Culture

Philadelphia, February 6, 2020 - Over the next decade, older adults will grow to become 20 percent of the US population. A new paper in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, published by Elsevier, found Healthy Teaching Kitchen programs are great vehicles for nutrition education specifically among older veterans.

Veterans Affairs' Healthy Teaching Kitchen is an interactive nutrition education program offered by the Veterans Health Administration's Nutrition and Food Services Department that addresses several aging-related issues like social connection, nutrition, and self-care.

"Each class, we learn, cook, and eat," one veteran said, adding they enjoyed "having the cooking steps explained as they were done and being able to eat it."

"It showed me that I can plan and make my meal with healthy choices [without getting] real expensive," said another.

Nutrition needs to be supported by a high quality diet that meets requirements for both micronutrients (e.g., vitamins C, A, D, calcium, iron) and macronutrients (e.g., protein, whole grains, carbs). This is especially important for older adults because poor nutrition increases the risk of aging-related issues like osteoporosis, muscle weakness, and falls.

The authors suggest nutrition education for older adults is improved by taking a holistic approach. By applying the 5M Care Philosophy framework that provides a categorical structure for older adults' complex health needs - Mind, Multi-complexity, Medications, Mobility, and what Matters Most - the issues affecting older adults can be easily addressed.

"Healthy Teaching Kitchens not only focus on participants' knowledge, but also on supporting practical skills such as kitchen setup, meal experience, grocery shopping, label reading, meal planning, and budgeting," explained author Marissa Black, MD, MPH, Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center, Puget Sound Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.

Programming through group classes can address social isolation or be tailored to individuals with mental health issues and/or cognitive impairment to address the "Mind" category. Given many older adults take more than five medications simultaneously or specific medications that affect nutrition, teaching how diet, disease, and medications interact and affect participants' daily choices is key for the "Medications" category. Authors found using this simple framework for future nutrition and cooking educational programming may benefit the geriatric population.

The program got largely positive reviews from its attendees.

"I feel very blessed and fortunate to have experienced this," one said in the review process. "As I see it, the teachers - while not being aware of it - were actually doing ministry. I don't mean religious; ministry to me is when people act out and share their skills and time with others. They are acting in love, and that is what life is all about."

The Healthy Teaching Kitchen program at the VA is part of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, a collaboration through the Harvard School of Public Health and the Culinary Institute of America with the goal of learning best practices and expanding research of Teaching Kitchen programs. The collaborative plans to do future research in this area.

Scientists from the University of La Serena, Newcastle University, UK, and the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile surveyed ranchers to find out what they thought were the drivers of conflict between people and guanacos (a wild camelid species closely related to the Llama).

Ranchers blamed the increased aridity for reducing the availability of pasture, which meant there was more competition for grazing between livestock and guanacos.

As the area became drier, guanacos were thought to come down from the mountains in search for better grazing, coming into conflict with the herds of cattle.

To reduce this problem, some ranchers wanted to cull the guanacos to protect their livestock.

Traditional ranchers in central Chile use summer pastures in the Andes Mountain, where livestock graze in areas shared with wildlife.

It is here that, in the last few years, conflicts have intensified between people grazing their livestock and the State Services that protect wildlife due to differences in how these groups want wildlife to be managed.

Farmers accuse guanaco (Lama guanicoe), a native and IUCN-listed Vulnerable herbivore, of competing for pastures with livestock, which farmers believe has intensified in recent years due to the increase of guanaco population in the summers grazing pastures of the Province of Petorca, in the Region of Valparaíso.

Solange Vargas, the lead author based at the University of La Serena, says:

"The problem was more complex than it initially seemed.

At first glance, it appeared that farmers were accusing only guanaco as a cause of pasture competition. But there was a key element that ultimately caused competition for pastures: climate change."

Farmers claimed that the cause of all changes in the mountain range was ultimately caused by climate change, including what would eventually be reflected in a problem by competition for pastures.

Dr Niki Rust, from Newcastle University, and one of the study's authors, adds:

"As climate change begins to alter our environments, we are already seeing increased competition for resources between people and wildlife.

"The bush fires in Australia, widely claimed to have increased in severity this year due to climate change, have resulted in humans and wild animals competing for scarce water.

"These human-wildlife conflicts will likely worsen as global temperatures rise, which is why it is so important that we act now to limit greenhouse gas emissions - to benefit people and wildlife."

Pablo Castro-Carrasco from the University of La Serena and one of the study's authors says that "understanding farmers' beliefs are key, because beliefs guide behaviour.

"Subjective theories are important to understand in conservation context because they can inhibit or prevent people's behaviour from changing.

"In this study, we have seen that the lay knowledge of farmers is very important to help us search for solutions to allow for coexistence between guanacos with human activities."

The conservation conflict between guanaco and livestock is also a reflection of other deeper demands.

Vargas explains that "where farmers claim to have been abandoned by the State and its public policies, they feel relegated to second place over vulnerable wild species, which they convey to the State through complaints about the species.

