Culture

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When faced with a decision, people may know which choice gives them the best chance of success, but still take the other option, a new study suggests.

People may choose based on a "gut feeling", a habit, or what worked for them last time, rather than on what they have learned will work most often, said Ian Krajbich, co-author of the study and associate professor of psychology and economics at The Ohio State University.

The results run counter to the belief that people make the less optimal choice because they just don't know any better.

"In our study, people knew what worked most often. They just didn't use that knowledge," Krajbich said.

The research, published today (April 20, 2020) in the journal Nature Communications, was led by Arkady Konovalov, a former graduate student at Ohio State who is now at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Krajbich gave an example of how the study's findings may work in real life. Say Main Street is usually the fastest way home from work for you. But yesterday there was an event that was going to slow traffic on Main Street, so you took Spruce Street instead and it got you home a few minutes faster than normal.

Today, do you take Main Street - which you know is usually the better route - or take Spruce Street because it worked so well yesterday?

Krajbich said the results of this study suggest that many times we will take the route that worked yesterday and ignore the evidence of what normally works best.

"There's this tension between doing what you should do, at least from a statistical perspective, versus doing what worked out well recently," Krajbich said.

In the study, participants played a simple computer game in which noticing and exploiting patterns could make them more money. The researchers tracked their mouse movements to detect whether they picked up on those patterns.

For example, participants would choose one of two symbols on the top half of the screen - one on the top left and one on the top right. They would then move the cursor to the bottom half of the screen and a symbol would appear on the bottom right or bottom left. They would click on that to see their reward.

Participants repeated this game dozens of times. The researchers could determine if the participants learned the pattern between what they chose at the top and what they got at the bottom (for example, choosing the top left symbol usually led to the bottom right symbol with the largest reward) by watching their mouse movements.

"We could tell where they thought the next symbol was going to appear by where they moved the cursor," Krajbich said.

"And we found that nearly everyone - 56 of the 57 participants - learned the pattern. That was no problem for our participants."

But the researchers designed part of the study so that the pattern that usually led to the largest reward didn't work 10 to 40 percent of the time.

So the question was: After one of the trials in which the pattern that usually led to the largest reward didn't work, what would participants do? Would they stick to the pattern or choose something else?

Results showed that participants followed the plan that gave them the best chance of success - which was following the pattern that worked at least 6 out of 10 times - only about 20 percent of the time.

In other parts of the study, the pattern that produced the biggest reward always worked the same way. Here, where the pattern was consistent, participants followed it about twice as often as in the other cases: about 40 percent of the time.

Why don't people follow the best strategy more often? While the answer to that is beyond the scope of this study, Krajbich said it likely takes a lot of mental energy and planning to always make decisions based on your knowledge of the environment.

And the rewards of following the best strategy aren't always obvious - especially if following that strategy increases your success by only a small percentage, he said.

This tension between using a statistical-based strategy versus going with your "gut" comes up a lot in sports, Krajbich said. Coaches and managers must decide whether to go for it on fourth down in football or walk a batter in baseball. The decision that has the best chance to succeed statistically is often only a bit more successful than the other choice.

"It can be hard to judge whether you made a good or bad decision based just on the outcome. We can make a good decision and just get unlucky and have a bad outcome. Or we can make a bad decision and get lucky and have a good outcome," Krajbich said.

In those situations, it is easy for people to stop being disciplined and just choose whatever decision got them rewards most recently.

The lesson from this study, Krajbich said, is that people often do learn what works best. "They just have to put that knowledge into practice."

For 157 years, scientists have wished they could understand the evolutionary relationships of a curious South American ground beetle that was missing a distinctive feature of the huge family of ground beetles (Carabidae). Could it be that this rare species was indeed lacking a characteristic trait known in over 40,000 species worldwide and how could that be? Was that species assigned to the wrong family from the very beginning?

The species, Nototylus fryi, or Fry's strange-combed beetle, is known so far only from a single, damaged specimen found in 1863 in the Brazilian State of Espíritu Santo, which today is kept in the Natural History Museum of London. So rare and unusual, due to its lack of "antennal cleaners" - specialised "combing" structures located on the forelegs and used by carabids to keep their antennae clean, it also prompted the description of its own genus: Nototylus, now colloquially called strange-combed beetles.

No mention of the structure was made in the original description of the species, so, at one point, scientists even started to wonder whether the beetle they were looking at was in fact a carabid at all.

Because the area where Fry's strange-combed beetle had been found was once Southern Atlantic Forest, but today is mostly sugar cane fields, cacao plantations, and cattle ranches, scientists have feared that additional specimens of strange-combed beetles might never be collected again and that the group was already extinct. Recently, however, a US team of entomologists have reported the discovery of a second specimen, one also representing a second species of strange-combed beetles new to science.

Following a careful study of this second, poorly preserved specimen, collected in French Guiana in 2014, the team of Dr Terry Erwin (Smithsonian Institution), Dr David Kavanaugh () and Dr David Maddison (Oregon State University) described the species, Nototylus balli, or Ball's strange-combed beetle, in a paper that they published in the open-access scholarly journal ZooKeys. The entomologists named the species in honour of their academic leader and renowned carabidologist George E. Ball, after presenting it to him in September 2016 around the time of his 90th birthday.

Despite its poor, yet relatively better condition, the new specimen shows that probable antennal grooming organs are indeed present in strange-combed beetles. However, they looked nothing like those seen in other genera of ground beetles and they are located on a different part of the front legs. Rather than stout and barely movable, the setae (hair-like structures) in the grooming organs of strange-combed beetles are slender, flexible and very differently shaped, which led the researchers to suggest that the structure had a different role in strange-combed beetles.

