Brain

A new study has discovered that US students achieve better results in reading and mathematics tests when they stay in elementary school for grades six (age 11-12) and seven (age 12-13), rather than transfer to middle school. In contrast, students in grade eight (age 13-14) achieve better results in middle school than high school.

"The current study adds to the growing body of research that experiencing a school transition during early adolescence is associated with detrimental outcomes," said lead researcher Marisa Malone from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Malone and her colleagues report their findings in School Effectiveness and School Improvement.

In the US, there are various ways that students can transfer between schools as they age, with the span of grades covered by different schools known as grade configuration. One of the most common configurations is to go to elementary school up to grade five, and then to middle school from grades six to eight, and then to high school from grade nine onwards. But several studies have found that academic motivation and achievement tend to fall in middle school, with sixth-grade students in middle schools more likely to exhibit lower academic competency, more disciplinary problems and poorer attendance than those who stay in elementary schools.

Most of these studies focused on student performance, but to gain a slightly different perspective on the issue, Malone and her colleagues decided to focus on school performance. This also allowed them to take account of various school-level factors that can affect academic performance, including school size, racial composition, socioeconomic status, and whether the school is in an urban, suburban or rural location. They also considered sixth, seventh and eighth grade students, whereas most studies only focus on sixth and seventh grade students.

They conducted their study on 573 public schools in Virginia, which adopts various grade configurations. Most students transfer to middle school for grades six, seven and eight, but in some areas, students stay in elementary school until grade six or seven and then transfer straight to high school, missing out middle school.

All schools in Virginia conduct mandatory tests of reading and mathematics from grade three onwards. Malone and her colleagues recorded the pass rates for these tests in grades six, seven and eight for each school over three years, and then compared the pass rates between the different configurations. They found that the pass rates for these tests were significantly higher for sixth and seventh grade students at elementary schools when compared to middle schools, although the effect was more pronounced for sixth grade students than seventh grade. For eighth grade students, the pass rate was higher in middle schools than high schools.

Together, these results suggest that students struggle with the transfer between schools, especially in early adolescence, adversely affecting their academic achievement. Malone and her colleagues therefore recommend that eliminating middle schools should be considered as an option, in order to limit the number of school transfers.

Although this study looked solely at US schools, Malone says transferring between schools may well affect the academic achievement of students in other countries. "Early adolescence is a challenging time for youth; these individuals are experiencing a host of physiological, psychological and social-emotional changes. At the same time, they experience the transition to middle school, which is structured very differently than elementary schools. For example, students in American middle schools have many teachers throughout the day, which means that they need to learn the rules and expectations for multiple classrooms, versus just one. Class and school sizes also tend to be larger in middle schools. If these structural changes are similar in other countries, then we may suspect that students in other countries may experience similar challenges adjusting to the new school environment."

COLUMBUS, Ohio -Climate change and over-tapped waterways could leave developing parts of Asia without enough water to cool power plants in the near future, new research indicates.

The study found that existing and planned power plants that burn coal for energy could be vulnerable. The work was published today in the journal Energy and Environment Science.

"One of the impacts of climate change is that the weather is changing, which leads to more extreme events - more torrential downpours and more droughts," said Jeffrey Bielicki, a co-author of the study and an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geodetic Engineering and the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University.

"The power plants - coal, nuclear and natural gas power plants - require water for cooling, so when you don't have the rain, you don't have the stream flow, you can't cool the power plant."

That is already a problem for some power plants in the United States, Bielicki said, where extreme weather patterns, which are increasingly frequent especially in hotter months, have reduced water supplies.

But, this study suggests, it is likely to be an even greater problem in developing parts of Asia - Mongolia, Southeast Asia and parts of India and China - where more than 400 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plant capacity are planned for operation by 2030. (By comparison: The largest coal-fired power plant in Ohio has the capacity to produce about 2,600 megawatts of electricity; the new plants planned for developing Asia are the equivalent of more than 150 similar facilities.)

That increasing power production will itself be part of the problem, the researchers found, creating greater demand for water at the same time that climate change significantly limits the supply.

"Capacity expansion and climate change combined is going to reduce the water available to cool power plants," said Yaoping Wang, lead author of the study and a former doctoral student at Ohio State. Wang, now a research assistant professor at The University of Tennessee, did some of this research while on a fellowship at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

Cooling is critical to a plant's ability to operate - without it, machinery can overheat, causing a shutdown that could disrupt the flow of electricity to homes and businesses, and creating the potential for additional pollution.

The researchers analyzed databases of existing and planned coal-fired power plants, and combined that information with high-resolution hydrological maps to evaluate the possible strain on water supplies throughout the region. Then they applied different climate scenarios - increases in global temperature of 1.5, 2 and 3 degrees Celsius (2.7 - 4.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, increases set out as milestones in the Paris Agreement, a 2016 international accord to address climate change.

The researchers then considered different cooling systems and potential use of post-combustion CO2 capture equipment, and the water that might be needed to run them.

The numbers showed that there simply would not be enough water to cool all the power plants, but there is also a lot of local variability, Wang said.

