Culture

Neurotransmitters are chemicals that transmit signals between neurons or from neurons to other cells. They interact with specific receptors found in the brain of humans and animals, controlling a variety of biological processes, e.g. fear, anger, pleasure, memory, energy, appetite and sleep. Today, scientists know various types of neurotransmitter systems: dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, histamine, glutamate, and many others. A large number of clinically used drugs for many brain disorders is based on the action on these systems.

The St Petersburg University researchers, together with colleagues from the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Genova, Italy) and the Pavlov First St Petersburg State Medical University (St. Petersburg, Russia) conducted experiments on mutant mice. They were able to show that there is a novel neurotransmitter system in the brain - in it, signal transmission of innate olfactory information into the "emotional" brain areas occurs via the trace amine-associated receptor 5 TAAR5.

'Trace amines are cousins of well-known neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin,' explains Raul Gainetdinov. 'It is known that humans have six subtypes of trace amine-associated receptors that sense trace amines. The TAAR1 receptor is the best investigated, and it is considered so promising that in May 2019, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration, the agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, which approves the launch of new drugs on the market) designated the experimental drug based on action on TAAR1 of Sunovion Pharmaceuticals the status of "breakthrough treatment" for schizophrenia. Since the FDA accepted the second stage of the clinical trial of their medication for schizophrenia as the third stage, the drug should enter the market within a few years. This should be the first antipsychotic drug in the world that is not a dopamine receptor blocker. It is worth noting that researchers of the St. Petersburg State University are also developing new drugs based on the action on TAAR1.'

Researchers drew attention to another trace amine-associated receptor, TAAR5. It was previously believed that all other receptors for trace amines, with the exception of TAAR1, are exclusively olfactory and participate only in the perception of socially-relevant innate odours (for example, the smell of rotten tissue, predators or pheromones). Therefore, it is believed that they are not useful in the search for novel cures for brain diseases. However, the St. Petersburg State University scientists were convinced of the contrary: to prove the important role of TAAR5 in the neuronal functions and psycho-emotional state, they conducted a series of experiments with knockout laboratory mice - the gene encoding the TAAR5 protein was "knocked out" or "turned off" in these animals. Instead, a marker was inserted into the genome, which allowed the researchers to see in which areas of the brain this protein is present.

'It turned out that TAAR5 is found not only in the nose and olfactory bulb, but also in the "emotional" brain areas associated with the olfactory system: the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus and other structures,' said Professor Gainetdinov. In addition, we observed that the lack of TAAR5 results in the alteration of the concentration of serotonin in the brain, and this is the major indicator of changes in emotional behaviour. Finally, knockout mice without TAAR5 behave as if they are under the treatment with antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs: they are not afraid of bright light and are not amenable to stress.

Preliminary data also suggest that all other trace amine-associated receptors are not only mediators of the innate olfactory function, but are also variously involved in the regulation of the psycho-emotional state. According to Raul Gainetdinov, this discovery can result in the development of fundamentally new drugs that can deal with schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders, various addictions, possibly even Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. The data obtained may have impact to various fields of neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and even aromatherapy.

'Now we have to search for effective antagonists - substances that will block TAAR5 receptors in the brain, thereby exerting an antidepressant and anti-anxiety effect,' said Raul Gainetdinov. 'Our laboratory at the St Petersburg University has essentially everything for these studies: we have developed a test system for searching for drugs that activate or block TAAR5 and other receptors; and we also have a unique collection of knockout animals for all receptors for trace amines. We hope to find the support of industrial partners with whom we will be able to develop innovative drugs that no one has created yet. So far, we have investigated only one receptor, TAAR5, which has been previously considered to be an exclusively olfactory receptor. We are performing now studies of four other trace amine-associated receptors, which can open new unexpected directions in the pharmacology of various brain diseases.'

Montreal, March 4, 2020--HIV hides in reservoirs during antiretroviral therapy (ART). These viral sanctuaries are the reason why ART is not a cure. And research teams have striven for years to determine how the HIV reservoirs are established and maintained during ART. Thanks to an unprecedented access to blood, and biopsies of rectums and lymph nodes of people at the earliest stages of HIV infection, an international team of researchers at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM), the U.S. Military HIV Research Program and the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre has shown that the first established reservoirs are still "sensitive" during these early stages and could be downsized about 100 times upon immediate ART initiation.

In this study published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers provide insight into the events unfolding during the crucial stages of early HIV infection. Through the U.S. Military HIV Research Program's acute infection cohort, RV254/SEARCH010, which started 10 years ago in collaboration with the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre, they identified acutely infected individuals in the first two weeks of infection (Fiebig I-II stages) and placed them onto ART immediately.

"The initiation of ART at this very early stage leads to a drastic decrease in the size of viral reservoirs by clearing large pools of infected cells harboured in gut-associated lymphoid tissues and lymph nodes, which are known to be preferential sites for HIV persistence during ART," said Dr. Nicolas Chomont, a CRCHUM researcher and a professor at Université de Montréal.

"Although the viral reservoirs from these early treated people are extremely small, the virus is still there and one might say there is no immediate clinical benefit for now. Nonetheless, since these early treated individuals have viral reservoirs 100 times smaller compared to our control group, we could reasonably think that it will be easier to eradicate these mini-reservoirs than the large reservoirs in people who started ART later."

