Culture

Social media accounts run by internet robots may be driving much of the discussion around the health threats posed by e-cigarettes, according to a study led by San Diego State University researchers, who also found most of the automated messages were positive toward vaping.

More than 70 percent of the tweets analyzed in the study appeared to have been put out by robots, also known as bots, whose use to influence public opinion and sell products while posing as real people is coming under increased scrutiny.

The discovery of the apparent bot promotion of vaping was unexpected. The team originally set out to use Twitter data to study the use and perceptions of e-cigarettes in the United States and to understand characteristics of users discussing e-cigarettes.

"Robots are the biggest challenges and problems in social media analytics," said Ming-Hsiang Tsou, founding director of SDSU's Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age, and co-author on the newly published study. "Since most of them are 'commercial-oriented' or 'political-oriented,' they will skew the analysis results and provide wrong conclusions for the analysis."

The findings come amid announcements by Twitter recently that it would be removing suspicious and fake accounts by the millions and also introduce new mechanisms to identify and fight spam and abuse on its platform, among other measures.

"Some robots can be easily removed based on their content and behaviors," Tsou said. "But some robots look exactly like human beings and can be more difficult to detect. This is a very hot topic now in social media analytics research."

Led by SDSU researcher Lourdes S. Martinez, findings of the study appear in the article, "'Okay, We Get It. You Vape': An Analysis of Geocoded Content, Context, and Sentiment regarding E-Cigarettes on Twitter," published in the July issue of the Journal of Health Communication.

Partially funded by the National Science Foundation, the study's two other authors are SDSU alumnae Sharon Hughes, who originated the idea for the project while a student, and Eric R. Walsh-Buhi, an associate professor in School of Public Health.

The study--one of the first known to rely on geocoded tweets to investigate perceptions of e-cigarettes--raises important questions about misinformation regarding public health issues and potential covert marketing of nicotine-based products.

"We are not talking about accounts made to represent organizations, or a business or a cause. These accounts are made to look like regular people," said Martinez, an assistant professor in SDSU's School of Communication. "This raises the question: To what extent is the public health discourse online being driven by robot accounts?"

For the study, the team compiled a random sample of nearly 194,000 geocoded tweets from across the United States posted between October 2015 and February 2016. A random sample of 973 tweets were analyzed for their sentiment and source (an individual versus an organization, for example). From these, 887 tweets were identified as posted by individuals, a category that includes potential bots.

The team found that more than 66 percent of tweets from individuals carried a supportive tone about the use of e-cigarettes. The team also found that about 59 percent of individuals also shared tweets about how they personally used e-cigarettes.

Also, the team was able to identify adolescent Twitter users, finding that more than 55 percent of their tweets were positive in tone related to e-cigarettes.

In tweets that gave reference to the harmfulness of e-cigarettes, 54 percent asserted e-cigarettes are not harmful or are significantly less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

Martinez said agencies and public health organizations must be far more attuned to conversations happening in the social media domain if they are to be effective in communicating information to the general public.

"The lack of awareness and need to voice a public health position on e-cigarettes represents a vital opportunity to continue winning gains for tobacco control and prevention efforts through health communication interventions targeting e-cigarettes," the team wrote in the paper.

Martinez said the team did not set out to identify potential robot accounts. After observing anomalies in the dataset, namely related to confusing and illogical posts about e-cigarettes and vaping, the team reviewed user types and decided to reclassify them--specifically identifying accounts that appeared to be operated by robots.

The large presence of robot accounts raises questions of whether other health topics are being driven by these accounts, she said.

"We do not know the source, or if they are being paid by commercial interests," Martinez said. "Are these robot accounts evading regulations? I do not know the answer to that. But that is something consumers deserve to know, and there are some very clear rules about tobacco marketing and the ways in which it is regulated."

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A uniquely designed experimental vaccine against Zika virus has proven powerful in mice, new research has found.

A team led by researchers at The Ohio State University has developed and tested a vaccine that employs an uncommon two-pronged approach to fighting the virus, which is spread by mosquitos and is most serious for pregnant women and their fetuses.

The single-dose vaccine, carrying the genes for two or three Zika proteins, proved effective in triggering an immune response that prevented later infection by Zika virus, according to the study, which appears in the journal Nature Communications.

"In this study, the vaccine was potent, safe and highly effective, at least in the short term. There's a long way to go, but we think this is a promising candidate for a human vaccine," said Jianrong Li, an Ohio State professor of veterinary biosciences who led the study and developed the vaccine platform.

