Culture

Researchers from Bochum and Münster have developed a new method to determine the structures of all RNA molecules in a bacterial cell at once. In the past, this had to be done individually for each molecule. Besides their exact composition, their structure is crucial for the function of the RNAs. The team describes the new high-throughput structure mapping method, termed Lead-Seq for lead sequencing, in the journal Nucleic Acids Research, published online on 28 May 2020.

Christian Twittenhoff, Vivian Brandenburg, Francesco Righetti and Professor Franz Narberhaus from the Chair of Microbial Biology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) collaborated with the bioinformatics group headed by Professor Axel Mosig at RUB and the team led by Professor Petra Dersch at the University of Münster, previously from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig.

No structure - no function

In all living cells, genetic information is stored in double-stranded DNA and transcribed into single-stranded RNA, which then serves as a blueprint for proteins. However, RNA is not only a linear copy of the genetic information, but often folds into complex structures. The combination of single-stranded and partially folded double-stranded regions is of central importance for the function and stability of RNAs. "If we want to learn something about RNAs, we must also understand their structure," says Franz Narberhaus.

Lead ions reveal single-stranded RNA positions

With lead sequencing, the authors present a method that facilitates the simultaneous analysis of all RNA structures in a bacterial cell. In the process, the researchers take advantage of the fact that lead ions cause strand breaks in single-stranded RNA segments; folded RNA structures, i.e. double strands, remain untouched by lead ions.

By applying lead, the researchers split the single-stranded RNA regions at random locations into smaller fragments, then transcribed them into DNA and sequenced them. The beginning of each DNA sequence thus corresponded to a former strand break in the RNA. "This tells us that the corresponding RNA regions were present as a single strand," explains Narberhaus.

Predicting the structure using bioinformatics

Vivian Brandenburg and Axel Mosig then used bioinformatics to evaluate the information on the single-stranded RNA sections obtained in the experiments. "We assumed that non-cut RNA regions were present as double strands and used prediction programs to calculate how the RNA molecules must be folded," elaborates Vivian Brandenburg. "This resulted in more reliable structures with the information from lead sequencing than without this information."

This approach enabled the researchers to simultaneously determine the structures of thousands of RNAs of the bacterium Yersinia pseudotuberculosis all at once. The team compared the results obtained by lead sequencing of some RNA structures with results obtained using traditional methods - they were both the same.

New RNA thermometers discovered

The group carried out their experiments at 25 and 37 degrees Celsius, since some RNA structures change depending on the temperature. Using what is known as RNA thermometers, bacteria such as the diarrhoea pathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis can detect whether they are inside the host. Using lead sequencing, the team not only identified already known RNA thermometers, but also discovered several new ones.

Establishing lead sequencing took about five years. "I'm happy to say that we are now able to map numerous RNA molecules in a bacterium simultaneously," concludes Franz Narberhaus. "One advantage of the method is that the small lead ions can easily enter living bacterial cells. We therefore assume that this method can be used universally and will in future facilitate the detailed structure-function analysis of bacterial RNAs."

Humans are not the only ones who have beliefs; animals do too, although it is more difficult to prove them than with humans. Dr. Tobias Starzak and Professor Albert Newen from the Institute of Philosophy II at Ruhr-Universität Bochum have proposed four criteria to understand and empirically investigate animal beliefs in the journal "Mind and Language". The article was published online on 16 June 2020.

Flexible use of information about the world

The first criterion for the existence of beliefs worked out by the philosophers is that an animal must have information about the world. However, this must not simply lead to an automatic reaction, like a frog instinctively snapping at a passing insect.

Instead, the animal must be able to use the information to behave in a flexible manner. "This is the case when one and the same piece of information can be combined with different motivations to produce different behaviours," explains Albert Newen. "For example, if the animal can use the information that there is food available at that moment for the purpose of eating or hiding the food."

Information can be relinked

The third criterion says that the information is internally structured in a belief; accordingly, individual aspects of that information can be processed separately. This has emerged, for example, in experiments with rats that can learn that a certain kind of food can be found at a certain time in a certain place. Their knowledge has a what-when-where structure.

Fourthly, animals with beliefs must be able to recombine the information components in novel ways. This reassembled belief should then lead to flexible behaviour. Rats can do this too, as the US researcher Jonathan Crystal demonstrated in experiments in an eight-armed labyrinth. The animals learned that if they received normal food in arm three of the maze in the morning, chocolate could be found in arm seven at noon.

Crows and scrub jays meet all criteria

The authors from Bochum also cite crows and scrub jays as examples of animals with beliefs. British researcher Nicola Clayton carried out conclusive experiments with scrub jays. When the birds are hungry, they initially tend to eat the food. When they are not hungry, they systematically hide the leftovers. In the process, they encode which food - worm or peanut - they have hidden where and when. If they are hungry in the following hours, they first look for the worms they prefer. After the period of time has elapsed that takes worms to become inedible, they head for the peanut hiding places instead.

