Culture

Tailored exercise programs led by accredited exercise physiologists don't just provide physical benefits for residents living in aged care - they improve mental wellbeing and social engagement, according to new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research.

A series of studies led by ECU Associate Professor Annette Raynor from the School of Medical and Health Sciences has investigated the benefits of a 12-week exercise program delivered by an accredited exercise physiologist for older adults living in three different residential aged care facilities in Perth.

According to health authorities, more than 50 per cent of the 230,000 Australian residents living in aged care experience symptoms of depression.

The new studies have provided preliminary evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of an accredited exercise physiologist-led therapy program to promote residents' physical and psychosocial wellbeing.

Associate Professor Raynor said previous research on exercise in aged care had tended to focus on the physical effects of resistance training and balance programs on fall prevention and in promoting functional capacity and mobility.

"This focus on the physical outcomes from exercise often decreases the significance of psychosocial benefits, such as enhanced independence, elevated mood and reduced agitation that can also be achieved with exercise," Associate Professor Raynor said.

Key findings:

The program led to improvements in residents' sense of independence, autonomy and social engagement.

Residents demonstrated improvements in balance, strength, flexibility and mobility.

The individualised structure of the program enabled residents to foster personal connections and accommodated specific needs relating to cognitive and physical impairments.

More than just physical benefits

While the exercise programs achieved physical improvements in balance, strength and flexibility, other significant benefits such as increased connectedness and motivation were also observed.

Associate Professor Raynor said staff had noticed that residents were coming out of their rooms more often, joining in activities, their mood was enhanced and they were generally more happy.

"One lady we worked with had experienced a stroke. She couldn't dress herself or go to the toilet unassisted. Prior to her stroke she had been very independent and found her current situation frustrating.

"Through the exercise program she regained some independence, was able to join classes, choose her own clothes and go to the bathroom on her own," Associate Professor Raynor said.

"These are the changes we were looking for - an increase in strength and functional ability are great, but the extra benefits that this enhanced physical ability brings to the residents' quality of life demonstrated the meaningfulness of the program."

No one-size-fits all approach

Associate Professor Raynor said exercise interventions in aged care in WA were typically not delivered by exercise physiologists, who are specifically trained to deliver tailored exercise programs.

"Because this exercise program was led by an exercise physiologist, they could prescribe and deliver one-on-one or group sessions tailored specifically to each individual.

"This also meant they could build personal relationships and adapt the exercise to the residents' needs," she said.

The paper It's not just physical: Exercise physiologist-led exercise program promotes functional and psychosocial health outcomes in aged care is published in in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity.

A research team led by Distinguished Professor Sang-Yup Lee reported the production of a microbial strain capable of the massive production of succinic acid with the highest production efficiency to date. This strategy of integrating systems metabolic engineering with enzyme engineering will be useful for the production of industrially competitive bio-based chemicals. Their strategy was described in Nature Communications on April 23.

The bio-based production of industrial chemicals from renewable non-food biomass has become increasingly important as a sustainable substitute for conventional petroleum-based production processes relying on fossil resources. Here, systems metabolic engineering, which is the key component for biorefinery technology, is utilized to effectively engineer the complex metabolic pathways of microorganisms to enable the efficient production of industrial chemicals.

Succinic acid, a four-carbon dicarboxylic acid, is one of the most promising platform chemicals serving as a precursor for industrially important chemicals. Among microorganisms producing succinic acid, Mannheimia succiniciproducens has been proven to be one of the best strains for succinic acid production.

The research team has developed a bio-based succinic acid production technology using the M. succiniciproducens strain isolated from the rumen of Korean cow for over 20 years and succeeded in developing a strain capable of producing succinic acid with the highest production efficiency.

They carried out systems metabolic engineering to optimize the succinic acid production pathway of the M. succiniciproducens strain by determining the crystal structure of key enzymes important for succinic acid production and performing protein engineering to develop enzymes with better catalytic performance.

As a result, 134 g per liter of succinic acid was produced from the fermentation of an engineered strain using glucose, glycerol, and carbon dioxide. They were able to achieve 21 g per liter per hour of succinic acid production, which is one of the key factors determining the economic feasibility of the overall production process. This is the world's best succinic acid production efficiency reported to date. Previous production methods averaged 1~3 g per liter per hour.

Distinguished professor Sang Yup Lee explained that his team's work will significantly contribute to transforming the current petrochemical-based industry into an eco-friendly bio-based one.

"Our research on the highly efficient bio-based production of succinic acid from renewable non-food resources and carbon dioxide has provided a basis for reducing our strong dependence on fossil resources, which is the main cause of the environmental crisis," Professor Lee said.

In general, workers in Switzerland and Germany are coping well with the Covid-19 crisis and the associated social disruption. They are feeling happier and finding it easier to unwind and balance work and private life. They are also more engaged at work than last year, a survey among 600 participants carried out by researchers of the University of Zurich shows.

Workers are currently having to be very flexible: They must come to terms with a new situation at work and changes in their workload, they may have to take on additional childcare duties, and they are facing an uncertain future. Occupational health researchers at the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute of the University of Zurich have examined the effects these challenges have had on the workers' well-being and health.

Pre- and post-outbreak comparison

The researchers conducted a survey in April 2020 among almost 600 workers who had already participated in a survey in June 2019 about their work conditions, well-being and strategies to improve their situation at work and leisure. This enabled the researchers to compare the situation of the survey participants before and after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. "We had anticipated that workers would feel more stressed during the crisis than before," says study leader Rebecca Brauchli. The study, however, suggests that the opposite is true, "which once again shows how remarkably adaptable people are."