Babies born to Zika-infected mothers are sometimes born with a birth defect called microcephaly. Other complications include miscarriage, stillbirth and other birth defects. Research also suggests that a small percentage of people infected with the virus can contract Guillain-Barre syndrome, which affects the nervous system.

There's no vaccine available currently - though some are in clinical trials - and the only protection against Zika are preventative measures such as insect repellant, staying indoors and wearing long sleeves and pants.

Shan-Lu Liu, a study co-author and director of Ohio State's Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program, said the experimental vaccine holds particular promise because it appears to afford an adequate immune response with one dose. In hard-to-reach and resource-poor areas, that becomes especially valuable, he said.

When this study began, the Ohio State team wondered if a novel approach to vaccination might prove effective against the virus - one in which they targeted a protective immune response by expressing two or three Zika proteins.

As a vehicle for the Zika proteins, they looked to vesicular stomatitis virus, or VSV, which is a foot-and-mouth disease in cattle. The weakened form of the virus is harmless in humans and mice. VSV has been used in other vaccines, including a successful Ebola vaccine which has been used in preventing outbreaks in humans in Africa.

"It's a good platform for human vaccines, because people don't have any antibodies against it and that allows VSV to successfully transport the vaccine without being stopped by the immune system," said study co-author Mark Peeples, a pediatrics professor at Ohio State and researcher at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus.

In general, vaccines work by delivering harmless amounts of the target virus proteins to the bloodstream, allowing the body to build up immune responses that will provide protection in the event of subsequent exposure to the virus. Li's work has been focused on weakening VSV so that it doesn't cause any problems and then inserting genes from other viruses to make powerful vaccines, said Peeples, who first encouraged Li to consider applying his vaccine platform to Zika.

In the experimental vaccine, VSV acts as a vehicle to deliver the genes for two or three key proteins from the Zika virus, carrying them into the mouse and expressing them inside some of the cells in the mouse so that the immune system could respond and build up a defense against Zika.

"The addition of NS1 protein is an innovative approach for a vaccine - it's a protein that is made after the Zika virus infects a cell. It's what this bug uses to replicate itself once it's inside the host," said Prosper Boyaka, a study co-author and Ohio State professor of veterinary biosciences.

The study included experiments in mice with severely compromised immune systems - a necessary step to make sure that mice could get sick after infection with Zika virus. When the vaccinated mice were exposed to Zika virus, their weak immune systems fought it off swiftly and efficiently, convincing the research team that their design had worked.

Without using the immunocompromised animals, the researchers would not have known how safe and effective the vaccine was, Peeples said.

The early success with this vaccine has encouraged this team to use the same approach to fight other related viruses, including Dengue fever, the researchers said.

The researchers also looked at the response to a vaccine with just the unique NS1 gene inserted into VSV and for the first time established that it offered partial protection all on its own, confirming its value in the vaccine, Boyaka said.

"We are very excited to find that VSV-based Zika vaccine is highly promising in both immunocompetent and immunocompromised mice", said Anzhong Li, who is the first author of the paper and a graduate student in Jianrong Li's laboratory. Anzhong Li recently presented these findings at a scientific conference in Italy.

"Really, the next big question is 'Will this be protective in humans?' " Peeples said.

ROCHESTER, Minn. - A research team led by Fergus Couch, Ph.D., a geneticist at Mayo Clinic, has identified specific genes associated with an increased risk for developing triple-negative breast cancer. Their research was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive type of cancer that cannot be treated using targeted therapies," says Dr. Couch. "It accounts for 15 percent of breast cancer in the Caucasian population and 35 percent in the African-American population. It is also associated with a high risk of recurrence and a poor five-year survival rate. Our findings provide the basis for better risk management."

Dr. Couch says germ line genetic testing, which evaluates inherited genetic changes that increase the risk of certain cancers in an individual, has helped identify women at increased risk of breast cancer. However, he says it has been more difficult to identify women at elevated risk of triple-negative breast cancer because only inherited mutations in BRCA1 have been linked to this subtype of breast cancer.

Dr. Couch and his colleagues performed genetic testing on 10,901 patients with triple-negative breast cancer from two studies. They tested 21 cancer predisposition genes in 8,753 patients and 17 genes in the remaining 2,148 patients. They found that alternations in BARD1, BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2 and RAD51D genes were associated with a high risk for triple-negative breast cancer and a greater than 20 percent lifetime risk for overall breast cancer among Caucasians. They observed a similar trend among African-Americans. In addition, mutations in the BRIP1 and RAD51C genes were linked to a more moderate risk of triple-negative breast cancer.