The takeaway for agencies that plan and permit plants across developing Asia, she said, is that they must evaluate the renewable water available near each power plant, taking into account water use by other plants.

Bielicki said this may require difficult decisions like reducing the number of planned power plants.

"There's often a perceived tension between developing your economy and protecting the environment," he said. "Some of the results of this study are saying, 'hey, we expect you're going to run into problems, so you should selectively change your plans, but also thin out your existing power plants, because as you're adding new power plants, you're creating more competition for the water. Your economy needs water, but your ecosystems and people need water, too.'"

A new report reveals the relationships between transport and property value across the North of England. The report highlights how understanding these relationships can help inform infrastructure planning and investment - from inter-city rail connections to shaping the urban environment.

Researchers from the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds have developed three new models of the property market in the North of England - an area of 40,000km2 with 15 million people and 7.1 million homes.

The models quantify the extent to which transport links can make locations more attractive to people and businesses. They also include a wide range of other factors contributing to property value, including access to local facilities, schools and greenspace.

The report, funded by Transport for the North, West Yorkshire Combined Authority and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, is the first of its kind and the results are being presented at six international conferences this year.

The study found that across the North there is a premium on being well connected. Ease of access to employment is a key driver of property values, with rail, road and pedestrian accessibility to jobs all adding value.

Rail access alone can add 14% to the value of a home. For every additional 10,000 jobs that are readily accessible by rail, there is a property price premium of 0.16%. There is also a premium of 0.19% per 10,000 jobs accessible by car.

The ability to walk to work has the most significant impact on values, with a property price premium of 3.61% for each additional 10,000 jobs within reach by walking - although the total number of jobs accessible by walking tends to be smaller than by car or rail. This is seen in the 'city centre premiums' in the market, and also points to the value of mixed urban development as the Northern economy grows.

The report also provides evidence that past transport investment in the North of England has created value in the property market. Using the Manchester Metrolink extensions since 1995 as a case study, the report finds that:

Metrolink extensions have increased property prices near to the new stations by 6.3% on average;

the South Manchester Line has increased prices by 10.5% and the Airport Line by 20.9%.

In addition to the effects of transport on property value the report identified many other factors - some of which can be influenced by public policy, including:

access to local centres with facilities such as shops and banks, is worth around 7.5% of the value of an average home,

access to parks and playgrounds can add up to 7% to property value - compared with locations without these features,

both air quality and freedom from traffic noise add value - measures to completely eliminate noise from busy roads and railways, such as tunnelling for example, can increase the value of nearby properties by as much as 8%,

measures such as low noise road surfacing and urban greening would make a more modest positive impact; and Clean Air Zones should raise property values across the area of the Zone.

Report lead author Dr John Nellthorp, from Leeds' Institute for Transport Studies, said: "Previous research has shown there are significant gaps in understanding how transport infrastructure investment can affect land value. Property markets are complex and transport is only one of the elements that can influence prices.

"We can now clearly see not only the value urban rail systems bring in the property market, but the value of inter-urban connectivity in the North, and walk accessibility as well as by rail and car.

"The findings on environment and place quality were not the main goal of the work but do help to put the transport impacts in context. Place quality is important, in fact it is one of the North's strengths and this report helps us understand how all these elements fit together in driving land value.

"The results of this study can be seen as a boost to the analysis of 'land value uplift' and to the case for well-designed investments in regions outside London".

The study also provided the first estimates of the potential impact of Northern Powerhouse Rail on land value. While the researchers caution that the national economy and fluctuations in the property market can cause additional impact to land value, the initial estimates indicate there is the potential for impacts up to 9.3% in some areas close to the stations - the outcomes will depend upon many factors including the investment response in the supply of new housing and business space.

Dr Jack Snape, Principal Data Analytics and Modelling Officer at Transport for the North, said: "This work shows significant increases in land value from improved access to employment by rail, road and walking - which could help to bring forward the investment needed to help tackle the housing crisis and support the growth plans of the North.

"The research provides a robust body of evidence to help us build the case for investment in transport, and we can use this to inform the case for Northern Powerhouse Rail."

Transport for the North plans to incorporate the report's findings into an Analytical Framework to help understand how transport investment could help rebalance the economy more evenly around the country.

The framework will be used to examine whether improved transport connections could enable existing buildings and vacant land in the North to be used to their full potential.

An increase in land value in the North could also stimulate other forms of investment, such as new and refurbished housing in places where commuters can easily and sustainably get to work.

Cllr Kim Groves, Chair of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority Transport Committee said: "This research provides invaluable insight on how local property markets can benefit from transport investment and gives us the means to accurately set out those benefits to the government when making the case for transport investment.

"Land value plays an important role in government appraisal of transport and regeneration investment and these new models will allow us to paint a more effective and robust picture of those benefits. It also gives us the means to monitor the property market across the lifetime of major transport investments to show the potential fiscal benefits of such investments to the government.

"The models developed by the researchers can do this more accurately than has been possible to date and we are working with the Department for Transport to help make sure this work will be used to support the business case for transport investment in West Yorkshire and to show those benefits across the North."