"We hope this study help people consider that when analyzing these types of complex social-ecological problems, considering the ecological knowledge of local communities is paramount."

Rust concludes that "because human behaviour is more often driven by perceptions of reality rather than reality itself, we should spend more time trying to understand how people think the world works and basing conservation interventions on these perceptions, rather than focusing exclusively on education as a way to change behaviour."

Moral or religious beliefs may lead some people to believe they are addicted to pornography even when their porn use is low or average, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

"Self-reported addiction to pornography is probably deeply intertwined with religious and moral beliefs for some people," said lead researcher Joshua B. Grubbs, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University. "When people morally disapprove of pornography but still use it anyway, they are more likely to report that pornography is interfering with their lives."

In two studies with more than 3,500 participants, the researchers found that moral or religious beliefs may be a central contributing factor to distress over porn use. Such a view may complicate an accurate diagnosis of compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD), which includes porn addiction and detrimental sexual behaviors such as patronizing prostitutes. The research was published online in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

In one experiment, 2,200 online participants who were selected to be representative of the U.S. population, along with 467 undergraduate students from Bowling Green State University, were surveyed about their porn use and their religious and moral beliefs. People who viewed pornography and believed pornography is morally wrong were more likely to report that they were addicted to porn than those who didn't find porn use to be morally objectionable. Participants who reported they were religious or who regularly attended religious services were more likely to believe they were addicted to porn, even if their porn use was the same as less religious participants who didn't believe their porn use was a problem.

In another online experiment, 850 U.S. adults who used porn were surveyed about their porn use and religious beliefs and then were invited to complete follow-up surveys every four months for a year. The findings were similar, with more religious participants reporting an addiction to pornography. These feelings tracked together over time: Increases in feelings of moral disapproval of pornography corresponded to increases in feelings of addiction to pornography.

"We are not suggesting that people need to change their moral or religious beliefs, but it's not helpful for someone with a low or normal amount of porn use to be convinced that they have an addiction because they feel bad about it," Grubbs said. "However, if someone wants to reduce their porn use because it causes distress, then therapists should work with them in a non-judgmental way that doesn't induce shame."

CSBD has been controversial due to conflicting research on whether it is a distinct mental illness. CSBD is not included in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association in 2013. In 2018, the World Health Organization included CSBD in the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases, a commonly used worldwide standard reference for health conditions and mental illnesses. In the International Classification of Diseases, CSBD is categorized as an impulse control disorder, which includes "a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behavior."

Grubbs said he supports a diagnosis for CSBD as a distinct mental illness, but mental health professionals must ensure their own biases don't lead to inaccurate diagnoses. Previous research has shown that therapists are less likely to diagnose LGBTQ people with CSBD, while religious therapists are more likely to view porn use as addictive and evidence of a mental illness.

Some people seeking treatment for CSBD may not meet the diagnostic criteria even if they are distressed about their porn use, Grubbs said. Clinicians will need to find objective measures, not just the subjective feelings of clients, to diagnose CSBD, such as failed attempts to stop using porn or impairment in job or family duties caused by porn use.

"This diagnosis enables access to care for people who need treatment," Grubbs said. "Just like cultural sensitivity is needed for any diagnosis, CSBD will require that clinicians and therapists be aware of and sensitive to the unique aspects of themselves and their clients that might influence how symptoms should be addressed."

Patients who are being treated with blood-thinning drugs for irregular heart beat should always be investigated for bowel cancer if they experience gastrointestinal bleeding, say the authors of a study published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Friday).

If doctors see bleeding in patients with atrial fibrillation, they may assume that it is due to oral anticoagulant drugs and alter the treatment rather than check for bowel cancer; but the study of nearly 125,500 Danish patients with atrial fibrillation shows that those who experienced bleeding were between 11 and 24 times more likely to be diagnosed with bowel cancer, compared to patients who did not have gastrointestinal bleeding. [2]

Dr Peter Vibe Rasmussen, from Herlev-Gentofte University Hospital, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, who led the research, said: "We found that between four and eight per cent of atrial fibrillation patients who experienced bleeding from their lower gastrointestinal tract were diagnosed with bowel cancer. Less than one per cent of patients were diagnosed with bowel cancer if they did not have bleeding.

"These high absolute risks of bowel cancer associated with bleeding provide a strong argument that if blood is detected in the stools of patients being treated with oral anticoagulants, this is something doctors should worry about. Our findings underline the important point that patients with gastrointestinal bleeding should always be offered meticulous clinical examination, irrespective of whether or not they are taking anticoagulants. It should not be dismissed as a mere consequence of anticoagulant treatment.

"Our study is also a reminder that educating and informing our patients is of utmost importance. When patients start taking anticoagulants, we should tell them that if they see blood in their stools they should always consult their doctor. Timely examination could potentially provide early detection of bowel cancer."

