Culture

The human brain has extreme ability in thinking and computation, but it only requires a very low energy power of about 20W, which is much lower than that of electronic computers. The neuronal connections in the brain network have a globally sparse but locally compact modular topological characteristics, which greatly reduces the total resource consumption for establishing the connections. The spikes of each neuron in the brain are sparse and irregular, and the clustered firing of the neuronal populations has a certain degree of synchronization, forming neural avalanches with scale-free characteristics, and the network can sensitively respond to external stimuli. However, it is still not clear how the brain structure and dynamic properties can self-organize to achieve their co-optimization in cost efficiency. Recently, Junhao Liang and Changsong Zhou from Hong Kong Baptist University and Sheng-Jun Wang from Shaanxi Normal University, tried to address this issue by a biological neural network model through large-scale numerical simulation, combined with a novel mean-field theory analysis. In their research article published in the National Science Review (NSR), they studied the excitation-inhibition balance neural dynamics model on the spatial network.

The research showed that: when a globally sparse randomly connected network (RN) is rewired to a more biologically realistic modular network (MN), the network's running consumption (neuron firing rate) and its building cost of connection are both significantly reduced; the dynamic mode of the network transitions to the region allowing scale-free avalanches (that is, criticality), which makes the network more sensitive in responding to external stimuli (see Figure 1).

Further analysis found that the increased connection density of single modules during the rewiring process is key to account for the dynamical transitions: higher network topological correlation leads to higher dynamical correlation, which makes neurons to firing spikes more easily. Using a novel approximate mean-field theory, the authors derived the macroscopic field equations of a single module, revealing that the increase of module density causes the decrease of neural firing rate and the proximity to the Hopf bifurcation of the system. This explains the formation of critical avalanches and the increased sensitivity to external stimuli with lower firing cost. The coupled oscillator model obtained by coupling multiple modules further reveals the dynamic transition during the rewiring process of the original network (see Figure 2).

The research clearly showed a principle of achieving a co-optimization of (rather than a trade-off between) the brain structural and dynamic properties, and offers a novel understanding of the cost-efficient operational principle of the brain, which also provides insights to the design of brain-inspired computational devices.

While attending a conference at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City several years ago, Sharon Borja was struck by the story of a young man who, as a child, joined his parents repatriating to their native country of Mexico. Like millions of Mexican immigrants, the family had called the United States home for years, and having been born in the U.S., he was an American citizen. Walking one day in his newfound urban Mexican neighborhood, a couple carrying a wooden stick approached him on the street and encouraged him to do the same, Borja recalled the man sharing.

"The stick was for protection against all the stray dogs," said Borja, an assistant professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. "He grew up in America and was in a new country for the first time and didn't understand the various challenges. His story sparked my interest in investigating other hurdles U.S. citizen migrant children face when accompanying their parents back to Mexico, including lack of adequate health insurance."

More than a million Mexican nationals and their families that returned to Mexico from the United States in 2015 fueled in part by the Great Recession limiting job opportunities and increased deportation. Among them were 550,000 U.S.-born minors.

An analysis of more than 36,000 of those minors, published in the peer reviewed journal Health Affairs, found that nearly 54% were underinsured. The situation was even more stark in urban settings, where 80% of U.S. citizen migrant children had limited, inadequate insurance. Among the children who lived in Mexican states near the U.S. border, 65% suffered the same fate.

For the study, "underinsured" was defined as those who reported having no insurance or received coverage through public health services or private insurance, which offer narrower coverage, limited access to high-quality care, and modest protection from catastrophic health expenses compared to employment-based programs through Mexico's Social Security Institute.

"We believe health care is a human right. It's a travesty that these U.S. citizen children are vulnerable to financial risk and delays in care and treatment. Many don't even think about this subgroup of at-risk kids, yet they are U.S. citizens who moved to another country, likely not by their choice," said Borja, lead author of the research paper. "These circumstances elevate their risk for lifelong disparities in health and productivity compared with their counterparts who stayed in the U.S."

The study also revealed that parents' level of education and living with an employed mother were associated with a higher likelihood of having the superior employment-based coverage. In addition, the likelihood of having such coverage is reduced by 59% for U.S. citizen migrant children in border states compared with those in other areas.

Although Mexico established a form of universal health care in 2020 called Instituto de Salud para el Bienestar (INSABI), or the Institute of Health for Well-being in English, it faces insufficient funding and does not cover all health conditions, according to the researchers. Regardless, access is guaranteed only for those with proof of citizenship or legal residency. Fewer than half of U.S. citizen migrant children in Mexico in 2015 reported having Mexican citizenship, further putting them at risk for delayed medical care, particularly when there is no alternative to prove eligibility.

The findings underscore the need for transborder health policies that address the growing place-based inequity in health coverage, according to the study authors. They recommend the following solutions:

Reintegration policies, including assistance to revalidate education and training obtained abroad, to help ease the transition of returning migrants and their families to Mexico.

Expedited dual-citizenship application process to facilitate receipt of health and social protection programs; a U.S.-Mexico bilateral agreement to recognize birth certificates from either country as proof of dual citizenship could further simplify the registration of U.S. citizen migrant children in programs such as INSABI, as these documents already bear their parents' nationalities.

Exempting U.S. citizen migrant children who reside in the 80 Mexican municipalities within approximately 60 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border from automatic suspensions of Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) benefits to ensure uninterrupted care via telemedicine and in-person consultation with U.S. health care providers.

Creation of a workgroup within the Comisión de Salud Fronteriza México-Estados Unidos (U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission) to help monitor the health status and needs of U.S. citizen migrant children.

