food chain up to fish and marine mammals.

New method improves projections

The international research team exploited the large divergence in simulated Arctic Ocean carbon uptake by current climate models. The researchers found a physical relationship across the models between the simulation of present-day Arctic sea surface densities and associated deep-water formation, with greater deep-water formation causing enhanced transport of carbon into the ocean interior and therefore enhanced acidification. Using measurements of Arctic sea surface density the research team was able to correct for biases in the models and reduce the uncertainty associated with projections of future Arctic Ocean acidification.

We've all experienced turbulent air and water, but did you know light can be turbulent too?

An international team of researchers, led by Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical Engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), have harnessed turbulence in light to create a specific type of high-precision laser, known as a laser frequency comb, in a system previously thought incapable of producing such a laser. The discovery could be used in a new generation of devices for applications such as optical spectroscopy and sensing.

The research is published in Nature.

Frequency combs are widely-used tools for detecting and measuring different frequencies of light with unique precision. Unlike conventional lasers, which emit a single frequency, these lasers emit multiple frequencies in lockstep, evenly spaced to resemble the teeth of a comb. Today, they are used in everything from environmental monitoring and chemical sensing to the search for exoplanets, optical communications and high- precision metrology and timing.

Capasso and his team at SEAS have been working to make these devices more efficient and compact for applications including telecommunications and portable sensing.

In 2019, Capasso and his team figured out how to transmit wireless signals from laser frequency combs, creating the first laser radio transmitter. The researchers used semiconducting quantum cascade lasers shaped like very small Kit Kat bars, which generated frequency combs by bouncing light from end to end. This bouncing light created counter-propagating waves that interact with each other to generate the different frequencies of the comb. However, these devices still emitted a lot of light that was unused in the radio-communication applications.

"Going into this research, our main question was how can we make a better geometry for laser radios," said Marco Piccardo, a former postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and first author of the paper.

Piccardo is currently a researcher at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Milan.

The researchers turned to ring quantum cascade lasers, which, due to their circular shape, can generate a laser with very low optical loss. However, ring lasers have a fundamental problem when it comes to generating frequency combs: light beams traveling in a perfect circle propagate only in one direction, clockwise or counter-clockwise, and therefore can't generate the counter-propagating waves needed to form a comb. To overcome this problem, the researchers introduced small defects into the rings and compared the results to a group of defect-less rings.

But when the researchers ran the experiment, the results took everyone by surprise.

The perfect rings, which previous physics theories said couldn't possibly generate a frequency comb, generated frequency combs.

"When we saw that, we thought this is great for us, because this is exactly the kind of light we are looking for, only we didn't expect to find it in this particular experiment. The success seemed to contradict current laser theory," said Benedikt Schwarz, a researcher at TU Wien in Vienna and co-author of the study.

The researchers tried to explain how such a phenomenon could occur, and eventually came across turbulence. In fluids, turbulence occurs when an ordered fluid flow breaks into increasingly small vortices which interact with each other until the system eventually breaks into chaos. In light, this takes the form of wave instabilities, in which a small disturbance gets bigger and bigger and eventually dominates the dynamics of the system.

The researchers figured out that small fluctuations in the current used to pump the laser caused small instabilities in the light waves, even in a perfect ring laser. Those instabilities grew and interacted with each other, just as in a turbulent fluid. Those interactions then caused a stable frequency comb to occur.

"We didn't just change the geometry of laser frequency combs, we discovered a whole new system in which to create these devices, and in doing so, recast a fundamental law of lasers," said Piccardo.

In the future, these devices may be used as electrically-pumped microresonators on integrated photonic circuits. Today's chip-scale microresonators are passive, meaning energy needs to be pumped optically from the outside, increasing the system size and complexity. But the ring laser frequency comb is active, meaning it can generate its own light just by injecting electrical current into it. It also provides access to regions of the electromagnetic spectrum that are not covered by microresonators. This could be useful in a range of applications, such as optical spectroscopy and chemical sensing.

"This is a first very important step in connecting passive microresonators with active frequency combs," said Capasso. "Combining the advantages of these two devices could have important fundamental and technological implications."

Geoscientists at The University of Texas at Dallas recently used massive amounts of earthquake data and supercomputers to generate high-resolution, 3D images of the dynamic geological processes taking place far below the Earth's surface.

In a study published April 29 in Nature Communications, the UT Dallas research team described how it created images of mantle flows in a subduction region under Central America and the Caribbean Sea using a computationally intensive technique called a full waveform inversion (FWI).

"This is the first comprehensive seismic study to directly image 3D mantle flow fields in actual subduction environments using advanced FWI technology," said Dr. Hejun Zhu, corresponding author of the study and assistant professor of geosciences in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Dr. Jidong Yang, who earned his PhD in geosciences from UT Dallas in May, and Dr. Robert Stern, professor of geosciences, are the study's co-authors.

A Dynamic Earth

Between the relatively thin layer of the Earth's crust and its inner core lies the thickest part of the planet, the mantle. Over short time periods, the mantle can be considered solid rock, but on the geological time scale of millions of years, the mantle flows like a viscous fluid.

Earth's crust is broken into pieces called tectonic plates. These plates move across and into the mantle very slowly -- about as fast as fingernails grow. At regions called subduction zones, one plate descends under another into the mantle.

