Culture

In the United States, more than 12 million children hear a minority language at home from birth. More than two-thirds hear English as well, and they reach school age with varying levels of proficiency in two languages. Parents and teachers often worry that acquiring Spanish will interfere with children's acquisition of English.

A first-of-its kind study in U.S.-born children from Spanish-speaking families led by researchers at Florida Atlantic University finds that minority language exposure does not threaten the acquisition of English by children in the U.S. and that there is no trade-off between English and Spanish. Rather, children reliably acquire English, and their total language knowledge is greater to the degree that they also acquire Spanish.

Results of the study, published in the journal Child Development, show that children with the most balanced bilingualism were those who heard the most Spanish at home and who had parents with high levels of education in Spanish.

Importantly, these children did not have lower English skills than the English-dominant children. Children's level of English knowledge was independent of their level of Spanish knowledge. U.S.-born children who live in Spanish-speaking homes and who also are exposed to English from infancy tend to become English dominant by age 5 - but some more so than others.

The study, conducted in collaboration with The George Washington University, is the first to describe the outcome of early dual language exposure in terms of bilingual skill profiles that reflect the relations in the data between children's skill levels in their two languages. The study addresses the question of what level of English and Spanish skill can be expected in 5-year-old children who come from Spanish-speaking homes in which they also hear English in varying amounts.

"We found that early in development, children who hear two languages take a little longer to acquire each language than children who hear only one language; however, there is no evidence that learning two languages is too difficult for children," said Erika Hoff, Ph.D., lead author and a professor in the Department of Psychology within FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science on the FAU Broward Campuses.

A key finding from the study is that low levels of proficiency in two languages at age 5 is not a typical outcome of exposure to two languages. Bilingual children who have weak skills in both languages at age 5 may have an underlying impairment or inadequate environmental support for language acquisition.

For the study, Hoff and co-authors Michelle K. Tulloch, a Ph.D. student in the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science; and Cynthia Core, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences within the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, The George Washington University, used an examiner-administered test to measure the English and Spanish expressive vocabulary of 126 U.S.-born 5 year olds from Spanish-speaking families with one or two immigrant parents who have been exposed to Spanish since birth and who have also heard English at home in varying amounts, either from birth or soon thereafter. They also measured indicators of the children's language learning ability.

Prior to this study, differences among bilingual children were described primarily in terms of dominance (English-dominant bilinguals, Spanish-dominant bilinguals) and balance, but that turns out not to be the only way in which bilinguals differ.

"Previous research has tended to treat bilingual children's development in each language as a separate outcome, rather than treating dual language skills as the single outcome of dual language exposure," said Hoff. "This approach not only fails to adequately capture the nature of children's dual language skills, it also leaves unaddressed the question of how the acquisition of one language is related to the acquisition of another."

Findings from this study suggest that dominance is not the same thing as proficiency. Bilinguals differ both in dominance and in total language knowledge. Teachers and clinicians cannot infer a bilingual child's language proficiency from that child's language dominance. There are balanced bilinguals at age 5 who have stronger English skills than some English-dominant bilinguals. Individual differences in dominance are significantly related to home exposure, although the function that relates exposure to dominance is biased toward English.

Balanced language exposure at home does not result in balanced proficiency; Spanish-dominant home exposure appears to be necessary. Individual differences in total language knowledge are significantly related to indicators of language-learning ability, measured in this study in terms of phonological memory and nonverbal intelligence.

Middle school, a time when children's brains are undergoing significant development, is often also a time of new challenges in navigating the social world. Recent research from the Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas demonstrates the power of combining a virtual platform with live coaching to help students enhance their social skills and confidence in a low-risk environment.

In this study, BrainHealth researchers partnered with low-income public middle schools in Dallas. Teachers recommended 90 students to participate in virtual training sessions via questionnaires, testing their ability to accurately identify students who are struggling socially. Importantly, participation was not limited to students with a clinical diagnosis.

Next, the team explored the efficacy of using Charisma™, a proprietary virtual platform for social training built on a video game platform whose effectiveness has been demonstrated in controlled trials but never before in a school setting.

At the end of the training, students submitted self-assessments of progress, and teachers submitted evaluations based on observations in the classroom. Both sources reported improvement in students' confidence, participation in the classroom, and ability to communicate with peers and teachers, among other benchmarks. The results appear in Frontiers in Education.

