Culture

Hundreds of millions of people live on river deltas around the world, making them central to rich diversity in culture and thriving economies. As deltas face environmental degradation and ongoing climate change, governments have sought ever more drastic measures to prevent flooding and protect society and its infrastructure. But, these policies can harm the natural environment and lead to loss of precious land. Striking a balance between limiting deltaic land loss and maximizing cultural and economic benefit to society is a top priority in sustainability policy.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas Tech University created a novel analysis tool that seeks to protect the millions of people living on urban river deltas, while preserving the environmental and commercial viability of these landscapes. Their study, published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, applies a cost-benefit model to the concept of delta management, for the first time, by examining how to balance the natural function of river deltas with societal desire for landscape stability.

"By restricting river channels on deltas, we have limited the delivery of sediment to the coast where it is needed to sustain land in the face of rising sea level," said Andrew Moodie, lead author of the paper and a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow working in associate professor Paola Passalacqua's lab in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering in the Cockrell School of Engineering. "The irony here is that by preventing the river from flooding naturally, we have exacerbated land loss, and in the long run, made society more susceptible to catastrophic floods."

In their paper, the researchers note that levees and other flood prevention measures are often placed near the coast because it costs less and minimizes the impact on major population centers. But these downstream locations restrict the natural function of delta land building, which requires sediment to reach the coast.

Moodie's study leverages recent scientific advancements from two highly populated deltas, the Yellow River in China and the Mississippi River, to investigate nature-based solutions that mimic how rivers naturally behave to stop land loss. They analyzed the best location for channel diversions, which are engineered structures that create new pathways for rivers to flow through. Finding the right placement required balancing the benefits of diversions in terms of land building, with the cost of the structure. The balance of costs and benefits will vary with every delta, so there is no one catchall answer. However, the framework can be applied to a variety of systems worldwide.

The analysis found that to maximize the efficacy of diversions, structures need to be placed farther upstream than existing designs and structures, which are often away from population centers and near the coast. The tradeoff with building diversions upstream is that it usually costs more and is more likely to displace people.

"A lot of studies have said that society, in particular major cities like New Orleans, is doomed, and that engineering efforts leveraging nature-based solutions can't coexist with large population centers," Moodie said. "What we've shown with our optimizable framework is that having cities nearby actually makes it even easier to justify doing these large projects, because they protect communities."

Moodie started this work as part of his Ph.D. studies while at Rice University. His dissertation explored the impacts of river channel avulsions on deltas -- a process by which a channel abruptly abandons its course in favor of a new pathway to the sea.

"Avulsions are quite similar to diversions that humans are trying to implement on river deltas, for the sake of nourishing the landscape," Moodie said.

Focusing on the Yellow River delta of China, Moodie recognized an unaddressed problem: a lack of research integrating geomorphology and hydrology with economics, when considering how to manage deltas with diversions.

"We as humans want stability; we want stable landscapes we can count on year after year to provide ecosystem services such as fisheries, growing beds for oysters and more," Moodie said. "All these things are impacted by natural avulsions, and if we effectively harness this behavior, we can sway the scale to better the chances of sustaining deltas and the people and cultures that exist there."

Glenview, Illinois - The American College of Chest Physicians® (CHEST) recently released a new clinical guideline, Screening for Lung Cancer: CHEST Guideline and Expert Panel Report. The guideline contains 16 evidence-based recommendations and an update of the evidence base for the benefits, harms, and implementation of low-dose chest computed tomography (CT) screening.

Lung cancer is by far the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women, making up almost 25% of all cancer deaths. Evidence suggests that low-dose CT screening for lung cancer can reduce cancer-related deaths in the group that is screened. The new guidelines provide recommendations on the selection of screen-eligible individuals, the quality of imaging and image interpretation, the management of screen detected findings and the effectiveness of smoking cessation interventions.

"The goal of these guidelines is to assist stakeholders with the development of high-quality screening programs and arm clinical providers with the information necessary to engage at-risk individuals in order to increase the number of screenings," says lead author Peter Mazzone, MD, MPH, FCCP. "Outlined in the recommendations is who should be screened and what that screening process should look like from the clinical side. For an individual patient, these guidelines highlight the importance of education to foster informed, value-based decisions about whether to be screened."

Of the 16 recommendations, the guidelines presented in the report include the following:

· For asymptomatic individuals aged 50 to 80 who have smoked 20 pack years or more and either continue to smoke or have quit within the past 15 years, we recommend that annual screening with low-dose CT should be offered.

· We suggest that low-dose CT screening programs develop strategies to maximize compliance with annual screening exams and evaluation of screen detected findings.

· For individuals who currently smoke and are undergoing low-dose CT screening, we recommend that screening programs provide evidence-based tobacco cessation treatment as recommended by the U.S. Public Health Service.

The full list of recommendations can be found here.

One of the requirements for Medicare coverage of lung cancer screening is that a beneficiary has a lung cancer screening counseling and shared decision-making (SDM) visit. The goal of shared decision-making is to inform individuals about the tradeoffs of screening vs. not screening and to help them make a choice that is aligned with their preferences and values. For training on shared decision-making, CHEST and Thomas Jefferson University offer a course dedicated to guiding patients through the decision to be screened for lung cancer. For more information on the course, visit the CHEST website.

Professors in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences explored whether or not the scientific community will ever be able to settle on a 'total number' of species of living vertebrates, which could help with species preservation. By knowing what's out there, researchers argue that they can prioritize places and groups on which to concentrate conservation efforts.

Research professor Bruce Wilkinson and professor Linda Ivany, both from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, recently co-authored a paper in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society where they determined that forecasting the total number of species may never be possible.

When asking the question, 'how many species?,' it is important to note that only a fraction of existing species have been named. In order to make a prediction on a total number, researchers project the curve of new species descriptions each year into the future until eventually reaching a point when all species should have been found.

