Culture

Thursday, 22 April 2021 - New research has found that childhood adversity, such as parental conflict, death of a close family member or serious injury, before the age of nine was associated with mental health problems in late adolescence.

However, the research also shows that improving the relationship between parents and children could prevent subsequent mental health problems, even in children who have experienced severe adversities. The research also indicated that improving a child's self-esteem and increasing their levels of physical activity can help to reduce the risk of developing mental health problems.

The study, led by researchers from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, is recently published in Psychological Medicine.

The research team analysed data from over 6,000 children in Ireland who took part in the Growing Up in Ireland study. The results showed that just over a quarter of children had experienced childhood adversity before the age of nine.

At age 17 and 18, almost one in five of the young people were experiencing significant mental health difficulties. 15.2% had developed internalising problems, such as anxiety or depression, and 7.5% had developed externalising problems, such as conduct problems or hyperactivity.

Those who experienced childhood adversity were significantly more likely to report mental health problems in late adolescence.

Parent-child conflict explained 35% of the relationship between childhood adversity and late adolescent externalising problems. The conflict also accounted for 42% of the relationship between childhood adversity and internalising problems.

The child's self-esteem (also called self-concept) explained 27% of the relationship between child adversity and later internalising problems. The child's level of physical activity explained 9% of the relationship between childhood adversity and later internalising problems.

"Children who experience multiple or severe life events are at an increased risk of mental health problems, but not all of those exposed to such events develop such problems. Our research points to some factors that can be useful for off-setting the risk of mental health problems in those who have been exposed to difficult life events," said Dr Colm Healy, the study's lead author and postdoctoral researcher at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences.

The work was funded by the Health Research Board in Ireland and the European Research Council.

"Among children who have experienced adversity, we found that reducing conflict between the parent and child and fostering a warm relationship can protect them from a broad range of later mental health problems," said Professor Mary Cannon, the study's principal investigator and professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health at RCSI.

"We also found that improving a child's self-esteem and encouraging physical activity may also be useful intervention targets for preventing difficulties with mood and anxiety following earlier adversity. On the whole, this is a hopeful story that points towards effective interventions to improve outcomes for children who had experienced difficulties early in life."

NUST MISIS scientists together with Indian colleagues from Jain University and Sri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College presented innovative membranes for the complete removal of heavy metals from industrial wastewater. The special nanostructure of zinc-modified aluminum oxide made it possible to remove arsenic and lead from water with an efficiency of 87% and 98%, respectively. The results of the work were published in the Chemosphere journal.

Industrialization is the main cause of water pollution due to the ingress of industrial waste. In particular, heavy metals -- arsenic, lead and cadmium -- can cause metabolic disorders and multiple critical effects to the body, which make them extremely toxic to the environment.

One of the most promising methods of purification and removal of heavy metal ions from water is the "Membrane technology". It acts as an effective barrier ("filter") and is relatively easy to manufacture. At the same time, it has some serious limitations such as high energy consumption, short membrane life, low productivity and selectivity.

The challenge for scientists is to make the membrane technology a more versatile and commercially available method of wastewater purification. An international team of researchers from Russia and India proposed a solution to the problem by synthesizing a new type of membranes -- especially porous nanoparticles of zinc-doped aluminium oxide.

"The nanoparticles that we obtained by solution combustion method have a very large surface area (261.44 m2/g) at a size of 50 nanometers. Cross-sectional images of nanoparticles obtained using scanning electron microscopy showed the finger-like morphology and porous nature of the membranes," said Vignesh Nayak, co-author of the work, a postdoc at NUST MISIS.

According to scientists, the synthesized membranes showed increased hydrophilicity (wettability), surface charge and "super porosity", which made it possible to remove arsenic and lead from an aqueous solution with an efficiency of 87% and 98%, respectively.

The second important advantage of the membranes obtained is antifouling properties. It means that the material is resistant to fouling by aquatic microorganisms, which disable devices that have been in aquatic environments for a long time.

The antifouling study conducted by developers at various pressures with a feed solution containing bovine serum albumin showed 98.4% recovery and reusability of membranes for up to three continuous cycles.

In the future, the membranes obtained can be used for effective treatment of industrial effluents, as well as in large city water treatment plants. The team is currently completing laboratory tests of the samples obtained.

Inspired by nature, the researchers developing a new load-bearing material

Engineers have developed a new material that mimics human cartilage - the body's shock absorbing and lubrication system, and it could herald the development of a new generation of lightweight bearings.

Cartilage is a soft fibrous tissue found around joints which provides protection from the compressive loading generated by walking, running or lifting. It also provides a protective, lubricating layer allowing bones to pass over one another in a frictionless way. For years, scientists have been trying to create a synthetic material with the properties of cartilage.

To date, they have had mixed results.

But in a paper published in the journal Applied Polymer Materials, researchers at the University of Leeds and Imperial College London have announced that they have created a material that functions like cartilage.

The research team believes a cartilage-like material would have a wide-range of uses in engineering.

Cartilage is a bi-phasic porous material, meaning it exists in solid and fluid phases. It switches to its fluid phase by absorbing a viscous substance produced in the joints called synovial fluid. This fluid not only lubricates the joints but when held in the porous matrix of the cartilage, it provides a hydroelastic cushion against compressive forces.

