Brain

TAMPA, Fla. (June 10, 2019) - Researchers continue to dig for molecular clues to better understand how gene-environment interactions influence neuropsychiatric disease risk and resilience. An increasing number of studies point to a strong association between the FKBP5 gene and increased susceptibility to depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health disorders.

Adding to the growing evidence, a new preclinical study by University of South Florida neuroscientists finds that anxiety-like behavior increases when early life adversity combines with high levels of FKBP5 - a protein capable of modifying hormonal stress response. Moreover, the researchers demonstrate this genetic-early life stress interaction amplifies anxiety by selectively altering signaling of the enzyme AKT in the dorsal hippocampus, a portion of the brain primarily responsible for cognitive functions like learning and memory.

While more research is required, the study suggests that FKBP5 may be an effective target for treating anxiety and other mood disorders.

The findings were published June 4 in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

"We know that the combination of genetic variations and environmental factors can make people either more or less susceptible to mental illness - even when they experience the same types of trauma," said senior author Laura Blair, PhD, assistant professor of molecular medicine at the USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Center. Postdoctoral scholar Marangelie Criado-Marrero, PhD, was lead author of the study.

"We hypothesized that high FKBP5 and early life stress might yield neuropsychiatric symptoms through altered cellular stress response pathways in the brain."

In a series of experiments, newborn mice overexpressing human FKBP5 in the forebrain were divided into two groups - one group was exposed to an early life stress (maternal separation), and the other was not. Two control groups were comprised of stressed and non-stressed mice without brain overexpression of FKBP5. At two months, when the mice were young adults, an elevated-plus maze with open and closed arms was used to test anxiety-like behavior. Compared to all other groups, the mice with high FKBP5 and early life stress showed more anxiety as measured by their tendency to stay within enclosed areas of the maze rather than naturally explore all arms of the maze.

The anxiety effect was more pronounced in the female mice than in males, an observation that aligns with sex differences noted in humans with anxiety disorders, Dr. Blair said.

The researchers also analyzed molecular changes in brains of the mice. They found that AKT signaling, specifically in the dorsal hippocampus, differed depending upon whether or not the mice with high FKBP5 had experienced maternal separation as newborns. AKT signaling - shown to be altered in Alzheimer's disease and cancer as well as in mental health disorders -- affects brain cell survival and metabolism, and the brain's ability to adapt to new information.

"The AKT signaling pathway was inversely regulated as a result of early life stress. High FKBP5 normally decreases AKT signaling, but when early life stress was added to overexpressed FKBP5 that signaling activity increased," Dr. Blair said. "Overall, our findings highlight the importance of stress and genes (like FKBP5) in modulating vulnerability to mood disorders and learning impairments."

INDIANAPOLIS - A new tool seeks to predict the severity of patients' postoperative delirium and help practitioners more effectively care for patients as they recover from surgery.

Currently providers only have tools for predicting whether or not patients will develop delirium, not its severity. Regenstrief Institute fellow Heidi Lindroth, Ph.D., and Robert D. Sanders, M.D.'s team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison aim to change that. By predicting the intensity of delirium in the aftermath of an elective surgery, Dr. Lindroth hopes to help reduce delirium incidence and impact in postoperative settings. She will participate in a symposium on predicting delirium at the American Delirium Society Annual Meeting, June 17-18.

Delirium, a serious acute change in brain function often manifesting as confusion, restlessness, agitation and difficulty speaking, occurs in as many as 7 million people annually. Complications from delirium can be devastating and long-lasting, including cognitive decline, post-traumatic stress disorder and increased risk of death within a year of discharge.

In her study, Dr. Lindroth and the team used data from a cohort of 100 adults undergoing non-cardiac, non-neurological surgery. Participants were 65 years of age or older, and all had a minimum of two days in the hospital following their procedures.

The team combined two previously unrelated tools, neither of which was originally designed to assess delirium, to create an innovative instrument that can predict delirium severity. To collect data on the patients' quality of life, the team used the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) tools to assess risks of serious complications (NSQIP-SC) and death (NSQIP-D) before the operation. Alongside the risk prediction tools, the team assessed patients before and after surgery with the Trail Making Tests A and B for differences in cognitive functions.