Part of the funding for this study and report came from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and the University of Leeds Institute for Transport Studies (ITS) joint Transport Research Innovation Fund (TRIF). TRIF was established in 2016 as a collaboration between the Combined Authority and the University of Leeds ITS.

The TRIF provides the opportunity to support the development and translation of applied research to deliver a step-change in transport and mobility in the region and across the North. TRIF has funded six research projects to-date. The research into Transport and Land Value Uplift investigates the potential for methodological improvements to the quantification of land value uplift in transport appraisal.

RUDN University mathematician for the first time proved the theorem of existence and uniqueness of solutions of the Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation in a strip. Such theorems are very rare for partial differential equations. The new results can be applied, for instance, in astrophysics, in describing the propagation of plane waves in plasma. The article is published in the journal Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications.

The Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation is a one-function equation of two variables x andy. For physics, x is the direction of wave propagation, and the deformation of the medium occurs along the perpendicular direction y. For example, an oscillation of the guitar string looks like the wave runs down the string, while the oscillations occur perpendicular direction relative to the run of the wave.

There are a large number of results that describe solutions of the Zakharov-Kuznetsovequations in the case when there are no constraints on y. But the question of wave propagation in the strip -- when y is limited -- was almost not studied until recently. And this is although such a statement of the problem has a physical meaning, and therefore potential applications.

RUDN University mathematicians dealt with the Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation in the strip. They examined three main cases -- when there are no oscillations on the boundary of the strip, when there is no current on the same boundary and when the boundary conditions are periodic in structure. The latter case corresponds to the propagation of waves in a medium whose structure is periodic in x.

In all these cases mathematicians managed to prove theorems of existence and uniqueness of solutions. For systems of partial differential equations, which include the Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation, such equations are very rare. These results are the first for solutions of the equation with initial conditions in the strip. Flat plasma flows with boundary conditions, which were considered by RUDNUniversity scientists, can occur in physics and astrophysics.

The Zakharov-Kuznetsov equations belong to a wider category of equations known the Korteweg-de Vries equations. In the study of this category of equations for the first time, it was possible to describe solitons -- waves whose shape does not change during movement. Physicists consider solitons as a tool for modern optical data transmission systems. The study of solitons, which can arise in the Zakharov-Kuznetsov equations, is one of the options for the development of the work done byRUDN University mathematicians.

Over millions of years, porpoises have developed powerful biosonar with high accuracy and intelligence to detect and track preys in underwater noisy environment. The sound source in a porpoise is about one half of the wavelength of its emitted acoustic waves. According to textbook sonar theories, it is difficult to control the directional sound waves for target detection. Porpoises, with remarkable sonar detection capabilities, have been known as natural legend of echolocation. How to reconstruct their acoustic super-structures is a huge challenge for artificial design.

In one research work published in the National Science Review (NSR), the research groups of Prof. Yu Zhang from Xiamen University and Prof. Nicholas Xuanlai Fang from Massachusetts Institute of Technology made exciting progress in this research area. They proposed to reconstruct the finless porpoises' physical model via hybrid metamaterials based on computer tomography imaging and gradient sound speed measurement (Fig. 1).

This physical-based porpoise model (PPM) can manipulate the directional sound beams through the multiphase artificial materials such as air sacs, solid structure, and gradient materials. The directional device can produce transient specular reflected and elastic waves by interacting with an underwater target, which is very similar to finless porpoise biosonar (Fig. 2). This advantage allows to significantly improve the detection accuracy and suppress the perturbations from environment noise and reverberation interferences such as sea interfaces and non-detected targets.

Acoustic field simulations and experimental measurements found that the PPM increased the main lobe energy in a wide range of frequency. However, the finless porpoise usually uses narrow-band sonar, suggesting that this physical model further improves the sonar performance. In addition, experimental measurements indicated that this device increased the signal-to-noise ratio for underwater target detection. Thus, PPM might have good performances in directionally detecting underwater targets and suppressing false target interferences.

The physical-based porpoise model bridges the gap between biosonar and artificial systems by mimicking biological materials. The physical modeling study of porpoises not only helps us to explore the natural mystery of porpoise's biosonar, but also to promote the development of bioinspired technology, so as to achieve the goal of "From the nature but Beyond the nature". The principle of wave manipulation in complex multiphase media is universal. The bioinspired devices might be widely used in the fields of underwater acoustic sensing, nondestructive testing, and medical ultrasound, etc.

A German and British research team lead by Technical University of Munich (TUM) has examined the interplay between genetics, cardiovascular disease and educational attainment in a major population study. Genetic variants which had been linked to educational attainment in other studies were observed in the subjects. The researchers found that these variants also had implications for a more health-conscious lifestyle and thus a lower risk of cardiovascular disease - in some cases regardless of the level of education.

It has long been known that individuals with higher educational attainment are less likely to suffer heart attacks in later life. Prof. Heribert Schunkert and his team have now examined this link in a major study that has focused on the genetic dimension for the first time. Schunkert is Director of the Cardiology Department and Medical Director of the German Heart Center Munich and a professor at TUM as well as scientist at the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research.