Because the cartilage is porous, the synovial fluid eventually drains away and as it does, it helps dissipate the energy forces travelling through the body, protecting joints from wear and tear and impact injuries. At this point the cartilage returns to its sold phase, ready for the cycle to be repeated.

Dr Siavash Soltanahmadi, Research Fellow in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Leeds, who led the research, said: "Scientists and engineers have been trying for years to develop a material that has the amazing properties of cartilage. We have now developed a material for engineering applications that mimics some of the most important properties found in cartilage, and it has only been possible because we have found a way to mimic the way nature does it.

"There are many applications in engineering for a synthetic material that is soft but can withstand heavy loading with minimum wear and tear, such as in bearings. There is potential across engineering for a material that behaves like cartilage."

Earlier attempts at developing a synthetic cartilage system have focused on the use of hydrogels, materials that absorb water. Hydrogels are good at reducing friction but perform poorly when under compressive force.

One of the problems is that it takes time for the hydrogel to return to its normal shape after it has been compressed.

The researchers have overcome this problem by creating a synthetic porous material made of a hydrogel held in a matrix of polydimethylsiloxane or PDMS - a silicone-based polymer. The matrix keeps the shape of the hydrogel.

In the paper, the scientists report that the load-bearing behaviour of the hydrogel held in the PDMS matrix was 14 to 19 times greater than the hydrogel on its own. The equilibrium elastic modulus of the composite was 452 kPa at a strain range of 10%-30%, close to the values reported for the modulus of cartilage tested.

The hydrogel also provided a lubricating layer.

The scientists believe future applications of a new material based on the function of cartilage would challenge many traditional oil-lubricated engineering systems.

Dr Michael Bryant, Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, who supervised the research, said; "The ability to use water as an effective lubricant has many applications from energy generation to medical devices. However this often requires a different approach when compared to traditional engineering systems which often use oil-based lubricants and hard-surface coatings.

"This project has helped us to better understand these requirements and develop new tools to address this need."

Transient grating spectroscopy is an elegant method that uses two laser pulses to activate a medium by creating an interference pattern made of parallel stripes of excitations that can be thermal, electronic, magnetic or even structural. The modulation depth of the pattern and its evolution can be measured by diffracting a third, time-delayed probe beam on the transient grating.

The modulation depth decays as the initial excitation propagates through the material. The distance between the stripes is determined by the wavelength of the pulses used to create the grating, which in the visible-ultraviolet part of the spectrum, is in the order of hundreds of nanometers.

Transient grating spectroscopy is a powerful tool for monitoring the transport properties of a material, be it heat, electric or magnetic flux, or structure. At a time of miniaturization of devices, the need to reach the regime of nanoscale transport is ever more pressing. Transport properties at the nanometer scale are completely unknown, and are expected to greatly differ from those at the micrometer or larger scales. This calls for the use of short wavelength radiation, and in particular X-rays. The main challenge is to cross two X-ray beams in order to generate a grating with nanometer step size.

Now, an international team of scientists have exploited the so-called Talbot effect to create the interference pattern with hard X-ray beams at a subnanometer wavelength (0.17 nm). The collaboration includes the LSU and LACUS (Majed Chergui) at EPFL, the PSI (Cris Svetina), the MIT (Keith Nelson), the FERMI free electron laser in Trieste (Claudio Masciovecchio), the Université Jean-Monnet-Saint-Étienne (Jérémy Rouxel), and the European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy in Florence (Renato Torre), among others. The scientists used the Swiss X-ray Free Electron Laser (SwissFEL) at PSI.

The results are published in Nature Photonics, showing that the transient excitation grating decays in tens of femtoseconds to picoseconds, revealing the material's phonon response. The researchers probed the grating using an optical pulse at 400 nm. This is the first demonstration of hard X-ray transient grating spectroscopy, which opens the way to exciting and novel developments.

"Hard X-ray transient grating is uniquely suited for investigating nanoscale transport phenomena in bulk and nanostructured materials, disordered materials, and even in liquids," says Majed Chergui. "Future experiments can open the field to applications in the characterization of materials, especially for nano-electronics, nano-optics, and nano-magnetism."

Students who have been exposed to interpersonal trauma —  physical assault, sexual assault or unwanted sexual experiences — prior to college are more likely to engage in risky alcohol use. But romantic relationships mitigate these effects of trauma on a student’s drinking behavior, according to a new study led by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers.

The study investigates whether romantic relationships might play a role in mitigating or exacerbating the effects of trauma exposure on alcohol use among college students. It found that students who experienced interpersonal trauma during college consumed more alcohol than those without interpersonal trauma exposure, and that their drinking was more pronounced for those in a relationship with a partner with higher levels of alcohol use. It also found that a student’s satisfaction in their romantic relationship did not change the association between interpersonal trauma and alcohol use.

Previous research has found that college students who have been exposed to interpersonal trauma are more likely to engage in risky alcohol use. Yet not everyone who experiences interpersonal trauma goes on to misuse alcohol, raising questions about what factors might play a role in the interaction of trauma and drinking.