"In the clinical world, we don't have a way to predict which patients will be at the greatest risk for severe delirium after surgery," said Dr. Lindroth. "What's more, in the research world, current tools only predict delirium as a binary, and most detection tools only look for patients with delirium at a level of impairment near that of dementia. This combination of tools gives a much-needed emphasis on the spectrum of delirium and a blueprint forward for future research into validation of our new tool."

The prime predators of the Baltic Sea at the top of the food web are losing weight, according to a new study that links the deteriorating health of gray seals and cod with changes in bottom-living crustaceans, isopods and amphipods.

"It is important that you understand how the food web works when managing a fishery. It is not enough to manage how the fish and fisheries are changing. The availability and quality of food is at least as important", says Lena Bergström, researcher at the Department of Aquatic Resources at the Swedish Agricultural University.

In a collaboration between several universities, the authors of the study examined how the health and abundance of certain species has changed over two decades in the Bothnian Sea and the Baltic Proper. They investigated seal, cod, herring, sprat, isopods, amphipods and zooplankton; species that all occur at different levels in the Baltic Sea food web. The system is complex and several species can be both predators and prey. For example, herring eats zooplankton and some bottom fauna while the herring itself is eaten by cod and seal.

Shrinking habitats for bottom-living animals

The study primarily shows that there are links between the health of both cod and seal with the availability of bottom-living animals. Regarding the seals, the connection is indirect through that the herring it eats is influenced by the availability of the bottom-living animals. In both cases, there is a link to climate change and eutrophication:

"Oxygen levels in Baltic Sea have reduced since the 1990s, in big part due to eutrophication, creating vast oxygen-free areas. This leads to less living space for the bottom-living prey animals. This has, among other things, led to the fact that the isopods have become fewer and smaller, making them a poorer food choice for cod", says Agnes Karlsson, lead author and researcher at the Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences (DEEP) at Stockholm University.

Extreme weather can degrade the situation

The fat content and the mean weight of herring in the Bothnian Sea have, according to the study, recently improved because of the supply of the bottom-living crustacean, the amphipod, has increased.

"However, the upturn is relative, because the amphipod in the Bothnian Sea collapsed in the early 2000s and what we now see are signs of a recovery", says Agnes Karlsson.

The bottom-living crustaceans were almost eliminated after a period of extremely heavy rain that changed the water quality of the Bothnian Sea.

"With climate change it is likely that we will see similar extreme events more frequently in the future. If activities that lead to eutrophication are not reduced, oxygen shortage in the Baltic Sea will likely continue, leading to further reductions in the numbers of bottom-living animals. This can have far reaching effects for the economy, with reference to the fish species that are important commercially. To manage a fishery, we must also manage the environment and the food web", says Lena Bergström.

Humankind has entered uncharted territory: atmospheric CO2 levels soared to record-breaking 415ppm for the first time in human history. The need to find a sustainable alternative to CO2-producing fuels is in dire need. One of the most promising environmentally-friendly energetic sources is hydrogen generated via water splitting - the reaction in which water is broken down into oxygen and hydrogen. Now, researchers from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia are bringing this hydrogen economy one step closer in an unexpected way.

In a paper published in Nature Energy, scientists from ICIQ's Galán-Mascarós and López groups describe how, for the first time, a magnet has been used to directly enhance the production of hydrogen in alkaline water splitting via electrolysis. "The simplicity of the discovery opens new opportunities to implement magnetic enhancement in water splitting. Furthermore, the low cost of the technology makes it suitable for industrial applications," explains Felipe A. Garcés-Pineda, first author of the paper.

Magnetic pull

The research shows how the presence of an external magnetic field - induced by approaching a neodymium magnet to the electrolyser - spurs the electrocatalytic activity on the anode, in some cases, increasing the hydrogen production twice fold. The scientists report that the magnetic field directly affects the reaction pathway by allowing for spin conservation of the active catalyst, which in turn favours parallel spin alignment of the oxygen atoms during the reaction. This overall spin polarization, due to the external magnetic field, improves the efficiency of the process. "This demonstrates that there is a lot to learn from the intimate reaction mechanisms taking place on electrocatalysts and opens new ways to overcome the limitations of state-of-the-art systems" states Núria López, ICIQ group leader and co-author of the manuscript.

The researchers studied a variety of catalysts in identical working conditions and report the catalytic activity enhancement is proportional to the magnetic nature of the catalysts used to drive the water splitting reaction. This way, NiZnFe4Ox, a highly magnetic ferrite, exhibited the biggest enhancing effect when presented with a magnetic field. This ferrite also possesses the advantage of being able to magnetically attach itself to a nickel metal support - curbing the need to use binders to attach catalysts to a physical support.

