Culture

Epidemiological and toxicological studies indicate that the adverse outcomes of PM2.5 exposure associated closely with the chemical composition in PM2.5. Metals in PM2.5 are highly concerned for their induced disruption of iron homeostasis in the lung and following oxidative stress, which is one of the key mechanisms underlying the cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction of PM2.5 exposure. However, there is no clear evidence on whether COPD patients are more susceptible to cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction associated with exposure to metals in ambient PM2.5 than individuals without COPD. Based on a panel study, the researchers directly compared metal-associated cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction between COPD patients and healthy controls.

"We observed higher levels of heart rate (HR) associated with exposure to PM2.5 and the metal elements therein. Associations between HR and metals exposure in COPD patients were stronger than those in healthy controls. Exposure to Cr had robust associations with HR, comparing to other metals." said Dr. Ke Gao, the first author for this work.

This study has many advantages. "It is a panel study design with repeated measurements of HR and exposure to metals in PM2.5. All of the recruited participants acted as their own controls, thereby lessening deviation linked to intra-individual differences. In addition, we recruited both individuals with COPD and healthy controls, allowing them to make direct comparisons of different responses from the COPD and healthy groups and to investigate the susceptibility of individuals with COPD to air pollution-linked responses." said Dr. Xi Chen, the co-first author for this work.

"Although our results require further validation, they shed light on the disease burden of COPD associated with exposure to metals in airborne PM2.5 in China." Said Prof. Tong Zhu, the corresponding author of the paper.

These encouraging results provide valuable data and improve the scientific understanding of susceptibility of COPD patients to metal-associated cardiovascular autonomic dysfunction

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) occupy the center of galaxies, with masses ranging from one million to 10 billion solar masses. Some SMBHs are in a bright phase called active galactic nuclei (AGN).

AGNs will eventually burn out since there is a maximum mass limit for SMBHs; scientists have long since pondered when that will be.

Tohoku University's Kohei Ichikawa and his research group may have discovered an AGN towards the end of its life span by accident after catching an AGN signal from the Arp 187 galaxy.

Through observing the radio images in the galaxy using two astronomy observatories - the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Array (VLA) - they found a jet lobe, a hallmark sign of AGN.

However, they noticed no signal from the nucleus, indicating the AGN activity might be silent already.

Upon further analysis of the multi-wavelength data, they found all the small scale AGN indicators to be silent, while the large-scale ones were bright. This is because the AGN has recently been quenched within the last 3,000 years.

Once an AGN dies off, smaller-scale AGN features become faint because further photon supplies also shut down. But the large scale ionized gas region is still visible since it takes about 3000 years for photons to arrive at the region's edge. Observing past AGN activity is known as light echoing.

"We used the NASA NuSTAR X-ray satellite, the best tool to observe current AGN activity," said Ichikawa. "It enables non-detection, so we were able to discover that the nucleus is completely dead."

The findings indicate AGN turn-off occurs within a 3000-year time scale, and the nucleus becomes over 1000 times fainter during the last 3000 years.

Ichikawa, who co-authored a paper for the 238 Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, says they will continue to investigate dying AGNs moving forward. "We will search for more dying AGN using a similar method as this study. We will also obtain the high spatial resolution follow-up observations to investigate the gas inflows and outflows, which might clarify how the shut down of AGN activity has occurred.

Anyone who collects mushrooms knows that it is better to keep the poisonous and the non-poisonous ones apart. Not to mention what would happen if someone ate the poisonous ones. In such "classification problems", which require us to distinguish certain objects from one another and to assign the objects we are looking for to certain classes by means of characteristics, computers can already provide useful support to humans.

Intelligent machine learning methods can recognise patterns or objects and automatically pick them out of data sets. For example, they could pick out those pictures from a photo database that show non-toxic mushrooms. Particularly with very large and complex data sets, machine learning can deliver valuable results that humans would not be able to find out, or only with much more time. However, for certain computational tasks, even the fastest computers available today reach their limits. This is where the great promise of quantum computers comes into play: that one day they will also perform super-fast calculations that classical computers cannot solve in a useful period of time.

The reason for this "quantum supremacy" lies in physics: quantum computers calculate and process information by exploiting certain states and interactions that occur within atoms or molecules or between elementary particles.

The fact that quantum states can superpose and entangle creates a basis that allows quantum computers the access to a fundamentally richer set of processing logic. For instance, unlike classical computers, quantum computers do not calculate with binary codes or bits, which process information only as 0 or 1, but with quantum bits or qubits, which correspond to the quantum states of particles. The crucial difference is that qubits can realise not only one state - 0 or 1 - per computational step, but also a state in which both superpose. These more general manners of information processing in turn allow for a drastic computational speed-up in certain problems.

Translating classical wisdom into the quantum realm

These speed advantages of quantum computing are also an opportunity for machine learning applications - after all, quantum computers could compute the huge amounts of data that machine learning methods need to improve the accuracy of their results much faster than classical computers.

However, to really exploit the potential of quantum computing, one has to adapt the classical machine learning methods to the peculiarities of quantum computers. For example, the algorithms, i.e. the mathematical calculation rules that describe how a classical computer solves a certain problem, must be formulated differently for quantum computers. Developing well-functioning "quantum algorithms" for machine learning is not entirely trivial, because there are still a few hurdles to overcome along the way.

On the one hand, this is due to the quantum hardware. At ETH Zurich, researchers currently have quantum computers that work with up to 17 qubits (see "ETH Zurich and PSI found Quantum Computing Hub" of 3 May 2021). However, if quantum computers are to realise their full potential one day, they might need thousands to hundreds of thousands of qubits.