"What best explains this change in behaviour is the birds' belief about the worms being spoiled and their beliefs about the location of other food items," says Tobias Starzak. The animals also react flexibly in other situations, for example if they notice that they are being watched by rivals while hiding; if this is the case, they hide the food again later.

Flexible behaviour, which can be interpreted as caused by beliefs, has also been shown in rats, chimpanzees and border collies. "But probably many more species have beliefs," supposes Albert Newen.

LAWRENCE - To get on the good side of a new boss, colleague or acquaintance in a business meeting, leave your cell phone stashed in your pocket or purse.

That is the implication of a new study conducted by University of Kansas Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Cameron W. Piercy and doctoral candidate Greta R. Underhill. It is titled "Expectations of technology use during meetings: An experimental test of manager policy, device use, and task acknowledgment" and was published in the journal Mobile Media & Communication.

Looking at your phone during a meeting is akin to "phubbing," or snubbing your interlocutor, in a strictly social setting, the study found.

The authors prepared video vignettes of people using either a paper notebook, a cell phone or a laptop computer while participating in a business meeting. They refer to this scenario as "multicommunication." Then they asked 243 viewers to rate the distracted meeting member's competence and the effectiveness of the meeting.

Other variables studied included the meeting manager's expectations for technology use in the workplace and whether the user apologized later that their technology use was work-related.

It mattered not whether the cell phone user stipulated afterward that their usage was strictly business-related. Viewers still rated them down, and to a significant degree more than those who used a computer or notepad.

In a recent interview, Piercy said the results can largely be attributed to a phenomenon known to social scientists as "introspective illusion."

"We know you can do work on your phone," Piercy said. But he added that because we also know phones can be used to scroll idly through social-media feeds, "we assume that you're not working when we see you're using it."

This is true even of people who themselves use a mobile device during a business meeting.

"We can always infer our own thoughts and motives, but we can't ever know a partner's thoughts and motives, so we make negative assumptions about others, and we make excuses for ourselves," Piercy said.

In line with this new concept, the mobile introspective illusion, people did not rate the technology user any differently if they apologized for using their device. Piercy said, "People expect that technology is used for ill, even when the person using the technology says their use is related to the topic of conversation."

A manager's attitude toward technology in the workplace does seem to matter somewhat, in terms of viewers' evaluations.

"When the manager articulated a policy, those who acknowledged their multicommunication were evaluated higher and seen as more competent," the authors write in their paper. "In the absence of a policy, the pattern is reversed. Finally, the means for communicator evaluation and competence were highest in the pro-technology policy condition. In all, when the manager's policy is matched by employee's behavior, outcome means tend to be higher."

"The manager articulating a clear policy about expectations of technology use ought to affect the way that people engage with technology in the workplace," Piercy said. "But so is the idea that people would be excused if they apologize for using technology. And in that case, we didn't find a significant effect."

However, the effect of cell phone use on viewers' perceptions was dramatic.

"The effect for the phone is ginormous," Piercy quipped. "It's as big an effect as you'll ever see in a social-science study -- 30% of the variance. You can just look at the numbers and see it. But the notebook was less of a problem than the computer, which was less of a problem than the phone. So even if you were to use a laptop in the meeting, you'd be better off than using your phone because there was this big spike in all the numbers that are associated with using the phone, relative to the other two."

Piercy noted that the study asked viewers to judge the interactions they saw on screen, simulating a meeting with a new person or boss. Attitudes might change, he said, in a situation where all the participants know each other - and the boss's expectations -- well.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found a link between traffic-related air pollution and an increased risk for changes in brain development relevant to neurodevelopmental disorders. Their study, based on rodent models, corroborates previous epidemiological evidence showing this association.

While air pollution has long been a concern for pulmonary and cardiovascular health, it has only been within the past decade that scientists have turned their attention to its effects on the brain, said UC Davis toxicologist Pamela Lein, senior author of the study, recently published in Translational Psychiatry.

Researchers had previously documented links between proximity to busy roadways and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, but preclinical data based on real-time exposures to traffic-related air pollution was scarce to nonexistent.

Lein worked with UC Davis atmospheric scientist Anthony Wexler and first author Kelley Patten, a doctoral student in the UC Davis graduate group for pharmacology and toxicology, to develop a novel approach to study the impacts of traffic-related air pollution in real time. They set up a vivarium near a traffic tunnel in Northern California so they could mimic, as closely as possible, the experience of humans in a rodent model.

"This approach was a creative way to get at the question of what impacts air pollution has on the brain in the absence of confounding factors such as socioeconomic influences, diet, etc.," Lein said. "It's important to know if living close to these roadways poses a significant risk to the developing human brain.

"If it does," Lein continues, "scientists can warn susceptible individuals, such as pregnant women -- particularly those who have already had a child diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder -- to take appropriate precautions to minimize risks to the health of their child's brain."

EARLY EXPOSURE OUTCOMES

The researchers compared the brains of rat pups exposed to traffic-related air pollution with those exposed to ?ltered air. Both air sources were drawn from the tunnel in real time.

They found abnormal growth and increased neuroinflammation in the brains of animals exposed to air pollution. This suggests that air pollution exposure during critical developmental periods may increase the risk for changes in the developing brain that are associated with neurodevelopmental disorders.