Big science for big problems

"The challenge towards a hydrogen economy is not only a scientific one," explains José Ramón Galán-Mascarós, ICIQ group leader and corresponding author of the paper. Galán-Mascarós participates in CREATE and A-LEAF, two European-wide projects devoted to reducing the costs for the production of hydrogen and other clean fuels. Both European consortiums are working to develop platforms to produce renewable fuels without employing critical raw materials.

To the scientist, finding technological solutions that avoid the use of noble metals, such as platinium or iridium, is the real challenge. It's also a requirement to make the hydrogen energy cycle viable - since noble metals are expensive and extremely scarce, their use limits the scaling-up of the technologies for mass production. Instead, scientists are searching for earth-abundant alternatives, which at the moment are able to offer very good performance in alkaline conditions, and allow for economically-viable scaling. "After decades of scientific research, the problem is still ongoing and big enough as not to expect easy solutions. The challenge of making sustainable fuels widely available needs of a multidisciplinary effort, and ultimately, of international collaborations," concludes Galán Mascarós.

Scientists recently developed a method to produce diesel fuel and hydrogen by exploiting light energy (solar energy or artificial light energy) and biomass-derived feedstocks. Their findings were published in Nature Energy.

Biomass, including agricultural straw and forest waste, is the largest source of sustainable carbon resources in nature and is able to replace petrochemical resources to provide abundant derivative products. As an alternative to photocatalytic water splitting to provide hydrogen, splitting of biomass or its derivatives usually yields higher light transformation efficiencies and higher rates of hydrogen production.

Nevertheless, oxidative products derived from biomass are mostly useless, causing waste of sustainable biomass resources and environmental pollution. Therefore, developing technologies that merge hydrogen production and biomass conversion into value-added chemicals or fuels is expected to bring about a "double guarantee" of materials and energy for industrial manufacture and daily life.

Prof. WANG Feng and his group at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a process for using light energy to drive the valorization of downstream biomass products, namely methyl furan compounds, to produce hydrogen and diesel fuel precursors simultaneously.

The reactions were carried out at room temperature and pressure, and produced hydrogen and diesel fuel precursors that are constituted by isomeric oxygenates with variety of carbon numbers typical of diesel fuel. Removal of the oxygen contents from the diesel fuel precursors produced sustainable diesel fuels with components close to current petroleum diesel; hydrogen could be used to remove the oxygen from the diesel fuel precursors or be used alone.

This process realizes the directional transformation of light energy and biomass to hydrogen energy and diesel fuels, and provides a way to produce clean energy using solar energy and sustainable carbon sources present on the earth's surface.

"Time alters all things," wrote the Latin poet Horace. Museum conservators would love to prove him wrong. Protecting artworks from the effects of aging requires an understanding of the way materials alter over time. Professor Patrizio Antici of Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) has developed a new diagnostic and analytical method for use in cultural conservation, putting his scientific knowledge of lasers and particle accelerators to work for the art world. He describes the new method in an article published in the journal Science Advances.

The bright yellow that Vincent van Gogh used in his paintings darkens over time. Peter Paul Rubens had the same type of paint on his palette and his paintings display the same loss of brightness. To shine a light on the mystery of this darkening, their mythical yellows are now being analyzed using In Air Plasma-Induced Luminescence, or In-Air PIL for short. This careful examination reveals that light causes a change in the quality of the paint crystals, which explains the darkening that is characteristic of certain works.

Developed by Patrizio Antici and his team, In-Air PIL uses a small particle accelerator and a laser-generated photon source. This method rapidly produces a reading of the chemical composition and crystal characteristics on larger surfaces than the leading methods currently in use. By performing a variety of luminescence analyses simultaneously, In-Air PIL reduces the number of complex devices needed for a diagnosis. More compact than comparable technologies and easy to set up, In-Air PIL produces information that can potentially be used to infer an artwork's state of conservation, authenticity, composition, and provenance.

Numerous scientific teams throughout the world are in a race to develop similar approaches. The challenge is to develop alternatives to the PIXE (Particle-Induced X-ray Emission) diagnostic, considered the golden standard in the field, which produces extremely precise analyses but also comes with significant constraints, particularly in terms of cost and infrastructure. "In many cases that kind of extreme precision isn't essential, making In-Air PIL a highly viable alternative," says professor Antici.