"This study is the first to establish which genes are associated with high lifetime risks of triple-negative breast cancer," says Dr. Couch. "While previous studies have found genetic variants in BARD1, BRIP1, PALB2 and RAD51C triple-negative breast cancer patients, the current study shows this in more detail, and identifies new specific and strong associations between the susceptibility genes RAD51D and BARD1, and triple-negative breast cancer risk."

Dr. Couch says these findings will enable expanded genetic testing to identify women at risk for triple-negative breast cancer and may potentially lead to better prevention strategies.

Dr. Couch says the new findings also may lead to revisions to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network screening guidelines, which currently recommend only BRCA testing when a patient has a family history of breast cancer or is diagnosed at age 60 or younger.

SMU Office of Research & Tech Transfer - An initial public offering (IPO) is usually seen as the start of a company's independence from its venture capitalist (VC) backers. But new research published in the Academy of Management Journal suggests that even after companies have been listed on the stock exchange, their failures can still negatively impact the reputations of VCs that once endorsed them.

When businesses decide whether to invest in or partner with a new company, they treat its affiliations with prominent third parties--such as endorsements from VCs--as valuable signals of the quality of the company. However, it is unclear whether VCs' reputations are really at risk should their endorsements turn out to be unreliable signals, and the company they vouch for fails to live up to expectations.

Titled 'Crossed Wires: Endorsement Signals and the Effects of IPO Firm Delistings on Venture Capitalists' Reputations', the present study examines the impact on VCs' reputations when newly public companies they once endorsed are delisted from the stock exchange. The research was carried out by an international team of scholars from Singapore Management University (SMU), Singapore; the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea; and Arizona State University and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in the US.

The researchers considered the following indicators to measure VC reputation: the amount and number of funds managed by the VC, the number of companies the VC invests in and the amount invested, and the number of companies the VC took public. They found that endorsing VCs indeed suffered reputational damage when their portfolio companies failed to meet expectations, even after such companies have gone public.

"We show that a firm's reputation is precarious and can be damaged even by an event that is not within the full control of the affected firm. Specifically, firm reputation can be vulnerable to negative events occurring in different industries or by past relationships that a firm no longer has," says study first author Assistant Professor David Gomulya of the SMU Lee Kong Chian School of Business. The results imply that VCs create high expectations of companies they endorse, which when violated, can have long-lasting consequences for the VCs' own reputations, say the authors. VCs concerned with protecting their reputations should therefore temper the expectations they create, and try to ensure that near-term performance expectations are met, says Professor Gomulya.

"VCs must remain vigilant about their reputation. If they want to bring startups public, they should ideally do so after the startups are strong enough to perform in the public arena. They should not rush this process prematurely," he explains. "Otherwise, any delisting the startups suffer within five years after the IPO can go back and hurt the VC's reputation even after it has 'handed over' the startups to the public domain."

Adolescents who view advertising for tobacco products on the tobacco "power wall" in convenience stores report being more willing to try vaping products in the future compared to peers who visited a store where the tobacco power wall was hidden, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Adolescents who were exposed to the power wall during a shopping trip were about 15 percent more likely to say they would be willing to use electronic cigarettes in the future as compared to adolescents who were not exposed to the power wall.

Researchers say the findings provide more evidence that the point-of-sale advertising found in convenience stores is a persuasive force in encouraging young people to use tobacco. E-cigarettes are now the most commonly used tobacco products among young people in the United States. The findings are published online by the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.

"Our findings provide evidence that hiding the tobacco wall in convenience stores might reduce the number of adolescents who try e-cigarettes," said Michael S. Dunbar, the study's lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "This is evidence that the tobacco power wall helps influence the attitudes of adolescents toward not only combustible cigarettes, but vaping products as well."

Most of the tobacco industry's advertising spending is focused on point-of-sale retail locations such as convenience stores. These outlets are awash in posters for tobacco products, signs for price promotions and the tobacco power wall -- the display of cigarettes, other tobacco products and -- in recent years -- e-cigarettes that is prominent behind the checkout counter.

Canada and several other countries have enacted laws requiring that the power walls be hidden from view and only customers of legal age may view tobacco products.

The RAND study was conducted in a one-of-a-kind laboratory that replicates a full-size convenience store and involved 160 middle and high school students aged 11 to 17.

Study participants were given $10 and allowed to shop in the laboratory store for whatever items they wanted. For half of the study participants, the tobacco power wall was openly displayed and for the other half, the tobacco power wall was hidden behind an opaque barrier.

Participants were surveyed before and after their shopping experience about a variety of topics and demographic information.