"What we witnessed are subtle changes," Patten said. "But we are seeing these effects using air pollution exposures that fall within regulatory limits. With the backdrop of other environmental and genetic risk factors in humans, this may have a more pronounced effect. This exposure also contains very fine particulate matter that isn't currently regulated."

In a separate study, Patten extended this exposure for 14 months to look at longer-term impacts of traffic-related air pollution and is in the process of writing up those results.

The team is also interested in what component of traffic-related air pollution is driving the neurodevelopmental outcomes.

If they can identify the culprits, Lein said, then scientists can approach legislators to develop scientifically based regulations to protect the developing human brain.

TEAM EFFORTS

UC Davis atmospheric scientist and co-author Keith Bein said that the single most challenging aspect of studying the health effects of air pollution may be replicating how, when and what people are exposed to throughout their lifetimes.

Tackling this requires creative thinking and a multidisciplinary team of researchers, including exposure engineers, atmospheric scientists, toxicologists, biologists, behaviorists and animal care specialists.

"We have managed to build a unique and talented team and taken advantage of our built environment to bring us closer than we've been before to achieving these objectives," Bein said. "Increasingly, these types of efforts are required to continue advancing the field, thereby informing policymakers and stakeholders about how best to protect human health."

In groundbreaking new research, mechanical engineers and computer scientists at the University of Minnesota have developed a 3D printing technique that uses motion capture technology, similar to that used in Hollywood movies, to print electronic sensors directly on organs that are expanding and contracting. The new 3D printing technique could have future applications in diagnosing and monitoring the lungs of patients with COVID-19.

The research is published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

The new research is the next generation of a 3D printing technique discovered two years ago by members of the team that allowed for printing of electronics directly on the skin of a hand that moved left to right or rotated. The new technique allows for even more sophisticated tracking to 3D print sensors on organs like the lungs or heart that change shape or distort due to expanding and contracting.

"We are pushing the boundaries of 3D printing in new ways we never even imagined years ago," said Michael McAlpine, a University of Minnesota mechanical engineering professor and senior researcher on the study. "3D printing on a moving object is difficult enough, but it was quite a challenge to find a way to print on a surface that was deforming as it expanded and contracted."

The researchers started in the lab with a balloon-like surface and a specialized 3D printer. They used motion capture tracking markers, much like those used in movies to create special effects, to help the 3D printer adapt its printing path to the expansion and contraction movements on the surface. The researchers then moved on to an animal lung in the lab that was artificially inflated. They were able to successfully print a soft hydrogel-based sensor directly on the surface. McAlpine said the technique could also possibly be used in the future to 3D print sensors on a pumping heart.

"The broader idea behind this research, is that this is a big step forward to the goal of combining 3D printing technology with surgical robots," said McAlpine, who holds the Kuhrmeyer Family Chair Professorship in the University of Minnesota Department of Mechanical Engineering. "In the future, 3D printing will not be just about printing but instead be part of a larger autonomous robotic system. This could be important for diseases like COVID-19 where health care providers are at risk when treating patients."

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is a widely used tool for chemical analysis and molecular structure recognition. Because it typically relies on the weak magnetic fields produced by a small thermal nuclear spin polarization, NMR suffers from poor sensitivity compared to other analytical techniques. A conventional NMR apparatus typically uses large sample volumes of about a milliliter -- large enough to contain around a million biological cells.

In a study published in Physical Review X (PRX), researchers from the University of Maryland's Quantum Technology Center (QTC) and colleagues report a new quantum sensing technique that allows high-resolution NMR spectroscopy on small molecules in dilute solution in a 10 picoliter sample volume -- roughly equivalent to a single cell.

The experiments reported in the paper, entitled "Hyperpolarization-Enhanced NMR Spectroscopy with Femtomole Sensitivity Using Quantum Defects in Diamond," were performed by the research group of Prof. Ronald Walsworth, QTC Founding Director. Their finding is the next step in previous results, in which Walsworth and collaborators developed a system that utilizes nitrogen-vacancy quantum defects in diamonds to detect the NMR signals produced by picoliter-scale samples. In this past work, the researchers could only observe signals from pure, highly concentrated samples. To overcome this limitation, Walsworth and colleagues combined quantum diamond NMR with a "hyperpolarization" method that boosts the sample's nuclear spin polarization -- and hence NMR signal strength -- by more than a hundred-fold. The results reported in PRX realize, for the first time, NMR with femtomole molecular sensitivity.

On the impact of the research, Walsworth says, "The real-world goal is to enable chemical analysis and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the level of individual biological cells." MRI is a type of scan that can process detailed pictures of parts of the body, including the brain. "Right now, MRI is limited in its resolution, and it can only image volumes containing about a million cells. Seeing individual cells noninvasively with MRI (to help diagnose illness and answer basic questions in biology) is one of the long-term goals of quantum sensing research," says Walsworth.

Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.