Wilkinson, a geologist, noticed parallels between the discovery curves of new species and the total reservoir size of nonrenewable resources like oil or mineral ores. Similar to the species curve, by extending the oil reservoir curve researchers thought they should be able to estimate the total global reservoir and how long it will take to get to it all. The theory of resource exploitation suggests that the number of discoveries over time follows a bell-shaped curve: The curve rises as production rate increases due to new discoveries and then decreases as production declines, despite all the effort continuing to go into finding the resource. The time of maximum discovery is known as Hubbert's peak, after M. King Hubbert who predicted it. Following that time, the resource is being evermore depleted until it is used up.

"The problem with using that curve to predict how much is left is that you have to assume that the effort invested and the approach used to discover new oil, or species, is consistent and known," says Wilkinson. "We used to think we'd gone over the peak for oil and gas around 1972, but then 15 or so years ago someone figured out how to do horizontal drilling and all of the sudden there was a new bump in the amount being discovered."

Wilkinson and Ivany say that the discovery curve for new species of vertebrate animals shows a similar bump. Like the increase in the oil curve caused by horizontal drilling in the early 2000s, there was a surge in new species discovery beginning around 1950, when new funding was being dedicated to science after the World War II, more scientists were going into biology, and new molecular techniques were leading to an increase in the ability to distinguish species from one another.

In both cases, unforeseen changes in the effort and method of discovering new oil or species altered the way the discovery curves were playing out.

If researchers had estimated the total number of species based on data prior to 1950, their estimates would be much different from any estimate made today, and both would likely be wrong because those new advents cannot be predicted.

In some ways, this is a reflection of the scientific method, in which hypotheses stand until new facts are discovered, which lead to changes in the hypothesis.

"As much as we'd like to know 'the number,' the total species richness of the planet will remain an elusive target," says Ivany.

Researchers at UC San Francisco have successfully developed a "speech neuroprosthesis" that has enabled a man with severe paralysis to communicate in sentences, translating signals from his brain to the vocal tract directly into words that appear as text on a screen.

The achievement, which was developed in collaboration with the first participant of a clinical research trial, builds on more than a decade of effort by UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, MD, to develop a technology that allows people with paralysis to communicate even if they are unable to speak on their own. The study appears July 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"To our knowledge, this is the first successful demonstration of direct decoding of full words from the brain activity of someone who is paralyzed and cannot speak," said Chang, the Joan and Sanford Weill Chair of Neurological Surgery at UCSF, Jeanne Robertson Distinguished Professor, and senior author on the study. "It shows strong promise to restore communication by tapping into the brain's natural speech machinery."

Each year, thousands of people lose the ability to speak due to stroke, accident, or disease. With further development, the approach described in this study could one day enable these people to fully communicate.

Translating Brain Signals into Speech

Previously, work in the field of communication neuroprosthetics has focused on restoring communication through spelling-based approaches to type out letters one-by-one in text. Chang's study differs from these efforts in a critical way: his team is translating signals intended to control muscles of the vocal system for speaking words, rather than signals to move the arm or hand to enable typing. Chang said this approach taps into the natural and fluid aspects of speech and promises more rapid and organic communication.

"With speech, we normally communicate information at a very high rate, up to 150 or 200 words per minute," he said, noting that spelling-based approaches using typing, writing, and controlling a cursor are considerably slower and more laborious. "Going straight to words, as we're doing here, has great advantages because it's closer to how we normally speak."

Over the past decade, Chang's progress toward this goal was facilitated by patients at the UCSF Epilepsy Center who were undergoing neurosurgery to pinpoint the origins of their seizures using electrode arrays placed on the surface of their brains. These patients, all of whom had normal speech, volunteered to have their brain recordings analyzed for speech-related activity. Early success with these patient volunteers paved the way for the current trial in people with paralysis.

Previously, Chang and colleagues in the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences mapped the cortical activity patterns associated with vocal tract movements that produce each consonant and vowel. To translate those findings into speech recognition of full words, David Moses, PhD, a postdoctoral engineer in the Chang lab and lead author of the new study, developed new methods for real-time decoding of those patterns, as well as incorporating statistical language models to improve accuracy.

But their success in decoding speech in participants who were able to speak didn't guarantee that the technology would work in a person whose vocal tract is paralyzed. "Our models needed to learn the mapping between complex brain activity patterns and intended speech," said Moses. "That poses a major challenge when the participant can't speak."

In addition, the team didn't know whether brain signals controlling the vocal tract would still be intact for people who haven't been able to move their vocal muscles for many years. "The best way to find out whether this could work was to try it," said Moses.

The First 50 Words

To investigate the potential of this technology in patients with paralysis, Chang partnered with colleague Karunesh Ganguly, MD, PhD, an associate professor of neurology, to launch a study known as "BRAVO" (Brain-Computer Interface Restoration of Arm and Voice). The first participant in the trial is a man in his late 30s who suffered a devastating brainstem stroke more than 15 years ago that severely damaged the connection between his brain and his vocal tract and limbs. Since his injury, he has had extremely limited head, neck, and limb movements, and communicates by using a pointer attached to a baseball cap to poke letters on a screen.

The participant, who asked to be referred to as BRAVO1, worked with the researchers to create a 50-word vocabulary that Chang's team could recognize from brain activity using advanced computer algorithms. The vocabulary - which includes words such as "water," "family," and "good" - was sufficient to create hundreds of sentences expressing concepts applicable to BRAVO1's daily life.

For the study, Chang surgically implanted a high-density electrode array over BRAVO1's speech motor cortex. After the participant's full recovery, his team recorded 22 hours of neural activity in this brain region over 48 sessions and several months. In each session, BRAVO1 attempted to say each of the 50 vocabulary words many times while the electrodes recorded brain signals from his speech cortex.

Translating Attempted Speech into Text

To translate the patterns of recorded neural activity into specific intended words, Moses's two co-lead authors, Sean Metzger and Jessie Liu, both bioengineering graduate students in the Chang Lab, used custom neural network models, which are forms of artificial intelligence. When the participant attempted to speak, these networks distinguished subtle patterns in brain activity to detect speech attempts and identify which words he was trying to say.