Other authors of the research paper include Jodi Berger Cardoso, University of Houston; Pedro Isnardo De La Cruz, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Krista Perreira, University of North Carolina; Natalia Giraldo-Santiago, University of Houston Ph.D. candidate; Martha Virginia Jasso Oyervides, Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila.

The researchers acknowledge that the evolving geopolitical landscape of U.S.-Mexico migration and the recent implementation of INSABI could present a different picture now, six years after their data was collected. But with increased deportations during the Trump Administration, the numbers of U.S. citizen migrant children lacking adequate health insurance is likely even higher today.

"We recognize that the implementation of cross-border health initiatives could be costly. But the long-term societal savings of investing in early childhood and ensuring timely access to high quality preventive care far outweigh the cost," wrote the researchers. "Sustained political will and consistent commitment to invest in U.S. citizen migrant children, who are often an ignored segment of the population, are needed so that they do not become 'out of sight and out of mind.'"

JUPITER, FL - The brain is wired for learning. With each experience, our neurons branch out to make new connections, laying down the circuitry of our long-term memories. Scientists call this trait plasticity, referring to an ability to adapt and change with experience.

For plasticity to happen, our neurons' synapses, or connection points, must constantly remodel and adapt, too. The mechanics underlying neurons' synaptic plasticity have become clearer, thanks to new research from the lab of Scripps Research neuroscientist Sathya Puthanveettil, PhD.

Scientists have learned that synaptic plasticity requires a complex relay from the neuron's cell body to its dendrite arms and its synapse junctions. Like a 24-hour port and highway network, an internal transportation system of microtubule roads and robot-like couriers shuttle the cell's vital cargo to its farthest reaches. The transported cargo allows ribosome organelles to assemble, read various RNA instructions, and build new proteins as needed in the dendrites.

In a study published July 13 in Cell Reports, Puthanveettil's team reports that among the transport network's courier molecules are two members of the Kinesin family, KIF5C and KIF3A. If KIF5C is knocked out, the team found, the neurons' ability to branch out dendrites and form input-receiving spines suffers. A gain of function to Kif5C improves these traits.

The study's first author, Supriya Swarnkar, PhD, a research associate in the Puthanveettil lab, says discerning the details of these processes points to possible causes of neurological disorders, and offers new directions for treatment. Kifs play an important role, she says.

"The ability to form memories depends on the proper functioning of the neuron's long-distance transport system from cell body to synapse," Swarnkar says. "And many studies have reported links between mutations in Kifs and neurological disorders, including intellectual disability, autism and ALS."

Structurally, many of the Kinesin family proteins resemble a walking robot, something from science fiction. They have a platform for carrying cargo, and two leg-like appendages that move back and forth, in a forward walking motion, along microtubules. In fact, they are referred to as molecular machines. These remarkable walking robots move along with their cargo on their back, until they reach their synapse destination and deposit their packages.

There are 46 different kinds of these molecular machines, specialized to carry different types of cargo, Puthanveettil says. Scientists are beginning to learn which Kifs carry which cargo.

Puthanveettil's team anticipated that KIF5C's cargo might include various RNAs. Cousin of DNA, which encode genes and reside in the nucleus, RNAs are transcribed from DNA, take its genetic instructions out to the cell's cytoplasm, build proteins encoded by the genes, and help regulate cell activities. Each different RNA has a different job.

By isolating complexes of KIF5C and their cargo, and then sequencing the RNA, they documented around 650 different RNAs that rely upon the KIF5C courier.

Significantly, this included an RNA that provides the code to initiate protein building, called EIF3G. If it doesn't show up when and where needed, compounds required for synapse plasticity aren't made. The ability to remodel the synapse with experience and to learn is impaired, Puthanveettil says.

To better understand the role of the Kifs in long-term memory storage and recall, the team carried out both loss- and gain-of-function studies both in cells and in mice, focusing on the dorsal hippocampal CA1 neurons that are involved in multiple forms of learning.

The mouse studies showed that loss of KIF5C diminishes spatial and fear-associated memory. If KIF5C is boosted in the dorsal hippocampus, on the other hand, memory is enhanced and amplified. The cells showed enhancement of synaptic transmission, arborization of dendrite arms, the neurons' arm-like extensions, and eruption of signal-receiving mushroom spines. Mushroom spine density is correlated with memory and synaptic plasticity.

Taken together, the research offers new ideas for addressing a wide variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. Intellectual disability, depression, epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease - anything that could benefit from greater or lesser expression of key proteins in neurons' dendrites might respond to a boosting or diminishing these molecular couriers, Puthanveettil says.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Direct farm marketing efforts, such as farmers markets and roadside stands, are more successful in communities with more nonprofits, social enterprises and creative industries, according to a team including Cornell University researchers, who created a nationwide database of assets to help municipalities craft community-specific development plans.

While many municipalities seek to encourage direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing - an important factor in farmers' livelihoods - the success of their efforts hinges on a wide array of community resources, or capital assets, with natural and cultural assets correlating most strongly with farmers' success, the research found.

To explore differences between communities, Todd Schmit, associate professor in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and colleagues at Colorado State University and the University of Missouri created a database of assets for every county in the United States, breaking down these community resources in six areas: built, cultural, financial, human, natural and social.

"There's a broad acceptance of the idea that sustainable community development is dependent on this array of capital assets. But when it comes to measuring those capitals, the literature is all over the place," Schmit said. "Some studies will use educational attainment to measure human capital, but others will use food security, or access to medical care. We thought, why not measure all of those things?"