Genetic variants as markers

The study was based on SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms), which are thought to influence school attainment. SNPs are small variations in the genetic code which may be linked to particular traits, abilities or disease risks. Heribert Schunkert and his team began by studying 74 of these SNPs, known as the "variants associated with educational attainment". Previous scientific studies conducted between 2016 and 2018 (see publications listed below) have shown that these variants have a positive influence on the years of schooling completed. They accounted for around 11 percent of the differences between the subjects with respect to the length of education.

In an initial study, Schunkert and his team examined data from around 13,000 patients with cardiovascular disease and 14,000 case-control subjects largely from Germany, England and the United States. It emerged that the risk of developing cardiovascular disease was approximately 21 percent higher if an individual belonged to the fifth of the population with the lowest score of genetic variants associated with educational attainment. On average, these individuals also had a lower level of education and had spent fewer years in school.

"Our findings suggest that these genetic factors not only affect educational attainment to a certain extent, but also the risk of subsequently developing cardiovascular disease," explains Schunkert. He adds: "We are of course aware that several other factors play an important role in educational attainment - including upbringing and the education level of the parents - but we did not examine these in our study."

The study also revealed the reasons behind an elevated risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. The team was able to prove statistically that individuals with a lower score of genetic variants associated with educational attainment were more likely to smoke, be overweight and suffer from high blood pressure.

Variants associated with educational attainment also have implications for a health-conscious lifestyle

The scientists went on to confirm their findings using another large database encompassing some 500,000 people in the UK, and they also increased the number of SNPs in their study to over 1,000. Here too, they arrived at the conclusion that the variants associated with educational attainment have a positive impact on the risk of a heart attack.

The next step for the researchers was to use statistical calculation methods to test how strongly the risk of developing cardiovascular disease was impacted directly by schooling and how big a role is played by genetics. For this purpose, the relationship between genetic variants and educational attainment was statistically cleansed, i.e. adjusted for the actual years of schooling completed. Surprisingly, the association between genetic variants and the risk of heart attack remained significant.

Prof. Schunkert explains the finding: "This protective effect against cardiovascular disease cannot be attributed to educational attainment alone - it is clear that genetic make-up also has a strong influencing role. In other words, the inherited traits that contribute to an individual's success in school also have an impact - regardless of educational attainment - on a more health-conscious lifestyle in later years." The researchers in Schunkert's team have been identifying the genetic factors that influence cardiovascular disease for several years.

Publications:
Zeng L, Ntalla I, Kessler T, Kastrati A, Erdmann J, Danesh J, Watkins H, Samani NJ, Deloukas P, Schunkert H., Genetically modulated educational attainment and coronary disease risk, European Heart Journal, June 6, 2019, DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehz328
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/40/29/2413/5512096

Lee JJ et al., Gene discovery and polygenic prediction from a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals, Nature Genetics, July 23, 2018, DOI: 10.1038/s41588-018-0147-3
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3

Okbay A. et al., Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment, Nature, May 11, 2016, DOI: 10.1038/nature17671
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17671

More information:
The following institutions were also involved in the study: Queen Mary University of London, University of Lübeck, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University of Oxford, University of Leicester, National Institute for Health Research Leicester, King Abdulaziz University

Profile of Prof. Heribert Schunkert
http://www.professoren.tum.de/en/schunkert-heribert/

Department of Cardiology at the German Heart Center
http://www.dhm.mhn.de/en/departments_and_institutes/cardiovascular_diseases.cfm

German Centre for Cardiovascular Research
https://dzhk.de/en/

Contact:
Prof. Dr. Heribert Schunkert
Director of the Cardiology Department
German Heart Center, Munich
Institute of the Technical University of Munich
Tel.: 089-1218 4073
E-mail: schunkert@dhm.mhn.de

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- It may still be decades before quantum computers are ready to solve problems that today's classical computers aren't fast or efficient enough to solve, but the emerging "probabilistic computer" could bridge the gap between classical and quantum computing.

Engineers at Purdue University and Tohoku University in Japan have built the first hardware to demonstrate how the fundamental units of what would be a probabilistic computer - called p-bits - are capable of performing a calculation that quantum computers would usually be called upon to perform.

The study, published in Nature on Wednesday (Sept. 18), introduces a device that serves as a basis for building probabilistic computers to more efficiently solve problems in areas such as drug research, encryption and cybersecurity, financial services, data analysis and supply chain logistics.

Today's computers store and use information in the form of zeroes and ones called bits. Quantum computers use qubits that can be both zero and one at the same time. In 2017, a Purdue research group led by Supriyo Datta, the university's Thomas Duncan Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, proposed the idea of a probabilistic computer using p-bits that can be either zero or one at any given time and fluctuate rapidly between the two.

"There is a useful subset of problems solvable with qubits that can also be solved with p-bits. You might say that a p-bit is a 'poor man's qubit,'" Datta said.

Whereas qubits need really cold temperatures to operate, p-bits work at room temperature like today's electronics, so existing hardware could be adapted to build a probabilistic computer, the researchers say.

The team built a device that is a modified version of magnetoresistive random-access memory, or MRAM, which some types of computers use today to store information. The technology uses the orientation of magnets to create states of resistance corresponding to zero or one.