Convenience stores were the most-common source of exposure to e-cigarette advertising among study participants, with more than three-quarters reporting some exposure to e-cigarettes ads in stores and 14 percent reporting seeing e-cigarettes in convenience stores most of the time. Television was the next-most-common source of exposure to e-cigarette advertising.

After accounting for factors such as demographic characteristics and prior use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes, researchers found that exposure to the visible tobacco power wall was associated with significant increases in willingness to use e-cigarettes in the future.

"These findings suggest that policies aimed at limiting exposure to e-cigarette and other tobacco advertising at the point of sale may help reduce the impact of industry advertising efforts on future nicotine and tobacco product use among adolescents," Dunbar said.

Washington DC - Researchers from the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP) have completed a study which outlines the cost of delivering routine childhood vaccines in seven Indian states. The findings, published in the British Medical Journal Global Health, provide useful information to India's Universal Immunization Program (UIP), where the data collected can be used to accurately plan and budget. The UIP is the largest public vaccination program in the world, yet its budget is prepared based on historical expenditure data.

The main finding in the research was the broad range of cost per dose delivered, from US$1.38 (INR 88) to US$2.93 (INR 187) . The weighted average national cost per dose delivered, including the cost of the vaccine itself, was US$2.29 (INR 147).

There was also a substantial range in the total cost of vaccinating a child, from US$20.08 (INR 1,285) to US$34.81 (INR 2,228) across the states of Bihar, Gujarat, Kerala, Meghalaya, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Currently, India's Universal Immunization Program (UIP) allocates approximately US$25 per child for vaccination costs.

The researchers visited 255 health facilities of different types and collected cost data using standardized and pre-tested questionnaires. The cost categories were personnel, vaccines and supplies, transport, training, maintenance and overhead, incentives, and the annual value of capital expenditures. Personnel cost accounted for 57% of the total costs, making this the largest contributor to the total cost.

"This study is of significant value to India's Universal Immunization Program as it's the first of its kind on a micro-level scale" according to Arindam Nandi of CDDEP, one of the study's co-authors. "It shows that it costs the Indian government about $2 (INR 128), without vaccine price, to deliver a dose of vaccine to a child. The findings serve as an important benchmark for both planning and future research purposes."

Brussels, 6 August 2018 : The genetic screening of fertilised eggs for embryo selection in assisted reproduction makes no difference to live birth rates, according to results from the largest published study of its kind. Results from this multicentre randomised controlled trial are reported today in the journal Human Reproduction (1) and, say the authors, confirm the "widely accepted" view that preimplantation genetic testing for chromosome abnormality (PGT-A) will not increase live birth rates in IVF.(2)

The study, which recruited its first patients in 2012, was performed in 396 women of "advanced maternal age" (aged between 36 and 40), a patient group considered likely to benefit from preimplantation genetic testing by chromosome screening. The women, treated in nine centres in seven countries, were randomly allocated to PGT-A (205 subjects) or no PGT-A (thus, a control group of 191 subjects).

Results of the study showed that up to one year after randomisation and after a first cycle of treatment 24% of the PGT-A group had had a baby, and 24% of the control group. This - measured as "cumulative live birth rate" - was the study's primary endpoint. There was a difference, however, in the miscarriage rate (a secondary endpoint) between the two groups: significantly fewer subjects with a miscarriage in the PGT-A group than in the control group (7% versus 14%).

The similarity in live birth rates was not only achieved with fewer miscarriages in the PGT-A group, but also with fewer embryo transfers (and fewer double embryo transfers, as the protocol allowed). This, say the authors, would point to "a greater efficiency of transfers with PGT-A", even if not an improvement in live birth rate. However, they add, "it remains to be seen" whether this benefit of efficiency and reduced miscarriage risk are sufficient to outweigh the drawbacks of cost and an invasive procedure in PGT-A.

It is now 20 years since first reports suggested an increased pregnancy rate from embryos screened for chromosomal abnormality, and since then the practice has continued to prove controversial. The early forms of testing - when the procedure was known as preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) - were limited by the small number of chromosomes in the analysis. This problem was later resolved by technologies which allowed "comprehensive chromosome screening", and thus the detection of abnormality in any of the full complement of 23 chromosomes.

The study reporting today also analysed a full complement of chromosomes, as found in the two polar bodies of recently collected eggs fertilised by ICSI. Polar bodies are the first non-functional "by-product" cells found in the egg as it prepares for its first division after fertilisation. Although the two extruded polar bodies contain only genetic material of maternal origin, they do reflect the chromosomal content of the egg, which accounts for 90% of all chromosomal errors found in fetuses and live births.(3)

The study's principal investigator, Professor Karen Sermon from the Research Group Reproduction and Genetics of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) in Belgium, explained that embryo biopsy for embryo selection was not allowed in two of the study countries at the time (Germany and Italy) and that anyway polar body biopsy was perceived as less invasive.

She described the results as "extremely robust", noting the large number of subjects and rigorous multicentre study design. She added that the results, although derived from polar body analysis, could confidently be extrapolated to other techniques of PGT-A in this patient population (women of advanced maternal age). "There is now a growing consensus that the most important chromosomal abnormalities interfering with implantation are of meiotic origin - that is, they are derived from the egg or the sperm," she explained.

Commenting on the trial's findings, Professor Sermon "saw no benefit" of now offering PGT-A to the patient population of this study, especially in cases where only few eggs have been retrieved. She advised that similarly rigorous trials should now be performed in other patient groups.

Otherwise, the benefits of PGT from this trial are confined to fewer miscarriages and fewer treatment cycles, which, said Professor Sermon, "may still tip the controversy scale in favour of PGT-A". But these benefits, she added, must still be balanced by the cost of PGT-A and the invasive nature of the procedure.

Chromosome screening in assisted reproduction

1. Following a pilot study, the ESHRE Study into the Evaluation of oocyte Euploidy by Microarray analysis (ESTEEM) was started in 2012. The study was financially supported by the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE).

2. The rationale for the chromosomal testing of embryos before transfer was (and remains) the undisputed fact that the prevalence of chromosomal abnormality (aneuploidy) in embryos increases dramatically with female age, and is recognised as the principal reason for miscarriage and some genetic disorders (such as Down syndrome), rates of which both increase with advancing age. In the ESTEEM trial, for example, in a study population of advanced maternal age, 525 out of 811 eggs analysed (65%) were found to be aneuploid. This rate is consistent with aneuploidy rates found in other studies.

3. Current PGT-A practice, as the ESTEEM investigators acknowledge, is not by analysis at the very early stage of polar body extrusion, but at the later blastocyst (five-day) stage of embryo development, when a small cluster of surface cells are removed by biopsy for testing. The technology of PGT-A has now moved through three phases of analysis but its benefit as an adjuvant treatment in IVF has remained controversial, mainly because the weight of evidence in support of improving delivery rates is still considered questionable.

An avalanche is an extremely complex event, with countless parameters and physical variables coming into play from the time the avalanche is triggered until it ends. Johan Gaume, a researcher in the Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences (CRYOS) and SLF,* has created a highly accurate digital simulation of an avalanche based on these parameters. His work, which offers unprecedented insight into how avalanches work, could be used to improve risk management in the mountains. It was published today in Nature Communications.**

The young avalanche expert spent several months last year at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) working with 3D modeling experts,*** some of whom had worked with Disney's engineers to simulate the snow in the film Frozen.

Combining these mathematicians' know-how with Gaume's scientific expertise turned out to be a winning formula. The mathematicians were able to increase the accuracy of their snow simulation thanks to Gaume's in-depth knowledge and the data and field observations collected and analyzed by Alec Van Herwijnen, Gaume's SLF colleague and co-author of the study.

Adopting a whole new approach, the Swiss and US researchers created the first realistic, complete and scientifically rigorous simulation of a snow slab avalanche - a type of avalanche that occurs when a very clear linear crack appears at the top of the snowpack. This usually happens when, over a large area, there is a weak - and therefore not very cohesive - snowpack layer under the dense top layer of snow, known as the slab. Snow slab avalanches are hard to predict and often triggered by skiers or walkers, making them the most dangerous and the mostly deadly type of avalanche.

Double agent

"What made our approach so original was that we took account of the fact that the snow in that type of avalanche behaves like both a solid and a fluid," explains Gaume.

A snow slab avalanche is usually triggered when there is an extra load - such as a crossing skier - on the snow, or when the snowpack is destabilized in some other way, for instance by an explosion. This causes a crack to appear in the bottom layer of snow, which can spread rapidly. At this point, the snow is behaving in accordance with the principles of solid mechanics. As the crack spreads, the weak layer's porous structure causes it to collapse under the weight of the surface slab. Because of its mass and the slope, the slab is then released and begins to slide across the weaker layer. The collisions, frictions and fractures that the solid snow experiences as the top layer slides downward and breaks apart lead to a collective behavior characteristic of a fluid.

The researchers were able to simulate the collapse of the porous bottom layer for the first time at a large scale using a continuum approach. In addition, the model integrates only the relatively few key parameters that dictate how the snow will behave at the various stages of the process; these include the dynamics of the fracture, friction, and the level of compaction based on the type of snow.

The researchers borrowed a technique known as the Material Point Method, which is used to analyze how moving materials behave yet had never before been applied in the study of avalanche release. It underpinned the researchers' novel approach to predicting avalanches - and therefore preventing them more effectively as well. "In addition to deepening our knowledge of how snow behaves, this project could make it possible to assess the potential size of an avalanche, the runout distance and the pressure on any obstacles in the avalanche's path more accurately," says Gaume.

The researcher's simulations could also be applied in the arts - and especially in animated films.

(SACRAMENTO) -- UC Davis researchers have shown that low levels of cytomegalovirus (CMV) have a significant impact on microbe and immune cell populations and how the immune system responds to the influenza vaccine. The study was published in the Journal of Virology.

"Subclinical CMV infection alters the immune system and the gut microbiota in the host and that impacts how we respond to vaccines, environmental stimuli and pathogens," said Satya Dandekar, who chairs the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at UC Davis and was senior author on the paper. She is also a core scientist in the infectious diseases unit at the California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis.

"This study highlights the role of these silent, latent viral infections that are totally asymptomatic," she said.

A member of the herpes family, CMV is a common virus that infects as many as 90 percent of adults in Africa and 70 percent in the U.S. and Europe. However, though CMV is ubiquitous, it is generally not dangerous. The exception is people whose immune systems are compromised, for example by HIV.

While the vast majority of CMV infections are subclinical, that does not mean the virus is inert. Researchers in the Dandekar lab, including first authors Clarissa Santos Rocha and Lauren Hirao, wanted to understand how CMV might be affecting its hosts.

In the study, animals infected with CMV had higher levels of Firmicutes and other butyrate-producing bacteria. Butyrates are short-chain fatty acids that reduce inflammation but may also boost genes that help CMV persist in the body.

Infected animals also showed increased lymphocytes and cytokine-producing (inflammatory) T cells. These differences leveled off when the animals were moved indoors. CMV infection generally increased immune activity but also diminished antibodies responding to influenza vaccination.

"There's a high degree of variation at the population level of how people respond to vaccines," said Dandekar, "and all the factors that contribute to these variations are not fully understood. Our paper shows the subclinical CMV infections may be one of the issues that contributes to that immune variation. This opens a new opportunity to come up with novel approaches to optimize and position the immune system to have higher quality responses to vaccines."

More work needs to be done to understand how CMV impacts vaccine responses. However, the immune system's constant efforts to control the virus may divert resources it might otherwise devote to other threats. From here, the Dandekar lab will be testing other vaccines in CMV-infected animals and generally working to better understand how subclinical viruses affect the immune system.

"This highlights the impact silent viruses have to influence how the host responds to vaccines," said Dandekar. "Can we somehow use this information to optimize our immune system? That's the direction we would like to go to see how we can inhibit CMV to see if we can enhance the vaccine response."

If you've ever felt like a deer in the headlights before taking a math test or speaking before a large group of people, you could benefit from a simple change in posture. As part of a new study by researchers at San Francisco State University, 125 college students were tested to see how well they could perform simple math -- subtracting 7 from 843 sequentially for 15 seconds -- while either slumped over or sitting up straight with shoulders back and relaxed. Fifty-six percent of the students reported finding it easier to perform the math in the upright position.

"For people who are anxious about math, posture makes a giant difference," said Professor of Health Education Erik Peper. "The slumped-over position shuts them down and their brains do not work as well. They cannot think as clearly." Before the study began, students filled out an anonymous questionnaire asking them to rate their anxiety levels while taking exams and performing math; they also described any physical symptoms of stress they experienced during test taking.

According to co-author Associate Professor of Health Education Richard Harvey, slumping over is a defensive posture that can trigger old negative memories in the body and brain. While the students without math anxiety did not report as great a benefit from better posture, they did find that doing math while slumped over was somewhat more difficult.

Peper and Harvey say these findings about body position can help people prepare for many different types of performance under stress, not just math tests. Athletes, musicians and public speakers can all benefit from better posture prior to and during their performance. "You have a choice," said Peper. "It's about using an empowered position to optimize your focus."

That empowerment could be particularly helpful to students facing the challenge called "stereotype threat," said Lauren Mason, one of the paper's authors and a recent SF State graduate. A first-generation college student, Mason can identify with such students, who experience fear and insecurity because of a belief by others -- which can become internalized -- that they won't do as well at math. Mason said she has benefitted personally from using a more empowered posture before taking difficult tests, including math. She believes that adopting a more confident posture could help other first-generation students as well as women entering science and math, who often battle stereotype threat, too.

"I always felt insecure about my math abilities even though I excelled at other subjects," said Mason, who helped design the experiment in the study. "You build a relationship with [math] so early -- as early as elementary school. You can carry that negative self-talk throughout your life, impacting your perception of yourself."

Mason said the study results demonstrate a simple way to improve many aspects of life, especially when stress is involved: "The way we carry ourselves and interact in space influences not only how others perceive us but also how we perceive ourselves."

WOODS HOLE, Mass. -- Scientists affiliated with the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have identified a key molecule driving chemoattraction between sperm and egg cells in marine invertebrates. The study was recently published in Nature Communications.

More than 100 years ago, MBL Director F.R. Lillie of the University of Chicago discovered that eggs from marine invertebrates release a chemical factor that attracts sperm, a process called chemotaxis. Sperm, for their part, swim up a chemical gradient to reach the egg, assisted by a pulsatile rise in calcium ion (Ca2+) concentration in the sperm tail that controls its beating.

In past years, many of the cellular components that translate chemoattractant stimulation into a Ca2+ response have been revealed, but a crucial ingredient has been missing. A prerequisite for Ca2+ ions from the sperm's environment being able to enter the tail is that the sperm cell's pH becomes more alkaline. The molecule that brings about this change in pH has been elusive.

In this new report, U. Benjamin Kaupp, a MBL Whitman Center Scientist from the Center of Advanced European Studies (Caesar) in Bonn, Germany, identifies this molecule. Kaupp spent 18 summers at the MBL conducting research in the footsteps of F.R. Lillie's original quest.

The molecule that Kaupp and colleagues identified allows sodium ions to flow into the sperm cell and, in exchange, transports protons out of the cell. Such so-called sodium/proton exchangers have been known for a long time, but this one is special. It is a chimaera that shares structural features with ion channels, called pacemaker channels, which control our heartbeat and electrical activity in the brain.

This sodium/proton exchange in the sperm cell, like in the pacemaker channels, is activated by a stretch of positively charged amino acids called the voltage sensor. When sperm capture chemoattractant molecules, the voltage becomes more negative, because potassium channels open and potassium ions leave the cell. The voltage-sensor registers this voltage change and the exchanger begins exporting protons from the cell; the cell's interior becomes more alkaline. When this mechanism is disabled, the Ca2+ pulses in the sperm tail are suppressed, and sperm are lost on their voyage to the egg.

A collaborative study by researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology has developed a new technique to decode motor intention of humans from Electroencephalography (EEG). This technique is motivated by the well documented ability of the brain to predict sensory outcomes of self-generated and imagined actions utilizing so called forward models. The method enabled for the first time, nearly 90% single trial decoding accuracy across tested subjects, within 96 ms of the stimulation, with zero user training, and with no additional cognitive load on the users.

The ultimate dream of brain computer interface (BCI) research is to develop an efficient connection between machines and the human brain, such that the machines may be used at will. For example, enabling an amputee to use a robot arm attached to him, just by thinking of it, as if it was his own arm. A big challenge for such a task is the deciphering of a human user's movement intention from his brain activity, while minimizing the user effort. While a plethora of methods have been suggested for this in the last two decades (1-2), they all require large effort in part of the human user- they either require extensive user training, work well with only a section of the users, or need to use a conspicuous stimulus, inducing additional attentional and cognitive loads on the users. In this study, Researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS-France), AIST and Osaka University propose a new movement intention decoding philosophy and technique that overcomes all these issues while providing equally much better decoding performance.

The fundamental difference between the previous methods and what they propose is in what is decoded. All the previous methods decode what movement a user intends/imagines, either directly (as in the so called active BCI systems) or indirectly, by decoding what he is attending to (like the reactive BCI systems). Here the researchers propose to use a subliminal sensory stimulator with the Electroencephalography (EEG), and decode, not what movement a user intends/imagines, but to decode whether the movement he intends matches (or not) the sensory feedback sent to the user using the stimulator. Their proposal is motivated by the multitude of studies on so called Forward models in the brain; the neural circuitry implicated in predicting sensory outcomes of self-generated movements (3). The sensory prediction errors, between the forward model predictions and the actual sensory signals, are known to be fundamental for our sensory-motor abilities- for haptic perception (4), motor control (5), motor learning (6), and even inter-personal interactions (7-8) and the cognition of self (9). The researchers therefore hypothesized the predictions errors to have a large signature in EEG, and perturbing the prediction errors (using an external sensory stimulator) to be a promising way to decode movement intentions.