Judging from the shapes of the setae in the grooming organs, the scientists point out that they are best suited for painting or coating the antennae, rather than scraping or cleaning them. Their hypothesis is that these rare carabids use these grooming structures to cohabitate with ants or termites, where they use them to apply specific substances to their antennae, so that the host colony recognises them as a friendly species, a kind of behaviour already known in some beetles.

However, the mystery around the strange-combed beetle remains, as the scientists found no evidence of special secretory structures in the specimen studied. It turns out that the only way to test their hypothesis, as well as to better understand the evolutionary relationships of these beetles with other carabids is finding and observing additional, preferably live, specimens in their natural habitat. Fortunately, this new discovery shows that the continued search for these beetles may yield good results because strange-combed beetles are not extinct.

It is no secret that genetic factors play a role in determining whether children have neurodevelopmental disorders. Maternal exposure to drugs and viral or bacterial illnesses can be detrimental too.

However, a recent epidemiological survey of approximately 6 million people worldwide has revealed that advanced paternal age is associated with the development of neurodevelopmental disorders. In other words, the older the parent, the increased risk a child has of developing disorders such as autism, ADHD and other learning disabilities.

A research team from the Department of Developmental Neuroscience at the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine has revealed further details about this phenomenon with their recent publication in PLOS ONE.

The research team, led by doctoral student Misako Tatehana and Professor Noriko Osumi, performed immunohistochemical analysis of the testis in three-month-old mice before performing the same analysis on mice aged 12 months or older.

Tatehana and her team analyzed histone proteins during the 12-step spermatogenesis process. Histone proteins undergo chemical modifications during spermatogenesis, thereby affecting gene expression. More specifically, the team looked at the seven methylations and one acetylation.

They catalogued these as epigenetic markers -- modifications that affect the expression of the gene without changing the DNA base sequence of the genome itself.

Comparisons of the markers between the younger and older mice using imaging quantification techniques revealed that the latter had higher amounts of the modified histone protein, H3K79me3. A previous study by Professor Osumi found a correlation between the amount of H3K79me3 in sperm and abnormal speech communication in pups, making it a predictive marker of neural-developmental disorders.

This new finding signals that paternal aging potentially affects neurodevelopment in humans. Further research on the matter hopes to develop greater diagnostic methods for disorders stemming from the risk of advanced paternal age.

When an earthquake or other natural disaster strikes, government relief agencies, insurers and other responders converge to take stock of fatalities and injuries, and to assess the extent and cost of damage to public infrastructure and personal property.

But until now, such post-disaster assessment procedures have focused on the dollar value of damages to property while failing to account for something that is equally important but harder to quantify; namely, that the poorer someone or their family is, the harder it is for them to recover and regain their former standard of living.

Now, civil engineers at Stanford, working with economists from the World Bank, have devised the first disaster assessment model that combines the well-understood property damage estimates with a way to calculate two previously nebulous variables - the community-wide economic impacts caused by disruptions to industry and jobs, and the social costs to individuals and families.

Although such an analysis might seem obvious, no one had ever put brick-and-mortar losses together with pain and suffering consequences until the Stanford civil engineers teamed up with World Bank economists Stephane Hallegatte and Brian Walsh to create this holistic damage assessment model.

A hypothetical scenario

In a study published March 30 in Nature Sustainability, the researchers test their model using a hypothetical 7.2 magnitude earthquake on the Hayward fault near San Francisco. "We've developed a financial model that builds upon previous property damage procedures in a way that allows us to quantify the pain and suffering people feel after a quake depending on their socioeconomic status," said study co-author Jack Baker, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford.

Although the researchers tailored their approach specifically for earthquakes, they hope experts in hurricanes, tornados, floods and other disasters will also adopt the new economic and sociological measures in order to give policymakers new tools to plan for disasters.

Study first author Maryia Markhvida, a former graduate student of Baker's, said the researchers started with traditional models of property damage assessment, and added on top of these a second layer of analysis to quantify a concept called "well-being," which they borrowed from economists and sociologists. The model calculates the incomes and consumption levels of people in different socioeconomic strata to assign a numerical value to well-being, which can be thought of as how people feel about daily life as they recover from a disaster.

The researchers combined the physical damage tools with economic and well-being assessments to create a more holistic model of disaster effects. For example, should the property damage part of their system show that a particular building is likely to collapse, the second layer of analysis would kick in to extrapolate how such structural damage would affect where people work and how it would affect a variety of industries in ways that would trickle down to impact people's incomes and spending power, thus diminishing their sense of well-being.

Policy implications

Much of the income, expense and spending data for the analysis was derived from Census data, which enabled the researchers to tie their well-being calculations to the relative poverty or prosperity of people living in different neighborhoods.

When they estimated the relative loss of well-being for people in each of four income brackets, they found that those at the bottom felt a roughly 60 percent loss of well-being as a fraction of the Bay Area's average annual income, relative to something closer to 25 percent for those at the top (see Chart A available via image download).

The researchers also compared three types of losses for 10 cities in the San Francisco Bay Area (see Chart B available via image download). These calculations factored in the vulnerability of each city's building stock (the number and types of homes, offices and other structures), its proximity to the hypothesized earthquake and other factors such what sort of savings and insurance people had as safety cushions. The chart shows that, even when property damages are roughly equal, well-being losses are larger in cities that have lower-income population and lower household savings.

"It makes sense that the people who have less in the first place feel that life becomes that much harder when they lose some of what little they had," Markhvida said.

The researchers envision that policymakers will use the model to consider in advance how to mitigate the impacts of a quake and speed the region's recovery afterward. They might, for instance, run "what if" exercises to weigh the relative benefits of measures such as tightening building codes, providing incentives to do retrofits or get earthquake insurance, or make contingency plans to extend or expand unemployment benefits.

"This model could help government officials decide which policies provide the best bang for the buck, and also see how they might affect not just potential property damages, but losses to people's sense of well-being," Baker said.