When asked to give a general assessment of their situation, 29 percent of survey participants said that their work situation had deteriorated after the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, and only 11 percent said that it had improved. These figures were also reflected in the workers' assessment of their private lives. However, this retrospective general assessment did not coincide with the survey findings gained from comparing specific answers before and after the outbreak of the pandemic.

Work and life in balance

When it comes to specific answers, the researchers found that workers are happier with their professional and private lives than one year ago, and that both spheres of life are perceived as more enriching. According to the survey, the workers are now able to expand their professional skills and learn new things. They feel more supported by their colleagues in their private life and, above all, are better able to control how and when they work. This autonomy in carrying out their work is likely also a reason why workers are currently better at maintaining a balance between work and private life. "There are fewer conflicts between work and private life," says Brauchli. "Significantly so, when it comes to people working from home." They are more actively shaping their free time and work-life balance than a year ago. The same goes for workers affected by short-time working.

More engaged, more relaxed, but less optimistic

In general, survey participants said they were better able to unwind from work. The general workload has decreased slightly, as have signs of burnout. "However, this doesn't mean that workers have been less engaged at work," emphasizes Brauchli. Quite the opposite, in fact: Across all groups, workers have been significantly more engaged at work.

The survey shows a slight deterioration when it comes to the workers' assessment of their own psychological and physical health. According to Brauchli, it is worth taking a closer look at the specific questions here. In terms of their own optimism and feeling of being close to others, respondents gave significantly lower ratings than in the previous survey. Physical exercise also decreased somewhat, in frequency and especially in intensity. At the same time, the survey respondents felt more relaxed and reported being able to think more clearly.

Greater burden for workers looking after children

Despite the generally positive developments in the professional and private lives of workers, the researchers found some exceptions in subgroups, especially among workers who also take care of small children. In contrast to other groups, these workers feel a slightly increased burden at home. Unlike the other survey respondents, they are not benefiting from the recreational effects and reduced workload, and generally feel less supported by their colleagues than a year ago. The latter, with slight variation, also applies to people working from home: They are more likely to be overwhelmed in terms of work content, "probably because they lack the support of their line managers or colleagues when facing a problem," suspects Rebecca Brauchli.

Favorable effects of flexibility and autonomy

Workers report feeling unsettled and steamrollered by recent events, which according to Brauchli could be a reason for their slightly downbeat overall retrospective assessment: "As the world has gone awry, they probably don't really trust their own positive feelings." A comparison of their answers to specific questions from one year ago and now, however, shows that many workers are significantly happier with their professional and private lives, and are mostly benefiting from the slower pace of life and resulting calm. "Increased flexibility and autonomy in particular appear to have a positive effect on the worker's well-being," says Brauchli. "This could also be something we can learn from for the future of work."

Composition of sample

The survey was conducted among 597 workers (54% men and 46% women) in Switzerland and Germany, with an average age of 49. 4% of survey respondents hold an executive role, and 24% are line managers. 29% live alone, 68% with a partner or their family, and 3% in a shared flat or house. 44% do not have to take care of children or other people, while almost 25% have at least one child under the age of 20. Around one quarter of survey participants were affected by short-time working. Workload has increased for 11% and decreased for 34% of respondents since the beginning of the crisis. While 24% worked from home to at least some extent before the crisis, this figure rose to 45% after the outbreak of the pandemic. For 17% of respondents, childcare duties have increased since the beginning of the crisis.

Hydrogen is an essential commodity with over 60 million tons produced globally every year. However over 95 percent of it is made by steam reformation of fossil fuels, a process that is energy intensive and produces carbon dioxide. If we could replace even a part of that with algal biohydrogen that is made via light and water, it would have a substantial impact.

This is essentially what has just been achieved in the lab of Kevin Redding, professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and director of the Center for Bioenergy and Photosynthesis. Their research, entitled Rewiring photosynthesis: a Photosystem I -hydrogenase chimera that makes hydrogen in vivo was published very recently in the high impact journal Energy and Environmental Science.

"What we have done is to show that it is possible to intercept the high energy electrons from photosynthesis and use them to drive alternate chemistry, in a living cell" explained Redding. "We have used hydrogen production here as an example."

"Kevin Redding and his group have made a true breakthrough in re-engineering the Photosystem I complex," explained Ian Gould, interim director of the School of Molecular Sciences, which is part of The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "They didn't just find a way to redirect a complex protein structure that nature designed for one purpose to perform a different, but equally critical process, but they found the best way to do it at the molecular level."

It is common knowledge that plants and algae, as well as cyanobacteria, use photosynthesis to produce oxygen and "fuels," the latter being oxidizable substances like carbohydrates and hydrogen. There are two pigment-protein complexes that orchestrate the primary reactions of light in oxygenic photosynthesis: Photosystem I (PSI) and Photosystem II (PSII).

Algae (in this work the single-celled green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, or 'Chlamy' for short) possess an enzyme called hydrogenase that uses electrons it gets from the protein ferredoxin, which is normally used to ferry electrons from PSI to various destinations. A problem is that the algal hydrogenase is rapidly and irreversibly inactivated by oxygen that is constantly produced by PSII.

In this study, doctoral student and first author Andrey Kanygin has created a genetic chimera of PSI and the hydrogenase such that they co-assemble and are active in vivo. This new assembly redirects electrons away from carbon dioxide fixation to the production of biohydrogen.

"We thought that some radically different approaches needed to be taken -- thus, our crazy idea of hooking up the hydrogenase enzyme directly to Photosystem I in order to divert a large fraction of the electrons from water splitting (by Photosystem II) to make molecular hydrogen," explained Redding.

Cells expressing the new photosystem (PSI-hydrogenase) make hydrogen at high rates in a light dependent fashion, for several days.

This important result will also be featured in an upcoming article in Chemistry World - a monthly chemistry news magazine published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The magazine addresses current developments in the world of chemistry including research, international business news and government policy as it affects the chemical science community.