The study published in Science Advances lays out the proof of concept that has motivated Professor Antici and his collaborators to pursue their efforts to bring In-Air PIL to market. The device would be aimed at heritage conservators but would also have applications in numerous other areas of material science.

The professor is also a pioneer in developing a new generation of more affordable, laser-driven PIXE. His work in that area has already led to a patent and two articles, including one recently published in Scientific Reports, and triggered a new field of science, now followed by several international research centers.

When the Fluvial Dynamics and Hydrology research group at the University of Cordoba, led by Professor María José Polo, got to the Sierra Nevada in 2002, there were no weather stations above the height of 1,200 meters, meaning that there was a great deal of uncertainty regarding the measurements of everything that happened in the field of meteorology and hydrology between 1,200 meters and the Mulhacen Peak at 3,479 meters.

Making use of the Poqueira weather station, at 2,500 meters, the first complete weather station especially designed for snow was set up, filling in the gaps for instrumentation and scientific needs that are essential in order to understand snow dynamics in high mountain areas of the Mediterranean. This is how the Guadalfeo Monitoring Network came to be, a network of weather stations up high in the mountains that have provided monitoring data over the course of 14 years. Now these data have been made available for the entire research community via the recent publication in the open access journal Earth System Science Data.

The experimental area of choice was of great scientific interest as it is a semiarid, very steep, high mountain area, representative of snow cover with highly variable dynamics and topography. Framed in the Guadalfeo river basin, this area includes the main snow zone and all of the watershed down to the Rules reservoir, which is a hydrological closing point as it registers daily water intakes.

The first station, in the Poqueira area, is the pilot zone for researching these processes and holds a complete set of scientific instruments (measuring device for snow water equivalence, fusion patches) and allows for carrying out very detailed studies to characterize the physics of snow accumulation and ablation. At the next level, at the headwaters, the complete meteorological network is located, including several additional stations where photographs are continuously taken. These photos provide detailed images of different areas which can calibrate and validate satellite data. Lastly, at the basin level, the water balance was able to close with data from the Rules reservoir. Thus, based on the study being performed at the first station, a study zone of hydrology in high mountains on multiple levels is obtained. This allows for validating the data obtained on a small scale and extrapolating those results on a larger scale.

Starting a monitoring methodology that uses digital photographs to supplement weather information with surface variables that the camera captures lets researchers validate these data and get even more information. Thanks to time lapses that were recorded, we can see if there is fog, if it is specifically raining or snowing at any given moment, how the snow melts around bushes that act as little heaters and a lot of data that could not be accurately gathered without those detailed images.

Due to including the photographs, snow distribution maps have been discovered which are now accessible to the whole scientific community along with the meteorological data gathered at the stations, facilitating work not only in the fields of hydrology and meteorology but also in those of ecology and botany.

Meanwhile, the Guadalfeo Monitoring Network continues working and growing thanks to the research group that has implemented new solutions for scientific gaps that are detected each year.

Osaka, Japan - A team led by Osaka University used angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy to probe the unusual surface conductivity of samarium hexaboride crystals. They showed that the material is a co-existing phase of "topological insulator" in which electrical current can flow along the surface but not through the bulk of the sample, a "Kondo insulator", which undergoes a metal-to-insulator transition due to the strong electron correlation. This work, which demonstrates that topological insulators can simultaneously have strong electron correlations, may allow for the development of quantum spin devices that use the magnetic spins of individual electrons to outperform current computers.

A long-standing debate has existed regarding the metallic surface electronic structure of samarium hexaboride (SmB6). SmB6 is known to be an insulator only at low temperatures due to strong electron correlations, called the "Kondo effect." Unlike most materials, the resistance in Kondo insulators actually increases with decreasing temperature. However, the origin of the remnant conductivity at low temperatures has not yet been revealed. A popular hypothesis is that SmB6 is also a topological insulator, which can have metallic electronic states on its surface. However, the surface electronic structures of SmB6 obtained so far have been complex and difficult to interpret and thus this question of whether or not SmB6 is indeed topological has been a long-standing debate. In this work, the team observed the surface states from a new crystal orientation and succeeded in significantly simplifying the surface states.