Update Alert: Should Clinicians Use Chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine Alone or in Combination With Azithromycin for the Prophylaxis or Treatment of COVID-19? Living Practice Points From the American College of Physicians

Still no evidence to support the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to treat or prevent COVID-19

Researchers for the Scientific Medical Policy Committee of the American College of Physicians (ACP) conducted an updated evidence review on May 8, 2020 to determine if changes needed to be made to their Practice Points on the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine alone or in combination with azithromycin for prophylaxis or treatment of coronavirus disease. The evidence update included one observational study focused on hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin, and one observational study assessed use of chloroquine alone (previously, no studies were available on the use of chloroquine alone). The new evidence added support to previous conclusions but resulted in no conceptual changes to the practice points. Read the full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-3862.

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Amir Qaseem, MD, PhD, MHA, can be reached through Andy Hachadorian at Ahachadorian@acponline.org.

Far, far beyond the orbits of the planets lie the hazy contours of the magnetic bubble in space that we call home.

This is the heliosphere, the vast bubble that is generated by the Sun's magnetic field and envelops all the planets. The borders of this cosmic bubble are not fixed. In response to the Sun's gasps and sighs, they shrink and stretch over the years.

Now, for the first time, scientists have used an entire solar cycle of data from NASA's IBEX spacecraft to study how the heliosphere changes over time. Solar cycles last roughly 11 years, as the Sun swings from seasons of high to low activity, and back to high again. With IBEX's long record, scientists were eager to examine how the Sun's mood swings play out at the edge of the heliosphere. The results show the shifting outer heliosphere in great detail, deftly sketch the heliosphere's shape (a matter of debate in recent years), and hint at processes behind one of its most puzzling features. These findings, along with a newly fine-tuned data set, are published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplements on June 10, 2020.

IBEX, short for the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, has been observing the boundary to interstellar space for more than 11 years, showing us where our cosmic neighborhood fits in with the rest of the galaxy.

"It's this very small mission," said David McComas, the principal investigator for the mission at Princeton University in New Jersey. IBEX is just as big as a bus tire. "It's been hugely successful, lasting much longer than anybody anticipated. We're lucky now to have a whole solar cycle of observations."

Mapping the solar system's edge, one particle at a time

The heliosphere is filled with the solar wind, the constant flow of charged particles from the Sun. The solar wind rushes out in all directions, a million miles per hour, until it butts against the interstellar medium, winds from other stars that fill the space between them.

As the Sun wades through the interstellar medium, it generates a hot, dense wave much like the wave at the front of a boat coursing through the sea. Our cosmic neighborhood is called the Local Fluff, for the cloud of superhot gases that blooms around us. Where the solar wind and Local Fluff meet forms the edge of the heliosphere, called the heliopause. Just inside that lies a turbulent region called the heliosheath.

Particles called energetic neutral atoms, or ENAs, that are formed in this distant region of space are the focus of IBEX's surveys. They're created when hot, charged particles like the ones in the solar wind collide with cold neutrals like those flowing in from interstellar space. Zippy solar wind particles can snatch electrons from lumbering interstellar atoms, becoming neutral themselves.

The journey of these particles begins long before IBEX detects them. Past the planets, past the asteroid belt and the Kuiper Belt, to the edge of the heliosphere, it takes about a year for a gust of solar wind to race 100 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Along the way, the solar wind picks up ionized atoms of interstellar gases that have wriggled in to the heliosphere. The solar wind that arrives at the edge is not the same wind that left the Sun a year before.

Solar wind particles might spend another six months roving the chaos of the heliosheath, the gulf between the heliosphere's two outer boundaries. Inevitably, some collide with interstellar gases and become energetic neutrals. It takes the neutral particles close to another year for the return trip, traversing the space from the edge of the heliosphere to reach IBEX -- if the particles happened to be heading in precisely the right direction. Of all the neutral particles formed, only a few actually make it to IBEX. The whole trip takes two to three years for the highest-energy particles in IBEX's observing range, and even longer at lower energies or more distant regions.

IBEX takes advantage of the fact that neutral atoms like these aren't diverted by the Sun's magnetic field: Fresh neutral particles bound away from collisions in nearly a straight line.

IBEX surveys the skies for the particles, noting their direction and energy. The spacecraft only detects about one every other second. The result is a map of the interstellar boundary, crafted from the same principle a bat uses to echolocate its way through the night: monitor an incoming signal to learn more about one's surroundings. By studying where the neutrals come from, and when, IBEX can trace the remote boundaries of our heliosphere.

"We're so lucky to observe this from inside the heliosphere," said Justyna Sokol, a visiting scientist on the Princeton team. "These are processes that happen at very small distances. When you observe other stars that are very far away, you observe distances of light years, from outside their astrospheres." Even the distance between the Sun and the nose of the heliosphere is tiny compared to many, many light years.

Using IBEX's 11-plus years of data, McComas and his team were able to study changes that evolve over time and are key to understanding our place in space.