The NSF grant funding this research is part of the U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF). In this arrangement, a U.S. scientist and Israeli scientist join forces to form a joint project. The U.S. partner submits a grant on the joint project to the NSF, and the Israeli partner submits the same grant to the ISF (Israel Science Foundation). Both agencies must agree to fund the project in order to obtain the BSF funding. Professor Iftach Yacoby of Tel Aviv University, Redding's partner on the BSF project, is a young scientist who first started at TAU about eight years ago and has focused on different ways to increase algal biohydrogen production.

In summary, re-engineering the fundamental processes of photosynthetic microorganisms offers a cheap and renewable platform for creating bio-factories capable of driving difficult electron reactions, powered only by the sun and using water as the electron source.

An international team of scientists led by the University of Adelaide's Davies Research Centre has shown that it is possible to disentangle the DNA sequences of the chromosomes inherited from the mother and the father, to create true diploid genomes from a single individual.

In a report published in Nature Communications, and funded by the Davies Research Centre over the past 15 years, the researchers have shown that genomes of two important modern-day cattle breeds, Angus (Bos taurus taurus) and Brahman (Bos taurus indicus), can be completely decoded from a single hybrid individual carrying the genetics of both breeds, using an innovative genome assembly strategy.

Although demonstrated in cattle, the approach is applicable to other species including humans.

Dr Lloyd Low, from the University of Adelaide's School of Animal and Veterinary Science, says the technique, called trio binning, gives the true genome sequence of each chromosome in an individual.

Obtaining a full genome from an organism that inherits half the chromosomes from the mother and the other half from the father is difficult due to the high similarity between the parental chromosomes.

"Back in 2018 we were able to demonstrate that with this method it was possible to identify large sections of the DNA from the parents. Now in 2020 we have used the same concept to create the sequence of full chromosomes," Lloyd said.

Professor John Williams added: "Disentangling maternal and paternal genomes is very difficult, but we have now been able to do this and create the best genome assemblies available for any livestock, and arguably any species."

"These high quality genome sequences will make it easier to more accurately study the genetics of cattle to improve production and welfare traits."

Brahman and Angus cattle subspecies were domesticated separately thousands of years ago and have been subjected to very different selection pressures since then; pest and humid environments in the case of the Brahman cattle and beef production in Angus cattle. These different characteristics and histories are reflected in their genomes, which makes them ideal test subjects.

Indian breeds such as Brahman cattle are better able to regulate body temperature and are routinely crossed with European breeds such as Angus to produce cattle that are better adapted to tropical climates.

Considering the large differences in production and adaptation traits between taurine and indicine cattle, comparing the genomes helps us understand how the animals adapt to their environment, which is of substantial scientific and economic interest.

Professor Stefan Hiendleder said high-quality genomes of both cattle subspecies were needed to decipher the differences between taurine and indicine cattle.

"This technology will ultimately lead to breeding cattle which are more productive in harsh environments and also better suited from an animal welfare perspective," he said.

"Comparison between the Brahman and Angus revealed an indicus-specific extra copy of fatty acid enzyme which may be important for the regulation of the metabolism related to heat tolerance."

Black males start puberty at younger ages than males of other racial or ethnic groups, and early puberty has been linked to risks for negative outcomes, yet we know little about how Black males navigate the changes in their bodies or understand their social identities. A new study explored how young African American and Caribbean Black males understand these matters and how variations in their understanding affect their self-concept and well-being. The study concluded that the meaning Black males ascribe to their ethnic-racial identity may help explain outcomes related to puberty.

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan and Arizona State University. It is published in Child Development, a journal of the Society for Research in Child Development.

"Black males who adopt healthy beliefs about their ethnic-racial identities during the transition to puberty are likely to have better mental health and stronger self-concepts than their Black peers who do not adopt such beliefs," says Rona Carter, associate professor of developmental psychology at the University of Michigan, who led the study. "The findings add to the growing recognition that variables linked to ethnicity and race are important mechanisms for understanding outcomes related to young males' transition to puberty."

Research on puberty among Black males is limited. To address this gap, researchers examined associations between three pubertal domains (voice change, hair growth, and perceived relative timing of puberty) and their effects on symptoms of depression, self-esteem, and self-efficacy in a nationally representative group of 395 African American and 164 Caribbean Black males from around the United States. Researchers also explored how the teens' concepts of their ethnic-racial identity affected them. The adolescents, ages 13 to 17, were part of the National Survey of American Life Adolescent sample. Mean family income was $36,693 for African Americans and $38, 580 for Caribbean Blacks.

The study found that positive levels of ethnic-racial identity buffered the effects of early puberty. For example:

Contrary to expectations, for both African American males and Caribbean Black males, perceptions of early puberty were not associated with high levels of symptoms of depression and low levels of self-esteem and self-efficacy. Instead, Black males who perceived that their voice changed early reported high levels of self-esteem.

Consistent with expectations, African American and Caribbean Black males who felt positively about being Black reported higher levels of self-esteem, more self-efficacy, and fewer symptoms of depression.

The study's authors acknowledge several limitations to their work. First, the study relied on self-reports of the teens' voice changes, hair growth, and perceived timing of puberty; it did not assess how the youth experienced their pubertal changes and the potentially racialized nature of those changes within their peer and family contexts. Second, the study is cross-sectional and based on self-reports, which prevents the authors from drawing causal conclusions. Finally, in their study of the Caribbean Black males, the authors could not address immigration status, which prior research has suggested plays a role in ethnic-racial identities.

"Greater attention should be placed on pubertal education programs that include exploration of one's ethnic-racial identity to help Black males process the identity-related messages they receive while navigating the transition to puberty," suggests Eleanor Seaton, associate professor in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University, who coauthored the study. "Individual characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, and the effects of various layers of social context affect the degree to which experience or context affect the mental health and self-concept of Black males. Furthermore, because this is an understudied area of research, we believe there is room for continued work on this matter."