To create their composite database, Schmit and his colleagues gathered data on dozens of factors, such as: the number of manufacturing establishments; the number of owner-occupied housing units without a mortgage; and acreage of farmland. All data came from publicly available sources such as the U.S. Census and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Then they used their new database to evaluate DTC farm marketing against community capital stocks in an article published July 2 in the journal Food Policy: "Measuring Stocks of Community Wealth and Their Association With Food Systems Efforts in Rural and Urban Places."

They found, as expected, that high levels of natural capital, especially farmland, correlated positively with DTC farm marketing. But they also found a positive association with cultural capital: Communities with more nonprofits, social enterprises and creative industries help farmers prosper in direct marketing.

"Art-centric businesses, museums, theaters, symphonies, architecture firms - there was a very complementary effect," Schmit said. "Maybe farmers markets are hosting musicians or art vendors and that's making the farmers market a bigger draw for consumers? Or maybe because people are coming to communities to visit an art gallery or go to a museum, they're saying, 'Well, let's head over to the farmers market, too, and make a day of it.'"

Schmit said he hopes the new database will be helpful for community planners and other researchers studying a variety of issues important for regional development.

"With this paper, we wanted to showcase an application of these capital stocks, but our bigger purpose is to provide this data for others to use in whatever application they want: obesity, child nutrition programs, infrastructure investment planning, conservation protection," he said. "We want people to use this data."

Co-author Becca Jablonski, a Cornell alum and an associate professor of agricultural and resource economics at Colorado State University, hopes the database will enable researchers and planners to craft economic development policies that are more successful because they are community-specific.

"Often policymakers set strategies to support community economic development at the federal level without full consideration of the fact that different types of programs and initiatives will have different impacts in different places based on the comparative advantage of a particular place - what they do better than other places," Jablonski said. "We hope that this database of the stocks of community assets can help decision-makers more thoughtfully reflect on their unique strengths and opportunities."

The University of Alberta-led research followed more than 400 infants from the CHILD Cohort Study (CHILD) at its Edmonton site. Boys with a gut bacterial composition that was high in the bacteria Bacteroidetes at one year of age were found to have more advanced cognition and language skills one year later. The finding was specific to male children.

"It's well known that female children score higher (at early ages), especially in cognition and language," said Anita Kozyrskyj, a professor of pediatrics at the U of A and principal investigator of the SyMBIOTA (Synergy in Microbiota) laboratory. "But when it comes to gut microbial composition, it was the male infants where we saw this obvious connection between the Bacteroidetes and the improved scores."

"The differences between male and female gut microbiota are very subtle, but we do know from CHILD Cohort Study data that girls at early ages are more likely to have more of these Bacteroidetes. So perhaps most girls have a sufficient number of Bacteroidetes and that's why they have improved scores over boys," added Kozyrskyj.

The researchers, led by Kozyrskyj and associate professor of pediatrics Piush Mandhane, studied bacteria found in fecal samples from the infants and identified three different groups exhibiting similar dominant clusters of bacteria. They then evaluated the infants on a variety of neural developmental scales. Of those groups, only the male infants with Bacteroidetes-dominant bacteria showed signs of enhanced neurodevelopment.

The research replicates similar findings from a U.S. study that also showed an association between Bacteroidetes and neural development.

According to Kozyrskyj, Bacteroidetes are one of a very few bacteria that produce metabolites called sphingolipids, which are instrumental for the formation and structure of neurons in the brain.

"It makes sense that if you have more of these microbes and they produce more sphingolipids, then you should see some improvement in terms of the formation of neuron connections in our brain and improved scores in cognition and language," she said.

According to Kozyrskyj, caesarean birth is one factor that can significantly deplete Bacteroidetes. Factors that positively influence gut microbiota composition in infants include breastfeeding, having a high-fibre diet, living with a dog and being exposed to nature and green spaces.

While the findings don't necessarily mean children with a lower proportion of Bacteroidetes will remain behind their peers in later childhood or adulthood, the researchers believe the study offers early promise as a way to potentially identify children at risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.

The team will continue to follow the infants participating in CHILD to determine whether the findings can be predictive of autism or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Moving forward, the researchers are also examining several other factors that may have an impact on neurodevelopment in infants, including stress and gut colonization by the bacterium Clostridium difficile.

"Over the first one to two years of life, your brain is very malleable," said Kozyrskyj. "Now we're seeing a connection between its malleability and gut microbiota, and I think that is very important."

New Rochelle, NY, July 13, 2021--Males with COVID-19 had significantly higher rates of hospitalization and of transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU) according to a new study. A higher percentage of males died of COVID-19 compared to females, as reported in the study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Women's Health. Click here to read the article now.

Joanne Michelle Gomez, MD, Rush University Medical Center, and coauthors, studied the first 8,108 positive COVID-19 patients that presented to the Rush University System from March 1-June 21, 2020. Nineteen percent of males required hospitalization, compared to 13% of females. Eight percent of males compared to 4% of females required escalation of care to the ICU. The authors also reported significantly greater need for vasopressor support and endotracheal intubation among males.

"A significant independent association was observed between male sex and in-hospital mortality when accounting for the total cohort of positive COVID-19 patients," state the authors. "The interplay among biological, hormonal, and gendered behavioral factors is likely responsible for the worse outcomes observed in males in COVID-19 infection."

"The findings of this study clearly demonstrate better outcomes for females infected with COVID-19. The authors propose some of the biological, hormonal, and behavioral factors that could be protective in females," says Journal of Women's Health Editor-in-Chief Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Executive Director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Women's Health, Richmond, VA.