Quantum noise and the inevitability of errors

One challenge that quantum computers face concerns their vulnerability to error. Today's quantum computers operate with a very high level of "noise", as errors or disturbances are known in technical jargon. For the American Physical Society, this noise is " the major obstacle to scaling up quantum computers". No comprehensive solution exists for both correcting and mitigating errors. No way has yet been found to produce error-free quantum hardware, and quantum computers with 50 to 100 qubits are too small to implement correction software or algorithms.

To a certain extent, one has to live with the fact that errors in quantum computing are in principle unavoidable, because the quantum states on which the concrete computational steps are based can only be distinguished and quantified with probabilities. What can be achieved, on the other hand, are procedures that limit the extent of noise and perturbations to such an extent that the calculations nevertheless deliver reliable results. Computer scientists refer to a reliably functioning calculation method as "robust" and in this context also speak of the necessary "error tolerance".

This is exactly what the research group led by Ce Zhang, ETH computer science professor and member of the ETH AI Center, has has recently explored, somehow "accidentally" during an endeavor to reason about the robustness of classical distributions for the purpose of building better machine learning systems and platforms. Together with Professor Nana Liu from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and with Professor Bo Li from the University of Illinois at Urbana, they have developed a new approach. This allows them to prove the robustness conditions of certain quantum-based machine learning models, for which the quantum computation is guaranteed to be reliable and the result to be correct. The researchers have published their approach, which is one of the first of its kind, in the scientific journal npj Quantum Information.

Protection against errors and hackers

"When we realised that quantum algorithms, like classical algorithms, are prone to errors and perturbations, we asked ourselves how we can estimate these sources of errors and perturbations for certain machine learning tasks, and how we can guarantee the robustness and reliability of the chosen method," says Zhikuan Zhao, a postdoc in Ce Zhang's group. "If we know this, we can trust the computational results, even if they are noisy."

The researchers investigated this question using quantum classification algorithms as an example - after all, errors in classification tasks are tricky because they can affect the real world, for example if poisonous mushrooms were classified as non-toxic. Perhaps most importantly, using the theory of quantum hypothesis testing - inspired by other researchers' recent work in applying hypothesis testing in the classical setting - which allows quantum states to be distinguished, the ETH researchers determined a threshold above which the assignments of the quantum classification algorithm are guaranteed to be correct and its predictions robust.

With their robustness method, the researchers can even verify whether the classification of an erroneous, noisy input yields the same result as a clean, noiseless input. From their findings, the researchers have also developed a protection scheme that can be used to specify the error tolerance of a computation, regardless of whether an error has a natural cause or is the result of manipulation from a hacking attack. Their robustness concept works for both hacking attacks and natural errors.

"The method can also be applied to a broader class of quantum algorithms," says Maurice Weber, a doctoral student with Ce Zhang and the first author of the publication. Since the impact of error in quantum computing increases as the system size rises, he and Zhao are now conducting research on this problem. "We are optimistic that our robustness conditions will prove useful, for example, in conjunction with quantum algorithms designed to better understand the electronic structure of molecules."

Scientists have observed for the first time what it looks like in the key memory region of the brain when a mistake is made during a memory trial. The findings have implications for Alzheimer's disease research and advancements in memory storage and enhancement, with a discovery that also provides a view into differences between the physiological events in the brain during a correct memory versus a faulty one.

The study was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

In both correct and incorrect recall of a spatial memory, researchers could observe patterns of cell activation in the brain that were similar, though the pace of activation differed.

"We could see the memories activating," said Laura Colgin, an associate professor of neuroscience at The University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the paper. "It's like dominoes falling. One cell activates and then the next fires."

Colgin and her team used electrophysiological recordings of rats in and out of mazes to study signals in the brain as the rats attempted to remember where a food reward was located and find it.

When rats remembered where the food reward was and located it, a specific pattern of brain cells activated with similar timing. These cells, called place cells, are associated with memories involving spatial relationships and locations and are found in the hippocampus, a section of the brain where animals including humans store most of their memories. It is also a region of the brain that experiences degeneration in patients with Alzheimer's and related memory disorders.

"If we understand what happens when a memory is not properly retrieved, it may give us insights into what is happening with memory disorders like Alzheimer's," Colgin said.

What the researchers saw in rats when they got the location wrong surprised them. They expected to see cells fire in a jumble. What they saw was the same pattern observed when rats were correct in finding the location, but the timing of the cell activation was different.

"The activation started later and it was slower, but the same pattern fired," Colgin said. "There may be less energy in the network to drive the cells, and that may be why memory was not connected with action."

The study also found that on trials when rats remembered the correct location, they were accessing the memory of the location while they were resting between tests, causing the pattern of cells to activate as they waited, the way a person might practice a speech before giving it.

On trials when rats made mistakes, they did not activate the memory of the location before they entered the maze.

One of the lab's long-term goals is to contribute to understanding memory formation and retrieval enough that one day, lost memories could be accessed even by people with memory disorders with the help of brain-computer interface technology.

"If we can understand how these large ensembles of neurons that represent memories are formed and what's happening when these memories are being properly retrieved, someday we may be able to decipher and store memories," Colgin said.

Colgin and her team plan to continue the research and hope to be able to decode memory formation and activation in real time in rats.

Most fish rely on water to feed, using suction to capture their prey. A new study, however, shows that snowflake morays can grab and swallow prey on land without water thanks to an extra set of jaws in their throats.

After a moray eel captures prey with its first set of jaws, a second set of "pharyngeal jaws" then reaches out to grasp the struggling prey and pull it down into the moray's throat. Rita Mehta, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz, first described this astonishing feeding mechanism in a 2007 Nature paper.

The new study, published June 7 in the Journal of Experimental Biology, shows that these pharyngeal jaws enable at least one species of moray to feed on land.

"Most fishes really need water to feed," Mehta said. "This is the first example of a fish that can feed on land without relying on water."

Reports of snowflake morays coming out of the water to grab crabs on the shore prompted her to take a closer look, she said. "These particular moray eels tend to eat hard-shelled prey like crabs, and I would see reports in the literature of them moving out of the water and lunging for crabs, but it was unclear what happened next."

Even fish well adapted to an amphibious lifestyle, such as mudskippers, need water to swallow their food. "Mudskippers come up onto mudflats and grab prey like small crabs and insects. They get around the challenge of swallowing on land by sucking up water and then using the water they have reserved in their mouth to swallow," Mehta said.

Snowflake morays can do it without water because of their unusual feeding mechanics.

"They have highly moveable pharyngeal jaws in their throat," she said. "Once the moray captures prey in its oral jaws, the pharyngeal jaws grab onto the prey again and move it further back into the esophagus. This mechanical movement does not rely on water."

Demonstrating that snowflake morays can eat on land, however, was no easy task. It took Mehta and a team of undergraduates over five years to train seven snowflake morays to slither up a ramp onto a platform, grab a piece of fish, and swallow it before returning to the water.

"They feel safer in the water, so at first they would just grab the fish and go straight back into the water with it," she said. "I relied on a team of dedicated and enthusiastic undergraduate researchers to work on training them."

Coauthor Kyle Donohoe was especially helpful, she said, because of his animal training experience from working with marine mammals as a research assistant at the Pinniped Cognition and Sensory Systems Laboratory next to Mehta's lab at UCSC's Long Marine Laboratory.

Once the eels were trained to feed on the platform, Mehta documented this unusual feeding behavior on video. She said the feeding performance of young snowflake morays is as good on land as it is in water.

"As a result, these particular morays can utilize very different environments for food resources," she said.

Propylene oxide (PO) is one of the important propylene derivatives with high reactivity, which is used extensively as raw material for the manufacture of numerous commercial chemicals. The titanosilicate-catalyzed hydrogen peroxide propylene oxide process (HPPO) is considered to be most advantageous because it is highly economical and ecofriendly, giving only H2O as the theoretical byproduct and achieving high PO selectivity under mild reaction conditions. The industrial HPPO process is generally carried out in a fixed-bed reactor using the shaped titanosilicate catalysts. Unfortunately, the inert and non-porous binders in shaping catalysts always negatively affect the accessibility of active sites and reaction performance in HPPO process. Moreover, for the HPPO process, in terms of catalyst cost, epoxidation reactivity and PO selectivity, the second-generation Ti-MWW/H2O2/Acetonitrile system is superior to the currently commercialized first-generation TS-1/H2O2/Methanol system. Therefore, it is of great academic and industrial significance to design and synthesize an applicable Ti-MWW catalyst and realize a highly efficient HPPO process, which should be engineered delicately and comprehensively.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Peng Wu from East China Normal University, China designed and synthesized a structured binder-free MWW-type titanosilicate catalyst with attractive HPPO performance via a combination method of shaping, recrystallization and chemical modification of Ti sites. The controlled dual- templates-assisted hydrothermal recrystallization converted the amorphous SiO2 binders in extruded SiO2/Ti-MWW catalyst to crystalline zeolite phase. Actually, such procedure could kill two birds with one stone: mass transfer problems in the shaped catalyst and chemical modification of micro-environments of the active Ti sites were conquered simultaneously. It was found recrystallization not only released the part of Ti sites within the micropores imprisoned by binders, improving the diffusion efficiency and the accessibility of Ti sites, but also constructed more active open framework TiO6 species and abundant internal silanol nests, which promoted the accumulation and activation ability of H2O2 inside the Ti-MWW monolith.

Afterwards, successive piperidine treatment and fluoridation of the binder-free Ti-MWW further enhanced the H2O2 activation and the active O transfer ability of active Ti sites, and stabilized the Ti-OOH intermediate through H-bonding formed between the end H in Ti-OOH and adjacent Si-F species, thus achieving a more efficient epoxidation process. Additionally, the side reaction of PO hydrolysis was inhibited because the modification effectively quenched numerous acidic Si-OH groups. The lifetime of the modified binder-free Ti-MWW catalyst was 2400 h with the H2O2 conversion and PO selectivity both above 99.5% as well low solvent consumption. The outstanding catalytic performance implied the great potential of this structured binder-free Ti-MWW catalyst in industrial HPPO applications. The results were published in Chinese Journal of Catalysis (10.1016/S1872-2067(20)63759-7).

The geometric isolation of metal species in single-atom catalysis (SACs) not only maximizes the atomic utilization efficiency, but also endows SACs with unique selectivity in various transformations.

The coordination environment of isolated metal atoms in SACs determines the catalytic performance. However, it remains challenging to modulate the coordinative structure while still maintain the single-atom dispersion.

Recently, a research group led by Prof. ZHANG Tao and Prof. WANG Aiqin from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences fabricated Ru1/NC SAC with good catalytic activity, selectivity and stability in reductive amination of biomass derived aldehydes/ketones to produce primary amines, and elucidated the structure-performance relationships from the atomic/molecular level.

This study was published in Nature Communications on June 2.

The researchers prepared Ru1/NC SAC towards the target reaction, and discovered that both catalytic activity and selectivity increased with the decrease of Ru-N coordination numbers. Particularly, Ru1/NC SAC with Ru1-N3 moiety offered the best catalytic performance, which was much superior to the ever reported nanoparticulate and homogeneous Ru catalysts.

Moreover, Ru1/NC presented excellent durability against poisoning by CO or sulfur-containing compounds, and the single-atom dispersion was well maintained even after reduction under extreme conditions.

A team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), in Bangalore, has used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies 9 billion years ago, in the young universe. This is the earliest epoch in the universe for which there is a measurement of the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies. The new result is a crucial confirmation of the group's earlier result, where they had measured the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies 8 billion years ago, and pushes our understanding of galaxies to even earlier in the universe. The new research has been published in the 2 June 2021 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Galaxies consist of mostly gas and stars, with new stars forming from the existing gas during the life of a galaxy. Stars formed much more frequently when the universe was young than they do today. Astronomers have known for more than two decades that the star formation activity in galaxies was at its highest about 8-10 billion years ago, and has declined steadily thereafter. Until recently, the cause of this decline was unknown, mostly because we have had no information about the amount of atomic hydrogen gas, the main fuel for star formation, in galaxies at these early times. This changed last year when a team of astronomers from NCRA and RRI, including some of the authors from the present study, used the upgraded GMRT to obtain the first measurement of the atomic hydrogen gas content of galaxies about 8 billion years ago, when the star-formation activity of the Universe began to decline. They found that the likely cause for the decline in star formation in galaxies is that galaxies were running out of fuel.

Aditya Chowdhury, a Ph.D. student at NCRA-TIFR, and the lead author of both the new study and the 2020 one, said, "Our new results are for galaxies at even earlier times, but still towards the end of the epoch of maximum star-formation activity. We find that galaxies 9 billion years ago were rich in atomic gas, with nearly three times as much mass in atomic gas as in stars! This is very different from galaxies today like the Milky Way, where the gas mass is nearly ten times smaller than the mass in stars."

The measurement of the atomic hydrogen gas mass was done by using the GMRT to search for a spectral line in atomic hydrogen, which can only be detected with radio telescopes. Unfortunately, this "21 cm" signal is very weak, and hence nearly impossible to detect from individual galaxies at such large distances, around 30 billion light years from us, even with powerful telescopes like the GMRT. The team hence used a technique called "stacking" to improve the sensitivity. This allowed them to measure the average gas content of nearly 3,000 galaxies, by combining their 21 cm signals.

"The observations of our study were carried out around 5 years ago, before the GMRT was upgraded in 2018. We used the original receivers and electronics chain of the GMRT before its upgrade, which had a narrow bandwidth. We could hence cover only a limited number of galaxies; this is why our current study covers 3000 galaxies, compared to the 8,000 galaxies of our 2020 study with the wider bandwidth of the upgraded GMRT.", said Nissim Kanekar of NCRA-TIFR, a co-author of the study.

Barnali Das, another Ph.D. student of NCRA-TIFR, added, "Although we had fewer galaxies, we increased our sensitivity by observing for longer, with nearly 400 hours of observations. The large volume of data meant that the analysis took a long time!".

"The star formation in these early galaxies is so intense that they would consume their atomic gas in just two billion years. And, if the galaxies could not acquire more gas, their star formation activity would decline, and finally cease.", said Chowdhury. "It thus appears likely that the cause of the declining star-formation in the Universe is simply that galaxies were not able to replenish their gas reservoirs after some epoch, probably because there wasn't enough gas available in their environments."

"Reproducibility is foundational to science! Last year, we reported the first measurement of the atomic gas content in such distant galaxies. With the present result, using a completely different set of receivers and electronics, we now have two independent measurements of the atomic gas mass in these early galaxies. This would have been hard to believe, even a few years ago!", said Kanekar.

K. S. Dwarakanath of RRI, a co-author of the study, mentioned "Detecting the 21 cm signal from distant galaxies was the main original goal of the GMRT, and continues to be a key science driver for building even more powerful telescopes like the Square Kilometre Array. These results are extremely important for our understanding of galaxy evolution.".

Decades of research has revealed the remarkable morphological adaptations of sea snakes to aquatic life, which include paddle-shaped tails, salt-excreting glands, and the ability to breathe through their skin.

In a new study published in Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, researchers at the University of Adelaide detail the enlarged touch receptors that evolved in male turtle-headed sea snakes (Emydocephalus annulatus), to help them locate and court females in aquatic environments.

Lead author, Jenna Crowe-Riddell, PhD graduate at the University of Adelaide's School of Biological Sciences, says on land, snakes use tongue-flicking to sense and follow sex pheromones left by other snakes, but in the water these chemicals are diluted.

"What's more, turtle-headed sea snakes can't see very clearly underwater; they've been known to court anything long and dark, including sea cucumbers. To make matters worse, once a female is found the male must overcome buoyancy force so he doesn't float away from his potential mate.

"Most snakes have thousands of touch receptors all over their face that look like a dusting of freckles. These touch receptors have become much larger in sea snakes, potentially to sense vibrations made by swimming mates, prey or predators.

"When we took a closer look at museum specimens, we discovered male turtle-headed sea snakes have larger touch receptors overall than females. We also found mature males have enlarged scale structures on their snout and chin, and their cloaca - an all-purpose hole used for reproduction and excretion."

Crowe-Riddell and colleagues used a range of microscopy techniques to characterise the ultrastructure of enlarged scale structures. They found that the structures on the chin and cloaca have specialised cells indicative of touch receptors - which suggests they provide sensory feedback for the male.

The researchers suggest that chin receptors may help males orient towards the direction of the female's swimming, whereas the cloacal receptors may help the male to align himself for successful reproduction.

"We think these receptors evolved to help males maintain the correct points of contact with the female during mating, which is a tricky task when you're a tube-shaped limbless snake," said Crowe-Riddell.

Males also have a spine-like structure on the snout known as a 'rostral spine' that is used to prod the back of females during courtship.

"The rostral spine may be used to stimulate the female, such types of tactile foreplay are thought to be important for mating in snakes because they can cause beneficial hormonal changes and receptive behaviours in females," said Crowe-Riddell.

"Reptiles are not typically appreciated for their intimate interactions, but our research is revealing that sea snakes have fascinating tactile adaptations for intra-species communication."

The evolutionary transition from terrestrial to aquatic life has influenced the signaling systems of many secondarily aquatic animals.

"As we build a more complete picture of underwater perception, sea snakes are becoming a fantastic example of how evolution creates opportunity from constraints," said Crowe-Riddell.

Further research could examine the role that tactile sensory modalities play in mate selection, an often overlooked aspect of snake social behaviour.

There are at least three species of turtle-headed sea snakes. These species occur in shallow-water habitats in Australia, south-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

In the study, researchers examined 59 specimens collected from offshore reefs in the Timor Sea, and accessed from the Australian Museum, the Art Gallery of Northern Territory, and the Western Australian Museum. The study was co-authored by researchers at the University of Melbourne and the University of New Caledonia.

Older people need digital skills training to learn to use digital technology more independently, but they also seek digital training opportunities because of the social benefits they offer, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. Published in International Journal of Lifelong Education, the study examined perceived benefits of digital skills training among older adult learners, their teachers and peer tutors. Data for the study were collected in liberal adult education organisations, such as community colleges, as well as in peer tutoring sessions organised by third sector actors.

New skills and friendships

The coronavirus pandemic has, for its part, highlighted inequalities in the availability and use of digital technology. People in different life situations have different opportunities to practise and develop their digital skills, which are rather essential in today's world.

Older people participating in the survey study wanted to attend digital skills training primarily in order to learn digital skills. Digital skills enabled them to solve technical problems and to use digital technology more independently.

"The perceived benefits of digital skills were often related to the ease of everyday life, such as being able to use electronic services, leisure time, or staying in touch with friends and family," Postdoctoral Researcher Kaisa Pihlainen from the University of Eastern Finland says.

However, digital skills training sessions are also beneficial in terms of social relations. According to the study, the training sessions were a good opportunity to meet other people and to establish friendships. That, in turn, was a source of more inner motivation and activity in older people's lives, which supported their personal development.

"For older people, participation in digital skills training is often a combination of individual and social reasons."

Meaningful experiences and promotion of well-being

According to the survey study, social benefits were highlighted especially by peer tutors.

"They valued a sense of community and togetherness with other older people. Peer tutoring was compared to the workplace: it provided peer tutors with a network of experts which respected and offered help to others."

Interdependence and reciprocity proved to be meaningful experiences in digital skills training sessions organised for older people. In addition, participation in new learning communities can boost older people's learning and enhance their well-being.

Digital skills training sessions were a source of joy, satisfaction and success for learners, teachers and peer tutors alike. Peer tutors reported that they had a stronger sense of belonging to society when teaching digital skills to other older people. Providing digital skills training was seen as a new alternative to civic participation and active citizenship, and it also enabled them to find their place in digital society.

"For some peer tutors, it was also a meaningful route to transition from working life to retirement," Pihlainen says.

According to the study, participation in digital skills training sessions supported the well-being of older adult learners as well as the well-being of their teachers and peer tutors. The majority of peer tutors reported an increase in their well-being when providing digital skills training. Digital skills learners who responded to the survey also described that their attitude towards digital devices had become more positive.

Research can support recruitment

Research-based knowledge can be used to strengthen peer tutors' and digital skills teachers' internal motivation in digital skills training situations. The recruitment of new digital skills tutors and teachers can also be supported by drawing attention to the perceived benefits. Emphasising these benefits can also encourage older people to learn how to use digital technology.

"Supporting older people's digital skills is also important at the level of society because other civic skills are usually learned at earlier stages of life. Digital skills are learned through experience, and this is why we need action to ensure that also older people have opportunities to experiment with digital technology and to learn digital skills in ways that interest them."

At the same time, more support for learning and personal growth should be targeted at older people.

The data included 226 respondents, 136 of whom were women and 90 men. The mean age the respondents was 71 years. The study constitutes part of the international and interdisciplinary project ACCESS - Supporting Digital Literacy and Appropriation of ICT by Older People.

The recent attacks against Asian Americans have put Asians in the U.S. in the spotlight. Many of the victims are first-generation immigrants in ethnic communities, while those rallying for the victims are second-generation Asian Americans. A new Dartmouth study explores who Asian Americans are today and the range of identities this category encompasses.

The study, by Sunmin Kim, an assistant professor of sociology at Dartmouth, is based on 2016 pre-election survey data and found that Asian Americans tend to have progressive opinions about public policy, including on healthcare, education, climate change, and racial justice, but diverge on views toward Muslim immigration.

As previous research has reported, in 1968, the pan-ethnic category, “Asian American” was born, as Chinese students and Japanese students at University of California, Berkeley, wanted a collective term to refer to both their student associations that could be used to help mobilize their political action. As a result, they established the Asian American Political Alliance, for which a chapter was also created at San Francisco State College.

“With the rise of radical social movements in the 1960s, the term ‘Asian Americans’ gained further traction as Asians protested domestic racism and the Vietnam War, often viewing both racism and U.S. intervention in Vietnam as originating from imperialism,” says Kim. “If the category Asian American can be created, then a logical extension of that argument is that it can also be broken down, reversed or remade in a different context.”

To determine whether Asian Americans still rally behind a common cause, the study drew on data from the 2016 pre-election National Asian American Survey (NAAS). With over 3,100 respondents representing nine national origin and ethnic groups in the U.S. (Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Hmong, Cambodian, and Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islander), and interviews conducted in English and 10 other languages, as well as comparison data on whites, Blacks, and Latinos, the survey is one of the most comprehensive of its kind. Kim’s research focused on the data from the nine Asian groups.

Participants in the NAAS survey were asked seven questions on public policy. Did they support or oppose: the healthcare law passed by Barack Obama and Congress in 2010; federal government spending to make public colleges tuition-free; accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S.; legal possession of small amounts of marijuana; banning Muslim immigrants from entering the U.S.; establishing stricter emissions limits for power plants; and government initiatives to give Blacks equal rights with whites?

The study’s findings are published in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences in the issue “Asian Americans and the Immigrant Integration Agenda.”

The results showed that Asian Americans support the Affordable Care Act, free college tuition, emissions limits for power plants, and racial equality initiatives for Blacks. However, 18% supported the Muslim travel ban, 31% opposed accepting Syrian refugees into the U.S. and 49% opposed the legalization of marijuana.

“Although Asian Americans are often Democrat-leaning, their liberal views are somewhat dampened when it comes to questions on Muslim immigration and Syrian refugees as compared to their opinions on other liberal public policies,” says Kim.

The results indicated that Asian Americans with reservations about immigration are more likely to be foreign born than native born and less educated, as opposed to progressives, who are more likely to be born in the U.S.

“There’s a considerable number of Asian Americans who are leaning towards these ideas of anti-immigrant sentiment even though they are immigrants themselves,” says Kim. “This divergence is one that political candidates may be inclined to tap into in the future, as they work to build a larger coalition. This was the case with Sery Kim, a Korean-American Republican, who delivered anti-Chinese remarks in March during her campaign for Texas’ 6th Congressional District.”

The research by Sunmin Kim also found that Asian Americans were more liberal than native whites, just as liberal as Latinos, and less liberal than Blacks.

As part of the analysis, the study applied a statistical technique designed to develop a typology, which is similar to the way that we perceive different types of people in various contexts. The analysis revealed two distinct subgroups of Asian Americans:

There are the second- or third-generation Asian Americans who are young, liberal, college educated, middle class, and racially conscious. These individuals may be of East Asian and Indian descent. Kim speculates that this group includes professionals such as lawyers and doctors, who live in the big cities such San Francisco or New York City and are integrated physically into white residential areas and working spaces.

There is also an older, first-generation of Asian American immigrants who were born outside the U.S. and are relatively more conservative. They are more likely to be men than women and are of Southeast Asian heritage, such as Cambodian or Vietnamese. Kim speculates that members of this group may not be proficient in English.

“While many second-generation immigrants today may identify with the Asian American label, if you ask a first- generation immigrant what they think of the term, they probably will be more inclined to identify with their national origin, rather than being associated with such a commonality,” says Kim.

“There’s a generational divide among Asian Americans, which is ironically present in the recent attacks on Asian Americans: the older, more conservative first-generation immigrants have often been the victims of these attacks rather than the younger, more liberal and highly educated second-generation,” adds Kim.

The study reports that, according to The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee at the University of Minnesota, the Asian American category comprises 24 ethnic groups, each with a distinct culture. As Kim explains in the conclusion of his paper, understanding division within Asian Americans is essential to sustaining the politics of this category and to addressing differences and inequality among Asian Americans today.

Osaka, Japan - In a new study, researchers from Osaka University discovered a novel molecular mechanism by which immune cells migrate to fight off infections. These findings may help in understanding the development of certain immune deficiency disorders and establish novel therapies against them.

Immune cells represent a diverse group of cells. Some circulate in the blood stream and migrate to infected tissues after receiving signals from damaged tissues. Others reside in tissues to take up the invading microbe, migrate to lymph nodes and activate an immune response. Therefore, to function effectively, the immune system's activities rely on motile cells. Immune cells move around the body via a process of repeated contraction and expansion, called actomyosin movement, involving myosin proteins. However, how this process of immune cell motility is governed remains unknown.

"As simple as it sounds, cell migration is a highly regulated and complex process," says first author of the study Takeshi Nakatani. "A lot of individual pieces of the cell have to come together to allow immune cells to move forward and travel to infected sites of the body. Lysosomes are compartments within cells that are connected to nutrient sensing and metabolism, and they have also been shown to be involved in cell motility. We wanted to understand how lysosomes regulate the process of immune cell migration."

The researchers focused on a protein complex on lysosomes, called the Ragulator complex. To understand how the Ragulator complex regulates immune cell motility, the researchers used isolated dendritic cells. These cells take up microbial invaders and bring them to other immune cells in lymph nodes to activate an immune response. The researchers found that when the Ragulator complex interacts with a protein called MPRIP (myosin phosphatase Rho-interacting protein), it prevents the protein MLCP (myosin light chain phosphatase) from blocking the phosphorylation of myosin proteins, resulting in cell contraction. In doing so, the action of the Ragulator complex can be seen as a 'brake-release'.

Interestingly, the researchers found that cells migrate by repeated cycles of protrusions of their front and contraction of their rear, leading to a forward movement. However, in the absence of the Ragulator complex, cell contraction did not occur. In experiments with animals, the researchers found that without the Ragulator complex, dendritic cells cannot travel from peripheral tissue to lymph nodes, which results in an impaired immune response.

"These are striking results that show how the lysosomal Ragulator complex is involved in the migration of immune cells in addition to its functions in cellular metabolism. Our study revealed a novel molecular mechanism by which immune cells migrate and elicit a proper immune response. These findings could help develop novel therapies against autoimmune diseases as well as better vaccines and anti-cancer drugs," says senior author of the study Hyota Takamatsu.

June 7, 2021 - Nyon, Switzerland -- A new report by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) draws attention to the burden of osteoporosis and the gaps and inequalities in the provision of primary and secondary prevention of fractures due to osteoporosis across Europe. 'SCOPE 2021: a new scorecard for osteoporosis in Europe' provides detailed findings for the 27 countries of the European Union as well as Switzerland and the United Kingdom (referred to as 'EU27+2'), covering key indicators for four domains: burden of disease, policy framework, service provision and service uptake.

Professor John A. Kanis, IOF Honorary President and lead author of SCOPE, stated:

"Osteoporosis is a major concern in Europe as it results in 4.3 million fragility fractures and health care costs in excess of €56 billion annually. Seeking to prioritize osteoporosis prevention in the EU27+2 countries, the SCOPE 2021 report has tracked key indicators of burden and service uptake which will help Europeans measure how well their country is able to provide quality care, including access to risk assessment and medications. It also provides a new benchmark to follow trends in osteoporosis management, and to measure future progress."

Osteoporosis is a progressive chronic disease that causes bones to become fragile and weak, leaving individuals at high risk of fragility fractures. Such fractures can have a serious impact on the sufferer, leading to pain, long-term disability and even premature death. In the EU27+2, there were estimated to be more than a quarter of a million fragility fracture-related deaths in 2019. This number is comparable to, or exceeds, other common causes of death such as lung cancer, diabetes, or chronic lower respiratory diseases.

Osteoporosis and fragility fractures place a heavy burden on Europe's population

SCOPE 2021 examined the burden of osteoporosis and fragility fractures in the EU27+2 countries, finding:

The total direct cost of fragility fractures was immense at €56.9 billion in 2019. This comprises €36.3 billion for direct costs of incident fractures, €19.0 billion for ongoing long-term disability costs (from fractures that occurred before 2019), and €1.6 billion for assessment and pharmacological treatment.

The average direct cost of osteoporotic fractures was €109.1 for each individual - in comparison, in 2010 the average for the EU27 was €85 (after adjusting for inflation).

Based on the WHO / bone mineral density criteria, there were approximately 32.0 million individuals with osteoporosis, of which 6.5 million were men and 25.5 million were women (2019).

An estimated 4.3 million new fragility fractures occurred in 2019--equivalent to 11,705 fractures/day (or 487 per hour).

Based on ten-year probability of a major fracture, 23.8 million Europeans had a probability of major fracture above the thresholds for high risk.

There was a marked difference in fracture risk among the countries. The probability of future hip fracture in men and women at the age of 50 years varied from 3.8-10.9% in men and 7.0-25.1% in women.

Given the projected increase in the aged population, the annual number of osteoporotic fractures in the EU27+2 is projected to rise by +24.8%; from 4.28 million in 2019 to 5.34 million in 2034.

Service provision lags in many countries

SCOPE 2021 also found notable inadequacies in service provision that hinder many Europeans from getting the care they need to prevent osteoporosis and fragility fractures:

In many countries there is suboptimal availability of DXA scanners, which are used to diagnose and monitor osteoporosis. Ten countries reported having less than the estimated minimum DXA units required, and only 15 of the 29 countries provide full reimbursement.

A wide variety of approved medications is available for the management of osteoporosis. Less than half of the countries offered full reimbursement for these medications.

Post-Fracture Care Coordination Programs (or Fracture Liaison Services) in hospitals were lacking in eight countries. Based on expert opinion, approximately half of the remaining countries reported that less than 10% of hospitals had such vital programs in place.

Large treatment gap indicates need for strategies to improve service uptake

Among the most startling findings of SCOPE 2021 is the enormous 'treatment gap' which is leaving the most high risk individuals unprotected against fragility fractures. Other measures of service uptake were also found to be suboptimal:

In 2019 an average of 71% of women at high fracture risk did not receive therapy for osteoporosis, ranging from 32% (Ireland) to 87% (Bulgaria).

In 2010 the gap was estimated at 55% (or 10.6 million women) who were eligible for treatment but were untreated - this number has risen to 14.8 million in 2019.

FRAX, the most commonly used risk assessment tool, is available for 24 of the 29 countries. However, its web-based usage varied widely from 49 to 41,874 sessions per million population. This indicates that the tool is underutilized in most countries.

Waiting times between admission to hospital and surgical intervention were on average greater than 48 hours in five of the 29 countries. Early surgery within 48 hours of a hip fracture has been shown to significantly reduce mortality and increase the proportion of patients returning to their original residence.

Professor Cyrus Cooper, President of IOF, welcomed the publication of SCOPE 2021 and urged European health authorities to prioritize osteoporosis and fracture prevention:

"This important publication clearly shows that osteoporosis is a major health care burden in Europe, resulting in enormous, and growing, costs to national health care systems. As well as revealing wide discrepancies in service provision and uptake within the EU, SCOPE has exposed an unacceptable treatment gap and poor provision of post-fracture care programs to prevent secondary fractures. Despite the wide availability of treatments to prevent fractures, only a minority of patients at high risk receive treatment even after their first fracture."

"IOF joins national osteoporosis societies in Europe in calling for a Europe-wide strategy and parallel national strategies to provide coordinated osteoporosis care and to reduce debilitating fractures and their impact on individual lives and health care systems. Given the projected increase in fracture burden, urgent action must be taken."

New research identified a novel interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the galectin-3-binding protein (LGALS3BP) which could be a new therapeutic anti-viral target. The research also found the presence of detectable viral RNA in blood in COVID-19 patients is a strong predictor of mortality.

The paper, published today in Nature Communications, was led by a group of researchers from King's College London, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's British Heart Foundation Centre. The research was funded by the NIHR Guy's and St Thomas' Biomedical Research Centre and supported by grants from BHF.

In the study, authors analysed close to 500 blood samples from patients admitted to Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College Hospitals. The authors compared plasma and serum samples between patients admitted to intensive care units (ICU) with COVID-19 and hospitalised non-ICU COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 patients in ICU.

Almost a quarter of COVID-19 ICU patients had detectable RNAemia - severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 RNA - within the first six days of admission to ICU. The presence of RNAemia was a strong predictor of 28-day mortality. RNAemia was detectable in 56% of deceased patients but in only 13% of survivors.

Researchers also identified LGALS3BP as a binding protein to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein

Rising levels of LGALS3BP in the lungs offered protection to cells from the harmful effects of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

The identification of LGALS3BP as a potential antiviral protein is encouraging as the UK government launched an Antivirals Taskforce in April 2021 to find effective treatments that could prevent future waves of infections and limit the effect of new variants.

Professor Manu Shankar Hari, a NIHR Clinician Scientist based at King's College London and a Consultant in Critical Care Medicine at Guy's and St Thomas', said: "We report that presence of detectable viral RNA in plasma or serum of COVID-19 patients is associated with increased risk of severe illness. We also highlight a novel interaction with potential antiviral effect between the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and a protein called galectin-3-binding protein. Our research findings have two main implications. First, there is an unmet diagnostic technology need for near patient tests to identify presence of viral RNA in blood in COVID-19 patients. Second, our research potentially highlights an antiviral drug target, which is a priority area highlighted within the UK government's launch of a COVID-19 antivirals Taskforce."

Professor Manuel Mayr, British Heart Foundation Professor at King's College London, said: "As British Heart Foundation Professor I am delighted that we could join forces with our clinical colleagues to contribute to a better understanding of COVID-19. This is the first time blood proteins with the ability to bind to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein have been analysed thanks to the specialised equipment available in King's British Heart Foundation Centre."

Cows can pass on the hypoglycin A toxin through their milk, a study by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB) in Toxins shows. The substance can cause severe symptoms in humans and animals. Small amounts of the toxin were detected in the raw milk of cows that grazed in a pasture exposed to sycamore maple. The team calls for further investigations to realistically assess the potential dangers.

High concentrations of hypoglycin A can be found in unripe akee and lychee fruit and in the seeds and seedlings of various maple trees. These include, for example, the sycamore maple, which is common throughout Europe. The toxin can cause severe illness in humans. In 2017, a team of researchers in India was able to prove that the toxin was responsible for the sudden death of several hundred children in the country who had previously eaten large quantities of lychee. "The substance interferes with the body's energy metabolism. One typical symptom in humans is very low blood sugar levels," says Professor Annette Zeyner from the Institute of Agricultural and Nutritional Sciences at MLU. In 2013, hypoglycin A from maple trees was also found to cause atypical myopathy in horses - a puzzling disease that is often fatal for animals kept on a pasture.

Zeyner and her team joined forces with Dr Jörg Ziegler from IPB to discover whether hypoglycin A could also be detected in the raw milk of cows. "Maple trees are widespread and grazing cows is a common practice. Thus, it seemed logical that cows - like horses - would eat the seeds or seedlings of maple trees, thereby ingesting the toxins," explains Zeyner. For the new study, the team examined samples from dairy farmers in northern Germany. Only milk provided directly from the farms was analysed. "We did not analyse samples from individual cows; instead, we sampled the milk from several cows which was stored in collection tanks," says Zeyner.

The samples were analysed using a special form of mass spectrometry which can detect even tiny amounts of a substance. The result: "We detected hypoglycin A only in two samples of raw milk from the one of the farms whose pasture contained a single maple tree," says Zeyner. The concentration of the substance was 17 and 69 micrograms per litre of milk. "These are low and widely varying concentrations. But considering that there was only one tree in the pasture and the sample came from a collection tank, it was surprising that we were able to detect anything at all," explains Zeyner. The toxin could not be detected in any of the other samples.

"Our study is the first to show that cows appear to ingest parts of the sycamore maple containing the toxin, which is then transferred to their milk. Many other questions arise from this finding," says the researcher in summary. It is still unclear, for example, how much toxin the cows have to ingest for there to be detectable traces in their milk. Follow-up studies will be needed to determine whether the substance is destroyed when the milk is processed or even whether this low concentration is a cause for concern, and how it can be prevented.