Researchers from Emory University, University of Maryland, Vanderbilt University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that re-examines the classic customer journey model from a social perspective by emphasizing the social influences expected at each stage of the journey and across the journey stages..

The study forthcoming in the the Journal of Marketing is titled "Traveling with Companions: The Social Customer Journey" and is authored by Ryan Hamilton, Rosellina Ferraro, Kelly Haws, and Anirban Mukhopadhyay.

Customer journey models go back more than 100 years to the earliest days of marketing as a discipline. These models break down the customer's path to purchase and beyond into discrete steps or stages and have proven remarkably useful to marketing academics and practitioners. These journey models vary a great deal in their specifics, but what nearly all previous incarnations of the customer journey have in common is the depiction of an individual journey. Hamilton explains, "While previous customer journey models have acknowledged the possible influence of social others on customers, our approach was unique because it fully integrates social influences. This social approach is especially relevant given the ways technology has facilitated more and different social influences throughout the customer journey."

The nature and type of social influences are varied. This article grapples with this diversity by organizing social influences on the customer journey along a social distance continuum. The researchers suggest that social distance is comprised primarily of five dimensions: number of social others, extent to which the other is known, temporal and physical presence, group membership, and strength of ties. They also suggest that these dimensions converge to form a global sense of social distance, but that not all dimensions need to be on the extreme ends of the continuum for the social other to be interpreted as overall more proximal or distal. Rather, a preponderance of the factors will determine how close the social other is perceived to be.

Distal social others can be larger groups or the whole of society, whose members might not be individuated, present, temporally proximal, or even known to the consumer. When a distal other is a single individual, it will tend to be someone the consumer does not know personally, such as a YouTube tutor or an anonymous review writer. For example, a vacation-planning consumer may be influenced by distal social others including the reviews on a travel website representing many, relatively unknown, non-physically present social others with only weak social ties and unlikely membership in a readily identifiable in-group.

Proximal social others are typically specific, individuated others who provide distinct, discrete, articulated inputs to the focal customer's journey. They tend to be close, in terms of temporal and physical proximity, members of the customer's in-group and have strong ties to the focal consumer. For example, the same vacation-planning consumer mentioned above may be influenced by inputs from a proximal social other, such as a single, close friend representing one, well-known, physically present, in-group member with strong social ties.

Perhaps the most fundamentally social journey is one wherein two or more consumers journey together. With respect to the social distance continuum, when a certain threshold is surpassed, social others may become incorporated into the decision-making unit (DMU) itself, creating a joint journey characterized by interdependence in most or all stages of the customer journey. This results in a pluralized DMU, where two or more people travel on a joint-decision, joint-consumption journey together. Decision making in such situations is qualitatively different because the members of the DMU have interdependent utilities and each member of the DMU may, at each stage of the journey, base his or her own responses on the responses of the other. Because of the relationship dynamics that must be managed, joint journeys are complex and distinct from individual journeys.

Key managerial issues across the entire social customer journey involve how and when to become involved in what might otherwise be consumer-to-consumer-only interactions. Considerations might include: when and how firms should respond to negative customer reviews or social media call-outs, when to highlight a social media influencer who is implicitly or explicitly endorsing one's product, how to manage "sponsored" blog posts, and when to provide "corrective" information when consumers are being exposed to unfavorable product information by their peers. Of particular interest to marketers, social influence may be used to nudge consumers from evaluation to decision. Technology has increased the number of opinions that bear upon a customer's journey and has even begun to insert itself as a decision support system wherein the customer and an artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled agent, such as a chatbot, together reach a final decision. Firms must carefully consider their usage of AI technologies, attending specifically to the social implications.

Several drugs approved for treating hepatitis C viral infection were identified as potential candidates against COVID-19, a new disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. This is the result of research based on extensive calculations using the MOGON II supercomputer at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). One of the most powerful computers in the world, MOGON II is operated by JGU and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz. As the JGU researchers explained in their paper recently published at the World Health Organization (WHO) website, they had simulated the way that about 42,000 different substances listed in open databases bind to certain proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and thereby inhibit the penetration of the virus into the human body or its multiplication. "This computer simulation method is known as molecular docking and it has been recognized and used for years. It is much faster and less expensive than lab experiments," said Professor Thomas Efferth of the JGU Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, lead author of the study. "As far as we know, we were the first to have used molecular docking with SARS-CoV-2. And it is fantastic news that we have found a number of approved hepatitis C drugs as promising candidates for treatment."

Using the MOGON II supercomputer, the reseachers made more than 30 billion single calculations within two months and found that compounds from the four hepatitis C drugs simeprevir, paritaprevir, grazoprevir, and velpatasvir have a high affinity to bind SARS-CoV-2 very strongly and may therefore be able to prevent infection. "This is also supported by the fact that both SARS-CoV-2 and the hepatitis C virus are a virus of the same type, a so-called single-stranded RNA virus," explained Efferth. According to the researchers, a natural substance from the Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), which has been used in Asia against various other diseases for some time now, might be another strong candidate against SARS-CoV-2. "Our research results now need to be checked in laboratory experiments and clinical studies," said Efferth and added that molecular docking had already been used successfully in the search for active substances against the coronaviruses MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV.

A must-have in green building design, solar chimneys can slash energy costs up to 50%. Now research reveals they could also help save lives in a building fire.

In a world-first, researchers designed a solar chimney optimised for both energy saving and fire safety, as part of the sustainable features of a new building in Melbourne, Australia.

Modelling shows the specially-designed solar chimney radically increases the amount of time people have to escape the building during a fire - extending the safe evacuation time from about two minutes to over 14 minutes.