The study, “A Longitudinal Study of the Moderating Effects of Romantic Relationships on the Associations Between Alcohol Use and Trauma in College Students,” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Addiction. It explores whether three aspects of romantic relationships — relationship status, relationship satisfaction and partner alcohol use — change the associations between interpersonal trauma and alcohol use.

“These findings are important because they help elucidate the ways that romantic relationships can improve or undermine health habits, particularly concerning alcohol consumption,” said lead author Rebecca Smith, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences. “A better understanding of the ways that social relationships can influence health behaviors might encourage people to carefully consider the people with whom they spend time. Moreover, these findings help us better understand alcohol use risk and protective factors across the lifespan, which can be used to inform prevention and treatment programs.”

Jessica Salvatore, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and the senior author on the study, said the findings “underscore the double-edged role that relationships and partners have on health behaviors in college.”

“On the one hand, we found that involvement in a committed relationship buffered the effects of interpersonal trauma exposure on students’ alcohol use,” she said. “On the other, we found that involvement with a heavier drinking partner amplified the association between exposure and alcohol use.”

Smith said she was surprised that relationship satisfaction was not a significant moderator of the associations between interpersonal trauma and alcohol use.

“Based on previous research suggesting that involvement in satisfying relationships is protective against stress and problematic drinking, we had hypothesized that high relationship satisfaction would buffer against the effects of interpersonal trauma on alcohol use,” she said.

The study relied on data collected through Spit for Science, a universitywide project at VCU in which student volunteers provide information on alcohol, substance use, emotional health and more, and contribute DNA samples that provide insight into the role of genetics. The study involved nearly 9,000 students who participated in Spit for Science between 2011 and 2014.

Participants completed baseline assessments during the fall of their freshman year and were invited to complete follow-up assessments every spring thereafter. Participants were included in the study if they completed surveys at baseline and at least one follow-up assessment.

“Each year, participants answered questions about stressful life events they may have experienced, their quantity and frequency of alcohol consumption, and their romantic relationships,” Smith said. “This allowed us to look at the interplay between interpersonal trauma, alcohol use and romantic relationship characteristics over time.”

The study’s findings could be valuable for efforts to increase awareness and education for college students about the ways in which our social ties can promote or undermine health behaviors, like alcohol use, Smith said.

Additionally, she said, the findings could be applied as part of treatment to reduce unsafe drinking.

“We know from previous research that exposure to interpersonal trauma is associated with risky alcohol use, so romantic partners can be included in treatment planning and aftercare to help trauma survivors cope with traumatic events in healthier ways and reduce engagement in risky drinking behaviors,” she said.

In addition to Smith and Salvatore, the study’s co-authors include Danielle Dick, Ph.D., Distinguished Commonwealth Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Human and Molecular Genetics at VCU; Ananda Amstadter, Ph.D., associate professor in the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at VCU; Nathaniel Thomas, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology; and the Spit for Science Working Group.

Journal

Addiction

DOI

10.1111/add.15490

Fast reactions to future events are crucial. A boxer, for example, needs to respond to her opponent in fractions of a second in order to anticipate and block the next attack. Such rapid responses are based on estimates of whether and when events will occur. Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) and New York University (NYU) have identified the cognitive computations underlying this complex predictive behavior.

How does the brain know when to pay attention? Every future event carries two distinct kinds of uncertainty: Whether it will happen within a given time span, and if so, when it will likely occur. Until now, most research on temporal prediction has assumed that the probability of whether an event will occur has a stable effect on anticipation over time. However, this assumption has not been empirically proven. Furthermore, it is unknown how the human brain combines the probabilities of whether and when a future event will occur.

An international team of researchers from MPIEA and NYU has now investigated how these two different sources of uncertainty affect human anticipatory behavior. Using a simple but elegant experiment, they systematically manipulated the probabilities of whether and when sensory events will occur and analyzed human reaction time behavior. In their recent article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the team reports two novel results. First, the probability of whether an event will occur has a highly dynamic effect on anticipation over time. Second, the brain's estimations of whether and when an event will occur take place independently.

"Our experiment taps into the basic ways we use probability in everyday life, for example when driving our car," explains Matthias Grabenhorst of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics. "When approaching a railroad crossing, the probability of the gates closing determines our overall readiness to hit the brakes. This is intuitive and known."

Georgios Michalareas, also MPIEA, adds: "We found, however, that this readiness to respond drastically increases over time. You become much more alert, although the probability of the gates closing objectively does not change." This dynamic effect of whether an event will occur is independent of when it will happen. The brain knows when to pay attention based on independent computations of these two probabilities.

The research team's findings indicate that the human brain dynamically adjusts its readiness to respond based on separate probability estimates of whether and when events occur. The results of this study add significantly to our understanding of how the human brain predicts future events in order to interact accordingly with the environment.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - In the continuing search for dark matter in our universe, scientists believe they have found a unique and powerful detector: exoplanets.

In a new paper, two astrophysicists suggest dark matter could be detected by measuring the effect it has on the temperature of exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.

This could provide new insights into dark matter, the mysterious substance that can't be directly observed, but which makes up roughly 80% of the mass of the universe.