The solar wind is constant, but the wind is not steady. When the wind gusts, the heliosphere inflates like a balloon, and neutral particles surge at the outer fringes. When the wind calms, the balloon contracts; neutral particles dwindle. The ensuing seesaw of neutral particles, the scientists reported, consistently echoed two to three years after the changes in the wind -- reflecting their journey to the edge of this balloon and back.

"It takes so many years for these effects to reach the edge of the heliosphere," said Jamey Szalay, another Princeton researcher on the team. "For us to have this much data from IBEX, finally allows us to make these long-term correlations."

Shaping up the heliosphere

From 2009 to 2014, the wind blew fairly low and steady, a gentle breeze. The heliosphere contracted. Then came a surprise swell in the solar wind, as if the Sun heaved a great sigh. In late 2014, NASA spacecraft orbiting Earth detected the solar wind pressure increase by about 50% (it has since remained high for several years).

Two years later, the billowing solar wind led to a flurry of neutral particles in the heliosheath. Another two years later, they filled most of the nose of the heliosphere. Eventually, they crested over the heliosphere's north and south poles.

These changes were not symmetric. Each observed bump traced the quirks of the heliosphere's shape. The scientists were surprised at how clearly they saw the tidal wave of solar wind pushing out the heliopause.

"Time and the neutral particles have really painted the distances in the shape of the heliosphere for us," McComas said.

IBEX still hasn't observed the effects of this cosmic punch from the back end of the heliosphere, the heliotail. That means the tail end is much farther away from the Sun than the front; those particles are on a much longer journey. Maybe the solar wind surge is still hurtling toward the tail, or maybe neutral particles are already on their way back. In the coming years, the IBEX team will be watching for signs of their return from the tail.

"Nature set up this perfect experiment for us to better understand this boundary," Szalay said. "We got to see what happens when this one big thing -- the solar wind push -- changes."

Overall, this paints a picture of the heliosphere that is shaped something like a comet. The shape of the heliosphere has been a matter of debate in recent years. Some have argued our bubble in space is spherical as a globe; others suggested it is closer to a croissant. But in this study, McComas said, IBEX data clearly shows the heliosphere's response to the solar wind push was asymmetric -- so the heliosphere itself must be asymmetric too. The Sun is situated close to the front, and as the Sun hurtles through space, the heliotail trails much farther behind, something like the streaking tail of a comet.

Tackling IBEX's biggest puzzle

IBEX's many years of data have also brought scientists closer to an explanation for one of the heliosphere's more puzzling features, known as the IBEX ribbon. The ribbon remains one of IBEX's biggest discoveries. Announced in 2009, it refers to a vast, diagonal swath of energetic neutrals, painted across the front of the heliosphere. It's long puzzled scientists: Why should any part of the boundary should be so different from the rest?

Over time, IBEX has indicated that what forms the ribbon is very different than what forms the rest of the interstellar sky. It is shaped by the direction of the interstellar magnetic field. But how are ribbon particles produced? Now, the scientists report that it's very likely a secondary process is responsible, causing the journey of a certain group of energetic neutral particles to roughly double.

After becoming energetic neutrals, rather than ricochet back toward IBEX, this group of particles would streak in the opposite direction, across the heliopause and into interstellar space. There, they'd get a taste of the Local Fluff, cruising until some would inevitably collide with passing charged particles, losing an electron once again and becoming tied to the surrounding magnetic field.

Another two years or so pass, and the charged particles might collide yet again with slower peers, stealing electrons like they've done before. After this brief migration beyond the heliosphere, the twice-born energetic neutrals might eventually re-enter, hurtling back toward home.

Extended IBEX data helped the scientists connect the ribbon to the particles' long interstellar tour. Particles forming the ribbon have journeyed some two years more than the rest of the neutral particles observed. When it came to the solar wind spike, the ribbon took another two years after the rest of the heliosphere to even start responding.

Far exceeding its initial mission of two years, IBEX will soon be joined by another NASA mission, IMAP -- short for the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, for which McComas also serves as principal investigator. The mission is scheduled to launch in late 2024.

"IMAP presents a perfect opportunity to study, with great resolution and sensitivity, what IBEX has begun to show us, so that we will really get a detailed understanding of the physics out there," McComas said.

Researchers from Kumamoto University, Japan have pinpointed the mechanism that regulates the balance between plant growth and defense. Plants synthesize and accumulate protective hormones to protect them from pathogen infections, but excessive accumulation significantly hinders plant growth. Researchers found that the DEL1 gene plays a role in balancing growth and defense of plants infected with nematodes. This finding is expected to contribute to the improvement of agricultural crop varieties and the identification of infection mechanisms of various pathogens.

Plants grow continuously throughout their life but growth becomes suppressed and energy is put into defense responses, like the synthesis of the defense hormones salicylic acid and lignin, when attacked by pathogens. When the accumulation of salicylic acid and lignin becomes excessive, plants show significant growth inhibition. It is therefore believed that plants keep an appropriate balance between growth and defense. However, this type of balance regulating mechanism has only been reported in leaves; the existence of a similar mechanism in roots was unknown.

