Brain

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University researchers have seen cognitive changes in the offspring of rats exposed to heavy amounts of cannabis. Their work is one of the rare studies to look at the effects of cannabis during pregnancy. The drug is the most commonly used illicit substance among pregnant women.

Ryan McLaughlin, an assistant professor of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience, exposed pregnant rats to various concentrations of cannabis vapor and documented how the offspring of those exposed to high amounts had trouble adjusting their strategy to get sugar rewards.

"Prenatal exposure to cannabis may cause meaningful changes in brain development that can negatively impact cognitive functioning into adulthood," McLaughlin and his colleagues wrote in a summary for a presentation Sunday at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting, Neuroscience 2018, in San Diego. It is the largest neuroscience conference in the world.

The researchers used a new model of exposure, vaporizing cannabis extracts to recreate the way humans most often use the drug. Pregnant rats, or dams, received various amounts of vapor. Controls received none, while others got cannabis-free vapor, or vapor with low or high amounts of cannabis. The smoke, administered in atmospherically controlled cages over two hour-long sessions per day from before pregnancy through gestation, raised the THC levels in the blood to that of a person who has had a few puffs.

About 60 offspring were submitted to a task similar to the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, an 80-year-old method of testing a human's flexibility when the conditions of positive reinforcement change. Rats were first trained to press one of two levers, learning that they got sugar when they pressed the lever near a light. The next day, they got a sugar reward when they pressed the left or right lever, regardless of the light.

Rats exposed to cannabis in utero learned the first rule easily enough. But rats exposed to a high concentration of cannabis, "showed marked deficits in their ability to shift strategies when the new rule was implemented," the researchers wrote.

Rats from dams exposed to high levels of cannabis often appeared to learn the new reward strategy, hitting the correct lever several times in a row. But they would not keep to the strategy long enough to strike the right lever ten times, like the offspring of dams exposed to less or no cannabis.

"The general take-home message is that we see deficits, particularly in the domain of cognitive flexibility, in rats prenatally exposed to high doses of cannabis vapor," McLaughlin said. "The impairment is not a general learning deficit, as they can learn the initial rule just fine. The deficit only emerges when the learned strategy is no longer resulting in reward delivery. They cannot seem to adapt properly and tend to commit more regressive errors as a result, which suggests impairment in maintaining the new optimal strategy."

McLaughlin notes that the high-exposure rats may not necessarily be less intelligent, just less motivated. They could be less interested in the task, not want so much sugar, or want to explore other avenues.

Although up to 20 percent of adolescents experience a depressive episode each year, the medical community has struggled to implement programs that effectively prevent depression.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have worked to fill this gap in pediatric primary care by conducting clinical trials to evaluate and compare interventions. A new study published in JAMA Network Open highlights the positive effect of one web-based intervention, called CATCH-IT, on preventing depressive episodes among adolescents most at risk.

The multicenter, randomized clinical trial compared the CATCH-IT intervention - which consisted of depression-specific online learning modules, motivational interviews and coaching - with a control intervention. The control intervention consisted of general health education and was similarly delivered through online learning modules.

More than 350 adolescents ages 13 to 18 from a mix of rural and urban areas were enrolled in the trial. Participants had either a history of depression or depressive symptoms, which were measured and assigned a score during screening. The researchers followed the participants for two years and tracked depressive episodes.

While depressive symptoms were reduced across all participants, they found no difference between the groups, except for among higher-risk adolescents whose depressive symptoms scored high on baseline screening. Among this group, individuals who participated in the CATCH-IT intervention demonstrated greater benefit, achieving as much as 80 percent risk reduction for experiencing a depressive episode.

"This study tells us that the online intervention works best for teens who are experiencing worse symptoms," said Dr. Benjamin Van Voorhees, the principal investigator. "We hypothesized that there would be a benefit across all participants, but it is perhaps even more telling to see such a significant risk reduction among a smaller group of high-risk adolescents."

Van Voorhees, professor and head of pediatrics at the UIC College of Medicine, said that the results indicate to physicians and researchers that "when it comes to first-line programs for depression prevention, scalable solutions may need to be targeted to patients based on symptom severity, not prior history alone.

"We need to move depression care away from reactive treatments to widespread prevention, but to be successful we need more research on which interventions work, and for what patients, in primary care settings," Van Voorhees said. "This is the first study to test a depression prevention intervention in a primary care setting -- primary care providers are likely to be the first people parents ask for help and they are also often among the first to identify worrisome trends towards depression."

"Often primary care physicians recognize sub-threshold depressive symptoms in their adolescent patients but do not have an appropriate way to respond," said Tracy Gladstone, co-principal investigator and associate director and senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. "Our hope is that this intervention can serve as a first-line, evidence-based response to support symptomatic teens before they develop a full-blown depressive illness."