"The middle school years are a time of dynamic emotional and cognitive changes for students," said Maria Johnson, Director of Youth & Family Innovations at the Center for BrainHealth and lead author of the study. "We wanted to see if we could empower middle schoolers to improve their ability to communicate in the classroom and enhance self-assertion."

The study confirmed that teachers are reliable identifiers of students who are struggling socially. The study also validated the feasibility of using this virtual platform for social training in a public school setting. Both students and teachers reported that the social communication and assertion strategies were most beneficial.

With high demands for communication, cooperation and assertion, a middle school classroom is rich with social interaction as well as considerable challenges, including peer pressure, academic competition and social comparison among peers, which may result in decreased connectedness with classmates, teachers and school staff. The potential exists for problematic behaviors that might be misclassified and treated with punishment rather than support.

Johnson continued, "Our findings are significant because using our virtual social training platform can be a key to helping individuals with social challenges soar. Demonstrating the power of this tool in a public middle school setting can inform future education policy to promote social independence and resiliency at a high level."

Supercomputers could find themselves out of a job thanks to a suite of new machine learning models that produce rapid, accurate results using a normal laptop.

Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science, based at RMIT University, have written a program that predicts the band gap of materials, including for solar energy applications, via freely available and easy-to-use software. Band gap is a crucial indication of how efficient a material will be when designing new solar cells.

Band gap predictions involve quantum and atomic-scale chemical calculations and are often made using density functional theory. Until now, this process has required hundreds of hours of costly supercomputer processing time, as well as complicated and expensive software.

To address this issue, the researchers trained a machine learning model using data generated from 250,000 previous supercomputer calculations. The results have been published in Journal of Cheminformatics.

Significantly, while the program is capable of including multiple variables, it was found that just one factor, stoichiometry, contains - in almost all cases - enough information to accurately predict band gap. Stoichiometry is the numerical relationships between chemical reactants and products, like the volume of ingredients in a recipe to bake a cake.

More work is needed to fully understand why stoichiometry alone proved to be so useful. But it raises the exciting prospect of lengthy supercomputer calculations no longer being required for some applications. The artificial neural network that powers the machine learning programs could one day be succeeded by a software program that performs a similar function to density functional theory, albeit with far more simplicity.

Lead author Carl Belle said: "If you want to do simulations but you need to have millions of dollars of supercomputing infrastructure behind you, you can't do it. If we can dig into why the stoichiometric configuration is so powerful, then it could mean that supercomputers are not needed to screen candidate materials, nor for accurate simulations. It could really open things up to a whole new group of scientists to use."

The machine learning program isn't limited to band gap. It can be used to predict the properties of many other materials for other contexts, and has been developed by a professional programmer, making it useful not only for scientists and academics but also for businesses and corporate applications.

"It's built to industry standard and it's designed to be collaborative," Carl said.

"The website has a fully relational database. It's got millions of records. It's all there and freely available to use. We're ready to go."

It's one of the iconic images of early Antarctic exploration: the heroic explorer sledging across the icy wastes towed by his trusty team of canine companions.

But new research analysing a century-old dog biscuit suggests the animals in this picture were probably marching on half-empty stomachs: early British Antarctic expeditions underfed their dogs.

In a paper just published in Polar Record, researchers from Canterbury Museum, Lincoln University and University of Otago in New Zealand analysed the history and contents of Spratt's dog cakes, the chow of choice for the canine members of early Antarctic expeditions.

Lead author, Canterbury Museum Curator Human History Dr Jill Haley, has researched the lives of dogs in Antarctica and curated the Museum's 2018 exhibition Dogs in Antarctica: Tales from the Pack.

"The early explorers valued their dogs, not just for pulling sledges but for their companionship in the bleak isolation of Antarctica," she says.

"Our analysis of a partially crumbled Spratt's dog cake, one of four cared for by Canterbury Museum, found that the contents of the cakes weren't that different to modern dog biscuits. However, the quantity dogs were fed on the expeditions didn't provide enough fuel for their high-energy activities."

Pet food was a relatively new invention in the early twentieth century and seen as superior to older practices of feeding dogs table scraps or letting them scavenge for themselves.

Early polar explorers were particularly keen on Spratt's dog cakes because they were easy to transport, took no effort to prepare and did not perish.

The cakes were used on two Arctic polar expeditions before they were taken south by Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery expedition (1901-1904). The expedition's 18 sledge dogs were fed the biscuits alongside dried fish from Norway; all the animals died after consuming rancid fish on a sledging expedition.