To test for a mechanism in roots, researchers infected wild-type and DEL1-deficient Arabidopsis, a plant related to cabbage or mustard frequently used in plant-based genetic research experiments, with Meloidogyne Incognita, a parasitic roundworm that infects roots. After nematode infection, DEL1 deficient plants exhibited excessive salicylic acid accumulation and infected sites turned brown, a strong reaction color, when stained with lignin. Additionally, the DEL1 deficient plant had a higher nematode resistance than the wild type, indicating that the DEL1 gene acts to suppress the defense response against nematodes. Furthermore, when the DEL1 deficient plant was infected with nematodes, significant root growth inhibition was observed.

This is the first study to demonstrate that the DEL1 gene plays an important role in the growth vs defense balancing mechanism in plant roots.

"This study should allow us to develop more diverse strategies for controlling pathogens," said study leader Professor Shinichiro Sawa. "For example, plant varieties that have excellent appearance, taste, and resistance traits often have slow growth and low yield. By focusing on genes involved in growth vs defense balance regulation like the DEL1 gene, increased yields and better plant varieties may be produced. We believe that direct control over DEL1 activity will improve our ability to breed pest resistant, high yield plants."

Science and engineering researchers at the University of Melbourne have been awarded a $3.95 million Australian Government grant to help develop cutting edge space capabilities in Australia.

The funding from the International Space Investment Expand Capability Program will allow researchers to build a small satellite - called SpIRIT - to be launched in space by 2022, in collaboration with multiple Australian space industry companies and the Italian Space Agency.

Associate Professor Michele Trenti from the University's School of Physics is the lead investigator of the Space Industry Responsive Intelligent Thermal (SpIRIT) satellite.

"SpIRIT will be very small - about the size of a shoe box - but powerful," Associate Professor Trenti said. "It will carry innovative X-ray sensors, sophisticated on-board computers and radios, and even a miniaturised electric propulsion engine, so we could well say that we will be building a tiny robotic spaceship.

"It will be the first Australian-made spacecraft to host a foreign space agency payload, with an X-ray detector provided by the Italian Space Agency."

Associate Professor Trenti said SpIRIT will demonstrate that Australian-made spacecraft are internationally competitive, opening new market opportunities.

"SpIRIT will not only benefit Australian industry, it will also contribute to some awesome scientific discoveries," Associate Professor Trenti said. "In particular, SpIRIT will combine its X-ray observations with data from a constellation of six other European satellites to spot cosmic fireworks that can be produced when stars die or collide with each other."

The SpIRIT mission will demonstrate innovative technological elements in the areas of thermal management, real-time communications and on-board autonomous decision capabilities that University of Melbourne researchers will use in future space telescope projects for both Earth and astronomical observations.

SpIRIT is a partnership between the University of Melbourne's Physics and Engineering Schools, Sitael Australia, Inovor Technologies, Neumann Space, and Nova Systems, with support from the Italian and United Kingdom Space Agencies (UK in an advisory role).

Dr Airlie Chapman, senior lecturer in mechatronics from Melbourne School of Engineering and co-investigator on the project, said SpIRIT will increase Australia's reputation in the global space sector, and contribute to training a highly capable future workforce.

"Building an innovative space-ready nanosatellite comes with unique challenges," Dr Chapman said. "This project will help us apply engineering research to break new ground in nanosatellite design, manufacturing and operations, hopefully acting as a guide for Australian aerospace research in the future."

Postgraduate students will have the opportunity to join engineering teams at the University of Melbourne and at industry partners through a paid internship program designed to mentor and inspire future space leaders, concluded Dr Chapman.

Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) Professor Jim McCluskey has welcomed the grant saying it acknowledges the work of the University to support Australia's space capabilities endeavours.

"SpIRIT is an important partnership that reflects the creativity, relevance and excellence of our researchers. The program will generate wider benefit for Australian businesses, and the next generation of space workforce, researchers and entrepreneurs. This is an outstanding achievement," Professor McCluskey said.

A world-first framework that identifies a health practitioner's readiness to address family violence has been developed in a University of Melbourne-led study funded by the Safer Families Centre.

The model identifies Commitment, Advocacy, Trust, Collaboration, and Health system support (CATCH) as vital in building readiness to deal with family violence. CATCH themes reflect factors that health practitioners felt they needed to be confident about providing sensitive care for survivors.

Experts say the development is timely given the surge in reported family violence incidents during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which has also seen a move to telehealth sessions for those seeking professional help.

The lead researcher, Professor Kelsey Hegarty from the University of Melbourne and Royal Women's Hospital, said the CATCH model allowed training and systems to tailor strategies to enable greater readiness to deal with family violence.

"We hope that this will change the way we prepare practitioners for this important role, in Australia and globally," Professor Hegarty said.

"The CATCH model could also prove timely during and following the COVID-19 crisis, as survivors may only be able to see health practitioners during movement restrictions."

Published in PLOS ONE journal, the qualitative meta-synthesis of 47 studies identifies five themes involved in readiness of health practitioners to address family violence.

Co-lead Dr Gemma McKibbin said these factors involved health practitioners having a personal commitment, adopting an advocacy approach, trusting the relationship in the health setting, collaborating with a team, and being supported by the health system.