Watch and embed the video

A solar chimney is a passive solar heating and cooling system that harnesses natural ventilation to regulate the temperature of a building.

With an estimated 19% of the world's energy resources going to heating, ventilating and cooling buildings*, integrating solar chimneys into new builds and retrofitting to existing structures offers great potential for reducing this massive environmental cost.

In the new project, a collaboration between RMIT University and the City of Kingston, researchers designed a solar chimney to maximise its efficiency for both ventilating fresh air and sucking smoke out of a building in case of fire.

Researcher Dr Long Shi said solar chimneys have well established environmental credentials, but their potential for improving fire safety had not been explored.

"In an emergency situation where every second counts, giving people more time to escape safely is critical," Shi said.

"Our research demonstrates that solar chimneys offer powerful benefits for both people's safety and the environment.

"Delivering on two important functions could boosts the already strong cost-effectiveness of this sustainable technology.

"We hope our findings will inspire more investment and development of solar chimneys in Australia, and around the world."

Kingston Mayor Georgina Oxley said Council was excited to be a part of the groundbreaking project.

"Creating new and innovative ways of reducing energy consumption in our building design is something that is a priority for Council," Oxley said.

"The solar-chimney that has been installed at the new state-of-the-art Mentone Reserve Pavilion not only allows us to harness clean green energy to heat and cool the building, helping Council achieve its environmental goals, but it also has the potential to save lives in the event of a fire. This is a truly remarkable design."

While calculations around the 6-fold increase in safe evacuation time were specific to the new building, previous research by the team from RMIT's School of Engineering has confirmed solar chimneys can successfully achieve both functions - ventilation and smoke exhaustion.

Hot air rises: how a solar chimney works

The passive design approach behind solar chimneys operates on the well-known principle that hot air always rises.

Modern solar chimneys usually feature a wall of glass next to a wall that is painted black, to maximise the absorption of solar radiation. Vents at the top and bottom control the airflow in and out of the chimney for heating or cooling.

As the sun warms the chimney, this heats the air inside it.

The hot air rises and is vented out of the top of the chimney, which draws more air in at the bottom, driving ventilation through a building to naturally cool it down.

When it's cold outside, the chimney can be closed, to direct the absorbed heat back into the building and keep it warm.

It's an ingeniously simple concept that is relatively cheap to retrofit and adds almost no extra cost to a new build, but can drive energy consumption down.

Reducing smoke, increasing safety

During a fire, the same principle - hot air rises - enables the solar chimney to suck smoke out of the building.

Less smoke means better visibility, lower temperatures and reduced carbon monoxide - all of which contribute to increasing the amount of time people have to safely evacuate.

To understand exactly how much evacuation time a solar chimney could deliver for a specific building, you need to model for that exact design, Shi said.

"This will differ from building to building, but we know that any extra time is precious and improves fire safety, which could ultimately help to save lives," he said.

The new research offers a technical guide for optimising the design and engineering of solar chimneys in real buildings, to expand their application across the two functions.

Barcelona, 4th May, 2020. A team of researchers led by Dr. Victoria Puig from the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), which also involved the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), has studied the neural basis of intellectual disability in mice with Down syndrome and has discovered that the neural networks of brain circuits relevant to memory and learning are over-activated and that the connectivity of these circuits is poor.

The researchers have also observed that neural activity during sleep is abnormal and probably interferes with memory consolidation. The study has even identified biomarkers in brain rhythms that can predict memory deficits in the mice which are corrected by chronic treatment with a natural component of green tea, epigallocatechin gallate, which other studies have already shown to improve executive function in adults with Down syndrome.

"These results suggest that both hyperactivity of neuronal networks and deficiencies in the connectivity of specific brain circuits are possible dysfunctional mechanisms that contribute to memory deficits in Down syndrome and, therefore, offer new therapeutic possibilities for treating intellectual disability," explains Dr. Victoria Puig, researcher in the Integrated Pharmacology and Systems Neuroscience Research Group at the IMIM.

To date, it had been recognised that epigallocatechin gallate corrects certain alterations at the molecular and cellular levels derived from the trisomy of chromosome 21 that are associated with cognitive deficits in Down syndrome. However, a dynamic description of the actions of epigallocatechin gallate on neural activity during distinct brain states was lacking. This is, therefore, the first time that anyone has looked at how mouse brain responds to chronic treatment with epigallocatechin gallate at a functional level in trisomy conditions.

The study involved recording neuronal activity simultaneously in two brain regions critical for learning and memory, the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, in trisomic and non-trisomic mice during periods of rest while awake, asleep, and during the performance of a simple memory task. The data was collected before and after one month of treatment with epigallocatechin gallate, and the alterations in the activity of the neuronal networks in the two regions as well as the connectivity of the circuitry correlating with memory capacities were analysed and found to have been corrected with the green tea extract.

According to Dr. Mara Dierssen from the Cellular and Systems Neurobiology lab at the CRG, "This study provides an in-depth description of the neurophysiological abnormalities present in different brain states in Down syndrome model mice and provides the keys for understanding the cellular mechanisms underlying the improved executive function observed in people with Down syndrome after chronic treatment with epigallocatechin gallate". (De la Torre R et al. Lancet Neurology del 2016 doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(16)30034-5)

Dr. Maria Alemany, first author of the paper and also a researcher in the IMIM's Integrated Pharmacology and Neuroscience Systems research group, explains "that the group is evaluating the effects of cognitive stimulation during brain development on the neuronal activity of mice with Down syndrome. This is important for understanding the cellular mechanisms of cognitive stimulation that are normally used in people to improve intellectual disability".

