Brain

When it comes to finding a mate, male guppies rely on their brothers to ward off the competition.

In a new study published by a Florida State University team, researchers found that male Trinidadian guppies observe a form of nepotism when it comes to pursuing the opposite sex. These tiny tropical fish often help their brothers in the mating process by darting in front of other males to block access to a female.

The study is published in Nature Ecology & Evolution . Researchers said the findings were significant because it showed male guppies' ability to recognize family members contributes to the mating process.

"The results strongly suggest that males use kin recognition to minimize sexual competition with their close relatives," said Mitchel J. Daniel, a postdoctoral researcher at Florida State and the lead author on the study. "There is evidence of kin recognition in a wide range of animal species, including humans. Does kin recognition affect male-male competition in similar ways in other species? I'm hoping this study will help motivate other researchers to ask this question."

In Daniel's previous research, he found that female guppies used kin recognition when choosing their mates to avoid inbreeding. That made Daniel wonder whether males recognized kin when competing for mates. This idea had been previously tested by other researchers in fruit flies, but results were mixed.

"Those previous studies led to a lot of debate in the literature about whether relatedness among males really does relax sexual competition," Daniel said. "Part of the motivation for our study was to help resolve this ongoing controversy by testing the idea in another species - guppies."

Male guppies typically court females by performing a kind of dance around the female to express interest. If the female is interested, she will respond by moving toward the male. However, if another male injects himself between the couple, it prevents the couple from mating and gives the interrupting male a shot at wooing the female.

Daniel developed a mathematical model for predicting how often males should block one another to maximize their own Darwinian fitness - that is, how many copies of his own genes he passes on.

He also developed a second version of the model predicting what males should do to maximize their inclusive fitness, which considers their own fitness and the fitness of their male relatives. Since brothers share some of the same genes, a male can get more of his genes into the next generation by blocking his brothers less often, giving them more opportunities to mate.

To test these models, Daniel observed 600 guppies in groups of 12, watching their dances and the interruption behavior. The data closely matched the second model, which predicted that males should compete less with their brothers than other rivals.

"This was really exciting to see because it suggests that males are competing in a way that increases how often their genes get passed, even if those genes are getting passed on by their relatives," he said. "It supports an evolutionary theory called kin selection, which can promote cooperation among relatives."

Though he was specifically interested in the familial aspect of the interruption, Daniel observed that male guppies also exercised a form of retribution.

"When one male interrupted another male, it was usually reciprocated," Daniel said. "More often than not, males went back and forth interrupting one another half a dozen times or so in quick succession before one male finally gave up. At times, it felt a bit like watching jealous lovers, each male desperate to keep 'his' female to himself."

Facebook users flipping through their feeds in the fall of 2016 faced a minefield of targeted advertisements pitting blacks against police, southern whites against immigrants, gun owners against Obama supporters and the LGBTQ community against the conservative right.

Placed by distant Russian trolls, they didn't aim to prop up one candidate or cause, but to turn Americans against one another.

The ads were cheaply made and full of threatening, vulgar language.

And, according to a sweeping new analysis of more than 2,500 of the ads, they were remarkably effective, eliciting clickthrough rates as much as nine times higher than what is typical in digital advertising.

"We found that fear and anger appeals work really well in getting people to engage," said lead author Chris Vargo, an assistant professor of Advertising, Public Relations and Media Design at University of Colorado Boulder.

The study, published this week in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, is the first to take a comprehensive look at ads placed by the infamous Russian propaganda machine known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and ask: How effective were they? And what makes people click on them?

While focused on ads running in 2016, the study's findings resonate in the age of COVID-19 and the run-up to the 2020 election, the authors say.

"As consumers continue to see ads that contain false claims and are intentionally designed to use their emotions to manipulate them, it's important for them to have cool heads and understand the motives behind them," said Vargo.

For the study, Vargo and assistant professor of advertising Toby Hopp scoured 2,517 Facebook and Instagram ads downloaded from the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence website. The committee made the ads publicly available in 2018 after concluding that the IRA had been creating fake U.S. personas, setting up fake social media pages, and using targeted paid advertising to "sow discord" among U.S. residents.

Using computational tools and manual coding, Vargo and Hopp analyzed every ad, looking for the inflammatory, obscene or threatening words and language hostile to a particular group's ethnic, religious or sexual identity. They also looked at which groups each ad targeted, how many clicks the ad got, and how much the IRA paid.

Collectively, the IRA spent about $75,000 to generate about 40.5 million impressions with about 3.7 million users clicking on them - a clickthrough rate of 9.2%.

That compares to between .9% and 1.8% for a typical digital ad.

While ads using blatantly racist language didn't do well, those using cuss words and inflammatory words (like "sissy," "idiot," "psychopath" and "terrorist") or posing a potential threat did. Ads that evoked fear and anger did the best.

One IRA advertisement targeting users with an interest in the Black Lives Matter movement stated: "They killed an unarmed guy again! We MUST make the cops stop thinking that they are above the law!" Another shouted: "White supremacists are planning to raise the racist flag again!" Meanwhile, ads targeting people who sympathized with white conservative groups read "Take care of our vets; not illegals" or joked "If you voted for Obama: We don't want your business because you are too stupid to own a firearm."

Only 110 out of 2,000 mentioned Donald Trump.

"This wasn't about electing one candidate or another," said Vargo. "It was essentially a make-Americans-hate-each-other campaign."

The ads were often unsophisticated, with spelling or grammatical errors and poorly photoshopped images. Yet at only a few cents to distribute, the IRA got an impressive rate of return.

"I was shocked at how effective these appeals were," said Vargo.

The authors warn that they have no doubt such troll farms are still at it.

According to some news reports, Russian trolls are already engaged in disinformation campaigns around COVID-19.

