Culture

New Rochelle, NY, March 23, 2020--A new systematic review and meta-analysis showed a small but significant reduction in subjective pain scores for cannabinoid treatment compared to placebo in patients experiencing acute pain. No increase in serious adverse events suggested the safety of using cannabinoids to treat acute pain, according to the study published in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the full-text article free on the Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research website through April 23, 2020.

The article entitled "Cannabinoids in the Management of Acute Pain: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis" was coauthored by Herman Johal, MD, MPH, PhD, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada and colleagues from McMaster University and Northern Ontario School of Medicine, Thunder Bay. The researchers included six trials in their study, five using oral cannabinoids, and one using intramuscular cannabinoids. They reported a significant difference in effect size between the oral and nonoral routes of administration, with intramuscular cannabinoids yielding a significant reduction in pain relative to placebo. There was no difference in effect between oral cannabinoids and placebo.

Editor-in-Chief Daniele Piomelli, PhD University of California-Irvine, School of Medicine, states: "The usefulness of cannabis-derived medicines in the treatment of pain, both acute and chronic, is still vigorously debated. The meta-analysis conducted in this study reinforces the need for more rigorous studies to assess whether cannabis might be effective in the treatment of acute pain conditions."

The cytoskeleton is a permanent construction site: it consists of protein filaments that are continually lengthening and shortening in a dynamic process. Through these remodeling processes, the cell can change its shape and even move to a new location. In this way, it guides fundamental processes, such as cell division and differentiation, and processes at a higher level in the organism, such as embryonic development and wound healing. If something goes wrong at the cytoskeletal construction site - e.g., if protein filaments undergo remodeling at the wrong place or time - this could lead to diseases. Such an error in spatio-temporal control is also the reason why metastatic cancer cells start to migrate in the body.

Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association (MDC) and other institutes, such as the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) in Hinxton, UK, have investigated how a family of 145 proteins causes these remodeling events to occur at the right place and time. Up to this point, scientists had only examined these regulatory proteins in individual studies, and only a few proteins had been characterized. "In order to understand complex processes, including cell shape changes, we need to know how the regulatory proteins work together collectively. Until now, we lacked a bird's eye perspective, so to speak," says Dr. Oliver Rocks, head of the MDC research group "Spatio-temporal Control of Rho GTPase Signaling" and senior responsible author of a new study in the journal Nature Cell Biology. His research group with lead authors Dr. Paul M. Müller and Dr. Juliane Rademacher, together with the group led by Dr. Evangelia Petsalaki at EMBL-EBI and an international research team, has now systematically characterized all these regulatory proteins. The team was able to show that there are different signaling zones within the cell that coordinate the cytoskeleton in space and time and also how these zones are created and maintained.

A new perspective, thanks to a comprehensive database

At the cytoskeletal construction site, the Rho GTPase proteins set the tone. When these molecular switches are activated, they send commands to the machinery on site. There are 145 regulatory proteins that control these molecular switches: RhoGEF proteins turn them on, RhoGAP proteins turn them off. Now Rocks and his team have systematically investigated all these regulators for the first time and created a kind of library. Researchers from all over the world can access this library to see which molecular switches individual proteins control, where in the cell this occurs and which binding partners it has.

The comprehensive information contained in the protein library allows proteins to be analyzed at the systems level for the first time - i.e., from a bird's eye perspective. This has revealed new collective properties of the regulators that were previously imperceptible. In this way, researchers discovered a new mechanism that explains how cell migration is controlled.

Focal adhesions control the balance of two opposing processes

Scientists were aware that two opposing processes controlled by the cytoskeleton - cell protrusion and cell contraction - need to occur in separate places in the cell to allow it to move. In one construction site at the front of the cell, the molecular switches give the command for cell protrusion in the migration direction. Further behind, towards the cell interior, they trigger a contraction of the cytoskeleton. The central question investigated by the MDC team was how Rho GTPases coordinate these two spatially separated processes.