Tohoku University researchers William Borders, Shusuke Fukami and Hideo Ohno altered an MRAM device, making it intentionally unstable to better facilitate the ability of p-bits to fluctuate. Purdue researchers combined this device with a transistor to build a three-terminal unit whose fluctuations could be controlled. Eight such p-bit units were interconnected to build a probabilistic computer.

The circuit successfully solved what is often considered a "quantum" problem: Breaking down, or factoring, numbers such as 35,161 and 945 into smaller numbers, a calculation known as integer factorization. These calculations are well within the capabilities of today's classical computers, but the researchers believe that the probabilistic approach demonstrated in this paper would take up much less space and energy.

"On a chip, this circuit would take up the same area as a transistor, but perform a function that would have taken thousands of transistors to perform. It also operates in a manner that could speed up calculation through the parallel operation of a large number of p-bits," said Ahmed Zeeshan Pervaiz, a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering at Purdue.

Realistically, hundreds of p-bits would be needed to solve bigger problems - but that's not too far off, the researchers say.

"In the near future, p-bits could better help a machine to learn like a human does or optimize a route for goods to travel to market," said Kerem Camsari, a Purdue postdoctoral associate in electrical and computer engineering.

(Carlisle, Pa., Sept. 18, 2019) - New research published today in the journal Science Advances challenges the conventional view of how a vital and life-sustaining feature of weathered rock is created. Porosity, the void space found in rock, was traditionally thought to be formed as water flowed through, chemically dissolving minerals. Now, researchers have found physical weathering, such as tree root wedging or ice cracking, bear a larger responsibility for creating porosity than previously thought. These pores, or empty spaces, are crucial reservoirs for water and life-sustaining nutrients within rocks.

Geophysicist Jorden Hayes, assistant professor of earth sciences at Dickinson College, and a team of researchers from the University of Wyoming, Virginia Tech and the University of California, Davis, conducted geochemical and geophysical analyses of granitic saprolite rock in the southern Sierra Nevada in California. In the field, researchers collected seismic data and gathered core samples of the subsurface material. Both the geophysical and geochemical datasets give independent information about subsurface porosity. The researchers linked these datasets to create subsurface maps that detail the degree of physical weathering in the subsurface.

"The rock there is actually expanding to more than double the initial volume as it weathers," said Hayes. "This is surprising because we don't usually think about rock expanding to such a degree, and scientists conventionally think about rock weathering being dominated by chemical dissolution as rainwater flows into the subsurface."

Hayes' research found this physical weathering contributes substantially to the overall porosity and thus subsurface water holding capacity, which is vital to sustaining mountain ecosystems, especially during the region's dry summer seasons and extended droughts. "Our finding is especially exciting as we think about other landscapes that may also be subjected to these physical mechanisms and have the ability to store large volumes of water," she said.

SEATTLE, SEPTEMBER 18, 2019 - The results of the study called HVTN 097, titled "Immune correlates of the Thai RV144 vaccine regimen in South Africa" and led by Dr. Glenda Gray, Co-Principal Investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), headquartered at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and President of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), were published in the journal Science Translational Medicine on September 18. This study was conducted in South Africa using the same HIV vaccine regimen that showed modest protection in an efficacy study conducted in Thailand, where clades B and E are prominent. Although clade C is the dominant circulating strain of HIV in South Africa, the RV144/Thai vaccine regimen mounted significant cellular and antibody responses in study participants enrolled in South Africa.

Despite major breakthroughs in HIV prevention and treatment, there were an estimated 1.8 million people newly infected with HIV in 2018: an estimated 5,000 new HIV infections around the world every day. The pursuit for a safe, effective and scalable HIV vaccine, although a challenging endeavor, is a global imperative.

Gray and her team evaluated whether the vaccine-induced immune responses would be similar in a South African cohort if immunized with the same RV144 HIV vaccine regimen used in Thailand. The U.S. Army-led RV144 was the first vaccine clinical trial to ever demonstrate any efficacy in preventing HIV that tested a heterologous "prime-boost" combination of two vaccines: ALVAC-HIV and AIDSVAX B/E vaccine based on clades B and E, which demonstrated moderate protection against HIV with a 31.2% efficacy.

"Vaccine-induced immune responses elicited from this clade B/E based vaccine regimen induced cross-clade responses in South Africans and, at peak immunogenicity, the South African vaccinees exhibited significantly higher cellular and antibody immune responses than the Thai vaccinees," said Gray.

The HVTN 097 study is part of a larger HIV vaccine research endeavor led by the Pox-Protein Public-Private Partnership, or P5--a diverse group of public and private organizations committed to building on the success of the RV144 trial. The P5 aims to produce an HIV vaccine that could have a significant public health benefit in southern Africa and to advance scientists' understanding of the immune responses associated with preventing HIV infection. P5 members include the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC), HVTN, Sanofi Pasteur, GSK and the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (MHRP) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. NIAID funds the HVTN and funded the HVTN 097 study.

"Since 2009, the HIV vaccine field has been building on findings from RV144 to understand and develop improvements in vaccine breadth and duration in order to protect more people for longer periods of time," said Lt. Col. Julie Ake, Principal Deputy Director of MHRP.