Patients with atrial fibrillation are often prescribed oral blood-thinning drugs, such as warfarin, dabigatran, rivaroxaban and apixaban, to prevent the formation of clots that can lead to stroke. However, bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract can be a side effect and is estimated to occur in about one to two per cent of these patients each year.

Dr Vibe Rasmussen said: "Cancer in the lower part of the digestive system develops over extended periods of time often without showing any symptoms. These tumours are called occult cancers. As a consequence, the cancer is most often not diagnosed until the patient experiences symptoms. Treatment with blood thinning medication, as often recommended in patients with heart disease, increases the risk of bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract. In this study we wanted to test the hypothesis that bleeding induced by oral anticoagulants could be due to the unmasking of an undiagnosed occult cancer."

The researchers identified all patients aged between 18 and 100 years with a diagnosis of atrial fibrillation between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2014 from the Danish national registers. Patients who took any oral anticoagulant were included in the study and were followed until the end of 2015. After excluding some patients for reasons such as not living in Denmark, already having a bowel cancer diagnosis, or having recently had hip or knee surgery, there was a total of 125,418 patients eligible for inclusion in the study.

During a maximum of three years of treatment, the researchers identified 2576 patients with bleeding from the lower gastrointestinal tract. Of these, 140 were diagnosed with bowel cancer within the first year after the bleeding was detected.

The risk of bowel cancer being diagnosed in the first year after bleeding depended on the patients' age. Patients aged 65 or younger with bleeding were 24 times more likely to have bowel cancer detected than those of the same age without bleeding, while older patients (aged 71 to 75 years) with bleeding were 11 times more likely to have bowel cancer than those without bleeding.

Dr Vibe Rasmussen said: "We found the highest absolute risk of bowel cancer after bleeding among patients aged 76-80 years; eight per cent of patients in this age group were diagnosed with bowel cancer within the first year after bleeding."

The researchers point out that with an aging population in many countries, the prevalence of atrial fibrillation is increasing, more people are treated with blood-thinning drugs and so gastrointestinal bleeding is likely to occur more frequently.

There is no suggestion that oral anticoagulants cause bowel cancer.

The main strength of the study is its large size and the fact that it included everyone in Denmark diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. Limitations of the study include: it is an observational study; there were no data available about risk factors such as alcohol consumption, dietary habits and obesity; adherence to oral anticoagulant therapy was assumed on the basis that patients were collecting their prescriptions; and selection bias may have occurred due to the fact that patients with more severe bleeding, combined with other, potentially cancer-related symptoms, are more likely to be referred for further investigation than patients with light bleeding and without any other symptoms.

Social media users are more likely to eat fruit and veg - or snack on junk food - if they think their friends do the same, a new study has found.

The research, by Aston University's School of Life and Health Sciences, found that study participants ate an extra fifth of a portion of fruit and vegetables themselves for every portion they thought their social media peers ate. So, if they believed their friends got their 'five a day' of fruit and veg, they were likely to eat an extra portion themselves.

But conversely, the Facebook users were found to consume an extra portion of unhealthy snack foods and sugary drinks for every three portions they believed their online social circles did. The finding suggests we eat around a third more junk food if we think our friends also indulge.

The Aston University researchers said the findings provide the first evidence to suggest our online social circles could be implicitly influencing our eating habits, with important implications for using 'nudge' techniques on social media to encourage healthy eating.

In the study, published in the scientific journal Appetite, the researchers asked 369 university students to estimate the amount of fruit, vegetables, 'energy-dense snacks' and sugary drinks their Facebook peers consumed on a daily basis.

This information was cross-referenced with the participants' own actual eating habits and showed that those who felt their social circles 'approved' of eating junk food consumed significantly more themselves. Meanwhile, those who thought their friends ate a healthy diet ate more portions of fruit and veg. Their perceptions could have come from seeing friends' posts about the food and drink they consumed, or simply a general impression of their overall health.

There was no significant link between the participants' eating habits and their Body Mass Index (BMI), a standard measure of healthy weight, however. The researchers said the next stage of their work would track a participant group over time to see whether the influence of social media on eating habits had a longer-term impact on weight.

The most recent figures from the NHS's Health Survey for England showed that in 2018 only 28 percent of adults were eating the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables per day. In Wales, this was 24 percent, in Scotland 22 percent and in Northern Ireland around 20 percent. Children and young people across the UK had even lower levels of fruit and veg consumption.

Aston University health psychology PhD student Lily Hawkins, who led the study alongside supervisor Dr Jason Thomas, said:

"This study suggests we may be influenced by our social peers more than we realise when choosing certain foods. We seem to be subconsciously accounting for how others behave when making our own food choices.

"So if we believe our friends are eating plenty of fruit and veg we're more likely to eat fruit and veg ourselves. On the other hand, if we feel they're happy to consume lots of snacks and sugary drinks, it can give us a 'licence to overeat' foods that are bad for our health.