An outstanding cohort

Louise Leyre, the study's first author and a master student in Chomont's lab at the time of the research, analyzed blood and tissues collected from individuals at the earliest stages of HIV infection to identify the locations in which HIV reservoirs are seeded and persist during ART. Previous studies in nonhuman primates had shown that the viral reservoirs can be found preferentially in lymphoid tissues.

"It was the first time researchers had access to blood, rectal and lymph node biopsies from the same people at this very early stage of infection," said Dr. Chomont. "We owe these volunteers a lot."

For this study, the researchers used samples from 170 acutely infected individuals in Thailand with a median age of 27, who initiated ART within a median time of 2 days after diagnosis. Ninety-six per cent (164) of the participants were male.

The researchers showed that participants starting ART at the earliest infection stages, known as Fiebig I to III, demonstrated a drastic decrease in the frequency of infected cells to nearly undetectable levels throughout the body. The rare infected cells that persisted were mostly found in their lymphoid tissues. Initiation of ART in infected individuals at later stages, i.e. Fiebig IV-V or chronic infection, induced only a slight reduction in the frequency of infected cells.

According to the World Health Organization, approximately 37.9 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2018. The majority of what is known about HIV comes from research done in high-income countries, where HIV subtype B predominates. However, subtype B only accounts for 12 per cent of global HIV infections. Nearly 50 per cent of all people living with HIV have subtype C. In this study, HIV subtype AE, prevalent in the Southeastern Asia region, was investigated.

Researchers have found that a new nerve interface technology endows upper limb amputees with greater control and precision when using prosthetic hands. The interface, which worked for almost a year without adjustments in four limb amputees, could improve the durability of upper limb prostheses and enhance the quality of life for patients with upper limb loss, including by potentially reducing pre-existing pain. Peripheral nerve interfaces control neuroprostheses by registering signals from nerves in the remaining limb and translating them into movements. Nerve interfaces allow people who have lost limbs to intuitively control prosthetic replacements and to sense pressure and touch. However, many interfaces lose their function over time and require readjustment, and most platforms give implanted amputees only a limited range of independent movements. Phillip Vu and colleagues had previously created the regenerative peripheral nerve interface (RPNI) - an implanted interface that offers superior fine motor control of prosthetic hands. The RPNIs consist of a peripheral nerve that has been cut and implanted into a graft of muscle, which then regenerates and develops nerves and blood vessels over three months. In this study, the scientists implanted their RPNIs into four upper limb amputees and tested their durability and function. The RPNIs allowed the participants to make quick and complex finger and thumb movements with a prosthetic hand in real-time. The individuals also performed well in functional tests, such as grasping and moving small objects, and the interface worked for up to 300 days without requiring recalibration. Vu et al. caution that further studies are needed to compare the benefits of RPNIs with other surgical approaches.

Women's fishing activities around the world amount to an estimated 3 million tonnes of marine fish and other seafood per year, contributing significantly to food and livelihood security in all regions of the world. However, these contributions often go unnoticed.

A new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia aims to address this oversight by assembling and presenting the first quantitative estimates of catch by women and the associated value of what is brought to shore, on a global scale.

"We used a variety of sources, from national databases to local experts, to peer-reviewed and newspaper articles, in order to estimate how much women are catching in all countries and regions," said Sarah Harper, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow with the OceanCanada Partnership and the Fisheries Economics Research Unit at UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. "We calculated the value of those 3 million tonnes of seafood that women are catching to be around $5.6 billion per year or the equivalent of 12% of the landed value of all small-scale fisheries catches globally."

The fish and invertebrates that women catch go towards feeding themselves and their families with some also sold in local markets. This means that the economic impact of these catches goes beyond the initial sale in the market, adding up to some $17 billion per year.

"And if we adjust these values to account for the variation between countries in purchasing power, the economic impact of women's catches is closer to $26 billion," Harper said. "Although there is increasing attention worldwide to the role of women and gender in fisheries, these numbers further emphasize the significance of the contributions by women in a sector where their work continues to be overlooked and undervalued."

Women in Asia, Africa, and Oceania were found to have the highest rates of participation in fishing activities. Overall, 2 million women participate in nearshore coastal fisheries worldwide using low-technology fishing gear.

"For many people, the numbers may come as a surprise. Fishing has long been considered a strictly male sphere. There has been such a lack of attention to the role of women in fisheries that some fisherwomen prefer to call themselves 'fishermen' so that their contributions count as much as those of their male counterparts," said Daniel Pauly, co-author of the study and principal investigator of the Sea Around Us initiative at UBC. "What happens, then, is that when you search for participation statistics, they show that there are no women in fisheries, which is not true".

For Rashid Sumaila, co-author of the paper and head of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, the numbers highlighted in the study are especially significant in contexts where women's income goes disproportionately towards household provisioning and children's health and education.

"This study translates the important work of researchers who have been working on this topic for decades into the language of policymakers, where dollar amounts are often the currency for evaluating policy priorities," Sumaila said. "Thus, our hope is that these findings are used to design policies that promote women's participation in and contributions to the fisheries sector."