For parents, Van Voorhees said the results should reinforce the need for action if teens display early signs of depression.

"If their teen's behavior is changing, parents should not wait to seek help," he said. "While this study showed that high-risk teens benefited most from the online intervention, it also showed that participation in the study, regardless of which group, helped reduce depression symptoms. We know that simply engaging in physical activity, practicing intentional positivity and engaging with family, friends and activities can help teens ward off major depressive episodes."

CATCH-IT is an acronym for Competent Adulthood Transition with Cognitive behavioral Humanistic and Interpersonal Training and was designed to teach coping skills to teenagers and young adults. The intervention included 20 modules, 15 of which were for adolescents. The remaining five were for parents. The information in the modules was based primarily on previously validated educational materials on coping with depression and behavioral and interpersonal psychotherapy methods. Example modules included lessons on ways to escape negative thoughts, identifying triggers and habitual responses, and how to solve problems in stressful situations.

The control group intervention consisted of 14 modules for adolescents and four modules for parents that provided instruction on general health topics, such as good nutrition, sleep, exercise and safety habits.

Trial sites included Wellesley College, NorthShore University HealthSystem, Harvard Vanguard, Advocate Children's Hospital, Access, Franciscan Alliance, and UI Health Mile Square Health Centers.

NEW ORLEANS -- A culturally tailored multilevel strategy designed to remove barriers to human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among low-income, mostly Chinese American adolescent girls and boys significantly increased vaccine uptake, according to results of a pilot study presented at the 11th AACR Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved, held here Nov. 2-5.

HPV vaccination could prevent more than 90 percent of the estimated 33,700 cases of cancer attributable to HPV infection that are diagnosed each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Therefore, the CDC recommends that all adolescents ages 11 and 12 receive two doses of HPV vaccine.

"HPV vaccination is an amazing cancer prevention tool, but only 66 percent of all U.S. adolescents ages 13 to 17 have received one or more dose of the vaccine," said Grace X. Ma, PhD, associate dean for health disparities, director of the Center for Asian Health, Laura H. Carnell professor, and professor in clinical sciences in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia. "Overall, HPV vaccine uptake among Asian American adolescents is similar to uptake among adolescents from other racial and ethnic groups, but there are certain subgroups, such as Chinese Americans whose parents are low-income and have limited English proficiency, for whom uptake is much lower.

"We know that there is a low level of awareness and knowledge about HPV vaccination among Asian American parents who are low-income and have limited English proficiency, continued Ma. "However, they have strong trust in pediatricians/physicians, so we designed a culturally tailored intervention to engage pediatricians/physicians in educating low-income Asian American parents about the importance of HPV vaccination in the clinical setting using written materials, videos, verbal recommendations, and mobile communication."

Ma and colleagues designed culturally tailored messages for pediatricians, community health workers, parents, and adolescents. The researchers intervened on multiple levels by developing messages for all these different groups of people, explained Ma.

The researchers provided the culturally tailored messages to Asian American pediatricians in primary care community health centers serving low-income Asian communities comprised mainly of Chinese Americans in Philadelphia and New York. The messages were delivered in Asian languages concordant with the language spoken by the parents.

The pilot study included 180 low-income mostly Chinese American parents with low English proficiency; 110 received the intervention and 70 did not. These parents had 290 adolescents ages 11-17; parents of 170 adolescents received the intervention.

Among those adolescents whose parents received the intervention, 76.36 percent had at least one dose of HPV vaccine, compared with 10 percent of adolescents whose parents did not receive the intervention.

Pediatrician engagement and pediatrician recommendation were the most important factors that led to parents choosing to have their children vaccinated, explained Ma. Having a peer or spouse who supported vaccination was another important factor.

"Despite the study limitation in small sample size, these pilot data are extremely encouraging and promising," said Ma. "We need to test this intervention in larger, more rigorous clinical trials, but I believe that this multilevel and technology-based intervention has great potential to increase HPV vaccination rates in diverse Asian American communities, as well as can be adapted by other ethnic populations."

Results from a collaborative study by Tokyo Institute of Technology and Tohoku University, Japan, raise prospects for large-scale production of algae-derived starch, a valuable bioresource for biofuels and other renewable materials. Such bio-based products have the potential to replace fossil fuels and contribute to the development of sustainable systems and societies.

A "switch" controlling the level of starch content in algae has been discovered by a research team led by Sousuke Imamura at the Laboratory for Chemistry and Life Science, Institute of Innovative Research, Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech).

Reported in The Plant Journal, the study focused on the unicellular red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae. The researchers demonstrated that starch content could be dramatically increased in C. merolae through inactivation of TOR (target of rapamycin), a protein kinase[1] known to play an important role in cell growth.