To test their approach, the team first presented BRAVO1 with short sentences constructed from the 50 vocabulary words and asked him to try saying them several times. As he made his attempts, the words were decoded from his brain activity, one by one, on a screen.

Then the team switched to prompting him with questions such as "How are you today?" and "Would you like some water?" As before, BRAVO1's attempted speech appeared on the screen. "I am very good," and "No, I am not thirsty."

Chang and Moses found that the system was able to decode words from brain activity at rate of up to 18 words per minute with up to 93 percent accuracy (75 percent median). Contributing to the success was a language model Moses applied that implemented an "auto-correct" function, similar to what is used by consumer texting and speech recognition software.

Moses characterized the early trial results as a proof of principle. "We were thrilled to see the accurate decoding of a variety of meaningful sentences," he said. "We've shown that it is actually possible to facilitate communication in this way and that it has potential for use in conversational settings."

Looking forward, Chang and Moses said they will expand the trial to include more participants affected by severe paralysis and communication deficits. The team is currently working to increase the number of words in the available vocabulary, as well as improve the rate of speech.

Both said that while the study focused on a single participant and a limited vocabulary, those limitations don't diminish the accomplishment. "This is an important technological milestone for a person who cannot communicate naturally," said Moses, "and it demonstrates the potential for this approach to give a voice to people with severe paralysis and speech loss."

As the Parker Solar Probe ventures closer to the sun, we are learning new things about our home star.

In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report the first definitive measurements of the sun's electric field, and how the electric field interacts with the solar wind, the fast-flowing current of charged particles that can affect activities on Earth, from satellites to telecommunications.

The physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the sun's electric field, a feat made possible by the fact that the Parker Solar Probe jetted within 0.1 astronomical units (AU), or a mere 9 million miles, from the sun--closer than any spacecraft has approached. From the electrons' distribution, the physicists were able to discern the size, breadth, and scope of the sun's electric field more clearly than had been done before.

"The key point I would make is you can't make these measurements far away from the sun. You can only make them when you get close," says Jasper Halekas, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa and the study's corresponding author. "It's like trying to understand a waterfall by looking at the river a mile downstream. The measurements we made at 0.1 AU, we're actually in the waterfall. The solar wind is still accelerating at that point. It's really just an awesome environment to be in."

The sun's electric field arises from the interaction of protons and electrons generated when hydrogen atoms are stripped apart in the intense heat generated by fusion deep within the sun. In this environment, electrons, with masses 1,800 times less than that of protons, are blown outward, less constrained by gravity than their weightier proton siblings. But the protons, with their positive charge, exert some control, reining in some electrons due to the familiar attraction forces of oppositely charged particles.

"Electrons are trying to escape, but protons are trying to pull them back. And that is the electric field," says Halekas, a co-investigator for the Solar Wind Electrons, Alphas, and Protons instrument aboard the Parker Solar Probe, the NASA-led mission that launched in August 2018. "If there were no electric field, all the electrons would rush away and be gone. But the electric field keeps it all together as one homogenous flow."

Now, imagine the sun's electric field as an immense bowl and the electrons as marbles rolling up the sides at differing speeds. Some of the electrons, or marbles in this metaphor, are zippy enough to cross over the lip of the bowl, while others don't accelerate enough and eventually roll back toward the bowl's base.

"We are measuring the ones that come back and not the ones that don't come back," Halekas says. "There's basically a boundary in energy there between the ones that escape the bowl and the ones that don't, which can be measured. Since we're close enough to the sun, we can make accurate measurements of electrons' distribution before collisions occur further out that distort the boundary and obscure the imprint of the electric field."

From those measurements the physicists can learn more about the solar wind, the million-mile-per-hour jet of plasma from the sun that washes over the Earth and other planets in the solar system. What they found is the sun's electric field exerts some influence over the solar wind, but less than had been thought.

"We can now put a number on how much of the acceleration is provided by the sun's electric field," Halekas says. "It looks like it's a small part of the total. It's not the main thing that gives the solar wind its kick. That then points to other mechanisms that might be giving the solar wind most of its kick."

The paper, "The sunward electron deficit: A telltale sign of the sun's electric potential," was published online July 14 in The Astrophysical Journal.

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- July 14, 2021 -- The results of a study by an international scientific team co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, suggest that -- like pouring water atop a wellhead before pumping -- the airway cells of patients with chronic lung diseases are "primed" for infection by the COVID-19 virus, resulting in more severe symptoms, poorer outcomes and a greater likelihood of death.

The study -- published today in Nature Communications -- details the genetic changes caused by chronic lung disease in the molecular makeup of a variety of cells, including the epithelial cells that line the lung and airways. The study details how those changes can help enable SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to enter the body, replicate and trigger an out-of-control immune response that fills the lungs with fluids and often results in patients needing respirators and lengthy hospitalizations.

The team used single-cell RNA sequencing technology to spell out the genetic code of 611,398 cells from various data bases, representing those with both healthy (control) lungs and those with chronic lung disease. Sequencing and analysis allowed researchers to identify molecular characteristics that may account for worse COVID-19 outcomes.

"Our results suggest that patients with chronic lung disease are molecularly primed to be more susceptible to infection by SARS-CoV-2," said Nicholas Banovich, Ph.D., an Associate Professor in TGen's Integrated Cancer Genomics Division, and one of the study's senior authors. Dr. Banovich is a leading participant in the Human Cell Atlas Lung Biological Network, whose dozens of members, representing more than 80 institutions worldwide, also contributed to this study.

In addition, older-age, male-gender, smoking, and comorbidities such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes, are all COVID-19 risk factors that are exacerbated by chronic lung diseases, such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD), and especially Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF), a progressive scaring and stiffening of the lung tissue.

"It was recognized early in the pandemic that patients with chronic lung diseases were at particularly high risk for severe COVID-19, and our goal was to gain insight into the cellular and molecular changes responsible for this," said Jonathan Kropski, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and a co-senior author of the study.

Changes in lung cells and immune cells

Researchers specifically searched for changes in AT2 cells, a major lung epithelial cell type, focusing on cellular pathways and expression levels of genes associated with COVID-19. They established a "viral entry score," a composite of all genes associated with SARS-CoV-2, and found higher scores among cells from patients with chronic lung disease.

They also explored changes in immune cells and discovered dysregulated gene expression associated with hyper-inflammation and with sustained cytokine production, two signature symptoms of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. So-called cytokine storms in COVID-19 patients unleash a cascade of immune cells that flood the lungs, causing severe organ damage.

"The genetic changes in immune cells, especially in specialized white blood cells known as T cells, may diminish the patient's immune response to viral infection and lead to higher risk of severe disease and poor outcomes in patients with chronic lung disease," said Linh Bui, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Banovich's lab, and one of the study's lead authors.

"Our data suggest that the immune microenvironment at both the molecular and cellular levels in lungs damaged by chronic diseases may promote severe COVID-19," Dr. Bui said.

Significant contributions to this study were made by: Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Yale School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Baylor College of Medicine, and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Plus several institutes in the UK, including: London's Imperial College, Royal Brompton and Harefield National Health System Foundation Trust, Edinburgh University Medical School, and the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

The extraordinary ability of animals to rapidly evolve in response to predators has been demonstrated via genetic sequencing of a waterflea population across nearly two decades.

In a new study, published in Nature Communications, scientists at the Universities of Birmingham in the UK, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and the Leibniz Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Berlin, were able to identify more than 300 genes that vary in the genome of the waterflea.

These genes, which account for about about 3 per cent of all sequenced waterflea genes, underpin changes in behavioural and life history traits that improve survival when exposed to predators.

Strikingly, evolution in response to predation pressure occurs within just a few generations. It is mediated by so-called standing genetic variation - the amount of genetic diversity harboured by a given natural population. The research brings to the forefront of science the importance of standing genetic diversity to support rapid adaptation. It also highlights that reducing the genetic diversity of natural populations has important consequences for their ability to adapt to environmental change.

Lead researcher, Dr Anurag Chaturvedi, currently at the University of Birmingham's School of Biosciences and former PhD student at KU Leuven, explained: "We were able to quantify the genetic diversity of one particular Daphnia population over nearly two decades and show clearly how rapid evolution took place in response to environmental pressures. This type of research will be invaluable for understanding the potential impacts of future environmental changes on animal populations."

The waterflea, or Daphnia, is central to the food webs of lakes and ponds. Its life cycle includes a dormant stage that can last for several decades. By awakening dormant stages through resurrection biology, scientists can quantify genetic changes at several time points in the past and observe evolution as it happens in nature.

In the study, the team was able to hatch dormant eggs that span two decades and to sequence the genome of 36 resurrected Daphnia from a fish-farming pond. During the two decades, the Daphnia population experienced a transition from no predation from fish to high fish predation and back to lower levels of predation. The team was able to uniquely match changes in predation pressure on Daphnia with changes in the DNA over time. In effect, the research was able to link specific changes in the environment of Daphnia with the evolution occurring in their genomes.

The team found that the required DNA variation to kick-start an evolutionary change that spreads through an entire population did not require more than five 'founding' individual Daphnia from the regional set of Daphnia populations.

This surprising result suggests that animal species such as Daphnia have a high capacity for adaptive evolution thanks to the fact that genetic variation is maintained at the landscape level - an important lesson for conservation biology.

Lead researcher, Dr Anurag Chaturvedi explained: "Our ability to investigate populations that evolve across decades is invaluable for both fundamental and applied science discoveries".

July 14, 2021 (Toronto) A new study from the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), published in the journal Lancet Oncology, has found an association between alcohol and a substantially higher risk of several forms of cancer, including breast, colon, and oral cancers. Increased risk was evident even among light to moderate drinkers (up to two drinks a day), who represented 1 in 7 of all new cancers in 2020 and more than 100,000 cases worldwide.

In Canada, alcohol use was linked to 7,000 new cases of cancer in 2020, including 24 per cent of breast cancer cases, 20 per cent of colon cancers, 15 per cent of rectal cancers, and 13 per cent of oral and liver cancers.

"All drinking involves risk," said study co-author Dr. Jürgen Rehm, Senior Scientist, Institute for Mental Health Policy Research and Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at CAMH. "And with alcohol-related cancers, all levels of consumption are associated with some risk. For example, each standard sized glass of wine per day is associated with a 6 per cent higher risk for developing female breast cancer."

"Alcohol consumption causes a substantial burden of cancer globally," said Dr. Isabelle Soerjomataram, Deputy Branch Head, Cancer Surveillance Branch at IARC. "Yet the impact on cancers is often unknown or overlooked, highlighting the need for implementation of effective policy and interventions to increase public awareness of the link between alcohol use and cancer risk, and decrease overall alcohol consumption to prevent the burden of alcohol-attributable cancers."

Dr. Leslie Buckley, CAMH Chief of Addictions, added: "In our clinic we are seeing many people who report increased alcohol use since the onset of the pandemic. Although this may be related to temporary stressors, there is a potential for new habits to become more permanent. The consequences with alcohol use are often subtle harms initially that take time to show themselves, while long-term consequences such as cancer, liver disease and substance use disorder can be devastating."

The modelling study was based on data on alcohol exposure from almost all countries of the world, both surveys and sales figures, which were combined with the latest relative risk estimates for cancer based on level of consumption.

"Alcohol causes cancer in numerous ways," explained Dr. Kevin Shield, Independent Scientist, Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, and study co-author. "The main mechanism of how alcohol causes cancer is through impairing DNA repair. Additional pathways include chronic alcohol consumption resulting in liver cirrhosis, and alcohol leading to a dysregulation of sex hormones, leading to breast cancer. Alcohol also increases the risk of head and neck cancer for smokers as it increases the absorption of carcinogens from tobacco."

Dr. Rehm says research into the link between light to moderate drinking and cancer is relatively new and that public policy does not yet reflect the degree of cancer risk. He added, "As an epidemiologist, I would recommend higher taxes to fully reflect the burden of disease from alcohol. Along with limiting the physical availability and marketing of alcohol, price controls are recognized as high-impact, cost-effective measures to reduce alcohol-related harm." Governments can also consider requiring manufacturers to include information about health and safety risks associated with alcohol consumption, including cancer risk, on alcoholic beverage labels.

These suggestions and many others can be found in CAMH's Alcohol Policy Framework. Updated in September 2019, the document proposes evidence-informed measures to effectively address the health and social harms associated with alcohol.

Washington/Philadelphia, July 14, 2021--New research finds that high school students who attended school remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered socially, emotionally, and academically compared with those who attended in person.

The study was published today in Educational Researcher (ER) by researchers Angela L. Duckworth, Tim Kautz, Amy Defnet, Emma Satlof-Bedrick, Sean Talamas, Benjamin Lira, and Laurence Steinberg. ER is a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

"Many news stories have reported on individual stories of teenagers who have suffered from anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges during the pandemic," said lead author Duckworth, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the founder and CEO of Character Lab. "This study gives some of the first empirical evidence of how learning remotely has affected adolescent well-being."

The study found a social, emotional, and academic "thriving gap" between students who had been attending school in person and their counterparts who had been attending remotely. The greater suffering of students attending school remotely held up when controlling for how students were faring on the same dimensions prior to the pandemic. Though not enormous in magnitude, the thriving gap was consistent across gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status--and even small effects are noteworthy when they impact millions of individuals.

On a 100-point scale, in-person students were rated higher than remote students on levels of social well-being (77.2 versus 74.8), emotional well-being (57.4 versus 55.7), and academic well-being (78.4 versus 77.3).

"Notably, the thriving gap was larger among students in 10th through 12th grades than it was among ninth graders," said Steinberg, a professor at Temple University.

"As policymakers gear up for national tutoring and remediation programs--which we agree are urgent priorities--we must recognize that our nation's students are not just lagging as performers, they are suffering as people," Duckworth said. "Meeting their intrinsic psychological needs--for social connection, for positive emotion, and authentic intellectual engagement--is a challenge that cannot wait."

As part of an ongoing research partnership with Orange County Public Schools, a large and demographically diverse public school district in Florida, the study authors had already administered the Character Lab Student Thriving Index--a confidential survey assessing students' current social, emotional, and academic experience--to over 6,500 students in February of 2020, just before the pandemic shut down schools.

Several months later, families in this district were offered the option of remote versus in-person classes for the 2020-21 school year. Two thirds of the students in the sample ended up attending school remotely, and one third attended school in person. Regardless of whether they were learning from home or attending classes at school, the same students completed the Student Thriving Index again in October 2020.

To capture social well-being, the survey included questions about fitting in at school, whether there was an adult in their school to whom they could turn for support or advice, and whether in their school there was an adult who always wanted them to do their best. For emotional well-being, teens responded on how often they were feeling happy, relaxed, and sad, as well as how they were feeling overall about their life. And for academic well-being, the survey asked how interesting teens found their classes, how important they found it to do well in their classes, and how confident they were that they could succeed in their classes if they tried.

Oncotarget published "CEA as a blood-based biomarker in anal cancer" which reported that the mean Carcinoembryonic Antigen (CEA) among subgroups by clinical status at the time of presentation to our institution was highest among those patients with metastatic Squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCCA) to visceral organs, however this finding was not statistically significant by ANOVA .

By clinical subgroup, the percentage of patients with an abnormally elevated CEA was highest in those patients with metastatic disease to lymph nodes followed by recurrent/unresectable SCCA , and metastatic SCCA to visceral organs, and was statistically significant between groups.

Using RECIST criteria for tumor progression and disease response, the mean change in CEA for patients with progression was an increase in 19 ng/mL, compared to a change of –7.3 ng/mL in those with disease response.

The authors likewise assessed whether CEA levels were associated with survival outcomes for all patients with metastatic SCCA, and found no correlation between CEA and likelihood for survival in a ROC analysis.

Despite interesting patterns of abnormally high CEA in SCCA patients with advanced disease, and correlation of increased CEA with disease progression, CEA is not associated with survival outcomes in SCCA, and is not a clinically relevant biomarker in this disease.

CEA is not associated with survival outcomes in SCCA, and is not a clinically relevant biomarker in this disease

Dr. Van K. Morris from The University of Texas - MD Anderson Cancer Center said, "Squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal (SCCA) is a rare cancer of the anogenital track with an estimated incidence of about 8500 new cases and 1350 deaths in 2020 in the U.S. annually, comprising 2–3% of all gastrointestinal malignancies."

Routine, readily available blood-based markers are often utilized in the clinical management of patients with solid tumors across a variety of clinical settings.

For example, trends in biomarkers such as carcinoembryonic antigen, carbohydrate antigen 19-9, prostate-specific antigen and carbohydrate antigen 125 can be monitored serially over time for patents with colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, and ovarian cancer, respectively, as a surrogate for changes in amount of tumor present.

To date, no blood-based biomarker for tracking responses to HPV-associated cancers is readily available to clinical oncologists for routine use.

Among anal cancer patients, one series examined 106 patients with early-stage SCCA treated definitely with chemoradiation and did not find clinical utility in the measurement of CEA in this subset of patients with anal cancer.

Since no blood-based biomarkers are currently available in a CLIA-certified laboratory for the routine management of SCCA, we performed a retrospective, single-institution study to correlate serum CEA levels with clinical and pathologic outcomes in patients across all stages and presentations of SCCA.

The Morris Research Team concluded in their Oncotarget Research Output, "we report the largest series to describe CEA as a serum biomarker for patients with metastatic SCCA. Our findings may not provide definitive support for the use of a routinely used blood-based assay for management of patients with SCCA and should guide clinicians in seeking alternative approaches for tracking responses to treatment in this disease. Nonetheless, novel approaches with serum biomarkers are needed for patients with this rare but increasingly diagnosed malignancy."

New data on macaw movements gathered by the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences' (CVMBS) The Macaw Society has the potential to greatly improve conservation strategies for the scarlet macaw, as well as similar species of large parrots.

While the overall conservation status of the scarlet macaw is listed as "least concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the species is declining across much of Central America and in other parts of its range in South America. The species also shares its habitat with numerous endangered species and influences the ecosystems in which it lives.

The Macaw Society's paper, recently published in Avian Conservation & Ecology, is the result of the long-term research study of the ecology and conservation of macaws and other parrots in Peru's Tambopata National Reserve.

Historically, the migratory movements of large parrots and macaws have largely remained a mystery because of the difficulty of tracking them over the long distances they travel. The recent publication describing the discoveries made using satellite tracking of individual birds over large areas has shed some light on this mystery.

The research team -- consisting of associate professor Donald Brightsmith; adjunct associate professor Janice Boyd; Elizabeth Hobson from the University of Cincinnati; and Charles Randel from the Southwestern Wildlife Survey in California -- used ARGOS satellite telemetry (orbiting satellites that detect signals emitted from a transmitter attached to an animal) to track six scarlet macaws and four blue-and-yellow macaws over a period of eight years.

They found that both macaw species had very large home ranges, consisting of thousands of hectares (with 1 hectare equaling 2.471 acres), and often traveled 20 to 40 km (approximately 12 to 25 miles) per day. Individuals of both species moved up to 160 km (99 miles) during the periods of low food availability, likely searching for areas with dense patches of food trees.

New data on macaw movements gathered by the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences' (CVMBS) The Macaw Society has the potential to greatly improve conservation strategies for the scarlet macaw, as well as similar species of large parrots.

While the overall conservation status of the scarlet macaw is listed as "least concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the species is declining across much of Central America and in other parts of its range in South America. The species also shares its habitat with numerous endangered species and influences the ecosystems in which it lives.

The Macaw Society's paper, recently published in Avian Conservation & Ecology, is the result of the long-term research study of the ecology and conservation of macaws and other parrots in Peru's Tambopata National Reserve.

Historically, the migratory movements of large parrots and macaws have largely remained a mystery because of the difficulty of tracking them over the long distances they travel. The recent publication describing the discoveries made using satellite tracking of individual birds over large areas has shed some light on this mystery.

The research team -- consisting of associate professor Donald Brightsmith; adjunct associate professor Janice Boyd; Elizabeth Hobson from the University of Cincinnati; and Charles Randel from the Southwestern Wildlife Survey in California -- used ARGOS satellite telemetry (orbiting satellites that detect signals emitted from a transmitter attached to an animal) to track six scarlet macaws and four blue-and-yellow macaws over a period of eight years.

They found that both macaw species had very large home ranges, consisting of thousands of hectares (with 1 hectare equaling 2.471 acres), and often traveled 20 to 40 km (approximately 12 to 25 miles) per day. Individuals of both species moved up to 160 km (99 miles) during the periods of low food availability, likely searching for areas with dense patches of food trees.

The concept of interoperability describes the ability of different systems to communicate. This is a major challenge in biomedical research, and in particular, in the field of personalised medicine, which is largely based on the compilation and analysis of numerous datasets. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that even when the technical, legal and ethical constraints are lifted, the data remain difficult to analyse because of semantic ambiguities. Under the auspices of the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) and in close collaboration with representatives from all five Swiss university hospitals and eHealth Suisse, a team of scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), in collaboration with the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), have developed the strategy for a national infrastructure adopted by all Swiss university hospitals and academic institutions. With its pragmatic approach, this strategy is based on the development of a common semantic framework that does not aim to replace existing standards, but to use them in a synergistic and flexible way according to the needs of the research and the partners involved. The implementation of this strategy, which has already started, marks a crucial step to stimulate research and innovation for a truly personalised medicine in Switzerland. Read more in the journal JMIR Medical Informatics.

Personalised medicine is based on the exploitation and analysis of large quantities of data whether genomic, epidemiological or from medical imaging, to extract meaning. To be able to do this, cross-referencing and aggregating mutually intelligible data is compulsory, even when they come from very different sources.

With this in mind, the Swiss government created in 2017 the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN), an initiative placed under the leadership of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences in collaboration with the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics that aims to promote the use and exchange of health data for research. "Despite major investments over the past decade, there are still major disparities", says Christian Lovis, director of the Department of Radiology and Medical Informatics at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and head of the Division of Medical Information Sciences at the HUG. "This is why we wanted, with our partners and the SPHN, to propose a strategy and common standards that are flexible enough to accommodate all kinds of current and future databases."

A three-pillar strategy

We communicate on three main standards: the meaning we give to things, because we must agree on a common basis for understanding each other; a technical standard -- the sound, with which we speak; and finally, the organisation of the meaning and sound with sentences and grammar to structure the communication in an intelligible way. "In terms of data, it's the same thing, explains Christophe Gaudet-Blavignac, a researcher in the team led by Christian Lovis. You have to agree on a semantic, to represent conceptually what has to be communicated. Then we need a compositional language to combine these meanings with all the freedom required to express everything that needs to be expressed. And finally, depending on the projects and research communities involved, this will be 'translated' as needed into data models, which are as numerous as the languages spoken in the world."