"The implication is that we can use social media as a tool to 'nudge' each other's eating behaviour within friendship groups, and potentially use this knowledge as a tool for public health interventions."

Professor Claire Farrow, Director of Aston University's Applied Health Research Group whose work has contributed to the national Child Feeding Guide resource, added:

"With children and young people spending a huge amount of time interacting with peers and influencers via social media, the important new findings from this study could help shape how we deliver interventions that help them adopt healthy eating habits from a young age - and stick with them for life."

Aisling Pigott, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association (BDA), said:

"Research such as this demonstrates how we are influenced by online perceptions about how others eat. The promotion of positive health messages across social media, which are focused on promoting healthy choices and non-restrictive relationships with food and body, could nudge people into making positive decisions around the food they eat.

"We do have to be mindful of the importance of 'nudging' positive behaviours and not 'shaming' food choices on social media as a health intervention. We know that generating guilt around food is not particularly helpful when it comes to lifestyle change and maintenance."

A new study from the University of Oxford and the University of Warwick reveals a breakthrough for sportsmen and women in the treatment of Achilles tendon rupture.

Researchers found that early walking in a brace provides similar outcomes to plaster casting with no increase in the risk of complications, paving the way for a big change in the way that patients are treated.

The results from the UKSTAR trial are reported today (Thursday 6 February) in The Lancet.

The study was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and was a multi-centre collaboration between universities and hospitals across the UK.

"This research is particularly important for sportsmen and women of all levels and abilities," said Matthew Costa, Professor of Orthopaedic Trauma Surgery at NDORMS, University of Oxford. "Achilles tendon rupture keeps people away from sport for many months. For some, it stops them ever returning to their favourite recreational activities, and for professional athletes it can be a career-ending injury. Immediate mobilisation in a brace is a safe alternative to plaster casting after an Achilles rupture and patients report better early outcomes, probably because the brace allows them to walk earlier than the cast."

Rupture of the Achilles tendon is a serious and increasingly common injury with over 11,000 people from both the sporting and non-sporting populations experiencing the injury each year in the UK.

Some patients are treated with surgery, but non-operative treatment is increasingly preferred, with patients either being treated in a plaster cast to immobilise the foot and ankle or by the use of functional bracing that allows weight-bearing. However, before the UKSTAR study there was little evidence towards which was more effective.

Although traditional plaster cast treatment protected the tendon as it healed, there were problems with casts including the immediate impact on mobility, additional risks associated with prolonged immobilisation, and possible long-term issues arising from gait abnormalities and muscle weakness.

With the bracing method, there were questions around the safety profile, specifically whether the risk of re-rupture was higher, leading to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons being unable to recommend for or against functional bracing in their 2009 guidelines.

However, the study found that the risk of re-rupture of the tendon in bracing was lower that reported in existing literature. Matthew Costa said: "Traditionally, patients with a rupture of the Achilles tendon are immobilised for several weeks in a plaster cast which restricts their mobility. However, our new research shows that immediate weight-bearing in a walking boot allows the tendon to heal just as quickly and with no increase in the risk of further rupture. Plus, the walking boot treatment is cheaper for the NHS."

Associate Professor Rebecca Kearney is an academic physiotherapy lead at Warwick Clinical Trials Unit, who has worked collaboratively with Professor Costa in this research area across Warwick and Oxford universities. She said: "This research is answering a question that has been debated for over a decade; early research began at the University of Warwick in 2009 exploring the impact of plaster casts and walking boots on walking patterns and getting back to activities, which led to the development of this trial. We now know that patients who immediate weight bear in a walking boot have better early outcomes, but this is only the beginning of the recovery. We need to do further research exploring how we best rehabilitate patients after the walking boot is discarded. This trial highlighted large variation in rehabilitation provision across the UK for this injury."

The UKSTAR trial randomised 540 participants from 39 UK hospitals making it the largest study of its kind to compare the two treatments. Adult patients were randomly assigned to plaster cast or functional brace. The objective was to compare function and pain, quality of life, complications including re-rupture, and resource use in patients having non-operative treatment. The study found no difference between the patient-reported Achilles Tendon Rupture Score (ATRS) at 9 months, or in the rate of re-rupture of the tendon.

Children with higher concentrations of a certain chemical in their blood are more likely to get cavities, according to a new study by West Virginia University School of Dentistry researchers.

Manufactured chemical g roups called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances are universal as a result of extensive manufacturing and use. Although manufacturers no longer use PFAS to make nonstick cookware, carpet, cardboard and other products, they persist in the environment. Scientists have linked them to a range of health problems--from heart disease to high cholesterol--but now R. Constance Wiener and Christopher Waters are exploring how they affect dental health.

They investigated whether higher concentrations of PFAS were associated with greater tooth decay in children. One of them--perfluorodecanoic acid--was linked to dental cavities. Their findings appear in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry.