"We believe there should be about 300 billion exoplanets that are waiting to be discovered," said Juri Smirnov, a fellow at The Ohio State University's Center for Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

"Even finding and studying a small number of them could give us a great deal of information about dark matter that we don't know now."

Smirnov co-authored the paper with Rebecca Leane, a postdoctoral researcher at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University. It was published today (April 22, 2021) in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Smirnov said that when the gravity of exoplanets captures dark matter, the dark matter travels to the planetary core where it "annihilates" and releases its energy as heat. The more dark matter that is captured, the more it should heat up the exoplanet.

This heating could be measured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared telescope scheduled to launch in October that will be able to measure the temperature of distant exoplanets.

"If exoplanets have this anomalous heating associated with dark matter, we should be able to pick it up," Smirnov said.

Exoplanets may be particularly useful in detecting light dark matter, Smirnov said, which is dark matter with a lower mass. Researchers have not yet probed light dark matter by direct detection or other experiments.

Scientists believe that dark matter density increases toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. If that is true, researchers should find that the closer planets are to the galactic center, the more their temperatures should rise.

"If we would find something like that, it would be amazing. Clearly, we would have found dark matter," Smirnov said.

Smirnov and Leane propose one type of search that would involve looking close to Earth at gas giants - so called "Super Jupiters" - and brown dwarfs for evidence of heating caused by dark matter. One advantage of using planets like this as dark matter detectors is that they don't have nuclear fusion, like stars do, so there is less "background heat" that would make it hard to find a dark matter signal.

In addition to this local search, the researchers suggest a search for distant rogue exoplanets that are no longer orbiting a star. The lack of radiation from a star would again cut down on interference that could obscure a signal from dark matter.

One of the best parts of using exoplanets as dark matter detectors is that it doesn't require any new types of instrumentation such as telescopes, or searches that aren't already being done, Smirnov said.

As of now, researchers have identified more than 4,300 confirmed exoplanets and an additional 5,695 candidates are currently under investigation. Gaia, a space observatory of the European Space Agency, is expected to identify tens of thousands more potential candidates in the next few years.

"With so many exoplanets being studied, we will have a tremendous opportunity to learn more than ever before about dark matter," Smirnov said.

Ann Arbor, April 22, 2021 - Using nearly a year of anonymous geolocation data from 15-17 million cell phone users in 3,037 United States counties, investigators have found that individuals with lower income per capita or greater Republican orientation were associated with significantly reduced social distancing throughout the study period from March 2020 through January 2021. Their findings are reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier.

The associations persisted after adjusting for a variety of county-level demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Other county-level characteristics, such as the share of Black and Hispanic residents, were also associated with reduced distancing at various points during the study period.

"We started this project in April 2020 because we wanted to understand the social, economic, and political factors that drive people to engage in social distancing. We ended up tracking these factors for almost a year," explained lead investigator Nolan M. Kavanagh, MPH, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

"A year is a long time to prepare policy responses and educate the public," he said. "Yet, the same kinds of communities that struggled to physically distance early on continue to struggle now."

To measure social distancing, the investigators used county-level averages of distance traveled per person using cell phone location data. They looked at the percentage change in average movement from the start of the pandemic relative to four pre-COVID-19 reference weeks. Statistical analysis was used to estimate the association between a variety of county-level demographic, socioeconomic, and political characteristics. Socioeconomic status was based on income per capita, and political orientation was based on the 2016 vote share for President Trump. Other county-level characteristics examined included the percentage of males, Black and Hispanic residents; share of residents over age 65; share of foreign-born residents; share of the workforce in industries most affected by COVID-19, such as retail, transportation and health, educational and social services; and the share of rural residential plots. These county-level characteristics were chosen based on their expected contribution to a community's ability to physically distance.

Investigators found a sharp reduction in average movement among US counties at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and declaration of a national emergency in March 2020. Social distancing was greatest from late March to early June and then returned to baseline levels by June 2020. Distancing began to increase again in early September. However, even as a national trend evolved, the investigators found substantial variability in social distancing across counties.

While the share of racial and ethnic minorities, immigration, rurality, and employment in transportation were correlated with changes in average movement on many days, the single most consistent predictor of engagement in distancing across the study was higher per capita income. The single most consistent predictor of lack of engagement with distancing across the study was share of vote for President Trump.

Other county level-characteristics varied over time in their degree of association with physical distancing. During the early months of the study, counties with greater shares of Black and Hispanic residents were less likely to engage in social distancing. These adjusted racial and ethnic differences closed during the summer months before re-emerging in the fall. Similarly, rural counties were less likely to engage in distancing early on; by the end of the summer, rurality became the strongest negative predictor of physical distancing.

The investigators suggest a number of barriers that may underlie these findings. For example, lower-income or gig jobs may be incompatible with working from home, and lower income households may not have the necessary liquidity to shop in bulk, requiring more trips for groceries and essential household items. They observe that partisanship has dramatically shaped the government and public response to COVID-19 in the US. These findings show that political differences have continued to shape social distancing behavior, months into the pandemic and extending beyond the 2020 general election. As a result, both low-income and Republican-leaning communities are at greater risk for COVID-19.