A low-cost, easy-to-build non-invasive ventilator aimed at supporting the breathing of patients with respiratory failure performs similarly to conventional commercial devices, according to new research published in the European Respiratory Journal [1].

Non-invasive ventilators are used to treat patients with breathing difficulty and respiratory failure, a common symptom of more severe coronavirus disease. Non-invasive ventilation is delivered using facemasks or nasal masks, which push a set amount of pressurised air into the lungs. This supports the natural breathing process when disease has caused the lungs to fail, enabling the body to fight infection and get better.

The research paper provides a free to replicate, open source description for how to build the ventilator. The researchers say the prototype ventilator could support treatment of coronavirus and other severe respiratory diseases in low income regions or where ventilator supplies are limited.

The study was led by Ramon Farré, Professor of Physiology in the Unit of Biophysics and Bioengineering at the School of Medicine of the University of Barcelona, Spain. He said: "In light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the escalating need for respiratory support devices around the world, we designed a ventilator that can be built at a low cost using off-the-shelf components. The ventilator is intended to support hospitals and health systems that are struggling to meet the demand for ventilatory support due to coronavirus and other severe lung diseases."

The research team designed, built and tested the low-cost non-invasive ventilator with a small high-pressure blower, two pressure transducers and a controller with a digital display, which are available at a retail cost of less than $75 USD (equivalent to £60 GBP / €67 EUR).

To assess the effectiveness of the ventilator prototype compared with a commercial ventilator, the research team tested the device using 12 healthy volunteers. The participants' breathing was partially hindered by having them wear bands around the chest, mimicking obstruction at the upper airways to simulate different levels of chest tightness and breathing difficulty caused by disease.

The participants wore face masks fitted over the nose to facilitate breathing and were asked to score the level of comfort or discomfort they experienced both with and without ventilatory support.

The researchers observed no faulty triggering of changes to the levels of air pushed from the ventilator during use, and the team says it effectively supported spontaneous breathing rhythm, suggesting that the prototype assists natural breathing well. Further, they found that the feeling of breathing relief provided by the prototype was virtually the same as what was reported using the commercial ventilator.

The team also carried out respiratory "bench testing", where lung modelling is used to assess how well the ventilator supports the breathing of patients with different levels of airflow obstruction or restriction. The ventilator prototype was tested under 16 different simulated conditions, covering real life settings where non-invasive ventilation is used in clinical practice.

The bench test showed that, across all simulated conditions, the prototype ventilator worked effectively to support the lungs to operate efficiently and there was no faulty triggering.

Professor Farré said: "Our tests showed that the prototype would perform similarly to a conventional, high-quality device when providing breathing support for patients who, although with great difficulty, can try to breathe by themselves. This low-cost device could be used to treat patients if commercial devices are not available, and it provides clinicians with a therapeutic tool for treating patients who otherwise would remain untreated."

The researchers highlight that the prototype is a non-invasive ventilator; it is not intended for the most severely diseased patients in intensive care units, who are intubated and require a mechanical ventilator to take full control of the patients' breathing, as the prototype only provides breathing support.

Professor Leo Heunks is an expert in intensive care medicine from the European Respiratory Society and was not involved in the study. He said: "World Health Organization data suggests that around 80% of people who get coronavirus recover without needing hospital treatment, but those who do develop severe symptoms can experience breathing difficulties, which is distressing and puts health systems under additional pressure. Low-cost solutions like the ventilator described in this paper could provide treatment for those patients, potentially improving outcomes and helping to alleviate pressure on health systems by reducing the need for more invasive types of ventilatory support."

An open source description with full technical details on how to build the non-invasive ventilator is included in the research paper. The authors say that to build the device no prior knowledge of ventilation is required, and only basic engineering skills are needed.

New research due to be presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID)* shows a link between blood infections with certain anaerobic bacteria and the risk of developing colorectal cancer. The study is by Dr Ulrik Stenz Justesen, Odense University Hospital, Denmark, and colleagues.

Anaerobic bacteria are bacteria that do not require oxygen for energy production, and live in various environments including the human gut, where they usually do not cause infections directly. Previous studies have reported an association between bacteria from the Bovis group streptococci, Clostridium septicum and colorectal cancer (CRC). Recently associations between different Bacteroides species, Fusobacterium nucleatum and CRC have also been reported. The authors aimed to investigate this further in a large-scale study.

The researchers performed a population-based cohort study including data on blood cultures from 2007 to 2016 covering a population of more than 2 million people in two regions of Denmark (Southern Denmark and Zealand regions).

They combined blood culture data with the national register for colorectal cancer (Danish Colorectal Cancer Group Database) and identified new cases of CRC after blood infection with these bacteria. The risk of incident CRC until 2018 was investigated for Bacteroides spp., Clostridium spp. and Fusobacterium spp. and compared with Bovis group streptococci, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and with blood samples that contained no infection (controls). Each case of infection was matched by age and sex with five controls.

The data included 45,760 bacteraemia episodes, of which 492 (1.1%) were diagnosed with CRC after the bacterial infection; 241 (0.5%) within 1 year. The risk of CRC for selected bacteria is shown in in the full abstract (link below). Results for infection with E. coli and S. aureus are not shown but were similar to negative (control) blood cultures. Most anaerobic species were associated with a considerable increased risk of CRC (up to 42 times) compared with negative blood cultures.

Clostridium septicum infection was associated with a 42 times increased risk of CRC within 1 year (0.5% of controls developing CRC versus 20.8% in C. septicum), and a 21-times risk overall (1.1% controls versus 22.6%). Bacteroides ovatus was linked to a 13 times increased risk of CRC within 1 year (0.5% of controls versus 6.7% B. ovatus), and a 6-times increased risk overall (1.1% controls versus 6.7%).