"I think with any major story, you are going to see this kind of disinformation circulated," said Hopp. "There are bad actors out there who have goals that are counter to the aspirational goals of American democracy, and there are plenty of opportunities for them to take advantage of the current structure of social media."

Ultimately, the authors believe better monitoring, via both machine algorithms and human reviewers, could help stem the tide of disinformation.

"We as a society need to start seriously talking about what role the platforms and government should play in times like the 2020 election or during COVID-19 when we have a compelling need for high-quality, accurate information to be distributed," said Hopp.

Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs), particularly those built from silicon, are being increasingly seen as the future of ultra-high-speed communications. However, despite nearly 30 years of research there is still no low-cost route to reliably integrating lasers or gain regions onto these devices. Current approaches, such as bonding III-V lasers directly to chips, or growing III-V structures directly onto silicon have been used but still don't meet all the requirements of industry. Any technology that is developed will have to access the key long-distance C-band of wavelengths at around 1.5 μm, where the low-loss window for silica fibre lies.

Erbium doped materials are well known for their 1.5 μm emission and are the main-stay of the long-distance telecommunications network which utilise erbium doped fibre amplifiers. However, their weak absorption leads to a requirement for powerful fibre lasers to achieve population inversion. It is this problem that the use of organic sensitizers overcomes, allowing for compact efficient devices that can be integrated onto any substrate, including PICs. Much of the early work in this area suffered from low efficiency for the Er emission due to the quenching of the Er ions by local CH and OH oscillators. Whilst fully fluorinated materials have been shown to facilitate high efficiency for the Er ions the presence of the fluorine atoms have the side effect of increasing the HOMO energy which makes hole injection very difficult and hence they are poor materials for producing OLEDs.

In a new paper published in Light Science & Application, scientists from Queen Mary University of London (UK), Chromosol Ltd. (UK) and Northeast Normal University (China) demonstrated an OLED that shown bright 1.5 μm electroluminescence due to enhanced Er emission. This performance is attributed to their innovative approach that makes the OLED's emissive layer by compositing an organic phosphorescent iridium complex molecule with a separated organic erbium complex molecule. The selected organic iridium complex obeys minimal triplet-triplet annihilation for efficient triplet excitons which are excellent for coupling energy into the Er ions. Meanwhile, the fully-fluorinated organic ligands of the separated organic erbium complex form a protective shell to keep the Er ions from the quenching. The combination of these two advantages have enhanced the Er emission by a factor of up to 1600 with a high Er emission efficiency.

"We successfully demonstrate considerable sensitization for the Er3+ ion in a fully fluorinated complex Er(F-TPIP)3 by taking an organic phosphorescent complex Ir-tBuPBI as a sensitizer." "...Ir-tBuPBI is chosen as the sensitizer because it exhibits a low TTA rate and efficiency roll-off but higher efficiency of PL and EL in a neat film than other non-doped Ir(III) materials..." "These features allow Ir-tBuPBI to provide efficient sensitization even at high concentrations. Er(F-TPIP)3 molecules have perfluorinated ligands and a large volume, approximately 2004 Å3... This enclosure keeps the C-H bonds on Ir-tBuPBI distant from the central Er3+ ion to reduce vibrational quenching." The authors present their strategy.

The scientists conclude that "...the approach of separating the function of the high-efficiency Er3+ emitter from that of a sensitizer molecule that allows for considerable OLED performance to make a composite device, which shows that the use of protiated phosphorescent molecules is not greatly detrimental to the quantum efficiency of the Er3+ ions"."...the demonstration highlights that future researchers can seek to optimize the individual performance of each component, rather than the current, difficult approach of seeking to design a single molecule with all the contradictory properties required", suggest they.

March 26, 2020 -- Columbia Mailman School of Public Health's Dr. John W. Rowe, Professor of Health Policy and Aging, is a member of a WHO Expert Panel on Care of the Elderly which just released the attached guidance for prevention and management of COVID-19 among elderly in long term care facilities. The paper that outlines the objective of WHO interim guidance on Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) in Long-Term Care Facilities (LTCF) in the context of COVID-19 which is to prevent COVID-19-virus from entering the facility, spreading within the facility, and spreading to outside the facility.

The findings also provide:

Guidance on system and service coordination to provide long-term care and on protocols for infection prevention and control within Long Term Care Facilities, for example, with regard to visitor, employee hygiene.

Advice on surveillances and early detection within facilities of COVID-19, emphasizing early detection of cases;

protocols for surveillance of employees and visitor screening; care for and confinement of residents with COVID-19;

use of personal protective equipment; and

cleaning measures for Long Term Care facilities.

WHO guidelines call for a minimization of the effect of infection control on the mental health and wellbeing of residents as well as for caregivers and staff. This interim guidance will be updated as more becomes known about COVID19.

Nobody likes to make mistakes, because they usually cause trouble. But what if a mistake sometimes makes things better than before? If so, it may make sense not to aim for perfection. Just like we navigate from one language to another through translation, cells routinely translate from a primary language (encoded by sequences of DNA) into a second language (encoded by sequences of proteins). Bacteria do not always make a protein whose sequence is exactly as specified in the gene; invariably, there are a number of mistakes.

Scientists from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore, have found that such mistakes in protein synthesis ("mistranslation") can be beneficial under stress in E. coli. Proteins are key biomolecules, and any mistake in their sequence generally changes their structure and function, and harms cellular functioning. Given this, the high rate of errors in protein synthesis observed across living cells has been a puzzle. Older work had shown that specific sequence changes in certain proteins can generate 'super proteins' that are advantageous under certain stresses. However, cellular mistranslation is not directed at specific proteins; so why are mistakes in overall protein synthesis so common?