More than half of the planet's fresh water is in Antarctica. While most of it is frozen in the ice sheets, underneath the ice pools and streams of water flow into one another and into the Southern Ocean surrounding the continent. Understanding the movement of this water, and what is dissolved in it as solutes, reveals how carbon and nutrients from the land may support life in the coastal ocean.

Gathering data on the biogeochemistry of these systems is an undertaking of Antarctic proportions. Trista Vick-Majors, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at Michigan Technological University, is part of a team that gathered samples from the Whillans Subglacial Lake in West Antarctica and is lead author on a paper about the lake, recently published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

"Life is tough -- it can handle a lot," Vick-Majors said. "This paper is putting together what we know about the biology and how active it is under Antarctic ice with information about the composition of organic carbon in the lake."

Life beneath the ice puts up with a lot -- there is no sunlight and pressure from the ice above in combination with heat radiating up from the Earth's core is what melts the water to form the lake, so the temperature hovers just below freezing. Organic carbon, an important food source for microorganisms, is present in relatively high concentrations in Whillans Subglacial Lake, even if it lacks the verdant mess of a Midwest pond in late August. Instead, as cameras dropped down the borehole of Mercer Subglacial Lake (a neighbor of Whillans) reveal, the subglacial lake is dark, cold, full of soft and fluffy sediment, and lined with bubble-filled ice.

The lake bed looks more alien than earth, and studying extreme environments like this does provide insight into what extraterrestrial life could be like or how earthly life might survive in similar conditions. Not that humans, penguins or fish could handle it; life in the waters beneath Antarctica's ice is mostly microbial. They still show signs of life -- organic carbon and other chemical byproducts of living, eating, excreting and dying -- that Vick-Majors and her team can measure and budget.

Using mass balance calculations, the team's research shows that a pool of dissolved organic carbon in the Whillans Subglacial Lake can be produced in 4.8 to 11.9 years. As the lake fills and drains, which takes about the same amount of time, all those nutrients slip and slide their way to the ice-covered coast of the Southern Ocean. Based on the team's calculations, the subglacial lakes in the region provide 5,400% more organic carbon than what microbial life in the ice-covered ocean downstream needs to survive.

"There's no photosynthesis under the ice in the ocean downstream of this lake - this limits the available food and energy sources in a way that you wouldn't find in a surface lake or the open ocean," Vick-Majors said. "The idea is that these subglacial lakes that are upstream could provide important sources of energy and nutrients for things living in the ice-covered regions of the Southern Ocean."

While the Whillans Subglacial Lake on its own indicates that upstream nutrients may be an important factor, it is only a single source of data in an ice-covered complex of underground lakes, streams and estuary-like mixing zones that undergo seasonal and sporadic fluxes.

To expand their view, Vick-Majors and the rest of the team have been gathering data at other sites (Mercer Subglacial Lake was sampled by the SALSA team in early 2019), and doing so is no small feat. They make it happen with a hot water drill, a specially designed hose, a 10-liter water sampling bottle, some sediment coring devices, and a week of summery polar weather that can plunge to 20 below. The crew wears Tyvek suits and all equipment is thoroughly cleaned. They also filter the drilling water, run it past several banks of ultra-violet lights to knock down microbial contamination, and then heat it up to use the hot water to open an approximately 1000-meter borehole down to the lake.

"Some of that melted ice water, which has now circulated through the drill, is removed from the hole so that when the lake is punctured, water from the lake moves up into the borehole," Vick-Majors said, explaining that the crew has to keep the hot water from the drill separate from the lake water to keep their samples and the lake clean. "It takes about 24 hours to drill the borehole and we keep it open for a few days; gathering a single sample or letting down the cameras can take two hours or more, depending on the equipment."

And the hole keeps trying to refreeze. Plus, Vick-Majors is not a lone scientist; she is embedded in an interdisciplinary team and everyone needs access to the borehole for different experiments. But for all the tight logistics and cold toes, she says it's worth it.

"There is water and there is life under the ice," Vick-Majors said. "These can teach us a lot about our planet because this is a great place to look at somewhat simplified ecosystems, without higher levels of organisms. So we can answer questions about life that can be really hard to answer in other places."

The flip side is that physical-biological interactions can be still be complicated in these environments; the paper is step towards understanding them. The subglacial lakes of West Antarctica are almost otherworldly and simultaneously grant insight into the possibilities for exoplanet environments while revealing the deep, water-kept secrets of our own world.

March 4, 2020 -- The U.S. is witnessing a dramatic rise in nontraditional 'gig economy' labor markets where workers are hired for single projects often on a short-term basis. An estimated 0.4% of U.S. adults are currently receiving income from such platforms each month. Research conducted based on collaboration between Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and CloudResearch.com examined the work of over 20,000 men and women completing over 5 million tasks online, and found a gender pay gap not accounted for by demographics, task preferences, or experience. On average, women's hourly earnings were 10.5% lower than men's. This is the first study to provide evidence that pay gaps can arise despite the absence of overt discrimination, labor segregation, and inflexible work arrangements. The findings are published online in PLOS ONE.

"Our goal was to examine a highly unique labor environment, characterized by factors that should make this labor market relatively immune to the emergence of a gender pay gap. Nevertheless, our results showed evidence of a gender wage gap not fully accounted for by such factors as task heterogeneity, experience, and task completion speed," said Lisa Bates, ScD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School.