In a new study of adults from the general population who were infected with COVID-19 in 2020, more than a quarter report not having fully recovered after six to eight months. Those findings are described this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Milo Puhan and colleagues at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

While initial public health responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus focused on reducing the acute burden of COVID-19, a growing body of evidence indicates that the infection can also result in longer-term physical and mental health consequences. These long-term consequences, currently referred to as "post-COVID-19 syndrome" or "Long Covid" are of increasing concern for healthcare systems.

In the new study, researchers recruited 431 participants from within the contact tracing system in Zurich, Switzerland. All participants had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between February and August 2020, and completed an online questionnaire about their health a median of 7.2 months after their diagnosis. Symptoms had been present at diagnosis in 89% of the participants and 19% were initially hospitalized. Compared to individuals not participating in the study, participants were younger--with an average age of 47.

Overall, 26% of participants reported that they had not fully recovered at six to eight months after initial COVID-19 diagnosis. 55% reported symptoms of fatigue, 25% had some degree of shortness of breath, and 26% had symptoms of depression. A higher percentage of females and initially hospitalized patients reported not having recovered compared to males and non-hospitalized individuals. A total of 40% of participants reported at least one general practitioner visit related to COVID-19 after their acute illness. The authors say that their findings underscore the need for the timely planning of resources and patient services for post-COVID-19 care.

The authors add: "This cohort study based on a respresentative, population-based sample of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals found that 26% did not fully recover within 6-8 months after diagnosis and 40% had at least one further healthcare contact related to COVID-19. These findings underline the need for the timely planning of healthcare resources and services tailored to the needs of individuals suffering from post-COVID-19 syndrome."

Magnetars are bizarre objects -- massive, spinning neutron stars with magnetic fields among the most powerful known, capable of shooting off brief bursts of radio waves so bright they're visible across the universe.

A team of astrophysicists has now found another peculiarity of magnetars: They can emit bursts of low energy gamma rays in a pattern never before seen in any other astronomical object.

It's unclear why this should be, but magnetars themselves are poorly understood, with dozens of theories about how they produce radio and gamma ray bursts. The recognition of this unusual pattern of gamma ray activity could help theorists figure out the mechanisms involved.

"Magnetars, which are connected with fast radio bursts and soft gamma repeaters, have something periodic going on, on top of randomness," said astrophysicist Bruce Grossan, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). "This is another mystery on top of the mystery of how the bursts are produced."

The researchers -- Grossan and theoretical physicist and cosmologist Eric Linder from UC Berkeley and postdoctoral fellow Mikhail Denissenya from Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan -- discovered the pattern in bursts from a soft gamma repeater, SGR1935+2154, that is a magnetar, a prolific source of soft or lower energy gamma ray bursts and the only known source of fast radio bursts within our Milky Way galaxy. They found that the object emits bursts randomly, but only within regular four-month windows of time, each active window separated by three months of inactivity.

On March 19, the team uploaded a preprint claiming "periodic windowed behavior" in soft gamma bursts from SGR1935+2154 and predicted that these bursts would start up again after June 1 -- following a three month hiatus -- and could occur throughout a four-month window ending Oct. 7.

On June 24, three weeks into the window of activity, the first new burst from SGR1935+2154 was observed after the predicted three month gap, and nearly a dozen more bursts have been observed since, including one on July 6, the day the paper was published online in the journal Physical Review D.

"These new bursts within this window means that our prediction is dead on," said Grossan, who studies high energy astronomical transients. "Probably more important is that no bursts were detected between the windows since we first published our preprint."

Linder likens the non-detection of bursts in three-month windows to a key clue -- the "curious incident" that a guard dog did not bark in the nighttime -- that allowed Sherlock Holmes to solve a murder in the short story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze".

"Missing or occasional data is a nightmare for any scientist," noted Denissenya, the first author of the paper and a member of the Energetic Cosmos Laboratory at Nazarbayev University that was founded several years ago by Grossan, Linder and UC Berkeley cosmologist and Nobel laureate George Smoot. "In our case, it was crucial to realize that missing bursts or no bursts at all carry information."

The confirmation of their prediction startled and thrilled the researchers, who think this may be a novel example of a phenomenon -- periodic windowed behavior -- that could characterize emissions from other astronomical objects.

Mining data from 27-year-old satellite

Within the last year, researchers suggested that the emission of fast radio bursts -- which typically last a few thousandths of a second -- from distant galaxies might be clustered in a periodic windowed pattern. But the data were intermittent, and the statistical and computational tools to firmly establish such a claim with sparse data were not well developed.

Grossan convinced Linder to explore whether advanced techniques and tools could be used to demonstrate that periodically windowed -- but random, as well, within an activity window -- behavior was present in the soft gamma ray burst data of the SGR1935+2154 magnetar. The Konus instrument aboard the WIND spacecraft, launched in 1994, has recorded soft gamma ray bursts from that object -- which also exhibits fast radio bursts -- since 2014 and likely never missed a bright one.

Linder, a member of the Supernova Cosmology Project based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, had used advanced statistical techniques to study the clustering in space of galaxies in the universe, and he and Denissenya adapted these techniques to analyze the clustering of bursts in time. Their analysis, the first to use such techniques for repeated events, showed an unusual windowed periodicity distinct from the very precise repetition produced by bodies rotating or in orbit, which most astronomers think of when they think of periodic behavior.

"So far, we have observed bursts over 10 windowed periods since 2014, and the probability is 3 in 10,000 that while we think it is periodic windowed, it is actually random," he said, meaning there's a 99.97% chance they're right. He noted that a Monte Carlo simulation indicated that the chance they're seeing a pattern that isn't really there is likely well under 1 in a billion.

