Culture

DALLAS - July 20, 2021 - UT Southwestern researchers report the first structural confirmation that endogenous - or self-made - molecules can set off innate immunity in mammals via a pair of immune cell proteins called the TLR4?MD-2 receptor complex. The work has wide-ranging implications for finding ways to treat and possibly prevent autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and antiphospholipid syndrome.

The TLR4?MD-2 receptor complex is well known for its role in the body's response to infection by gram-negative bacteria. Its role in autoimmunity had been long suspected, although direct proof was lacking. The team, led by Nobel Laureate Bruce Beutler, M.D., director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense (CGHD), identified lipids called sulfatides that can activate the innate immunity sensor TLR4, located on a cell's membrane. His discovery of the genes behind the TLR4 receptor and its role in the body's earliest response to infection - innate immunity - led to his 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Beutler is corresponding author of the study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that used X-ray crystallography to confirm how sulfatides bind to the receptor complex. Lead author Lijing Su, Ph.D., a CGHD assistant professor with a secondary appointment in biophysics, conducted the X-ray crystallography at UT Southwestern's Structural Biology Core Facility and at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.

"For many years, the question of whether endogenous - or self - molecules can activate innate immune receptors has been an important one," says Beutler, a professor of immunology and internal medicine. "Scientists had observed that our own nucleic acids can activate TLRs 3, 7, 8, and 9, causing inflammation and autoimmunity. Many endogenous ligands for TLR4, most of them proteins, have been proposed. This is the first study to substantiate the existence of such a TLR4 ligand, meaning a molecule that fits into the receptor, by structural studies."

The team's structural studies of mouse TLR4?MD-2 in complex with sulfatides gave a detailed look at how sulfatides bind to the U-shaped side of the receptor complex in order to activate it. That binding sets off biological pathways that lead to the body's inflammatory response.

The study, which raises new and important questions, includes some observations about differences in the way the receptor responds in mice and humans. It also raises new questions about how the chemical makeup of individual sulfatides might affect the way they interact with the receptor complex to activate or suppress the immune response.

"Our work demonstrates that these, or perhaps other endogenous lipids, may indeed trigger activation of TLR4," Beutler says, adding that TLR4 usually acts as a sensor of lipopolysaccharide (a lipid plus sugar molecule) - also known as endotoxin - that resides on gram-negative bacteria. TLR4-LPS binding is implicated in sepsis, a potentially deadly condition in which the immune system goes into overdrive in response to infection.

Su adds that she and others in the Beutler lab previously reported that TLR4 and its co-receptor MD-2 can be activated by a synthetic small molecule called neoseptin-3, created in collaboration with the laboratory of Dale Boger, Ph.D., at The Scripps Research Institute, which shares no structural similarity to the natural microbial ligand, LPS.

"Our crystal structure of mouse TLR4?MD-2 in complex with neoseptin-3 revealed that this receptor complex might accommodate multiple small molecules rather than a big molecule like LPS," Su explains. "This result led us to look for natural lipids that might bind and activate TLR4?MD-2 signaling. Among early candidates were phosphoceramides, but these failed to activate the receptor. Structural features of sulfatides, and their great abundance in some tissues, led us to test them instead, and we confirmed that some sulfatides do indeed activate TLR4."

In one out of every six local authorities, rates of hunger are more than 150 per cent (one and a half times) the national average. Shockingly, in one in 10 local authorities, the rate is almost double, according to new research by the University of Sheffield.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield Institute for Sustainable Food modelled data from the Food Foundation, who surveyed people across the UK, and for the first time were able to identify food insecurity at a local authority scale. Local authority percentages show the marked variation in levels of food insecurity between local areas and, whereas national and even regional averages, hide this difference.

According to data from the Food Foundation, in January 2021, 4.2 per cent of adults across the UK reported that during the previous month they had been hungry but unable to eat at least once, but the problem is much worse in some places with nearly one out of every ten adults going hungry.

This new analysis of the national data collected during the pandemic goes further to assess the problem at a local authority level and breaks down experiences of food insecurity into three distinct groups, mapping them for the first time:

Those who are hungry include people who indicated that they were hungry but were unable to eat food because they could not afford it, or were unable to access food in the previous month.

Those who are struggling to access food, include those who may have sought help within the last month with access to food, have cut back on meals and healthy foods to stretch tight budgets, or indicated that they struggled to access food in some way. In some places the rate is as high as 28 per cent of adults.

Those who worry about food insecurity or being able to continue to supply adequate food for their household. These people may be just about managing but could slip into food insecurity as a result of an unexpected crisis.

Data, represented on a map of the UK identifies which local authorities are most affected within all four nations of the UK. The map shows it is in England where the areas with the highest and lowest rates of food insecurity are located. At one end of the scale, the majority of local authorities in Yorkshire and the Humber are in the top 20 per cent of local authorities with the greatest percentages of adults going hungry, whereas in the East of England, the majority of local authorities are in the 20 per cent that have the lowest percentages.