The researchers collected data from the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform, an online platform that connects employers ('requesters') to employees ('workers') who perform jobs called "Human Intelligence Tasks" (HITs). "Due to factors that are unique to the Mechanical Turk online marketplace - such as anonymity, self-selection into tasks, relative homogeneity of the tasks performed, and flexible work scheduling - we did not expect earnings to differ by gender on this platform. However, contrary to our expectations, a robust and persistent gender pay gap was observed," said Zohn Rosen, PhD, in the Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School.

The analysis of nearly 5 million tasks completed during an 18-month period between January 2016 and June 2017 by 12,312 female and 9,959 male workers from 2014 show that men and women completed comparable numbers of tasks during the study period; 2,396,978 (49%) for men and 2,539,229 (51%) for women.

Although task completion speed appeared to account for some of the gap, a significant portion of it seems to result from women selecting tasks that have a lower advertised hourly pay. The authors hypothesize, "Women may select lower paying tasks because cumulative experiences of pervasive discrimination lead women to undervalue their labor. In turn, women's experiences with earning lower pay compared to men on traditional labor markets may lower women's pay expectations on gig economy markets. Therefore, consistent with these lowered expectations, women may be more likely than men to settle for lower paying tasks," said Leib Litman, PhD, co-author and associate professor, Touro College, and co-founder, CloudResearch.com.

An examination of the advertised gender pay gap among individuals who differed in their marital and parental status also showed women's hourly pay is consistently lower than men's within both single and married subgroups of workers, and among workers who do and do not have children.

"This study represents an important and novel contribution to the literature on the gender pay gap," said Bates. "Future research should explore the observed gender pay gap in this niche of the gig economy and seek to understand how it may both reflect broader gender inequalities and point to opportunities for structural remedies."

ADELPHI, Md. -- Researchers at the Army's corporate laboratory in collaboration with the University of California, Riverside have identified an approach to network security that will enhance the effectiveness and timeliness of protection against adversarial intrusion and evasion strategies.

Networked devices and infrastructure are becoming increasingly complex, making it nearly impossible to verify an entire system, and new attacks are continuously being developed.

To rapidly protect Army systems from attack in ways that don't require massive amounts of manual intervention, the researchers have developed and approach called SymTCP.

SymTCP is a proposed approach that can be used to identify previously unknown ways to bypass deep packet inspection, or DPI, checks in networked appliances, often what internet service providers use to prevent malicious attacks from being launched or to censor certain content.

"Identifying strategies that attackers use to evade DPI in networked systems has been generally a manual process," said Dr. Kevin Chan, researcher at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory. "This research provides an automated method to identify potential vulnerabilities in the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP, state machines of DPI implementation."

Chan stated that this research has found previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in TCP, which is what the internet is built on; most of internet traffic is TCP. However, it is very difficult to find vulnerabilities in the implementation of TCP, as some of these vulnerabilities are found in obscure parts of the code and require a specific sequence of packets to be sent in order to trigger the vulnerability.

"Our approach uses symbolic execution to explore the state of TCP implementation of an endhost to identify ways to reach critical points in the code," Chan said. "If such a point is found, then packets can be inserted and be undetected by DPI. This method is evaluated against several state-of-the-art DPI systems such as Zeek and Snort and identifies previously known evasion strategies in addition to new ones that were not previously documented."

The search space is enormous, and being able to make sense of the state and explore it efficiently is a great achievement, Chan said.

"This research will improve the security of Army networks in terms of being able to protect against future intrusion and evasion strategies," Chan said. "It has developed an efficient way to find and patch vulnerabilities in future Army network infrastructure."

According to the researchers, information must be securely transmitted between domains (i.e. air and land) and within domains (i.e. cyber domains) for various Army functions, making this research crucial to each of the Army Modernization Priorities in support of enabling Multi-Domain Operations, with direct applicability to the Army's Network Modernization Priority.

"This type of research helps focus cyber defense resources," said Dr. Tracy Braun, computer scientist at CCDC ARL. "It can reveal weaknesses and suggest more efficient deployments of network defenses. This helps protect networks against advanced attacks. It can also help guide the design of future Army network infrastructure and cyber defense strategies."

This collaborative research endeavor was made possible by ARL's Cyber Security Collaborative Research Alliance, which has the objective to develop a fundamental understanding of cyber phenomena, including aspects of human attackers, cyber defenders and end users, so that fundamental laws, theories, and theoretically grounded and empirically validated models can be applied to a broad range of Army domains, applications and environments.

CRAs are partnerships between Army laboratories and centers, private industry and academia that are focusing on the rapid transition of innovative science and technology for Army modernization.

"Collaboration by the teams of academic, industry and government researchers in the CRA, including students, builds enduring relationships and maintains a focus on cross-cutting foundational research addressing important Army challenges," said Dr. Michael Frame, Cyber Security CRA collaborative alliance manager.

The team's research was accepted to be presented at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium 2020, which took place Feb. 23-26 in San Diego, California.

The Network and Distributed System Security Symposium fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners of network and distributed system security. The target audience includes those interested in practical aspects of network and distributed system security, with a focus on actual system design and implementation. A major goal is to encourage and enable the Internet community to apply, deploy and advance the state of available security technologies.