The recent observation of five bursts within their predicted window, seen by WIND and other spacecraft monitoring gamma ray bursts, adds to their confidence. However, a single future burst observed outside the window would disprove the whole theory, or cause them to redo their analysis completely.

"The most intriguing and fun part for me was to make predictions that could be tested in the sky. We then ran simulations against real and random patterns and found it really did tell us about the bursts," Denissenya said.

As for what causes this pattern, Grossan and Linder can only guess. Soft gamma ray bursts from magnetars are thought to involve starquakes, perhaps triggered by interactions between the neutron star's crust and its intense magnetic field. Magnetars rotate once every few seconds, and if the rotation is accompanied by a precession -- a wobble in the rotation -- that might make the source of burst emission point to Earth only within a certain window. Another possibility, Grossan said, is that a dense, rotating cloud of obscuring material surrounds the magnetar but has a hole that only periodically allows bursts to come out and reach Earth.

"At this stage of our knowledge of these sources, we can't really say which it is," Grossan said. "This is a rich phenomenon that will likely be studied for some time."

Linder agrees and points out that the advances were made by the cross-pollination of techniques from high energy astrophysics observations and theoretical cosmology.

"UC Berkeley is a great place where diverse scientists can come together," he said. "They will continue to watch and learn and even 'listen' with their instruments for more dogs in the night."

WACO, Texas (July 13, 2021) - Climate change mitigation efforts have led to shifts from fossil-fuel dependence to large-scale renewable energy. However, renewable energy sources require significant land and could come at a cost to ecosystems. A new study led by Ryan McManamay, Ph.D., assistant professor of environmental science at Baylor University, evaluates potential conflicts between alternative energy strategies and biodiversity conservation.

The study, published in Biological Conservation, evaluates potential tradeoffs between climate benefits and energy costs, especially any negative impacts on biodiversity. While the environmental consequences of some renewable energy sources, like hydropower, have been widely studied, the large-scale impacts of other renewables, like solar, aren't well known.

"The study points to a need for the global community to understand the opposing endpoints of sustainability, which are scale-dependent," McManamay said. "At one endpoint, efforts to mitigate climate change at global scales via large-scale energy transitions may be completely incognizant of the consequences on local biodiversity. Likewise, local conservationists may not appreciate the magnitude of energy transitions required to shift global carbon emissions. Finally, I think there is a broad misconception among much of the community that if renewable energies are good for climate, they must also be good for the local ecosystem. Energies like solar have the potential to be deployed haphazardly with that mindset."

The challenges of climate mitigation in relation to different climate policy scenarios are projected in five Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) -- qualitative descriptions of plausible alternative socio-economic development in the next century. The SSPs include alternative projections in deployment of electricity generations by technology. Considering scenarios under the SSPs, ecological footprinting was used to evaluate the potential land and biodiversity tradeoffs of 10 different energy sources: solar photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, wind, hydropower, coal, conventional oil, conventional gas, unconventional oil, unconventional gas, and biomass.

"Ecological footprinting took into account land-use efficiencies of each technology as well as estimates of the degree of habitat alteration arising from technology deployment," McManamay said. "This provides a standardized way to compare the biodiversity consequences of large-scale deployment of alternative energy technologies."

Researchers estimated a biodiversity footprint for each of the 10 energy sources by overlaying energy densities and habitat alteration probabilities with biodiversity patterns. They then used spatial modeling to examine regional variations in future energy deployment and potential biodiversity impacts at a high-resolution. Different biodiversity footprints were scored based on their impact and a cumulative biodiversity score was determined for each of the 10 energy sources.

The cumulative impact scores among the SSPs showed significant and consistent differences -- the fossil-fueled development pathway (SSP 5) had the highest impacts while the regional rivalry scenario (SSP3) had the lowest. The sustainability-focused scenario (SSP1) represented a moderate impact score by comparison. Unexpectedly, the variation among SSPs didn't show a clear tradeoff between global climate mitigation and cumulative biodiversity impact.

"It was surprising to see the lack of a clear tradeoffs among sustainability endpoints," McManamay said. "This elicited us to take a deeper look into differences among the SSPs. Although SSP5 is termed 'fossil-fueled' development, the pathway includes significant technological advances in both advanced fossil and renewable technologies to meet highly consumptive, energy-luxurious lifestyles. In other words, the biodiversity impacts are more related to total energy deployment than fossil versus renewable technologies. Although SSP1 is also characterized by significant renewable energy deployment, overall energy demand decreases due to increases in energy efficiencies. So, our work suggests that climate mitigation may not necessarily have to be at odds with biodiversity conservation."

Additionally, land constraints accounted for the most variation in biodiversity impact, particularly with regard to protected land use. Downscaled electricity generation scenarios were constrained by alternative land conservation and energy development policies.

The results offer an approximation of land and biodiversity impacts of future energy strategies outlined in the SSPs. While there were differences in the SSPs, the impact scores suggest that land protection measures and energy diversification could have greater implications for biodiversity challenges than the national-level global energy pathways outlined in the SSPs. Future planning and objectives for climate mitigation will require both broad and local consideration of biodiversity challenges.

An important new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has yielded critical fresh insights into the lithium production process and how it relates to long-term environmental sustainability, particularly in the area of transportation with batteries and electric vehicles.

The paper, “Energy, Greenhouse Gas, and Water Life Cycle Analysis of Lithium Carbonate and Lithium Hydroxide Monohydrate from Brine and Ore Resources and Their Use in Lithium Ion Battery Cathodes and Lithium Ion Batteries,” in the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling, was the result of a unique collaboration with SQM, a Chilean company that is one of the world’s biggest producers of lithium.