They observed a notable increase in the level of starch 12 hours after inactivation of TOR through exposure to rapamycin, and this led to a remarkable ten-fold increase after 48 hours.

Importantly, the study details a mechanism underlying this profound increase in starch content. Using a method called liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), the researchers examined subtle changes in the structure of more than 50 proteins that might be involved in "switching on" the process of starch accumulation. As a result, they pinpointed GLG1 as a key protein of interest. GLG1 acts in a similar way to glycogenin, an enzyme found in yeast and animal cells, which is known to be involved in the initiation of starch (or glycogen) synthesis.

The mechanism will be of immense interest to a wide range of industries seeking to scale up biofuel and value-added biochemicals production.

For example, the findings could accelerate the production of environmentally friendly fuel additives, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and bioplastics[2] that are now in high demand with the phasing out of single-use plastic bags and straws in many parts of the world.

Algae, compared with land plants, are very appealing due to their high photosynthetic productivity and relative ease of cultivation. Starch, triacylglycerols (TAGs) and other algal biomass constituents are increasingly viewed as a promising and powerful way to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) outlined by the United Nations.

The research team notes that more studies using other algal species, as well as higher plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana, could yield further information about the fundamental molecular mechanisms behind starch accumulation. "This information will help to develop technologies to improve starch biosynthesis productivity and concomitantly improve sustainable biomass and bioenergy production," Imamura says.

Ageing and a low life expectancy are caused, at least partly, by oxidative stress. A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Ivana Ivanovi-Burmazovi from the Chair of Bioinorganic Chemistry at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), together with researchers from the USA, have discovered that zinc can activate an organic molecule, helping to protect against oxidative stress.

Zinc is a trace mineral we need in order to remain healthy. FAU researchers working together with Prof. Dr. Christian Goldsmith from Auburn University, Alabama, USA, have discovered that zinc can protect against the superoxide responsible for oxidative stress when taken together with a component found in foodstuffs such as wine, coffee, tea and chocolate. This component is a hydroquinone group found in polyphenols, in other words the plant substances responsible for smell and taste. Zinc activates the hydroquinone groups, producing natural protection against superoxide, a by-product of human cell respiration which damages the body's own biomolecules, for example proteins or lipids, as well as the human genome. Superoxide is thought to have a role to play in the ageing process and a number of illnesses such as inflammation, cancer or neurodegenerative diseases.

New metal complex against superoxide

Hydroquinone alone is not capable of breaking down superoxide. If zinc and hydroquinone combine, however, a metal complex is created which imitates a superoxide dismutase enzyme (SOD). These enzymes protect the body from the degradation processes caused by oxidation and have an antioxidative effect. In this way, the superoxide can be metabolised and damage to the organism prevented; oxidative stress is avoided.

Chocolate, coffee etc. with added zinc

For the first time, the function of this enzyme has been copied without reverting to redox-active transition metals such as manganese, iron, copper or nickel. Whilst the metals could also have an antioxidative effect, any positive effects are quickly outweighed by the fact that if too much is taken they can even cause oxidative stress to increase. Zinc is much less toxic than the transition metals mentioned above, making it possible for new medication or supplements to be created with considerably fewer side-effects. It would also be plausible to add zinc to food which contains hydroquinone naturally to boost the consumer's health. 'It is certainly possible that wine, coffee, tea or chocolate may well become be available in future with added zinc. However, any alcohol content whatsoever would destroy the positive effects of this combination,' emphasises Ivana Ivanovi-Burmazovi.

A clinical trial to determine whether a smartwatch app that analyzes pulse-rate data can screen for a heart-rhythm disorder has enrolled more than 400,000 participants.

Researchers at Stanford Medicine, in collaboration with Apple, launched the Apple Heart Study last November to determine whether a mobile app that uses the optical sensor on the Apple Watch to analyze pulse rate data can identify atrial fibrillation. The condition, which is characterized by an irregular heartbeat, often remains hidden because many people don't experience symptoms. Atrial fibrillation can increase the risk of stroke and heart failure.

A paper to be published online Nov. 1 in the American Heart Journal describes the design of this unique clinical trial, the largest screening study on atrial fibrillation ever done. Enrollment, which was conducted through an iPhone app, is now closed.

The study has entered the final phase of data collection and will be completed early next year, the researchers said. The Stanford team is led by principal investigators Mintu Turakhia, MD, associate professor of cardiovascular medicine, and Marco Perez, MD, assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine, and by study chair Kenneth Mahaffey, MD, professor of cardiovascular medicine.

"We hope this study will help us better understand how wearable technologies can inform precision health," said Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine. "These new tools, which have the potential to predict, prevent and manage disease, are finally within our reach."