The main insight was measuring along a particular surface direction, which had previously been difficult to do. To obtain this surface, the researchers first had to prepare an atomically flat, extremely clean surface of the crystal in a very precise manner. They accomplished this by heating a single crystal of samarium hexaboride to very high temperatures in an ultra-high vacuum chamber. They then performed angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy, which monitors the electrons ejected from the crystal when exposed to intense beams of light. Using a ferromagnetic detector, they were able to determine not only the speeds of the electrons, but also if they had their spins oriented up or down. "We were able to show that samarium hexaboride is a topological insulator, without any ambiguity," says lead author Shin-ichi Kimura. "This opens a new research area in which strong correlations and topological effects can exist in the same material."

Oakland, Calif. - Children who receive the chickenpox (varicella) vaccine are significantly less likely to contract shingles, according to a new study led by researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research published today in the journal Pediatrics.

Shingles, or herpes zoster, is caused by the varicella-zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are an estimated 1 million cases of HZ each year in the United States. However, pediatric HZ is a rare disease, and the symptoms are usually milder for children compared with adults, who typically report a painful, burning, and blistering skin rash.

"Since the introduction of the chickenpox vaccine, we have known how effective it is in preventing children from contracting that itchy and painful disease, but we set out to determine if the vaccine would also reduce risk of herpes zoster," explained lead investigator Sheila Weinmann, PhD. "Our findings demonstrate that the vaccine does reduce the likelihood of shingles in kids, highlighting the dual benefits of the chickenpox vaccine."

The study, funded by the CDC, looked at the electronic health records of more than 6.3 million children between 2003 and 2014, using data from 6 integrated health care organizations. Approximately 50% of the children were vaccinated for some or all of the study period.

Researchers found that, overall, HZ risk is much lower in vaccinated than unvaccinated children. Specifically, they concluded the following:

Over the 12-year period of the study, the rate of pediatric HZ declined by 72% overall as the number of vaccinated children rose.

Incidence of HZ was 78% lower in vaccinated children than in unvaccinated children.

Rates for immunosuppressed children, who were unable to receive the vaccination, were 5- to 6-times higher than for those who were not immunosuppressed.

"We looked at the incidence rates of HZ overall, at how many cases there were per 100,000 person-years, including by age and gender," noted Weinmann. Person-years refers to the type of measurement that takes into account both the number of children who were included in the HZ study and the amount of time each child spent in the study over its 12-year course. "We saw the highest rates of HZ in the early years of the study when there was a higher proportion of children, particularly older children, who had not received the varicella vaccine."

The rate of HZ among children who were unvaccinated climbed from 2003 to 2007 and then declined sharply through the end of the study period. Increasing rates of vaccination over the study period reduced the risk of contracting HZ overall for all children, including those who were unvaccinated. The decline could also have been related to the introduction of the second vaccine dose beginning in 2007, as HZ incidence was much lower in those children who received the 2-dose vaccinations rather than 1-dose vaccination.

Baltimore (June 9, 2019) - The foods we eat can play an important role in preventing cancer. New modeling research presented at Nutrition 2019 shows that policies using taxes or warning labels to encourage healthier eating could reduce the number of people who develop cancer, which would bring significant savings in medical costs.

Nutrition 2019 is being held June 8-11, 2019 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Contact the media team for more information or to obtain a free press pass to attend the meeting.

Reducing obesity-related cancers

How will new added-sugar nutrition labeling affect cancer cases?
A new modeling study estimates that, based on changes in consumer behavior, the soon-to-be-implemented added-sugar labeling on all U.S. packaged foods could prevent 35,500 new obesity-related cancer cases and 16,700 cancer deaths over a lifetime in the U.S. The policy would also save an estimated $1.4 billion in direct medical costs. After taking into consideration additional savings from patient time and productivity loss as well as policy implementation costs from both the government and industry, the policy would save an estimated $0.5 billion in total costs from the society level. Industry reformulations would likely add to the prevented cancer cases and health care cost savings. Mengxi Du, Tufts University, will present this research on Tuesday, June 11, from 8:30 - 8:45 a.m. in the Baltimore Convention Center, Room 314/315 (abstract).