According to Dr. Zhiyun Qian, Everett and Imogene Ross associate professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California Riverside, future research includes the continuous analysis of future generation of DPI boxes, as well as better designs of DPIs that can be made robust against evasion attempts.

Physicists have unraveled a mystery behind the strange behavior of electrons in a ferromagnet, a finding that could eventually help develop high temperature superconductivity.
A Rutgers co-authored study of the unusual ferromagnetic material appears in the journal Nature.

The Rutgers Center for Materials Theory, a world leader in the field, studies “quantum phase transitions.” Phase transitions, such as when ice melts, usually require heat to jiggle atoms and melt ice crystals. Quantum phase transitions are driven by the jiggling of atoms and electrons that result from fluctuations that never cease even at low temperatures.
A quantum phase transition can be achieved by tuning a material to enhance quantum fluctuations, either by applying a magnetic field or exposing it to intense pressure when the temperature is near absolute zero. In certain quantum phase transitions, the quantum fluctuations become infinitely intense, forming a “quantum critical point.” These unusual states of matter are of great interest because of their propensity to form superconductors. Think of it as like an electronic stem cell, a form of matter that can transform itself in many ways.
Meanwhile, in the weird world of quantum mechanics, “entanglement” allows something to be in two different states or places at the same time. The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, which features a cat that is simultaneously dead and alive, is an example of entanglement.
Inside materials with electrons moving through them, entanglement often involves the spin of electrons, which can be simultaneously up and down. Typically, only electrons near each other are entangled in quantum materials, but at a quantum critical point, the entanglement patterns can change abruptly, spreading out across the material and transforming it. Electrons, even distant ones, become entangled.

Ferromagnets are an unlikely setting for studying quantum entanglement because the electrons moving through them align in one direction instead of spinning up and down. But physicists found that the ferromagnetism in “Cerge,” (CeRh6Ge4) a ferromagnet, must have a large amount of entanglement with electrons that spin up and down and are connected with each other. That had never been seen in ferromagnets.
“We believe our work, connecting entanglement with the strange metal and ferromagnets, provides important clues for our efforts to understand superconductors that work at room temperature,” said co-author Piers Coleman, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “As we learn to understand how nature controls entanglement in matter, we hope we’ll develop the skills to control quantum entanglement inside quantum computers and to design and develop new kinds of quantum matter useful for technology.”
Rutgers scientists have used some of their findings to propose a new theory for a family of iron-based superconductors that were discovered about 10 years ago. “If we are right, these systems, like ferromagnets, are driven by forces that like to align electrons,” Coleman said.
Yashar Komijani, a Rutgers post-doctoral associate, is one of three co-lead authors. Scientists at Zhejiang University in China, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Germany and Nanjing University in China contributed to the study.

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-020-2052-z

Entomologists at UC Riverside have documented that a species of native sweat bee widespread throughout North and South America has a daily routine that makes it a promising pollinator.

Because the bee can thrive in environments that have been highly modified by humans, such as cities and agricultural areas, it could become a suitable supplement to honeybees, which are expensive for farmers to rent and threatened by pesticides and climate change.

Sweat bees are not as famous as their prolific cousin, the European honeybee, but are common in natural, urban, and agricultural areas in North America. Sweat bees, along with other native bees like bumble bees, are valuable pollinators of many wildflowers and cultivated crop plants, yet often do not receive the level of public attention that honeybees do.

In a paper published in the journal Ecology, Ph.D. candidate Jacob Cecala, and Erin Wilson Rankin, an associate professor of entomology, describe in-depth for the first time a foraging behavior of a small, common, and often-overlooked species of sweat bee, Halictus ligatus. The species is classified as a "generalist," meaning it is known to feed on many kinds of flowers. But no one knew how flexible individuals are in their flower selection, and whether an individual's floral choices varied day-to-day.

To explore this species' daily routine, Cecala captured sweat bees while feeding on flowers in several commercial plant nurseries across Southern California. Nurseries grow many different species of plants in close proximity to one another, so they are useful for studying bees' foraging choices. He marked the bees with different colored dots of non-toxic paint to track which plants they were visiting.

He returned the next day and caught almost 52% of the marked bees again. Cecala repeated this experiment four times in summer and four times in autumn and recaptured around 50% each time. Virtually all--96%--were found on the same plant species as on the first day, indicating that most individual bees fed on the same plant species day-to-day. The findings suggest it is common for individual bees to make consistent choices about what to forage on across days.

"These results are encouraging given that plant nurseries are, relatively speaking, artificial man-made habitats. You would expect really intense agricultural and urban areas to be pretty devoid of biodiversity but these native bees are flying around and visiting the plants and using them as pollen and nectar resources," Cecala said.

The study also documented a 45% higher probability of recapturing the bees on California native plant species than on plant species exotic to California. This varied somewhat by season. Recapture rates were higher on the native plants in the summer, suggesting seasonal differences in how the bees forage. While this suggests native plants are more valuable to these bees, many individuals still showed fidelity to non-native plants.

Much remains to be learned about Halictus ligatus feeding behaviors, but the high plant fidelity reported in the study probably indicates a smaller foraging range, which would be consistent with their small body size, and useful for commercial pollination.