The Food and Drug Administration announced Sept. 11 that it had cleared two mobile medical apps designed by Apple to work on the Apple Watch. One app uses data from new hardware on the Apple Watch Series 4 to take an electrocardiogram by touching the button on the side of the device. The other app uses data from an optical sensor available on the Apple Watch Series 1 and later to analyze pulse data to identify irregular heart rhythms suggestive of atrial fibrillation and notify the user. The Apple Heart Study involves only this second app.

"The advantage of the app that uses the optical sensor is that it can check for an irregular pulse multiple times throughout the day in the background, without needing the user to actively engage the application," Perez said.

Goals of the study

Each year in the United States, atrial fibrillation results in 130,000 deaths and 750,000 hospitalizations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates that the condition affects between 2.7 million and 6.1 million people. In addition, another 700,000 people may have undiagnosed atrial fibrillation.

Each participant in the study is required to have an Apple Watch (series 1, 2 or 3) and an iPhone. An app on the phone intermittently checks the heart-rate pulse sensor for measurements of an irregular pulse. If sufficient episodes of an irregular pulse are detected, then the participant receives a notification and is asked to schedule a visit with a doctor involved in the study. Participants are then sent electrocardiography patches, which record the electrical rhythm of their hearts for up to a week.

The goals of the study are threefold: to determine how many among those who receive irregular pulse notifications are found to have atrial fibrillation on ECG patch monitoring; to determine how many among those who received an irregular pulse notification go on to get medical attention; and to determine the accuracy of irregular-pulse detection by the watch by comparing it with the simultaneous ECG patch recordings.

"We now have access to high-quality sensors that can measure and detect changes in our bodies in entirely new and insightful ways without even needing to go to the doctor, but we need to rigorously evaluate them," Turakhia said. "There's never really been a study like this done before."

A subset of the study data was used by Apple as part of its regulatory submission for FDA clearance of the smartwatch app that analyzes pulse-rate data. Apple Heart Study investigators were aware of the submission, but have not seen the submission data.

"We are inspired by the overwhelming response to the Apple Heart Study," said Sumbul Desai, MD, vice president of Apple. "Through the combined power of our participants, Apple Watch and Stanford Medicine, it's one of the largest and most novel atrial fibrillation studies to date."

BOSTON, MA -A pioneering study conducted within a nationwide network, the National Patient Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet), finds that antibiotic use at Pediatrics published online on October 31.

Antibiotic overuse has been a major population health concern, primarily due to the dangers of increasing antibiotic resistance but, recently, interest in antibiotics' effect on weight has emerged. Antibiotics disrupt the natural balance of intestinal bacteria or gut microbiome. Because the microbiome has important effects on the body's metabolism and how food is digested, researchers have hypothesized that changes in weight might occur with microbiome disruptions. This issue is important for parents and their doctors, who often must decide whether children should receive antibiotics.

PCORnet is an innovative research network that facilitates research across healthcare institutions through use of a process whereby each institution organizes their data from electronic health records into a common form. The network also uses a variety of important innovations to protect patient privacy. Studies conducted in PCORnet also incorporate patient views in the design and conduct of the study.

Previous studies have had conflicting results regarding the potential effect of antibiotics on weight. This new study is the largest to tackle the issue, involving a sample of over 360,000 children from 35 institutions across the country. Researchers examined the relationship between antibiotic use among children less than two years old and their weight at around five years old, analyzing such factors as: diagnosis of chronic conditions, number of antibiotic prescriptions given to children, and the specific types of antibiotics given.

Results demonstrate that the effect of antibiotic use in early childhood and weight around age 5 was small -- less than a pound difference in weight for children of average height and weight receiving 4 or more courses of antibiotics, compared to children who received none. "While this small difference in weight might not be important for individual decisions regarding antibiotic prescribing by doctors and parents, these data may serve, in a small way, to further encourage efforts to decrease antibiotic use. The ability to conduct research on large, diverse populations in networks like PCORnet provides critical opportunities to examine important research questions, no matter the outcome." says Jason Block, lead author and Associate Professor of Population Medicine at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and Harvard Medical School.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Most people would appreciate a chatbot that offers sympathetic or empathetic responses, according to a team of researchers, but they added that reaction may rely on how comfortable the person is with the idea of a feeling machine.

In a study, the researchers reported that people preferred receiving sympathetic and empathetic responses from a chatbot -- a machine programmed to simulate a conversation -- than receiving a response from a machine without emotions, said S. Shyam Sundar, James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory. People express sympathy when they feel compassion for a person, whereas they express empathy when they are actually feeling the same emotions of the other person, said Sundar.

As healthcare providers look for ways to cut costs and improve service, he added these findings could help developers create conversational technologies that encourage people to share information about their physical and mental health states, for example.