Would taxing sugar-sweetened beverages save health-care costs?
A new study estimates that a national tax of 1 cent per ounce of sugar-sweetened beverage could prevent around 17,000 new obesity-associated cancers cases and 10,000 cancer deaths. This modeling study estimates that this tax would save $2.4 billion in lifetime medical costs for 13 types of cancer. The largest health benefits were for endometrial, kidney and liver cancer. Christina Griecci, Tufts University, will present this research on Sunday, June 9, from 12:45 - 1:45 p.m. in the Baltimore Convention Center, Halls A-B (Poster 75) (abstract).

The costs of unhealthy eating

What is the cost of cancers associated with poor diet?
A new analysis reveals that over 5 years, cancers attributable to unhealthy eating among U.S. adults resulted in direct medical costs of $6.9 billion (2015 dollars). Nearly 70 percent of this cost is due to colorectal cancer attributable to poor diet. The calculations are based on the estimated number of cancers cases attributed to not eating enough fruits, vegetables, whole grains and dairy, and eating more processed meats, red meats and sugar-sweetened beverages. Given the substantial economic burden of diet-attributable cancers, nutritional policies may help reduce cancer cases and their associated costs. Jaya Khushalani, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will present this research on Monday, June 10, from 8:30 - 8:45 a.m. in the Baltimore Convention Center Room 317 (abstract).

Can we decrease cancer disparities?
Results from a new study suggest that policies targeting food price could help reduce cancer disparities among low-income participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Of the policies modeled, a 10 percent national tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meat together with a 30 percent SNAP-targeted food subsidy would produce the largest reduction in cancer disparities, with about 16 more cases averted per million SNAP users compared to higher-income individuals. The overall greatest decrease in cancer cases would result from a national 30 percent subsidy for fruits, vegetables and whole grains combined with a 10 percent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats, which would have eliminated an estimated 7,208 new cancer cases among US adults in 2015. Heesun Eom, Tufts University, will present this research on Sunday, June 9, from 1:45 - 2:45 p.m. in the Baltimore Convention Center, Halls A-B (Poster 230) (abstract).

Which policies would reduce processed meat consumption?
A new simulation study found that using an excise tax or warning label on processed meats could bring substantial health and economic benefits. The researchers found that over a lifetime a 10 percent excise tax could prevent 77,000 colorectal and 12,500 stomach cancer cases and generate a savings of $1.1 billion in health-care costs while warning labels may prevent 85,400 colorectal and 15,000 stomach cancer cases with a savings of $1.3 billion from health-care costs. Groups who benefited most from the policies were younger, had a higher cancer risk or ate the most processed meat prior to policy implementation. David D. Kim, Tufts Medical Center, will present this research on Monday, June 10, from 8:00 - 8:15 a.m. in the Baltimore Convention Center, Room 314/315 (abstract).

Copper and platinum nanoparticles added to the surface of a blue titania photocatalyst significantly improve its ability to recycle atmospheric carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels.

The modified photocatalyst was developed and tested by researchers at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), with colleagues in Korea, Japan, and the US. It converted sunlight to fuel with an efficiency of 3.3% over 30-minute periods. This 'photoconversion efficiency' is an important milestone, the researchers report in their study published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, as it means that large-scale use of this technology is becoming a more realistic prospect.

Photocatalysts are semiconducting materials that can use the energy from sunlight to catalyse a chemical reaction. Scientists are investigating their use to trap harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as one of many means to alleviate global warming. Some photocatalysts are being tested for their ability to recycle carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels like methane, the main component found in natural gas. Methane combustion releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared to other fossil fuels, making it an attractive alternative. But scientists have been finding it difficult to manufacture photocatalysts that produce a large enough yield of hydrocarbon products for their use to be practical.

Professor Su-Il In of DGIST's Department of Energy Science and Engineering and his colleagues modified a blue titania photocatalyst by adding copper and platinum nanoparticles to its surface.

Copper has good carbon dioxide adsorption property while platinum is very good at separating the much-needed charges generated by the blue titania from the sun's energy.

The team developed a unique set-up to accurately measure the catalyst's photoconversion efficiency. The catalyst was placed in a chamber that received a quantifiable amount of artificial sunlight. Carbon dioxide gas and water vapour moved through the chamber, passing over the catalyst. An analyser measured the gaseous components coming out of the chamber as a result of the photocatalytic reaction.

The blue titania catalyst converts the energy in sunlight into charges that are transferred to the carbon and hydrogen molecules in carbon dioxide and water to convert them into methane and ethane gases. The addition of copper and platinum nanoparticles on the catalyst's surface was found to significantly improve the efficiency of this process.