The authors conclude: "In this large scale cohort study, it was found that, in patients with blood infections caused by selected anaerobic bacteria, the risk of developing colorectal cancer was increased by up to 42 times compared with patients with blood infections caused by aerobic bacteria such as E.coli or S.aureus or negative controls. The discovery of blood infections with certain anaerobic bacteria could potentially result in a recommendation of screening for colorectal cancer in selected patients."

To put the findings in context, in Dr Justesen's own clinical microbiology department, there are usually two cases of blood infection causes by these anaerobic bacteria each week. They are usually caused by a breach in the intestinal wall, which can itself be caused by cancer. Dr Justesen says: "At this stage we are not sure if the bacteria are directly causing cases of colorectal cancer, of if the blood infection with these bacteria is itself caused by the cancer. It's an example of the question 'is this the chicken or the egg?'"

He continues: "Our follow up research of this study will focus on the specific bacteria from cancer patients to see if we can identify specific characteristics that could be implicated in cancer development. If this is the case it could be of great importance when it comes to screening and treatment of colorectal cancer."

He adds: "With regards to screening, if we saw these high-risk bacteria in combination with advanced age, then it would definitely be worth screening the patient for colorectal cancer. At the other end, we would not need to screen children, but it is very rare to see either colorectal cancer or blood infections caused by anaerobic bacteria in children. We need to do further analysis to come up with specific recommendations on screening."

A survey of five European countries shows that parents in Spain are the most pro-vaccination (94%) while those in France (73%) are the least in favour of vaccination. One in 30 sets of parents in the UK and Germany are against all vaccinations, no matter which disease they are for. The survey results are part of a study due to be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID)*, by Professor Jean Paul Stahl, University Hospital Grenoble, France, and colleagues.

Suboptimal vaccination coverage rates have led to vaccine-preventable disease resurgence and epidemics in Europe, such as measles, in recent years. Growing vaccine hesitancy is one of the key reasons for this situation. In this study, the authors aimed to compare opinions on vaccination of parents, the key target audience for vaccination, in five large European countries.

Vaccinoscopie Europe is a web-based survey conducted in 2019 on a representative sample of 1,500 parents of children aged 0 to 35 months in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK: 300 per country - 150 sets of parents (mother and father) of children in each country - with each set of parents submitting one set of opinions. The proportion of parents with positive opinions of vaccination varied according to countries (from 73% for France to 94% for Spain; other countries fell in between: 88% for Germany; 87% for Italy; 86% for the UK.

The UK and Germany had 3% of parents (1 in 30) opposed to all vaccinations versus less than 1% in the other countries. In all countries, more than 90% of parents were favourable to mandatory vaccination for at least certain vaccines (defined as being In favour of mandatory vaccination for at least 1 of the following diseases : tetanus; whooping cough; measles; rubella; pneumococcal meningitis; meningococcal meningitis B; meningococcal meningitis C; Haemophilus influenzae type b; poliomyelitis; diphtheria; mumps; hepatitis B; rotavirus gastroenteritis; chicken pox). Germany and the UK had the highest proportion of parents against compulsory vaccination: 7.8% for Germany; 7.4% for the UK; 4% for France; 1% for Italy and 0.8% for Spain.

In terms of vaccination knowledge, French parents felt significantly less well informed (77% well informed) than parents from the other countries (90-94% feeling well informed), and had read less online information about vaccination: 58% for France versus 70% for Germany; 81% for the UK; 71% for Italy; 58% for France; 70% for Spain.

The level of trust in health authorities was highest in Spain and lowest in France: 88% of Spanish parents rated their level of trust from 7 to 10 on a 10-point scale, while only 68% of French parents did so. For the UK and Germany this figure was 79%, and for Italy 74%.

Although the first source of information for parents in making the decision to vaccinate their child was a health care vaccinator, this differed in each country based on health care system. The second source of information was the internet, with health authorities' websites the most consulted by all countries, followed by friends and families. Influence of these last two sources varied according to countries (from 14 to 40% and from 9% to 30% respectively).

The authors conclude "Parents having a favourable opinion on vaccination seemed to be linked with a better perceived vaccination knowledge. The health care provider doing the vaccination was the first source of information, while the internet was also a valuable resource while friends and families can also be influential. Local characteristics should be taken into account to increase confidence into vaccination. Evaluation should be harmonised at a European level, allowing countries to share best practice strategies for public health."

Nearly half (49%) of New York City residents believe we should wait until after June 1st to reopen all non-essential businesses, while 19% said openings should take place between May 16-31. These findings are part of the sixth weekly city and statewide tracking survey from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH), conducted April 17-19.

Three in five (60%) New Yorkers say the epidemic has made them feel more connected to fellow New Yorkers, and a similar number (61%) reported a feeling of solidarity with all Americans nationwide.

"The New Yorkers we surveyed have been badly buffeted by the coronavirus. This experience appears to have made them more cautious than some in other parts of our country," said CUNY SPH Dean Ayman El-Mohandes. "Nonetheless, New Yorkers feel a strong sense of solidarity with all Americans."

Consistent with their concerns about re-opening the economy, almost two thirds (66%) of employed New Yorkers expressed concern about returning to their jobs. Over a quarter of workers (28%) want COVID-19 tests taken before returning to work, another 27% said they would not return to work because of fear of getting sick or getting a family member sick. Respondents cited childcare as an important barrier to returning to work: 11% reported they will need to stay home to care for a child when business resumes. Overall, about a fourth (24%) report having a student in grades K-12 at home now, and a majority (51%) said there would be no parent in the household when non-essential businesses re-open.

Household job loss has continued to rise, from 29% in week two to 37% in week six, accompanied by a substantial shift in ethnic distribution. Between weeks two and six, household job loss among African Americans doubled (17% to 35%). Among Asian Americans there was also a marked increase (25% to 40%), and for whites there was an increase from 24% to 32%. The hardest hit group, Latinx/Hispanics, stayed relatively steady, increasing from 42% to 44%.