Perhaps wanting to avoid a repeat of this episode, the handlers on Scott's Terra Nova expedition (1910-1913) fed the animals on Spratt's alone. On rations of 0.3 kg of biscuits each per day the dogs became desperately hungry, even eating their own excrement. They recovered when seal meat was added to their diet.

Ernest Shackleton took Spratt's on his Nimrod (1907-1909) and Endurance (1914-1917) expeditions, where they were part of a doggy diet that also included seal meat, blubber, biscuits and pemmican, a high-energy mix of fat and protein.

University of Otago researchers Professor Keith Gordon, Dr Sara Fraser-Miller and Jeremy Rooney used laser-based analysis to determine the composition of the materials in the cake down to micron resolution, identifying a number of constituents including wheat, oats and bone.

Lincoln University Associate Professor of Animal Science Dr Craig Bunt compared the cakes with similar foods, including modern dog food, and calculated how many kilojoules of energy each biscuit would have provided.

To match the energy intake needed by modern sledge dogs, the dogs on the early Antarctic expeditions would have needed to eat between 2.6 and 3.2 kg of Spratt's dog cakes a day.

However, historic accounts suggest daily dog rations on some expeditions were only around 0.5 kg of biscuits and were sometimes as low as 0.3 kg.

The researchers concluded that Spratt's dog cakes were probably a suitable complete food for dogs in Antarctica; dogs on the early expeditions just weren't fed enough of them.

A joint research team led by Prof. LIU Zhongmin, Prof. WEI Yingxu, and Prof. XU Shutao from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) revealed the mechanism underlying the formation of the first carbon-carbon (C-C) bond formation during the methanol-to-olefins (MTO) process.

This study was published in Chem on June 23.

Prof. ZHENG Anmin's group from Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology of CAS was also involved in the study.

The first C-C bond in the MTO process is formed at the initial stage of the reaction. There is no direct method to elucidate the bond formation /reaction mechanism due to the difficulty in capturing intermediate species.

"We investigated the direct C-C bond formation mechanism during the initial MTO reaction over HSSZ-13 zeolite with an 8-membered ring and a chabazite topological structure," said Prof. XU.

They detected the evolution of the organic species on the SSZ-13 catalyst surface during the methanol conversion. For the first time, they directly captured the surface ethoxy species (SES), the critical species containing the initial C-C bond under real MTO reaction conditions at the initial reaction stage.

Moreover, the researchers employed the ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) theoretical calculation simulation to predict and present the visualized and complete process of initial C-C bond formation starting from the C1 reactants and C1 intermediates.

Based on the experimental and theoretical evidence, they established the complete and feasible initial C-C bond formation routes, namely, surface methoxy species (SMS)/trimethoxyonium (TMO) mediated methanol/dimethyl ether (DME) activation with a synergistic effect from SMS and the negatively charged framework oxygen atoms to form SES.

"Our study not only sheds light on the controversial issue of the first C-C bond formation in the MTO process, but also enriches the fundamental theory of C1 catalytic chemistry," said Prof. WEI.

The results of the study were published in the journal "Neurology" on 19 May 2021 under the leadership of Professor Elena Enax-Krumova, holder of the endowed professorship of the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV).

Nerve injuries: frequent complication after occupational accidents

Peripheral nerves refer to nerves that lie outside of the brain and spinal cord. They run throughout the entire body. These bundles of nerve fibres can be damaged in the event of blunt or sharp force trauma due to accidents, as well as during surgery. Injuries to the peripheral nerves are a frequent complication, particularly after occupational accidents. Patients often suffer from motor and sensory disorders in the affected area of the body. These can lead to persistent complaints and impairments. The underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood.

"In patients with shingles, it is known that sensory abnormalities can not only occur in the affected area but also on the opposite side of the body," explains Enax-Krumova. "We wanted to find out to what extent such contralateral changes occur also in unilateral nerve injuries and to what factors they are related. Together with other centres from the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (DFNS) and some other European centres, the Department of Neurology and the Department of Pain Medicine (temporary senior doctor: Dr. Dr. Andreas Schwarzer) at Bergmannsheil were involved in a Europe-wide research project.

To answer this question, data sets from a total of 424 patients were analysed. They all suffered from unilateral painful or painless peripheral nerve disorder (neuropathy), caused either by a peripheral nerve injury, a nerve root injury or shingles. In all of the participants, the unaffected side of the body was examined with regard to possible sensory changes. Following a standardised procedure, detection and pain perception for cold, warm, sharp and blunt stimuli were examined using quantitative sensory testing (QST).