"The photocatalyst has a very high conversion efficiency and is relatively easy to manufacture, making it advantageous for commercialization," says Prof. In. "

The team plans to continue its efforts to further improve the catalyst's photoconversion efficiency, to make it thick enough to absorb all incident light, and to improve its mechanical integrity to enable easier handling.

A new way of analysing sperm that tracks the movement of the sperm tail could enable substantial improvements to male fertility testing.

The technique measures the speed and action of the sperm flagellum, or tail, which provides vital information for understanding whether sperm in an ejaculate have the potential to reach and fertilise the egg.

It was developed by a University of Birmingham team led by Professor Dave Smith in the School of Mathematics, in partnership with the University's Centre for Human Reproductive Science and is published today in the journal Human Reproduction.

Professor Smith explains: "We have all heard of 'sperm count', and indeed the tools available to understand sperm - manual counting with a microscope - have not changed much since the 1950s. However, think of the amount of technology - camera, computing, connectivity - that we all now have access to. This project is about harnessing these 21st century technologies to address male fertility problems."

Current methods of analysing sperm for male fertility have been restricted to either counting the number of sperm produced, or tracking the head of the cell and there is limited understanding of what a healthy swimming sperm looks like.

Meurig Gallagher, lead author of the study, says: "Sperm have an incredibly challenging task - they must travel distances of several thousand times their own body length through the female reproductive tract in search of an egg. This journey whittles a population of many million cells down to under a hundred. The flagellum is responsible for propulsion and navigation, so it's really vital that we understand what success looks like - how a healthy tail moves and how it consumes energy."

Using a combination of rapid, high-throughput digital imaging, mathematics and fluid dynamics to detect and track sperm in samples, the team have developed a free-to-use software package called FAST (flagellar capture and sperm tracking). They hope clinical research teams worldwide will start to use this to better understand how sperm motility relates to fertility.

This improved understanding will help researchers and clinicians develop new interventions to tackle male fertility problems.

Gemma Cupples, of the School of Mathematics, developed the system's mathematical model to understand the amount of energy required for sperm to swim effectively. "The new model enables us to measure miniscule forces that are impossible to measure experimentally," she explains. "The technique has lots of potential for other important problems, for example understanding how bacteria spread, and how fluids are transported around in tiny spaces in the body such as the brain."

Jackson Kirkman Brown MBE, of the University's Centre for Human Reproductive Science, led the clinical strategy. "Diagnostic techniques are crude and there are still no drugs available for treating male infertility," he says. "We know that sperm motility is a major factor and so being able to analyse the movement of the sperm in detail will ultimately help us to identify appropriate treatments or lifestyle changes to tackle male fertility problems, giving couples clearer answers and enabling better decisions.

"Importantly, the better diagnoses this technique should enable will mean that patients can also be better assigned the correct treatment - be that an inexpensive and 'easy' treatment such as washing the sperm and injecting into the womb, or more invasive and complex treatments such as IVF or ICSI - a process similar to IVF in which sperm is injected directly into the harvested egg."

An international research team led by the University of Liverpool has made a discovery that will help with the search for electric dipole moments (EDM) in atoms, and could contribute to new theories of particle physics such as supersymmetry.

Short lived isotopes of both radon and radium have both been identified as potential candidates for measuring EDM in atoms.

However, in a paper published in Nature Communications researchers conclude, for the first time, that radon atoms provide less favourable conditions for the enhancement of a measurable atomic EDM than radium.

The researchers exploited the ISOLDE facility at CERN to accelerate beams of radioactive radon ions and were able to measure the properties of rotating radon nuclei. The experiments showed that the radon isotopes 224Rn and 226Rn vibrate between a pear shape and its mirror image but do not possess static pear-shapes in their ground states. This behaviour is quite different to their neighbouring radium isotopes that are permanently deformed into the shape of a pear.

Liverpool Professor of Physics, Peter Butler, who is the lead author of the paper and spokesperson of the collaboration that carried out the research, said: "This research builds on our experimental observation of nuclear pear shapes in 2013.

"We find that certain radon isotopes vibrate between a pear shape and its mirror image. This is in contrast to radium, where we have previously shown that some radium isotopes are permanently deformed into the shape of a pear.

"This finding is important for searches for EDMs in atoms which, if measurable, would require revisions of the Standard Model that could explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe."