"Due to the strong chemical bonds of PFAS, it is difficult for them to breakdown, which makes them more likely to be persistent within the environment, especially in drinking water systems," said Waters, who directs the School of Dentistry's research labs. "A majority of people may not be aware that they are using water and other products that contain PFAS."

The 629 children who participated in the study were 3 to 11 years old and were part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Samples of the children's blood were analyzed for PFAS in 2013 and 2014. Their tooth decay and other factors--such as their race, their BMI and how often they brushed their teeth--were assessed.

Of the seven PFAS that Wiener and Waters analyzed, perfluorodecanoic acid was the one that correlated with higher levels of tooth decay.

"Perfluorodecanoic acid, in particular, has a long molecular structure and strong chemical bonds; therefore, it remains in the environment longer. As a result, it is more likely to have negative health consequences such as dental caries," said Dr. Wiener, an associate professor in the Department of Dental Practice and Rural Health.

But how does that influence happen? Wiener and Waters have a hypothesis. According to other research, perfluorodecanoic acid may disrupt the healthy development of enamel, which is what makes teeth hard. That disruption can leave teeth susceptible to decay.

However, when it comes to cavities, scientists haven't parsed perfluorodecanoic acid's mechanism of action yet. The topic warrants further investigation.

"While the findings of this study are important, there are some study limitations, and more work is needed to fully understand how this molecule impacts normal tooth formation," said Fotinos Panagakos, the School of Dentistry's vice dean for administration and research.

"The good news is that, in our study, about half of the children did not have any measurable amount of PFAS. Perhaps this is due to certain PFAS no longer being made in the US," Wiener said.

Another piece of good news is that the study reaffirmed the importance of dental hygiene and checkups. Children who brushed once a day or less frequently had significantly higher tooth decay than those who brushed at least twice daily.

Likewise, children who had not been to the dentist within the previous year were twice as likely to have higher rates of tooth decay than kids who hadn't.

So, even though parents cannot control what is in their children's drinking water, they can still protect their children's teeth by fostering thorough, regular brushing and scheduling dental exams.

The School of Dentistry will hold Give Kids a Smile Day on Friday, Feb. 7, at the Pediatric Dentistry Clinic. Dental students will treat more than 100 children for free that day. Each visit includes an exam, a cleaning, a fluoride treatment and--if appropriate--X-rays.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - In a recent study, University of Arkansas physics researchers found evidence of an inverse transition in ferroelectric ultrathin films, which could lead to advances in development of data storage, microelectronics and sensors.

"We found that a disordered labyrinthine phase transforms into the more ordered parallel-stripe structure upon raising the temperature," said Yousra Nahas, first author of the study titled "Inverse Transition of Labyrinthine Domain Patterns in Ferroelectric Thin Films," published in the journal Nature. Former and present U of A physics researchers Sergei Prokhorenko, Bin Xu, Sergey Prosandeev, and Distinguished Professor Laurent Bellaiche, along with colleagues in France, also contributed to the study.

Proposed a century ago, these types of transitions seem to contradict the fundamental law that disorder increases with temperature. They have been found in other systems such as superconductors, proteins, liquid crystals and metallic alloys. But they had not been found in ferroelectric materials, which are of interest to scientists because they possess spontaneous electrical polarization that can be reversed by the application of an electric field.

The University of Arkansas researchers were able to model the transitions using the Arkansas High Performance Computing Center, which is funded in part by the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. Researchers in France demonstrated the model's predictions through laboratory experiments.

"These findings may be put at use to leap beyond current technologies by enabling fundamentally new design principles and topologically enhanced functionalities within ferroelectric films," said Nahas.

Italian American organized crime may conjure images of classic gangster flicks, but as James B. Jacobs explores in the Crime and Justice article "The Rise and Fall of Organized Crime in the United States," its history is unexpectedly nuanced and mutable. The Cosa Nostra families--popularly known as the Mafia--operated, at the height of their power, in at least twenty-four American cities, with five in New York City alone. Although no national body governed the families, they operated similarly to one another and were major urban power brokers.

Before the 1970s, organized crime was largely ignored by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, even though Cosa Nostra families had begun to traffic drugs and infiltrate unions as early as the 1910s, and Prohibition in particular (1919-1933) gave them the opportunity to control black markets. As times changed, they expanded their powers to run seedy coin-operated pornography films, finance the first large Las Vegas casino, and fix sports contests. It wasn't until the 1960s that Cosa Nostra began to face serious legal consequences. Congress enacted the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act in 1968 and followed up in 1970 with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). When Hoover died in 1972, the FBI redefined its top priorities, and took on the Cosa Nostra families. By this time, Italian American organized crime was reaching its peak, thanks to labor and business racketeering, black markets like gambling and pornography, and drug trafficking. But in the 1980s and '90s, and into the current century, the federal government relentlessly pressured and prosecuted organized crime outfits, with dozens upon dozens of members and even bosses recanting the Cosa Nostra code of silence known as omertá. With the federal government able to protect informants under 1970's Witness Security Program, streams of members and associates agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

Jacobs details many aspects of organized crime and explains how political and social changes helped define paths to power--and how further political and social changes have eroded them. For instance, the power that labor unions held in the U.S. in the 1970s was substantial enough that by replacing union officers with Cosa Nostra family members and associates, an organized crime family could control which businesses could operate in certain sectors, designating who would win contracts. As corruption began to be rooted out of these unions, the Cosa Nostra families' powers shrank. Around the same time, most U.S. cities had working-class Italian American neighborhoods, including recent immigrants who were ripe for recruitment by the ruling crime families. With neighborhood boundaries shrinking, and Italian Americans assimilating into mainstream society, the recruitment pool shrank. More legislation, especially in New York City in the late '90s, allowed law enforcement to purge Cosa Nostra groups from the legitimate economy by, for instance, refusing to award government contracts to any group affiliated with organized crime.

Despite pressure from the legal and judicial systems and a rapidly changing world, Cosa Nostra families survive and operate, albeit as shadow of their former selves. But Jacobs cautions that Cosa Nostra has proved resilient for more than a century--and even if organized crime is down, it's not out.

HOUSTON -- A study led by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center furthered understanding about mitochondria, the cell components known as the "powerhouse of the cell." Knowing more about the genome is crucial given that mitochondria play important roles in tumorigenesis.

Findings were published in the Feb. 5 online issue of Nature Genetics and resulted through collaboration with the International Cancer Genome Consortium--The Cancer Genome Atlas Pan--Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) project, an effort involving more than 1,300 scientists and clinicians from 37 countries. Since its inception, the PCAWG has analyzed more than 2,600 genomes across 38 tumor types.

"This study lays a foundation for translating mitochondrial biology into clinical applications," said Han Liang, Ph.D., professor of Bioinformatics & Computational Biology. "Our analysis presents the most definitive mutational landscape of mitochondrial genomes and identifies several hyper-mutated cases. Such truncated mutations are remarkably enriched in kidney, colorectal and thyroid cancers, suggesting oncogenic impact with the activation of signaling pathways."

Mitochondria are crucial cellular organelles, with a single human cell containing several hundred mitochondria. The cell components play essential roles in generating most of the cell's energy through a process known as oxidative phosphorylation. The mitochondrial genome encodes 13 proteins that form respiratory chain complexes with other proteins.

"The involvement of mitochondria in carcinogenesis has long been suspected because altered energy metabolism is a common feature of cancer," said Liang. "Furthermore, mitochondria play important roles in other tasks, such as biosynthesis, signaling, cellular differentiation, cell growth and death."

The team found that the mitochondrial genome is an essential component in understanding the complex molecular patterns observed in cancer genomes and helping to pinpoint potential cancer driver events.

"Our results underscore the clinical importance of mitochondria. This study has untangled and characterized the full spectrum of molecular alterations of mitochondria in human cancers," said Liang. "We have highlighted the function of mitochondrial genes in oxidative phosphorylation, DNA repair and cell cycle, showing their connections with clinically actionable genes."

Singapore, 6 February 2020 - Cancer is the leading cause of death in Singapore and the second leading cause of death around the world, implicated in about one in six deaths globally. An international consortium of scientists has now identified 81 mutational 'signatures' that could help reveal the origins and development of various types of cancer, and inform new strategies to prevent, diagnose and treat the disease.

Published in the journal Nature, the study by researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK, the University of California San Diego School of Medicine in the USA, and their collaborators around the world is part of a decade-long Pan-Cancer Project aimed at comprehensively analysing whole cancer genomes.

"Different kinds of DNA copying problems and mutation-causing agents, like tobacco, UV light, and chemotherapeutic drugs, lead to mutations with recognisable fingerprints, which we call mutational signatures," explained Professor Steven Rozen, a senior author of the study from the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Programme at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore.

These signatures can provide a snapshot of a cell's life history and insight into factors that have mutated the cell's genetic material. Understanding the role these mutations play in cancer development can help advance research into prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

The research was part of the Pan-Cancer Project, a massive international effort to establish the most comprehensive map of primary cancer genomes to date, involving more than 1,300 scientists and clinicians from 37 countries. For this particular study, the researchers used machine learning to computationally mine mutation data from almost 24,000 human cancer samples. The large data set allowed them to identify 81 different mutational signatures.

Some of the signatures represented fingerprints of known mutation-causing agents. For example, signature SBS4 involves a specific combination of 'single base substitutions', in which mutations cause the replacement of a nucleic acid base, the building block of DNA, with another. Lung cancer samples have a strong SBS4 signature, indicating that this particular one is associated with tobacco smoking.

"This study presents a fundamental resource that will tie in with experimental studies to open new doors for understanding the causes of cancer," said Prof Rozen, who is also Director of Duke-NUS' Centre for Computational Biology. "This will illuminate new opportunities for cancer prevention, or help screen exposed individuals more intensively. The results will also help us understand in more detail how exposure to mutation-causing agents leads to cancer."

Prof Mike Stratton, a senior author of the study and Director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK, said, "Using our detailed catalogue of the range of mutational signatures in cancer DNA, researchers worldwide will now be able to investigate which chemicals or processes are linked to these signatures. This will increase our understanding of how cancer develops, and discover new causes of cancer, helping to inform public health strategies to prevent cancer."

Prof Patrick Casey, Senior Vice Dean for Research at Duke-NUS, commented, "In Singapore, cancer is the leading cause of death, and it has significant societal and economic impact on patients and their families, as well as the healthcare system. We are truly encouraged by this important achievement by Prof Rozen and his collaborators, and look forward to the advances in cancer treatment and patient care their findings unlock."

Prof Rozen and his team next plan to study the mutational signature caused by aristolochic acid, a naturally occurring chemical found in the plant family known as birthworts, which are used in herbal medicine in Asia and worldwide. This mutational signature is found in urinary tract and liver cancers throughout East Asia. Further studies on this mutational signature could lead to tests that could help determine who has been exposed to aristolochic acid and help clarify if cancers caused by it require a unique treatment approach.

Prof Rozen shared that scientists will also need to study a more geographically diverse data set of cancer genomes, as the current data set was mainly from Europe and North America. "We simply have no idea if there are substantial exposures to unknown mutation-causing agents in other parts of the world," he stated.

The research findings were published as part of a special edition of Nature and affiliated publications featuring 23 papers from the Pan-Cancer Project, which is coordinated by the International Cancer Genome Consortium and The Cancer Genome Atlas.

The University of Rochester research lab that recently used lasers to create unsinkable metallic structures has now demonstrated how the same technology could be used to create highly efficient solar power generators.

In a paper in Light: Science & Applications, the lab of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics also affiliated with Physics and the Material Sciences Program, describes using powerful femto-second laser pulses to etch metal surfaces with nanoscale structures that selectively absorb light only at the solar wavelengths, but not elsewhere.

A regular metal surface is shiny and highly reflective. Years ago, the Guo lab developed a black metal technology that turned shiny metals pitch black. "But to make a perfect solar absorber," Guo says, "We need more than a black metal and the result is this selective absorber."

This surface not only enhances the energy absorption from sunlight, but also reduces heat dissipation at other wavelengths, in effect, "making a perfect metallic solar absorber for the first time," Guo says. "We also demonstrate solar energy harnessing with a thermal electric generator device."

"This will be useful for any thermal solar energy absorber or harvesting device," particularly in places with abundant sunlight, he adds.

The work was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Army Research Office, and the National Science Foundation.

The researchers experimented with aluminum, copper, steel, and tungsten, and found that tungsten, commonly used as a thermal solar absorber, had the highest solar absorption efficiency when treated with the new nanoscale structures. This improved the efficiency of thermal electrical generation by 130 percent compared to untreated tungsten.

Co-authors include Sohail Jalil, Bo Lai, Mohamed Elkabbash, Jihua Zhang, Erik M. Garcell, and Subhash Singh of the Guo lab.

The lab has also used the femto-second laser etching technology to create superhydrophobic (water repellent) and superhydrophilic (water-attracting) metals. In November 2019, for example, Guo's lab reported creating metallic structures that do not sink no matter how often they are forced into water or how much it is damaged or punctured.

This new paper, however, expands upon the lab's initial work with femto-second laser etched black metal.

Prior to creating the water attracting and repellent metals, Guo and his assistant, Anatoliy Vorobyev, demonstrated the use of femto-second laser pulses to turn almost any metal pitch black. The surface structures created on the metal were incredibly effective at capturing incoming radiation, such as light. But they captured light over a broad range of wavelengths.

Subsequently, his team used a similar process to change the color of a range of metals to various colors, such as blue, golden, and gray, in addition to the black already achieved. The applications could include making color filters and optical spectral devices, a car factory using a single laser to produce cars of different colors; etching a full-color photograph of a family into the refrigerator door; or proposing with a gold engagement ring that matches the color of your fiancee's blue eyes.

The lab also used the initial black and colored metal technique to create a unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament, enabling a light bulb to glow more brightly at the same energy usage.

"We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a patch on the filament. When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament," Guo said.

Pathogens such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and recently the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China (2019-nCoV) have been a global threat. Lymph nodes (LNs) fight against infectious diseases by providing a shelter for immune cells to grow and launch an attack against pathogens. However, LNs' particular inner workings are poorly understood.

Scientists led by KOH Gou Young at the Center for Vascular Research, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), with collaborators of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea, have found that a chain of chemical reactions, known as the Hippo-YAP/TAZ signaling pathway, that plays a dominant role in the formation and maintenance of LNs. Their findings have been reported in the journal Nature Communications.