The spatial organization of the two opposing processes is made possible through focal adhesions, explains Rocks. These are protein accumulations located directly below the cell membrane that anchor the cell to its environment. Focal adhesions occur close to the front of the cell, mature into more stable structures and eventually dissolve again. As the cell travels through focal adhesions during migration, these move from the front to the middle of the cell. "The cell exploits the fact that focal adhesions change their location," Rocks says. Initially, his team discovered a surprising number of regulatory proteins on these structures. But the real surprise, he says, "was that we found a specific subgroup of regulators located almost exclusively on newly formed focal adhesions at the cell's edge and another separate subgroup on mature structures towards the middle of the cell." These subgroups control the opposing cytoskeletal processes mentioned above, creating the spatially separated signal zones. The researchers were also able to show that both processes are linked by mechanical forces in the cell, which can help maintain a balance between the number of newly formed focal adhesions and the number of mature ones.

Rocks next plans to investigate how precisely the collective Rho GTPase regulators on the focal adhesions communicate with the cytoskeletal machinery, whether the principle of spatial separation of these proteins also plays a role on other cell structures and how a defective regulatory function can ultimately lead to diseases.

Rocks confirms that gaining this systemic view of cell shape regulation has taken a great deal of effort. "However, it was absolutely essential to revitalize this research field and open up new conceptual approaches for further study," the researcher says. The database and protein library are now available to all scientists worldwide.

Prolonged fear and anxiety brought on by major stressors, like the coronavirus pandemic, can not only take a toll on a person's mental health, but may also have a lasting impact on a man's sperm composition that could affect his future offspring. That is the finding of a provocative new study published in the journal Nature Communications by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The research outlines a biological mechanism for how a father's experience with stress can influence fetal brain development in the womb. The effects of paternal stress can be transferred to offspring through changes in the extracellular vesicles that then interact with maturing sperm. Extracellular vesicles are small membrane-bound particles that transport proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids between cells. They are produced in large amounts in the reproductive tract and play an integral role in sperm maturation.

"There are so many reasons that reducing stress is beneficial especially now when our stress levels are chronically elevated and will remain so for the next few months," said study corresponding author Tracy Bale, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology and Director of the Center for Epigenetic Research in Child Health & Brain Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "Properly managing stress can not only improve mental health and other stress-related ailments, but it can also help reduce the potential lasting impact on the reproductive system that could impact future generations."

She and her colleagues did not specifically study those who were under stress due to the coronavirus pandemic.

To examine a novel biological role for extracellular vesicles in transferring dad's stress to sperm, the researchers examined extracellular vesicles from mice following treatment with the stress hormone corticosterone. After treatment, the extracellular vesicles showed dramatic changes in their overall size as well as their protein and small RNA content.

When sperm were incubated with these previously "stressed" extracellular vesicles prior to fertilizing an egg, the resulting mouse pups showed significant changes in patterns of early brain development, and as adults these mice were also significantly different than controls for how they responded to stress themselves.

To see if similar differences occurred in human sperm, the researchers recruited students from the University of Pennsylvania to donate sperm each month for six months, and complete questionnaires about their perceived stress state in the preceding month. They found that students who had experienced elevated stress in months prior showed significant changes in the small RNA content of their sperm, while those who had no change in stress levels experienced little or no change. These data confirm a very similar pattern found in the mouse study.

"Our study shows that the baby's brain develops differently if the father experienced a chronic period of stress before conception, but we still do not know the implications of these differences," said Dr. Bale. "Could this prolonged higher level of stress raise the risk for mental health issues in future offspring, or could experiencing stress and managing it well help to promote stress resilience? We don't really know at this point, but our data highlight why further studies are necessary."

The research team did find that stress-induced changes in the male reproductive system take place at least a month after the stress is attenuated and life has resumed its normal patterns. "It appears the body's adaptation to stress is to return to a new baseline," Dr. Bale said, "a post-stress physiological state - termed allostasis."

This research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and included co-authors from the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Department of Pharmaceutical Science at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, as well as the University of Pennsylvania.

"This research represents a critical step in understanding important mechanisms that underlie the field of intergenerational epigenetics," said UMSOM Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, who is also the Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor. "Such knowledge is crucial to identify early interventions to improve reproduction and early childhood development down the road."

While the study did not test stress management interventions to determine what effects they might have on attenuating the changes in sperm composition, Dr. Bale, who goes for regular runs to reduce the stress of the current COVID-19 pandemic, contends that any lifestyle habits that are good for the brain are likely good for the reproductive system.