Respondents' perception of their risk of getting sick with the virus has plateaued over the last three weeks, with just more than half (53%) believing that they have a high chance of becoming ill.

Notably, people who reported living in larger households (five or more persons) reported significantly higher numbers of people at home with symptoms associated with the viral infection at 34%, compared to 13% with households of three or four people and 8% of households with one or two people.

New Yorkers continue to exhibit high risk for mental health challenges, with 40% of residents reporting feeling anxious and 32% feeling depressed more than half the time in the past two weeks. Reports of social isolation are unchanged from weeks three and four, with 43% reporting not feeling socially connected at all. Women are more likely than men to report anxiety (45% vs 34%) while levels of depression are similar across gender.

Causing the most distress for New York residents were fears about family and loved ones getting sick or dying (44%). Seventeen percent (17%) are most anxious about their own health, followed by feeling unsafe (13%), remaining isolated from others (12%), losing their job (9%), and not having enough food (4%).

At week six, Asians report the highest rates of hopelessness (75% vs. 49% to 66% among other groups) and depression risk (42% vs 30-32%), although they report the lowest rates of anxiety symptoms (34% vs 40- 41%). For Asian Americans feeling unsafe is the most stressful factor contributing to their mental health symptoms, while all other groups report that the fear of loved ones getting sick is the top stressor. Like Latinx/Hispanics (65%), Asians report higher perceived risk of getting sick with COVID-19 (62%) compared with 42% for African Americans and 48% for whites.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of New Yorkers reported consuming alcohol while 26% report using marijuana. For New Yorkers who drink, nearly half report that their drinking remains the same (43%), 31% report less than usual, and 25% report more. A similar pattern was found for marijuana use, with 43% using about the same amount, but a higher percentage using more than usual (31%), and 26% using less than usual. Men are more likely to report an increase in drinking (62% vs 47%) and marijuana use (33% vs. 20%) compared with women.

"We are seeing persistent elevated mental health challenges and an increase in depression risk for Asian Americans, suggesting changing social, economic patterns across ethnicities as the pandemic unfolds," said Dr. Victoria Ngo, Associate Professor of Community Health and Social Sciences and Director of the Center for Innovation in Mental Health at CUNY SPH.

What astronomers thought was a planet beyond our solar system has now seemingly vanished from sight, suggesting that what was heralded as one of the first exoplanets to ever be discovered with direct imaging likely never existed.

Two University of Arizona astronomers conclude that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was instead looking at an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles from two icy bodies that smashed into each other. Hubble came along too late to witness the suspected collision but may have captured its aftermath. The missing-in-action planet was last seen orbiting the star Fomalhaut, 25 light years away.

"These collisions are exceedingly rare and so this is a big deal that we actually get to see evidence of one," said Andras Gaspar, an assistant astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and lead author of a research paper announcing the discovery. "We believe that we were at the right place at the right time to have witnessed such an unlikely event with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope."

"The Fomalhaut star system is the ultimate test lab for all of our ideas about how exoplanets and star systems evolve," added George Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy at Steward Observatory. "We do have evidence of such collisions in other systems, but none of this magnitude has been observed in our solar system. This is a blueprint of how planets destroy each other."

The suspected exoplanet, named Fomalhaut b, was first announced in 2008, based on data from 2004 and 2006. It was clearly visible in several years of Hubble observations, which revealed it was a moving dot. Until then, evidence for exoplanets had mostly been inferred through indirect detection methods, such as subtle back-and-forth stellar wobbles and shadows from planets passing in front of their stars.

Unlike other directly imaged exoplanets, however, puzzles arose with Fomalhaut b. The object was bright in visible light -- highly unusual for an exoplanet, which is simply too small to reflect enough light from its host star to be seen from Earth. At the same time, it did not have any detectable infrared heat signature -- again, highly unusual, as a planet should be warm enough to shine in the infrared, especially a young one like Fomalhaut b. Astronomers conjectured that the added brightness came from a huge shell or ring of dust encircling the planet that may have been collision-related.

"Our study, which analyzed all available archival Hubble data on Fomalhaut, revealed several characteristics that together paint a picture that the planet-sized object may never have existed in the first place," Gaspar said.

The team emphasizes that the final nail in the coffin came when their data analysis of Hubble images taken in 2014 showed the object had vanished, to their disbelief. Adding to the mystery, earlier images showed the object to continuously fade over time, they say.

"Clearly, Fomalhaut b was doing things a bona fide planet should not be doing," Gaspar said.

The interpretation is that Fomalhaut b is slowly expanding from the smashup that blasted a dissipating dust cloud into space. Taking into account all available data, Gaspar and Rieke think the collision occurred not too long prior to the first observations taken in 2004. By now, the debris cloud -- consisting of dust particles around 1 micron in size, or about 1/50th the diameter of a human hair -- is below Hubble's detection limit. The dust cloud is estimated to have expanded by now to a size larger than the orbit of Earth around the sun.

Equally confounding is that the team reports that the object is more likely on an escape path, rather than on an elliptical orbit, as expected for planets. This is based on the researchers adding later observations to the trajectory plots from earlier data.

"A recently created massive dust cloud, experiencing considerable radiative forces from the central star Fomalhaut, would be placed on such a trajectory," Gaspar said. "Our model is naturally able to explain all independent observable parameters of the system: its expansion rate, its fading and its trajectory."

Because Fomalhaut b is presently inside a vast ring of icy debris encircling the star Fomalhaut, colliding bodies would likely be a mixture of ice and dust, like the comets that exist in the Kuiper belt on the outer fringe of our solar system. Gaspar and Rieke estimate that each of these comet-like bodies measured about 125 miles across, roughly half the size of the asteroid Vesta.