"Increasingly, as we have more and more chatbots and more AI-driven conversational agents in our midst," said Sundar. "And, as more people begin to turn to their smart speaker or chatbot on a health forum for advice, or for social and emotional support, the question becomes: To what extent should these chatbots and smart speakers express human-like emotions?"

While machines today cannot truly feel either sympathy or empathy, developers could program these cues into current chatbot and voice assistant technology, according to the researchers who report their findings in the current issue of Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking.

However, chatbots may become too personal for some people, said Bingjie Liu, a doctoral candidate in mass communications, who worked with Sundar on the study. She said that study participants who were leery of conscious machines indicated they were impressed by the chatbots that were programmed to deliver statements of sympathy and empathy.

"The majority of people in our sample did not really believe in machine emotion, so, in our interpretation, they took those expressions of empathy and sympathy as courtesies," said Liu. "When we looked at people who have different beliefs, however, we found that people who think it's possible that machines could have emotions had negative reactions to these expressions of sympathy and empathy from the chatbots."

The researchers recruited 88 volunteers from a university and Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online task platform. The volunteers were asked to interact with one of four different online health service chatbots programmed to deliver responses specific to one of four conditions set up by the researchers: sympathy, two different types of empathy -- cognitive empathy and affective empathy -- or, an advice-only control condition.

In the sympathetic version, the chatbot responded with a statement, such as, "I am sorry to hear that." The chatbot programmed for cognitive empathy, which acknowledged the user's feelings, might say, "That issue can be quite disturbing." A chatbot that expressed affective empathy might respond with a sentence that showed the machine understood how and why a user felt the way they did, such as, "I understand your anxiety about the situation."

The researchers said that affective empathy and sympathy worked the best.

"We found that the cognitive empathy -- where the response is somewhat detached and it's approaching the problem from a thoughtful, but almost antiseptic way -- did not quite work," said Sundar." Of course, chatbots and robots do that quite well, but that is also the stereotype of machines. And it doesn't seem to be as effective. What seems to work best is affective empathy, or an expression of sympathy."

In a previous study, the researchers asked participants to just read the script of the conversation between a human subject and a machine. They found similar effects on the use of sympathy and empathy in messages.

The researchers said that future research could examine how the sympathetic and empathetic interactions work for different issues beyond health and sexuality, as well as investigate how people feel if humanlike machines and robots deliver those types of responses.

"We want to see if this is a consistent pattern in how humans react to machine emotions," said Liu.

In our decisions about whether to invest in a certain company, buy tickets to a movie or vote for a political candidate, we are often influenced by what others think. But how exactly do we figure out what others think?

In reality, most people make assumptions about general opinions from a fairly limited number of sources. To better understand this process of predicting opinions, researchers studied how participants responded to two different scenarios. In one scenario, participants viewed a scene in which four people at a restaurant all tried a new brand of bottled water. While waiting for their food, two people got up to wash their hands. The remaining two had a conversation about whether they liked the bottled water or not. The participants themselves were also told they had tried the water before and had either liked or disliked it.

In this scenario, the researchers discovered a pattern in participants' predictions about the unknown opinions: They assumed the people not present in the conversation - who went to wash their hands - would agree with the majority opinion among the speakers. If the two speakers liked the water, they assumed those not present would like it as well regardless of the participants' own opinion about the water.

In the second scenario, all four people stayed at the table and had a conversation about the bottled water, but rather than getting up from the table, the two people with unknown opinions remained and were silent in the conversation. The study respondents again were assigned a personal opinion of the new bottled water.

The researchers now found that rather than assuming that the people with unknown opinions agreed with the majority opinion, the respondents in this scenario predicted that the silent people agreed with their own opinion. This happened even when the participants' own opinion was outnumbered in the group. If both speakers in the conversation liked the water but the study respondent didn't personally like the water, the respondent assumed that the silent people did not like the water as well.

There are multiple reasons people may be silent--to avoid repeating a majority opinion, for example, or to avoid potential conflict caused by offering a differing opinion.

The new research showed that people generally assume others are silent for the same reasons they would have remained silent in the same situation. The study authors called this a mirror effect. This could explain their overall finding - that people generally assume silent members of a group would agree with their own personal beliefs.

"Even though the opinions in both study scenarios were equally unknown, people drew markedly different inferences about how those with unknown opinions felt about the topic based on whether they were actively silent or simply absent from the conversation," says lead author Kimberlee Weaver Livnat, PhD, a marketing professor at the University of Haifa in Israel.

The findings have implications for leaders who are trying to make decisions based on group opinions. Leaders should be aware that they may interpret silence as agreement with their own viewpoint, but this may not be accurate, Weaver Livnat says. Similarly, quiet members of a group should be aware that their silence may not be accurately interpreted.