"It is fundamental that health practitioners are ready to identify and respond to family violence," Dr McKibbin said. "Health practitioners may be the first people to 'name' family violence for victims, which can influence the entire trajectory of women and their children's journey to recovery."

The analysis involved the University of Melbourne, Auckland University of Technology, the University of Bristol, La Trobe University, which are all involved with the Safer Families Centre. It found major gaps remained in knowledge about how best to support and train health practitioners to enable an evidence-based pathway to safety for those experiencing family violence through the health system.

Interview and focus group data was drawn from health practitioners across emergency medicine, primary care, intensive care, obstetrics/gynaecology, maternal and child health, family planning, prenatal and antenatal medicine, mental health, orthopaedics, paediatrics, dentistry, and allied health.

The researchers found a 'ready' health practitioner was motivated to make a difference, knew how to advocate, and felt they were likely to succeed. They also had received encouraging feedback, worked with others and were strongly supported with ongoing training, clinical protocols, tools, and health system leadership.

Professor Hegarty said the model was comprehensive and could improve training in this space.

"Now, more than ever, we need to ensure that health professionals are well equipped to deal with family violence," Professor Hegarty said.

"This could improve survivors' experience within the health system and their overall outcomes."

Most of the studies were from high income countries such as Australia, Canada, the USA, and parts of Europe. Researchers say more work needs to be done in low and middle income countries.

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and NEC Corporation have jointly developed a 28 GHz phased-array[1] transceiver supporting dual-polarized MIMO[2] for fifth-generation mobile communications system (5G) radio units. Advances in 5G will benefit an array of industries ranging from healthcare, manufacturing and transportation to education and entertainment that require high bandwidth and high-quality connectivity.

As countries launch or prepare for 5G services, researchers are continuing to step up efforts to facilitate deployment of 5G infrastructure. Dual-polarized phased-array transceivers are an attractive class of antenna systems that can transmit data simultaneously through horizontal and vertical-polarized waves. Numerous studies have shown that dual-polarized MIMO can improve the data rate and spectrum efficiency in 5G radio units. However, one problem encountered with these systems is cross-polarization leakage[3], which results in degradation of signal quality especially in the millimeter wave band.

Now, Kenichi Okada's Lab at Tokyo Tech's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and NEC corporation in Japan have developed a transceiver capable of canceling cross-polarization interference using a built-in so-called horizontal and vertical (H/V) canceller. Tests have shown that the error vector magnitude[4] in 256QAM[5] can be improved from 7.6% to a more desirable, lower figure of 3.3% using this new leakage cancellation technique. "The cancellation signals are generated for horizontal and vertical polarization at the transmission side so that it can cancel the cross-polarization leakage caused by all through the transmitter/receiver chip, package, printed circuit board and antenna," the researchers say.

The transceiver was fabricated using low-cost, mass-producible silicon CMOS[6] technology, occupying an area of just 16 mm2. The researchers anticipate that the new circuitry could be installed in a wide range of applications that will be enabled by 5G in the future. Importantly, they point out that their transceiver will improve spectrum efficiency while keeping equipment size and set-up costs to a minimum.

The findings are being presented at the 2020 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits (VLSI 2020), held online from 14 June. The paper has also been selected as one of the technical highlights at the conference.

New Rochelle, NY, June 16, 2020--COVID-19 is like a heat-seeking missile that targets the most vulnerable. The bull's-eye is environmental justice communities, which are the poorest, the most polluted, and the sickest when it comes to comorbidities. A Roundtable Discussion on this subject is in the current issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Justice. Click here to read the article now.

COVID-19 is a civil rights issue, observes Moderator and Editor-in-Chief Sacoby Wilson, PhD, University of Maryland-College Park. The participants discuss the impact of COVID-19 in the context of issues such as inequality in access to jobs, food, housing, and healthcare, and equity implications in the context of climate change.

"COVID-19 has made many of these issues, like social determinants of health and structural racism, front-page news for America, in human terms, for the first time. I think we have to seize this moment," says Roundtable participant, Stephen Thomas, PhD, Maryland Center for Health Equity.

North America had the T. rex, South America had the Giganotosaurus and Africa the Spinosaurus - now evidence shows Australia had gigantic predatory dinosaurs.

The discovery came in University of Queensland research, led by palaeontologist Dr Anthony Romilio, which analysed southern Queensland dinosaur footprint fossils dated to the latter part of the Jurassic Period, between 165 and 151 million-year-ago.

"I've always wondered, where were Australia's big carnivorous dinosaurs?" Dr Romilio said.

"But I think we've found them, right here in Queensland.

"The specimens of these gigantic dinosaurs were not fossilised bones, which are the sorts of things that are typically housed at museums.

"Rather, we looked at footprints, which - in Australia - are much more abundant.

"These tracks were made by dinosaurs walking through the swamp-forests that once occupied much of the landscape of what is now southern Queensland."

Most of the tracks used in the study belong to theropods, the same group of dinosaurs that includes Australovenator, Velociraptor, and their modern-day descendants, birds.