Down syndrome is a genetic alteration produced by the presence of an extra copy of chromosome 21, which is why this syndrome is also known as trisomy 21. It is the main cause of intellectual disability and the most common human genetic alteration. It is estimated that 34,000 people with Down's syndrome live in Spain and that there are a total of six million sufferers worldwide.

According to Dr. Mara Dierssen from the Cellular and Systems Neurobiology lab at the CRG, "This study provides an in-depth description of the neurophysiological abnormalities present in different brain states in Down syndrome model mice and provides the keys for understanding the cellular mechanisms underlying the improved executive function observed in people with Down syndrome after chronic treatment with epigallocatechin gallate". (De la Torre R et al. Lancet Neurology del 2016 doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(16)30034-5)

By analysing virus genomes from over 7,500 people infected with Covid-19, a UCL-led research team has characterised patterns of diversity of SARS-CoV-2 virus genome, offering clues to direct drugs and vaccine targets.

The study, led by the UCL Genetics Institute, identified close to 200 recurrent genetic mutations in the virus, highlighting how it may be adapting and evolving to its human hosts.

Researchers found that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 is found in all hardest-hit countries, suggesting extensive global transmission from early on in the epidemic and the absence of single 'Patient Zeroes' in most countries.

The findings, published today in Infection, Genetics and Evolution, also further establish the virus only emerged recently in late 2019, before quickly spreading across the globe.
Scientists analysed the emergence of genomic diversity in SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing Covid-19, by screening the genomes of over 7,500 viruses from infected patients around the globe. They identified 198 mutations that appear to have independently occurred more than once, which may hold clues to how the virus is adapting.

Co-lead author Professor Francois Balloux (UCL Genetics Institute) said: "All viruses naturally mutate. Mutations in themselves are not a bad thing and there is nothing to suggest SARS-CoV-2 is mutating faster or slower than expected. So far we cannot say whether SARS-CoV-2 is becoming more or less lethal and contagious."

The small genetic changes, or mutations, identified were not evenly distributed across the virus genome. As some parts of the genome had very few mutations, the researchers say those invariant parts of the virus could be better targets for drug and vaccine development.

"A major challenge to defeating viruses is that a vaccine or drug might no longer be effective if the virus has mutated. If we focus our efforts on parts of the virus that are less likely to mutate, we have a better chance of developing drugs that will be effective in the long run," Professor Balloux explained.

"We need to develop drugs and vaccines that cannot be easily evaded by the virus."

Co-lead author Dr Lucy van Dorp (UCL Genetics Institute) added: "There are still very few genetic differences or mutations between viruses. We found that some of these differences have occurred multiple times, independently of one another during the course of the pandemic - we need to continue to monitor these as more genomes become available and conduct research to understand exactly what they do."

The results add to a growing body of evidence that SARS-CoV-2 viruses share a common ancestor from late 2019, suggesting that this was when the virus jumped from a previous animal host, into people. This means it is most unlikely the virus causing Covid-19 was in human circulation for long before it was first detected.

In many countries including the UK, the diversity of viruses sampled was almost as much as that seen across the whole world, meaning the virus entered the UK numerous times independently, rather than via any one index case.

The research team have developed a new interactive, open-source online application so that researchers across the globe can also review the virus genomes and apply similar approaches to better understand its evolution.

Dr van Dorp said: "Being able to analyse such an extraordinary number of virus genomes within the first few months of the pandemic could be invaluable to drug development efforts, and showcases how far genomic research has come even within the last decade. We are all benefiting from a tremendous effort by hundreds of researchers globally who have been sequencing virus genomes and making them available online."

There is clear evidence that high sugar consumption leads to obesity and fatty liver disease. Synthetic and natural alternatives to sugar are available, but little is known about the effects of these non-caloric sweeteners on the liver. A new study led by Rohit Kohli, MBBS, MS, shows that stevia extract can reduce markers of fatty liver disease. The results of the pre-clinical research, published in the journal Scientific Reports led to a clinical trial, now in progress.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that obesity affects nearly 19% of children. An associated condition called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease affects one out of every 10 children. Fatty liver disease can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Consumption of too much sugar can lead to both obesity and fatty liver disease.

"Sugary foods and drinks can cause scarring in the liver," says Dr. Kohli, "but we don't know how non-caloric sweeteners may affect liver disease." In a first-of-its-kind study, Dr. Kohli addressed and answered the question: Can non-caloric sweeteners improve signs of fatty liver disease?

Using a preclinical model, he tested two non-caloric sweeteners, sucralose and stevia extract. Both are widely available and appear in many sweetened foods and drinks. "We were interested in those two compounds because they are the newest and least studied in the context of liver disease and obesity," says Dr. Kohli.

The results were striking. "We compared these sweeteners head to head with sugar," he says. "Stevia extract lowers glucose levels and improves markers of fatty liver disease." These markers include fibrosis and fat levels in the liver. The study also uncovered some potential mechanisms that could be responsible for reversing these markers of fatty liver disease. "We saw a decrease in signs of cellular stress and some changes in the gut microbiome," says Dr. Kohli, "but there is more work to do in order for us to understand the clinical relevance."

The preclinical study was funded by the Stanley W. Ekstrom Foundation. The results led Dr. Kohli's team directly into a clinical trial - also funded by the Stanley W. Ekstrom Foundation - to test the effects of stevia in pediatric patients. "The exciting thing is that we have taken a problem that we see in the clinic, studied it preclinically, and now we are back to test the solution - all in under two years." says Dr. Kohli.

An international team led by Emory scientists has gained insight into the pathological mechanisms behind two devastating neurodegenerative diseases. The scientists compared the most common inherited form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia (ALS/FTD) with a rarer disease called spinocerebellar ataxia type 36 (SCA36).