The results also have implications for how people draw conclusions about controversial topics. People are often strongly influenced by the opinions of others, and this is especially true when they are faced with complicated questions, says Weaver Livnat. These questions may include: How concerning is the risk of a pandemic? Is increased automation a wonderful step for progress or a step toward a scary future? Is cryptocurrency a savvy investment opportunity or a waste of money?

"Our answers to these types of questions depend in part on how we think others think about them," Weaver Livnat says. "But we need to examine how we decide what others think."

If you're a parent, you may be concerned that materialism among children has been on the rise. According to research, materialism has been linked to a variety of mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression, as well as selfish attitudes and behaviors.

But there's some good news. A new study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology suggests that some parenting tactics can curb kids' materialistic tendencies.

"Our findings show that it is possible to reduce materialism among young consumers, as well as one of its most common negative consequences (nongenerosity) using a simple strategy -- fostering gratitude for the things and people in their lives," writes researcher Lan Nguyen Chaplin, associate professor of marketing at the University of Illinois at Chicago and coauthor of the study.

After studying a nationwide sample of more than 900 adolescents ages 11 to 17, Chaplin's team found a link between fostering gratitude and its effects on materialism, suggesting that having and expressing gratitude may possibly decrease materialism and increase generosity among adolescents.

The team surveyed 870 adolescents and asked them to complete an online eight-item measure of materialism assessing the value placed on money and material goods, and a four-item measure of gratitude assessing how thankful they are for people and possessions in their lives.

The researchers then conducted an experiment among 61 adolescents and asked them to complete the same four-item gratitude measure from the first study and an eight-item materialism measure. The adolescents were randomly assigned to keep a daily journal for two weeks. One group was asked to record who and what they were thankful for each day by keeping a gratitude journal, and the control group was asked to record their daily activities.

After two weeks, the journals were collected and the participants completed the same gratitude and materialism measures as before. The kids were then given 10 $1 bills for participating and told they could keep all the money or donate some or all of it to charity.

Results showed that participants who were encouraged to keep a gratitude journal showed a significant decrease in materialism and increase in gratitude. The control group, which kept the daily activity journal, retained their pre-journal levels of gratitude and materialism.

In addition, the group that kept a gratitude journal was more generous than the control group. Adolescents, who were in the experimental group, wrote about who and what they were thankful for and donated more than two-thirds of their earnings. Those who were in the control group and simply wrote about their daily activities donated less than half of their earnings.

"The results of this survey study indicate that higher levels of gratitude are associated with lower levels of materialism in adolescents across a wide range of demographic groups," Chaplin noted.

The authors also suggest that materialism can be curbed and feelings of gratitude can be enhanced by a daily gratitude reflection around the dinner table, having children and adolescents make posters of what they are grateful for, or keeping a "gratitude jar" where children and teens write down something they are grateful for each week, while countering materialism.

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE and BOSTON, Mass. (Oct. 18, 2018)--A team of Tufts University-led researchers has developed three-dimensional (3D) human tissue culture models for the central nervous system that mimic structural and functional features of the brain and demonstrate neural activity sustained over a period of many months. With the ability to populate a 3D matrix of silk protein and collagen with cells from patients with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and other conditions, the tissue models allow for the exploration of cell interactions, disease progression and response to treatment. The development and characterization of the models are reported today in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, a journal of the American Chemical Society.

The new 3D brain tissue models overcome a key challenge of previous models -the availability of human source neurons. This is due to the fact that neurological tissues are rarely removed from healthy patients and are usually only available post-mortem from diseased patients. The 3D tissue models are instead populated with human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) that can be derived from many sources, including patient skin. The iPSCs are generated by turning back the clock on cell development to their embryonic-like precursors. They can then be dialed forward again to any cell type, including neurons.

The 3D brain tissue models were the result of a collaborative effort between engineering and the medical sciences and included researchers from Tufts University School of Engineering, Tufts University School of Medicine, the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts, and the Jackson Laboratory.

"We found the right conditions to get the iPSCs to differentiate into a number of different neural subtypes, as well as astrocytes that support the growing neural networks," said David L. Kaplan, Ph.D., Stern Family Professor of Engineering, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts' School of Engineering and program faculty member at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts. "The silk-collagen scaffolds provide the right environment to produce cells with the genetic signatures and electrical signaling found in native neuronal tissues."

Compared to growing and culturing cells in two dimensions, the three-dimensional matrix yields a significantly more complete mix of cells found in neural tissue, with the appropriate morphology and expression of receptors and neurotransmitters, according to the paper.

Others have used iPSCs to create brain-like organoids, which are small dense spherical structures useful for understanding brain development and function, but can still make it difficult to tease out what individual cells are doing in real time. Also, cells in the center of the organoids may not receive enough oxygen or nutrients to function in a native state. The porous structure of the 3D tissue cultures described in this study provides ample oxygenation, access for nutrients and measurement of cellular properties. A clear window in the center of each 3D matrix enables researchers to visualize the growth, organization and behavior of individual cells.