One of the key components of LNs are fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs), which form LN's basic infrastructure and trigger immune responses by releasing cytokines, which are proteins important for immunity. Functional FRCs form during LN's development: a poorly defined population of mesenchymal cells differentiate into FRC precursors, which further develop into mature FRCs with immune functions. Whereas the molecular details involved in the latter process, such as lymphotoxin-β receptor (LTβR) signaling, have been thoroughly described, the details of the commitment steps of FRC development are still unclear.

The research team confirmed the importance of the Hippo pathway - a key regulator of cellular proliferation and organ size control - in FRCs' maturation. The researchers used more than 20 different genetically modified mouse models to characterize the Hippo pathway at specific time points, depleting the proteins YAP/TAZ at various stages of FRC development.

"As I witnessed the enriched expression of YAP/TAZ in fibroblastic reticular cells of lymph nodes, I knew there must be a role of the Hippo pathway in FRCs," says CHOI Sung Yong, first co-author of this study.

By performing a careful examination of the mice's LNs, the team found that FRCs transform into fat cells when YAP/TAZ are reduced in FRC precursors.

BAE Hosung, first co-author of this study, explains, "It was like a mathematic equation, when we drew out the findings on the blackboard, we were sure that depleting YAP/TAZ in fibroblastic reticular cell precursors would show an effect on the lymph nodes."

The researchers found that YAP/TAZ binding to p52 is required for maintaining FRC identity. JEONG Sun-Hye, first co-author of this study, notes, "I had this basic instinct that YAP/TAZ should bind with key components that regulate fibroblastic reticular cell identity, such as p52."

Future research will focus on determining whether diseases or conditions that affect systemic immune responses can be linked to alterations in the Hippo signaling pathway in FRCs, and whether modulating Hippo signaling within FRCs could serve as a viable therapeutic option. Beyond their importance in the immune response against flu, FRCs have recently gained considerable recognition for their role in cancer progression and patient outcome. The degree of stromal fibrosis within metastatic LNs is an important prognostic factor that significantly affects disease-free survival of cancer patients. "It definitely warrants more extensive investigation of fibroblastic reticular cells in patients with tumor lymph node metastases prior to clinical investigation," adds Koh.

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Proposed hydropower dams in Gabon pose a substantial threat to the African nation's most culturally and economically important fishes, according to a new study.

The study, published today in the journal Ecosphere, is the first of its kind to predict the distribution of fishes throughout central African freshwaters by linking museum records to ecological data. That synthesis allowed the study's authors to infer how the nearly 40 dams planned for construction in Gabon might affect its many fish species.

Many of the culturally and economically important fish species in Gabon move from the ocean into rivers, with some known to swim up to 250 miles upstream into pure freshwaters.

Gabon has some of the world's most pristine unimpeded river systems and high freshwater biodiversity. The proposed dams will block access to much of the freshwater habitat that is also suitable for marine species and will impact at least 350 fish species, said Brian Sidlauskas, study co-author and associate professor at Oregon State University.

"Our modeling found that particularly in Gabon's second-largest river, the Nyanga, dam development could cut marine fishes off from 60% of the most suitable freshwater habitats, representing 392 river kilometers," Sidlauskas said.

Previous research shows that freshwater ecosystems are among the most imperiled in the world and approximately 20% of the assessed freshwater fishes are threatened with extinction, and that dams are causing major shifts in species distribution and abundance, including extinctions.

There are three free-flowing rivers at least 500 kilometers in length in Gabon: the Ivindo, the Nyanga, which is currently undammed, and the Ogooué. While the 38 proposed dams in Gabon, including 28 in the Ogooué watershed, can increase energy production, they would fragment and alter relatively pristine river systems, according to the study co-authors.

Potentially impacted fish species include the Giant African threadfin, snappers, croakers, bonga shad, mullets, Atlantic tarpon and tongue soles. Though these fishes are known to enter rivers regularly as adults or as juveniles, most of the 38 potential dam sites have never been scientifically surveyed for their presence, and no previous formal studies of fish movement within Gabon's freshwater ecosystems had been conducted.

For their study, researchers at OSU and University of California, Santa Cruz, compiled records for fresh and brackish water fishes of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea from three databases, and grouped them by guilds. An ecological guild is any group of species that exploits the same resources, or that exploit different resources in similar ways.

The research team used a geographic information system to record river data to create two connectivity scenarios: one under existing dams and one with the proposed dams.

The model used guild data, which included traits and prevalence; topography, including tree canopy cover, waterfalls or steep changes in elevation, and other hydrological information.

The model predicted marine-associated fishes had a high likelihood of occupying the Nyanga and its major tributaries and much of the Ogooué's main channel, as well as portions of its major tributaries.

Construction of all the proposed dams might lead to a loss of access to 7% of highly suitable habitats, or 466 stream kilometers. These losses were largest on the Nyanga, Ogooué, Mvoung, Lolo, Komo and Okano rivers.