Across the Sheffield City Region, both Rotherham and Barnsley are in the 20 per cent of local authorities with the highest percentages of adults who were hungry at least once in January. While Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster are all in the 20 per cent of local authorities with the highest percentages of adults who were most likely to have struggled to access food.

The areas worst hit by food insecurity are Wycombe [1] with 14 per cent of people who are estimated to be hungry and nearly 30 percent of people who are struggling to access food. The area also has high estimates for numbers of people who are worried about having enough food (22 per cent). This is followed closely by Hull with 13 per cent of people being hungry and more than one in five adults who struggled to access food. The locality with least hunger, struggle or worry is St. Albans.

Food insecurity is the inability to consistently afford, access and utilise the food needed to maintain good health and wellbeing. The problem has become well known in recent years due to the rise in reporting on food bank usage in the UK; the Food Foundation has been tracking household food insecurity UK-wide showing more people living with the daily effects of poor diets and limited food access.

Typically measures of moderate and severe food insecurity use three indicators: skipping meals for a whole day or more, not having enough food and going hungry, and shrinking or skipping meals with 7.4 per cent of adults reported one or more of these experiences in the one month running up to January 2021.

In this study, the second indicator comprises the Hungry measure. The estimates for the struggling with food access measure include those who skipped or shrank meals, and also includes those who indicated that they sought help when they were food insecure, and those who gave a reason for not having enough food.

The worry measure is not generally included in other estimates of food insecurity; however, this group is likely to be at increased risk of food insecurity. They will struggle to include healthy food in their diets and be bearing the mental strain of trying to make their budgets stretch.

Dr Megan Blake from the University of Sheffield Institute for Sustainable Food, who collaborated on the work, said: "This new map, for the first time, makes visible the patterns of food insecurity across the UK. While no one should have to go hungry, struggle to get or worry about having enough food, in some places it is at proportions that are especially shocking, particularly as we are a wealthy country. If we are going to recover from Covid-19 we must address this problem."

This new analysis of the data shows how not everyone living with food insecurity experiences hunger on the same level, making apparent that an alarmingly large number of people also actively plan to go without food to make ends meet, or worry about doing so. The burden of these forms of food insecurity also immediately threatens people's health and wellbeing.

For some, living on the edge of food insecurity may mean an event such as a car or boiler breakdown or an unexpected illness, could be the tipping point that squeezes their food budget, and they have to plan to eat less, or skip meals altogether.

This in turn can be linked to higher rates of illness and obesity due to people buying cheaper foods, which store longer and are more filling, over healthier choices.

Kris Gibbon-Walsh, from FareShare - the UK's national network of charitable surplus food redistributors, and the Emergencies Partnership, said: "The best way to become food secure is to have the health and money to go to the shops, buy the nutritious food you need for your family and the knowledge to cook it. People should not need to rely on charity to access food, however charities can do a huge amount of good work with food to support their communities, bring people together and stop them becoming food insecure in the first place.

"Having a map of food insecurity in the UK allows FareShare and other food organisations to understand the geographical implications of where we send our food and make decisions, not only about where the food goes, but also how the local foodscape can best support its community out of food insecurity."

Anna Taylor, Executive Director, Food Foundation said: "We've known from tracking food insecurity at a national level during the pandemic that Covid-19 has pushed households across the UK further into hardship and forced a newly vulnerable segment of society to seek help for the first time.

"Local authorities have played a leading role in strengthening charitable food provision for the vulnerable during the crisis and many now have a good understanding of levels of need in their area. But this new study makes clear the variation in food access and vulnerability to food insecurity from one local authority to the next across the UK. It should provide a valuable resource to inform and drive targeted policy action at the local level in response to the data to eradicate food insecurity and deliver on the levelling up agenda."

Dr Megan Blake, added: "We hope this clear breakdown of the data will be a useful resource for local authorities and the government to use to address the challenges facing all people living with food insecurity, and that help can be tailored and targeted to those communities who need it, as the answer is not as simple as opening more food banks."

"Food insecurity is undermining our chances of recovery after Covid-19. We need to urgently address this issue that pervades so many of our communities. No one should have to be hungry."

Persistence may be the key when quitting smoking using an electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS), commonly known as vaping, a University of Otago study found.

Researchers found people attempting to switch from cigarettes to ENDS reported highly varied smoking and ENDS use. They recommend people persist in their attempts to transition away from smoking, even if their progress feels slow and uncertain.

Lead author Associate Professor Tamlin Conner, of the Department of Psychology, says, although people may plan to use ENDS exclusively instead of cigarettes, making the switch is not always straightforward.

"We found that dual use of ENDS and cigarettes was very common, suggesting that people tested but had difficulty successfully substituting ENDS for smoking," she says.

For the study, published this month in International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the researchers recruited 45 people who wanted to quit smoking, gave each participant an ENDS device, and prompted participants to report their ENDS use and smoking each day for up to 20 weeks using a smartphone survey.

The researchers examined how participants' patterns of smoking and ENDS use changed over this extended period. The daily diary survey was part of a wider mixed qualitative and quantitative study of smoking to ENDS transitions funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund to Principal Investigator Professor Janet Hoek and her collaborators.

Aided by innovative data visualisations created by co-authors Dr Jimmy Zeng and Vicky He, the research team found considerable variety in how people used their ENDS.

The most common behaviour pattern was dual use of cigarettes and ENDS, then exclusive ENDS use and back to dual use. A smaller group reported moving from dual use to exclusive smoking, and often back to dual use. Another small group reported moving between abstinence and different ENDS use and smoking behaviours.

"Not any one person's journey to quit smoking is the same. Some people take up exclusive vaping relatively quickly in several weeks, others take longer from 12 - 20 weeks, or do not transition at all and continue smoking. People who wish to switch to exclusive vaping should view this variability as typical and should persevere in their efforts to switch," Associate Professor Conner says.

Professor Hoek believes this variability has implications for smoking cessation programmes.

"Classifying behaviours using point-prevalence categories, like achieving 'smoke free' status after 12 weeks, may be simplistic, especially during the early stages of an ENDS-assisted quit attempt. Cessation support programmes involving ENDS may need to run for longer than the conventional 12-weeks to ensure people have access to support during what could be an extended period of movement between smoking and ENDS use," she explains.

Associate Professor Conner also wanted to remind people that ENDS are not a risk-free alternative to smoking cigarettes.

"Although vaping can assist some people in quitting cigarettes, people should regard their use as a transition phase and aim to quit vaping when they think their risk of relapse back to smoking is very low."

A new quantitative study suggests people seeking asylum are more likely to experience mental health deterioration as they spend more time living in refugee camps, backing up qualitative evidence from aid organisations.

The research, co-authored by Dr Francisco Urzua from the Business School (formerly Cass) alongside practitioners from Moria Medical Support (MMS) and academics from Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile and University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands measured incidences of acute mental health crises arising from extended stays in the Moria refugee camp on the western Greek Island of Lesbos.

Key findings from the study include:

Acute mental health crises were significantly linked with the length of time somebody stayed in the Moria refugee camp: the longer a refugee stayed in the camp, the more likely they were to suffer a mental health crisis.

A 10 per cent increase in the number of days spent in the camp led to a 3.3 per cent increase in the chances of a refugee suffering a mental health crisis - a significant factor given an average length of stay of 70.6 days.

Refugees of Iranian, Iraqi and Syrian ethnicity were most significantly affected by longer stays in the refugee camps, with male refugees more likely to experience incidences of acute mental health crises than women as time spent in the refugee camp increased.

The study used three months of anonymised data from MMS, a transitory clinic that offered night-time medical services to the island at the time, between January and April 2018. This included Psychological First Aid (PFA) and psychiatric crisis management, with patient data on age, gender, ethnicity and length of stay in the camp.

An acute mental health crisis is defined as a case of somebody either harming themselves through a non-accidental implemented wound, a suicide attempt requiring hospital care, or a state of unease constituted by anxiety, nervous agitation or undirected aggression.

Dr Urzua said that results supported prior claims about the quality of life in refugee camps, and that actions should be taken to safeguard inhabitants throughout the asylum process.

"The EU-Turkey deal of 2016 has seen camp populations multiply in size, but adequate mental health care provisions have not been expanded or improved in equal measure," Dr Urzua said.

"Our study expands upon existing qualitative evidence that the prolonged system of asylum has detrimental effects on mental health, brought on by poor living conditions of refugee camps.

"This mental health deterioration not only affects the individuals themselves but also has significant repercussions for fellow refugees with increased physical violence and the destabilisation of an often close-knit social environment, which in turn affects the mental wellbeing of others. Furthermore, the implications of deteriorating mental health most likely continue even after release, which makes it harder for refugees to integrate into a new society.

"It is clear to see from our study and prior anecdotal evidence that mental health in these camps is a serious problem, and it is imperative that policymakers from across Europe take action and uphold the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention to protect the rights and wellbeing those awaiting and granted asylum."

Dr Willemine van de Wiel, doctor and coordinator at Moria Medical Support said more needed to be done to support conditions at the Moria camp and others in the northern hemisphere.

"During our time on the Island of Lesbos, my overwhelming feeling was frustration at the conditions in the camp - a sentiment shared by many seasoned NGO-workers.

"In our experience, refugees are better off in many camps in the global south in terms of safety, housing, access to food, sanitation and medical services.

"I hope this research adds to public awareness about the psychological impact of life in these camps and inspires the development of a more humane asylum process."

Researchers from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences at King's College London have automated brain MRI image labelling, needed to teach machine learning image recognition models, by deriving important labels from radiology reports and accurately assigning them to the corresponding MRI examinations. Now, more than 100,00 MRI examinations can be labelled in less than half an hour.

Published in European Radiology, this is the first study allowing researchers to label complex MRI image datasets at scale.

The researchers say it would take years to manually perform labelling of more than 100,000 MRI examinations.

Deep learning typically requires tens of thousands of labelled images to achieve the best possible performance in image recognition tasks. This represents a bottleneck to the development of deep learning systems for complex image datasets, particularly MRI which is fundamental to neurological abnormality detection.

Senior author, Dr Tom Booth from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences at King's College London said: "By overcoming this bottleneck, we have massively facilitated future deep learning image recognition tasks and this will almost certainly accelerate the arrival into the clinic of automated brain MRI readers. The potential for patient benefit through, ultimately, timely diagnosis, is enormous."

Dr Booth said their validation was uniquely robust. Rather than evaluating their model performance on unseen radiology reports, they also evaluated their model performance on unseen images.

"While this might seem obvious, this has been challenging to do in medical imaging because it requires an enormous team of expert radiologists. Fortunately, our team is a perfect synthesis of clinicians and scientists," Dr Booth said.

Lead Author, Dr David Wood from the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences said: "This study builds on recent breakthroughs in natural language processing, particularly the release of large transformer-based models such as BERT and BioBERT which have been trained on huge collections of unlabeled text such as all of English Wikipedia, and all PubMed Central abstracts and full-text articles; in the spirit of open-access science, we have also made our code and models available to other researchers to ensure that as many people benefit from this work as possible."

The authors say that while one barrier has now been overcome, further challenges will be, firstly, to perform the deep learning image recognition tasks which also have multiple technical challenges; and secondly, once this is achieved, to ensure the developed models can still perform accurately across different hospitals using different scanners.

Dr Booth said: "This study was possible thanks to a very broad team of experts who are working on these challenges. There is a huge base of supporting organisers and facilitators who are equally important in delivering this research. Obtaining clean data from multiple hospitals across the UK is an important step to overcome the next challenges. We are running an NIHR portfolio adopted study across the UK to prospectively collect brain MRI data for this purpose."

An international research team has come up with an innovative method for metal recovery from industrial waste. The new method allows the simultaneous recovery of multiple metals from waste oxides in a single process. This novel route will lower the burden on waste storage facilities with significant contributions to the economic and environmental sustainability of industrial waste management. The study was published in Journal of Environmental Management. This work is the first in a series of studies aimed at developing cost-effective and environmentally sustainable solutions for industrial waste recycling.

Some of the major industries such as coal and biomass-based power generation, iron and steel sector, aluminium production, water treatment etc. are known to produce huge amounts of aluminium and iron oxides rich wastes, e.g., fly ash from combustion of coal and biomass, mill scales, red mud, biochar (the char coproduct from the thermochemical processing of biomass utilized as a soil amendment and/or carbon sequestration agent), water treatment residues. Produced in hundreds to billions of tonnes, these wastes cause immense disposal issues. Leaching of metals into atmosphere through improper disposal can result in serious environmental damage and adverse effects on humans. However, current waste management methods are economically unviable and environmentally unsustainable.

These industrial wastes can be a valuable secondary metals resource, scientists believe. A group of researchers from NUST MISIS, the University of New South Wales, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Universidad Andres Bello, Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India have developed a new technology that allows the simultaneous recovery of multiple metals from waste oxides in a single process, which, in turn, helps reduce the costs of waste processing.

The scientists used carbothermal reduction to extract metals from industrial wastes rich in oxides of iron, aluminium, silicon and other metals.

"Simply put, we used carbon and high temperatures to extract metals from the oxides in the waste. Key innovation of this study was to lower the reduction temperature for alumina, thus making it possible to recover it simultaneously along with iron and silicon that have lower reduction temperature," noted Yuri Konyhov, Deputy Head of the Department of Functional Nanosystems and High-Temperature Materials at NUST MISIS.

This novel approach could significantly enhance economic and environmental sustainability of managing industrial waste as it allows mixing various types of waste together and processing of large amounts of waste, the researchers believe.

Alexandria, Va., USA - Muthuthanthrige Cooray, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, presented the oral session "Oral and General Health Associations Using Machine Learning Prediction Algorithms" at the virtual 99th General Session & Exhibition of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR), held in conjunction with the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) and the 45th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR), on July 21-24, 2021.

General health and oral health are conventionally treated as separate entities within the healthcare delivery, however most general health and oral health problems share common risk factors and both affect overall well-being. This study investigated the robustness of the association between general health and oral health using machine learning prediction.

Analyses included 19,862 Japanese Gerontological Evaluation Study 2016 participants aged 65 years or older. XGBoost machine learning algorithm was used to predict self-rated oral health using general health-related predictors (frailty, psychological status, comorbidity) and self-rated general health using oral health-related predictors (poor occlusion, chewing difficulty, and dry mouth). Age, sex, household income and smoking were added as common predictors for both models. Predictors were selected based on literature and availability.

Prevalence of poor self-rated oral health was higher (28.6%) compared to poor self-rated general health (12.4%). 20.6% of those with poor self-rated oral health also reported poor self-rated general health, whereas 47.7% of those with poor self-rated general health also reported poor self-rated oral health.

A robust general health to oral health and oral health to general health association existed as demonstrated by accurate prediction models. Oral health appeared to have a higher predictive capacity in predicting general health than general health in predicting oral health. General health and oral health factors should be considered collectively when planning healthcare for older adults.

View this oral session in the IADR General Session Virtual Experience Platform.

To be useful, drones need to be quick. Because of their limited battery life they must complete whatever task they have - searching for survivors on a disaster site, inspecting a building, delivering cargo - in the shortest possible time. And they may have to do it by going through a series of waypoints like windows, rooms, or specific locations to inspect, adopting the best trajectory and the right acceleration or deceleration at each segment.

Algorithm outperforms professional pilots

The best human drone pilots are very good at doing this and have so far always outperformed autonomous systems in drone racing. Now, a research group at the University of Zurich (UZH) has created an algorithm that can find the quickest trajectory to guide a quadrotor - a drone with four propellers - through a series of waypoints on a circuit. "Our drone beat the fastest lap of two world-class human pilots on an experimental race track", says Davide Scaramuzza, who heads the Robotics and Perception Group at UZH and the Rescue Robotics Grand Challenge of the NCCR Robotics, which funded the research.

"The novelty of the algorithm is that it is the first to generate time-optimal trajectories that fully consider the drones' limitations", says Scaramuzza. Previous works relied on simplifications of either the quadrotor system or the description of the flight path, and thus they were sub-optimal. "The key idea is, rather than assigning sections of the flight path to specific waypoints, that our algorithm just tells the drone to pass through all waypoints, but not how or when to do that", adds Philipp Foehn, PhD student and first author of the paper.

External cameras provide position information in real-time

The researchers had the algorithm and two human pilots fly the same quadrotor through a race circuit. They employed external cameras to precisely capture the motion of the drones and - in the case of the autonomous drone - to give real-time information to the algorithm on where the drone was at any moment. To ensure a fair comparison, the human pilots were given the opportunity to train on the circuit before the race. But the algorithm won: all its laps were faster than the human ones, and the performance was more consistent. This is not surprising, because once the algorithm has found the best trajectory it can reproduce it faithfully many times, unlike human pilots.

Before commercial applications, the algorithm will need to become less computationally demanding, as it now takes up to an hour for the computer to calculate the time-optimal trajectory for the drone. Also, at the moment, the drone relies on external cameras to compute where it was at any moment. In future work, the scientists want to use onboard cameras. But the demonstration that an autonomous drone can in principle fly faster than human pilots is promising. "This algorithm can have huge applications in package delivery with drones, inspection, search and rescue, and more", says Scaramuzza.

Alexandria, Va., USA - Walter Siqueira, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, presented the poster "Self-collected Saliva and Courier Service - A Feasible Diagnostic Strategy for COVID-19" at the virtual 99th General Session & Exhibition of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR), held in conjunction with the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) and the 45th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR), on July 21-24, 2021.

Saliva has been proposed as a convenient and cost-effective biofluid for diagnostic purposes and in vitro studies have shown that the addition of stabilizers to saliva preserves it for up to 7-10 days at room temperature, but its translational application has never been tested. In this study Siqueira, CADR President and 2019 recipient of the IADR Distinguished Scientist Salivary Research Award, and colleagues tested the feasibility of saliva self-collection and large-scale mailing to a laboratory for further analysis in a sample of subjects distributed widely across Canada. Licensed dentists were enrolled in a prospective cohort study and were asked to collect 1.5 mL of saliva every four weeks for a 12-month period, place the sample tube in a biohazard transportation bag and ship the sample to the University of Saskatchewan.

The results of this ongoing study demonstrate the feasibility of saliva self-collection and mailing from multiple distant areas of Canada to a laboratory for valid analyses. This is the first study dealing with a large-scale saliva collection and shipping protocol and this approach represents an important strategy for the development of timely salivary diagnostic platforms.

View this poster presentation in the IADR General Session Virtual Experience Platform.

To reach the target of carbon neutral, a transition from fossil energy to renewable energy generation is indispensable. Photovoltaic technology is considered as one of the most prominent sources of renewable energy. For decades, about 90% of global solar cell market has been dominated by silicon solar cells. Although the price of silicon solar panels decreases year by year, it is a big challenge to significantly reduce its manufacturing cost further. Hence, next-generation photovoltaic technologies are in urgent need of new materials and novel techniques. Recently, metal halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have attracted extensive attention from both academia and industry, due to their excellent photoelectric conversion efficiency and great commercial potential.

Metal halide perovskite materials can be easily synthesized in solution at low-temperature and deposited into thin-film through a variety of printing method. Recently, many reviews have been published on the topic of perovskite film deposition techniques/mechanisms, such as solvent engineering and additives-engineering, whereas discussions about ink engineering for printing high-quality perovskite films as well as other function layers are few.

In this article, the authors provide a systematical overview of applicable printing technologies that can be possibly used for scaling-up PSCs. The authors consider the ink engineering is the key issue to achieve high quality thin films for efficient solar cells. Therefore, they mainly focus on the perspective of perovskite precursor ink formula and additives on controlling the film formation process. They analyze the potential physical and chemical mechanisms of the nucleation and crystallization process during the printing. For the additives in the printing of PSCs, the authors discuss the effect of additives for the film formation process, the microstructure and defect population.

Moreover, they also present the technical feasibility of printing the other layers besides perovskite layers, including hole transporting layers (HTL) and electron transporting layers (ETL), which might enable a rapid and mass production of PSCs. Finally, they introduce the recent progress of roll-to-roll (R2R) printing and the stability issues of perovskite modules, and give a prospect of mass production of perovskite solar modules in the near future.

PHILADELPHIA--Investing in structural home repairs in historically segregated, low-income, Black and Latino neighborhoods has been associated with reduced crime rates. In Philadelphia, when a home received repairs through a city-funded program, total crime dropped by 21.9% on that block, and as the number of repaired houses on a block increased, instances of crime fell even further, according to research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published today in JAMA Network Open.

In an effort to address an old housing stock and high levels of historical disinvestment in Philadelphia, the city implemented the Basic Systems Repair Program (BSRP) in 1995, which repairs structural damages to the homes of low-income owners, such as replacing an exterior wall to stop leaking, or electrical repairs that include replacing circuits that overheat, spark, or won't stay on, causing inconsistent heating and unreliable electricity. The majority of BSRP homes are in Black and Latino neighborhoods. Researchers hypothesized that over time these micro-investments would have an impact on community health, including crime.

Using BSRP data from 2006 through 2013, researchers determined that 13,632 houses on 6,732 blocks in Philadelphia received BSRP repairs. They then merged crime data - which included instances of homicide, assault, burglary, theft, robbery, disorderly conduct, and public drunkenness - from the Philadelphia Police Department with BSRP data to create a database that allowed them to understand the impact of BSRP investment on crime in every block across the city over time. This data revealed lower instances of all crime, including homicide, on blocks with a single BSRP-repaired home compared to blocks that were eligible for a BSRP-repaired home but did not get the intervention. With each additional repaired home, instances of crime on that block declined further.

"We can now add structural home repairs to the growing list of place-based neighborhood interventions with strong evidence that they can help reduce violent crime," said lead author Eugenia South, MD, MSHP, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine and Faculty Director of the Penn Urban Health Lab. "Violent crime is out of control in many cities across the country right now and policy makers should prioritize funding for structural, scalable, and sustainable interventions such as the BSRP that address the lasting scars of historical disinvestment in Black neighborhoods."

The root causes of violent crime in Black urban neighborhoods are structural, including historical racial segregation, concentrated poverty, lack of economic opportunity, and deterioration of the neighborhood's physical conditions - houses in disrepair, blighted vacant lots, and a lack of greenspace. What's more, the health implications of violence exposure are vast and include increased depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and cardiovascular disease.

"There is a critical need to invest in the housing stock in cities across the U.S, particularly in majority Black neighborhood that have not received such investment for far too long, if ever," said senior author Vincent Raina PhD, an Associate Professor of Planning and Urban Economics and the Faculty Director of the Housing Initiative at Penn. "This research shows that even small investments in housing stabilization benefit both those homeowners who live in homes that receive support and the blocks and neighborhoods in which they live through crime reduction."

The research teams says that programs like BSRP are small relative to housing needs, and are not the sole solution to addressing years of systemic racial discrimination in public and private investments and lending in housing, but they are emblematic of the positive impact that a more robust and comprehensive public and private response to systemic racial inequities in housing and neighborhood investments can have.

"Stable housing is important for creating and maintaining safe and functioning neighborhoods," says David Thomas, CEO of Philadelphia Housing Development Corporation (PHDC). "For over 40 years BSRP has helped individuals and families relieve what can be overwhelming financial and mental pressure that occurs when you need necessary housing repairs but lack resources. The program has also helped reduce homelessness by keeping persons in their homes, preserve blocks and communities, and reduce blight."

"Just as there is no one cause of crime there is no one solution," said Mayor Jim Kenney. "Investing in our neighborhoods, as we do with PHDC's BSRP program, strengthens those neighborhoods and, as we see in this study, reduces crime. Our challenge is to continue to find new approaches and resources to supporting community investment for programs like BSRP that stabilize communities."

Commonly accepted advice to keep a straight back and squat while lifting in order to avoid back pain has been challenged by new Curtin University research.

The research examined people who had regularly performed manual lifting through their occupation for more than five years and found those who experienced low back pain as a result were more likely to use the recommended technique of squatting and keeping a straight back, while those without back pain tended not to adhere to the recommended lifting advice.

Lead researcher PhD candidate Nic Saraceni from the Curtin School of Allied Health said the study required participants to each perform 100 lifts using two differently weighted boxes, with researchers observing and measuring their action.

"We found those with low back pain were more likely to lift with a slower, less flexed low back and a more squat-like technique," Mr Saraceni said.

"While both groups lifted using a more comparable technique at the end of the 100 lifts, the low back pain group still demonstrated a tendency to perform a slower and more squat-like lift throughout the task.

"These findings are the opposite of what is expected to occur according to existing advice on correct lifting techniques."

Research supervisor John Curtin Distinguished Professor Peter O'Sullivan, also from the Curtin School of Allied Health, said although the study did not reveal why people with low back pain lift with a more squat-like action, the findings were in line with previous research showing people with low back pain lift in a manner that society perceives to be correct or 'protective' of them.

"It is likely 'a one size fits all' approach to preventing and managing lifting-related low back pain does not exist, rather a more individualised approach may be required, which may be the subject of future research," Professor O'Sullivan said.

"Common assumptions that people who experience low back pain during lifting do so in a way that is 'incorrect' were not supported by our research and this raises questions about current advice regarding 'safe lifting'.

Over the past six months, the World Health Organization has categorized four SARS-CoV-2 variants as being "of concern" because they are more transmissible or may escape the immune response. They have been termed the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with the French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), Ipsos and Santé publique France, conducted a nationwide case-control study to evaluate the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines against symptomatic forms of SARS-CoV-2 infection, be that non-variant virus or the Alpha and Beta variants. The results show that the two-dose vaccination regimen of mRNA vaccines provides 88% protection against non-variant virus, 86% against the Alpha variant and 77% against the Beta variant. The results of this study were published in The Lancet Regional Health Europe on July 14, 2021.

In late 2020, two new variants of SARS-CoV-2 were reported in the United Kingdom and in South Africa, respectively. This occurred at a time when the United Kingdom was experiencing a resurgence in the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections. This was later attributed to the emergence of the Alpha variant, which has now demonstrated increased transmissibility as compared to the original SARS-CoV-2. The Beta variant was first reported in South Africa and later identified to carry a mutation known as E484K and which is associated with immune evasion. The reporting of the first SARS-CoV-2 variants occurred as mass COVID-19 vaccination campaigns were commencing at global level. In France, both Alpha and Beta were circulating in the first months of 2021. It was therefore important to analyze the effectiveness of the messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines against these SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.

In October 2020, the Institut Pasteur, in collaboration with the French National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM), Ipsos and Santé publique France, launched the ComCor study, a case-control study at national level to analyze the sociodemographic, behavioral and practical factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection. All those infected with SARS-CoV-2 were invited to take part in the study by the CNAM, while non-infected control were identified through an Ipsos representative panel. The first results of the study were published in The Lancet Regional Health on June 7, 2021 (press release here).

In February 2021, the scientists adapted the ComCor questionnaire to add information about vaccination against COVID-19, previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and information on the variants responsible for infection, provided as part of test results. This information was used to assess the effectiveness of two doses of mRNA vaccine against the Alpha and Beta variants, and to evaluate the protection conferred by previous SARS-CoV-2 infection.

In this study, 7,288 people infected with the original strain, 31,313 people infected with the Alpha variant, 2,550 people infected with the Beta variant and 3,644 non-infected controls were included between February and May 2021. The study enabled the scientists to demonstrate that two doses of mRNA vaccine conferred 88% (81-92) effectiveness against infection with original virus, 86% (81-90) effectiveness against infection with the Alpha variant and 77% (71-90) effectiveness against infection with the Beta variant, as measured seven days after the second dose. No difference in vaccine effectiveness was found between different categories of age, sex or occupational exposure.

"There was much expectation surrounding the (vaccine effectiveness) results for the Beta variant, known for its E484K mutation associated with immune evasion. Our estimate of 77% protection is very close to the estimate of 75% reached by the only other study worldwide to have evaluated the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines against this variant. These analyses confirm the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines and the key role that they have to play in tackling the epidemic," explains Arnaud Fontanet, Head of the Epidemiology of Emerging Diseases Unit at the Institut Pasteur and Professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM).

Another important finding of the study related to previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The scientists demonstrated that recent infection (in the past 2 to 6 months) confers similar protection to that observed with mRNA vaccines.

The analyses will now be extended to estimate vaccine effectiveness against the Delta variant, which has been the dominant variant in France since early July 2021.

The ComCor project is funded by REACTing, the Fondation de France via the "All United Against Coronavirus" alliance, and the Institut Pasteur. It was recently awarded the CAPNET "national research priority" label.

Tsukuba, Japan - Rice is the world's most commonly grown and consumed crop. It also supports lives and livelihoods, especially in low- and middle-income regions. As such, methods for securing abundant and profitable rice harvests are key in global food security.

The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) offers a repeatable, sustainable system for increasing rice yields. It brings together fundamental planting and harvesting techniques such as strategically spacing plants, minimizing water, and transplanting seedlings. These practices can be repeated in varying conditions. While SRI has been around since the mid-1980s, need persists for evidence to back its merits and distinguish its techniques.

New findings published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics now give much-needed evidence of SRI, following its diffusion to more than 5,000 Bangladeshi farmers. SRI training was introduced and evaluated among the rice farmers in a similar manner to a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in medicine. Certain communities were trained while others were not. This created a pure control group, similar to those who receive a placebo or receiving nothing in an RCT. That in turn allowed compelling comparisons, along with insights into related effects of the training.

Professor Abdul Malek of the University of Tsukuba (Japan), together with international colleagues including Asad Islam (Monash University), Christopher Barrett (Cornell University), Marcel Fafchamps (Stanford University), and Debayan Pakrashi (Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur), conducted these randomized introductions of SRI in Bangladesh and studied them from agricultural and social angles. The core of the researchers' work was two RCTs in 2014-2015 and 2015-2016.

"To a large degree, we already know SRI delivers good yields, among other advantages. Some have, however, questioned its uniqueness and results, so there is continued need for evidence to support it," Professor Malek says. "By randomizing a large cohort of farmers, we have been able to look at both SRI's quantifiable economic benefits and the qualitative benefits of disseminating this agronomic training and knowledge."

Among the results, SRI led to rice yield and profit increases of 14%-17% and 22%-31%, respectively. Household well-being was also found to be higher for farmers in training communities vs. those without training. Additionally, a spillover effect was seen as untrained farmers in training communities also gained exposure to SRI practices.

In two previous studies published as Fafchamps, etal (2021 and 2020) available at respectively: lhab009, https://doi.org/10.1093/wber/lhab009 and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387818314913
, Professor Malek and colleagues elaborated on these knock-on benefits of this training. His research teams used the trials to show (1) the efficacy of introductory referrals to training and (2) the cost advantages of peer-to-peer transmission of knowledge acquired. The latest work corroborates the overall findings in a broader scope to give valuable evidence of training and of SRI itself.

"We've covered a great deal of ground in verifying how SRI boosts productivity and farmers' well-being," Professor Malek says. "We've also seen how knowledge is transferred among trained farmers. This may help settle intense debates around SRI as a tool for boosting rice productivity and rice farmers' well-being. It also offers a great deal of promise for agronomy in the Global South."

A new study of almost 12,000 Australians has found one-third of the adult population has experienced pure cybercrime during their lifetime, with 14% reporting this disruption to network systems in the past 12 months.

With all forms of cybercrime already costing trillions every year globally, experts from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) and Flinders University say the crimes involved substantial levels of personal victimisation including direct losses as well as the high cost of preventing future attacks.

A pre-COVID-19 snapshot of the cost of 'pure cybercrime' in 2019 has found an approximate total economic hit of $3.5 billion - comprising $1.4 billion spent on prevention costs, $1.9 billion in money directly lost by victims and $597 million spent dealing with the consequences of victimisation.

With only about $389 million recovered by victims - barely paying for the cost of dealing with the incidents - the survey estimated about 2.8 million Australians had been hit within the past year and nearly 6.7 million Australian adults could have been victims at any time in the past.

Only a small proportion of financial losses are recovered by victims.

'Pure cybercrime' activities include hacking, spreading viruses and other malware, and distributed denial-of-service attacks. While this involves crimes against machines and networks, it is estimated other forms of cyber-enabled identity crime cost Australian government agencies, individuals and businesses additional sums of more than $3bn a year.

"Pure cybercrime is a highly profitable criminal activity and results in substantial financial losses to Australians," says Flinders University Professor Russell Smith, who also warns of a potential rise in online fraud as a result of opportunities for dishonesty created by COVID-19-related economic disruptions.

"On current information, as cybercriminals become more sophisticated, it's clear the need for additional expenditure on prevention will need to increase.

"Equally, it is imperative that the financial harms associated with cybercrime are assessed so that resources for prevention and response activities can be targeted most effectively, and a baseline can be developed against which to measure the impact of future policy responses," Professor Smith says.

A 2018-2019 investigation into identity crime (Smith & Franks 2020) found a cost of $3.1 billion to Commonwealth entities, state and territory agencies (including police), individuals and businesses - most of which, but not all, was a consequence of cyber-enabled identity crime.

Cyber-enabled offences use technology to make conventional crimes such as identity theft, fraud, stalking and harassment easier to commit and with a lower risk of detection.

"Cybercrime is a growing, borderless and continually evolving body of crimes which can threaten individuals, businesses, government and national security," says lead author in the new AIC publication,' Mr Coen Teunissen.

"This study represents the first large-scale Australian study of pure cybercrime prevalence and financial harm.

"Importantly, this is a conservative estimate, as many victims were unable to report how much they had lost or how much they had spent dealing with the consequences of cybercrime. This also excludes the cost to business and government from pure cybercrime," Mr Teunissen says.