The authors say their model explains all the observed characteristics of Fomalhaut b. Sophisticated modeling of how dust moves over time, done on a cluster of computers at UArizona, shows that such a model is able to fit quantitatively all the observations. According to the author's calculations, the Fomalhaut system, located about 25 light-years from Earth, may experience one of these events only every 200,000 years.

Gaspar and Rieke - along with other team members - will also be observing the Fomalhaut system with NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope in its first year of science operations. The team will be directly imaging the inner warm regions of the system, and for the first time in a star system other than our own, they will obtain detailed information about the architecture of Fomalhaut's elusive asteroid belt. The team will also search for bona fide planets orbiting Fomalhaut that might still await discovery.

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A Northwestern University evaluation of a procedural justice training program involving more than 8,000 Chicago Police Department (CPD) officers shows it reduced complaints filed against police by approximately 10%. It also reduced use of force by 6% in the two years following officers' training.

"The CPD is undergoing significant reform on multiple fronts, through a consent decree, including new top leadership and now a response to an unprecedented health epidemic," said Andrew Papachristos, co-author of the study and a professor of sociology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. "Fundamental to such reforms is repairing trust with the larger community. Reducing force and misconduct in a way that is fair and transparent by adopting procedural justice strategies is one key way to repair trust."

Papachristos is also a faculty fellow in the University's Institute for Policy Research (IPR).

The study by IPR postdoctoral fellow George Wood, along with Tom Tyler of Yale University and Papachristos, shows that this approach to police training, which typically only takes one day, can reduce complaints and improve community relations.

"It's particularly notable that these reductions were achieved through a training program, which was scaled up to include a sizable majority of the officers within the CPD," Wood said.

The procedural justice model emphasizes transparency and responding to community concerns, as well as police treating citizens in encounters with dignity, courtesy and respect. Such training is one of the strategies recommended by President Obama's 2015 Task Force on 21st-Century Policing, which argues for transparency and efforts by officers to build popular legitimacy with civilians instead of harsher "command-and-control" police techniques.

The CPD officers who took part in the training also received fewer sustained complaints, or complaints that were found valid, and had fewer complaints that resulted in a settlement payout by the city. The researchers' estimates suggest 500 fewer incidents of use of force by trained officers between 2011 and 2016.

These results indicate that procedural justice training can reduce both police use of force and complaints related to police misconduct. The researchers tracked use of force over a five-year period by using official forms that must be filled out by an officer when engaging in certain actions, ranging from a wristlock to discharging a firearm. They tracked complaints using CPD administrative records.

The findings reveal that training police in how to adopt procedural justice principles is a promising strategy for reducing use of force and complaints against officers and can be successfully used in other communities.

"By reducing force and hostility, this type of training might help the process of rebuilding trust between police and civilians -- and because the training is relatively short and can be staggered over time, it will not be a major disruption of policing activities," Wood said.

The methodology used the phased roll-out of training in which officers were trained at different times over a four-year period between January 2012 and March 2016. This roll-out meant that, within a given time period, the researchers could compare trained officers to officers who had not yet undergone training. In the same model, they also compared officers after training to their own behavior before training.

The researchers also observe that procedural justice training significantly changes how officers behave in the field, and the impact of such training lasts for at least two years. They note that its effect could be even greater as officers trained in procedural justice share their knowledge throughout their departments. When officers are trained in such tactics, they behave in ways that are proven to promote public trust, compliance and cooperation between police and citizens.

According to the researchers, such training efforts could not only change police behavior on the streets, but reform how entire departments operate. That could be a major factor in reducing misconduct and the undue use of force.

"Procedural justice training reduces police use of force and complaints against officers," publishes April 20 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The Northwestern Neighborhood and Network Institute (N3), directed by Papachristos and where Wood is a postdoctoral fellow, has been researching the causes and consequences of police misconduct and use of force. N3 is also involved in the ongoing evaluation of a new Neighborhood Policing Initiative aimed at improving police-civilian relationships through new methods of community-focused policing practices.

NEW YORK -- Cannabis use makes young brains more sensitive to the first exposure to cocaine, according to a new study on rodents led by scientists at Columbia University and the University of Cagliari in Italy. By monitoring the brains of both adolescent and adult rats after giving them synthetic psychoactive cannabinoids followed by cocaine, the research team identified key molecular and epigenetic changes that occurred in the brains of adolescents -- but not adults. This discovery reveals a new interplay between the two drugs that had never previously been directly observed in biological detail.

These findings, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide new understanding of how the abuse of cannabis during teenage years may enhance the first experience with cocaine and lead to continued use among vulnerable individuals.

"We know from human epidemiological studies that individuals who abuse cocaine have a history of early cannabis use, and that a person's initial response to a drug can have a large impact on whether they continue to use it. But many questions remain on how early cannabis exposure affects the brain," said epidemiologist Denise Kandel, PhD, who is a professor of Sociomedical Sciences in Psychiatry at Columbia's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and co-senior author of today's paper.

"Our study in rats is the first to map the detailed molecular and epigenetic mechanisms by which cocaine interacts with brains already exposed to cannabinoids, providing much-needed clarity to the biological mechanisms that may increase the risk for drug abuse and addiction," added co-author and Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, MD, codirector of Columbia's Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and Senior Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Previous research had revealed key differences in how cannabis and cocaine affect brain chemistry. "Studies on the addictive properties of cocaine have traditionally focused on the mesolimbic dopaminergic pathway, a brain system that underlies our motivation to pursue pleasurable experiences," said Philippe Melas, PhD, who was an associate research scientist in Eric Kandel's lab at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and is the paper's co-senior author. "While cannabis enhances mesolimbic dopaminergic activity similarly to cocaine, it also affects an entirely different neurochemical system that is widespread in the brain called the endocannabinoid system. This system is essential for brain development -- a process that is still ongoing in adolescence."