"These results suggest that policy responses to the pandemic have failed to level the playing field," said Mr. Kavanagh. "We have not addressed the challenges to physical distancing faced by low-income Americans, such as working from home. And messages by political and public health leaders have not reached populations who may have different beliefs about disease risk. Analyses such as this study that monitor disparities over time can help us target public health and economic interventions to the communities that need them the most."

States with stricter firearms laws reported lower suicide and homicide rates, according to a Rutgers study.

The study, conducted by the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center, the Rutgers School of Public Health, the Rutgers University-Newark Department of Psychology, the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the Rutgers-Newark Department of Social Work, was published in the Journal of Public Health and examined the association between firearm laws and suicide and homicide rates.

Firearm violence is a major public health concern in the United States, with firearm suicide and homicide accounting for the majority of gun deaths. In 2017, 66,683 people died by suicide and homicide with a majority of the deaths resulting from a firearm: 48 percent for suicide and 74 percent for homicide.

Using the State Firearm Law Database, the Rutgers researchers compared suicide and homicide rates across the United States from 1991 to 2017 with the number of firearm laws in each state. The study found that even with several factors, such as unemployment and overall gun ownership rates, taken into account, the total number of firearm laws in a state was a significant predictor of suicide and homicide rates.

"As states' strictness increased, their suicide and homicide rates decreased," said lead author John F. Gunn III, a postdoctoral researcher at the Rutgers School of Public Health and New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.

The researchers, who were the first to focus on the impact of the total number of firearms regulations in each state, utilized a general index of states' overall approach to firearms regulation by aggregating the total number of gun laws. This index broadly defined states as restrictive or lenient towards firearms.

"With close to 40, 000 deaths annually from firearm violence, regulations that can limit access to firearms appear to reduce state-level mortality," says senior study author Bernadette Hohl, an assistant professor at Rutgers School of Public Health. "Evidence-based implementation of firearm regulations across the whole of the United States has the potential to significantly reduce the toll of firearm violence."

Previous research supports associations between state suicide and homicide rates and specific gun laws, such as waiting periods and universal background checks, with most work finding that the presence of specific firearm laws is associated with reductions in gun mortality.

Future research is required to continue to holistically examine the relationship between firearm laws and suicide and homicide rates. "Assessing the implications of law changes, regulation enforcement and if there is a correlation with violent crime decline will be necessary," Gunn said.

Days after the 4 August 2020 massive explosion at the port of Beirut in Lebanon, researchers were on the ground mapping the impacts of the explosion in the port and surrounding city.

The goal was to document and preserve data on structural and façade damage before rebuilding, said University of California, Los Angeles civil and environmental engineer Jonathan Stewart, who spoke about the effort at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting.

The effort also provided an opportunity to compare NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory satellite surveys of the blast effects with data collected from the ground surveys. Stewart and his colleagues concluded that satellite-based Damage Proxy Maps were effective at identifying severely damaged buildings and undamaged buildings, but were less effective for assessing intermediate levels of structural or façade damage.

"The main take away is that the Damage Proxy Maps can definitely distinguish severe damage from lack of damage" for both structural and façade assessments, Stewart said, "but they are not as good at finer tuning."

"If what you're interested in is a fairly detailed picture of what has happened, it's not able to replace a person who actually knows what they're doing looking at the structure, particularly from the inside," he added.

The reconnaissance of the Beirut blast was organized through the National Science Foundation-sponsored Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance Association (GEER). In addition to Stewart and his colleagues at the American University of Beirut, the team included members from the University of Illinois and the University of Calabria in Italy. The information analyzed by the GEER team can help engineers learn more about how to build safely against similarly destructive events, including earthquakes, in the future.

Their findings, detailed in a GEER report, also "make some recommendations about how you can optimize human resources when doing these inspections," Stewart said.

On that August day, a fire at the port detonated an estimated 2.75 kilotons TNT equivalent of ammonium nitrate and fuel, an event about the size of a magnitude 3.3 earthquake. Within days, engineers at the American University of Beirut "had set up a hotline where people could call in who were concerned with the stability of damaged structures," Stewart said.

Professors and students made visits to inspect and assess the stability of these structures and others, but the in-person visits were scaled back in September due to COVID-19. After that, the researchers depended on street view surveys, using GoPro 360-degree cameras mounted on cars driven around the city.

The damage was ranked using scales adapted from those used for post-earthquake events, said Stewart. For instance, structural damage was ranked on a scale that began with minor damage to non-load bearing elements up to the complete collapse of a structure. Façade damage was ranked using a scale that begins with cracked windows and extends to complete blowout of windows and doors.

The spatial patterns of damage from an explosion differ from those seen in an earthquake. Site conditions such as underlying soil matter much more when it comes to the structural impact of an earthquake, while explosion damage depends "on how much are you feeling that blast," Stewart explained. "With an explosion, the damage decreases with distance and with the number of buildings between you and the blast that can deflect its effects."

Stewart isn't an expert in explosion seismology, but he has experience in assessing structural damage after earthquakes from his work in post-earthquake zones with GEER. He reached out to a colleague at the American University in Beirut after the disaster to offer his help in collecting observations that could be useful to future researchers and engineers.

"We felt that it was important to gather perishable data that we anticipate will be useful to people who study blast effects in an urban setting, and to learn something from this disaster to improve our resilience to future such disasters," he said.

Research has identified critical factors that enable dangerous bacteria to spread disease by surviving on surfaces in hospitals and kitchens.

The study into the mechanisms which enable the opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa to survive on surfaces, could lead to new ways of targeting harmful bacteria.

To survive outside their host, pathogenic bacteria must withstand various environmental stresses. One mechanism is the sugar molecule, trehalose, which is associated with a range of external stresses, particularly osmotic shock - sudden changes to the salt concentration surrounding cells.

Researchers at the John Innes Centre analysed how trehalose is metabolised by P. aeruginosa to define its role in protection against external stresses.

Combining analytical biochemistry and reverse genetics - using mutated bacteria lacking key functions - they show that trehalose metabolism in P. aeruginosa is connected to biosynthesis of the carbon storage molecule glycogen.

Experiments showed that disruption of either trehalose or glycogen pathways significantly reduced the ability of P. aeruginosa to survive on man-made surfaces such as kitchen or hospital counters.

The study found that while both trehalose and glycogen are important for stress tolerance in P. aeruginosa they counter distinct stresses: trehalose helps the bacteria to survive in conditions of elevated salt; glycogen contributes to survival in dry (desiccated) environments.

The findings raise the possibility of targeting the trehalose and glycogen pathways to limit pathogen survival on man-made surfaces.

"We have shown how a dangerous human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa responds to environmental challenges, such as salt stress or drying out. Disrupting the production of certain stress-tolerance sugars in this bug significantly reduces its ability to survive on kitchen and hospital worksurfaces," said corresponding author of the study Dr Jacob Malone.

An unexpected finding was how the bacteria operates different pathways for different stresses, said Dr Malone: "Conventional wisdom says that trehalose was responsible for both phenotypes, but we have shown that trehalose only protects against osmo-stress and glycogen is needed to protect against desiccation. We were also surprised to see such a marked drop in surface survival when we disrupted the pathways in the bugs."

The next step for the research is to understand how trehalose and glycogen metabolic pathways are regulated in P. aeruginosa and closely related species. The group also wants to understand how glycogen accumulation allows the bacteria to survive in dry environments and provide more explanation of how and when different parts of the pathways are turned on and off.

P. aeruginosa is a significant pathogen in animals as well as humans. In humans it primarily affects immunocompromised individuals, where it is a major cause of pneumonia and hospital-acquired infections. Chronic P. aeruginosa infections occur in 80% of adult cystic fibrosis patients, where it is the primary cause of morbidity and mortality.

EUGENE, Ore. -- April 22, 2021 -- Product marketers should be clear in their messaging to avoid customer skepticism that makes them feel duped, according to University of Oregon research.

At issue in a new study, published in the Journal of Business Research, was a social-cognitive construct called theory of mind, which considers how well people assess the mental states and apparent goals of others.

Developmental psychologists link it to an ability to show empathy. In business, the study, led by former UO doctoral student Elizabeth Minton, showed it also can influence a person's recognition of being persuaded. And that affects a person's evaluation and willingness to buy a product, she found.

"There has been some research on adult theory of mind, particularly in understanding sales communications," said co-author T. Bettina Cornwell, head of the Department of Marketing and a Philip H. Knight Chair at the UO. "However, there hasn't been a lot of attention to variations of how it plays out."

In young children, Cornwell said, theory of mind is easily seen. For them, she said, their parent's minds and aspirations are their minds, too. If a child wants a doll for a birthday, then mom does, too. Later a child separates that thinking, realizing that mom may instead prefer perfume or dinner out.

In the project, Minton, now an associate professor of marketing at the University of Wyoming, designed four experiments in collaboration with Cornwell and Hong Yuan, the Richard P. Booth Associate Professor and Research Scholar of marketing and director of the UO's Business Research Institute.

"We wanted to know when the recognition of persuasion becomes particularly important," Minton said. "At what point will a person be misled?"

The first experiment involved a pool of 61 online participants who considered a visual with a character describing "a soap that smells good and is gentle on your hands." A second condition had the additional text, "You HAVE to buy it." Result found that no matter the text in the advertisement, higher theory of mind increased skepticism and, in turn, attitudes toward the product and purchase intentions declined.

Next, 238 subjects were recruited from the customer database of a real company that produces a stevia leaf cocoa syrup. All saw the same general text about the sweetener but across three ads the accompanying visuals changed. One ad had no additional visuals or text, one showed an outline of a girl on a bicycle with a persuasive message, and the last with an added bubble containing persuasive words spoken by the girl.

Again, the pattern of results showed that across the advertising types, theory of mind increased advertising skepticism and, in turn, attitude, purchase intentions and willingness to pay for the product declined.

A third experiment dealt with transparency. An online group of 200 adults saw an advertisement for a limited time offer to get seven packets of seed butter for free but with shipping costs of $10.99. About half of the participants saw the price information on the same page (high transparency) and the rest on a second page (low transparency).

Same-page high transparency produced little skepticism. The delayed low transparency presentation, however, significantly raised flags of skepticism and reduced the subjects' attitudes, purchase intentions and willingness to pay.