"The growth of neural networks is sustained and very consistent in the 3D tissue models, whether we use cells from healthy individuals or cells from patients with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease," said William Cantley, Ph.D., 2018 graduate of the Cell, Molecular & Developmental Biology program at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts and first author of the study, which was completed as part of his Ph.D. dissertation. "That gives us a reliable platform to study different disease conditions and the ability to observe what happens to the cells over the long term."

The researchers are looking ahead to take greater advantage of the 3D tissue models with advanced imaging techniques, and the addition of other cell types, such as microglia and endothelial cells, to create a more complete model of the brain environment and the complex interactions that are involved in signaling, learning and plasticity, and degeneration.

Investigators who analyzed the published literature have found significant gaps in our understanding of the effects of microplastics--plastic particles less than 5mm in size--in the environment.

In the Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry analysis, the researchers noted that microplastics occur in surface water and sediments and that fragments and fibers predominate, with beads making up only a small proportion of the detected microplastic types. Concentrations detected are orders of magnitude lower than those reported to affect feeding, reproduction, growth, tissue inflammation, and mortality in organisms. The available data suggest that these materials are not causing harm to the environment, but there is a mismatch between the particle types, size ranges, and concentrations of microparticles used in laboratory tests and those measured in the environment. Select environmental regions have also received limited attention.

"There is an urgent need for better quality and more holistic monitoring studies alongside more environmentally realistic effects studies on the particle sizes and material types that are actually in the environment," said co-author Dr. Alistair Boxall, of the University of York, in the UK. "We believe regulations and controls may be focusing on activities that are having limited impact and ignoring the most polluting activities such as releases of small particles from tyres on our cars."

A chemist from RUDN was the first to use catalysts with ruthenium nanoparticles to obtain hydrogen under the influence of visible light and UV radiation. In the future, such catalysts may be used for large-scale production of hydrogen fuel under the influence of sunlight. The results of the study were published in Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.

Photochemical reactions are one of the most eco-friendly ways of producing "green fuel". They don't consume a lot of energy for heating the raw materials or supporting high pressure levels. To maintain the speed of the reaction one needs only light and photocatalysts. Photocatalysts based on platinum, gold, and palladium are highly efficient in such photochemical reactions as hydrogen extraction from biomass derivatives, such as alcohols. However, these metals are expensive, therefore the scientists are in search of cheaper photocatalysts.

Together with their Spanish colleagues, RUDN chemists studied the photocatalytic activity of titanium dioxide enriched with ruthenium particles. It was the first time they were used to obtain hydrogen. The chemists monitored the influence of a titanium-dioxide based ruthenium nanocatalyst on the emission of hydrogen from a methanol-water mixture. The team studied four catalysts (with 1%, 2%, 3%, and 5% ruthenium content), and each of them was tested in two types of reactions - in the presence of visible light and UV radiation. Before that the systems of titanium dioxide and ruthenium were rarely used, therefore it was important to characterize their composition and optical properties, including quantum efficiency. It indicates the photosensitivity of a material and is calculated as a ratio of the total number of photons causing the formation of free electrons in a materials and the total number of absorbed photons. This is the main parameter used to compare the photocatalytic activity of substances.

Experiments have shown that the activity of ruthenium-containing photocatalysts under UV radiation is comparable to platinum and palladium analogs. The quantum efficiency of platinum or palladium based compounds calculated on the basis of other studies makes up from 1.9% to 5.1%, and the results of ruthenium photocatalysts stay within this range. The best value (3.1%) was calculated for the system with 3% ruthenium content. Taking into account the cheapness of ruthenium catalysts, it makes them promising for industrial use. The activity of ruthenium catalysts under visible light was quite low -the quantum efficiency did not exceed 0.6%, but the authors expect it to increase under sunlight up to 1.1%. The scientists have already started verifying this hypothesis.

"Our catalysts based on titanium dioxide and ruthenium appeared to be universal systems and helped us obtain hydrogen in sufficient quantities both under the influence of UV light and visible light,' explains Raphael Luke, director of the Center for Molecular Design and Synthesis of Innovative Compounds for Medicine, and a visiting scholar at RUDN. "Having modelled the reaction between light and substance and calculated the quantum efficiency of all our samples, we understood that the key role in the catalyst's activity was played by the inter-reaction between ruthenium and titanium dioxide particles, especially by the concentration of ruthenium particles and possibly its compounds with oxygen on the surface of the material. The exact mechanism of this phenomenon is yet to be discovered. We continue our studies and are currently experimenting with obtaining hydrogen under sunlight in Spain and Russia."