T-cell and antibody responses measured

The RV144 vaccine regimen in HVTN 097 vaccinees induced a significantly higher CD4+ T cell response rate than seen in the Thai vaccine recipients (RV144=36.4%; HVTN 097=51.9%), irrespective of age and sex. South African and Thai participants also generated cross-clade antibody responses against HIV clades AE, B, and C, which, in a panel of clade C antigens, were also higher and more prevalent in South Africans. In general, cross-clade immune responses were stronger than expected in South Africa. HVTN 097 is a precursor to studies that adapted the RV144/Thai vaccine regimen to be clade C specific, now underway in South Africa (HVTN 702).

"This breaks open the thought pattern that each region of the world needs a separate type of HIV vaccine based upon their circulating strains," said Larry Corey, M.D., Principal Investigator of the HVTN.

Associations between BMI and vaccine-induced immune responses

A previous clinical trial (HVTN 503/Phambili) conducted in South Africa demonstrated that higher BMI was associated with a reduction in vaccine-induced immune responses. Given the high rates of obesity in South Africa, the HVTN 097 study team, after stratifying the groups, found that a higher BMI was not associated with a reduced CD4+ T cell and antibody response rate or the strength of the response rate. Notably, CD4 + T cell responses were detected in 100% of vaccinees with a BMI greater than 30, giving hope for future HIV vaccine regimens based on the RV144/Thai vaccine regimen.

Differences observed in vaccine-induced immune responses between Thais and South Africans

The study team acknowledge that factors such as race, ethnicity, the microbiome, or genetic factors may have influenced vaccine-induced immune responses in South Africans.

New Rochelle, NY, September 17, 2019-Short bowel syndrome is a debilitating condition with few treatment options, and these treatments have limited efficacy. The ability to grow artificial intestine is a coveted goal with the potential to profoundly improve this outlook. Working toward this target, researchers have created an artificial scaffold that mimics the native small intestinal architecture, complete with villi; this scaffold can incorporate intestinal epithelial cells and be successfully implanted in mice while retaining structural integrity. The work is reported in Tissue Engineering, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the article for free through October 17, 2019.

David J. Hackam, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, and colleagues present their results in an article titled "Development of Intestinal Scaffolds that Mimic Native Mammalian Intestinal Tissue." The authors used polyglycerol sebacate to fabricate scaffolds and showed that they have mechanical properties similar to native intestine, are stable in control and digestive media, and can be infiltrated with intestinal epithelial cells for functional intestinal recreation attempts. An additional feature of the scaffold material is its amenability to the future integration of drug and growth factor delivery mechanisms.

"Dr. Hackam and his team at Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Walter Reed, have beautifully mimicked the microarchitecture of native small intestine using a degradable, poly(glycerol sebacate) scaffold, showing that their approach supports functional intestinal epithelial cells for weeks after implantation," says Tissue Engineering Co-Editor-in-Chief John P. Fisher, PhD, Fischell Family Distinguished Professor & Department Chair, and Director of the NIH Center for Engineering Complex Tissues at the University of Maryland. "The work has tremendous translational potential."

Adolescents place a lot of emphasis on popularity and they are keenly aware of the difference between being liked and being popular. If forced to choose, many opt for popularity.

Popularity, however, has many faces. In prior research, two groups of popular adolescents stand out: those who are aggressive and those who are prosocial. Prosocial popular teens acquire and maintain popularity through cooperation. Aggressive popular teens acquire and maintain popularity through coercion and aggressive behavior.

Yet, if you ask any teenager about popularity, you will hear about a third group, who are described as Machiavellian-like. "The most popular are feared AND loved." Just like the "Mean Girls" in the iconic American teen comedy, this group of teens can be aggressive when needed and then quickly "make nice" to smooth out any ruffled feathers.

To put this idea about teens who are both loved and feared to the test, researchers from Florida Atlantic University and the University of Montreal in Canada conducted a novel longitudinal study to examine different types of popular adolescents. For the study, published in the journal Child Development, researchers followed 568 girls and boys in seventh and eighth grade (median age 13) for two years. Classmates identified those who were aggressive, prosocial and popular.

Results from the study identified three distinct groups of popular adolescents: prosocial popular; aggressive popular; and bistrategic popular or Machiavellian. The bistrategic group had the highest level of popularity and were above average on physical and relational aggression, as well as on prosocial behavior. They were viewed by their peers as disruptive and angry but were otherwise well-adjusted.

"Bistrategic adolescents are noteworthy not only for their very high levels of popularity, but also for the way that they balance getting their way with getting along," said Brett Laursen, Ph.D., co-author and a professor of psychology in FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science. "They were less prosocial than prosocial popular adolescents, but at the same time less physically and relationally aggressive than the aggressive popular adolescents. These youth are truly Machiavellian, maintaining their popularity by off-setting the coercive behavior required to maintain power with carefully calibrated acts of kindness."

As expected, prosocial popular adolescents were well-liked and well-adjusted; aggressive popular adolescents were neither.