Dr Romilio said these were clearly not bird tracks.

"Most of these footprints are around 50 to 60 centimetres in length, with some of the really huge tracks measuring nearly 80 centimetres," he said.

"We estimate these tracks were made by large-bodied carnivorous dinosaurs, some of which were up to three metres high at the hips and probably around 10 metres long.

"To put that into perspective, T. rex got to about 3.25 metres at the hips and attained lengths of 12 to 13 metres long, but it didn't appear until 90 million years after our Queensland giants.

"The Queensland tracks were probably made by giant carnosaurs - the group that includes the Allosaurus.

"At the time, these were probably some of the largest predatory dinosaurs on the planet."

Despite the study providing important new insights into Australia's natural heritage, the fossils are not a recent discovery.

"The tracks have been known for more than half a century," Dr Romilio said.

"They were discovered in the ceilings of underground coal mines from Rosewood near Ipswich, and Oakey just north of Toowoomba, back in the 1950s and 1960s.

"Most hadn't been scientifically described, and were left for decades in museum drawers waiting to be re-discovered.

"Finding these fossils has been our way of tracking down the creatures from Australia's Jurassic Park."

Like any cells in the body, cancer cells need sugar ­- namely glucose - to fuel cell proliferation and growth. Cancer cells in particular metabolize glucose at a much higher rate than normal cells. However researchers from USC Viterbi's Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science have unlocked a weakness in a common type of cancer cell: sugar inflexibility. That is, when cancer cells are exposed to a different type of sugar - galactose - the cells can't adapt, and will die.

The discovery, which could have important implications for new metabolic treatments for cancer, was led by Dongqing Zheng, a PhD student in the lab of Nicholas Graham, assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science. The research was recently published in the Journal of Cell Science.

The paper describes how oncogenes, the genes that cause cancer, can also lead cancer cells to become inflexible to changes in their sugar supply. Normally, cells grow by metabolizing glucose, but most normal cells can also grow using galactose. However, the team discovered that cells possessing a common cancer-causing gene named AKT cannot process galactose, and therefore they die when exposed to this type of sugar.

Zheng said that galactose is quite structurally similar to the glucose which helps cancer cells thrive, but that it has some differences. Graham said that exposing cells to galactose forces them to do more oxidative metabolism, where oxygen is used to convert sugars into energy, as opposed to glycolytic metabolism, where energy is derived from glucose. Normal cells can metabolize both glucose and galactose, but cancer cells that with an activated AKT signaling pathway, commonly found in breast cancer cells, cannot.

"We hadn't seen research looking at galactose in a cancer context, to see whether specific mutations can cause cancer cause cells to be better or worse at managing that switch between glycolytic and oxidative metabolism," Graham said.

Zheng said that the discovery did not mean that galactose itself would be an effective treatment for AKT-type cancer cells, but that it did uncover a fundamental flaw in these cells, whereby the oxidative state leads to cell death.

"What we're trying to do is to use a systems approach to understand this, so we can use some type of targeted drug or gene therapy that can induce a similar effect and force the cell into this oxidative state," Zheng said.

"Galactose is a model system that we're using to uncover these vulnerabilities in cells that would then lead to future drug development," Graham said. "Our lab will focus on trying to use drugs specifically to do that."

The team's findings also showed that while the oxidative process brought on by galactose did result in cell death in AKT-type cancer cells, when the cells were given a different genetic mutation, MYC, the galactose did not kill the cells.

"So if you had a drug that could inhibit glycolysis, you would give it to a patient that had an AKT mutation," Graham said. "But you wouldn't give it to a patient that had an MYC mutation, because it wouldn't work theoretically for those MYC cells."

The researchers also discovered after around 15 days in galactose, some cancer cells started to reoccur.

"Maybe there is a small sub population that are resistant to the galactose," Zheng said. "The other possibility is that some cancer cells are very resilient and they adapt and reprogram themselves after two weeks exposed to the galactose treatment."

The systems biology approach to cancer treatment is different to traditional treatments like chemotherapy and radiation therapy in that it targets metabolic processes in cancer cells. It aims to identify drugs without a lot of the side effects of traditional chemotherapies that also kill healthy cells, leading to adverse effects such as hair loss. However some resurgence is common in a lot of targeted metabolic treatments for cancer, which demonstrate strong initial results before a partial recurrence of the cells. Graham said that AKT tumors can potentially be targeted using a metabolic treatment like this, in order to initially shrink the tumor, but that the treatment would need to be accompanied by another treatment in a drug cocktail to prevent recurrence and protect against cancer cells mutating and adapting.

Zheng and Graham said the latest research would not have been possible without the work of undergraduate students Jonathan Sussman (biomedical engineering) and Matthew Jeon (chemical engineering and materials science), who assisted with cell counting tasks and proteomics ­- the study of the proteins involved in the cancer cells' metabolism.

Graham said that moving forward, the team's biggest challenge is to figure out which types of combination treatments to apply to test in cancer cells with the AKT gene, to lead to more effective therapeutics.