This proposal was tested in a binary simulated wheelchair task, in which users thought of turning their wheelchair either left or right. The researchers stimulated the user's vestibular system (as this is the dominant sensory feedback during turning), towards either the left or right direction, subliminally using a galvanic vestibular stimulator. They then decode for the presence of prediction errors (ie. whether or stimulation direction matches the direction the user imagines, or not) and consequently, as the direction of stimulation is known, the direction the user imagines. This procedure provides excellent single trial decoding accuracy (87.2% median) in all tested subjects, and within 96 ms of stimulation. These results were obtained with zero user training and with no additional cognitive load on the users, as the stimulation was subliminal.

This proposal promises to radically change how movement intention is decoded, due to several reasons. Primarily, because the method promises better decoding accuracies with no user training and without inducing additional cognitive loads on the users. Furthermore, the fact that the decoding can be done in less than 100 ms of the stimulation highlights its use for real-time decoding. Finally, this method is distinct from other methods utilizing ERP, ERD and ERN, showing that it can be used in parallel to current methods to improve their accuracy.

A study from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the University of Barcelona (IRBio-UB) analysed how water macroinvertebrate species, such as beetles, mosquitos and dragonflies, evolved and diversified since their beginnings. With the analysis of the ecological features of about 6,600 European species, researchers rebuilt the functional space they occupy.

At the same time, they used DNA sequencing to rebuild the tree of life of aquatic macroinvertebrates -evolutionary and phylogenic relation between species- to estimate when they first appeared and their evolution. Results prove previous studies right, which suggested the number of species of each lineage does not depend on the evolutionary time. This study concludes that oldest lineages have more functional diversity -they can do more things and live in more habitats- than younger ones, whose functional diversity is conditioned by oldest lineages which colonized that habitat previously.

The new study has been selected as the article of the month (July) in the journal Ecography. Its first author is the ecologist Cesc Múrria (IRBio-UB) and is led by Professor Núria Bonada (IRBio-UB), head of the research group Freshwater Ecology, Hydrology and Management (FEHM) of the UB. Other participating experts are Anna Papadopoulou (Doñana Biological Station, CSIC), Sylvain Dolédec (University of Lyon, France), and Alfried Vogler (Natural History Museum - Imperial College London, United Kingdom).

Age of lineage and functional diversity

Macroecology is the field of ecology that studies global patterns in biodiversity, such as the decrease of richness of species ranging from tropical areas to the poles, or how this variety gets reduced while the elevation of a mountain rises. In this study, researchers analysed the tree of life of European aquatic macroinvertebrates to determine the time these colonized water ecosystems out of terrestrial or marine ancestors. For instance, it is well established that lineages such as dragonflies colonized continental freshwaters before others, such as beetles or mosquitoes. The next step was to relate the age of lineage to the functional diversity they currently have. "To understand biodiversity global patterns and the processes that created it, it is important to know what these species do -breathe, eat, breed- and where they live -elevation, pH, temperature, amount of oxygen and organic matter of the habitat-, which is known as functional diversity", says Cesc Múrria, member of the Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences and FEHM.

Youngest lineages are found in less used places

To relate the evolutionary age and functional diversity, researchers gathered ecological data from about 6,600 species of aquatic macroinvertebrates published in previous studies. Results prove the hypothesis according to which oldest lineages would have a larger functional diversity than young ones, but it also shows how this evolution occurs. "Our results show that young lineages have a functional space which was not used before by other lineages, such as salty environments where we cannot find old lineages. This diversification would occur due older lineages colonizing continental waters with no competitors to limit the functional space. Therefore, as other lineages appeared and occupied functional space, the new ones would evolve to use ecological spaces which were not used before, and they would do fewer things and live in particular habitats", says Cesc Múrria.

A pioneer research in evolutionary studies

This research study is one of the first ones in the field of evolution which determines how lineages in a new habitat can condition the functional diversity of lineages that will colonize the habitat later. "We offer a new perspective for the evolutionary studies that have to consider the ecology of species and not only the amount of species within different lineages. Although it seems something obvious, since the origin of species depends on what the species do, this ecological and evolutionary view is rare in studies that analyse diversity patterns at a big time and space scale. This involvement goes further than the study of aquatic organisms and it can be applied to the whole biota", adds Cesc Múrria.

"The new study is a step forward to a better understanding of the evolutionary and ecological history of rivers, since the study mixes three research fields that have been worked on separately: phylogeny, functional ecology and evolution", conclude the researchers.