Even though the study took place inside plant nurseries, its findings have implications for commercial crop pollination on farms. While farmers must pay to rent commercial honeybee hives, native bees like sweat bees provide pollination services free of charge.

"Honeybees, which are larger, forage much farther," Rankin added. "Even if you put honeybees in your field there's nothing to say they're not actually going two farms over, whereas these sweat bees forage repeatedly on plants right around the area where they live."

"These wild bees are pretty good, consistent pollinators," Cecala said. "If you have these sweat bees in the area, it's in your best interest to conserve them in whatever way you can, because they are probably visiting crops each day, not just passing through."

This study reinforces that certain plants publicly available at nurseries can serve as dependable resources for native bees. By planting a variety of different flowers around their homes, and ensuring they are free of insecticides, anyone can help these native bees.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Cells depend on signaling to regulate most life processes, including cell growth and differentiation, immune response and reactions to various stresses.

And while scientists have identified enzymes that remove a chemical modification known as lysine myristoylation - a "code" used for cell signaling - the enzymes that add such modifications have proved elusive. Knowledge of such modifications would allow scientists to chemically regulate cell signaling, leading to practical applications in treating human diseases such as slowing the growth of cancerous cells and inhibiting viral infections.

New research, published Feb. 26 in Nature Communications, identifies an enzyme - N-terminal glycine myristoyltransferases (NMT) 1 and 2 - which adds lysine myristoylation to a key protein.

Hening Lin, professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the College of Arts and Sciences, is senior author of "NMT1 and NMT2 are Lysine Myristoyltransferases Regulating the ARF6 GTPase Cycle."

Lin and his lab report the mechanism of adding and removing the lysine myristoylation code to the signaling protein ADP-ribosylation factor 6 (ARF6).

"The modification we discovered occurs to many proteins that are important for cell signaling," Lin said. "This is also the first time this kind of enzymatic activity has been identified in mammals."

Just like a set of flight instructions directs a pilot to fly a correct route, biochemical mechanisms ordered by these enzymes give proteins directions for moving through different subcellular locations in the most efficient way, Lin said. Without the proper chemical code, a protein might travel through the cell inefficiently or incorrectly.

"In our cells, there are certain proteins, such as ARF6, which need to go from A to B to C, then back to A, because that's what's required for transporting other proteins in a cycle," Lin said. "That's what we found - the mechanism that makes sure the protein ARF6 follows that path."

The researchers found that this mechanism takes place in human cells of many kinds. They believe that all mammalian cells operate in a similar way.

In addition to telling ARF6 where to go, NMT1 and NMT2 also help to activate the protein. This provides a new way to regulate the protein, which will in turn allow scientists to control it, leading to possible medical applications, said Tatsiana Kosciuk, doctoral student in biochemistry and lead author of the study. Since some cancer cells cycle at a high rate, slowing that cycle through drug inhibitors may slow cancer cell growth.

"This could be a potential therapeutic strategy," said Kosciuk, a member of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow Program. "If we target one of these enzymes, we can control the activity of this very important protein that is implicated in a variety of diseases."

There is also evidence that NMT could modify other proteins in a similar way, hinting at other potential applications of targeting this chemical modification. "There are numerous disease implications in this finding," Kosciuk said. "We're still working on it, but it looks promising."

A lithium-ion battery that is safe, has high power and can last for 1 million miles has been developed by a team in Penn State's Battery and Energy Storage Technology (BEST) Center.

Electric vehicle batteries typically require a tradeoff between safety and energy density. If the battery has high energy and power density, which is required for uphill driving or merging on the freeway, then there is a chance the battery can catch fire or explode in the wrong conditions. But materials that have low energy/power density, and therefore high safety, tend to have poor performance. There is no material that satisfies both. For that reason, battery engineers opt for performance over safety.

"In this work we decided we were going to take a totally different approach," said Chao-Yang Wang, professor of mechanical, chemical and materials science and engineering, and William E. Diefenderfer Chair in Mechanical Engineering, Penn State. "We divided our strategy into two steps. First we wanted to build a highly stable battery with highly stable materials."

Their second step was to introduce instant heating. About four years ago, Wang developed a self-heating battery to overcome the problem of poor performance in cold climates. The battery uses an electric current to heat up in seconds compared to the hours an external heater required. By heating the battery from room temperature to around 140 degrees Fahrenheit -- 60 degrees Celsius -- the battery gets an instant boost in reactivity because the law of kinetics is that reactivity increases exponentially with temperature.

"With these two steps I can get high safety when the battery is not being used and high power when it is," he said.

The self-heating battery, called the All Climate battery, has been adopted by several car companies, including BMW, and was chosen to power a fleet of 10,000 vehicles that will be used to ferry people between venues at the next Winter Olympics in Beijing.

The BEST Center tests the safety of the battery using nail penetration equipment. They drive the nail into the cell causing short circuiting. They then monitor the cell for temperature and voltage. The difference in temperature for the passivated cell was 212 degrees F -- 100 degrees C --compared to a standard battery cell which was 1,832 degrees F -- 1000 degrees C, an enormous improvement.

Because their batteries are built using stable materials, they have a long cycle life. Even at 140 degrees F, their cycle number is over 4000, which translates to over a million miles.

The team's next project will be to develop a solid-state battery, which will likely require heating as well.