"Prosocial popular adolescents are well-adjusted while aggressive popular adolescents are troubled on many fronts," said Amy C. Hartl, Ph.D., senior author, who conducted this study as a psychology graduate student at FAU. "The prognosis for bistrategic popular youth is mixed. Their well-adjusted social and emotional profile coupled with a moderate propensity for social dominance and rule breaking may prove good or bad depending on the environment, thus providing hope for positive long-term adjustment and concern for the same."

Even though the majority of the Finnish youth are thriving, some of them are wrestling with a host of problems. Studies find that 14% of Finns born in 1987 hadn't completed any degrees within nine years after completing the nine-year comprehensive school starting at the age of seven. Some of them have faced wellbeing and health related challenges: every third of them have either been given a psychiatric diagnosis or taken psychiatric medications. As for Finns born in 1997, there is no indication that the numbers will change for the better.

Despite the excellent reputation of the Finnish school system, some schoolchildren in Finland struggle with a lack of vision for the future. Some of them feel some degree of cynicism towards school already by the age of 13, and 15 percent regard school as completely insignificant for their future.

It's exactly these kinds of children and teenagers that could benefit from cultural outreach work, researchers of the ArtsEqual initiative suggest. Cultural outreach means providing children and teenagers the opportunity to participate in tailored cultural activities in cases where they otherwise wouldn't know how to get involved or wouldn't have access to the activities.

A Helsinki-based pilot project named SONGLAB, for example, involves teenagers who are interested in making music and who come from different backgrounds and provides them a low-threshold opportunity to compose, write lyrics, produce and release their own music together with other teenagers free of charge.

Other similar examples include the Floora project, in which children who had needed child welfare services were offered free instrument lessons in a music school. The policy brief also mentions a dance group assembled from nine-year-old boys who weren't selected to participate in the extended dance curriculum of a comprehensive school.

"Cultural participation enforces people's experiences of seeing the value of human life and finding life meaningful, and encourages us to take action," says researcher Isto Turpeinen, one of the authors of the policy brief from the University of the Arts Helsinki (Uniarts Helsinki).

Cultural capital linked to a meaningful life

Numerous studies show that arts education and artistic activities boost learning, wellbeing, and development of social skills. Cultural capital has been linked to enhanced learning results, academic skills, and educational choices. In adult age, cultural capital is associated with social inclusion, wellbeing, and having an enjoyable and meaningful life.

"For the time being, only some of the positive effects associated with arts education, including prevention of social exclusion and increased wellbeing, are being realised. If art activities and arts education aren't available for everyone, we won't be able to fully utilise these possibilities," Turpeinen notes.

The purpose of cultural outreach is to increase the quality of living, strengthen a sense of community, support people's wellbeing, and thereby prevent social exclusion.

The ArtsEqual policy brief is available in Finnish under the title "Etsivä kulttuurityö lisää lasten ja nuorten kulttuurista osallisuutta" (Cultural outreach work increases children's and teenagers' cultural participation), and it has been written by professor Marja-Leena Juntunen, researcher Isto Turpeinen and doctoral candidate Hanna Kamensky from Uniarts Helsinki.

The six-year ArtsEqual initiative examines how art could increase social equality and wellbeing in Finland of the 2020s. It is coordinated by Uniarts Helsinki and funded by the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland. It is one of the biggest research initiatives in Finland in the field of arts.

More information: http://www.artsequal.fi

Emphasizing more play, hands-on learning, and students helping one another in kindergarten improves academic outcomes, self-control and attention regulation, finds new UBC research.

The study, published today in the journal PLoS One, found this approach to kindergarten curriculum also enhanced children's joy in learning and teachers' enjoyment of teaching, and reduced bullying, peer ostracism, and teacher burnout.

"Before children have the ability to sit for long periods absorbing information the way it is traditionally presented in school through lectures, they need to be allowed to be active and encouraged to learn by doing," said Dr. Adele Diamond, the study's lead author, a professor in the UBC Department of Psychiatry and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. "Indeed, people of all ages learn better by doing than by being told."

Through a randomized controlled trial, Diamond and her colleagues analyzed the effectiveness of a curriculum called Tools of the Mind (Tools). The curriculum was introduced to willing kindergarten teachers and 351 children with diverse socio-economic backgrounds in 18 public schools across the school districts of Vancouver and Surrey.

Tools was developed in 1993 by American researchers Drs. Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong. Its foundational principle is that social-emotional development and improving self-control is as important as teaching academic skills and content. The program emphasizes the role of social dramatic play in building executive functions--which includes skills such as self-control and selective attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, reasoning, and planning.

"Executive functioning skills are necessary for learning, and are often more strongly associated with school readiness than intelligence quotient (IQ)," said Diamond. "This trial is the first to show benefits of a curriculum emphasizing social play to executive functioning in a real-world setting."

Previous studies had demonstrated that Tools produces better results for reading and math and on laboratory tests of executive functions. Diamond's new study demonstrates for the first time that Tools also dramatically improves writing (exceeding the top level on the provincial assessment scale), improves executive functions in the real world, and has a host of social and emotional benefits not previously documented.