The new study finds a general advantage of mistranslation. More mistranslated proteins lead to an increase in the levels of a key quality control molecule (called Lon protease), which in turn brings cells closer to the threshold for activating a DNA repair response (the SOS response). This advance guard now sets mistranslating cells on high alert, conferring higher early survival without mutations, and consequently higher mutational resistance on encountering DNA damage. The authors speculate that such occasional but general benefits of errors in protein synthesis - leading to a quick stress response - could be one reason why a high rate of mistranslation persists in nature.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a set of conditions that affect a baby, toddler or preschooler's mental development. The signs can come on as early as 6 months, but usually, in India, diagnosis happens around 3-5 years. ASD is diagnosed as a problem in social communication- language, non-verbal signs of social interaction, and compulsive interests or activities that the child insists on doing to the exclusion of everything else. Mental retardation, epilepsy, and attention deficit issues may also accompany ASD.

ASD is a very complex condition but has been recognised worldwide to have a very strong genetic basis. One verified theory is that children with ASD have more than usual disruptive mutations in their genome than unaffected children. These mutations can be of two types: inherited from parents, and some that are novel and crop up only in the child with ASD. Research of the past 10 years has focused on the novel mutations, with an acknowledgement that inherited mutations from parents may have some effect.

At the other end, in the past 20 years, after the release of the human genome, almost all diseases are being searched for a genetic basis. Two kinds of mutations have also been found for ASD, one causal- that just by their presence can cause the disease, and the other an influencer- that doesn't cause the disease but changes response to medicines, the severity of symptoms, etc. As a practice, causal mutations are studied, but influencer mutations have gained importance with the advent of precision medicine and biomarker development.

Researchers at the Centre for Neurodevelopmental Synaptopathies (CNS), inStem, decided to pursue the inherited mutations in ASD databases in cellular pathways that control protein synthesis. Timely protein synthesis is a key requirement for proper brain development and function, as new proteins are made "on-demand" when we encode a memory or learn a new skill. The team, led by Dr. Aditi Bhattacharya, found a novel mutation in an important enzyme for protein synthesis called the p70 S6 Kinase 1 (S6K1). S6K1 not only helps proper brain function, but is also important for heart, pancreas and muscle function.

This mutation was found in the Simon Simplex Collection genetic database of the SFARI foundation, which has sequenced more than 2700 families called simplex or quads (meaning both parents' DNA is sequenced, and the family has only one child with ASD, or one normally developing child and one with ASD). The team found, in collaboration with Dr. Ivan Iossifov at Cold Spring Harbor and Prof. Eric Klann at New York University, that the S6K1 mutation, when occurring in children with ASD, and not their parents or unaffected siblings, changed certain cognitive abilities in the children.

The scientists then uncovered how the mutant S6k1 enzyme was hyperactive, in a series of biochemical tests in two different kinds of cells, and also found increased protein synthesis across the board. Furthermore, this mutant protein could not be targeted using an inhibitor molecule, which has important implications for patient response to drugs developed for S6k1 that are in clinical trial preparation.

Finally, the study showed that having this mutation in S6k1 changed the course of normal neural development when expressed in the stem cell line and also changed the structure of cultured neurons which would likely also change memory forming capacity. The mutation is present fairly commonly in the population and future steps would be to test how this altered S6k1 would change the function of pancreatic, cardiac and skeletal muscle cells.

Results of this work are early evidence that inherited mutations in neurological conditions may be a good place to look for mapping the variation in disease symptoms and treatment responses.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Smaug, the deadly dragon in J.R.R Tolkien's "The Hobbit," has a few living relatives. With dense, alligator-like armor, these small, real-life dragon lizards are rock-crevice recluses mostly confined to mountaintops in southern Africa.

Now, herpetologists Michael Bates, a curator at South Africa's National Museum in Bloemfontein, and Edward Stanley of the Florida Museum of Natural History have discovered a ninth species of dragon lizard in the genus Smaug, previously mistaken for a similar-looking species, S. barbertonensis.

The new species, a heavily plated dark brown lizard with pale yellow bands, has been named Smaug swazicus, or the Swazi dragon lizard, in honor of the country of Eswatini, where most of the species' range is located. Up to 13 inches from snout to tail tip, S. swazicus is an unusually big lizard for the region.

"In terms of bulk and actual recorded total length, Smaug swazicus may be the largest southern African lizard species described since the western giant plated lizard, Matobosaurus maltzahni, 82 years ago," Bates said.

While species in the Smaug genus, also known as girdled lizards, may have scaled-down versions of their fearsome namesake's shield-like scales and sword-like teeth, they have gentle dispositions, Stanley said.

"They're just little tanks," said Stanley, who is also the director of the Florida Museum's Digital Discovery and Dissemination Laboratory. "They hide in rock cracks and put a lot of their energy and effort into simply being spiky and inedible, so they don't have to put up a big fight."

Stanley led a group of scientists that named the Smaug genus in 2011, and he has been instrumental in parsing out its species. "Smaug," he explained, comes from the German word "smugan," which means "to squeeze through a hole." These lizards are also found near South Africa's Drakensberg Mountains, Afrikaans for "dragon mountains."

While Africa has an enormous diversity of lizards, girdled lizards are the only family exclusive to mainland Africa and, because of their crevice-dwelling lifestyle, are often restricted to specific habitats. As a result, Stanley said more stringent conservation strategies may be needed for certain Smaug species.

"S. barbertonensis already had a relatively restricted range, but that's obviously before it was split in half when S. swazicus was discovered," Stanley said. "So, although barbertonensis wasn't of concern before, it now has a range of only around 200 square miles," an area less than the size of Chicago.

Tethered to high-elevation boulder-filled habitats, dragon lizards could already be feeling the effects of a warming climate, Stanley said. Securing rock crevices in which to hide could become challenging as dragon lizards creep to higher elevations in search of lower temperatures.