The current work appears in the journal Science Advances and is titled "A new approach to both safety and high performance of lithium-ion batteries." Wang's coauthors are research assistant professors Shanhai Ge, Yongjun Leng and Xiao-Guang Yang, and doctoral students Teng Liu, Ryan Longchamps, Yue Gao and Daiwei Wang. Donghai Wang, professor of mechanical and of chemical engineering, Penn State, also participated in this work.

The Department of Energy funded this work.

In a recent study, scientists at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute (RRI) found that research participants moved their eyes to determine whether they had seen an image before, and that their eye movement patterns could predict mistakes in memory. They obtained these results using an innovative new eye tracking technique they developed.

"Our findings indicate that eye movements play a functional role in memory retrieval," says Dr. Jennifer Ryan, senior scientist at the RRI and Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory. "They can tell us a lot about someone's memory."

This study builds on previous Baycrest research examining the link between eye movements and memory, including the role of our eye movements in memorization and the weakening connection between our eye movements and our brain activity as we age.

"When we see a picture, a face or something else that we have already seen, our eyes tend to look at the same locations as they did the first time. The brain compares important characteristics of what we are seeing to a mental picture in our memory, and it identifies the two as the same," says Dr. Bradley Buchsbaum, senior scientist at the RRI. "The brain is pretty good at this, even in conditions of lower visibility."

"If we see someone in the distance, or if their face is partially hidden by branches, our brain will compare the features that are visible to a mental picture to determine whether we know that person," says Jordana Wynn, lead researcher on this study, former PhD student at the RRI and current fellow at Harvard University.

This phenomenon is called "pattern completion." When it goes wrong, we may end up mistakenly waving to a stranger if he or she has similar hair or a similar nose to someone we know.

In this study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), participants were first asked to memorize a series of 30 new images on a screen. Next, they viewed another series, this time containing both some of the previously seen images and some new-but-similar images. They were then asked to indicate whether they had seen each one before. Their eye movements were tracked during both stages. Each image was shown briefly, ranging from 250 milliseconds to 750 milliseconds, before the participants were instructed to visualize it while looking at a blank screen.

Participants were highly accurate in identifying previously seen images as old, scoring almost 90%. They were more likely to be correct if their eye movements were the same as when they initially saw the image. On the other hand, they performed less well, at 70%, when faced with a new-but-similar image. In the latter case, the more participants repeated their initial viewing pattern instead of focusing on the different aspects of the image, the more likely they were to incorrectly identify the image as old.

To emulate real-world situations where we don't have full information, the researchers also used incomplete, or "degraded," versions of images. This ranged from 0 to 80% degradation, in the form of grey squares covering parts of the image. Remarkably, even when the image was 80% degraded, performance was much better than pure guessing, reflecting the strength of pattern completion.

"Using our eye tracking technique, we were able to map the participants' eye movements and observe that they were mentally picturing an image that they could not see," says Wynn. "They were using pattern completion."

Many studies have examined pattern completion over the past decades, but with one critical weakness. "These studies have all been based on the untested assumption that we can infer pattern completion is happening when participants mistakenly 'recognize' images that they have not seen before," says Wynn. "Our study is the first to use eye movement analysis, rather than behaviour, to show that people are in fact retrieving a memory of an old image when they make this mistake."

This study's findings have important implications in terms of assessing memory. "Some of the traditional tests used to diagnose memory impairments are quite verbal," says Dr. Ryan. "They often require good command of the English language, which can be a problem in a multicultural city like Toronto."

"With eye tracking, you don't have to ask people what they remember. You can just look at their eyes. This gives us a lot more information about their memory than we thought," says Dr. Buchsbaum.

This work was made possible with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

With additional funding, the researchers could further examine the role of eye movements in memory retrieval. "This could lead to the development of better screening tools for dementia, which is the ultimate hope," says Dr. Ryan.

A new study links being overweight in middle age and later adulthood to a greater risk of advanced prostate cancer. Jeanine Genkinger, PhD, an epidemiologist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues published the study in Annals of Oncology, the journal of the European Society for Medical Oncology and Japanese Society of Medical Oncology.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer in men in the United States. Fewer than one in three men with advanced prostate cancer live five years beyond diagnosis.

Before this study, only a few studies examined contributing factors to advanced prostate cancer. There was an especially noticeable lack of research on the linkage between factors like weight in early adulthood, changes in weight during adulthood, and waist circumference, specifically with advanced prostate cancer risk.

Using data from 15 large studies combined together, Genkinger examined associations between body fat, height, and prostate cancer risk in 830,772 men, 51,734 of whom had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Her study took a life-course-based approach, examining survey data collected across respondents' lifespans to determine whether and at what age during adulthood excess body fat increased risk for advanced prostate cancer. The researchers found that a BMI elevated above a healthy weight during middle to late adulthood--median age range from 50 to 64--was linked to the greatest risk for developing advanced prostate cancer. A "healthy" weight is defined as a BMI between 21 and 25 kg/m2.

They also found that greater waist circumference was linked with increased risk of advanced prostate cancer and death. Although other studies have linked higher BMI with increased prostate cancer, this is the first study to find a positive association with waist circumference.