"This clearly showed us a sense of transparency that people appreciated," Yuan said. "It tells us that we, as advertisers and marketers, probably need to focus on transparency."

The final experiment, with 215 undergraduate students, considered possible boundaries to how theory of mind influences advertising skepticism as found in the first three studies. Participants viewed one advertisement that was either a private-use item (socks) or a public use item (a graphic T-shirt) with varied text and visuals.

The logic is that because theory of mind is a social processing capability, the researchers said, it might be emphasized in a situation where the product is publicly seen and noticeable.

Skepticism, as in previous experiments, remained high in participants with high levels of theory of mind, but the private-versus-public nature had strong effects. Those showing higher skepticism reported higher valuations for the private products, while participants with lower levels of skepticism showed higher valuation for the public products.

"These findings continue to provide evidence for the importance of understanding theory of mind's influence on response to potential persuasion episodes and the interaction with a product's private versus public nature," the researchers suggest.

The study, Minton said, opens a public policy question about advertising being allowed to potentially persuade people who haven't developed a strong theory of mind.

"It's probably not advantageous for marketers to promote a product in a way that has low transparency and makes a consumer have to work hard to understand the offer," Cornwell said.

"One, consumers who don't have high theory of mind may be duped then frustrated while those who have high theory of mind, and thus more skepticism, will be irritated by the way the offer is presented and be less willing to buy," she said. "Neither of the outcomes is good."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- As NASA's Perseverance rover begins its search for ancient life on the surface of Mars, a new study suggests that the Martian subsurface might be a good place to look for possible present-day life on the Red Planet.

The study, published in the journal Astrobiology, looked at the chemical composition of Martian meteorites -- rocks blasted off of the surface of Mars that eventually landed on Earth. The analysis determined that those rocks, if in consistent contact with water, would produce the chemical energy needed to support microbial communities similar to those that survive in the unlit depths of the Earth. Because these meteorites may be representative of vast swaths of the Martian crust, the findings suggest that much of the Mars subsurface could be habitable.

"The big implication here for subsurface exploration science is that wherever you have groundwater on Mars, there's a good chance that you have enough chemical energy to support subsurface microbial life," said Jesse Tarnas, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who led the study while completing his Ph.D. at Brown University. "We don't know whether life ever got started beneath the surface of Mars, but if it did, we think there would be ample energy there to sustain it right up to today."

In recent decades, scientists have discovered that Earth's depths are home to a vast biome that exists largely separated from the world above. Lacking sunlight, these creatures survive using the byproducts of chemical reactions produced when rocks come into contact with water.

One of those reactions is radiolysis, which occurs when radioactive elements within rocks react with water trapped in pore and fracture space. The reaction breaks water molecules into their constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The liberated hydrogen is dissolved in the remaining groundwater, while minerals like pyrite (fool's gold) soak up free oxygen to form sulfate minerals. Microbes can ingest the dissolved hydrogen as fuel and use the oxygen preserved in the sulfates to "burn" that fuel.

In places like Canada's Kidd Creek Mine, these "sulfate-reducing" microbes have been found living more than a mile underground, in water that hasn't seen the light of day in more than a billion years. Tarnas has been working with a team co-led by Brown University professor Jack Mustard and Professor Barbara Sherwood Lollar of the University of Toronto to better understand these underground systems, with an eye toward looking for similar habitats on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system. The project, called Earth 4-D: Subsurface Science and Exploration, is supported by the Canadian Institute for Advances Research.

For this new study, the researchers wanted to see if the ingredients for radiolysis-driven habitats could exist on Mars. They drew on data from NASA's Curiosity rover and other orbiting spacecraft, as well as compositional data from a suite of Martian meteorites, which are representative of different parts of the planet's crust.

The researchers were looking for the ingredients for radiolysis: radioactive elements like thorium, uranium and potassium; sulfide minerals that could be converted to sulfate; and rock units with adequate pore space to trap water. The study found that in several different types of Martian meteorites, all the ingredients are present in adequate abundances to support Earth-like habitats. This was particularly true for regolith breccias -- meteorites sourced from crustal rocks more than 3.6 billion years old -- which were found to have the highest potential for life support. Unlike Earth, Mars lacks a plate tectonics system that constantly recycle crustal rocks. So these ancient terrains remain largely undisturbed.

The researchers say the findings help make the case for an exploration program that looks for signs of present-day life in the Martian subsurface. Prior research has found evidence of an active groundwater system on Mars in the past, the researchers say, and there's reason to believe that groundwater exists today. One recent study, for example, raised the possibility of an underground lake lurking under the planet's southern ice cap. This new research suggests that wherever there's groundwater, there's energy for life.

Tarnas and Mustard say that while there are certainly technical challenges involved in subsurface exploration, they aren't as insurmountable as people may think. A drilling operation wouldn't require "a Texas-sized oil rig," Mustard said, and recent advances in small drill probes could soon put the Martian depths within reach.

"The subsurface is one of the frontiers in Mars exploration," Mustard said. "We've investigated the atmosphere, mapped the surface with different wavelengths of light and landed on the surface in half-a-dozen places, and that work continues to tell us so much about the planet's past. But if we want to think about the possibility of present-day life, the subsurface is absolutely going to be where the action is."

Researchers have found that a natural molecule can effectively block the binding of a subset of human antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. The discovery may help explain why some COVID-19 patients can become severely ill despite having high levels of antibodies against the virus.

In their research, published in Science Advances today (22 April 2021), teams from the Francis Crick Institute, in collaboration with researchers at Imperial College London, Kings College London and UCL (University College London), found that biliverdin and bilirubin, natural molecules present in the body, can suppress the binding of antibodies to the coronavirus spike.

As vaccines are rolled out globally, understanding immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and also how the virus evades antibodies is critically important. However, there are still many unknowns. The ability of the immune system to control the infection and the quality of the antibody response are highly variable, and not well correlated, between individuals.

The Crick researchers were involved in the development of tests that see if a person has been exposed to the virus. The scientists discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein strongly binds to biliverdin, a molecule which was giving these proteins an unusual green colouration.

Working with teams at Imperial College London, UCL and Kings College London, they found that this natural molecule reduced antibody binding to the spike. They used blood sera and antibodies from people who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and found that biliverdin could suppress the binding of human antibodies to the spike by as much as 30-50%, with some antibodies becoming ineffective at neutralising the virus.

Such a significant impact was completely unexpected, as biliverdin only binds to a very small patch on the virus' surface. To find out the mechanism at work, the team at the Crick used cryo-electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography to look in detail at the interactions between the spike, the antibodies and biliverdin. They found that biliverdin attaches to the spike N-terminal domain and stabilises it so that the spike is not able to open up and expose parts of its structure. This means that some antibodies are not able to access their target sites and so cannot bind to and neutralise the virus.

Annachiara Rosa, first author and postdoctoral training fellow in the Chromatin structure and mobile DNA Laboratory at the Crick, says: "When SARS-CoV-2 infects a patient's lungs it damages blood vessels and causes a rise in the number immune cells. Both of these effects may contribute to increasing the levels of biliverdin and bilirubin in the surrounding tissues. And with more of these molecules available, the virus has more opportunity to hide from certain antibodies. This is a really striking process, as the virus may be benefiting from a side-effect of the damage it has already caused."

Peter Cherepanov, author and a group leader of the Chromatin structure and mobile DNA Laboratory at the Crick, says: "In the first months of the pandemic, we were extremely busy churning out viral antigens for SARS-CoV-2 tests. It was a race, as these tests were urgently needed. When we finally found the time to study our green proteins, we expected a mundane answer. Instead, we were astonished to discover a new trick the virus uses to avoid antibody recognition. This is a result of a collaborative effort of several amazing teams working at the Crick and three partner universities, led purely by scientific curiosity."

The researchers will continue this work from various angles, including measuring the levels of biliverdin and other haem metabolites in patients with COVID-19 and also exploring if it is possible to hijack the binding site used by biliverdin to potentially find new ways to target the virus.

A new study by Simon Fraser University historical ecologists finds that Indigenous-managed forests--cared for as "forest gardens"--contain more biologically and functionally diverse species than surrounding conifer-dominated forests and create important habitat for animals and pollinators. The findings are published today in Ecology and Society.

According to researchers, ancient forests were once tended by Ts'msyen and Coast Salish peoples living along the north and south Pacific coast. These forest gardens continue to grow at remote archaeological villages on Canada's northwest coast and are composed of native fruit and nut trees and shrubs such as crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherries. Important medicinal plants and root foods like wild ginger and wild rice root grow in the understory layers.

"These plants never grow together in the wild," says Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, an SFU Indigenous Studies assistant professor and the study lead researcher. "It seemed obvious that people put them there to grow all in one spot - like a garden. Elders and knowledge holders talk about perennial management all the time."

"It's no surprise these forest gardens continue to grow at archaeological village sites that haven't yet been too severely disrupted by settler-colonial land-use."

Ts'msyen and Coast Salish peoples' management practices challenge the assumption that humans tend to overturn or exhaust the ecosystems they inhabit. This research highlights how Indigenous peoples not only improved the inhabited landscape, but were also keystone builders, facilitating the creation of habitat in some cases. The findings provide strong evidence that Indigenous management practices are tied to ecosystem health and resilience.

"Human activities are often considered detrimental to biodiversity, and indeed, industrial land management has had devastating consequences for biodiversity," says Jesse Miller, study co-author, ecologist and lecturer at Stanford University. "Our research, however, shows that human activities can also have substantial benefits for biodiversity and ecosystem function. Our findings highlight that there continues to be an important role for human activities in restoring and managing ecosystems in the present and future."

Forest gardens are a common management regime identified in Indigenous communities around the world, especially in tropical regions. Armstrong says the study is the first time forest gardens have been studied in North America -- showing how important Indigenous peoples are in the maintenance and defence of some of the most functionally diverse ecosystems on the Northwest Coast.

"The forest gardens of Kitselas Canyon are a testament to the long-standing practice of Kitselas people shaping the landscape through stewardship and management," says Chris Apps, director, Kitselas Lands & Resources Department. "Studies such as this reconnect the community with historic resources and support integration of traditional approaches with contemporary land-use management while promoting exciting initiatives for food sovereignty and cultural reflection."