Both of the diseases are caused by abnormally expanded and strikingly similar DNA repeats. However, ALS progresses quickly, typically killing patients within a year or two, while the disease progression of SCA36 proceeds more slowly over the course of decades. In ALS/FTD it appears that protein products can poison cells in the nervous system. Whether similar protein products exist in SCA36 was not known.

What Zachary McEachin, PhD and Gary Bassell, PhD from Emory's Department of Cell Biology, along with a team of collaborators at Emory, Mayo Florida, and internationally from Spain and Japan, discovered have provided a new paradigm for thinking about how aberrant protein species are formed. Despite the disparate clinical outcomes between these diseases, this research could broaden the avenue of research toward genetically targeted treatments for such related neurodegenerative diseases.

Their study, published Tuesday in Neuron, provides a guide to types of protein gobbledygook that build up in brain cells in both disorders, and which should be reduced if the new mode of treatment is working in clinical trials.

"We are thinking of these diseases as genetic doppelgängers," says McEachin, a postdoctoral fellow in Bassell's lab. "By that, I mean they are genetically similar, but the neurodegeneration progresses differently for each disease. We can use this research to understand each of the respective disorders much better -- and hopefully help patients improve their quality of life down the road with better treatments."

An estimated 16,000 people in the United States have ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The most common inherited form of ALS/FTD occurs because there is an abnormally expanded repeat of six DNA "letters" stuck into a gene called c9orf72.

Some of the degeneration of motor neurons comes from the expanded repeat being made into proteins that repeat two amino acids over and over. It's like a printing press being forced to print entire pages of "GPGPGPGP", "GAGAGAGA"..." or "PRPRPRPR" In c9 ALS, those proteins are thought to build up inside brain cells and poison them. A striking finding is that in c9 ALS, there are others chimeric variants e.g. "GAGAGAGPGPGP" suggesting these toxic proteins are more complex than previously thought.

"A major goal in the field has been to identify and characterize the various types of pathological aggregates that accumulate in patient brains as 'bad actors' that cause neurodegeneration," Bassell says. "Here we identify fundamental differences in this process for these two neurological diseases with disparate clinical outcomes. I think this is a paradigm shift for how heterogenous this process is in ALS and points to possible therapeutic strategies that might mitigate multiple bad actors simultaneously."

The two diseases (c9 form of ALS and SCA36) both have abnormally expanded 6-letter genetic repeats, but the letters that are being repeated are different. McEachin was able to show that the nonsensical protein products from the expanded repeats aggregate in c9 ALS patients' cells but do not in SCA36. He says it was surprising because the proteins were predicted to be similar in the two diseases.

"Studying the differences in the aberrant proteins gives insight into both diseases," McEachin says.

SCA36, one of several types of SCA, is a condition characterized by progressive problems with movement that typically begins in mid-adulthood. They also develop hearing loss and muscle twitches over time, including losing the ability to move their tongue. Their legs, forearms and hands atrophy as the condition worsens.

The mutation for SCA36 was discovered around same time as the c9 form of ALS/FTD in 2011. The ALS/FTD discovery has since formed the basis for myriad studies implicating these toxic protein aggregates as contributing drivers of disease in ALS and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

"The genetic overlap was known, however the rate limiting step in studying SCA36 has been the availability of patient samples," says McEachin.

He traveled to Spain and Japan where there are known pedigrees of SCA36 patients to learn more about the disorder. To obtain SCA36 patient samples, the authors reached out to neurologists Maria-Jesus Sobrido, MD and Manuel Arias, MD at the Hospital Clínico Universitario in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and neurologist Koji Abe, MD of Okayama University in Japan.

Emory University's ALS Clinic, directed by Jonathan Glass, MD, a close collaborator on this study, is the largest in the southeast and has curated a substantial biorepository of C9orf72 ALS and FTD biospecimens, including those used in this study.

"The study would not have been possible without the interest of these clinicians and willingness of their patients to participate," McEachin says. "We are truly grateful for their collaboration as this study wouldn't have been possible otherwise."

The authors also worked in collaboration with Leonard Petrucelli, PhD, and Tania Gendron, PhD at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, who developed specialized antibodies to analyze the nonsensical protein products. Wilfried Rossoll, PhD now at Mayo Clinic, formerly at Emory, was also a collaborator.

In a separate paper released the same day in Cell Reports, these finding were further supported by similar observations in a novel mouse model of SCA36 generated by Leonard Petrucelli, Wilfried Rossoll and colleagues at Mayo. McEachin and Bassell were also co-authors on this manuscript.

A new technology for treating diseases with expanded DNA repeats - including Huntington's disease and myotonic dystrophy, as well as some forms of ALS and SCA -- is emerging. "Antisense oligonucleotides" can be delivered to the nervous system and shut down production of the toxic proteins. The Emory ALS clinic is participating in some of the ASO clinical trials.

"We think our analysis will guide future research into potential treatments, for example, by developing drugs that can best target these related aggregation-prone molecules," Bassell says.

The reason why we sleep remains an unresolved question of the 21st century. Research by Sara Marie Ulv Larsen, Sebastian Camillo Holst and colleagues from the Neurobiology Research Unit at the University Hospital Copenhagen, published this week in the open access journal PLoS Biology, now shows that the depth of non-rapid-eye-movement (nonREM) sleep in humans is associated with different genetic versions of a gene that encodes a water channel involved in fluid flow in the brain.

Recent insights suggest that sleep may enable and promote a flow of cerebrospinal fluid into the brain that literally removes metabolic waste. In experimental animals, this process is aided by water channels called AQP4; these form water-permeable pores through the cell membranes of brain cells called astrocytes. The role of these water channels in the human brain and whether they are associated with the regulation of deep nonREM sleep, also called slow wave sleep, had not yet been examined.

