Culture

LAWRENCE -- College students across the country struggle with a vicious cycle: Test anxiety triggers poor sleep, which in turn reduces performance on the tests that caused the anxiety in the first place.

New research from the University of Kansas just published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine is shedding light on this biopsychosocial process that can lead to poor grades, withdrawal from classes and even students who drop out. Indeed, about 40% of freshman don't return to their universities for a second year in the United States.

"We were interested in finding out what predicted students' performance in statistics classes -- stats classes are usually the most dreaded undergrad class," said lead author Nancy Hamilton, professor of psychology at KU. "It can be a particular problem that can be a sticking point for a lot of students. I'm interested in sleep, and sleep and anxiety are related. So, we wanted to find out what the relationship was between sleep, anxiety and test performance to find the correlation and how it unfolds over time."

Hamilton and graduate student co-authors Ronald Freche and Ian Carroll and undergraduates Yichi Zhang and Gabriella Zeller surveyed the sleep quality, anxiety levels and test scores for 167 students enrolled in a statistics class at KU. Participants completed an electronic battery of measures and filled out Sleep Mood Study Diaries during the mornings in the days before a statistics exam. Instructors confirmed exam scores. The study showed "sleep and anxiety feed one another" and can hurt academic performance predictably.

"We looked at test anxiety to determine whether that did predict who passed, and it was a predictor," Hamilton said. "It was a predictor even after controlling for students' past performance and increased the likelihood of students failing in class. When you look at students who are especially anxious, it was almost a five-point difference in their score over students who had average levels of anxiety. This is not small potatoes. It's the difference between a C-minus abd a D. It's the difference between a B-plus and an A-minus. It's real."

Beyond falling grades, a student's overall health could suffer when test anxiety and poor sleep reinforce each other.

"Studies have shown students tend to cope with anxiety through health behaviors," Hamilton said. "Students may use more caffeine to combat sleep problems associated with anxiety, and caffeine can actually enhance sleep problems, specifically if you're using caffeine in the afternoon or in the evening. Students sometimes self-medicate for anxiety by using alcohol or other sedating drugs. Those are things that we know are related."

Hamilton said universities could do more to communicate to students the prevalence of test anxiety and provide them with resources.

"What would be really helpful for a university to do is to talk about testing anxiety and to talk about the fact that it's very common and that there are things that can be done for students who have test anxiety," she said. "A university can also talk to instructors about doing things that they can do to help minimize the effect of testing anxiety."

According to Hamilton, instructors are hindered by the phenomenon as well: Anxiety and associated sleep problems actually distort instructors' ability to measure student knowledge in a given subject.

"As an instructor, my goal when I'm writing a test is to assess how much a student understands," she said. "So having a psychological or an emotional problem gets in the way of that. It actually impedes my ability to effectively assess learning. It's noise. It's unrelated to what they understand and what they know. So, I think it behooves all of us to see if we can figure out ways to help students minimize the effects of anxiety on their performance."

The KU researcher said testing itself isn't the problem and suggested an increase in regular tests might reduce anxiety through regular exposure. However, she said a few small changes to how tests are administered also could calm student anxiety.

"In classes that use performance-based measures like math or statistics, classes that tend to really induce a lot of anxiety for some students, encouraging those students to take five minutes right before an exam to physically write about what they're anxious about can help -- that's cheap, that's easy," Hamilton said. "Also, eliminating a time limit on a test can help. There's just really nothing to be gained by telling students, 'You have an hour to complete a test and what you don't get done you just don't get done.' That's really not assessing what a student can do -- it's only assessing what a student can do quickly."

Hamilton said going forward she'd like research into the link between test anxiety and poor sleep broadened to include a more diverse group of students and also to include its influence on remote learning.

"The students in this study were mostly middle-class, Caucasian students," she said. "So, I hesitate to say these results would generalize necessarily to universities that have a more heterogeneous student body. I also would hesitate to say how this would generalize into our current Zoom environment. I don't know how that shakes out because the demands of doing exams online are likely to be very different."

Seasonally occurring fields of aufeis (icing) constitute an important resource for the water supply of the local population in the Upper Indus Basin. However, little research has been done on them so far. Geographers at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University have now examined the spreading of aufeis and, for the first time, created a full inventory of these aufeis fields. The more than 3,700 accumulations of laminated ice are important for these high mountain areas between South and Central Asia, particularly with respect to hydrology and climatology.

In the semi-arid Himalaya regions of India and Pakistan, meltwater from snow and glaciers plays an essential role for irrigation in local agriculture and hydropower generation. In this context, aufeis has been given little attention. It appears as thin sheet-like layers of ice that form through successive freezing of water and can be several meters thick. This phenomenon occurs on a seasonal basis below springsheds, along rivulets or streams under conditions of frequent freeze-thaw cycles. "In individual cases, this process is deliberately fostered through the construction of stone walls. These artificial reservoirs are used in some valleys of Upper Indus tributaries as water harvesting measures to bridge the seasonal water shortage in spring. However, the amount of ice, size and number of natural aufeis fields have been unknown so far," underlines Prof. Dr Marcus Nüsser from the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University.

The Heidelberg geographers have now compiled an inventory of these fields for the whole Upper Indus Basin and, in this context, also analysed the role of topographical parameters such as altitude and slope. The basis were several field campaigns spent in the region along with the evaluation of almost 8,300 Landsat satellite images taken between 2010 and 2020. With this imagery, the scientists were able to record the characteristic seasonal formation of aufeis and map the annually recurring bodies of ice. They detected over 3,700 aufeis fields, covering a total area of approximately 300 square kilometers. The majority of the aufeis fields lie in the Trans-Himalaya of Ladakh and on the Tibetan Plateau. In contrast, they hardly occur at all in the western part of the Upper Indus region, Marcus Nüsser explains.

The study is part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation about the significance of aufeis and ice reservoirs for the population and agriculture in the Indian region of Ladakh. The participating scientists are studying the effectiveness of the different types of ice reservoirs and whether they function efficiently on a seasonal basis. "Climate change alters both the melt rate and the annual timing of runoff, which causes increasing uncertainties for irrigated agriculture," emphasises Prof. Nüsser. "Our findings may contribute to identifying suitable locations for ice reservoirs that can improve seasonal water availability for local farming. In addition, we are going to investigate the extent to which bodies of aufeis can serve as appropriate indicators of climate change."

The current research findings were published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

April 28, 2021 - Injectable dermal fillers provide a minimally invasive approach to reduce facial lines and wrinkles while restoring volume and fullness in the face. More than 2.7 million dermal filler procedures were performed in 2019, according to the most recent statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

Even as the popularity of dermal fillers continues to skyrocket, plastic surgeons are still working out how to maximize their benefits for patients seeking nonsurgical facial rejuvenation. Most studies have used subjective rating systems, with little objective evidence on the outcomes achieved.

One recent study suggested that in addition to their "volumizing" effects, dermal fillers may also have variable "lifting" effects. Sebastian Cotofana, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., and colleagues designed a study to measure the true lifting effect of soft tissue fillers in different areas of the face. Their study appears in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the ASPS.

In the experimental study, the researchers performed standardized dermal filler injections in specially prepared facial cadaver specimens. Injections were made in areas commonly targeted in minimally invasive facial rejuvenation procedures: the forehead and temple; the midface region, including both the medial (central) and the lateral (sides) areas; and the perioral area (mouth and chin) and jawline.

To measure the effects of the injections, Dr. Cotofana and colleagues performed before-and-after scans of the facial surface using an advanced three-dimensional scanning technology (Vectra 3D imaging system). The same type of 3D digital imaging system is now commonly used to assess and even simulate the results of plastic and reconstructive surgery procedures.

Scans taken after dermal filler injections showed significant increases in local soft tissue volume in central areas of the face. That was consistent with the well-established clinical effects of "injectable" treatment in the medial forehead, midface, and mouth and chin areas.

Central facial injections also showed local lifting effects, including up to one millimeter of vertical "lift" in the forehead area. However, there was no accompanying regional lifting effect - for example, forehead injection produced no lifting effect in the central areas of the middle or lower face.

Injections in lateral facial areas like the temple, midface, and jawline also produced local volumizing and lifting effects. In addition, the lateral facial injections created "additional regional lifting effects" in neighboring areas of the face. For example, injection in the temple had a small but significant lifting effect on the lateral midface and jawline.

Combined injection techniques provided even larger benefits. Added to deep filler injection, a superficial temple injection technique produced an additional 17.5 percent increase in the lifting effect of the temple, plus a 100 percent increase in the jawline lifting effect.

"These results indicate that lateral face injections co-influence adjacent lateral facial regions and can thus induce regional lifting effects," Dr. Cotofana and coauthors write. The results are consistent with previous knowledge of the in-depth anatomy of the face: filler injections may lead to a change in tension of the connective tissue (fascia) under the skin, resulting in "re-positioning" of the upper skin layers.

In this way, filler injections can provide a small but significant lifting effect in a minimally invasive, repeatable procedure. Of course, the gravity-defying lifting effects don't approach the impact of facelift surgery. In addition to confirming previous findings on the lifting effects of facial injectables, the study also "broadens their applicability to the total lateral face...to achieve local and regional lifting effects."

Constantina Theofanopoulou wanted to study oxytocin. Her graduate work had focused on how the hormone influences human speech development, and now she was preparing to use those findings to investigate how songbirds learn to sing. The problem was that birds do not have oxytocin. Or so she was told.

"Everywhere that I looked in the genome," she says, "I was unable to find a gene called oxytocin in birds."

Theofanopoulou eventually came across mesotocin, the analogue for oxytocin in birds, reptiles, and amphibians. But as she plumped the literature in Erich Jarvis's lab at Rockefeller, the waters grew muddier. If she and Jarvis wanted to find studies on oxytocin in fish, they had to remember to search for the unique term isotocin. Unless, of course, they were looking for studies of oxytocin in certain species of shark, in which case they were obliged to scour abstracts for valitocin--the oxytocin of spiny dogfish. Similar issues arose when they tried studying the hormone vasotocin in birds, which is called vasopressin in humans. And the oxytocin receptor, typically abbreviated OXTR in mammalian studies, could be named VT3, MTR, MesoR, or ITR in studies of other species.

"I started getting lost," Jarvis admits. "I said, before we dig deeper, we need to make sure we've made the right assumptions about which human and bird genes are evolutionarily related."

Now, in a new study in Nature, Theofanopoulou and Jarvis demonstrate that the human hormone known as oxytocin is in fact the one and the same gene across all major vertebrate lineages. The similarities are in fact so striking that the scientists advocate for cleaning up the jargon once and for all by applying new standard nomenclature for the hormones known as oxytocin and vasopressin in humans, as well as their respective receptors.

This updated naming convention would, at the very least, make life easier for scientists studying oxytocin. But it could also serve as a model for how to translate a vast range of biological findings across species--ultimately leading to a better understanding of how the same genes function in different organisms.

A Whole-Genome Approach

Before whole genome sequencing gave scientists a big picture view of just how similar many genetic sequences are, biochemists would often assign unique names to near-identical genes in recognition of slight, often inconsequential, differences. This gave rise to the odd naming conventions across species that so baffled Theofanopoulou and Jarvis. "Oxytocin in mammals has one different amino acid than mesotocin in turtles," Theofanopoulou says. "Before we had a whole-genome perspective, we might have thought that it was an entirely different gene."

But sequence similarity isn't the only sign that two genes from different species are related. Another is each gene's surrounding gene territory on its respective chromosome, which scientists refer to as synteny. In other words, the identity of a gene is not made up only by the sequence 'inside' the gene, but also by the genes that surround it, those genes found 'outside' that gene. And while mammalian oxytocin differs slightly, in sequence, from its turtle analogue, this new study demonstrates that there is synteny in oxytocin, vasotocin, and each hormone's receptor, across the genomes of 35 species that span all major vertebrate lineages and four invertebrate lineages.

"With synteny, we can show that oxytocin in mammals is the same gene as mesotocin in turtles, because it is located in the same syntenic position in all these genomes, namely surrounded by the same genes across species. Gene sequence within a gene tends to change fast, but the gene order, how genes are located the one after the other, tends to be much more conserved in evolutionary time." Theofanopoulou says.

This broader perspective would not have been possible without recent updates that made whole genomes more complete and accurate, a project spearheaded by the international Vertebrate Genomes Project, which Jarvis chairs. These use long-sequence reads and long-range data to generate nearly complete chromosomal level genome assemblies. Cleaner genomes with fewer errors allow scientists to search for syntenic subtleties in new ways. "Many of the genomes that we have been looking at don't have mixed up chromosomes or errors," Jarvis says. "Nobody had this before."

What's in a name?

Many more genes may require just this sort of re-evaluation, to facilitate translational research and bring scientific vocabulary into the post-genomic era. For instance, similar nomenclature issues exist within two genes pertinent to Jarvis's work on vocal learning, SRGAP and FOXP2, and Theofanopoulou suspects that naming conventions for dopamine and estrogen receptors may need revisions as well. "This paper serves as a model for how to revamp genome nomenclature in biology, based on gene evolution," Jarvis says.

But whether such new names will stick remains an open question. Jarvis and Theofanopoulou are already experiencing pushback from researchers who are reluctant to see the long legacy of mesotocin research renamed and bundled up with oxytocin, or vasopressin with vasotocin. "We've spoken with several people who knew that these genes were analogues but insisted that they cannot be called by the same name," Jarvis says. "Some argued that 'this is the way it has been for decades.'"

Others worry that, however syntenic these genes may be across species, it would be inaccurate and perhaps even misleading to use the same name for the gene that promotes lactation in mammals and clearly plays a different role in birds and turtles. Jarvis disagrees. "A name shouldn't be based solely on function, but also on genetic and evolutionary similarities," he says.

"We can now show that these are the same genes because they are located in the same conserved blocks of gene order in the genome across species," Theofanopoulou adds. "Had the genes for these hormones been discovered in today's genomics era, they would have been named with the same and not different names."

Researchers from Erasmus School of Economics, IESE Business School, and New York University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines what business schools do wrong when conducting academic research and what changes they can make so that research contributes to improving society.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Faculty Research Incentives and Business School Health: A New Perspective from and for Marketing" and is authored by Stefan Stremersch, Russell Winer, and Nuno Camacho.

In February 2020, an article in the Financial Times stated that business schools' research model is "ill," with faculty increasingly focusing on "abstract, abstruse and overly academic topics with little resonance beyond the higher education sector."

The researchers demonstrate that business schools use the wrong research metrics and incentives with research faculty. As Stremersch explains, "We show that business schools focus excessively on the quantity of research and insufficiently on other critical aspects such as the quality, rigor, relevance, and creativity of such research." To gauge whether research incentives in business schools are indeed badly designed, they surveyed 234 marketing professors in business schools across 20 countries and completed 22 interviews with 14 (associate) deans and eight external institution stakeholders.

Results show that business schools' research incentives are badly designed for three main reasons. First, business schools use the wrong research metrics to monitor their faculty's research, often harming the quality (rigor and relevance) of the research produced by their research faculty. Second, research with lower-than-desired practical importance may hurt teaching quality, which negatively impacts business school health. Third, while research faculty feel undercompensated for the research they do, (associate) deans feel that the current compensation levels for faculty are not sustainable.

The researchers assert that business schools need to recalibrate their faculty research incentives. To do so, business schools can start with three concrete actions. First, business schools need to develop better research metrics. "Schools need to reduce the weight they place in low-effort metrics (such as the mere number of publications or citations) and increase the weight they place in effortful metrics such as awards, research creativity, literacy, and relevance to non-academic audiences," says Winer.

Second, business schools need to develop a high commitment working environment where research faculty internalize and actively contribute to the health of the business school. Such high commitment environments should improve alignment between schools and their research faculty in terms of compensation.

Third, business schools need to improve the practical importance of their faculty's research. Several (associate) deans at top business schools whom the researchers interviewed report that the business schools they lead have made more progress on rigor than on practical importance and that they are concerned about a further decline in such practical importance in recent years.

In sum, business schools need to revise their faculty research incentives to ensure their faculty produce research that lives up to society's expectations and improves managers and firms' decision making.

The flightless kakapo of New Zealand is in trouble. The world's heaviest parrot--representing one of the most ancestral branches of the parrot family tree--is nearly extinct, with barely 200 adults plodding the underbrush of four small islands. Whether the last of the kakapos had the genetic resilience to survive was a question that only high-quality genomic analysis could answer.

But a high-quality genome assembly did not exist for the kakapo--nor for most of the 70,000 vertebrate species alive today.

Questions about how best to prevent the extinction of species ranging from the flightless kakapos to the adorable small vaquita dolphins were left unanswered. Had inbreeding left these populations genetically non-viable? Were humans the only reason that these animals stood on the brink of extinction, or was something inherently broken in their DNA?

The solution was the Vertebrate Genomes Project, an ambitious initiative launched to generate high-quality reference genomes for every extant vertebrate species. Now in their flagship study published in Nature, they present methods and principles for sequencing and assembling high-quality reference genome.

The team has applied this approach and principles to produce 16 high-quality reference genomes, one of which was the endangered kakapo, to help reveal if it is hardy enough to rebuild its population. The researchers found that extremely small populations of the endangered kakapo and vaquita have been able to survive their low numbers in the past since the last ice age over 10,000 years ago, by purging deleterious mutations that cause disease from inbreeding. As long as humans do not kill of more of the last remaining animals, findings from the high-quality reference genomes give hope that these species could survive from less than 100 individuals each.

"We call it the 'kitchen sink approach'--combining tools from several biotech companies to make this one high-quality genome assembly pipeline," says Rockefeller's Erich D. Jarvis, Chair of the Vertebrate Genomes Project. "Endangered species were the first to benefit from the new technology because, even though conservation is not my area of research, I felt it was a moral duty."

Working with low-quality genomes

High-quality reference genomes only exist for the celebrities of laboratory science--mice, fruit flies, zebrafish, and, of course, humans. For less popular species, there is often no reference genome or, perhaps worse, messy genomes stitched together from sequences obtained via quick and dirty methods. Compared to the new VGP genomes, up to 60 percent of the genes in such genomes have missing sequence, are entirely missing, or incorrectly assembled, the researchers found. It can take years to untangle the thousands of assembly errors per species.

Many false gene duplications were found, most caused by algorithms that due not properly separate out maternal and paternal chromosome sequences and instead interpret them as a two separate sister genes. "We have thousands of genes in the literature that are false duplications. The genes are not actually there!" Jarvis says. "It is unconscionable to be working with some of these genomes."

The Vertebrate Genomes Project was born from the frustrations of hundreds of scientists working in its parent organization, the Genome 10K consortium, whose mission it was to generate genome assemblies of 10,000 vertebrate species. The initial genome assemblies that the G10K and other groups generated were based on short 35 to 200 base pair reads, but these assemblies were highly incomplete. The VGP goal is to build a library of error-free reference genomes for all vertebrate species, which researchers and conservationists will be able to use readily, without dedicating months or years to fixing individual genes. "We said, let's do some hard work on the front end, so that we can get high quality data on the back end," Jarvis says.

The "kitchen sink" approach

Many companies approached the Vertebrate Genomes Project, promising a single sequencing technology that would solve every problem with messy reference genomes. The Vertebrate Genomes Project assembly team tested each method on a single hummingbird, chosen both for its relatively small genome and because of Jarvis' research interests in vocal learning among bird species ("two birds with one stone," he quips). But every technology fell short. "None had all of the necessary components to make a high-quality assembly," Jarvis says. "So we combined many tools into one pipeline."

Their approach works. Organizations including the Earth Biogenome Project, the Darwin Tree of Life Project, and the New Zealand Genome Sequencing Project are already using the most advance version of the novel pipeline. Reference genomes that once took years to generate are now rolling out in weeks and months--all without the false duplications and other errors endemic to previous assemblies. Scientists are already using the new data to study genes that render bats immune to COVID-19, and question long-standing conventions in basic science, such as whether there are meaningful differences between oxytocin and its receptors found in humans, birds, reptiles, and fish.

All told, 20 studies and 25 high-quality vertebrate genomes accompany the rollout of the novel pipeline. "The first high-quality genomes that we sequenced taught us so much about the technology and the biology that we decided to publish in these initial papers," Jarvis says. But plenty of work still lies ahead. "The next step is to sequence all 1,000 vertebrate genera, and then all 10,000 vertebrate families, and eventually every single vertebrate species"

The highly infectious SARS-CoV-2 variant that recently emerged in South Africa, known as B.1.351, has scientists wondering how existing COVID-19 vaccines and therapies can be improved to ensure strong protection. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry have used computer modeling to reveal that one of the three mutations that make variant B.1.351 different from the original SARS-CoV-2 reduces the virus' binding to human cells -- but potentially allows it to escape some antibodies.

Since the original SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, several new variants have emerged, including ones from the U.K., South Africa and Brazil. Because the new variants appear to be more highly transmissible, and thus spread rapidly, many people are worried that they could undermine current vaccines, antibody therapies or natural immunity. Variant B.1.351 bears two mutations (N501Y and E484K) that can enhance binding between the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the coronavirus spike protein and the human ACE2 receptor. However, the third mutation (K417N; a lysine to asparagine mutation at position 417) is puzzling because it eradicates a favorable interaction between the RBD and ACE2. Therefore, Binquan Luan and Tien Huynh from IBM Research wanted to investigate potential benefits of the K417N mutation that could have caused the coronavirus to evolve along this path.

The researchers used molecular dynamics simulations to analyze the consequences of the K417N mutation in variant B.1.351. First, they modeled binding between the original SARS-CoV-2 RBD and ACE2, and between the RBD and CB6, which is a SARS-CoV-2-neutralizing antibody isolated from a recovered COVID-19 patient. They found that the original amino acid, a lysine, at position 417 in the RBD interacted more strongly with CB6 than with ACE2, consistent with the antibody's therapeutic efficacy in animal models. Then, the team modeled binding with the K417N variant, which changes that lysine to an asparagine. Although this mutation reduced the strength of binding between the RBD and ACE2, it decreased the RBD's binding to CB6 and several other human antibodies to a much greater extent. Thus, variant B.1.351 appears to have sacrificed tight binding to ACE2 at this site for the ability to evade the immune system. This information could prove useful to scientists as they work to enhance the protection of current vaccines and therapies, the researchers say.

People of color, those with a higher income and younger individuals are more likely to participate in clinical trials during their cancer treatment according to a new study from the University of Missouri School of Medicine.

Clinical trials are research studies that involve people who volunteer to take part in tests of new drugs, current approved drugs for a new purpose or medical devices.

The study analyzed data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System Survey, which is an annual national telephone survey designed to collect health-related data from U.S. adults. Survey years selected included the question, "Did you participate in a clinical trial as part of your cancer treatment?" The analysis of 20,053 respondents revealed an average overall clinical trial participation rate of 6.51%. Among 17,600 white respondents, participation was 6.24%; among 445 Hispanic respondents, participation was 11%; and among 943 Black respondents, participation was 8.27%.

"This study informs our understanding of who is participating in cancer clinical trials," said Lincoln Sheets, MD, PhD, assistant research professor at the MU School of Medicine. "We found people of color were more likely to participate in cancer clinical trials than white cancer patients when controlling for other demographic factors. It could be that in previous studies, the effects of income, sex or age were muddling the true picture."

Sheets said the analysis also indicated people who earn more than the national median household income of $50,000 annually and the young were more likely to participate in clinical trials during cancer treatment.

"Taken in total, the results of this study help confirm that there are sociodemographic disparities in cancer clinical trials, indicating there are deficiencies in the system as it stands now," Sheets said. "We must lessen financial barriers to participation, improve logistical accessibility of cancer clinical trials and loosen restrictions on the enrollment of patients with comorbidities."

Sheets said improving access to transportation, childcare and health insurance would remove some of the structural and logistical barriers that prevent people from participating in cancer clinical trials.

Chocolate is a beloved treat, but sometimes the cocoa beans that go into bars and other sweets have unpleasant flavors or scents, making the final products taste bad. Surprisingly, only a few compounds associated with these stinky odors are known. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have identified the two compounds that cause musty, moldy scents in cocoa -- work that can help chocolatiers ensure the quality of their products.

Cocoa beans, when fermented correctly, have a pleasant smell with sweet and floral notes. But they can have an off-putting scent when fermentation goes wrong, or when storage conditions aren't quite right and microorganisms grow on them. If these beans make their way into the manufacturing process, the final chocolate can smell unpleasant, leading to consumer complaints and recalls. So, sensory professionals smell fermented cocoa beans before they are roasted, detecting any unwanted musty, moldy, smoky or mushroom-like odors. Even with this testing in place, spoiled beans can evade human noses and ruin batches of chocolate, so a more objective assessment is needed for quality control. In previous studies, researchers used molecular techniques to identify the compounds that contribute to undesirable smoky flavors, but a similar method has not clarified other volatile scent compounds. So, Martin Steinhaus and colleagues wanted to determine the principal compounds that cause musty and moldy odors in tainted cocoa beans.

The researchers identified 57 molecules that made up the scent profiles of both normal and musty/moldy smelling cocoa beans using gas chromatography in combination with olfactometry and mass spectrometry. Of these compounds, four had higher concentrations in off-smelling samples. Then, these four compounds were spiked into unscented cocoa butter, and the researchers conducted smell tests with 15-20 participants. By comparing the results of these tests with the molecular content of nine samples of unpleasant fermented cocoa beans and cocoa liquors, the team determined that (-)-geosmin -- associated with moldy and beetroot odors -- and 3-methyl-1H-indole -- associated with fecal and mothball odors -- are the primary contributors to the musty and moldy scents of cocoa beans. Finally, they found that (-)-geosmin was mostly in the beans' shells, which are removed during processing, while 3-methyl-1H-indole was primarily in the bean nib that is manufactured into chocolate. The researchers say that measuring the amount of these compounds within cocoa beans could be an objective way to detect off-putting scents and flavors, keeping future batches of chocolate smelling sweet.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- There are hard-to-please customers in almost every industry, with certain people being picky about which clothes, houses and even romantic partners they will consider.

A new series of studies has found that shopper pickiness can go beyond shopping for the "best" option. The researchers define what it means to be "picky" and also developed a scale for measuring shopper pickiness.

Margaret Meloy, department chair and professor of marketing at Penn State, said the findings could help companies devise the best strategies for satisfying their pickier customers.

"If a company knows they have a lot of picky customers, they may need to change the way they reward salespeople or dedicate specific salespeople to their pickiest customers, because picky shoppers have very narrow preferences and they see perceived flaws in products others wouldn't notice," Meloy said. "Alternatively, a company may allow picky shoppers to customize their products to satisfy their idiosyncratic preferences. It's not just about offering the best products, but offering the products that are best for the picky customers."

Meloy added that even the most robust promotional strategies, like offering a free gift with purchase, may fail with picky customers.

Previous research has found that about 40% of people have family or friends they would consider "picky," suggesting the trait is common. The researchers said it might be helpful for retailers to have a better understanding of what being "picky" means for their customer base, and what those customers may need from a product or shopping experience.

Meloy said that while pickiness affects a customer's shopping habits and therefore affects a company's business, there hasn't been much research done on defining pickiness or investigating how it influences a customer's behavior.

"In marketing, we call customers who want the absolute best version of a product 'maximizers,'" Meloy said. "But with picky customers, the best is more idiosyncratic. For them, it might not be about getting the best quality, but getting the precise version of a product they have in their head -- a shirt in a very precise shade of black, for example. We wanted to explore this a bit more."

For the paper -- recently published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology -- the researchers performed a series of studies to create a scale for measuring shopper pickiness and to identify the consequences of that pickiness on customer behavior.

The first series of studies focused on developing the scale. The researchers said they created a series of questions that would help uncover the psychological dimensions of pickiness while also avoiding using the word "picky," since the word tends to have negative connotations. Once the researchers were confident the scale accurately measured pickiness, they conducted additional studies to examine the possible consequences of pickiness.

The researchers found that people who scored higher on the picky shopper scale tend to have a small window of what they consider acceptable, which the researchers described as having a small latitude of acceptance and a wide latitude for rejection. These shoppers were more likely to reject a free gift when offered as a thank you for participating in a survey.

"This may seem irrational to some people who may not understand why a person would reject things that come at no cost," said Andong Cheng, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Delaware who earned her doctorate at Penn State. "We speculate that it could be psychologically costly for picky shoppers to take free items that they don't like because possessing these items is a source of irritation for these individuals."

Additionally, the researchers found that picky people didn't change their opinions based on a product's popularity. When they were informed that their top choice of a product was less popular than other options, people who scored high on the picky scale weren't swayed by that information. They stuck with their original selection.

Meloy said the results support the theory that being picky is a general personality trait that isn't just present in one situation or area of a person's life.

"We looked at a range of contexts to see whether being picky in one domain meant you were likely to be picky in others," Meloy said. "Sure enough, individuals who were picky in one domain were picky in other domains. For example, if you tend to be picky while shopping for groceries, you'll probably be picky shopping for clothes, as well."

Meloy said the findings also illustrate the importance of a company understanding and tailoring their business practices to their customer base.

"If you know you have a lot of picky customers, you might not want to bother with offering free products or promoting products by saying how popular they are with other people," Meloy said. "It's just not going to work as well with picky customers. These companies will need to come up with strategies that give customers more control to better align their idiosyncratic preferences with the company's offerings."

Hans Baumgartner, Smeal Chair Professor of Marketing at Penn State, also participated in this work.

In collaboration with VGP, the research group has published a research paper in Nature on platypus and echidna genomes early this year (see report in the right column). In the Nature current special issue, the research group published another study on the genome of the common marmoset, an important primate model for neurodegenerative diseases, drug development and other biomedical research.

The genome includes two sets of chromosomes, one inherited from the mother, the other from the father. In traditional genome sequencing efforts including the human genome project, the sequencing only produced a mosaic reference genome mixing randomly with sequences from the maternal or paternal chromosomes. Now, the research group reported a new strategy to produce completed assemblies of the two sets of genomes independently into chromosomal level. They have applied this method to produce the diploid genomes of a male common marmoset and showed huge number of variations between the two paternal genomes that previous genomic sequencing methods could not obtain. The study has established standards for the new era of biodiversity genomics.

- "The two parental genomes in our cell are not completely identical but have different nucleotide compositions. These differences can affect the function of genes and also our health. Some of these differences in men, for examples, the X chromosome from our mother and Y chromosome from our father have different structures and harbor genes with intensified sexual conflicts," explains Guojie Zhang, the senior author of this study.

The researchers have sequenced a trio (the mother, father and a male offspring) of the common marmosets. Taking advance of the long reads sequencing technology, now the researchers can distinguish the two parental genomic sequences in the male offspring based on the genomic features from the mother and father. For the first time, the researchers present a completed diploid genome with two sets of paternal chromosomes have been assembled independently into chromosome level.

- "This allows us to detect large genomic variations between the parental genomes, " says Chentao Yang, who is a BIO-BGI joined PhD student and the first author of this paper, 'surprisingly, we found the heterozygosity level in the diploid genome is 10 times higher than that can be revealed by previous method'.

The completed assembly also allows the researchers to closely investigate the structure and evolution of the sex chromosomes in this primate species. This New World Monkey species has different structure of sex chromosome than our human. A lineage-specific inversion occurred on the Y chromosome of the common marmoset leading to a more degenerated Y chromosome in this species.

The study also discovered genetic changes occurred in common marmosets that might explain many unique biological traits in this species, such as small body size, high frequency of twin born, gum chewing, and maintaining bone density during aging. Some genes related to the gonadotropin releasing hormone and fertility have accumulated mutations that might provide selection advantage for these animals to produce more twin offspring. The changes on the gonadal estrogen and genes involved in osteoclastogensis and bone metabolism might explain why this primate species does not suffer from osteoporosis during aging because of the reduced level of gonadal estrogen which other primates including human would experience.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Socially just policies aimed at limiting the Earth's human population hold tremendous potential for advancing equity while simultaneously helping to mitigate the effects of climate change, Oregon State University researchers say.

In a paper published this week in Sustainability Science, William Ripple and Christopher Wolf of the OSU College of Forestry also note that fertility rates are a dramatically understudied and overlooked aspect of the climate emergency. That's especially true relative to the attention devoted to other climate-related topics including energy, short-lived pollutants and nature-based solutions, they say.

"More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries have come together to warn that if we continue with business as usual, the result will be untold human suffering from climate change," Ripple said. "We have listed six areas, including curbing population growth in the context of social justice, as a framework for action.

"Since 1997, there have been more than 200 articles published in Nature and Science on climate mitigation, but just four of those discussed social justice, and only two considered population," he added. "Clearly social justice and population policy are not getting the attention they deserve in the struggle against the climate emergency."

The Earth's 7.7 billion people contribute to climate change in a variety of ways, primarily through the consumption of natural resources, including non-renewable energy sources, and the greenhouse gas emissions that result from industrial processes and transportation. The more people there are on the planet, the more potential they have for affecting climate.

Partly due to forced sterilization campaigns and China's one-child policy, population policies have long been viewed as a taboo topic and detrimental to social justice, Wolf says, but they can be just the opposite when developed and implemented appropriately with the goal of promoting human rights, equity and social justice.

"There are strong links between high rates of population growth and ecosystem impacts in developing countries connected to water and food security," he said. "Given the challenges of food and water security, effective population policies can support achieving both social justice and climate adaptation, particularly when you consider the current and projected uneven geographical distribution of the impacts of climate change. Policies that address health and education can greatly reduce fertility rates."

Examples of badly needed population policy measures include improving education for girls and young women, ending child marriage and increasing the availability of voluntary, rights-based family planning services that empower all people and particularly poor women, the researchers say.

"Three examples of countries in which improved education for girls and young women may have contributed to significant fertility rate declines are Ethiopia, Indonesia and Kenya," Ripple says. "Among those nations, specific education reforms included instituting classes in local languages, increasing budgets for education and removing fees for attending school. Ethiopia also implemented a school lunch program, large-scale school construction took place in Indonesia, and primary school was lengthened by one year in Kenya."

As part of an overall climate justice initiative, the scientists say, rich countries should do more to help fund voluntary family planning and educational opportunities for girls and young women in developing nations.

"It's not a balanced approach to focus on fertility rates without remembering that wealthy governments, corporations and individuals have been the primary contributors to carbon dioxide emissions and the main beneficiaries of fossil fuel consumption," Wolf said, noting the richest half of the world's population is responsible for 90% of the CO2 emissions.

"From both climate and social justice perspectives, affluent overconsumption by the wealthy must be addressed immediately, for example through policies like eco-taxes such as carbon pricing," Ripple added. "Reducing fertility rates alone is clearly not enough. The middle class and rich must be responsible for most of the needed reduction in emissions."

Taking steps to stabilize and then gradually reduce total human numbers within a socially just framework enhances human rights and reduces the further ordeals of migration, displacement and conflict expected in this century, Wolf and Ripple say. One potential framework is contraction and convergence, which calls for simultaneously reducing net emissions (contraction) while equalizing per capita emissions (convergence). This is equitable in the sense that it entails equalizing per capita emissions globally, a stark contrast to current patterns.

"Social justice and the climate emergency demand that equitable population policies be prioritized in parallel with strategies involving energy, food, nature, short-lived pollutants and the economy," Ripple said. "With feedback loops, tipping points and potential climate catastrophe looming, we have to be taking steps in all of those areas and not ignoring any of them."

Biologists use the term adaptive radiation to describe a phenomenon in which new species rapidly evolve from an ancestral species, often in response to changes in the local environment that lead to new biological niches becoming available. To understand this process, biologists often turn to the cichlids of Lake Victoria, in which over 500 species of the fish have evolved over the past 14,600 years. As Professor Masato Nikaido of Tokyo Tech explains, "The level of genetic differentiation among species is considered very low due to the short period of time after these different species began evolving, and this limited genetic differentiation provides us with a great opportunity to find candidate genes that have contributed to adaptive radiation and the evolution of new species."

Past studies on Lake Victoria cichlids have shown that species living at different depths in the lake differ considerably with respect to the alleles for a gene that determines visual abilities. Spurred by this evidence, Professor Nikaido and his colleagues, including scientists from the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute, wanted to learn more about the genetic processes underlying adaptation to different environmental conditions. They therefore analyzed the genomes of three species of Lake Victoria cichlids: Haplochromis chilotes and H. sauvagei, which inhabit only rocky shores, and Lithochromis rufus, which inhabits diverse lake-bottom environments, including rocky and sandy areas and areas with vegetation. Their findings are soon to appear in Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Comparisons of genomic data from these different species led to the identification of 678 different genes located within genomic regions that exhibited considerable between-species variation. The researchers saw these genes as potentially playing critical roles in adaptive radiation, and they identified 43 that were specific to H. chilotes, 54 that were specific to H. sauvagei, and 63 that were specific to L. rufus. Some of these genes were related to behavioral variables, such as circadian rhythms, locomotion, and the development of sensory systems.

The genomic analyses also revealed signs of what biologists call "selective sweep events", in which selective pressures cause a beneficial mutation to rapidly increase its frequency within a population and become present in all members of a species. Furthermore, many of the species-specific alleles appeared to have existed alongside several alternative alleles prior to the adaptive radiation that produced different species of fish.

In conclusion, these analyses of Lake Victoria cichlids offer novel insights into the genetic processes underlying adaptive radiation. As Professor Nikaido puts it, "Our analyses uncovered the processes of species-specific adaption of Lake Victoria cichlids and the complexity of the genomic substrate that facilitated this adaptation."

The evidence for species-specific genetic alleles being derived from preexisting genetic variation is a particularly interesting finding that may prove useful to biologists who wish to understand adaptive radiation processes in different environments.

Predatory bacteria--bacteria that eat other bacteria--grow faster and consume more resources than non-predators in the same soil, according to a new study out this week from Northern Arizona University. These active predators, which use wolfpack-like behavior, enzymes, and cytoskeletal 'fangs' to hunt and feast on other bacteria, wield important power in determining where soil nutrients go. The results of the study, published in the journal mBio this week, show predation is an important dynamic in the wild microbial realm, and suggest that these predators play an outsized role in how elements are stored in or released from soil.

Like every other life form on earth, bacteria belong to intricate food webs in which organisms are connected to one another by whom they consume and how. In macro webs, ecologists have long understood that when resources like grass and shrubs are added to lower levels of the web, predators at the top, such as wolves, often benefit. The research team, led by Bruce Hungate and researchers from Northern Arizona University and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, wanted to test whether the same was true in the microbial food webs found in wild soil.

"We've known predation plays a role in maintaining soil health, but we didn't appreciate how significant predator bacteria are to these ecosystems before now," said Hungate, who directs the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University.

To understand who and how much predator bacteria were consuming, the research team assembled a big picture using dozens of smaller data "snapshots": 82 sets of data from 15 sites in a range of ecosystems. The team used information about how bacteria behave in culture to categorize bacteria as obligate or facultative predators. About seven percent of all bacteria in the meta-analysis were identified as predators, and the majority of those were facultative, or omnivorous.

Obligate predator bacteria like Bdellovibrionales and Vampirovibrionales grew 36 percent faster and took up carbon 211 percent faster than non-predators did. When the soil received a boost of carbon, predator bacteria used it to grow faster than other types. Researchers saw these effects in the omnivorous bacteria, as well, though the differences were less profound.

All the experiments were conducted using a state-of-the-art technique called quantitative Stable Isotope Probing, or qSIP. Researchers used labeled isotopes, which act a little like molecular hashtags, to track who is active and taking up nutrients in the soil. By sequencing the DNA in a soil sample and looking for these labels, the team could see who was growing and eating whom at the level of bacterial taxa.

"While analyzing my data, I noticed that Vampirovibrio was super enriched. Since we know Vampirovibrio is a predator, I became interested in looking for other potential predators in my other data," said Brianna Finley, a postdoctoral research at University of California-Irvine and co-author on the study. "That we could pick up on these signals really validates qSIP as a tool."

Soil ecosystems contain more carbon than is stored in all the plants on Earth, so understanding how carbon and other elements move among soil organisms is crucial to predicting future climate change. And because bacteria are so abundant in soil, they have an enormous role in how nutrients are stored there or lost. And learning more about how predator bacteria act as 'antibiotics' could have therapeutic implications, down the road.

"Until now, predatory bacteria have not been a part of that soil story," said Hungate. "But this study suggests that they are important characters who have a significant role determining the fate of carbon and other elements. These findings motivate us to take a deeper look at predation as a process."

Veterinarians, pet owners and breeders often have preconceived notions about each other, but by investigating these biases, experts at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine hope to improve both human communication and animal care.

"Veterinary medicine may require us to treat the patient, but we are unable to improve pet patient outcomes without human client consent and trust. Communication is an essential component of veterinary practice," said Ryane Englar, an associate professor and the director of veterinary skills development for the college. "As an anecdotal example, vets and breeders don't always get along, but there was no research on these subjects. I wondered, what do the groups want and need? If they are aligned in any way, how can we work with one another better?"

Englar's most recent study, published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, explores biases and communication between vets and breeders. She found that dog and cat breeders often feel that veterinarians lack training and knowledge about birth and breeding. At the same time, vets may not acknowledge breeders' expertise on the subject, and may disapprove of breeding and make assumptions about breeders.

Englar hopes that addressing such biases will help people take better care of animals and each other. She proposes solutions to the tension between pet owners, breeders and vets in her research and in her classes, which focus not only on veterinary skills but on communication skills such as genuine listening, putting judgments on hold, being aware of assumptions and asking questions.

During National Pet Month, UArizona News spoke with Englar about her latest research and her philosophy on animal care and human communication.

Q: Why did you decide to study veterinary medicine communication, and why is it so important?

A: When I attended vet school, classes on communication and professionalism were not required. Historically, it's seen as a soft skill, and something that cannot be taught. In class, it was a sink-or-swim mentality; we were thrown into clinics and expected to just take (medical) history, talk to people, explain diagnoses. I did feel more equipped than peers, though. My mom is a hospice social worker, and my father is a high school teacher; I got my communications training from them. My mom taught me about death and dying and grief and bereavement, so I was well suited to end-of-life talks. But then, communication skills started to get flagged as something that was lacking in the field. It's now seen as a teachable skill, like suturing. Personally, I went from never being taught communication, to asking clients what they want and need to improve communication. At that point, I was proud of the progress, but this research has taught me that I'm still generalizing and approaching some clients with preconceived notions, and that hinders communication and care.

Q: What do pet owners want from their vets when it comes to communication?

A: We teach TONERR to students, which is a method we pieced together from a separate study. It stands for transparency, open-ended questions, nonverbal cues, empathy, reflective listening and unconditional positive regard.

For example, we found that clients want vets to be honest about what they don't know. They expect vets to say, "This is how I can find the information for you." And they expect transparency about diagnoses and prognoses. Don't skirt around things. Clients want to be seen as individuals worthy of respect. We teach students to try and leave their judgment at the door. For example, if a dog owner gives their pet painkillers for a high fever - which you shouldn't do - we'd hope the vet would realize that they likely did it from a good place; they just lacked the knowledge. We'd hope the vet would say, "I can see why you did what you did, but you're here now, so let's focus on that."

Q: As a vet, how did you feel about your latest research findings about communication between vets and breeders?

A: This was one of the most eye-opening studies I've ever done. It taught me a lot about myself. When I read comments from breeders (who participated in the study), some made me feel defensive, but then there was so much that resonated. I hope it helps people think about bridging the divide. If we can understand each other, there's almost perfect alignment from what all parties want and expect. When I surveyed (participants) for solutions, both sides suggested the same things. We just need to get past these biases and actually hear each other.

Here are some examples: Most vets have never seen any dog or cat give birth. Our (pet patient) population is almost all spayed or neutered. It's the assumption that good owners will spay or neuter their pets, and when animals are born, they're born at home and we don't see them until they're eight weeks old. So, when we see an animal that is not spayed or neutered, we wonder why that owner hasn't fixed their pet yet. That makes us have preconceived notions. The reality is that, as vets, we want to be respected for our knowledge and experience; yet, breeders feel they are not being acknowledged for their own knowledge or experience. They've seen hundreds of births, while we've seen close to zero. There needs to be understanding that we each bring different skills to the table.

Q: How has your research affected what you teach in the classroom?

A: Here, at the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine, it is important to me that communication skills have equal consideration in the classroom. My colleague Teresa Graham Brett (the college's associate dean of diversity and inclusion) and I script fictional cases for students. We ask students to consider their expectations before an encounter and compare it to how the encounter actually unfolded, as well as their assumptions about the case, the patient or the client, based on limited details provided upfront. We teach our students that assumptions are normal; it is how we process the world around us and make sense of it. However, we also need students to be aware of how preconceived notions influence their reactions and responses to clinical scenarios, patients and clients. To be successful at relationship-centered care, students need to learn how to move from reaction to response.

Beyond communication, Teresa and I want students to learn to develop their own professional identity, to tactfully practice bad news delivery with clients, to manage the financial and business side of clinical practice and to be resilient in the face of burnout. They might have to euthanize an animal, but we need to teach them how to process their emotions and emotionally reset so they can continue to face appointments after a poor patient outcome.

It's a long journey, but our hope is that we graduate day-one ready students with critical thinking skills, who are able to work with each other and support staff, who are better able to work with clients and really understand themselves in the same way I was open to learning that I have areas to work on after my breeder survey. Medicine is life-long learning and we're all learning together. None of us are perfect, but it's about being a person, first and foremost.