"These study results show that risk for advanced prostate cancer can be decreased by maintaining a 'healthy' weight, which is in line with guidelines by the American Cancer Society and World Cancer Research Fund. Adopting healthy eating and exercising are factors that can help maintain a healthy weight," says Genkinger, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School. "This study shows that adopting and maintaining healthy weight in middle to late adulthood can especially reduce risk of advanced prostate cancer."

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Nearly 30% of the $3.6 trillion spent on health care costs in the United States is wasted. New research from Michigan State University and Rutgers University reveals the amount of money washed away in hospital operating rooms, offering solutions to save hospitals - and the country - millions of dollars each year.

The paper, published in the Journal of Operations Management, found that five to 10 minutes were added to each surgery due to unplanned supplies. Additionally, an average $1,800 per surgery - nearly $28 million annually - could be saved by more frequently planning the supplies needed for a surgery.

"This problem is due to the fact that quality of care has always taken precedence over cost -- and rightly so," said Anand Nair, professor of operations and supply chain management. "However, with increasing pressure on health care organizations, they are trying to find ways to jointly increase quality and reduce costs."

Nair - along with co-authors David Dreyfus, assistant professor at Rutgers Business School and alumnus of MSU's doctoral program, and Claudia Rosales, assistant professor of supply chain management at MSU - found that not only do unplanned costs affect a hospital's bottom line, but they can also endanger patients under anesthesia with potentially harmful complications.

The team spent more than 250 hours observing hospital operating rooms, taking note of processes, preparation and performance of 92 surgeries. Ultimately, they found that the greatest issue stems from a lack of standardization for the planning processes.

"In most hospitals, every surgeon is allowed to make their own decisions in terms of equipment and supplies," Nair said. "Surgeons are comfortable using certain supplies due to their past experiences; this increases the variance among items and the number of items that hospitals need to carry in inventory."

Surgeons request equipment and supplies they need on what's called a physician preference card, or PPC.

With different surgeons requesting preferred equipment for procedures, hospitals end up fulfilling multiple personalized requests, Nair explained. Additionally, without a standardized planning process, teams must address supply shortages during surgery, which can reduce quality, increase costs and present possibilities of potential security lapses.

"If a doctor doesn't have what they immediately need, a surgical team member must find it, which becomes an unplanned cost - and potentially a health risk if they leave the area," Nair said. "On the other hand, if a surgeon requests something that isn't necessary for the surgery, it's simply a waste of money."

Nair explained that some surgeons err on the side of caution and carry supplies in case they might be needed. While this is important given the critical nature of surgeries, a more standardized use of PPCs - along with audits of what supplies are on them - will allow hospitals to reduce redundancies.

Nair explained that minor changes in processes can add up to big savings.

"Managing medical supplies is a critical aspect of the health care supply chain," Nair said.

"Mechanisms need to be put in place to provide more learning opportunities from such operational failures for long-term benefits to happen."

Another complication in hospital rooms is that surgical teams change often, which makes it difficult to communicate which supplies on the PPC aren't consistently used. Open communication among surgical teams helps anticipate needs and reduces unplanned costs in a surgery.

The researchers acknowledge that savings aren't always immediate, but that progress happens along the way during any procedure.

"Our research should encourage hospitals to embrace systems that can better track unplanned costs and plan ahead," Nair said. "Hospitals should explore methods to incentivize surgeons to plan more often. This may be achieved by providing visibility about unplanned costs and workarounds, offering greater control on administering supplies and rewarding for unplanned cost reduction."

ITHACA, N.Y. - "Scooter clutter" has been a concern amplified by media reports in urban areas where micromobility has entered the landscape, with large numbers of dockless scooters and shared e-bikes on city streets and sidewalks. But a recent study finds that motor vehicles are still the main offender by far when it comes to blocking access by other travelers.

Research co-authored by Nicholas Klein, assistant professor of city and regional planning at Cornell University, offers data on the impacts of scooters and bikeshare vehicles in five American cities.

The research is translatable and replicable, to help inform cities' efforts in reimagining public streets and sidewalks. Some cities are considering new parking regulations and seeking other planning and policy solutions for these shared scooters and bikes, which have been introduced to more than 100 cities since 2018.

A paper, published in Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, investigated scooter, bike and car parking behavior in Austin, Texas; Portland, Oregon; San Francisco and Santa Monica, California; and Washington, D.C. The research was led by Anne Brown of the University of Oregon School of Planning, Public Policy and Management.

Researchers collected 3,666 observations of e-scooters, bikes, motor vehicles and "sidewalk objects" such as sandwich boards. Research assistants recorded parking behavior on both sides of a busy commercial corridor for three days, eight hours each day. They observed parked cars, scooters and bicycles, as well as sidewalk furniture including advertising, construction materials and sidewalk-mounted elevator or stair-access doors.

The study found that parking noncompliance rates across the five cities were far higher for motor vehicles (24.7% of 2,631 motor vehicles observed) than for micromobility vehicles (0.8% of 865 scooter and bike observations).

Food delivery and ride-hailing vehicles accounted for a disproportionate number of improper parking incidents impeding access or mobility for other travelers, Klein said. Most of these violations occurred while dropping off or picking up people or food, including double parking, occupying "No Parking" or restricted areas and blocking driveways.

The findings suggest that the presence of micromobility companies and other technology-enabled transportation services should motivate cities to rethink their parking policies, the researchers said.