Despite fears to the contrary, sexual behaviours of adolescent girls stayed the same or became safer after publicly funded school-based HPV vaccinations were introduced in British Columbia (BC), according to new research published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.180628.

Some groups have been concerned that HPV vaccination could encourage early sexual activity, unprotected sex and other risky sexual behaviours.

"The HPV vaccine has proved to be a remarkably effective and safe vaccine. However, parents have expressed concern that the use of the HPV vaccine might promote or condone risky sexual behavior in adolescents," explains lead author Dr. Gina Ogilvie, of the School of Population and Public Health, the University of British Columbia, and assistant director of the Women's Health Research Institute at BC Women's Hospital, Vancouver, BC.

In 2008, BC introduced a publicly funded routine HPV vaccination program in schools for girls in grades 6 and 9. After 2011, the program was available only for girls in grade 6.

Researchers looked at data from the BC Adolescent Health Survey, a comprehensive population-based survey of students in grades 7 to 12 conducted every five years by the McCreary Centre Society. Girls from the 2003, 2008 and 2013 surveys were included, representing the more than 300 000 girls enrolled in public schools across the province. The percentage of girls who reported ever having sex decreased from 21.3% in 2003 to 20.6 % in 2008 and to 18.3% in 2013. As well, the proportion of girls having intercourse before age 14 declined between 2008 and 2013, and the use of condoms increased over time, from 65.6% in 2003 to 68.9% in 2013.

"Our analyses of data from this province-wide survey suggests that implementing a school-based program for HPV vaccination did not lead to an increase in risky sexual behaviours among adolescent girls at the population level," notes study co-author Dr. Elizabeth Saewyc, of the School of Nursing, University of British Columbia. "These findings should help allay any parent or provider fears that participating in HPV vaccination might increase sexual behaviours among teenaged girls."

A fine line exists between confidence and arrogance, and many in positions of power --such as politicians and CEOs -- often are labeled arrogant. Although confidence can serve as both a blessing and a curse, new research from the University of Notre Dame shows how people can reap the rewards without risking the social penalties for overconfidence.

"Is Overconfidence a Social Liability? The Effect of Verbal Versus Nonverbal Expressions of Confidence" is forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology from Nathan Meikle, postdoctoral research and teaching associate in the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business.

It reveals an accountability loophole -- a way for people to enhance their status without risking punishment for overconfidence. It shows that expressing confidence nonverbally through making eye contact, gesturing, adopting an expansive posture or speaking in a strong voice allows people to enjoy the social benefits of expressing confidence while simultaneously reducing the risk they'll be punished for overconfidence. 

The team conducted a series of experiments in which participants met potential collaborators or advisers and decided which -- the confident or cautious -- they trusted and wanted to work with most. On average, they strongly preferred the confident candidate; however, once they learned that person was overconfident and the cautious counterpart was well-calibrated, caution won. 

"Interestingly, though, we found that if the overly confident candidates expressed their confidence nonverbally, they remained the most trusted and desirable choice, even when revealed to be over-the-top," Meikle says.

The findings illustrate how politicians, business leaders and others are able to retain their status and influence even when they are potentially exposed as being overconfident: by leveraging plausible deniability -- their ability to deny responsibility due to a lack of concrete evidence.

"The plausible deniability hypothesis explains why overconfidence sometimes, but not always, is punished," Meikle says. "For example, verifiably overconfident claims, void of plausible deniability, will face consequences. However, there are a number of ways people can create plausible deniability."

Think President Donald Trump.

"One strategy is to make audacious claims about future events," Meikle says. "President Trump frequently makes bold claims, such as he alone can bring coal mining jobs back to West Virginia. Future claims necessarily enjoy some degree of plausible deniability because they cannot be proven wrong in the moment. Thus, individuals boasting about future events would be expected to enjoy the benefits of expressing confidence while simultaneously sidestepping the potential costs. However, even if overconfident claims are eventually proven false, people can still create plausible deniability by undermining the messenger, such as calling it 'fake news.'"

On the flip side, there are those who make audacious, specific claims with little hope of plausible deniability coming to the rescue -- such as a coach boasting his team will go undefeated.

Ken Adelman, writing for the Washington Post in 2002, claimed, "I believe demolishing [Saddam] Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk."

"Adelman invokes some plausible deniability by making a confident prediction about the future," Meikle says. "However, he simultaneously undermines the plausible deniability by using the word 'cakewalk,' as there's virtually no plausible deniability when using that particular word to describe a war. If one person dies, it can be argued that it was not a cakewalk -- let alone the 500,000 people who actually died."  

Meikle researches social perception and its implications for organizations, specifically examining the cues people use to form impressions, such as confidence and deference, as well as the biases that affect people's perceptions.