Besides the dopaminergic system, both cannabis and cocaine appear to share some additional features. Recent studies have suggested that the development of cocaine craving is dependent on the brain's glutamatergic system. This system uses glutamate, a brain molecule that acts as a synaptic transmitter in the brain, enhancing the transmission of signals between the brain's neurons. According to previous research, as well as findings presented in today's new study, using cannabis during adolescence may also affect this glutamatergic signaling process.

To delve deeper into a potential link between the two drugs, Dr. Melas and the husband-and-wife team of Drs. Eric and Denise Kandel partnered with Paola Fadda, PhD, Maria Scherma, PhD, and Walter Fratta, PhD, researchers in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, at the University of Cagliari in Italy. The group examined the behavioral, molecular and epigenetic changes that occur when both adolescent and adult rats are first exposed to WIN, a synthetic cannabinoid with psychoactive properties similar to those of THC found in cannabis, and then are subsequently exposed to cocaine.

"We found that adolescent rats that had been pre-exposed to WIN had an enhanced reaction to their initial exposure to cocaine. Notably, we observed this effect in adolescent but not in adult rats," said Dr. Melas, who is now a junior researcher in the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Upon further examination, the team found that, when preceded by a history of psychoactive cannabinoid use in adolescence, exposure to cocaine sets off a battery of unique molecular reactions in the rat brain. These reactions included not only changes in the aforementioned glutamate receptors but also key epigenetic modifications. Epigenetic modifications are distinct, in that they affect the way genes are switched on or off but do not affect the sequence of the genes themselves.

The Columbia team had previously found similar epigenetic mechanisms in adult animals in response to nicotine and alcohol in the brain's reward center, known as the nucleus accumbens. In the present study, however, the epigenetic effects of cannabinoids were found to be specific to adolescents and to target the brain's prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex, which plays a role in various executive functions, including long-term planning and self-control, is one of the last regions of the brain to reach maturity, a fact that has long been linked to adolescents' propensity for risky behavior.

Moreover, aberrant prefrontal cortex activity is often observed in patients suffering from addiction. Efforts to enhance the function of the prefrontal cortex are currently being evaluated in the treatment of addiction through the use of brain stimulation and other methodologies.

"Our findings suggest that exposure to psychoactive cannabinoids during adolescence primes the animals' prefrontal cortex, so that it responds differently to cocaine compared to animals who had been given cocaine without having previously experienced cannabis," said Dr. Melas.

These results in rats offer important clues to the biological mechanisms that may underlie the way that different classes of drugs can reinforce each other in humans. The results also support the notion that cannabis abuse during adolescence can enhance a person's initial positive experience with a different drug, such as cocaine, which in turn can have an effect on whether that person chooses to continue, or expand, their initial use of cocaine.

"This study suggests that teenagers who use cannabis may have a favorable initial reaction to cocaine, which will increase their likelihood of engaging in its repeated use so that they eventually become addicted, especially if they carry additional environmental or genetic vulnerabilities," said Dr. Denise Kandel.

Most research involving rodents and addiction has traditionally focused on adult animals. It has also largely been limited to studying one substance of abuse at a time, without taking into consideration a history of drug exposure in adolescence.

"These and other experiments are key to understanding the molecular changes to the brain that occur during drug use," said Dr. Eric Kandel, who is also University Professor and Kavli Professor of Brain Science at Columbia. "This knowledge will be crucial for developing effective treatments that curb addiction by targeting the disease's underlying mechanisms."

HOUSTON - (April 20, 2020) - If you're on skis, you want to avoid avalanches. But when the right kind happen in your brain, you shouldn't worry. You won't feel them. They're probably to your benefit.

Scientists at Rice University's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) have simulated the mechanics of a complex network that helps give neurons their ever-changing structures. They found the complex, Arp2/3, may be largely responsible for the "avalanches" observed in the cells' cytoskeletal networks.

The finding, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides another clue to how the brain forms and retains memories. It follows a study last year that detailed the interactions that allow neurons to accept the electrical signals that remodel their structures. An earlier study suggested actin filaments that control the shape of neurons may be the key to the formation and storage of long-term memories.

The new study led by Rice biophysicist Peter Wolynes, University of Houston physicist Margaret Cheung and Northeastern University biophysicist Herbert Levine suggests cytoskeletal avalanches within the neurons' dendritic spines may be one way they retain new information.

Much about the cytoskeleton in every cell remains a mystery, but neurons are particularly interesting to the research team that studies how they acquire information and store it for later use. Lego-like actin proteins assemble to form these spidery filaments that allow motor proteins to carry nutrients and other cargoes across cells. They also give cells the ability to move and divide.

Sometimes, these filaments form branched actomyosin networks that have been observed to collapse. The simulations revealed the presence of Arp2/3 is key to nucleating branched actin networks that occasionally convulse and release strain in the network. (Arp stands for actin-related protein.)

When Arp2/3 was present, the simulations showed branched networks tended to relax significantly more slowly than unbranched networks do.

"There's an analogy I use," Wolynes said. "With memory, you have to have something that changes, then it has to remain relatively permanent, but then perhaps be able to change again.

"Suppose you have a pillow made up of a random array of feathers," he said. "They're basically rods, similar to the branched structure of actin. If you put your head on the pillow, you crush it down, and when you get up later it still has that same crushed shape. Another time, it could have a different shape. So it has memory."

Actin networks retain memory in somewhat the same way, Wolynes said. "Like your pillow, the rods in the network reconfigure when you put stress on them, in this case, an electrochemical signal input. When signaled, they undergo a series of avalanches that change the shape of the dendritic spine."

"These are also similar to earthquakes in a sense," Levine added. "In an earthquake, the ground is static for a long time and then you have a dramatic event that reconfigures things. This new configuration lasts for a long time.