"It is important to realize that social distancing does not have to mean social isolation, especially with modern technologies available to many of us," said Joshua Gordon, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health in his web message about coping with coronavirus. "Connecting with our friends and loved ones, whether by high tech means or through simple phone calls, can help us maintain ties during stressful days ahead and will give us strength to weather this difficult passage."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tips on "stress and coping" page on their COVID-19 site that recommends the following to "support yourself":

Take breaks from watching, reading, or listening to news stories, including social media. Hearing about the pandemic repeatedly can be upsetting.

Take care of your body. Take deep breaths, stretch, or meditate. Try to eat healthy, well-balanced meals, exercise regularly, get plenty of sleep, and avoid alcohol and drugs.

Make time to unwind. Try to do some other activities you enjoy.

Connect with others. Talk with people you trust about your concerns and how you are feeling.

Philadelphia, March 23, 2020 - A new study led by researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) shows that a set of simple questionnaires can help clinicians and families better evaluate the quality of life of people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The newly-developed tool is designed for children, adolescents, and adults on the autism spectrum, and early findings show where clinicians can learn more about how to support the needs of autistic individuals by directly asking them these critical questions. The findings were published online this month by the journal Autism Research.

While clinical researchers often focus on measuring diagnostic criteria or behavioral impairments, autistic self-advocates, family members, and community organizations have long called for a greater emphasis on measuring specific and practical areas that, if properly addressed, could then help people on the autism spectrum achieve a better quality of life. Several methods on how to accomplish this have been proposed, but they have not necessarily addressed topics covering a person's entire lifespan or had sufficient data on women and girls.

"Individual studies have examined specific quality of life measurements for people with autism, but we believed there was an opportunity to create an approach that could measure quality of life across multiple areas, in a way that can grow throughout their lifetime as needs change," said Laura Graham Holmes, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University who led the research while she was a postdoctoral fellow at the CHOP Center for Autism Research. "We wanted to be sure this tool encompassed a variety of domains, including physical and mental health, relationships, and subjective well-being, so we could begin to understand on a more nuanced level the struggles and successes that autistic people experience throughout their lives."

The study team developed and tested an autism-specific lifespan quality of life measurement tool, using the National Institutes of Health Parent-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) as its foundation. The new tool is named the PROMIS Autism Battery - Lifespan (PAB-L). After reviewing each area and receiving feedback from autistic people and their families as well as autism experts, the tool was administered for autistic children ages 5-13 (reported through parent proxy), adolescents ages 14-17 (parent proxy and/or self-reported), and adults ages 18-65 (self reported) and then results were compared with the general population.

A total of 912 participants completed the tool's surveys online. The study measured feasibility, and participants reported that the survey was easy to understand, covered important topics, and may even change the way an individual or parent manages their autism support programs or clinical care based on the results.

While some individuals reported strengths, on average, people of all ages on the autism spectrum reported greater challenges and lower quality of life compared with their peers without an autism diagnosis. In particular, they reported lower life statisfaction, less social support and more social isolation, were more likely to exhibit emotional distress through symptoms like anger and anxiety, and were more likely to have sleep problems. Women and teenaged girls on the autism spectrum reported higher levels of anxiety and sleep problems than their male counterparts. As this is the first study to use this tool, more work is needed. However, these measurements give researchers an important starting point.

"This study demonstrated that assessing quality of life among patients of different ages and genders is possible, and that it's meaningful," said Judith S. Miller, PhD, a psychologist in the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, a senior scientist and training director in the Center for Autism Research at CHOP and senior author of the study. "We believe that these findings provide an important foundation to answer some very important questions about how to support the quality of life for people with autism, including those who have been historically under-represented in clinical research."

What The Study Did: This study used data and brain imaging from a randomized clinical trial for older adults who are cognitively unimpaired and examined brain changes, including the presence of biomarkers for Alzheimer disease, between those with sleep-disordered breathing and those without.

Authors: Gael Chetelat, Ph.D., of the Universite de Caen in France, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.0311)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the articles for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

What The Study Did: Researchers used a large commercial claims database to estimate the percentage of U.S. women in their 40s with private insurance who were eligible and received screening mammography in 2017 and national costs for this screening.

Authors: Natalia Kunst, M.Sc., of the University of Oslo in Norway, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/ 

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.0262)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the articles for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

KAIST researchers have developed a novel wearable strain sensor based on the modulation of optical transmittance of a carbon nanotube (CNT)-embedded elastomer. The sensor is capable of sensitive, stable, and continuous measurement of physical signals. This technology, featured in the March 4th issue of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces as a front cover article, shows great potential for the detection of subtle human motions and the real-time monitoring of body postures for healthcare applications.

A wearable strain sensor must have high sensitivity, flexibility, and stretchability, as well as low cost. Those used especially for health monitoring should also be tied to long-term solid performance, and be environmentally stable. Various stretchable strain sensors based on piezo-resistive and capacitive principles have been developed to meet all these requirements.

Conventional piezo-resistive strain sensors using functional nanomaterials, including CNTs as the most common example, have shown high sensitivity and great sensing performance. However, they suffer from poor long-term stability and linearity, as well as considerable signal hysteresis. As an alternative, piezo-capacitive strain sensors with better stability, lower hysteresis, and higher stretchability have been suggested. But due to the fact that piezo-capacitive strain sensors exhibit limited sensitivity and strong electromagnetic interference caused by the conductive objects in the surrounding environment, these conventional stretchable strain sensors are still facing limitations that are yet to be resolved.

A KAIST research team led by Professor Inkyu Park from the Department of Mechanical Engineering suggested that an optical-type stretchable strain sensor can be a good alternative to resolve the limitations of conventional piezo-resistive and piezo-capacitive strain sensors, because they have high stability and are less affected by environmental disturbances. The team then introduced an optical wearable strain sensor based on the light transmittance changes of a CNT-embedded elastomer, which further addresses the low sensitivity problem of conventional optical stretchable strain sensors.

In order to achieve a large dynamic range for the sensor, Professor Park and his researchers chose Ecoflex as an elastomeric substrate with good mechanical durability, flexibility, and attachability on human skin, and the new optical wearable strain sensor developed by the research group actually shows a wide dynamic range of 0 to 400%.

In addition, the researchers propagated the microcracks under tensile strain within the film of multi-walled CNTs embedded in the Ecoflex substrate, changing the optical transmittance of the film. By doing so, it was possible for them to develop a wearable strain sensor having a sensitivity 10 times higher than conventional optical stretchable strain sensors.

The proposed sensor has also passed the durability test with excellent results. The sensor's response after 13,000 sets of cyclic loading was stable without any noticeable drift. This suggests that the sensor response can be used without degradation, even if the sensor is repeatedly used for a long time and in various environmental conditions.

Using the developed sensor, the research team could measure the finger bending motion and used it for robot control. They also developed a three-axes sensor array for body posture monitoring. The sensor was able to monitor human motions with small strains such as a pulse near the carotid artery and muscle movement around the mouth during pronunciation.

Professor Park said, "In this study, our group developed a new wearable strain sensor platform that overcomes many limitations of previously developed resistive, capacitive, and optical-type stretchable strain sensors. Our sensor could be widely used in a variety of fields including soft robotics, wearable electronics, electric skin, healthcare, and even entertainment."

In Southeast Asia, the fruit, flowers, and leaves of Indonesia's "Melinjo" tree are traditional foods. Researchers from Kumamoto University, Japan who study plants from around the world for useful medicinal properties have found that Melinjo seed extract (MSE) stimulates the production of adiponectin, a beneficial hormone that improves obesity and diabetes. They also discovered that individual genotype differences were responsible for variations in its efficacy.

Melinjo fruit have high antioxidant and antibacterial qualities and are known to contain large amounts of polyphenols. One such compound, resveratrol, has been shown to induce adiponectin and may improve lifestyle-related diseases like metabolic syndrome. Gnetin C, a type of resveratrol abundant in MSE, is known to have higher antioxidant activity and stays in the body longer than resveratrol. However, the detailed mechanism by which these compounds exert their biological activity is still unknown.

Kumamoto University's Global Center for Natural Resources Sciences conducts component isolation and identification of useful plants and natural products from around the world and evaluates their pharmacological activities. Within the center, Dr. Kentaro Oniki's research team used genetic analysis to find that differences in the type of DsbA-L (Disulfide-bond-A oxidoreductase-like protein) gene affects adiponectin activation. In other words, DsbA-L induction may promote adiponectin activation and improve lifestyle-related diseases. In their recent work, they attempted to determine 1) whether MSE enhances the function of DsbA-L, 2) whether MSE promotes adiponectin activation, and 3) whether MSE has a therapeutic effect on obesity and diabetes.

In their first study (double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized controlled), 42 healthy adult men took MSE supplements orally for 14 days. They found that taking 300 mg of MSE per day activated adiponectin in human males. They also found that effects varied depending on the differences in the type of DsbA-L gene (G/G, G/T, T/T) possessed by the individual. MSE effects were large in G/T or T/T genotype carriers whose gene expression level was presumed to be low.

Following the results of the clinical trials, another of the center's researchers, Dr. Tsuyoshi Shuto, and his research team tested the compound in a high fat diet mouse model with obesity-induced diabetes. By measuring the effects of MSE on DsbA-L expression and blood adiponectin concentration in various tissues, they found that daily oral administration of MSE over a period of four weeks increased the expression of DsbA-L and the amount of activated adiponectin in the body. Diabetic pathologies, in muscle tissue also improved. Symptoms such as increased fat accumulation and fasting blood sugar levels significantly improved.

These research results show that MSE promotes DsbA-L expression, increases the amount of activated adiponectin, and may improve obesity and diabetic symptoms in living organisms, especially in mice.

"We believe that our findings can benefit human health through the treatment of obesity and diabetes by focusing on the induction of the DsbA-L gene using MSE," said Associate Professor Shuto. "We hope that this work contributes to a healthier society through the creation of innovative medicines and products from plants and other natural resources. It is important to provide solid scientific evidence that supports the use of natural resources in emerging countries and using them for beneficial drug discovery and health."

Tsukuba, Japan - In most cases, taking a break isn't the most efficient way of getting a job done. But in a study published this week in iScience, researchers from Japan's University of Tsukuba have uncovered the regulatory pathway governing the first of two breaks that are essential for proper germline cell development in model species Drosophila melanogaster.

Germ cells go on to form the mature cells (gametes) needed for sexual reproduction--sperm and eggs. During germ cell cycling in Drosophila, primordial germ cells, called pole cells, migrate through the developing embryo to the gonads, where they mature into gametes. Interestingly, cell cycling is arrested during this migration period.

Previous studies have shown that there are actually two rest, or quiescence, periods in Drosophila germ cell cycling that appear to be essential for pole cell maturation and, ultimately, fertility. However, while the pathway regulating the second of these rest cycles has been characterized, the first pathway appears to be independently regulated via an as yet unknown mechanism.

"Research has shown that newly-formed pole cells lack nucleoli, while nucleoli are prominent in somatic cells at the same time point," says lead author of the study Dr Shumpei Morita. "This led us to investigate factors that influence nucleolus formation, specifically the Pgc peptide, encoded by pgc."

Sure enough, the researchers found that Pgc repressed nucleolus formation in pole cells and inhibited the expression of a microRNA, miR-10404, which is encoded within the nucleolus organizer region of the chromosome. microRNAs degrade specific target messenger RNA, preventing protein expression. By examining messenger RNA levels in pgc mutant versus normal pole cells, the researchers were able to pinpoint the target of miR-10404.

"Our results showed that miR-10404 degrades dap messenger RNA in pole cells," explains senior author Professor Satoru Kobayashi. "Dap is a Cdk inhibitor that blocks cell cycle progression. Thus, in normal pole cells, Pgc-dependent suppression of miR-10404 expression prevents the degradation of dap messenger RNA, resulting in Dap accumulation and inhibition of cell cycle progression."

When the researchers artificially increased cellular levels of miR-10404 and CycB, which inhibits the first and second germline quiescence, pole cells failed to migrate to the gonads and were eliminated in the resulting embryos. This observation confirmed that the two rest periods are essential for Drosophila germline development.

Says Professor Kobayashi, "Given the widespread occurrence of cell cycle quiescence in animals, our findings will help us to better understand the mechanism and significance of these rest periods during germline development."

Fuel cells and water electrolyzers that are cheap and efficient will form the cornerstone of a hydrogen fuel based economy, which is one of the most promising clean and sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels. These devices rely on materials called electrocatalysts to work, so the development of efficient and low-cost catalysts is essential to make hydrogen fuel a viable alternative. Researchers at Aalto university have developed a new catalyst material to improve these technologies.

The oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) are the most important electrochemical reactions that limit the efficiencies of hydrogen fuel cells (for powering vehicles and power generation), water electrolyzers (for clean hydrogen production), and high-capacity metal-air batteries. Physicists and chemists at Aalto collaborating with researchers at CNRS France, and Vienna in Austria have developed a new catalyst that drive these reactions more efficiently than other bifunctional catalysts currently available. The researchers also found that the electrocatalytic activity of their new catalyst can be significantly altered depending on choice of the material on which the catalyst was deposited.

"We want to replace traditional expesive and scarce catalysts based on precious metals like platinum and iridium with highly active and stable alternatives composed of cheap and earth-abundant elements such as transition metals, carbon and nitrogen." says Dr Mohammad Tavakkoli, the researcher at Aalto who led the work and wrote the paper.

In collaboration with CNRS the team produced a highly porous graphene-carbon nanotube hybrid and doped it with single atoms of other elements known to make good catalysts. Graphene and carbon nanotube (CNT) are the one?atom?thick two- and one?dimensional allotropes of carbon, respectively, which have attracted tremendous interest in both academia and industry due to their outstanding properties compared more traditional materials. They developed an easy and scalable method to grow these nanomaterials at the same time, combining their properties in a single product. "We are one of the leading teams in the world for the scalable synthesis of double-walled carbon nanotubes. The innovation here was to modify our fabrication process to prepare these unique samples," said Dr Emmanuel Flahut, research director at CNRS.

In this one-step process, they could also dope the graphene with nitrogen and/or metallic (Cobalt and Molybdenum) single-atoms as a promising strategy to produce single-atom catalysts (SACs). In catalysis science, the new field of SACs with isolated metal atoms dispersed on solid supports has attracted wide research attention because of the maximum atom-utilization efficiency and the unique properties of SACs. Compared with rival strategies for making SACs, the method used by the Aalto & CNRS team provides an easy method which takes place in one step, keeping costs down.

Catalysts are usually deposited on an underlying substrate. The role this substrate plays on the final reactivity of the catalyst is usually neglected by researchers, however for this new catalyst, the researchers spotted the substrate played an important part in its efficiency. The team found porous structure of their material allows to access more active catalyst sites formed at its interface with the substrate, so they developed a new microscopy analysis method to measure how this interface could be altered to produce the most effective catalyst. They hope their study of substrate effects on the catalytic activity of porous materials establishes a basis for the rational design of high-performance electrodes for the electrochemical energy devices and provides guidelines for future studies.

Photodetectors, a key optoelectrical component for the translation of optical signals into electrical signals, are of great interest to a wide range of industrial production, military affairs, biochemical detection, optical communication. Organic-inorganic hybrid perovskites (OIHPs), owing to their excellent optical and electrical properties including tunable direct bandgap, preeminent optical absorption, high carrier mobility, and low trap density, have attracted immense research interest for thin-film solar cells, LEDs, and photodetectors. In recent years, the fabrication and characterizations of OIHPs have been advanced and photodetectors thereof with high sensitivity, fast response, and large linear dynamic range have been reported. However, to circumvent existing limitation to the detection band of visible light resulting from the bandgap of the perovskite material, new device architectures and material systems are needed which offer high performance over a wide spectral range up to NIR.

In the new paper published in Light Science & Application, scientists from the State Key Laboratory of Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, China, State Key Laboratory of Infrared Physics, Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, and co-workers have designed new OIHP photodetectors combined with organic bulk heterojunction (BHJ) ofsuitable band structure, achieving a high external quantum efficiency (EQE) of higher than ~54% in the NIR region. Benefitting from low trap density in the light absorption layer and high carrier mobility in the transport layer, the OIHP/BHJ photodetectors have ultra-fast response times of just 5.6 nanoseconds by the transient photocurrent method (TPC) that can mitigate the issue of the resistance-capacitance time constant. To further verify the broadband detection capability and large linear dynamic range (LDR), they adopted the OIHP/BHJ photodetectors to construct a single-pixel scanning optical imaging system. High-quality imaging of complex letter graphics and visible/NIR imaging of the heat coil are obtained through the imaging system based on the OIHP/BHJ photodetectors with large LDR, ultra-fast response speed, and room temperature stability. We believe that state-of-the-art OIHP photodetectors can accelerate the translation of solution-processed photodetector applications from the laboratory to the imaging market.

As average temperatures rise every year, it is no longer rare to see plants flower as early as February. Behind this phenomenon is a complex of proteins whose activity is controlled by temperature changes, as has just been demonstrated by researchers from the Cell and Plant Physiology Laboratory (CNRS / CEA / INRAE / Université Grenoble Alpes) and their partners.* Composed of three proteins (LUX, ELF3, and ELF4), the Evening Complex regulates the expression of genes involved in plant growth and flowering, as a function of exterior temperatures. The research team has shown, in vitro, that while all three proteins are needed for the complex to function correctly, ELF3 is the only one whose activity directly depends on temperature. When the temperature increases, ELF3 prevents the complex from binding to DNA and repressing plant growth genes. Consequently, growth proceeds. A study of the structure of LUX nonetheless demonstrated that certain mutations could alter plant sensitivity to temperature. These findings are published in PNAS (12 March 2020).

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2020 -- Constantly being told to wash your hands? Us, too. So we're diving into the chemistry behind why soap is so effective against viruses like the coronavirus that causes COVID-19: https://youtu.be/K2pMVimI2bw.

Big data makes big promises when it comes to providing insights into human behavior and health. The problem is how to harness the information it provides in an efficient manner. An international team of researchers has proposed a microbiome search-based method, via Microbiome Search Engine (MSE), to analyze the wealth of available health data to detect and diagnose human diseases.  

They published their method on March 17, 2020 in mSystems, a peer-reviewed open access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.  
"Microbiome-based disease classification depends on well-validated, disease-specific models or markers," said Dr. SU Xiaoquan, from Single-Cell Center at Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). "However, current models are lacking that information for many diseases." 

In addition, SU said, multiple diseases can share the same biomarkers - the microorganisms that indicate something out of the ordinary, such as a mutated protein found in cancer cells, making it harder for researchers to correctly classify each one.  

To combat these issues for disease detection and classification, SU and his joint software team from Single-Cell Center, QIBEBT and Center for Microbiome Innovation (CMI), University of California at San Diego (UCSD), developed a new search approach based on the whole microbial community a human body contains, collectively called the microbiome. Every person has a microbiome, even if they do not have a disease.  

Traditional models compare samples from healthy subjects to those from people known to have specific diseases. With the new method, by searching based on the specific outlier, rather than known biomarkers that can code for several diseases, the researchers can identify the microbiome state associated with the disease across different cohorts or sequencing platforms.  

In this new approach, the research team employs a two-step process to identify disease. First, they search a baseline database of healthy individuals to detect any specific microbiome outlier novelty - or any known anomaly that differentiates the microbiome from a healthy state. They then search for that outlier in a database of disease-specific examples.  

"Our strategy's precision, sensitivity and speed outperform model-based approaches," SU said.  

The results of the search can provide quick predictions to help clinicians diagnose and treat diseases.  

"This search-based strategy shows promise as an important first step in microbiome big data-based diagnosis," according to Rob Knight, Director of CMI and UCSD. "In light of the general shift of microbiome-sequencing focus from healthy to diseased hosts, the findings here advocate for adding more baseline samples from across different geographic locations."

XU Jian, Director of Single-Cell Center, QIBEBT, agrees. Next, the joint Sino-USA team is working towards encouraging their colleagues to join a coordinated effort to continue expanding the microbiome database, to include every population and every ecosystem on the globe. 

"With Microbiome Search Engine, performing a search can become as standard and enabling for new microbiome studies as performing a BLAST against your new DNA sequence is today." XU said. 

They are billions of times larger than our Sun: how is it possible that, as recently observed, supermassive black holes were already present when the Universe, now 14 billion years old, was "just" 800 million years old? For astrophysicists, the formation of these cosmic monsters in such a short time is a real scientific headache, which raises important questions on the current knowledge of the development of these celestial bodies. A recent article published in The Astrophysical Journal, by the SISSA Ph.D. student Lumen Boco and his supervisor Andrea Lapi, offers a possible explanation to the thorny issue. Thanks to an original model theorized by the scientists from Trieste, the study proposes a very fast formation process in the initial phases of the development of the supermassive black holes, those up to now considered slower. Proving, mathematically, that their existence was possible in the young Universe, the results of the research reconcile the timing required for their growth with the limits imposed by the age of the Cosmos. The validity of the theory can be fully validated thanks to future gravitational wave detectors namely Einstein Telescope and LISA, but tested in several basic aspects also with the current Advanced LIGO/Virgo system.

The cosmic monster that grows at the centre of galaxies

The scientists started their study with a piece of well-known observational evidence: the growth of supermassive black holes occurs in the central regions of galaxies, progenitors of the current elliptical galaxies, which had a very high gas content and in which the stellar formation was extremely intense. "The biggest stars live a short time and very quickly evolve into stellar black holes, as large as several scores of solar masses; they are small, but many form in these galaxies". The dense gas that surrounds them, explain Boco and Lapi, has a very powerful definitive effect of dynamic friction and causes them to migrate very quickly to the centre of the galaxy. The majority of the numerous black holes that reach the central regions merge, creating the supermassive black hole seed. Boco and Lapi continue: "According to classical theories, a supermassive black hole grows at the centre of a galaxy capturing the surrounding matter, principally gas, "growing it" on itself and finally devouring it at a rhythm which is proportional to its mass. For this reason, during the initial phases of its development, when the mass of the black hole is small, the growth is very slow. To the extent that, according to the calculations, to reach the mass observed, billions of times that of the Sun, a very long time would be required, even greater than the age of the young Universe". Their study, however, showed that things could go much faster than that.

The crazy dash of black holes: what the scientists have discovered

"Our numerical calculations show that the process of dynamic migration and fusion of stellar black holes can make the supermassive black hole seed reach a mass of between 10,000 and 100,000 times that of the Sun in just 50-100 million years". At this point, the researchers say, "the growth of the central black hole according to the aforementioned direct accretion of gas, envisaged by the standard theory, will become very fast, because the quantity of gas it will succeed in attracting and absorbing will become immense, and predominant on the process we propose. Nevertheless, precisely the fact of starting from such a big seed as envisaged by our mechanism speeds up the global growth of the supermassive black hole and allows its formation, also in the Young Universe. In short, in light of this theory, we can state that 800 million years after the Big Bang the supermassive black holes could already populate the Cosmos".

"Looking" at the supermassive black hole seeds grow

The article, besides illustrating the model and demonstrating its efficacy, also proposes a method for testing it: "The fusion of numerous stellar black holes with the seed of the supermassive black hole at the centre will produce gravitational waves which we expect to see and study with current and future detectors", explain the researchers. In particular, the gravitational waves emitted in the initial phases, when the central black hole seed is still small, will be identifiable by the current detectors like Advanced LIGO/Virgo and fully characterisable by the future Einstein Telescope. The subsequent development phases of the supermassive black hole could be investigated thanks to the future detector LISA, which will be launched in space around 2034. In this way, explain Boco and Lapi, "the process we propose can be validated in its different phases, in a complementary way, by future gravitational wave detectors.

"This research" concludes Andrea Lapi, coordinator of the Astrophysics and Cosmology group of SISSA, "shows how the students and researchers of our group are fully approaching the new frontier of gravitational waves and multi-messenger astronomy. In particular, our main goal will be to develop theoretical models, like that devised in this case, which serve to capitalise on the information originating from the experiments of current and future gravitational waves, thereby hopefully providing solutions for unresolved issues connected with astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics".