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Press materials are now available for NUTRITION 2021 LIVE ONLINE, a dynamic virtual event showcasing new research findings and timely discussions on food and nutrition. The online meeting will be held June 7-10, 2021.

NUTRITION 2021 LIVE ONLINE is the flagship meeting of the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), the preeminent professional organization for nutrition research scientists and clinicians around the world.

Register for a press pass to access hundreds of live and recorded sessions. Explore the virtual poster presentations and oral presentations to see all the exciting research topics that will be covered at NUTRITION 2021 LIVE ONLINE.

All materials are embargoed until 12 p.m. EDT (UTC-4) June 7.

New Research Shows Trend Toward Unhealthy Eating During Pandemic
Study participants consumed more vegetables and whole grains before COVID-19 began

Study Compares Heart Benefits of Low-Fat and Plant-Centered Diets
New findings suggest that a plant-centered diet could help lower heart disease risk

When the Economy Goes Down, So Does the Quality of Our Diets
Study examining dietary trends during the Great Recession offers lessons for the COVID-19 era

Diets that Promote Inflammation Could Increase Breast Cancer Risk
Analysis of dietary patterns for over 350,000 women suggests eating more anti-inflammatory foods helps lower risk

How a Global Pandemic Changed the Way We Eat and Shop
Studies reveal how COVID-19 influenced food choices, attitudes and prices

Smartphone Use Associated with Unhealthy Eating and Overweight in Teens
More time online linked with less healthy behaviors in large study conducted in South Korea

How Kids Eat: Five New Insights on Daily Habits and Childhood Obesity
Studies reveal how family, social media and COVID-19 influence children's diets and health

New Research Examines the Science Behind Superfoods
Findings suggest that consuming mangos, honey and spices could bring important health benefits

Trying Not to Overeat? How You Eat Matters
Study finds people who eat more tend to take larger bites or eat faster

Cutting Food Waste Alone Won't Solve World's Nutritional Needs
To feed the growing population, researchers urge attention to essential vitamins and minerals

Most Americans Are Not Getting Enough Fiber in Our Diets
Just 7% of adults meet fiber recommendations, raising risk of chronic diseases

The Latest Science on Staying Healthy During Pregnancy
New research examines prenatal supplements, how eating patterns affect sleep, physical activity while pregnant and more

PULLMAN, Wash. - No billionaires live among the Tsimane people of Bolivia, although some are a bit better off than others. These subsistence communities on the edge of the Amazon also have fewer chronic health problems linked to the kind of dramatic economic disparity found in industrialized Western societies.

For a study in the journal eLife, a research team led by Aaron Blackwell of Washington State University and Adrian Jaeggi of University of Zurich tracked 13 different health variables across 40 Tsimane communities, analyzing them against each person's wealth and the degree of inequality in each community. While some have theorized that inequality's health impacts are universal, the researchers found only two robustly associated outcomes: higher blood pressure and respiratory disease.

"The connection between inequality and health is not as straightforward as what you would see in an industrialized population. We had a lot of mixed results," said Blackwell, a WSU associate professor of anthropology. "These findings suggest that at this scale, inequality is not at the level that causes health problems. Instead maybe it's the extreme inequality in a lot of modern environments that causes health problems since it's unlike any inequality we've ever had in our evolutionary history."

Anthropologists are particularly interested in studying the Tsimane because their traditional lifestyle better resembles the conditions humans lived under for many centuries before the modern era. The Tsimane eat very little processed food--instead they forage, hunt, fish and grow crops. They also get plenty of exercise through their daily activities and have few health conditions associated with modern societies like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. They do not have easy access to modern health care so do have to contend with parasites and many respiratory conditions ranging from the common cold to pneumonia.

Starting in 2001, a team of health care workers and researchers have visited these communities annually to provide care and collect data as part of a larger Tsimane Health and Life History Project. For this study, Blackwell, Jaeggi and their colleagues were able to analyze data from different points in time, extending to 2015.

Tsimane communities are smaller and more egalitarian than most industrialized societies but some of the communities have more inequality than others. The researchers found that for several health variables, including body mass index, gastrointestinal disorders and depression, there was not a clear connection to disparity.

However, in communities where inequality was high, many individuals had higher blood pressure, whether they were at the top or the bottom of the economic pecking order, compared to their peers in communities that were less stratified. The highest blood pressure was found among poor Tsimane men, no matter where they lived.

"Basically, it's bad to be poor, but it's also bad to be poorer," said Jaeggi. "If you feel like you're worse off than other people, that's stressful. In Western industrialized societies, it's associated with many negative health consequences like high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems and infectious disease as COVID-19 has shown. In the Tsimane communities, we did find some negative effects of living in a more unequal community, but it definitely wasn't on all of the outcomes, so it seems like it's less of a universal pattern."

This study was conducted before the pandemic, so COVID-19 impacts weren't included, but the researchers did find some connection with increased risk of respiratory disease like influenza and pneumonia to inequality. The authors said it was unclear what the exact mechanisms for that connection might be, as there wasn't a clear connection with stress, unlike in Western societies.

Blackwell also noted that while increased high blood pressure was found in more unequal communities, it hadn't developed into worse conditions such as hypertension and cardiovascular disease which are more prevalent in industrialized societies.

"I think this study tells us that there are some of the seeds of why inequality is bad for us, even in relatively egalitarian societies without huge economic differences," he said. "So perhaps if we want to increase health for everybody, then trying to reduce inequality is one route to do that."

An enhanced learning environment during the first five years of life shapes the brain in ways that are apparent four decades later, say Virginia Tech and University of Pennsylvania scientists writing in the June edition of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

The researchers used structural brain imaging to detect the developmental effects of linguistic and cognitive stimulation starting at six weeks of age in infants. The influence of an enriched environment on brain structure had formerly been demonstrated in animal studies, but this is the first experimental study to find a similar result in humans.

"Our research shows a relationship between brain structure and five years of high-quality, educational and social experiences," said Craig Ramey, professor and distinguished research scholar with Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC and principal investigator of the study. "We have demonstrated that in vulnerable children who received stimulating and emotionally supportive learning experiences, statistically significant changes in brain structure appear in middle age."

The results support the idea that early environment influences the brain structure of individuals growing up with multi-risk socioeconomic challenges, said Martha Farah, director of the Center for Neuroscience and Society at Penn and first author of the study.

"This has exciting implications for the basic science of brain development, as well as for theories of social stratification and social policy," Farah said.

The study follows children who have continuously participated in the Abecedarian Project, an early intervention program initiated by Ramey in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1971 to study the effects of educational, social, health, and family support services on high-risk infants.

Both the comparison and treatment groups received extra health care, nutrition, and family support services; however, beginning at six weeks of age, the treatment group also received five years of high quality educational support, five days a week, 50 weeks a year.

When scanned, the Abecedarian study participants were in their late 30s to early 40s, offering the researchers a unique look at how childhood factors affect the adult brain.

"People generally know about the potentially large benefits of early education for children from very low resource circumstances," said co-author Sharon Landesman Ramey, professor and distinguished research scholar at Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. "The new results reveal that biological effects accompany the many behavioral, social, health, and economic benefits reported in the Abecedarian Project. This affirms the idea that positive early life experiences contribute to later positive adjustment through a combination of behavioral, social, and brain pathways."

During follow-up examinations, structural MRI scans of the brains of 47 study participants were conducted at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Human Neuroimaging Lab. Of those, 29 individuals had been in the group that received the educational enrichment focused on promoting language, cognition, and interactive learning.

The other 18 individuals received the same robust health, nutritional, and social services supports provided to the educational treatment group, and whatever community childcare or other learning their parents provided. The two groups were well matched on a variety of factors such as maternal education, head circumference at birth and age at scanning.

Analyzing the scans, the researchers looked at brain size as a whole, including the cortex, the brain's outermost layer, as well as five regions selected for their expected connection to the intervention's stimulation of children's language and cognitive development.

Those included the left inferior frontal gyrus and left superior temporal gyrus, which may be relevant to language, and the right inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, relevant to cognitive control. A fifth, the bilateral hippocampus, was added because its volume is frequently associated with early life adversity and socioeconomic status.

The researchers determined that those in the early education treatment group had increased size of the whole brain, including the cortex.

Several specific cortical regions also appeared larger, according to study co-authors Read Montague, professor and director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, and Terry Lohrenz, research assistant professor and member of the institute's Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.

The scientists noted the group intervention treatment results for the brain were substantially greater for males than for females. The reasons for this are not known, and were surprising, since both the boys and girls showed generally comparable positive behavioral and educational effects from their early enriched education. The current study cannot adequately explain the sex differences.

"When we launched this project in the 1970s, the field knew more about how to assess behavior than it knew about how to assess brain structure," Craig Ramey said. "Because of advances in neuroimaging technology and through strong interdisciplinary collaborations, we were able to measure structural features of the brain. The prefrontal cortex and areas associated with language were definitely affected; and to our knowledge, this is the first experimental evidence on a link between known early educational experiences and long-term changes in humans."

"We believe that these findings warrant careful consideration and lend further support to the value of ensuring positive learning and social-emotional support for all children - particularly to improve outcomes for children who are vulnerable to inadequate stimulation and care in the early years of life," Craig Ramey said.

Tsukuba, Japan - It is estimated that during a heart attack, one billion cells in the heart are lost. In the wake of the heart attack, the lost tissue is replaced by scar tissue, which can lead to heart failure, arrhythmia and death. In a new study, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have shown how cells in the scar tissue can be converted to heart muscle cells, effectively regenerating the injured heart.

The injured heart of humans and rodents alike does not have the capacity to regenerate after injury. Therefore, the only way for the heart to heal the wound is to build a scar tissue in the injured area. A longstanding goal in the field has been to find a way to reprogram fibroblasts, cells that produce the connective tissue in a scar, to cardiomyocytes, the working heart muscle cells. By doing so, the lost heart muscle cells could be replaced, effectively preventing the heart from going into heart failure, a heart muscle weakness that can lead to death.

Previous studies have shown that cardiomyocytes appear to be formed by directly injecting a harmless virus carrying a set of cardiac transcription factors, proteins that drive the expression of genes that heart muscle cells need for their development and function, into the heart of rodents after a heart attack. However, the origin and functional significance of these newly formed heart muscle cells has not unequivocally been determined yet.

"Direct cardiac reprogramming holds great potential for cardiac regeneration and the treatment of myocardial infarction," says lead author of the study Professor Masaki Ieda. "However, when transcription factors are introduced, apparent cardiomyocytes may be formed either by converting fibroblasts to new cardiomyocytes or by fusing fibroblasts with existing cardiomyocytes. The difference is that only the former process, which we call 'direct reprogramming', significantly contributes to regeneration. In this study, our goal was to determine how new cardiomyocytes are formed when cardiac transcription factors are introduced after myocardial infarction."

To achieve their goal, the researchers first generated mice in which all cells emitted red fluorescence. However, the mice were modified in a way that the fibroblasts emitted green fluorescence after treatment with the drug tamoxifen. As a result, when looking at the heart after treatment with tamoxifen, cells that emitted both red and green fluorescence indicated that cell fusion between fibroblasts and cardiomyocytes had happened. Conversely, the presence of green fluorescence indicated that direct reprogramming of fibroblasts to cardiomyocytes had occurred.

Equipped with the tools to tackle their research question, the researchers used a mouse model of heart attack and treated the mice with tamoxifen. While there was no direct reprogramming in a control group, the researchers found 1-1.5% of directly reprogrammed cells when a virus carrying cardiac transcription factors was injected into the mice. Both groups exhibited minimal cell fusion. These results suggest that the main route of generating new heart muscle cells by this method is via reprogramming fibroblasts directly to cardiomyocytes.

"These are striking results that show that fibroblasts can be directly reprogrammed to cardiomyocytes. Our findings demonstrate the exciting potential of direct reprograming as a strategy for cardiac regeneration after myocardial infarction," says Professor Ieda.

Bribery in the public healthcare does not solve the problem of poor quality of services, and even exacerbates it, researchers argue. The same can be said about the well-being of patients and their own assessment of health. In other words, bribes in the healthcare do not provide good quality services and do not pay off. Such conclusions were reached by an international team of researchers, including Olga Popova, the article's co-author, an associate professor at the Ural Federal University (UrFU, Russia).

Researchers examined survey data on 41,000 citizens from 28 post-communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the former Soviet republics, including Russia (information provided by the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development). The research results were published at the Journal of Comparative Economics.

"In general, the corruption mechanism that undermines people's health is as follows," said Olga Popova. "As everyday practice shows, the poorest strata of the population have the greatest health problems. They are also the ones who most often use medical services and, as a result, are more inclined than others to solve their problems with the help of bribes."

Corruption is also fueled by the fact that healthcare workers can deliberately reduce the quality of service in order to receive informal remuneration, the researchers presume.

"However, the plight in public health together with dismissive and irresponsible attitudes toward the poor population groups lead to the fact that giving a bribe does not solve such problems," said Olga Popova. "The other problems, including the frequent and unjustified absence of doctors, long waiting times for services, disrespectful treatment by the staff, unavailability of medicines, and uncleaned premises are not solved as well. The mismatch between the consequences of bribery and expectations while giving a bribe as well as the risk of disclosure lead to a deterioration in the well-being of patients who bribe."

The researchers emphasize that bribery for any public service, not just healthcare, has the same adverse effect.

Another conclusion is that bribe-givers face the risks of health deterioration more often than other people. This happens because bribes divert the funds from personal and family budgets, disrupt the normal diet, and reduce the possibility of regular consumption of meat, chicken, fish or their vegetarian equivalent.

The lowest level of bribery in healthcare is in Slovenia, Estonia, Poland, Georgia, and the Czech Republic, while the highest is in Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Tajikistan. Russia is approximately in the middle of the ranking and is close to the positions of Lithuania and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On average across the surveyed countries, 17% of the respondents reported having had a bribe-taking experience while receiving a health care in the public health system. About a third reported having such experience while receiving the other types of government services. In Moldova and Tajikistan, almost a half of the patients have an experience of corruption. In Ukraine and Azerbaijan ? about a third. In terms of the prevalence of corruption, including in the healthcare sector, European post-communist states are second after the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Researchers call such volumes catastrophic and urge to fight corruption. Increasing the salaries of civil servants, law enforcement practice, and campaigns to create intolerance in society may help to solve the problem.

In the modern day, our interactions with voice-based devices and services continue to increase. In this light, researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology and RIKEN, Japan, have performed a meta-synthesis to understand how we perceive and interact with the voice (and the body) of various machines. Their findings have generated insights into human preferences, and can be used by engineers and designers to develop future vocal technologies.

As humans, we primarily communicate vocally and aurally. We convey not just linguistic information, but also the complexities of our emotional states and personalities. Aspects of our voice such as tone, rhythm, and pitch are vital to the way we are perceived. In other words, the way we say things matters.

With advances in technology and the introduction of social robots, conversational agents, and voice assistants into our lives, we are expanding our interactions to include computer agents, interfaces, and environments. Research on these technologies can be found across the fields of human-agent interaction (HAI), human-robot interaction (HRI), human-computer interaction (HCI), and human-machine communication (HMC), depending on the kind of technology under study. Many studies have analyzed the impact of computer voice on user perception and interaction. However, these studies are spread across different types of technologies and user groups and focus on different aspects of voice.

In this regard, a group of researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), Japan, RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP), Japan, and gDial Inc., Canada, have now compiled findings from several studies in these fields with the intention to provide a framework that can guide future design and research on computer voice. As lead researcher Associate Professor Katie Seaborn from Tokyo Tech (Visiting Researcher and former Postdoctoral Researcher at RIKEN AIP) explains, "Voice assistants, smart speakers, vehicles that can speak to us, and social robots are already here. We need to know how best to design these technologies to work with us, live with us, and match our needs and desires. We also need to know how they have influenced our attitudes and behaviors, especially in subtle and unseen ways."

The team's survey considered peer-reviewed journal papers and proceedings-based conference papers where the focus was on the user perception of agent voice. The source materials encompassed a wide variety of agent, interface, and environment types and technologies, with the majority being "bodyless" computer voices, computer agents, and social robots. Most of the user responses documented were from university students and adults. From these papers, the researchers were able to observe and map patterns and draw conclusions regarding the perceptions of agent voice in a variety of interaction contexts.

The results showed that users anthropomorphized the agents that they interacted with and preferred interactions with agents that matched their personality and speaking style. There was a preference for human voices over synthetic ones. The inclusion of vocal fillers such as the use of pauses and terms like "I mean..." and "um" improved the interaction. In general, the survey found that people preferred human-like, happy, empathetic voices with higher pitches. However, these preferences were not static; for instance, user preference for voice gender changed over time from masculine voices to more feminine ones. Based on these findings, the researchers were able to formulate a high-level framework to classify different types of interactions across various computer-based technologies.

The researchers also considered the effect of the body, or morphology and form factor, of the agent, which could take the form of a virtual or physical character, display or interface, or even an object or environment. They found that users tended to perceive agents better when the agents were embodied and when the voice "matched" the body of the agent.

The field of human-computer interaction, particularly that of voice-based interaction, is a burgeoning one that continues to evolve almost daily. As such, the team's survey provides an essential starting point for the study and creation of new and existing technologies in voice-based human-agent interaction (vHAI). "The research agenda that emerged from this work is expected to guide how voice-based agents, interfaces, systems, spaces, and experiences are developed and studied in the years to come," Prof. Seaborn concludes, summing up the importance of their findings.

Spending time outdoors is good for a person's body and soul, but how good is it for the wildlife around us?

Outdoor recreation has become a popular activity, especially in the midst of a pandemic, where access to indoor activities might be limited. Long known to have negative behavioural and physiological effects on wildlife, outdoor recreation is one of the biggest threats to protected areas. Human disturbance to animal habitats can lower their survival and reproduction rates, and ultimately shrink populations or eradicate them from areas where they would otherwise thrive. Still, park planners and natural resource managers often can't find clear recommendations on how to limit these impacts.

A new scholarly article in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Nature Conservation from researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society looked at nearly 40 years of research on recreation impacts on wildlife to try to find the point where recreation starts to impact the wildlife around us. Knowing when and to what extent a species is being disturbed can ultimately allow for more informed and effective management decisions and increase the chances of its successful conservation.

The researchers found that the impact or uncomfortable distance to humans, vehicles or trails for shorebirds and songbirds was as short as 100 meters or even less, whereas for hawks and eagles it was greater than 400 meters. For mammals, it varied even more widely, with an impact threshold of 50 meters for medium-sized rodents. Large ungulates - like elk - would rather have to stay 500 to 1,000 meters away from people.

While human disturbance thresholds can vary widely, large buffer zones around human activities and controlled visitation limits should always be considered during planning and maintenance of parks and protected areas. Based on their findings, the authors recommend that human activities should be considered to be impacting wildlife at least 250 metres away. Further, they call for future research to explicitly identify points where recreation begins or ends to impact wildlife.

The Covid-19 pandemic has introduced us to expressions like 'lockdown', 'isolation' and 'social distancing', which became part of social conduct all over the world. Now it appears that bats also maintain social distancing which might help prevent the spread of contagious diseases in their colonies. In a new study published in Annals of the New York Academy of Science, researchers from Tel Aviv University demonstrate that sick bats, just like ill humans, prefer to stay away from their communities, probably as a means for recovery, and possibly also as a measure for protecting others. The study was conducted by postdoctoral researcher Dr. Kelsey Moreno and PhD candidate Maya Weinberg at the laboratory of Prof. Yossi Yovel, Head of the Sagol School of Neuroscience and a researcher at School of Zoology at the George S. wise Faculty of Life Sciences.

The study monitored two colonies of Egyptian fruit bats - one living in an enclosure and the other in its natural environment. To examine the behavior of bats when they get sick, the researchers injected several bats in each group with a bacteria-like protein, thereby stimulating their immune response without generating any real danger to the bats. Tests revealed symptoms such as a high fever, fatigue and weight loss, and the 'ill' bats' behavior was tracked with GPS.

The researchers discovered that the 'sick' bats chose to keep away from the colony. In the first group, they left the bat cluster of their own accord and kept their distance. In the second group the 'ill' bats likewise moved away from the other bats in the colony, and also stayed in the colony and did not go out in search of food for two successive nights.

Research student Maya Weinberg explains that this social distancing behavior is probably caused by the need to conserve energy - by avoiding the energy-consuming social interactions in the group. Weinberg emphasizes, however, that this behavior can also protect the group and prevent the pathogen from spreading within the colony. Moreover, the fact that sick bats don't leave the cave, prevents the disease from spreading to other colonies. "The bats' choice to stay away from the group is highly unusual for these animals. Normally these bats are extremely social creatures, living in caves in very crowded conditions," says Weinberg. "In fact, the 'sick' bats' behavior is very reminiscent of our own during recovery from an illness. Just as we prefer to stay home quietly under the blanket when we are ill, sick bats, living in very crowded caves, also seek solitude and peace as they recuperate."

Prof. Yovel adds that the study's findings suggest that the likelihood of bats passing pathogens to humans under regular conditions is very low, because sick bats tend to isolate themselves and stay in the cave. "We observed that during illness bats choose to stay away from the colony and don't leave the cave, and thus avoid mixing with other bats. This suggests that in order to encounter a sick bat, people must actually invade the bats' natural environment or eliminate their habitats. In other words, if we protect them, they will also protect us."

Research by scientists from University of Southampton (UK) and the Central University of Jharkhand (India) and has shown the first COVID-19 lockdown in India led to an improvement in air quality and a reduction in land surface temperature in major urban areas across the country.

The study found that travel and work restrictions imposed early in the pandemic resulted in a significant environmental improvement, due to an abrupt reduction in industrial activities and a major decrease in the use of land and air transport.

The international team used data from a range of Earth Observation sensors, including those from the European Space Agency's Sentinel-5p and NASA's MODIS sensors, to measure changes in surface temperature and atmospheric pollutants and aerosols. They concentrated on six major urban areas: Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabad - comparing data from the 2020 March to May lockdown with pre-pandemic years.

Their findings, published in the journal Environmental Research, provide a strong evidence base for potential environmental benefits through larger scale policy implementation.

The researchers revealed a significant reduction in Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), a greenhouse gas emitted from the combustion of fossil fuels, which equated to an average decrease of 12 percent throughout India and 31.5 percent over the six cities. There was a 40 percent reduction over the national capital, New Delhi. In India alone, about 16,000 premature deaths occur annually due to exposure to poor air quality.

The study also found Land Surface Temperature (LST) over major cities in India substantially declined in contrast with the previous five-year average (2015-2019) with day temperatures being up to 1°C cooler and those at night up to 2°C cooler.

Co- author Professor Jadu Dash, from University of Southampton, commented: "The lockdown provided a natural experiment to understand the coupling between urbanisation and local microclimate. We clearly observed that reduction in atmospheric pollutants (due to reduction in anthropogenic activity during lockdown) resulted in a decrease in local day and night-time temperature. This is an important finding to feed into the planning for sustainable urban development."

Along with surface temperature, the atmospheric fluxes at the surface and top of the atmosphere also significantly declined over major parts of India. The reduction of greenhouse gas concentration, higher atmospheric water vapour content and meteorological conditions played a complex role in the land and near-surface temperature reduction.

Commenting on the research, Dr Bikash Parida, from Central University of Jharkhand said: "Aerosol optical depth (AOD) and absorption AOD showed a significant reduction which could be connected with the reduction in the emission sources across India during the lockdown. The aerosol type sources, such as organic carbon (OC), black carbon (BC), mineral dust, and sea salt also reduced significantly. Moreover, in central India, increases in AOD were attributed to the supply of dust aerosols transported from the western Thar desert region."

Dr Gareth Roberts from the University of Southampton added: "Satellite instruments play a vital role in acquiring information on the Earth's environment in a timely manner. This study has illustrated the importance of Earth Observation data for monitoring changes in the atmospheric pollutants, which are significant health risk, and in highlighting the impact that anthropogenic activities have on regional air quality."

Efforts to contain the novel coronavirus have caused lockdowns and school closures around the world. These efforts and policies have unfortunately cut off many children from valuable resources such as the opportunity for exercise, access to clean water and food, learning, and socialization. Therefore, the effects on mental health and behavior may be found not just in adults but children. However, studies published thus far have been limited to elucidating the mood of middle school and high school students and the conditions for which mood problems occur remain unclear. Therefore, support and assistance methods to help such students, including younger children remained unclear. To fill this knowledge gap, this study conducted a follow-up study during the time Japan was under a state of emergency and schools were closed in March until May of 2020.

Associate Professor Fumito Takahashi of the Faculty of Education, Shinshu University led this cohort study on elucidating the anguish and problems faced not only by middle school and high school-aged students but also that of grade-schoolers from the first grade and above, until the third year of high school. First graders of elementary-age, who were excluded from the past self-reported surveys due to their inability to articulate their problems on self-report questionnaires, were included in this parent-reported survey, so that the problems in this age group could be understood by teachers, clinicians and policymakers. Not only was the mood of subjects under study such as depression and anxiety, but problematic behaviors such as delinquency, inattention and hyperactivity were successfully elucidated. The study showed that in fact, the inattention and hyperactivity in children grades 1 to 3 were the problems that increased the most during the lockdown.

The cohort study showed that when schools close and there are lockdowns in effect to control the spread of disease, households that have any of the following may need special assistance and support: 1) a household with (a) child(ren) under the age of ten (grades 3 and under), 2) households with low income (under 2 million yen per year) 3) households with children with developmental disabilities.

Dr. Takahashi will continue to research conditions or other support and assistance which allow children to thrive, especially those until adolescence who may have developmental disabilities so that their mental health will not worsen. Such studies aim to make environments in which "characteristics" are turned into "disabilities" fewer and to allocate social resources appropriately for those who experience difficulties so that people of all characteristics can live and thrive.

To realize such a society is not just the work of specialists such as psychiatrists and social workers, but the cooperation of guardians, local residents, pediatricians, nurses, and teachers is crucial. Policies that enable the cooperation of each actor are also important. There remains a lot to do, which means that everyone in any position has a way they can be of help.

Drinking straws are single use plastic products which will be subjected to a Europe-wide sales ban from 2021 onwards. This is stated in EU Directive 2019/904 from 5 June 2019. Consequently, alternative materials have to be established for the production of drinking straws as well as other frequently used products which predominantly were made of plastic so far.

As set out in the EU Framework Regulation for food contact material (Regulation (EC) No. 1935/2004), objects that come into direct contact with food must be safe. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has appraised straw, silicone, metal, paper and paper-board, durum wheat, and glass for their suitability to replace plastic in the production of drinking straws.

If frequently used, drinking straws made of silicone, stainless steel or glass are, in the opinion of the BfR, an appropriate alternative to plastic straws. Silicone is suitable as a food contact material (FCM) provided that its manufacture is compliant with the specifications of BfR recommendation No. XV. Metals and alloys (e.g. stainless steel) are also appropriate as FCMs, provided that the specifications of the Council of Europe Resolution regarding metals and alloys are met. Glass is also suitable for food contact. However, there is the risk of breaking. As a result, fragments of glass can get into the food or drink and in case of swallowing dangerous injuries can occur. Meanwhile, there are drinking straws made from particularly durable glass.

In case of single use, durum wheat (e.g. raw macaroni noodles) is an appropriate material for drinking straws from a health perspective. However, the noodles may decompose, particularly in warm and hot drinks, or over a longer time period, and become useless as a result. Furthermore, they may modify the consistency and taste of the drink.

Straws made of paper and paperboard are only useful if substances are added which prevent the paper from softening. These compounds are also known as wet-strength aids. Certain residues of these products, especially chloropropanols, can migrate into food. If the specifications of BfR recommendation no. XXXVI are met, no health risks are currently noted with the use of drinking straws made of paper and paperboard.

There are no risk assessments at the moment regarding the use of drinking straws made out of straw. The BfR recommends that straw is not used for this purpose with regard to potential health risks resulting from bacteria, mycotoxins, or other unwanted substances.

Regardless of the material, drinking straws used more than once should be cleaned thoroughly every time before using. If thorough cleaning of the drinking straws cannot be guaranteed, the BfR recommends that such multiple-use drinking straws are not used for reasons of hygiene. Furthermore, they should not have any sharp edges and should also be replaced if there are any signs of material damage (signs of wear and tear).

Using a brain-training app helps people eat less junk food and lose weight, new research suggests.

The Food Trainer (FoodT app) trains people to tap on images of healthy foods - but to stop when they see unhealthy snacks, creating an association between these foods and stopping.

The new study, by the universities of Exeter and Helsinki, found that playing the game about once a day for a month led to an average one-point reduction of junk food consumption on an eight-point scale (the scale ranges from four or more items per day, to one or zero items per month).

Overall, people who used the app more also reported larger changes in their food intake.

About half of the study's 1,234 participants followed the recommendation and played the game at least 10 times.

Across all participants, an average weight loss of half a kilogram (just over a pound) and a small increase in healthy food eaten was seen.

"As an example, someone who ate each junk food two to four times a week reduced this to once a week after using the app regularly for a month," said Professor Natalia Lawrence, of the University of Exeter.

"Overall, the findings are really encouraging. The app is free and it only takes about four minutes per day - so it's something people realistically can do - and our results suggest it is effective.
"There's some evidence that the benefits were stronger for people who were more overweight.

"We would expect to see this, because the app targets mechanisms that lead people to become overweight, such as the strong urges to approach and consume tempting junk foods."

Dr Matthias Aulbach, of the University of Helsinki, added: "For anyone with unhealthy eating habits - perhaps developed during lockdown - FoodT might be helpful."

The study used FoodT usage data, and the app also periodically asks questions about how often users eat certain foods, along with other information such as their age and weight.

The findings suggest that using the app regularly was linked with bigger changes in eating habits.

"If you're trying to teach the brain something new, it's a good idea to space out the learning over multiple sessions," said Dr Aulbach.

"It may be helpful to do the training in different contexts - not just at home but at work and elsewhere, so the associations you learn don't just relate to one location.

"From our results it seems important that you do the training regularly and don't just stop. So keep it interesting and relevant for yourself so you won't get bored with it: personalise the app as far as possible and pick the foods that you find really hard to resist."

The researchers stress that their findings should be interpreted cautiously, because there was no control (comparison) group and other factors (such as the possibility that people who did more training were also separately more motivated to lose weight) could play a part in the results.

Leaving a review on Google Play, one app user wrote: "Really useful. Seems to work on different levels whether it's the green/red circle association of stop/go which psychologically makes you more aware, I'm not sure - but my cravings have reduced dramatically and I no longer eat in the evening mindlessly."

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder caused by the death of dopaminergic neurons in a part of the brain (known as substantia nigra pars compacta), which leads to a deficit of dopamine (DA), one of the main neurotransmitters active in the central nervous system. Symptomatic treatment focuses on increasing the concentration of dopamine into the brain.

However, dopamine is not directly administered, because it is unable to cross the so called blood-brain barrier, which prevents some of the substances circulating in the blood to penetrate into the nervous system. Thus, DA precursor levodopa (L-DOPA) -an amino-acid which participates in the synthesis of dopamine- is used, due to its better ability to cross such barrier. Nevertheless, long-term and intermittent administration of this drug is associated with important disabling complications, such as motor disorders and involuntary muscle movements.

In a paper recently published in ACS Nano, synthetic melanin-like nanoparticles are used to overcome these limitations. This research was coordinated by Dr Daniel Ruiz-Molina, leader of the ICN2 Nanostructured Functional Materials Group, and Dr Julia Lorenzo, leader of the Protein Engineering Group at the Institute of Biotehcnology and Biomedicine (IBB) of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and was developed in collaboration with the Neurodegenerative Diseases group of Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), led by Prof. Miquel Vila.

The main objective of this work was to obtain a "nanoplatform" -which is a biocompatible nano-structure including the substance to be delivered- able to reach the brain through a noninvasive route and generate a slow and controlled release of dopamine. A tailor-made nanoscale coordination polymer (NCP), characterized by the reversible incorporation of DA as its principal component, was tested in vitro and in vivo in rats. Intranasal administration of these nanoparticles, called DA-NCPs, showed a relevant biocompatibility, non-toxicity and a fast and efficient distribution of dopamine in the central nervous system of the animals (avoiding the blood-brain barrier).

As reported by the researchers, the proposed method is effective in delivering dopamine to the brain and, thus, in reversing Parkinson's symptoms. In addition, the synthetic methodology used is simple, cheap and exhibited a satisfactory yield (with a DA loading efficiency up to 60%).

These findings establish nanoscale coordination polymers as promising future candidates for efficient nasal delivery of drugs to the central nervous system, and thus for the symptomatic treatment of people affected by Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative disorders. This type of nano-formulation and administration route may also pave the way to the development of other platforms able to deliver a wide range of drugs into the brain in a controlled manner, for the treatment of various brain diseases (such as brain tumours, Alzheimer's, Epilepsy).

Announcing a new article publication for BIO Integration journal. In this article the authors Craig S. Carlson and Michiel Postema, from University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa and Tampere University, Tampere, Finland discuss deep impact of superficial skin inking: acoustic analysis of underlying tissue.

Skin tattoos are a common decoration, but profound scientific study on whether a skin tattoo alters the acoustic response from superficial tissues, and therefore from underlying tissue, was previously lacking; thus, any quantitative effects were unknown.

This study is the first to investigate the nature of artifacts in ultrasound images, which have been observed to originate from tattooed skin. The work was conducted theoretically and experimentally using extremely simplified cases of perfectly flat and homogenous layered media and in tattooed pork. The measured speeds of sound of tattooed materials were higher than those of their uninked counterparts.

The authors concluded that the artifacts observed in in vitro and in vivo brightness-mode scans were explained from near-vertical transitions between areas of different sound speeds. In addition, phantom material is a suitable acoustic alternative for live human skin.

In summary, the presence of superficial tattoos has a small but quantifiable effect on the acoustic response from deeper tissues. The study integrated acoustic physics, biomaterials research, mechanical engineering, and medical imaging to increase knowledge on tattooed skin.

Aging is associated with an overall decline in health and increased frailty, and is a major risk factor for multiple chronic diseases. Frailty syndrome, characterized by weakness, fatigue and low physical activity, affects more than 30% of the elderly population. Increasing our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the aging process is a top priority to facilitate the development of interventions that will lead to the preservation of health and improvements on survival and lifespan.

Cumulative evidence suggests that diet and metabolism are key targetable regulators of healthy lifespan. Prof. Haim Cohen, Director of the Sagol Healthy Human Longevity Center at Bar-Ilan University, focuses much of his research on the SIRT6 protein that is involved in regulating many biological processes, such as aging, obesity, and insulin resistance.

In a study just published in the journal Nature Communications, an international team led by Cohen and his PhD student Asael Roichman -- together with Prof. Rafael de Cabo, of the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health, Prof. Manuel Serrani, of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona, and Prof. Eyal Gottlieb from the Technion -- report that transgenic mice express high levels of the SIRT6 gene, and show that their life expectancy can be increased by an average of 30% in both males and females. Translated into human terms this means that a 90-year-old could live until nearly 120!

Furthermore, the mice exhibited significant improvement in overcoming a variety of age-related diseases, such as cancer and blood disorders. Beyond this, strikingly, they were able to conduct the same level of vigorous activity as young mice, and didn't become frail.

Next, through a variety of biochemical methods and metabolic analyses the researchers deciphered the mechanism through which SIRT6 acts as a type of "fountain of youth", facilitating healthy aging. They showed that older animals lose the ability to generate energy in the absence of external energy sources, such as a short fast. On the other hand, the engineered mice maintained an enhanced energy generation capacity from other storage, such as the breakdown of fats and lactic acid. By doing so, they created sugar utilized for energy in muscle and specifically in the brain. In fact SIRT6 activates a physical response that is identical to diets that increase longevity.

"This discovery, combined with our previous findings, shows that SIRT6 controls the rate of healthy aging," says Prof. Cohen, of Bar-Ilan University's Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences. "If we can determine how to activate it in humans, we will be able to prolong life, and this could have enormous health and economic implications." Today, Cohen's lab is developing methods for extending healthy life based on these findings.