According to Argonne lifecycle analyst and lead author Jarod Kelly, the researchers — using operational data supplied by SQM — found that the sourcing of lithium, from both a process and location perspective, can strongly affect its associated environmental impacts.

“The results show that concentrated lithium brine and its related end products can vary significantly in energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, sulfur dioxide emissions and water consumption depending upon the resource allocation method used,” Kelly explained.

The researchers modeled brine-based lithium extracted from the Salar de Atacama, a large salt flat in northern Chile near the Andes Mountains. The lithium is naturally dried in large ponds to evaporate the water, concentrate the lithium, and remove impurities. Materials and energy are later added to produce lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide. These two end products are shipped worldwide to battery cathode producers that process them into a variety of battery materials.

The study findings could have major implications for how to optimize lithium production at each stage of the process, which would result in more environmentally-friendly products, particularly battery electric vehicles. The International Energy Agency predicts that demand for lithium may grow by as much as 40 times between 2020 and 2040, mainly due to global deployment of electric vehicles.

“Examination of current lithium production and the pursuit of future production, including from within the U.S., are critical to sustaining electric vehicle deployment,” said Michael Wang, director of the Systems Assessment Center at Argonne and a study co-author.

“This study establishes a baseline for current practices and shows us potential areas for improvement,” added Kelly. “With further research, it will be possible to use this information to help develop best practices for producing lithium in the most sustainable way.”

SQM initially approached Argonne last year about a collaboration in support of ambitious sustainability targets the company recently unveiled.

“According to our sustainability plan, we want to look more closely at carbon emissions, water consumption and energy consumption in our lithium products, and see how it affects the rest of the value chain,” said Veronica Gautier, SQM’s head of innovation. “This information will help us achieve our goal of being carbon neutral by 2030.”

The analysis will also help address an overarching question in the global trend toward the electrification of transportation with battery electric vehicles, Wang said.

“Often electrification is for the purpose of pursuing environmental sustainability. But we need to know more about lithium battery production before we can say we are truly on a sustainable path,” he said. “This study provides crucial insights into the electric mobility value chain.”

The formal analysis used Argonne’s open-source modeling tool, GREET (Greenhouse gases Regulated Emissions and Energy in Technologies), with detailed data and technical insight coming from SQM. In addition to the brine-based lithium extracted in Chile, the researchers augmented their data by modeling ore-based lithium extracted from spodumene ore in Western Australia.

Kelly said it was the first analysis of its kind to be based on such comprehensive data from an industrial partner. Gautier added that SQM was pleased that the study results were now publicly available and would help further global efforts toward ensuring responsible and sustainable lithium production.

“It is important for us to have full and complete transparency about how our process works, and we’re excited to leverage Argonne’s experience and expertise,” she said. “Sharing this information will have great educational value.”

Osaka, Japan - When things get too much, we're often advised to "take a load off," but when it comes to bone maintenance, doing the opposite can be a good thing. Researchers from Japan have discovered some key mechanisms of how physical load stimulates bone growth.

In a study published July 13, 2021 at 11 a.m. ET in Cell Reports, researchers from the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute have revealed that the expression of the peptide osteocrin (OSTN) is influenced by load - decreasing when load is reduced, and increasing when it is added.

Bones and skeletal muscles are strengthened by the load associated with exercise, preventing bone and muscle atrophy, and maintaining bone and muscle strength is important for maintaining physical activity. The growth of long bones, such as the femur and tibia, is a very complex process controlled by genetic and environmental factors, such as exercise and gravity.

"Not much is known about how mechanical force initiates biochemical signals to control bone growth," says lead author of the study Haruko Watanabe-Takano. "We investigated how load is related to the metabolic balance adjustment of bone maintenance."

Bone is maintained by the balanced activities of two types of cells - osteoblasts, which make bone, and osteoclasts, which break down bone - and is thought to be made in response load demand. Specifically, the team investigated the expression of OSTN, a peptide produced by osteoblasts, in mice. OSTN is critical to the regulation of bone growth, as well as physical endurance.

The researchers found that OSTN was very strongly expressed in bones such as the tibia, radius, and ulna, and in the region where the load was applied. Additionally, they showed that OSTN was secreted by the periosteal osteoblasts in these bones. The periosteum is a membrane found on the outer surface of bones, except at the joints of long bones, and is involved in bone remodeling and production, especially during growth.

"We also found that OSTN expression decreased when load was reduced, and was increased by load stimulation," says Watanabe-Takano. "Moreover, when we genetically engineered mice lacking OSTN, we found that they had reduced bone mass compared with normal mice and lacked load-induced recovery of bone mass after prolonged load reduction. Thus, we concluded that OSTN makes bone in response to stimulation by load, promoting bone formation."

When they looked into how OSTN might achieve this effect, the team found that it increases levels of another peptide, called C natriuretic peptide, which in turn drives bone-forming osteoblasts to multiply, mature, and become functional.

The results of this study will be useful for the promotion of bone maintenance in bedridden patients, because bone formation is known to be inhibited by long-term bed rest, and for the prevention and treatment of frailty syndrome. Future studies will build on these results to discover further mechanisms, such as how periosteal cells detect load stimulation.

An associate professor of marketing at The University of Texas at Arlington says digital avatars can replace a sales force and customer service employees at a fraction of the cost.

In this context, avatars are typically computer-generated representations of people. UTA Associate Professor Fred Miao says they can fill the void in interactive assistance that a majority of shoppers says they want.

"An Accenture survey of online shoppers shows that 62% never completed their purchases because there was no real-time customer service or support. That Accenture survey also shows that 90% of those shoppers wanted some sort of interactive assistance during the shopping process," said Miao, faculty fellow of the John Merrill Endowed Professorship in Consultative Sales in UTA's College of Business. "Avatars, used in the right way, can fill this void at a fraction of the cost of hiring and training human salespeople and service employees."

Miao's paper, "An Emerging Theory of Avatar Marketing," appears in the Journal of Marketing, the premier research outlet for the American Marketing Association.

In his analysis, Miao argues that businesses using avatar representatives need to be on the lookout for misalignment between the form and behavioral realism of their avatars. Form realism relates to how much an avatar looks like a real human being. Behavioral realism relates to an avatar's "intelligence" and whether it acts like a human being.

"Getting those two parts of an avatar matched is difficult," Miao said. "When the physical and the behavioral aspects don't synch up, the effectiveness of using avatars can be inconsistent and at best contingent upon the context, such as perceived financial risk."

In complex relational exchanges with customers, such as when someone chooses a skincare product, avatars may be most effective when they are highly realistic looking and intelligent. When interactions involve privacy concerns, such as in mental health interviews, customers are better served with less realistic looking avatars that still act with intelligence.

Miao urges firms to consider five interrelated areas in using avatars:

timing

form realism

behavioral realism

form-behavioral realism alignment

situational factors and context

"The bottom line is that with budgets being so constricted among businesses, using avatars for marketing or customer service could not only be a worthwhile management tool to consider using, but also a means of increasing sales through consistent service quality," Miao said.

Elten Briggs, chair and associate professor in the Department of Marketing, said Miao's work conveys critical insights to businesses.

"Avatars and other forms of artificial intelligence are increasingly being employed to deliver services to customers," Briggs said. "Dr. Miao's paper provides much needed guidance on how businesses can utilize avatars to improve customers' service experiences."

UW researchers reveal new aspects of gum disease and body's protective response

SEATTLE - A team led by University of Washington researchers has, for the first time, identified and classified how different people respond to the accumulation of dental plaque, the sticky biofilm that gathers on teeth. Their work, recently published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), sheds important new light on why some people may be more prone to serious conditions that lead to tooth loss and other problems.

Left unchecked, plaque buildup can induce gingivitis, or gum inflammation. Gingivitis, in turn, can lead to periodontitis, a serious gum infection that damages the soft tissue and can destroy the bone that supports teeth. Not only can this result in tooth loss, but chronic inflammation can also spur other serious health consequences, including heart disease, diabetes, cancer, arthritis, and bowel diseases.

The researchers also found a previously unidentified range of inflammatory responses to bacterial accumulation in the mouth. When bacteria build up on tooth surfaces, it generates inflammation, a tool the body uses to tamp down the buildup. Previously, there were two known major oral inflammation phenotypes, or individual traits: a high or strong clinical response and a low clinical response. The team identified a third phenotype, which they called "slow": a delayed strong inflammatory response in the wake of the bacterial buildup.

The study revealed for the first time that subjects with low clinical response also demonstrated a low inflammatory response for a wide variety of inflammation signals. "Indeed, this study has revealed a heterogeneity in the inflammatory response to bacterial accumulation that has not been described previously," said Dr. Richard Darveau of the UW School of Dentistry, one of the study's authors.

His School of Dentistry colleague and study co-author Dr. Jeffrey McLean said, "We found a particular group of people that have a slower development of plaque as well as a distinct microbial community makeup prior to the start of the study." The study authors wrote that understanding the variations in gum inflammation could help better identify people at elevated risk of periodontitis. In addition, it is possible that this variation in the inflammatory response among the human population may be related to susceptibility to other chronic bacterial-associated inflammatory conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease.

In addition, the researchers found a novel protective response by the body, triggered by plaque accumulation, that can save tissue and bone during inflammation. This mechanism, which was apparent among all three phenotypes, utilizes white blood cells known as neutrophils. In the mouth, they act something like cops on the beat, patrolling and regulating the bacterial population to maintain a stable condition known as healthy homeostasis.

In this instance, plaque is not a villain. To the contrary, the researchers said that the proper amount and makeup of plaque supports normal tissue function. Studies in mice have also shown that plaque also provides a pathway for neutrophils to migrate from the bloodstream through the gum tissue and into the crevice between the teeth and gums.

When healthy homeostasis exists and everything is working right, the neutrophils promote colonization resistance, a low-level protective inflammatory response that helps the mouth fend off an excess of unhealthy bacteria and resist infection. At the same time, the neutrophils help ensure the proper microbial composition for normal periodontal bone and tissue function.

The researchers' findings underscore why dentists preach the virtues of regular brushing and flossing, which prevent too much plaque buildup. "The idea of oral hygiene is to in fact recolonize the tooth surface with appropriate bacteria that participate with the host inflammatory response to keep unwanted bacteria out," Dr. Darveau said. The bacteria start repopulating the mouth's surfaces spontaneously and almost immediately afterward, he said.

DALLAS, July 12, 2021 -- People of South Asian ancestry have more than double the risk of developing heart disease compared to people of European ancestry, yet clinical risk assessment calculators used to guide decisions about preventing or treating heart disease may fail to account for the increased risk, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association's flagship journal Circulation.

About a quarter of the world's population (1.8 billion people) are of South Asian descent, and prior research has shown South Asians experience higher rates of heart disease compared to people of most other ethnicities.

To better understand the variables surrounding the heart disease risk for people of South Asian ancestry, researchers evaluated data from a subset of participants in the UK Biobank study who did not have atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease when they enrolled in the study between 2006 and 2010. There were 8,124 participants of South Asian Ancestry and 449,349 of European ancestry included in this analysis. Their average age was 57 and they were followed an average of 11 years. People in the South Asian ancestry group were defined as those who self-reported being of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin, or who reported other South Asian heritage, such as their country of birth as Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal or Sri Lanka. European ancestry was based on self-identification as being white British, white Irish, or any other white European background.

Researchers compared the rates of developing cardiovascular disease (heart attack, stroke, or a procedure to restore normal blood supply to the heart) among people of South Asian ancestry to the rate among people of European ancestry.

They found that 6.8% of participants of South Asian ancestry had a cardiovascular disease event, compared to 4.4% of those who reported having European ancestry. After adjustment for age and sex, this represents a more than two-fold higher risk for people of South Asian descent. The higher relative risk was largely consistent across a variety of age, sex and clinical subgroups. However, this increased risk was not captured by the clinical estimators used in the United States or Europe.

"Based on previous studies, we expected South Asians would have higher rates of heart disease - in fact, the American Heart Association now considers South Asian ethnicity a 'risk enhancer' beyond the standard risk calculator," said senior study author Amit V. Khera, M.D., M.Sc., a cardiologist in the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center and leader of a research group within the Center for Genomic Medicine, both at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

"We were surprised by the magnitude of the increased risk -- even within contemporary clinical practice, it was more than double -- and how much of it remains unexplained by traditional clinical or lifestyle risk factors," he said. "Our current tools do not help us predict this extra risk in the South Asian population, likely because no South Asians were included in developing the U.S. tool, so we may be missing opportunities to prevent heart attacks and strokes in this group. Intensive control of risk factors like high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes are even more important in this population."

A higher percentage of people in the South Asian study group did have more risk factors for heart disease, including Type 2 diabetes (even in the absence of obesity), high blood pressure and increased central adiposity (belly fat). However, even when researchers accounted for the known risks, the risk for people of South Asian ancestry was still 45% higher than for people of European ancestry.

"We need to dig deeper to better understand why South Asians are having heart attacks and strokes at higher rates even after accounting for these risk factors," said Aniruddh P. Patel, M.D., lead author of the study and a cardiology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital. "Our ability to study South Asian and other populations in general in the United States using public databases has been limited because individuals are grouped together by race rather than ancestry. This makes recognizing and addressing these disparities among a fast-growing South Asian population in the U.S. more difficult. In addition to recruiting more South Asians in clinical trials and cohort studies, better reporting of ancestry in addition to race in hospital data systems and electronic medical records would help us better understand and target these disparities."

The research does have some limitations. The study included adults between the ages of 40 and 69 living in the United Kingdom, thus the results may not be generalizable to younger individuals or those who live in other countries. Additionally, based upon the data, people who volunteered for the UK Biobank study were known to be healthier compared to the general population, thus, there were potentially reduced rates of heart disease in both ancestry groups. Further, medical records of study participants were reviewed electronically rather than manually, so underreporting may have occurred.

Khera and colleagues have assembled a team of international investigators to aggregate data and expertise needed to develop new genetic risk estimators for South Asian individuals as part of an NIH-funded consortium. As for the clinical risk estimator tools, South Asians have been severely under-represented to-date, accounting for only about 1% of studied individuals.

A novel method of gene therapy is helping children born with a rare genetic disorder called AADC deficiency that causes severe physical and developmental disabilities. The study, led by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and The Ohio State University College of Medicine, offers new hope to those living with incurable genetic and neurodegenerative diseases.

Research findings are published online in the journal Nature Communications.

This study describes the findings from the targeted delivery of gene therapy to midbrain to treat a rare deadly neurodevelopmental disorder in children with a neurogenetic disease, aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency characterized by deficient synthesis of dopamine and serotonin.

Only about 135 children worldwide are known to be missing the enzyme that produces dopamine in the central nervous system, which fuels pathways in the brain responsible for motor function and emotions. Without this enzyme, children lack muscle control, and are usually unable to speak, feed themselves or even hold up their head. They also suffer from seizure-like episodes called oculogyric crises that can last for hours.

"Remarkably, these episodes are the first symptom to disappear after gene therapy surgery, and they never return," said study co-author Dr. Krystof Bankiewicz, professor of neurological surgery at Ohio State College of Medicine who leads the Bankiewicz Lab. "In the months that follow, many patients experience life-changing improvements. Not only do they begin laughing and have improved mood, but many are able to begin speaking and even walking. They are making up for the time they lost during their abnormal development."

The directed gene therapy in seven children ages 4 to 9 who were infused with the viral vector resulted in dramatic improvement of symptoms, motor function and quality of life. Six children were treated at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital in San Francisco and one at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. This therapeutic modality promises to transform the treatment of AADC deficiency and other similar disorders of the brain in the future, Bankiewicz said.

During the gene therapy surgery, physicians infuse a benign virus programmed with specific DNA into precisely targeted areas of the brain. The infusion is delivered extremely slowly as surgeons monitor exactly how it spreads within the brain using real-time MRI imaging.

"Really, what we're doing is introducing a different code to the cell," said Dr. James "Brad" Elder, director of neurosurgical oncology at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center's Neurological Institute. "And we're watching the whole thing happen live. So we continuously repeat the MRI and we can see the infusion blossom within the desired nucleus."

Researchers believe this same method of gene therapy can be used to treat other genetic disorders as well as common neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. Clinical trials are underway to test this procedure in others living with debilitating and incurable neurological conditions.

The directed gene therapy, in these patients, resulted in dramatic improvement of symptoms, motor function and quality of life. This therapeutic modality promises to transform the treatment of AADC deficiency and other similar disorders of the brain in the future.