The paper `The observation of vibrating pear-shapes in radon nuclei' (doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-10494-5) is published today in Nature Communications.

The experiments were conducted at HIE-ISOLDE at CERN, Switzerland in collaboration with University of the West of Scotland, UK; University of the Western Cape, South Africa; TRIUMF, Canada; Lund University, Sweden; University of Michigan, USA; INFN Legnaro, Italy; KU Leuven, Belgium; University of Guelph, Canada; University of Cologne, Germany; TU Darmstadt, Germany; University of Warsaw, Poland; University of Jyvaskyla, Finland; University of Oslo, Norway; University of York, UK; JINR Dubna, Russia; CSIC Madrid, Spain; CEA Saclay, France.

Sediment stirred up from fishing activity has a negative effect on reef-building sea sponges in northern British Columbia, according to a new study by University of Alberta biologists.

The sediment is kicked up during human activities such as bottom trawling, where a weighted net is dragged across the seafloor. It includes organic matter as well as clay and silt, which can smother sponges from the outside or, if taken into their filtration system, can clog them.

"If sponges are clogged, they can die, and if sponges die, then the other animals that use the sponges as homes or as food are in trouble as well," said Sally Leys, professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and co-author on the paper. "The finer the particle, the worse for the sponge. Even a week of not filtering could mean the death of the reef."

A critical component of ocean health

A critical part of the marine ecosystem, sponges act as a filtration system for the sea, consuming bacteria and returning nutrients to the waters that help to sustain plankton and fish populations. The sponges also provide habitat in the form of reefs, which provide homes to countless marine organisms.

In this study, the research team examined three species of sponge in the Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound glass sponge reefs off of the coast of British Columbia. Their results show a negative effect on sponge filtration caused by sediment.

"Sensitive areas, especially those with filter-feeding animals, need a buffer zone that is large enough to prevent the transit of suspended sediments over the animals," says Leys. "We provide a model that shows what the size the boundary or buffer zone around a region of filter feeders needs to be in order to safeguard the animals."

Science professors go through years of training to learn about their field, yet they often don't receive any formal education in how to teach students about it. A new study takes a decade-long look at one way that science departments in the California State University (CSU) system are trying to amend that by bringing faculty with educational expertise into the fold.

The story starts in 2005, when San Francisco State University Professor of Biology Kimberly Tanner and five of her colleagues across the CSU noticed a little-reported phenomenon: education specialists in science departments. "The practice of embedding people who have scientific backgrounds but who also bring expertise in education was an emerging idea," she said. There's a long history of science departments working with education departments, but this was something different. To learn more about the shift, the team surveyed faculty members across the 23 CSU campuses and published their results in 2008.

After a decade of national studies on the topic, they saw an opportunity to check back in at home to see how things had changed. Tanner, along with Cal Poly Pomona Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Seth Bush, Utah Valley University Professor of Biology Michael Stevens and San Diego State University Professor of Biology Kathy Williams, found and surveyed 89 education specialists in science departments across the CSU system. The team published the results today in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers found that the number of education specialists in CSU science departments had increased by more than 50% since 2008, and the percentage who were formally trained in science education more than doubled. They were better-funded, too: The fraction of surveyed faculty who won more than a million dollars in grant funding also doubled over the decade to more than half. Some specialized in education research in their scientific discipline while others focused on improving science courses at their university or supporting K-12 science education.

The findings are contrary to the assumptions of many researchers who, at the time of the original study, expected that the phenomenon of education specialists in science departments would be short-lived. "That's why this research is so key," Tanner said. "Not only are they still around, but it looks like there's an increase in the number of people in these positions."

A number of factors could be responsible for the shift. Tanner points to an increase in national grant funding for science education and a broader recognition that lackluster teaching discourages some students from pursuing science degrees. Many university science departments "disproportionately lose students of color, transfer students and LGBTQ students," she explained. "There is increasing focus within science departments to be better educators and to retain more students — and more diverse populations of students."

While the study was focused on the CSU system, the researchers write that the results are useful for understanding national trends, since the system is the largest four-year public university system in the U.S. and includes a variety of university types. They next hope to survey administrators and other researchers among science faculty to see how the phenomenon is affecting teaching in science departments more broadly.

"It could have turned out very differently than it has," Tanner said. "But these hybrid professionals have really flourished."