A common set of genetic variants that are inherited together are called a haplotype. One such a haplotype (containing eight individual DNA variants) was previously shown to modulate the levels of AQP4. By carefully studying more than 100 healthy individuals, the authors found that the depth of slow wave sleep, which can be measured by analyzing the brain waves recorded during sleep, differs between carriers of this haplotype and a control group. The difference was most pronounced at the beginning of the night, when our need for sleep is highest. Interestingly, the two haplotype groups also coped differently when kept awake for two full days, suggesting that changes in the flow of fluids through AQP4 water channels may modify how we cope with sleep loss.

Because the genetic variants within the AQP4 haplotype were also previously associated with the progression of Alzheimer's disease, the results of this study may suggest that a sleep-driven exchange of fluids through AQP4 water channels could be linked to Alzheimer's progression. To explore the possible association between Alzheimer's disease and AQP4 water channels, further studies are warranted. "A more immediate implication of our results" the authors note, "is by improving our understanding of the importance of sleep". In other words, this is the first study to show that the genetics of AQP4 water channels affect the intensity of deep sleep and how we cope with loss of sleep. These findings add support to the current theory that sleep may be involved in the regulation of "brain clearance" and as such highlights the link between sleep and fluid flow in the human brain.

Overall, adding robots to manufacturing reduces jobs -- by more than three per robot, in fact. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor reveals an important pattern: Firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly.

The study, by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, examines the introduction of robots to French manufacturing in recent decades, illuminating the business dynamics and labor implications in granular detail.

"When you look at use of robots at the firm level, it is really interesting because there is an additional dimension," says Acemoglu. "We know firms are adopting robots in order to reduce their costs, so it is quite plausible that firms adopting robots early are going to expand at the expense of their competitors whose costs are not going down. And that's exactly what we find."

Indeed, as the study shows, a 20 percentage point increase in robot use in manufacturing from 2010 to 2015 led to a 3.2 percent decline in industry-wide employment. And yet, for firms adopting robots during that timespan, employee hours worked rose by 10.9 percent, and wages rose modestly as well.

A new paper detailing the study, "Competing with Robots: Firm-Level Evidence from France," will appear in the May issue of the American Economic Association: Papers and Proceedings. The authors are Acemoglu, who is an Institute Professor at MIT; Clair Lelarge, a senior research economist at the Banque de France and the Center for Economic Policy Research; and Pascual Restrepo Phd '16, an assistant professor of economics at Boston University.

A French robot census

To conduct the study, the scholars examined 55,390 French manufacturing firms, of which 598 purchased robots during the period from 2010 to 2015. The study uses data provided by France's Ministry of Industry, client data from French robot suppliers, customs data about imported robots, and firm-level financial data concerning sales, employment, and wages, among other things.

The 598 firms that did purchase robots, while comprising just 1 percent of manufacturing firms, accounted for about 20 percent of manufacturing production during that five-year period.

"Our paper is unique in that we have an almost comprehensive [view] of robot adoption," Acemoglu says.

The manufacturing industries most heavily adding robots to their production lines in France were pharmaceutical companies, chemicals and plastic manufacturers, food and beverage producers, metal and machinery manufacturers, and automakers.

The industries investing least in robots from 2010 to 2015 included paper and printing, textiles and apparel manufacturing, appliance manufacturers, furniture makers, and minerals companies.

The firms that did add robots to their manufacturing processes became more productive and profitable, and the use of automation lowered their labor share -- the part of their income going to workers -- between roughly 4 and 6 percentage points. However, because their investments in technology fueled more growth and more market share, they added more workers overall.

By contrast, the firms that did not add robots saw no change in the labor share, and for every 10 percentage point increase in robot adoption by their competitors, these firms saw their own employment drop 2.5 percent. Essentially, the firms not investing in technology were losing ground to their competitors.

This dynamic -- job growth at robot-adopting firms, but job losses overall -- fits with another finding Acemoglu and Restrepo made in a separate paper about the effects of robots on employment in the U.S. There, the economists found that each robot added to the work force essentially eliminated 3.3 jobs nationally.

"Looking at the result, you might think [at first] it's the opposite of the U.S. result, where the robot adoption goes hand in hand with destruction of jobs, whereas in France, robot-adopting firms are expanding their employment," Acemoglu says. "But that's only because they're expanding at the expense of their competitors. What we show is that when we add the indirect effect on those competitors, the overall effect is negative and comparable to what we find the in the U.S."

Superstar firms and the labor share issue

The competitive dynamics the researchers found in France resemble those in another high-profile piece of economics research recently published by MIT professors. In a recent paper, MIT economists David Autor and John Van Reenen, along with three co-authors, published evidence indicating the decline in the labor share in the U.S. as a whole was driven by gains made by "superstar firms," which find ways to lower their labor share and gain market power.

While those elite firms may hire more workers and even pay relatively well as they grow, labor share declines in their industries, overall.

"It's very complementary," Acemoglu observes about the work of Autor and Van Reenen. However, he notes, "A slight difference is that superstar firms [in the work of Autor and Van Reenen, in the U.S.] could come from many different sources. By having this individual firm-level technology data, we are able to show that a lot of this is about automation."

So, while economists have offered many possible explanations for the decline of the labor share generally -- including technology, tax policy, changes in labor market institutions, and more -- Acemoglu suspects technology, and automation specifically, is the prime candidate, certainly in France.

"A big part of the [economic] literature now on technology, globalization, labor market institutions, is turning to the question of what explains the decline in the labor share," Acemoglu says. "Many of those are reasonably interesting hypotheses, but in France it's only the firms that adopt robots -- and they are very large firms -- that are reducing their labor share, and that's what accounts for the entirety of the decline in the labor share in French manufacturing. This really emphasizes that automation, and in particular robots, is a critical part in understanding what's going on."