Teachers reported more helping behavior and greater sense of community in Tools classes. Cliques developed in most control classes, but in few Tools classes. Late in the school year, Tools teachers reported still feeling energized and excited about teaching, while control teachers were exhausted.

"I have enjoyed seeing the enormous progress my students have made in writing and reading. I have never had so many students writing two or three sentences by the end of kindergarten," said Susan Kochan, a Tools teacher in Vancouver. "I have also enjoyed seeing the students get so excited about coming to school and learning. They loved all the activities we did so much that many students didn't want to miss school, even if they were sick."

Athens, Ga. - When it comes to boosting mental health among older Chinese, it might be as simple as a game of mahjong, according to a new study from the University of Georgia.

Regularly playing the popular tile-based strategy game was one of several types of social participation linked to reduced rates of depression among middle-aged and older adults in China in the study appearing in Social Science & Medicine.

"Global economic and epidemiologic trends have led to significant increases in the burden of mental health among older adults, especially in the low- and middle-income countries," said Adam Chen, an associate professor of health policy and management at UGA's College of Public Health and study co-author.

Poor mental health is a major issue in China, which accounts for 17% of the global disease burden of mental disorders. On top of that, mental health issues related to social isolation and loneliness are on the rise as China's number of older adults - as in other nations - continues to increase.

The benefits of participating in social activities to mental health have been widely acknowledged, and some work has been done in developed nations, including the U.S. and Japan, to better understand this relationship.

But little is known about the role of social interaction and mental health outside of these settings.

"Social participation manifests itself in different formats within different cultural contexts," said Chen.

"Our paper provides evidence on the association between social participation and mental health in the context of a developing country. We also examined the rural-urban difference, which has not been examined extensively in this line of literature."

Chen and collaborators from China's Huazhong University of Science and Technology analyzed survey data from nearly 11,000 residents aged 45 years and older from the nationally representative China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study.

They looked at symptoms of depression and compared it to the type and frequency of social participation, including visiting with friends, playing mahjong, participating in a sport or social club, and volunteering in the community.

They found that, on the whole, participating in a wide variety of activities more frequently was associated with better mental health. Specifically, urban residents who played mahjong, a popular strategy game, were less likely to feel depressed.

That wasn't too surprising for Chen, as this finding was in line with other studies, but he was surprised to find that rural Chinese overall tended to report poor mental health compared to their urban counterparts.

"Traditionally, rural China featured tight-knit communities of close kinship, often with a limited number of extended large families in a village," he said. "We were expecting strong ties and communal bonds in rural China, but it appears that we were wrong."

Chen suspects that the social structures in rural China were disrupted as many able-bodied adults moved into cities to find work. While family ties remained strong, community ties weakened in rural areas.

"What is more surprising is that mahjong playing does not associate with better mental health among rural elderly respondents," added Chen. "One hypothesis is that mahjong playing tends to be more competitive and at times become a means of gambling in rural China."

The authors believe these findings may offer a guide to health practitioners designing policies and interventions to improve mental health among older Chinese.

The findings could also translate, said Chen, to Asian American communities.

"Older Asian Americans have a much higher proportion of suicidal thoughts than whites and African Americans," he said. "Improving social participation among older Asian Americans may help to address this burden to the U.S. population health that has not received due attention."

For decades, physicists have been attempting to reconcile quantum mechanics, the physics of the very small, with gravity, the physics of the very large. While many academics are working on quantum gravity, they often use models that don't consider certain aspects of our own universe, like its accelerated expansion. A team at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) reports a new approach to quantum gravity using a model that more closely matches our reality.

Writing in Physical Review D, the team reports their progress on the scattering matrix for massless fields, or S-matrix, an expression that predicts what will happen when particles at infinitely far distances comes together, interact, and go about their business. In other words, the S-matrix uses starting points to predict outcomes. Importantly, this concept can apply to a de Sitter space, a universe that is expanding at an accelerating rate -- just like our own.

In this paper, the team calculates the S-matrix in de Sitter space for the simplest scenario, involving free, non-interacting particles. This expression is known as the free S-matrix.

"The free S-matrix is more than just elegant math -- it has the potential to explain more realistic scenarios," says Adrian David, one of the authors of the study. "We will now start thinking about such scenarios, moving beyond individual fields to explore what happens when those fields interact."

Hello, World!

A "Hello, World!" is a computer program that displays this simple message as an output. It is a test used by software developers to confirm that the underlying programming language is properly working. Developers usually perform this sanity check before using the language in more complex settings with useful outputs. The free S-matrix is like a "Hello, World!" program used to the math in a simple context.

"Like a sanity test in computer programming, the output 'Hello, World!' message is less interesting than the underlying language used to create it," says David. "Likewise, the free S-matrix is less interesting by itself, but more in the questions it might allow us to answer."

"We are in a universe that is expanding at an accelerating rate, a de Sitter space, and it appears that these conditions are now permanent," says Professor Yasha Neiman, head of the Quantum Gravity Group. "This information must be incorporated as a cornerstone in our description of reality."

For now, the team will work on the next step of the problem -- applying the free S-matrix to more complicated scenarios that echo reality. Then, they might gain a better understanding -- is this simply gorgeous math, or more than just a pretty face?