"These creatures are brilliantly evolved for their environment. If things aren't done to protect them, we could lose 20 million years of evolution in 50 years," he said. "The important thing is that you need to characterize and identify animals before you can protect them. You need to know what you have before you can make a plan to protect it."

But finding lizards in southern Africa can be daunting: Stanley and his fellow researchers had to dodge everything from mambas to undetonated explosives. When team members expanded their search to well-shaded boulders on a military base, they were accused of being gold prospectors, thieves and pet trade dealers.

"We had to spend all morning explaining, 'No, we're not here for any of that - we're really here just to try and find some lizards on your army base,'" Stanley said. "And in fact, because the range was so unpopulated, the lizards we found there were quite friendly. It was a weird experience having spent such a long time looking for them and then going into this sort of garden where they'd run on your lap and jump into your arms."

Stanley's next run-in with the new species wasn't deep in the South African escarpment. He said he recognized the species from his time at the American Museum of Natural History, where there was a jar of unidentified pet trade specimens from the early 1980s in the herpetology collection.

"That's the nice thing about museums, isn't it? It's not like these animals are sitting underground, never before seen. A lot of times they're just hiding in plain sight," he said.

To differentiate similar-looking species, Stanley and Bates relied on traditional approaches based on physical features, CT scanning and DNA analysis, a process he compared to sorting candy.

"Say you have different kinds of candies that you need to sort by type," Stanley said. "You start by visually sorting all your M&M's into one pile and your Mike and Ike's in another."

Then comes the DNA analysis - in other words, the taste test.

"So, you sample your candies, and you find that there are a proportion of M&M's you've sorted that are actually Skittles, and then you notice that instead of an 'M,' they actually have a tiny 'S' on them," Stanley said. "You can now pull these out and say, 'Oh, I actually have three candies.'"

The new species of dragon lizard can be compared to the Skittles, Stanley said - similar in appearance to S. barbertonensis, but with slight genetic differences that show it's more closely related to another species of dragon lizard, S. warreni. The analysis also allowed Stanley and Bates to parse minor physical differences that other researchers originally attributed to individual variation and helped explain why Bates's previous examination of museum specimens had revealed three distinct color patterns in dragon lizards.

Stanley said he can't rule out the possibility that more species in the group await discovery.

"Even now, in this well-worked group in these very populated countries of South Africa and Eswatini, that have had a lot of herpetologists working for hundreds of years, there are still some cool discoveries to be made," he said. "That's the biggest part of the story for me, is that there are some awesome animals out there just undescribed."

Early mortality of myocardial infarction (MI), one of fatal diseases, is about 30%. So, it is critical to have immediate and proactive treatment to prevent a heart attack. Contributing to developing an efficient treatment of this fatal disease, a research team from South Korea recently proposed an effective stem cell treatment system for myocardial infarction, using harmless protein from mussel and stem cells.

Prof. Hyung Joon Cha and Mr. Tae Yoon Park from Department of Chemical Engineering, POSTECH with Prof. Sung Bo Sim from Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Yeouido St. Mary's Hospital and Prof. Jongho Lee from Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Daejeon St. Mary's Hospital developed an 'adhesive protein-based immiscible condensed liquid system' (APICLS) that efficiently delivered the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to the damaged cardiac muscular tissues and enabled the transplantation prolonged. By employing the phase separation phenomenon of mussel adhesive protein, they were able to easily encapsulate the MSCs in the liquid coacervate. Especially, based on the mass production of bioengineered mussel adhesive protein, their newly suggested platform can be expected to be an innovative therapeutic system for myocardial infarction.

Heart is a vital organ that circulates blood while repeating contraction and relaxation of muscles by electrical signals. When blood vessels are clogged, oxygens and nutrients cannot be supplied to the heart and it brings severe damages to a muscle of the heart, causing infarcted myocardium with disruption of blood networks. This causes a necrosis on wall of the myocardium, resulting in cardiac wall thinning and this phenomenon is known as myocardial infarction. Because the heart cannot regenerate itself when it is damaged, there is no method for innovatively regenerating damaged heart muscles. As current therapeutic strategies, patients are treated with either mechanical device or heart transplantation.

Recently, there have been numbers of research proposing on transplanting exogenous stem cells into the damaged myocardium to help heart regeneration as a future treatment technique. However, transplanted stem cells have very low survival rate due to harsh environment of the heart. Even when the transplantation is successful, most of the stems cells soon die.

For a successful stem cell therapy on MI, there are two conditions required to survive in harsh environment of the damaged heart. First, the stem cells must be efficiently transplanted and remained into the thinned cardiac muscles. Secondly, transplanted stem cells must integrate rapidly into resident surrounding tissues to improve their viability by forming blood vessels. However, the current therapeutic methods so far cannot deliver injected stem cells to infarcted cardiac muscular tissues successfully, making it very difficult to maintain the transplantation.

The joint research team injected the MSCs encapsulated in APICLS into the thinned and infarcted cardiac muscular wall efficiently. They demonstrated in vivo feasibility through rat MI model that transplanted MSCs survived in the infarcted cardiac muscular tissues for a long time due to the mussel adhesive proteins with its unique characteristics of adhesiveness and angiogenesis and the efficacy of MSCs. Furthermore, the damaged heart muscles formed new blood vessels, prevented further apoptosis of existing cardiomyocytes, and regenerated the damaged cardiac wall by reducing fibrosis.

It is anticipated that the new stem cell delivery system proposed in this research will play an essential role in the stem cell therapeutic market as it used biocompatible materials which are harmless to humans.

"By using mussel adhesive proteins, we demonstrated with the MI rat model and proved its therapeutic efficacy as an efficient stem cell injection strategy. We gives a hope that it can also be successfully applied to chronic diseases and ischemic diseases that have similar environment," said Prof. Hyung Joon Cha who led the research.

In the meanwhile, this research was introduced as the most innovative technology found by POSTECH in the Most Innovative Universities 2019 by Reuters last year. It is also published on the website of Journal of Controlled Release, the world's most renowned journal in the field of drug delivery. This study was supported by the Marine BioMaterials Research Center grant funded by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Korea.

Strong painkillers are very important in the management of patients with cancer and heart attack or requiring surgery. They extert their effect by binding to so-called opioid receptors in the body.

These painkillers have excellent efficacy, but also severe side effects. On the one hand, there is the danger of dependency, on the other hand, patients may become tolerant - i.e. the effectiveness of the drugs decreases with repeated use. This means that the dose must be increased over time to achieve the same effect.

Basic research on opioid receptors

Painkillers with less drastic undesirable effects and equally good efficacy would therefore be highly desirable. Michael Decker, Professor of Pharmaceutical and Medicinal Chemistry at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg, in Bavaria, Germany, is pursuing research in this field. Among other things, his team wants to expand the basic knowledge about opioid receptors.

Decker now presents new findings in this field in the journal "Angewandte Chemie" together with Sébastien Granier from the Institut de Génomique Fonctionelle in Montpellier, Peter Gmeiner from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and as main collaborator Professor Davide Calebiro from the University of Birmingham, UK. The JMU PhD students Christian Gentzsch, Kerstin Seier, and Antonios Drakopoulos were also involved in the work.

The receptors form short-lived pairs

The team dealt with a question that has been highly debated in the field so far. "It is still unclear whether the analgesic effect of opioids is mediated by individual receptors or whether it is necessary for the receptors to aggregate into pairs or larger molecular complexes," said Decker. Evidence has already been found for all these possibilities.

"Our results help reconciling some of the previously contradictory observations," says Davide Calebiro, who until recently was a researcher at JMU. "We found that most opioid receptors exist as individual entities in the cell membrane. However, a small proportion forms pairs of two. Although the lifespan of these pairs is short, they might contribute to the function of this important family of receptors."

Journal classifies work as "Highly Important"

This finding might be very important: "There is evidence that the receptor pairs have different pharmacological effects than individual receptors," said Decker. Therefore, it might be possible to develop new painkillers with a more favourable effect profile on the basis of this knowledge.

Due to the importance of these new findings, "Angewandte Chemie" has classified the publication of the JMU researchers as "highly important". It is freely available on the Web. In addition, the work was selected for one of the journal covers.

Highly selective ligands developed

The research team came to its conclusion because it had previously developed highly selective fluorescent ligands for a subtype of the receptors, the so-called mu opioid receptor (MOR). This is the most important of the three receptor subtypes and is responsible for the desired pain-relieving but also for the addictive effect. The new ligands can be used as molecular probes to label the receptor highly specifically and to observe its behaviour in living cells using single-molecule fluorescence microscopy.

What is interaction and when does it occur? Intuition suggests that the necessary condition for the interaction of independently created particles is their direct touch or contact through physical force carriers. In quantum mechanics, the result of the interaction is entanglement--the appearance of non-classical correlations in the system. It seems that quantum theory allows entanglement of independent particles without any contact. The fundamental identity of particles of the same kind is responsible for this phenomenon.

"The whole is other than the sum of its parts." - Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book VIII)

Quantum mechanics is currently the best and the most accurate and sophisticated theory used by physicists to describe the world around us. Its characteristic feature, however, is the abstract mathematical language notoriously leading to serious interpretational problems. The view of reality proposed by this theory is still a subject of scientific dispute, which, instead of expiring over time, is becoming hotter and more interesting. The new motivation and intriguing questions are brought forth by a fresh perspective resulting from the standpoint of quantum information and the enormous progress of experimental techniques. This allows verification of the conclusions drawn from subtle thought experiments directly related to the problem of interpretation. Moreover, we are now witnessing enormous progress in the field of quantum communication and quantum computer technology, which significantly draws on non-classical resources offered by quantum mechanics.

The work by Pawel Blasiak from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow and Marcin Markiewicz from the University of Gdansk focus on analyzing widely accepted paradigms and theoretical concepts regarding the basics and interpretation of quantum mechanics. The researchers are trying to answer the question to what extent the intuitions used to describe quantum mechanical processes are justified in a realistic view of the world. For this purpose, they try to clarify specific theoretical ideas, often functioning in the form of vague intuitions, using the language of mathematics. This approach often results in the appearance of inspiring paradoxes. Of course, the more basic the concept to which a given paradox relates, the better, because it opens up new doors to deeper understanding a given problem.

In this spirit, both scientists decided to ponder the fundamental question: what is interaction and when does it occur? In quantum mechanics, the result of the interaction is entanglement, which is the appearance of non-classical correlations in the system. Imagine two particles created independently in distant galaxies. It would seem that a necessary condition for the emergence of entanglement is the requirement that at some point in their evolution the particles touch one another or, at least, indirect contact should take place through another particle or physical field to convey the interaction. How else can they establish this mysterious bond, which is quantum entanglement? Paradoxically, however, it turns out that this is possible. Quantum mechanics allows entanglement to occur without the need for any, even indirect, contact.

To justify such a surprising conclusion, a scheme should be presented in which the particles will show non-local correlations at a distance (in a Bell-type experiment). The subtlety of this approach is to exclude the possibility of an interaction understood as some form of contact along the way. Such a scheme should also be very economical, so it must exclude the presence of force carriers which could mediate this interaction (physical field or intermediate particles). Blasiak and Markiewicz showed how this can be done by starting from the original considerations of Yurke and Stoler, which they reinterpreted as a permutation of paths traversed by the particles from different sources. This new perspective allows generating any entangled states of two and three particles, avoiding any contact. The proposed approach can be easily extended to more particles.

How is it possible to entangle independent particles at a distance without their interaction? The hint is given by quantum mechanics itself, in which the identity - the fundamental indistinguishability of all particles of the same kind - is postulated. This means, for example, that all photons (as well as other families of elementary particles) in the entire Universe are the same, regardless of their distance. From a formal perspective, this boils down to symmetrization of the wave function for bosons or its antisymmetrization for fermions. Effects of particle identity are usually associated with their statistics having consequences for a description of interacting multi-particle systems (such as Bose-Einstein condensate or solid-state band theory). In the case of simpler systems, the direct result of particle identity is the Pauli exclusion principle for fermions or bunching in quantum optics for bosons. The common feature of all these effects is the contact of particles at one point in space, which follows the simple intuition of interaction (for example, in particle theory, this comes down to interaction vertices). Hence the belief that the consequences of symmetrization can only be observed in this way. However, interaction by its very nature causes entanglement. Therefore, it is unclear what causes the observed effects and non-classical correlations: is it an interaction in itself, or is it the inherent indistinguishability of particles? The scheme proposed by both scientists bypasses this difficulty, eliminating interaction that could occur through any contact. Hence the conclusion that non-classical correlations are a direct consequence of the postulate of particle identity. It follows that a way was found to purely activate entanglement from their fundamental indistinguishability.

This type of view, starting from questions about the basics of quantum mechanics, can be practically used to generate entangled states for quantum technologies. The article shows how to create any entangled state of two and three qubits, and these ideas are already implemented experimentally. It seems that the considered schemes can be successfully extended to create any entangled many-particle states. As part of further research, both scientists intend to analyze in detail the postulate of identical particles, both from the standpoint of theoretical interpretation and practical applications.

A big surprise may be the fact that the postulate of indistinguishability of particles is not only a formal mathematical procedure but in its pure form leads to the consequences observed in laboratories. Is nonlocality inherent in all identical particles in the Universe? The photon emitted by the monitor screen and the photon from the distant galaxy at the depths of the Universe seem to be entangled only by their identical nature. This is a great secret that science will soon face.

The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ PAN) is currently the largest research institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The broad range of studies and activities of IFJ PAN includes basic and applied research, ranging from particle physics and astrophysics, through hadron physics, high-, medium-, and low-energy nuclear physics, condensed matter physics (including materials engineering), to various applications of methods of nuclear physics in interdisciplinary research, covering medical physics, dosimetry, radiation and environmental biology, environmental protection, and other related disciplines. The average yearly yield of the IFJ PAN encompasses more than 600 scientific papers in the Journal Citation Reports published by the Clarivate Analytics. The part of the Institute is the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB) which is an infrastructure, unique in Central Europe, to serve as a clinical and research centre in the area of medical and nuclear physics. IFJ PAN is a member of the Marian Smoluchowski Kraków Research Consortium: "Matter-Energy-Future" which possesses the status of a Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) in physics for the years 2012-2017. In 2017 the European Commission granted to the Institute the HR Excellence in Research award. The Institute is of A+ Category (leading level in Poland) in the field of sciences and engineering.

The habenula is a small region at the centre of the brain, but is crucial for people's lives. It is made up of groups of nerve cells that control the "neurotransmitters" of the brain, that is to say substances like dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin. The release of these substances is fundamental to respond to stimuli, for example to perceive pain or fear and to regulate mood-related behaviours, and is implicated in conditions like schizophrenia, autism and depression.

Scientists have known the habenula for a long time, but little is known about its implications in nervous system conditions. And that is precisely what a genetic study coordinated by the University of Trento, whose results were published in "Development", a scientific journal of developmental biology, set out to explore.

The research work was mainly performed at the Laboratory of translational neurogenetics with support from the Laboratory of molecular and cellular ophthalmology led by Lucia Poggi of Cibio, the Department of Cellular, computational and integrative biology of the University of Trento, in collaboration with the universities of Heidelberg (Matthias Carl was working there before moving to Trento) and Padova.

Matthias Carl, coordinator of the study, explained: "The brain is enormously complex and billions of neurons are generated in a perfect symphony with precise connections among them. When something goes wrong in this process there can be devastating consequences to our daily life and behaviour, which can cause for instance diseases like schizophrenia, autism or depression. The habenula, which is present in all vertebrate animals from fish to humans, is an important brain structure associated to these conditions. It functions like a post-office as it releases the "neurotransmitters", the chemical substances, that direct the symphony".

The research team identified a molecule that is essential for the correct composition of habenula neurons and their connectivity in the brain. This molecule (Wnt inhibitory factor 1, Wif1), which is a well-known tumour suppressor, plays a key role also in this symphony of neurons and their proper functioning, and may be implicated in autism. This knowledge, linking the molecule, brain structure and a number of neurological disorders, opens new directions for research into brain disorders, hopefully to find out more about serious conditions that can only be treated in ways that take a toll on the quality of life of people.

Old human cells return to a more youthful and vigorous state after being induced to briefly express a panel of proteins involved in embryonic development, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers also found that elderly mice regained youthful strength after their existing muscle stem cells were subjected to the rejuvenating protein treatment and transplanted back into their bodies.

The proteins, known as Yamanaka factors, are commonly used to transform an adult cell into what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells can become nearly any type of cell in the body, regardless of the cell from which they originated. They've become important in regenerative medicine and drug discovery.

The study found that inducing old human cells in a lab dish to briefly express these proteins rewinds many of the molecular hallmarks of aging and renders the treated cells nearly indistinguishable from their younger counterparts.