Contralateral sensory abnormalities

Contralateral sensory abnormalities were frequent both in patients with unilateral painful and painless neuropathy, even on the unaffected side of the body. Reduced contralateral perception of temperature and light touch was suggested to be an indicator of a possible unfavourable central nervous response. In a subgroup of patients with increased pain sensitivity on the affected side of the body, contralateral hypersensitivity to sharp stimuli was also registered. According to the research team, this could indicate hypersensitivity of the central nervous system, called central sensitisation. The so called descending facilitation from the brainstem of pain processing in the spinal cord seems to be a clinically important mechanism of pain amplification. The changes that were found did not depend from the disease duration. Pain intensity, underlying condition and the affected area of the body were associated with changes in only single parameters in the performed test battery.

"The results of this study show that the mechanisms of sensory abnormalities following a unilateral nerve injury appear to spread to the opposite side of the human body, both for painful and painless nerve injuries," summarises Elena Enax-Krumova. "Patients with signs of central sensitisation on the unaffected side represent a subgroup that needs to be investigated further with regard to both the precise underlying mechanisms and their response to specific treatment options." The authors of the study expect that such findings will enable personalized treatment approaches for neuropathic pain in the future.

Beware of those snack attacks. A new study in Appetite has confirmed the small luxuries, from sweets and chocolate to salty treats, have helped to lift our spirits - and kilojoule intake - during COVID-19 lockdowns.

Researchers in England and Australia have gathered evidence about similar experiences in the UK and Victoria, Australia to warn about the effect of extended pandemic lockdowns on our eating behaviours.

While time at home provides more time for healthy food preparation, intake of high-energy density foods (HED) has risen for some - presenting at-risk adults with the prospect of managing weight gain, the psychology researchers warn.

"The new stresses created by the pandemic appears to be associated with reported increases in overall savoury and sweet snack intake," says lead researcher Dr Nicola Buckland, who assessed dietary survey responses from 588 people during the first UK lockdown (May-June 2020).

Participants indicated whether their intake of tasty, calorific foods (e.g. chocolate, cake, ice cream, pizza) had changed during the lockdown. These are foods that people typically report to be difficult to resist and difficult to control intake of. Participants also completed questionnaires that measured individual eating styles.

"The findings showed that, in terms of dietary changes, not everyone responded the same way to the lockdown. Over half of the respondents (53%) reported increased snack intake, 26% reported decreased snack intake and 20% reported no changes to the amount of snacks they ate during the lockdown.

"When we looked at the participants' eating styles (based on responses to the questionnaires), we found that participants who scored low in the ability to control cravings were more likely to report increased snack intake."

Flinders University Professor of Psychology Eva Kemps says the first COVID-19 lockdown started in Victoria, Australia just after the UK research was conducted.

The 124 respondents in the Australian survey also reported changes in food intake and eating styles changed during the lockdown, as well as their perceived stress levels.

Similar to the UK findings, of the Australian respondents, 49% reported increased snack intake during the COVID-19 lockdown, and the remaining respondents reported either reduced snack intake (25%) or no change (26%).

"Increased snack intake was associated with higher levels of perceived stress, indicating that those who experienced higher levels of stress reported greater increases of sweet and savoury snack foods," Professor Kemps says.

"Also, similar to the UK survey, participants with low craving control were most likely to report increased snack intake."

The findings from the UK and Australian surveys show that for some people, especially those who have difficulty controlling food cravings, the COVID-19 lockdowns were a risky time period for increased food intake, the researchers say.

"Our findings support the use of strategies that can help people to manage their cravings, to minimise the risk of increased snack intake during the COVID-19 lockdowns."

The response times of footballers is slowed down when part of the kit worn by both teams is of the same colour, a new study shows.

The research from the University of York revealed that when players have any kit colour clash - either shirt or shorts - it takes them twice as long to find a fellow player on the pitch.

Study authors are calling for a change in the laws of the game or for clearer guidance.

Researchers used two experiments to investigate how kit variations affect the visual search for teammates. Their first experiment confirmed that a player's ability to discriminate is slower when playing in crossed kits, for example red shirts-blue shorts versus blue shirts-red shorts.

The second experiment found that there was significant confusion when both teams wore the same coloured shorts and that there were quicker response times occurring for both teams when there was no overlap in shorts colour.

First author, former graduate, Liam Burnell from the Department of Psychology said: "We found that where for example one team wears white tops and red shorts and the other wears red tops and white shorts the search time for a fellow team player is affected.

"With crossed conditions also impairing the ability to discriminate two teams quickly and accurately, rules that prevent this from occurring may be beneficial in preventing misplaced passes, and incorrect refereeing decisions."

The study cites examples including the 2017 English Football League Cup Final where Manchester United played Southampton in which the players were wearing crossed kits of red and white. A Southampton goal was controversially disallowed when the assistant referee had to make an offside call.

Liam Burnell added: "This could have implications for the laws of the game, with current guidelines only prompting a change in kit when the referee believes kits to make teams indistinguishable. There is currently no requirement for teams to wear different shorts colours, and guidelines remain pretty vague as to what constitutes a kit clash."

The study also made some preliminary investigations into the role different strip colours have in player detectability when set against stadium backgrounds as they set out to explore whether Ferguson's infamous claims that his players couldn't see each other in their 1996 clash against Southampton could carry any truth.

Researchers also cited examples including comments from the then Wales manager, Chris Coleman, before a World Cup qualifier against Austria saying that no one wanted to play in grey as it was hard to distinguish players. Derek Adams in 2017, the then Plymouth Argyle manager also commented on their dark green strip at the time, reflecting on how they had changed the kit a little by bringing in white socks to help players because the strip blended in with the seating and the grass.

Study supervisor, Professor Peter Thompson from the Department of Psychology said: "These reports suggest that strips including those that are grey and dark coloured do not 'pop-out' from the background, a problem which may be exacerbated when the team strip is close in colour to the stadium seating and particularly when playing in an empty stadium."

The research was conducted using graphic images from video games and alternating kit colours which were then transposed onto different backgrounds. Participants' response time in identifying the different teams was then monitored.

Profs. Okujima and Uno at Ehime University, in collaboration with Prof. Kobayashi at Shinshu University, reported the selective synthesis, the molecular structure, optical properties and electronic structure of cyclo[9]pyrrole, a ring-expanded porphyrin consisting of directly connected pyrrole rings.

Porphyrins, which are well-known natural porphyrin molecules, e.g. heme and chlorophyll, are attractive for use in practical materials because of the easy optimization of their optical and physical properties by conjugation expansion and functionalization. In 2002, Sessler reported the first synthesis of cyclo[n]pyrrole (n: the number of pyrrole rings). Peripheral alkyl-substituted cyclo[8]pyrroles were obtained via an oxidative coupling of 2,2'-bipyrrole, and showed an intense L band at ca. 1,100 nm.

We successfully synthesized a good yield of cyclo[9]pyrroles via the oxidative coupling of terpyrrole. A relatively distorted structure with a C2-like symmetry was clarified by NMR and X-ray diffraction analyses. Intense absorption was observed at ca. 1,740 nm. We analyzed the optical and electronic structures using magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy and time-dependent density functional theory calculations. Comparison of cyclo[8], [9], and [10]pyrroles showed the electronic structures don't significantly depend on the number of pyrroles.

The Earth is a sphere, and it comprises spheres: atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere and biosphere -- in short, all of the cycles that interact to influence Earth's weather and climate. Now, to better research how the spheres interact and impact the planet, China is launching EarthLab in Beijing. On June 23, after EarthLab's opening ceremony, researchers will begin trials to demonstrate the facility's ability to integrate simulations and observations to more accurately project outcomes and provide a scientific foundation to predict and mitigate such things as natural weather disasters.

EarthLab's research team published an introduction to the facility on June 23 in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences.

"Since the earth system is extremely large and complex, traditional theories and observations are too limited to meet the overall requirements of the scientific research community," said paper corresponding author He Zhang, EarthLab researcher affiliated with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). "EarthLab is the first comprehensive virtual earth laboratory in China for simulation the physical climate system, environmental system, ecological system, solid earth system, and space weather system as a whole with a high-performance scientific computing platform."

In partnership with Tsinghua University, IAP/CAS began construction of EarthLab in 2018. After successful trialing, inspections and approvals, EarthLab is expected to become fully operational -- and open to universities and research institutes across the world -- in 2022.

"Other countries, such as the United States and Japan, as well as some European countries, have built specialized numerical simulations facilities," Zhang said, noting that China's vast and complex topography has been difficult to model accurately with various levels of observational and experimental resources across the country. "Weather, climate and environmental disasters occur frequently and seriously with grave losses of life and property. Consequently, a global earth system simulation system, as well as high-precision regional environmental simulation system, are urgently needed to better predict climate and environment variability, to prevent and mitigate natural disasters more effectively, and to formulate relevant national plans more scientifically."

According to Zhang, EarthLab will also become a science outreach base for children and students to learn more about Earth sciences. During an IAP outreach day in 2017, children voted on EarthLab's Chinese name: Huan. The name means "a place as vast as the earth where people live and upon whose land they depend".

"Our ultimate goal is to predict Earth systems on a vast range of time scale, from seconds to hundreds of years, and of spatial scale, from 10 meters to millions of meters," Zhang said. "Along with other earth simulators around the world, the development and construction of EarthLab will advance not only the understanding of the Earth's spheres and their interactions, and Earth's past, present and future, but also the progress of computational mathematics, high-performance computing and technology, and other broader fields."

A paper published in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine on long-COVID, describes persistent symptoms six months after acute COVID-19, even in young home isolated people.

The study from the Bergen COVID-19 Research Group followed infected patients during the first pandemic wave in Bergen Norway.

"The main novel finding is that more than fifty per cent of young adults up to 30 years old, isolated at home, still have persistent symptoms six months after mild to moderate disease", the leader of the group, Professor Nina Langeland explains.

The most common symptoms were loss of smell and/or taste, fatigue, shortness of breath, impaired concentration, and memory problems.

"There was a significant correlation between high antibody levels and symptoms in home isolated patients, other risk factors for symptoms were asthma or other chronic lung disease", says Professor Rebecca Cox, Head of the Influenza Centre at University of Bergen and Haukeland University Hospital and co-leader of the research group.

Impaired memory and concentration difficulties

In non-hospitalized COVID-19-patients, thirty per cent experienced fatigue which was the most common symptom. Children under the age of 16 years had fewer long-term symptoms than adults, but Associate Professor Bjørn Blomberg, and first author of the article, underlines:

"The cognitive symptoms of impaired memory and concentration difficulties are particularly worrying for young people at school or university and highlights the importance of vaccination to prevent the long-term health implications of COVID-19".

A rare genetic defect that affects the so-called ALG2 gene can cause serious metabolic diseases in humans. It does so through the defective formation of proteins and sugar molecules. Until now, its rareness and complexity made it difficult to study this congenital glycosylation disorder. A research team led by Prof. Dr Joachim Wittbrodt and Dr Thomas Thumberger from the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS) of Heidelberg University has finally succeeded in introducing the underlying mutation in the ALG2 gene in a fish model, thus allowing the causes of these complex diseases to be studied at the molecular level.

Human cells are kept alive by the activity of millions of proteins. As they mature, these proteins must be modified in a myriad of ways, such as through the addition of sugar molecules - a crucial change for proper function. Defects in this sugar-adding process, also known as sugar decoration, are often lethal at the very early stages of development. As Prof. Wittbrodt explains, in rare cases a genetic defect causes sugar-addition deficiencies, which then manifest as congenital disorders of glycosylation. "Correct protein glycosylation requires a number of enzymes functioning together like clockwork," states the researcher. The ALG2 gene has an especially important task in this process. It codes an enzyme needed for the correct branching of the sugar chain. If this process is disturbed, patients appear unaffected at birth but develop problems in different organs, such as the eyes, brain, and muscles, during early childhood.

The team led by Prof. Wittbrodt and Dr Thumberger used the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing scissors to introduce an ALG2 mutation in a fish model, the Japanese rice fish or medaka. "Fish are particularly good models for these disorders because they develop outside the mother, making them very suitable for studying early embryonic defects," explains Dr Thumberger. In addition, the genome of the Japanese rice fish can be edited efficiently and precisely. "Our fish are genetic twins, so to speak, so the effect of individual changes can be directly identified as compared to non-genetically altered fish."

Although the evolutionary distance between humans and fish is vast, the researchers report many of the same symptoms in the fish model that appear in ALG2 patients, including specific neuronal defects. They were surprised by the results yielded by the analysis of the total medaka organism, which took into account the full spectrum of different cell types. "Although all cells of the fish showed the same reduced ALG2 activity, some cell types were more affected than others," states Prof. Wittbrodt. In the retina of the fish eye, cone cells needed for colour-sensing were unaffected, but there was a progressive loss of rod cells needed for vision in low light, thus rendering the fish night-blind. Now the researchers hope to identify the proteins that cause the rod cells to die off because of diminished sugar binding.

"Our studies on the medaka fish model showed that all symptoms could be prevented by supplying fully functional ALG2 mRNA - the blueprint for producing the correct ALG2 enzyme. We were able to effectively reverse the genetic defect in the fish model. That means that we can now systematically analyse the individual function areas of the ALG2 enzyme. We are particularly interested in the cell type-specific response in the context of the whole organism," stresses Joachim Wittbrodt. Building on this research, the Heidelberg research team plans to study the molecular mechanisms and causes for the development of such complex metabolic diseases in humans.

Several eye clinics around Sweden are seeing a rise in eye damage related to the racket sport padel. In an article in the Journal of the Swedish Medical Association (Läkartidningen), eye researchers affiliated with the University of Gothenburg state that padel is a potential high-risk sport for eye injuries, and that wearing protective goggles is a good idea.

Ball sports are often associated with an increased risk of eye injuries, and the risk seems to be even greater with padel, a sport that is now highly popular in Sweden (and should not be confused with the North American "paddle tennis").

"The ball has a weight of about 50 grams, and a size corresponding to the opening of the eye socket. The ball speed is high, and for a smash shot can be up to 130 kilometers an hour. The bouncing properties of the ball also make recoil assessments quite difficult, which probably increases the risk of the eyes getting damaged," says Gunnar Jakobsson, ophthalmologist at the University of Gothenburg and chief physician at the eye clinic (Department of Ophthalmology) at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

Serious injuries are rare

Most eye injuries that occur in padel, such as minor hemorrhages inside the eye that require no surgery, are relatively mild. But there have also been reports of occasional serious cases in which padel players suffer lasting visual impairment. In the event of severe injury, there is even a risk of blindness. In the article in the Journal of the Swedish Medical Association (Läkartidningen), Jakobsson and his colleague Catharina Thörnland describe three cases of people incurring eye damage while playing padel. Although their injuries were moderate, they all needed surgical treatment to get better.

Protecting the eyes

Since padel is a potentially high-risk sport where eye injuries are concerned, it is a good idea to wear goggles while playing. Several scientific studies show that wearing goggles, or some other means of eye protection such as a safety visor or face shield, is the most effective way to avoid eye injuries in risky sports. If these protective devices are used correctly, the risk of eye damage is reduced by up to 90 percent.

Jakobsson draws a parallel to floorball, another modern sport characterized by a rapid rise in popularity -- for floorball, that occurred in the 1990s.

"For a while, floorball became the sport that caused the most eye injuries. Thanks to the introduction of mandatory goggles for children and at junior level, and strong recommendations for senior players, eye damage among floorball players has declined."

A sensitive blood test being developed by a team of researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center shows promise for predicting whether patients with metastatic HPV-positive throat cancer will respond to treatment months earlier than standard imaging scans.

That's according to a study, published in Oncotarget, validating the test in a small group of patients with metastatic human papillomavirus-related oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma -- a type of head and neck cancer that develops in the back of the mouth and in the throat.

If the test can quickly determine that a treatment approach isn't helping, it could allow doctors to seek out alternative therapies or clinical trials in a more timely manner. It could also potentially spare some patients months of toxic side effects from a treatment that isn't working.

"Currently, the only way doctors know if a treatment is working is for the patient to get an imaging scan every few months to see whether their tumors are shrinking," said oncologist Paul Swiecicki, M.D., one of the study's senior authors. "And this isn't fully accurate since some cancers show what we call pseudoprogression, where a successful treatment actually makes the tumors bigger before it shrinks them.

"Our goal was to develop a test that could tell us whether a treatment is likely to work after a single cycle," he continued.

The research comes amid a rising incidence of throat cancer caused by human papillomavirus infections, which are often spread through sexual activity. Once the cancer has recurred or spread within the body, patients typically only live for about one year. Furthermore, most of the available treatments, such as immunotherapy, work for less than 20% of patients and can have significant side effects.

The test is a form of "liquid biopsy" that looks for DNA shed by a patient's cancer cells into their bloodstream using a method known as digital droplet PCR, which can amplify minute amounts of DNA for analysis.

Development of the test was led by co-first authors Catherine Haring, M.D., an otolaryngology resident, and Chandan Bhambhani, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of senior study author Muneesh Tewari, M.D., Ph.D.

"We can actually identify DNA from a small tumor at the back of the throat circulating throughout the entire bloodstream," Haring said.

"From a single tube of blood, this technology can isolate a single copy of tumor DNA," Bhambhani added. "And quantifying the number of copies can tell us whether a patient's cancer is responding to treatment."

The study analyzed more than 100 samples taken over nearly two years from 16 patients with advanced cancer that was positive for HPV 16, one of the most common, high-risk types of HPV infection. Seven of the patients were treated with immunotherapy regimens. Eleven patients underwent treatment that included chemotherapy.

The researchers found that increasing levels of HPV-positive circulating tumor DNA after a course of treatment were a strong indicator that the cancer was not responding to the treatment. And that the tumor DNA could be detected months ahead of tumor growth that can be measured on imaging scans.

Swiecicki points to one of the patients in the study as an example.

The patient underwent chemotherapy treatment for about 200 days. Their HPV 16-positive circulating tumor DNA fell to nearly zero for the first 100 days and imaging scans showed the disease had stabilized. But copies of the HPV 16 DNA started to multiply in their blood between day 100 and day 200, when the disease progression was ultimately detected on imaging scans.

"In the future, the idea is that the test would give us a window of time -- about 100 days in this example -- to find alternative therapies or a clinical trial," Swiecicki said. "And this particular patient did have significant toxicities from the therapy, some of which potentially could have been avoided once it became clear the cancer was no longer responding to the treatment."

Senior study author Chad Brenner, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, notes that scientists around the world have been working to develop similar tests. The success at U-M was the result of collaboration that involved clinicians as well as researchers with expertise in next-generation sequencing and in the genetics of head and neck cancer.

"Everybody talks about team science," added Tewari, a professor of internal medicine and of biomedical engineering, "but everybody involved in this effort contributed a unique piece. And U-M is a place that really embraces this spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration."

The blood test may also be useful for early detection of recurrence before the cancer is incurable. According to additional findings the research team recently described in the journal Oral Oncology, HPV circulating tumor DNA is in the blood of patients with early stage throat cancer. Retrospectively, the test was also able to identify recurrent disease in a patient more than a year before it was detected by with standard approaches.

Before treatment, the patient had significant levels of circulating tumor DNA in their blood, which dropped down to near zero in the months following treatment.

"We thought they were potentially cured," Brenner said. "We couldn't detect this biomarker at all."

But after six months, the level of circulating tumor DNA in their blood started to rise -- slowly at first and then more dramatically.

"Yet we weren't able to detect clinical signs of recurrence until after the two-year time point," Brenner noted. "So, our test was able to detect the first signals of recurrence a year and a half before it was evident on imaging scans."

While work to further optimize and validate the test continues, the team is partnering with other academic medical institutions to use the test to study the relationship between HPV-positive circulating tumor DNA and clinical outcomes in additional patients.

Pairing blueberry pie with a scoop of ice cream is a nice summer treat. Aside from being tasty, this combination might also help people take up more of the "superfruit's" nutrients, such as anthocyanins. Researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry show that α-casein, a protein found in cow's milk, helped rats absorb more blueberry anthocyanins and their byproducts, boosting accessibility to these good-for-you nutrients.

In studies, anthocyanins have been shown to have antioxidant properties, lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of developing some cancers. However, only small amounts of these nutrients are absorbed from blueberries during digestion, despite their abundance in the fruit. Previous researchers have reported that consuming foods with ingredients such as citrus pectin, capcasin, capsicate and some proteins improve the uptake of anthocyanins. For instance, Bin Li and colleagues found that α-casein and β-casein proteins from cow's milk protected blueberry anthocyanins in simulated digestion experiments. Now, this team wanted to see whether α-casein could help increase the absorption of blueberry anthocyanins in vivo.

The researchers fed rats purified blueberry anthocyanin extracts, adding α-casein to the solution given to one group of rats. During the next 24 hours, anthocyanin and metabolite concentrations were 1.5 to 10.1 times higher in the α-casein group than in the control rats. When examining α-casein's molecular structure, the researchers observed that its amino acids allowed it to interact with and encapsulate the anthocyanin molecules, improving their stability in the intestines and allowing for better transport into the bloodstream. While the α-casein protein used in these experiments was derived and purified from milk, the results may not be the same for whole milk because its fats and sugars could impact absorption, the researchers explain. They say their next step is to conduct similar tests with human subjects.