"Our aim has therefore been to unify vocabularies so that they can be communicated in any grammar, rather than creating a new vocabulary from scratch that everybody would have to learn anew", says Christian Lovis. "In this sense, the Swiss federalism is a huge advantage: it has forced us to imagine a decentralised strategy, which can be applied everywhere. The constraint has therefore created the opportunity to develop a system that works despite local languages, cultures and regulations." This makes it possible to apply specific data models for only the last step to be adapted to the formats required by a particular project -- the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) format in the case of collaboration with an American team, for example, or any other specific format used by a particular country or research initiative. This constitutes a guarantee of mutual understanding and a huge time saving.

No impact on data protection

However, data interoperability does not mean systematic data sharing. "The banking world, for example, has long since adopted global interoperability standards, stresses Christophe Gaudet-Blavignac. A simple IBAN can be used to transfer money from any account to any other. However, this does not mean that anyone, be they individuals, private organisations or governments, can know what is in these accounts without a strict legal framework." Indeed, a distinction must be made between the instruments that create interoperability and their implementation, on the one hand, and the regulatory framework that governs their accessibility, on the other hand.

Strategy implementation

This strategy has been implemented stepwise in Switzerland since the middle of 2019, in the framework of the Swiss Personalized Health Network. "Swiss university hospitals are already following the proposed strategy to share interoperable data for all multicentric research projects funded by the SPHN initiative", reports Katrin Crameri, director of the Personalized Health Informatics Group at SIB in charge of the SPHN Data Coordination Centre. Further, some hospitals are starting to implement this strategy beyond the SPHN initiative.

The corona pandemic has ensured that the term "mRNA" is now also known to a large public beyond laboratories and lecture halls. However, the molecule is much more than an important component of a successful vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. "mRNAs are a central component of all living things on our planet. Without them life as we know it would not function," says Elmar Wolf.

Wolf is a professor for tumour system biology at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Würzburg. With his research team, he has now deciphered new details about the formation of mRNA which provide novel insights into how a fundamental process inside cells works: the transcription. The team presents the results of their research in the current issue of Molecular Cell.

Information becomes protein

Transcription: If one can still remember their biology lessons, then they know that it is the process by which the genetic information in the DNA is translated into messenger RNA - or as how scientists like to call it: mRNA. Only the mRNA is capable of transmitting the information from the genetic material of the DNA in the nucleus of the cell to the sites of protein biosynthesis outside the nucleus. "The mRNA composition thus decides how the cells of our body look and how they function," Wolf says.

The transcription process from DNA to mRNA sounds relatively simple: "You can think of transcription as an obstacle race. The RNA polymerase starts the reading process at the beginning of the gene, then moves through the entire gene and, finally reach the finish line," Wolf explains. If the polymerase makes it through to the end, the mRNA has been produced. Scientists have long known that a lot can go wrong in this process. After all, many genes are a long "race track" with plenty of obstacles.

Polymerase fails in difficult places

In order to better understand what happens at the molecular level during the race, Wolf and his team took a close look at the process of transcription. "We studied an important component of the RNA polymerase: the protein SPT6," explains Wolf. The question they explored is: "Is SPT6 important for the process of transcription and - if so - in what way?"

What do the scientists do when they want to learn about the function of a protein: they remove it from the cells and see what happens. That's exactly what Wolf and his team did. The result was quite clear: "Interestingly, RNA polymerase starts making mRNA even in the absence of SPT6," Wolf described. But then it regularly gets stuck in difficult places - you could say that it falls over an obstacle.

New picture of the transcription

This failure has two consequences that have a negative impact on cell function: On one hand, hardly any RNA polymerase makes it to the destination, which is why hardly any mRNA is produced. On the other hand, however, the gene itself is also affected. "Without SPT6, the polymerase destroys the obstacles and the racetrack, which is why functional RNA polymerases are then unable to find their way," says Wolf. Thus, it is clear that the SPT6 protein is a central element in the production of mRNA in cells.

With these findings, the researchers are helping to shed more light on the process of transcription: "Until now, scientists had assumed that the only thing that mattered for mRNA production was how many RNA polymerases started transcription," Wolf says. Thanks to the results that have now been published, it is now clear that by no means all RNA polymerases that start the transcription process actually make it to the end of the gene and that the protein SPT6 is essential for this arrival.

Dr. Iair Arcavi, a Tel Aviv University researcher at the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, participated in a study that discovered a new type of stellar explosion - an electron-capture supernova. While they have been theorized for 40 years, real-world examples have been elusive. Such supernovas arise from the explosions of stars 8-9 times the mass of the sun. The discovery also sheds new light on the thousand-year mystery of the supernova from A.D. 1054 that was seen by ancient astronomers, before eventually becoming the Crab Nebula, that we know today.

A supernova is the explosion of a star following a sudden imbalance between two opposing forces that shaped the star throughout its life. Gravity tries to contract every star. Our sun, for example, counter balances this force through nuclear fusion in its core, which produces pressure that opposes the gravitational pull. As long as there is enough nuclear fusion, gravity will not be able to collapse the star. However, eventually, nuclear fusion will stop, just like gas runs out in a car, and the star will collapse. For stars like the sun, the collapsed core is called a white dwarf. This material in white dwarfs is so dense that quantum forces between electrons prevent further collapse.

For stars 10 times more massive than our sun, however, electron quantum forces are not enough to stop the gravitational pull, and the core continues to collapse until it becomes a neutron star or a black hole, accompanied by a giant explosion. In the intermediate mass range, the electrons are squeezed (or more accurately, captured) onto atomic nuclei. This removes the electron quantum forces, and causes the star to collapse and then explode.

Historically, there have been two main supernova types. One is a thermonuclear supernova -- the explosion of a white dwarf star after it gains matter in a binary star system. These white dwarfs are the dense cores of ash that remain after a low-mass star (one up to about 8 times the mass of the sun) reaches the end of its life. Another main supernova type is a core-collapse supernova where a massive star -- one more than about 10 times the mass of the sun -- runs out of nuclear fuel and has its core collapsed, creating a black hole or a neutron star. Theoretical work suggested that electron-capture supernovae would occur on the borderline between these two types of supernovae.