"When iPS cells are made from adult cells, they become both youthful and pluripotent," said Vittorio Sebastiano, PhD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and the Woods Family Faculty Scholar in Pediatric Translational Medicine. "We've wondered for some time if it might be possible to simply rewind the aging clock without inducing pluripotency. Now we've found that, by tightly controlling the duration of the exposure to these protein factors, we can promote rejuvenation in multiple human cell types."

Sebastiano is the senior author of the study, which will be published online March 24 in Nature Communications. Former graduate student Tapash Sarkar, PhD, is the lead author of the article.

"We are very excited about these findings," said study co-author Thomas Rando, MD, PhD, professor of neurology and neurological sciences and the director of Stanford's Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging. "My colleagues and I have been pursuing the rejuvenation of tissues since our studies in the early 2000s revealed that systemic factors can make old tissues younger. In 2012, Howard Chang and I proposed the concept of using reprogramming factors to rejuvenate cells and tissues, and it is gratifying to see evidence of success with this approach." Chang, MD, PhD, is a professor of dermatology and of genetics at Stanford.

Exposure to proteins

Researchers in Sebastiano's laboratory make iPS cells from adult cells, such as those that compose skin, by repeatedly exposing them over a period of about two weeks to a panel of proteins important to early embryonic development. They do so by introducing daily, short-lived RNA messages into the adult cells. The RNA messages encode the instructions for making the Yamanaka proteins. Over time, these proteins rewind the cells' fate -- pushing them backward along the developmental timeline until they resemble the young, embryonic-like pluripotent cells from which they originated.

During this process the cells not only shed any memories of their previous identities, but they revert to a younger state. They accomplish this transformation by wiping their DNA clean of the molecular tags that not only differentiate, say, a skin cell from a heart muscle cell, but of other tags that accumulate as a cell ages.

Recently researchers have begun to wonder whether exposing the adult cells to Yamanaka proteins for days rather than weeks could trigger this youthful reversion without inducing full-on pluripotency. In fact, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found in 2016 that briefly expressing the four Yamanaka factors in mice with a form of premature aging extended the animals' life span by about 20%. But it wasn't clear whether this approach would work in humans.

Sarkar and Sebastiano wondered whether old human cells would respond in a similar fashion, and whether the response would be limited to just a few cell types or generalizable for many tissues. They devised a way to use genetic material called messenger RNA to temporarily express six reprogramming factors -- the four Yamanaka factors plus two additional proteins -- in human skin and blood vessel cells. Messenger RNA rapidly degrades in cells, allowing the researchers to tightly control the duration of the signal.

The researchers then compared the gene-expression patterns of treated cells and control cells, both obtained from elderly adults, with those of untreated cells from younger people. They found that cells from elderly people exhibited signs of aging reversal after just four days of exposure to the reprogramming factors. Whereas untreated elderly cells expressed higher levels of genes associated with known aging pathways, treated elderly cells more closely resembled younger cells in their patterns of gene expression.

When the researchers studied the patterns of aging-associated chemical tags called methyl groups, which serve as an indicator of a cell's chronological age, they found that the treated cells appeared to be about 1½ to 3½ years younger on average than untreated cells from elderly people, with peaks of 3½ years (in skin cells) and 7½ years (in cells that line blood vessels).

Comparing hallmarks of aging

Next they compared several hallmarks of aging -- including how cells sense nutrients, metabolize compounds to create energy and dispose of cellular trash -- among cells from young people, treated cells from old people and untreated cells from old people.

"We saw a dramatic rejuvenation across all hallmarks but one in all the cell types tested," Sebastiano said. "But our last and most important experiment was done on muscle stem cells. Although they are naturally endowed with the ability to self-renew, this capacity wanes with age. We wondered, Can we also rejuvenate stem cells and have a long-term effect?"

When the researchers transplanted old mouse muscle stem cells that had been treated back into elderly mice, the animals regained the muscle strength of younger mice, they found.

Finally, the researchers isolated cells from the cartilage of people with and without osteoarthritis. They found that the temporary exposure of the osteoarthritic cells to the reprogramming factors reduced the secretion of inflammatory molecules and improved the cells' ability to divide and function.

The researchers are now optimizing the panel of reprogramming proteins needed to rejuvenate human cells and are exploring the possibility of treating cells or tissues without removing them from the body.

"Although much more work needs to be done, we are hopeful that we may one day have the opportunity to reboot entire tissues," Sebastiano said. "But first we want to make sure that this is rigorously tested in the lab and found to be safe."

Sometimes, fixing one problem can create another.

Concrete production contributes 8 percent of global greenhouse gases, and demand continues to rise as populations and incomes grow. Yet some commonly discussed strategies to reduce the sector's global GHG emissions could, under some scenarios, increase local air pollution and related health damages, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

For the study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists quantified the costs of climate change impacts and of death and illness from air pollution. They found that concrete production causes about $335 billion per year in damages, a large fraction of the industry value.

The scientists also compared several GHG-reduction strategies to determine which are most likely to lower both global emissions and local air pollution related to concrete production. They found that a variety of available methods could, together, reduce climate and health damage costs by 44 percent.

"There is a high emissions burden associated with the production of concrete because there is so much demand for it," said lead author Sabbie Miller, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. "We clearly care a great deal about greenhouse gas emissions. But we haven't paid as much attention to health burdens, which are also are driven in large part by this demand."

ASSESSING THE DAMAGES

Among the most effective strategies include using cleaner-burning kiln fuel, more renewable energy and replacing a portion of the cement used in production with lower-carbon alternative materials.

While carbon capture and storage technologies could reduce GHG emissions from concrete production by up to 28 percent, the study found it could actually increase human health impacts from air pollutants unless the technology itself is powered by clean energy. It's also not currently widely implementable.

"Air pollution and climate change problems are really intertwined when we talk about solutions," said co-author Frances Moore, an assistant professor with the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy. "This paper takes these two problems and their joint nature seriously. It shows how different solutions have different effects for global climate change and local air pollution, which may matter a lot for policymakers."