"The sinking of oceanic plates into the Earth's mantle at subduction zones is what causes the Earth's tectonic plates to move and is one of the most important processes taking place in our planet," Zhu said. "Subduction zones are also the source of many natural hazards, such as earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. But the pattern of mantle flow and deformation around descending plates is still poorly understood. The information our techniques yield is crucial for understanding our dynamic planet."

Data-Intensive Research

Zhu and his colleagues tackled the problem using a geophysical measurement called seismic anisotropy, which measures the difference in how fast mechanical waves generated by earthquakes travel in different directions inside the Earth. Seismic anisotropy can reveal how the mantle moves around the subducting plate. Similar technology is also used by the energy industry to locate oil and gas resources.

"When a diver dives into water, the water separates, and that separation in turn affects the way the water moves around the swimmer," Zhu said. "It's similar with oceanic plates: When they dive into hot mantle, that action induces mantle separation and flow around the plates."

The research team created the images using high-fidelity data recorded over a 10-year period from 180 earthquakes by some 4,500 seismic stations located in a grid across the U.S. The numerical calculations for the FWI algorithm were performed on the high-performance computing clusters at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported Texas Advanced Computing Center at UT Austin, as well as on supercomputers at UT Dallas.

"Previously we couldn't 'see' under the Earth's surface, but by using this technology and this very wonderful data set, we are able to delineate the 3D distribution of various seismic phenomena and tell at what depths they are occurring," Zhu said.

Gone to Pieces

The images confirmed that the plates in the study region are not large, solid pieces but rather are fragmented into smaller slabs.

"This looks different from the textbook depictions of tectonic plates coming together, with one solid piece of oceanic plate descending under another solid piece," Zhu said. "Some researchers have hypothesized that this fragmentation occurs, and our imaging and modeling provides evidence that supports that view."

Zhu's 3D model shows complex mantle flow patterns around a number of descending fragments and in the gaps between slabs. Such chunky, fragmented pieces are seen in regions throughout the world, Zhu said.

In the northwestern U.S., for example, the Juan de Fuca Plate is also fragmented into two pieces where it descends under the North American Plate in the Cascadia subduction zone, an area where strong earthquakes have occurred over the centuries.

"We know that most earthquakes happen at the interface between a slab and the mantle. If there is a gap between these fragments, what's called a window region, you wouldn't expect earthquakes there," Zhu said. "If you look at the earthquake distribution along the Cascadia subduction zone, there is a span where you do not have earthquakes. That is probably a region where there is a gap in the subducting oceanic plate.

"The Middle America Trench that we studied has its own unique, dynamic properties. In the future, we plan to shift our attention to other subduction zones, including the Kermadec-Tonga subduction zone in the region of the Australian and Pacific plates."

At least 3.9 million early deaths are being averted worldwide every year by people being physically active, according to a new study published in The Lancet Global Health today by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh.

The team behind the study argue that too often we focus on the negative health consequences of poor levels of physical activity when we could be celebrating the achievements of physical activity.

"Research into lifestyle factors such as lack of physical activity, poor diet, drinking alcohol, and smoking, tends to focus on the harms these do to health," said Dr Paul Kelly from the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh. "This helps create a narrative to try and prevent and reduce these behaviours.

"We also believe there is value in trying to understand the benefits that 'healthy behaviours' confer in order to argue for maintaining and increasing them. Can we look instead at population activity levels and estimate the health benefits of all this activity to society?"

In their study, Dr Tessa Strain from the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge and colleagues used a number known as the Prevented Fraction for the Population - in this case, the proportion of deaths that were prevented because people are physically active.

The team looked at previously published data for 168 countries, on the proportion of the population meeting World Health Organization global recommendation of at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity throughout the week, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity, or an equivalent combination. The proportion of the population meeting the recommended amount of physical activity varied substantially between countries, from 33% for Kuwait, to 64% for the United Kingdom, to 94% for Mozambique.

By combining these data with estimates of the relative risk of dying early for active people compared to inactive people, the authors were able to estimate the proportion of premature deaths that were prevented because people are physically active.

They found that globally, due to physical activity the number of premature deaths was an average (median) of 15% lower than it would have been - 14% for women and 16% for men - equating to approximately 3.9 million lives saved per year.

Despite considerable variation in physical activity levels between countries, the positive contribution of physical activity was remarkably consistent across the globe, with a broad trend towards a greater proportion of premature deaths averted for low- and middle-income countries. In low income countries, an average of 18% of premature deaths were averted compared to 14% for high income countries.

In the USA, 140,200 early deaths were prevented annually and in the UK 26,600.

Health experts often frame the debate in terms of the number of early deaths due to lack of physical activity, estimating that 3.2 million die prematurely each year. But the researchers say that by showing how many deaths are averted, it might also be possible to frame the debate in a positive way and this could have benefits to advocacy, policy and population messaging.

"We're used to looking at the downsides of not getting enough activity - whether that's sports or a gym or just a brisk walk at lunchtime - but by focusing on the number of lives saved, we can tell a good news story of what is already being achieved," said Dr Strain. "It tells us how much good is being done and helps us say 'look how much benefit physical activity is already providing - let's make things even better by increasing physical activity levels further'.

"Although there's a risk of complacency - people asking why we need to invest more when it's already providing benefit - we hope our findings will encourage governments and local authorities to protect and maintain services in challenging economic climates."