That's the theory that was developed in the 1980's by Ken'ichi Nomoto of the University of Tokyo, and others. Over the decades, theorists have formulated predictions of what to look for in an electron-capture supernova. The stars should lose a lot of mass of particular composition before exploding, and the supernova itself should be relatively weak, have little radioactive fallout, and produce neutron-rich elements.

The new study, published in Nature Astronomy, focuses on the supernova SN2018zd, discovered in 2018 by Japanese amateur astronomer Koihchi Itagaki. Dr. Iair Arcavi, of the astrophysics department at Tel Aviv University, also took part in the study. This supernova, located in the galaxy NGC 2146, has all of the properties expected from an electron-capture supernova, which were not seen in any other supernova. In addition, because the supernova is relatively nearby - only 31 million light years away - the researchers were able to identify the star in pre-explosion archival images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Indeed, the star itself also fits the predictions of the type of star that should explode as an electron-capture supernovae, and is unlike stars that were seen to explode as the other types of supernovae.

While some supernovae discovered in the past had a few of the indicators predicted for electron-capture supernovae, only SN2018zd had all six - a progenitor star that fits within the expected mass range, strong pre-supernova mass loss, an unusual chemical composition, a weak explosion, little radioactivity, and neutron-rich material. "We started by asking 'what's this weirdo?'" said Daichi Hiramatsu of the University of California Santa Barbara and Las Cumbres Observatory, who led the study. "Then we examined every aspect of SN 2018zd and realized that all of them can be explained in the electron-capture scenario."

The new discoveries also illuminate some mysteries of one of the most famous supernovae of the past. In A.D. 1054 a supernova happened in our own Milky Way Galaxy, and according to Chinese and Japanese records, it was so bright that it could be seen in the daytime and cast shadows at night. The resulting remnant, the Crab Nebula, has been studied in great detail, and was found to have an unusual composition. It was previously the best candidate for an electron-capture supernova, but this was uncertain partly because the explosion happened nearly a thousand years ago. The new result increases the confidence that the historic 1054 supernova was an electron-capture supernova.

"It's amazing that we can shed light on historical events in the Universe with modern instruments," says Dr. Arcavi. "Today, with robotic telescopes that scan the sky in unprecedented efficiency, we can discover more and more rare events which are critical for understanding the laws of nature, without having to wait 1000 years between one event and the next."

A consortium of modern slavery experts, led by the University of Nottingham, have assisted the Greek government to tackle a humanitarian crisis unfolding in the strawberry fields of southern Greece.

Using satellite technology to identify migrant settlements - a technique pioneered by the university's Rights Lab - and working with the Greek authorities, the experts then developed a decision model for which they could prioritise victims that were at highest risk.

Leading the study, the Rights Lab combined different data sources and methods to build a set of criteria measuring the extent of labour exploitation in a settlement. The academics then validated these criteria with a government agency and a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) involved in fighting labour exploitation.

By combining earth observation data with operations management techniques, this method has been successfully used to address labour exploitation in areas where strawberries are harvested.

This approach is a world-first in the humanitarian sector, with the study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), being published in the journal of Production and Operations Management.

The strawberry fields of Nea Manolada have been in the human rights spotlight since May 2013, when three local field guards shot and injured 30 Bangladeshi migrant workers. In March 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled that the workers had been subjected to forced labour and that Greece had violated Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights by not preventing human trafficking of irregular migrant workers. Following a high-stake ruling by the Court, the Greek government was mandated to ramp-up its fight against labour exploitation.

Dr Ioannis Kougkoulos led the study while at the Rights Lab. He said: "The use of seasonal workers, the relatively low level of skills required, a strong reliance on outsourcing and agent-based recruitment of workers increase the likelihood of labour exploitation. Forced migration caused by crises around the world exacerbates this phenomenon. Refugees and migrants often live-in illegality and experience serious financial distress, which puts them at high risk of becoming victims of labour exploitation.

"Governments are responsible for ensuring equal treatment for migrant and national workers on their territory, and to protect migrants from being employed under substandard working conditions."

Dr Doreen Boyd, a co-author, Rights Lab Associate Director, and Professor of Earth Observation at the University of Nottingham led the ESRC grant that supported this work. She said: "We have demonstrated how remote sensing data enables the identification and location of informal settlements of workers in potential situations of labour exploitation over a large geographic area (140km2). Identifying these settlements from the ground would require driving around the entire study area in search of possible settlements, which would be costly and ineffective, since many settlements are not visible from the road.

"Our approach can be replicated in other labour-intensive agricultural activities where cheap labour is abundant, such as the Italian tomato fields or tobacco-producing regions in Argentina. Future studies could extend our approach to different applications in humanitarian operations, for example, to study migration flows, by combining remote sensing with a decision-making tool such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for identifying and assessing risks of settlements of forcibly displaced persons in highly fluid conflict situations, like the South Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo."

In the paper, the researchers report that fighting labour exploitation in the agricultural sector requires time-intensive fieldwork, as it involves visiting suspected farms and informal worker settlements, which governments and humanitarian organisations often lack resources to do.

Using remote sensing, a form of satellite technology, for real-time data collection allowed the academics to overcome one of the major challenges of research in humanitarian operations, namely the difficulty of accessing data due to safety and logistical issues limiting access to the field.

Once areas of potential exploitation had been identified through satellite imagery, these settlements were investigated and verified - known as 'ground-truthing'. On the ground, the inspection teams collected data from each settlement using questionnaires to address all criteria required for the decision analysis model that the academics had prepared.

Next, the academics used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), a recognised method in the operations sector for decision-making to formalise and address the problem of competing decision objectives - a common characteristic of humanitarian operations.

Each settlement was then ranked, using the MCDA model, to assist the government and humanitarian organisations intervene in the top-priority settlements (starting with the riskiest settlement and moving toward the less risky) and allocate resources to the most vulnerable migrant workers to improve their living conditions.