Cement production is responsible for about half of the total climate (32 percent) and health (18 percent) damages of making concrete. That is followed by aggregate production, which is responsible for 34 percent of health damages and 4 percent in climate damages.

Mixing concrete, or batching, contributes little to climate damages but represents 11 percent of health damages.

To reduce these impacts, the authors evaluated eight GHG reduction strategies and presented the options in ways policymakers can consider for feasibility.

REDUCING GHGS

Methods that can be readily implemented to reduce climate damages include:

Cleaner combusting kiln fuel

Increase use of limestone filler or other low-impact mineral additions to partially replace cement

Clean energy, such as wind power

Amine scrubbing and calcium looping, which are forms of carbon capture storage, could reduce climate damage costs over 50 percent and 65 percent, respectively. They are not yet readily implementable but may become so in the future.

REDUCING AIR POLLUTION

Cleaner combusting kiln fuel shows the greatest co-benefit, with a 14 percent reduction in health damages -- four times as large as any other mitigation strategy for air quality benefits.

The authors note that additional strategies and policies that reduce particulate matter emissions may reduce air pollution impacts more directly.

Major concrete-producing communities include parts of the U.S., China, Brazil, India, Russia and other regions. While effectiveness of strategies varies by region, the study says that overall, a mixture of the strategies could reduce climate and health damages by 85 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

"As the cement and concrete industries make large efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is critical that they remain mindful of the impacts decisions have on other environmental burdens to avoid undesired side effects," Miller said.

For years, core-shell structured particles have been recognized as well-designed catalysts that can facilitate reaction activity owing to their distinct synergism at the interface.

Recently, by using a combination of in situ methods, Dr. LIU Wei and his colleagues from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found that the core-shell configuration of a Ni-Au catalyst was lost during the actual reaction and recovered afterwards. The Ni-Au alloy as the real active surface can solely be observed via in situ microscopy. The results were published in Nature Catalysis.

Supported metal nanoparticles can change their size, structure, and active surface composition under reaction conditions, thus functioning differently than expected.

As for core-shell nanoparticles - one of the most popular heterogeneous catalysts - it is accepted that their catalytic properties derive from the synergy of electronics and geometry between the core and shell layer.

However, lack of direct in situ evidence visualizing the localized atomic coordination/arrangement during real reactions impedes our understanding of actual structure-activity mechanism and core-shell functionality.

The researchers from DICP described the real catalytic surface of a Ni-Au bimetallic catalyst. Without in situ characterization, it showed no difference from any other reported core-shell catalysis. Its high CO selectivity (>95%) (Fig. 1b) could be attributed to the well-controlled ultra-thin (about two atoms thick) Au shell, since a nickel catalyst always yields methane.

However, by using environmental transmission electron microscopy to directly visualize the dynamic process at the atomic level (Fig. 1a), the researchers disclosed that the core-shell structure contributed nothing to the reactivity because the core-shell Ni-Au kinetically transformed into a Ni-Au alloy during the reaction and dramatically reverted to the core-shell configuration after the reaction (Fig. 1c).

This discovery has been well supported by results from multiple in situ techniques, including synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy as well as theoretical simulations.

This finding regarding core-shell nanoparticles overturns our conventional understanding. As a result, researchers may begin to question whether core-shell catalysts are really in core-shell structure under working conditions or not. The discovery of this hidden transformation also indicates that efforts to synthesize core-shell structures may be unnecessary in some reactions.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A multistate study of Medicaid enrollees led by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center found that suicide risk was highest among youth with epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia, substance use and bipolar disorder. In addition, the odds of suicide decreased among those who had more mental health visits within the 30 days before the date of suicide.

Researchers compared the clinical profiles and mental health service patterns of children and adolescents who had died by suicide to see how they differed from the general population. The findings published today in JAMA Pediatrics.

"To the best of our knowledge, no studies have examined the clinical profiles and health and mental health service utilization patterns prior to suicide for children and adolescents within the Medicaid population," said lead researcher Cynthia Fontanella, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral health at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. "Understanding how health care utilization patterns of suicidal decedents differ from the general population is critical to target suicide prevention efforts."

This population-based case-control study merged mortality data with U.S. Medicaid data from 16 states spanning all regions of the country and accounting for 65% of the total child Medicaid population.

The study looked at 910 youth aged 10-18 years who died by suicide between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2013 compared to a control group of 6,346 youth that was matched based on gender, race, ethnicity, Medicaid eligibility category, state and age.

For both groups, researchers examined health and behavioral health visits in the six-month period prior to date of suicide. Associations between visits, clinical characteristics and suicide were examined.

Clinical characteristics included psychiatric diagnoses (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorders, depression, bipolar disorder and other mood disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia/psychosis, substance use and other mental health disorders) and chronic medical conditions (diabetes, seizure disorders, cerebral palsy, asthma or cancer.)

"Our study found that 41% of youth who died by suicide had at least one mental health diagnosis in the six months prior to death, a finding similar to those of previous studies on adults," Fontanella said. "Our findings suggest that youths with psychiatric disorders, particularly mood disorders, schizophrenia, and substance use should be routinely assessed for suicide risk and receive high-intensity, evidence-based treatments for suicidality, such as cognitive behavioral therapy."

In the United States, the suicide rate among people aged 10-24 years has increased by 50% since 1999. Suicide is currently the second leading cause of death in this age group, accounting for nearly 6,800 deaths in 2017.

"Suicide among young people is a major public health problem. Based on our findings, we believe that implementing suicide screening protocols for youth enrolled in Medicaid - targeted on the basis of frequency of visits and psychiatric diagnoses - has the potential to decrease suicide rates," Fontanella said.