"The novelty of what's being done here is that we're not just focusing on individual molecules, as we've often done in the past," he said. "We're figuring out how individual molecules and their properties can modulate structures at larger length scales."

The models showed branched actomyosin networks do not destabilize at specific concentrations, but that the avalanches depend on the initial configuration of the network as well as the history of past avalanches.

"Like your pillow, how flexible the network is depends on how often it has been compressed in the past," Wolynes said.

Cheung, whose lab continues to run three-dimensional MEDYAN models that combine mechanics and chemistry to study actomyosin dynamics, said many additional proteins are involved and are being studied by the team in order to understand memory.

The team hopes to tie its new findings to the earlier study led by Wolynes on how actin filaments exert force to stabilize long-term memories in prionlike fibers.

"One of the ways in which memory becomes more lasting is to change the global shape of the dendritic spine," Levine said. "That's not currently in our modeling framework, and it will be an extensive effort to get it to work, but I'm interested in how to extend these models to calculate how the shapes change."

Rice graduate student James Liman is lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Rice graduate student Carlos Bueno, University of Houston graduate student Yossi Eliaz, Rice academic visitor Nicholas Schafer and Neal Waxham, the William M. Wheless III Professor in Biomedical Sciences and a professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston's McGovern Medical School.

April 20, 2020 -- Gender-based violence has been shown to increase during global emergencies. In a paper just published by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, researchers report that according to early evidence it is the same for the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are online in the journal Bioethics.

Early results from China suggest that domestic violence has dramatically increased. For example, a police station in China's Hubei Province recorded a tripling of domestic violence reports in February 2020 during the COVID?19 quarantine. Other reports suggest that police have been reluctant to intervene and detain perpetrators due to COVID?19 outbreaks in prisons.

"Gender norms and roles relegating women to the realm of care work puts them on the frontlines in times of crisis, resulting in greater risk of exposure while excluding them from developing the response," said Terry McGovern, chair of the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health at Columbia Mailman School, director of the Program on Global Health Justice and Governance, and senior author of the study.

For example:

Globally women perform three?quarters of unpaid care work, including household disease prevention and care for sick relatives, and there is not a country in the world where men provide an equal share of unpaid care work.

in China's Hubei province 90% of frontline healthcare workers are women as in many other parts of the world.

However, the researchers make the point that it is not too late to include the voices of women in tackling COVID-19:

Governments can incorporate gender considerations into their response.

Technology can be leveraged to ensure women continue to receive essential services when they need them most. For example, emergency services and victim support can be maintained via text, phone, and online services.

Telemedicine should be considered an alternative and secure way to provide women and girls access to contraceptives and abortion medication.

"Recognizing, valuing, supporting women's roles and giving them a voice in global health governance can go a long way in avoiding unintended consequences, building resilient healthcare systems, and reducing intersectional inequalities and vulnerabilities across gender, race, class and geography," noted Neetu John, first author and assistant professor in Columbia Mailman School's Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health, and the co-authors.

An exploratory randomized, controlled study on the safety and efficacy of either lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) or Arbidol--antivirals that are used in some countries against HIV-1 and to treat influenza , respectively--as treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, suggests that neither drug improves the clinical outcome of patients hospitalized with mild-to-moderate cases of the disease over supportive care. The findings appeared April 17 in Med, a new medical journal published by Cell Press.

"We found that neither lopinavir/ritonavir nor Arbidol could benefit clinical outcomes for patients and that they might bring some side effects," says co-senior author Linghua Li, Vice Director of the Centre for Infectious Diseases of Guangzhou Eighth People's Hospital in Guangzhou, China. "And although the sample size is small, we believe it could still provide meaningful suggestions for proper application of LPV/r or Arbidol for COVID-19."

The researchers chose to study LPV/r and Arbidol because the antivirals had been selected as candidates for treating COVID-19 in a guidance issued on February 19, 2020, by the National Health Commission of China, based on in vitro cell tests and previous clinical data from SARS and MERS. Other researchers had already found that LPV/r did not improve outcomes for patients with severe COVID-19. "It is important to know if lopinavir/ritonavir is effective for mild/moderate cases with COVID-19," Li says. "If it is, the medicine could prevent mild/moderate cases from deteriorating to severe status and help reduce the mortality rate."

The study assessed 86 patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19, with 34 randomly assigned to receive LPV/r, 35 to Arbidol, and 17 with no antiviral medication as a control. All three groups showed similar outcomes at 7 and 14 days, with no differences between groups in the rates of fever reduction, cough alleviation, or improvement of chest CT scan. Patients in both drug groups experienced adverse events such as diarrhea, nausea, and loss of appetite during the follow-up period, while no apparent adverse event occurred in the control group.

"Our findings suggest that we need to cautiously consider before using these drugs," Li says. "Researchers need to keep working to find a really effective antiviral regimen against COVID-19, but meanwhile, any conclusions about antiviral regimens need strict and scientific clinical trials and appropriate caution. The general public, however, shouldn't panic just because currently there's no specific antiviral medicine currently. Quarantine and good personal health protection could help us prevent people from getting infected with COVID-19, and even in case of infection, the present comprehensive treatment can still enable the vast majority of patients to return to health."

New Rochelle, NY, April 20, 2020--A new study analyzing tweets about COVID-19 found that users with larger social networks tend to use fewer uncivil remarks when they have more positive responses from others. The study, which used computer-assisted content analysis, is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the full-text article free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website.

Bumsoo Kim, PhD, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), is the author of "Effects of Social Grooming on Incivility in COVID-19." Dr. Kim defines social grooming as building strong social ties through informational exchange and emotional support. He concluded that social network size is a negative predictor of incivility. Furthermore, the linguistic choices that a user makes also differs depending on the size of their social network.

"In a time of isolation and collective trauma, social media allows for an immediate sharing of intense emotions. Prosocial behavior and positive affect may help to promote societal resilience," says Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium.