Culture

PULLMAN, Wash. - When it comes to craft beer, the flavor doesn't have to be all in the hops. As a panel of amateur beer tasters at Washington State University recently demonstrated, malted barley, the number one ingredient in beer besides water, can have a range of desirable flavors too.

Researchers recruited a panel of about 100 craft beer drinkers to taste some so-called SMaSH beers--those brewed with a single barley malt and single hop. All the beers contained the same hop variety, called Tahoma, but each had a malt from a different barley genotype, or genetic makeup. Trained tasters can distinguish these easily, but even the untrained panel could taste the difference among five different barley varieties--and definitely favored some more than others.

"We found that the untrained panelists could differentiate among the barley breeding lines in the beer," said Evan Craine, a WSU doctoral student and first author on the study in the Journal of Food Science. "They did a good job of selecting attributes that revealed distinctive profiles for each of the beers."

The panel generally preferred the four barley breeding lines developed at WSU over the control, known as Copeland, a high-quality malting barley widely grown in Washington state. The panelists were able to easily identify the flavor profiles of the beers, such as one with a "fruity and sweet aromatic" flavor and another with a "citrus" profile made with a barley called Palmer, a variety recently released by WSU for commercial use.

While the untrained panel could distinguish flavors from brewed beers, they were not as adept at tasting the differences among "hot steep" samples which are made by combining hot water and ground barley malt before filtering. This creates a sweet liquid--similar to that made by brewers before yeast is added to create alcohol.

The researchers had hoped amateur beer tasters could distinguish flavor differences in the hot steep as it would shorten the testing process for new barley varieties. Corresponding author Kevin Murphy was not ready to give up on the method.

"Hot steep malt still shows a lot of promise," said Murphy, a WSU associate professor of crop and soil sciences. "The next step would be testing it with a trained panel to see if they can distinguish barley varieties. Ideally, we would just set it out to consumers because hot steep malting is great outreach. It gets people involved. They love tasting and talking about it."

While U.S. craft beer drinkers are known for their love of hop-heavy India Pale Ales, the results of this study add evidence that barley malts might be another good way to develop new beers.

For this study, Craine and Murphy worked with Scott Fisk, a faculty research assistant at Oregon State University, to create the malts and brewer Aaron Hart of Moscow Brewing Company to develop the beers, using hops only to add a little bitterness to balance the sweetness from the malt. These types of beers are called "malt-forward." They can be light or strong flavored, ranging in types from lagers and pilsners to ambers and stouts. Hart called the beers developed for this study "American Pale Ales."

More variety from malt-forward beers can potentially benefit not only beer lovers but also the environment and brewers' bottom lines, said Craine.

"In terms of sustainability, hops can be pretty resource intensive, and at least around us in Pullman, we can grow barley that's just rain fed," he said. "Hops can also be really expensive. Brewers are already buying the malt, so if we can find ways to increase the flavor contribution from the malt, hopefully, they can rely less on the hops and save money."

While the hops craze is continuing, the malt-forward beers have the potential to spur the next evolution in craft brewing, said Murphy.

"Just as craft beer flavor has evolved in the last 20 years, we can expect it to continue to change over the next 20, and the new frontier will be adding different barley flavors or barley-hop combinations," he said. "I don't know how many people knew about IPAs 20 years ago, and they exploded. Brewers are very innovative, and I am very excited to see where this goes in the future."

Tsukuba, Japan - Scientists from the department of Anatomy and Embryology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Tsukuba created a computer model to simulate the development of complex structures based on the Delta-Notch signaling pathway. This work may lead to a more comprehensive picture of the process that results in the formation of organs and other physiological systems.

The development of a tiny embryo consisting of undifferentiated cells into a healthy fetus with spatially defined organs depends on the complex interplay between genetic instructions and signaling molecules. For example, "Notch" genes are found in almost all animals and insects, and encode for receptor proteins that extend through a cell's membrane. This allows external signaling molecules to coordinate the cell's development by turning specific genes on or off at just the right time and location. However, there is still much we do not understand about the details of this mechanism.

Now, to better understand the role of signaling systems in organ development and cell differentiation, a team of scientists at the University of Tsukuba created a computer simulation that models the Delta-Notch signaling pathway in biliary cell differentiation. The differentiation of epithelial cells that are essential for the development of liver's bile ducts are special in that they receive signals in the form of Delta ligands from portal vein cells to ensure they are in the proper location. "A Delta ligand released by a portal vein cell can bind to a Notch receptor to regulate gene expression in the epithelial cell," first author Masaharu Yoshihara explains.

The scientists used a set of coupled differential equations to show how the concentrations of each change over time on a 20 × 20 two-dimensional matrix mimicking the planar cross-section of the liver. The diffusion of Delta molecules led to concentration differences based on the location, ensuring that epithelial differentiation occurred at only the correct places, which the authors called "fine-grained differentiation". However, even with a portal vein cell from the liver sending out Delta molecules, certain conditions resulted in no cell differentiation, showing that proper development is dependent on the rates of production of Delta ligands and Notch receptors. "This project demonstrates the ability of computer models to simulate the formation of spatial structure using complex feedback signaling pathways," senior author Professor Satoru Takahashi says. Future models may incorporate other signaling molecules, as well as cell migration.

CATONSVILLE, MD, July 20, 2021 - Uber and Lyft are popular on-demand ways to travel, but does that mean trains and buses are a thing of the past? Travelers prefer different modes of transportation at different times. So how can all these modes co-exist and do so successfully? New research in the INFORMS Journal Transportation Science has created a model and an algorithm to redistribute transit resources based on commuter preferences resulting in millions in savings.

"Based on case study experiments in New York City, our optimized transit schedules consistently lead to 0.4%-3% system-wide cost reduction. This amounts to rush hour savings of millions of dollars per day, while simultaneously reducing costs to passengers and transportation service providers," said Vikrant Vaze of Dartmouth College.

"Transit Planning Optimization under Ride-hailing Competition and Traffic Congestion," was written by Vaze alongside Keji Wei also of Dartmouth, as well as Alexandre Jacquillat of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This study attempts to understand what would happen if a public transit agency were to explicitly consider commuter choice factors and what that would do to the commute when designing their schedules.

Commuters choose modes of transportation based on travel convenience, prices, travel times and traffic congestion. The authors have found that the opposite is also true - their choice in turn changes the traffic patterns and travel times.

The authors note that by considering both of these points, they can come up with a better alignment of available transportation options with passengers' preferences in mind - by redistributing public transit resources where they provide the strongest societal benefits.

"In the interest of the overall urban ecosystem, a transit operator should critically assess what kinds of trips and travel needs transit is better equipped to serve and at the same time, what are some of the areas where it might be better to cut down and let on-demand operators take up a larger proportion of trips. Such thoughtful reconfiguration can benefit diverse stakeholders simultaneously," continued Vaze, a professor in the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. "What we found is that this leads to schedules that are better for passengers, better for transportation operators and better for the city as a whole, a rare win-win-win."

Retail traders often fear that reducing the amount of urban space made available for parking private vehicles would have a negative effect on their businesses. A survey conducted by researchers from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) on two shopping streets in Berlin shows that traders have a skewed perception of their customers' mobility habits. The findings of this research will facilitate better-informed decision-making around urban land-use planning.

The researchers surveyed around 2,000 customers and 145 retailers on Kottbusser Damm (Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district) and Hermannstraße (Neukölln district). The vast majority of shoppers - 93 per cent - had not travelled to their destination by car. 91 per cent of the revenue generated by these businesses came out of the wallets of customers who walked, cycled or used public transport to reach them. Customers that drive to the shops accounted for just 9 per cent of sales.

Just 7 per cent of customers travel to businesses by car

"The results of this survey confirm the findings of studies published in 2019 on the inner cities of Offenbach, Gera, Erfurt, Weimar and Leipzig. Studies on mobility and local economic impacts conducted in other European countries, North America, and Australia paint a similar picture. The car is less relevant for local business than is often assumed in policy processes. Pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders are the important customer groups for local business in an urban context." says IASS researcher Dirk von Schneidemesser. Retailers in the cities surveyed overestimated the share of customers who come by car - so too in Berlin, where retailers estimated that 22 per cent of their customers used this mode of transport, when in fact it was only 7 per cent.

This misperception could be due to a human tendency to assume that others behaviour in a similar manner. The survey revealed that traders who drive to their business estimated much higher customer car use (29%) than traders that use other modes of transport (between 10% and 19%). Traders were also found to overestimate the distance that customers travel to visit their businesses. In fact, over half (51%) of the shoppers surveyed lived less than 1 kilometer from the shopping street. In contrast, traders estimated that just 13% of customers live within this range.

Better infrastructure for active mobility can benefit businesses

"The findings of this survey are in line with the growing body of literature that suggests improved active travel (i.e. for pedestrians and cyclists) and transit infrastructure is likely to benefit local business", says Dirk von Schneidemesser. Business associations should consider this evidence when weighing the benefits and disadvantages of infrastructure development in order to best represent the interests of local business.

One of the leading thinkers in nano-science has called on the energy materials community to help finally put an end to the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

In a hard-hitting editorial published by Energy and Environmental Materials, Professor Ravi Silva, Director of the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) at the University of Surrey, argues that there are no coherent excuses left to justify the use of fossil fuels. In his paper, Professor Silva challenges the scientific community to lead the world away from a reality where fossil fuels still account for 80 per cent of the energy mix.

While the cost of clean energy generation has plummeted over recent years, Professor Silva argues that significant innovations in advanced batteries and energy storage technologies are needed to meet the International Energy Agency's goal of the planet being carbon net-zero by 2050.

For example, the transportation sector would need to see a 15-fold rise in electric vehicle sales from 10m in 2020 to 145m in 2030 - a goal entirely dependent on a leap in battery and energy storage technology, according to Professor Silva.

Professor Silva concludes that these unprecedented but much-needed goals are only possible if the scientific community usher in a new wave of energy materials that are cheap, easily deployable and have short payback times.

Professor Ravi Silva, Director of the ATI at the University of Surrey, said:

"The pandemic has been a truly horrific experience. However, one of the few positives that I can gather from the past two years is that it has allowed me to take stock and refocus on the incredible challenge of combatting climate change. It is increasingly clear that the energy materials community has a crucial role to play in weaning the world off fossil fuels.

"The cost of green energy is falling all the time - in the UK, solar and wind generation is competitive with fossil fuels. But we need to look at improvements in thin-film technologies, new polymers and other hybrid materials that can boost energy capture capabilities while reducing the cost of production if we are to have a genuine green energy revolution."

Amsterdam, July 20, 2021 - Well over six million people globally have been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (PD), which has an enormous impact on the lives of patients, their families, and caregivers and is incurring mounting costs for society. This special supplement to the Journal of Parkinson's Disease (JPD), guest-edited by noted experts Anat Mirelman, PhD, E. Ray Dorsey, MD, MBA, Patrik Brundin, MD, PhD, and Bastiaan R. Bloem, MD, PhD, reviews how digital technology is being used to reshape research and clinical care in PD.

Digital health technology is an umbrella term that spans a diverse range of applications, including body-fixed wearable sensors, non-contactable domestic sensors, smartphone apps, and videoconferencing and other telemedicine systems that allow for direct remote interaction between patients and healthcare providers.

"Digital health technology is an important and promising field that is beginning to make a real tangible impact on persons with PD," explained Co-Guest Editor Anat Mirelman, PhD, Center for the Study of Movement, Cognition and Mobility, Neurological Institute, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center; and Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Israel. "This special supplement includes a series of succinct reviews that cover many practical and relevant aspects, such as digital monitoring, telemedicine, digital therapeutics, virtual clinical trials and digital progression biomarkers for clinical trials. All reviews offer both a view of the current state-of-the-art and informed perspectives on future directions."

"Despite the accumulating body of evidence to support the feasibility, utility, and benefits of various digital technology approaches, the use of digital technology in clinical practice has long remained scarce," added Co-Guest Editor and joint JPD Editor-in-Chief Bastiaan R. Bloem, MD, PhD, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior; Department of Neurology, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. "It has taken a contagion to make patients, physicians, and insurers pay better attention. Specifically, the limits on our ability to travel imposed by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has led to a dramatic increase in the use of digital platforms in a matter of a few months. This change was unprecedented and has been identified as one of the few silver linings of the pandemic."

Important developments highlighted in this supplement include:

The increase in use of digital platforms is transforming neurological care, catalyzing the use of digital technology to maintain continuity of care, and impacting clinical trials. Using wearable sensors, clinicians can still monitor patients' motor symptoms while they are isolated at home and gain insights into behavioral changes and the implications of social distancing on patients' non-motor symptoms.

In clinical research, digital technologies are transforming practice and enhancing the understanding of PD. For example, assessing sleep can now be done in the home, passively, and frequently, expanding the knowledge of sleep disorders in patients with clinically manifest Parkinson's as well as individuals in early stages of the disease.

New tools may also shine a light on features of the disease that have largely been invisible, such as the appraisal of social function, expanded assessments of voice, quantification of tremor, assessment of falls, dyskinesia or freezing of gait, and objective measurement of the response to treatment. This could lead to a better understanding of the disease, its temporal pattern, variability, and impact on individuals bearing its burden.

Technological applications have the potential to reshape the way clinical research is conducted as decentralized trials will expand and even more assessments will transfer from the clinic to the home and mobile devices. Remote digital therapeutics can offer an attractive alternative for intensive interventions such as speech and language therapy, which typically requires frequent visits to clinics.

"There remain significant challenges," noted Dr. Mirelman. "These include the digital divide, the issue of privacy and security, and reimbursement, which requires health insurance companies and other payers to be persuaded by the merits of technology."

"The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized some of the shortcomings of telemedicine or monitoring approaches, such as the undiminished need for in-person visits, especially for new patients," commented Professor Bloem. "These shortcomings raise yet another question as to what extent digital health technologies will survive when our lives get back to a new normal after this pandemic has resolved.

"We can say with certainty that the digital revolution has definitely started. We can almost be equally certain that this is only the beginning. The future of digital medicine will likely benefit both patients and healthcare in ways that are currently difficult to predict," he concluded.

Parkinson's disease is a slowly progressive disorder that affects movement, muscle control, and balance. It is the second most common age-related neurodegenerative disorder affecting about 3% of the population by the age of 65 and up to 5% of individuals over 85 years of age.

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (07/20/2021) -- National data analyzed by University of Minnesota Medical School researchers show that nearly 40 percent of all funds used to pay for medical school are expected to come from family or personal sources and scholarships. The prevalence of these sources, however, varies widely by race and socioeconomic status.

Arman Shahriar, Varun Sagi and Lorenzo Gonzalez, all fourth-year students at the University of Minnesota Medical School, are co-lead authors of the study, which was published today in JAMA Network Open.

"Financing a four-year medical education requires upwards of a quarter-million dollars, and this amount has been rising faster than inflation since the 1960s. Prior to this study, little was known about how students pay for medical school, so we set out to shed light on this opaque subject," Shahriar said.

Their research analyzed de-identified data from more than 29,000 medical students nationwide who responded to the 2017 to 2019 Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Matriculating Student Questionnaire. The study found that:

- Nearly 25 percent of all medical students come from the top five percent of household incomes (greater than $270,000 in 2019), and 37% of these high-income students will be paying for medical school primarily using family or personal funds. For comparison, only three to four percent of students from the lowest three income quintiles rely primarily on family or personal funds.

- Family or personal financing was more prevalent among Asian students and white students and was least prevalent among Black students. Shahriar says, "This may be a reflection of the widening racial wealth gap - rooted in structural racism - and may explain AAMC data indicating Black students graduate with the highest debt burden of any racial group."

- Between high- and low-income students, scholarships were distributed much more evenly than family or personal funds. The heavier reliance on loans among low-income students suggests an inadequacy of current scholarship amounts to offset the large deficit in family or personal funds that these low-income students face.

"Knowing that scholarship funds are finite, individual medical schools should work to ensure that scholarships are awarded through holistic review with ample consideration of economic background," Shahriar said. "Additionally, considering the degree to which some students are relying on family wealth, medical schools ought to be ensuring equal access to expensive resources during training, like board preparatory materials. As medicine works toward improving its socioeconomic, racial and ethnic diversity, the last thing we want is for family wealth to be influencing educational quality."

The study team is now looking at socioeconomic diversity among matriculating medical students. Shahriar says that future work on the topic of financing should better examine how financing methods have evolved over time for various subgroups, as well as link matriculant financing plans with debt and other economic outcomes at the time of graduation and beyond.

Despite the best efforts of industry to work towards sustainability, most plastics (or polymers) are still made using non-renewable fossil fuels. However, researchers have now found an economical method for producing biobased acrylate resins. The study, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, shows how all the synthesis steps, from initial building blocks right up to polymerization, can be carried out in a single reactor (one pot), minimizing environmental impact.

Most varnishes, adhesives and paints are made from acrylate resins, which are polymers of acrylic acid esters and methacrylic acid esters. The raw materials that form these esters are acrylic or methacrylic acid, and alcohols. The alcohols give the plastics properties, such as softness or hardness, and water absorption or repulsion.

To make these polyacrylates and polymethacrylates more sustainable, Christophe Thomas and his team from the Institut de Recherche de Chimie in Paris, France, used alcohols from biobased or natural sources, rather than fossil sources. These included plant-based lauryl alcohol, menthol, tetrahydrogeraniol (a pheromone-like substance), vanillin, and ethyl lactate.

In addition to sustainability through renewable resources, the team also targeted synthesis in as few steps as possible, in other words a one-pot process. This meant they had to find catalysts that were suitable for several steps of the process, and also to finely tune all the other synthesis conditions, such as solvents, concentrations, and temperatures.

The first step in this kind of synthesis is the activation of acrylic or methacrylic acid. The researchers were able to identify catalysts from simple salts. These substances were also suitable for the next step, reacting the biobased alcohols with acrylic or methacrylic anhydride (a condensed form of the acids) to give the corresponding esters, which are the building blocks of the subsequent polymer.

"This monomer preparation step is highly efficient and allowed us to perform the polymerization in the same reactor," says Thomas. Thus, without purifying the intermediate products, the team was ultimately able to produce block copolymers, which are widely used in plastics production, from two or three different individual polymers produced separately.

The team's biobased plastics had a number of beneficial properties, depending on the monomers making them up. For example, the resin produced with a lactic acid side chain (poly(ELMA)) was hard and brittle, while the one produced with the more flexible tetrahydrogeraniol side chain (poly(THGA)) was pliable at room temperature. The authors emphasize the numerous available possibilities thanks to the wide variety of biobased alcohols at their disposal.

Aside from the versatility of the team's approach, their one-pot synthesis also helps reduce the environmental footprint. Since work-up solvents account for a large proportion of the E-factor, or environmental impact, of plastics synthesis, one-pot processes without work-up obviously greatly reduce this factor. Their most successful synthesis reduced the E-factor by three quarters, demonstrating the significance of this research.

Surgical scars treated with a molecule called alphaCT1 showed a long-term improvement in appearance when compared to control scars, according to multicenter, controlled Phase II clinical trials - a finding that could help surgeons improve patient outcomes.

Now, a public-private research team led by Rob Gourdie, professor and director of the Center for Vascular and Heart Research at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, has revealed clues about why and how it improves the appearance of scars.

The study, to be published in the August issue of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) Journal, describes how the drug influences the behavior of collagen-producing cells called fibroblasts.

The findings reveal a previously unreported feature of scar formation, and could help advance wound healing treatments for patients undergoing surgical procedures.

The researchers analyzed scars from 49 healthy volunteers in a randomized, double-blind Phase I clinical study. Each volunteer had 5-milimeter punches of skin biopsied from each of their inner biceps. One arm's wound was treated with the alphaCT1 molecule in a gel, and the other received a non-medicated control gel. The wounds healed for 29 days, at which point the scars were photographed and biopsied again.

Under the microscope, the untreated scars' collagen - a protein produced by cells called fibroblasts - formed parallel strips, which makes the tissue less pliable. By contrast, scars that were applied with the drug had a collagen matrix resembling unwounded skin. Related experiments were repeated using guinea pig and rat models and yielded similar results.

The researchers also analyzed human skin cells cultured in a dish to watch how the drug influenced cellular activity in real-time. They discovered that the presence of the molecule caused fibroblasts to stretch out like a rubber band, then snap back into shape and change direction.

"We call it the fibroblast dance," said Gourdie, who is also the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund Eminent Scholar in Heart Reparative Medicine Research and a professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics in Virginia Tech's College of Engineering.

This unusual fibroblast behavior in the treated tissue appears to have a positive effect on scar formation, Gourdie says.

"In unwounded skin, the collagen is enmeshed, allowing the tissue to move and stretch in all directions. The fibroblasts' directional changes appear to influence how the collagen matrix forms during scarring," Gourdie said.

More than 300 million surgical procedures are performed in the United States each year - often resulting in noticeable scarring on patients. Methods to reduce scarring after operations are sought after.

"This is some of the most exciting basic science research in wound healing I've seen in a long time," said Kurtis Moyer, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery for Carilion Clinic and a professor of surgery at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. Moyer was not involved in the study, but has collaborated with the Gourdie lab on wound healing research for 20 years.

"This shows real promise and could potentially revolutionize what we do in plastic surgery," Moyer said.

AlphaCT1 influences wound healing by temporarily interrupting cell signaling functions of connexin 43, a gap junction channel protein.

Gourdie and his lab invented the molecule and discovered its useful effects on wound healing with his former postdoctoral associate, Gautam Ghatnekar, a decade ago. Together they formed a biopharmaceutical company, FirstString Research Inc., to bring alphaCT1 to market.

The molecule is currently being evaluated in Phase III clinical testing in bilateral breast surgery patients.

"These findings validate that the drug's mechanism is playing out as we thought it would," said Ghatnekar, FirstString's president and chief executive officer.

The company has closed $55 million in Series B, C, and D Funding since 2018, and is evaluating the drug's use in a variety of applications, including surgical wound healing, chronic wound healing, radiation therapy wound healing, and corneal tissue repair.

"We alter how the human body responds to injury by shifting the balance from healing by scarring to healing by regeneration. The medical applications for our technology are far-ranging," Ghatnekar said.

When it was discovered in the 1980s in Argentina, this hadrosaur was diagnosed with a fractured foot. However, a new analysis now shows that this ornithopod commonly known as the duck-billed dinosaur actually had a tumour some 70 million years ago, as well as two painful fractures in the vertebrae of its tail, despite which, it managed to survive for some time.

This dinosaur, called Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis, was discovered in Argentinean Patagonia in the 1980s, and the first analyses of its fossils indicated an ailment of the foot, possibly a fracture, as the Argentinean palaeontologist Jaime Powell pointed out at the time. The study of this animal then came to a standstill until 2016, when Powell invited another team of scientists to resume the research.

"In addition to the ailment of the foot, there were other possible fractures in several neural spines of the vertebrae of the tail," as Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, the lead author of the study, now published in the journal Cretaceous Research, and a scientist at the Research Institute of Palaeobiology and Geology of CONICET and the National University of Río Negro (Argentina), as well as a professor at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), has told SINC.

The researchers decided to analyse them all to see this hadrosaur, also known as duck-billed dinosaur, "during its lifetime" and to see how it was able to interact with the environment, with its fellows, and with predators while suffering from these problems.

Scientists were particularly surprised by the condition of the foot. "We were struck by the large overgrowth of bone that gave it a cauliflower-like appearance and covered almost the entire metatarsal," the researcher points out. When studying the histology and CT scans of the fossil, the team did not find a fracture. Instead, the indicators showed a reduction in bone density and several areas where cortical tissue had been destroyed.

"We were probably looking at a cancer or a neoplasm, such as an osteosarcoma," specifies Cruzado-Caballero. The presence of diseases such as tumours confirms that they already existed at a very early age and among a very diverse group of animals.

"Despite the large development of the cancer, it did not significantly affect the muscle insertion zone, so we cannot be sure that the lesion affected its locomotion," says the palaeontologist. The study has allowed us to determine that the tumour did not spread to other bones - since this ornithopod preserved almost half of its skeleton -, "so, although it severely affected the metatarsus, it did not cause its death," she adds.

Tail fractures followed by infections

In addition to the foot tumour, other pathologies were identified in the neural spines of two vertebrae in Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis's tail. According to the scientists, one of the vertebrae had a displaced fracture that had almost healed. "It was probably related to an injury resulting from a strong blow that caused the bone to be displaced and to heal in this manner, giving the spine a curved appearance," Cruzado-Caballero stresses.

The other vertebra had an almost completely healed fracture also produced by a stress event (it is not known if it was due to impact), which did not lead to the displacement of the bone. Although the spine maintains its straight shape, the researchers observed a swelling that formed a callus on the bone as it healed.

"These fractures, especially in the case of the displaced fracture, must have been associated with infections following the rupture of the muscles surrounding the bone," says the researcher, who considers that they must have been painful not only because of the blow, but also because of the infections that could have impeded the mobility of the tail and caused this specimen a great deal of discomfort when it moved.

However, despite the severity of the ailments, the death of Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis did not follow immediately after its injuries, the authors point out. "But we cannot quantify how long it lived afterwards, which means that it could have lived for months or years. Nor can we confirm that these injuries were the final cause of its death," comments the scientist.

This hadrosaur, although badly injured, therefore managed to survive and continued to interact with its fellows, despite the initial pain caused by fractures and infections. These could have been caused by falling, hitting an object or another animal to defend itself from predators, or even by being trampled on the tail by another hadrosaur.

PHILADELPHIA--Alzheimer's disease and related diseases can still only be confirmed in deceased patients' brains via autopsy. Even so, the development of biomarkers can give patients and their families answers during life: Alzheimer's disease can be accurately detected via peptides and proteins in a patient's cerebrospinal fluids (CSF), which can be collected through a lumbar puncture and tested while the patient is alive. In 2018, a new framework suggested combining three Alzheimer's disease biomarkers in CSF - pathologic amyloid plaques (A), tangles (T), and neurodegeneration (N), collectively called ATN. According to recent research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the ATN framework can be extended to detect another neurodegenerative condition: frontotemporal degeneration.

Patients with frontotemporal degeneration can experience a range of symptoms, including behavioral changes, executive dysfunction, and language impairments. Distinguishing frontotemporal degeneration from Alzheimer's disease can be a challenge for clinicians: the symptoms of frontotemporal degeneration can sometimes overlap with Alzheimer's disease, and a subset of patients can even have both pathologies. Biomarkers can fill the gap by providing evidence of whether Alzheimer's pathology underlies a patient's symptoms.

"CSF biomarkers work similarly to a pregnancy test, offering a simple positive or negative result when enough of a substance is detected. But like a pregnancy test, biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease can provide false negatives or positives," said lead investigator Katheryn A.Q. Cousins, PhD, a research associate in the Frontotemporal Degeneration Center in the Department of Neurology at Penn Medicine. "Alzheimer's is a diverse disease, and it is common for other conditions to also be present in the brain. The ATN framework may provide a more complete look at a person's diagnosis and give us a much richer understanding of not only Alzheimer's disease, but other co-occurring neurodegenerative conditions. However, to accomplish this, additional biomarkers that can detect other neurodegenerative conditions are critically needed."

The findings, published in Alzheimer's and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, show that ATN incorporating neurofilament light chain (NfL) may provide a more accurate and precise diagnosis for patients with frontotemporal degeneration. NfL is a protein abundant in the brain, whose levels increase as degeneration progresses. Cousins' work shows that CSF NfL may be a more accurate marker of neurodegeneration for patients with frontotemporal degeneration, including for Alzheimer's disease.

"While the ATN framework is very exciting and offers much opportunity for patients with Alzheimer's disease, these biomarkers don't capture every case of the disease. We want to be able to detect and treat every patient with neurodegenerative disease as early as possible, and more research is needed to fully understand how biofluids track with the disease process," said Cousins. "I am eager to conduct additional research into which patients might be missed by these markers, what they have in common, and what causes the pathological and clinical differences in the disease."

In order to correctly separate vehicles into classes, for instance for mobility pricing, one must be able to clearly distinguish mid-sized cars from upper class cars or small cars from compact cars. But this is becoming increasingly difficult: On photos, an Audi A4 looks almost the same as an Audi A6, a Mini One looks similar to a Mini Countryman. To date, there is no independent procedure for doing this.

Thus far, the classes in each country have been determined by experts - to a large extend at their own discretion. Empa researcher Naghmeh Niroomand has now developed a system that can classify cars worldwide based on their dimensions. Purely mathematical and fair. Thanks to it, the current classification by experts could soon be a thing of the past. At the same time, car classes could be compared worldwide in an easier and more objective way. After all, a "mid-size car" is something different in Italy than it is in the US.

FORT LAUDERDALE/DAVIE, Fla. - It's good to have friends.

Most humans have experienced social anxiety on some level during their lives. We all know the feeling - we show up to a party thinking it is going to be chock full of friends, only to find nearly all total strangers. While we typically attribute the long-lasting bonds of social familiarity to complex thinkers like humans, growing evidence indicates that we underestimate the importance of friendship networks in seemingly "simple" animals, like fish, and its importance for survival in the wild. To better understand how familiarity impacts social fishes, a group of research scientists studied this idea using schooling coral reef fish.

"We studied how the presence of 'friends' versus 'strangers' affected how fish responded to a predator threat," said lead author Lauren Nadler, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Nova Southeastern University's (NSU) Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. "The presence of 'strangers' seemed to distract fish, making them react more slowly and greatly increasing the chance that they would become lunch for a hungry predator when in the wrong social scene."

You can find the study published online in the journal Communications Biology.

Nadler and her colleagues believe that their results come down to trust. In social animals living in the wild, individuals rely on their buddies to alert them if a predator is lurking, but they need to balance the risk of being eaten against the wasted energy of reacting to inaccurate information. So, individuals will alter their sensitivity to social information based on the level of familiarity in the group, and hence trust in the information's accuracy.

"Trust among individuals is critical. This is true for humans as well as many other species, including fishes," said co-author Jacob Johansen, Ph.D., assistant professor at University of Hawaii Manoa. "Our research in fishes show that when accurate information transfer breaks down, so too does the chance of survival for the individual and the group as a whole."

Further, the researchers' results seemed to be driven by a combination of greater vigilance by the first fish to detect the predator, as well as more effective information sharing among neighboring fish.

"Our work shows that readiness to react to a threat depends on who is around you, if you are a fish," said Dr. Paolo Domenici, Research Director with the Institute of Biophysics at the Italian National Research Council "If you are in an unfamiliar social environment, this is already something you need to pay attention to. If you are surrounded by familiar individuals, then you will be able to pay attention to any external threat more readily."

As escape performance underpins survival from predator attacks, these results help us to understand why animals have evolved to prefer associating with "friends" rather than "strangers", due to the implications for both individual and group-level survival in the wild.

"Friendship networks matter, both for humans and for less evolved taxa like fishes," said Mark McCormick, Ph.D., of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. "The more you can rely on your friends, the easier and more fulfilling your life will be."

FRANKFURT, GERMANY. When SARS-CoV-2 infects a cell, it introduces its RNA into it and re-programmes it in such a way that the cell first produces viral proteins and then whole viral particles. In the search for active substances against SARS-CoV-2, researchers have so far mostly concentrated on the viral proteins and on blocking them, since this promises to prevent, or at least slow down, replication. But attacking the viral genome, a long RNA molecule, might also stop or slow down viral replication.

The scientists in the COVID-19-NMR consortium, which is coordinated by Professor Harald Schwalbe from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Goethe University, have now completed an important first step in the development of such a new class of SARS-CoV-2 drugs. They have identified 15 short segments of the SARS-CoV-2 genome that are very similar in various coronaviruses and are known to perform essential regulatory functions. In the course of 2020 too, these segments were very rarely affected by mutations.

The researchers let a substance library of 768 small, chemically simple molecules interact with the 15 RNA segments and analysed the result by means of NMR spectroscopy. In NMR spectroscopy, molecules are first labelled with special types of atoms (stable isotopes) and then exposed to a strong magnetic field. The atomic nuclei are excited by means of a short radio frequency pulse and emit a frequency spectrum, with the help of which it is possible to determine the RNA and protein structure and how and where small molecules bind.

This enabled the research team led by Professor Schwalbe to identify 69 small molecules that bound to 13 of the 15 RNA segments. Professor Harald Schwalbe: "Three of the molecules even bind specifically to just one RNA segment. Through this, we were able to show that the SARS-CoV-2 RNA is highly suitable as a potential target structure for drugs. In view of the large number of SARS-CoV-2 mutations, such conservative RNA segments, like the ones we've identified, are particularly interesting for developing potential inhibitors. And since the viral RNA accounts for up to two thirds of all RNA in an infected cell, we should be able to disrupt viral replication on a considerable scale by using suitable molecules." Against this background, Schwalbe continues, the researchers have now already started follow-up trials with readily available substances that are chemically similar to the binding partners from the substance library.

Neurons communicate through rapid electrical signals that regulate the release of neurotransmitters, the brain's chemical messengers. Once transmitted across a neuron, electrical signals cause the juncture with another neuron, known as a synapse, to release droplets filled with neurotransmitters that pass the information on to the next neuron. This type of neuron-to-neuron communication is known as evoked neurotransmission.

However, some neurotransmitter-packed droplets are released at the synapse even in the absence of electrical impulses. These miniature release events -- or minis -- have long been regarded as 'background noise', says Brian McCabe, Director of the Laboratory of Neural Genetics and Disease and a Professor in the EPFL Brain Mind Institute.

But several studies have suggested that minis do have a function -- and an important one. In 2014, for example, McCabe and his team showed that minis are important for the development of synapses. If neurons in the brain were a network of computers, evoked releases would be packets of data through which the machines exchange information, whereas minis would be pings -- brief electronic signals that determine if there is a connection between two computers, McCabe says. "Minis are the pings that neurons use to say 'I am connected.'"

To assess whether minis could play a role in the mature nervous system, Soumya Banerjee, a postdoc in McCabe's group, and his colleagues set out to study a set of neurons that control movement in fruit flies. As the insects aged, their synapses started to break up into smaller fragments, the researchers found. (A similar process occurs in aging mammals, including people.) As nerve junctions broke down, both evoked and miniature neurotransmission were dampened, and the flies showed motor problems such as a reduced ability to climb the walls of a plastic vial.

Next, the team assessed the effects of stimulating or inhibiting evoked and miniature neurotransmission. When both types of neurotransmission were blocked, synapses aged prematurely, suggesting that during aging or in neurological diseases associated with old age, changes in neurotransmission happen before synapses start to crumble. This finding, McCabe says, upends a longstanding idea in neuroscience. "The idea has long been that the structure of the synapse breaks down, and that causes a functional change in the synapse, but we found it is the other way around," he says.

Stimulating evoked neurotransmission alone had no effect on aging synapses, the researchers found. However, increasing the frequency of minis kept synapses intact and preserved the motor ability of middle-aged flies at levels comparable to those of young flies. "Motor ability declines in all aging animals, including humans, so it was a delightful surprise to see that we could change that," McCabe says.

The findings, published in Nature Communications, could have important implications for human health: minis have been found at every type of synapse studied so far, and defects in miniature neurotransmission have been linked to range of neurodevelopmental disorders in children. Figuring out how a reduction in miniature neurotransmission changes the structure of synapses, and how that in turn affects behavior, could help to better understand neurodegenerative disorders and other brain conditions.