Culture

Water touches virtually every aspect of human society, and all life on earth requires it. Yet, fresh, clean water is becoming increasingly scarce -- one in eight people on the planet lack access to clean water. Drivers of freshwater salt pollution such as de-icers on roads and parking lots, water softeners, and wastewater and industrial discharges further threaten freshwater ecosystem health and human water security.

"Inland freshwater salt pollution is rising nationwide and worldwide, and we investigated the potential conflict between managing freshwater salt pollution and the sustainable practice of increasing water supply through the addition of highly treated wastewater to surface waters and groundwaters," said Stanley Grant, professor of civil and environmental engineering in the Virginia Tech College of Engineering. "If we don't figure out how to reverse this trend of salt pollution soon, it may become one of our nation's top environmental challenges."

Grant and his collaborators have recently published their findings in the journal Nature Sustainability.

In a recent modeling study, it was predicted that salt pollution will increase over 50 percent in more than half of U.S. streams by 2100. Freshwater salt pollution is associated with the decline of biodiversity, critical freshwater habitat, and lack of safe drinking water.

"We found there are numerous opportunities that exist to reduce the contribution of salt pollution in the highly treated wastewater discharged to the Occoquan Reservoir and freshwater pollution more generally," said Peter Vikesland, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and affiliated faculty member in the Global Change Center, housed within Fralin Life Sciences Institute at Virginia Tech. "These efforts will require deliberative engagement with a diverse community of watershed stakeholders and careful consideration of the local political, social and environmental context."

From time-series data collected over 25 years, the researchers quantified the contributions of three salinity sources -- highly treated wastewater and outflows from two rapidly urbanizing watersheds in Northern Virginia -- to the rising concentration of sodium, a major ion associated with freshwater pollution.

The Occoquan Reservoir, a regionally important drinking-water reservoir in the mid-Atlantic United States, is located approximately 19 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia, and is one of two primary sources of water supply for nearly 2 million people in Fairfax County, Virginia, and surrounding communities. On an annual basis, approximately 95% of the water flowing into the reservoir comes from its Occoquan River and Bull Run tributaries.

"This study exemplifies the power of combining historical data and new computational tools; it underscores the incredible value of long-term monitoring," said Grant who is the Co-Director of the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Lab and an affiliated faculty member in the Center for Coastal Studies at Virginia Tech. "It is a testimony to the vision of Virginia Tech and the Occoquan Watershed Monitoring Lab and their collaboration with stakeholders in the watershed, including Fairfax Water and the Upper Occoquan Service Authority, over the past two decades."

The researchers found that rising salt pollution in the reservoir is primarily from watershed runoff during wet weather and highly treated wastewater during dry weather.

Across all timescales evaluated, sodium concentration in the treated wastewater is higher than in outflow from the two watersheds. Sodium in the treated wastewater originates from chemicals added during wastewater treatment, industrial and commercial discharges, human excretion and down-drain disposal of drinking water and sodium-rich household products.

"Our study is unique because it brings together engineers, ecologists, hydrologists, and social scientists to investigate and tackle one of the greatest threats to the world's water quality," said Sujay Kaushal, a co-author on the paper, professor of geology at the University of Maryland, and an international expert on freshwater salinization.

The researchers envision at least four ways in which salt pollution can be reduced: limit watershed sources of sodium that enter the water supply (such as from deicer use), enforce more stringent pre-treatment requirements on industrial and commercial dischargers, switch to low-sodium water and wastewater treatment methods, and encourage households to adopt low-sodium products.

Drinking water supply and sewage collection systems contribute salt to the former ultimately contribute salt to the latter as well.

"Citizens can start today or tomorrow by thinking more critically about what they put down the drain and how that harms the environment, and in turn, their own drinking water supply," said Vikesland.

This research aligns with the One Water vision used nationally and globally by multiple water resource sectors, and it catalyzes robust stakeholder-driven decision making under seemingly conflicting objectives.

This research was part of a partnership between Virginia Tech, University of Maryland, Vanderbilt University, and North Carolina State University. It was funded by a recent multimillion dollar grant that Grant and his collaborators received from the National Science Foundation aimed at addressing freshwater salt pollution and is part of the National Science Foundation's Growing Convergence Research (GCR) program, which aims to catalyze solutions to societal grand challenges by the merging of ideas, approaches, and technologies from widely diverse fields of knowledge to stimulate innovation and discovery. Experience gained and lessons learned from this research will be upscaled nationally and globally in partnership with The Water Research Foundation.

"The collaborative effort by this highly interdisciplinary team exemplifies the type of paradigm shifting science that we seek to catalyze and promote," said William Hopkins, professor in the College of Natural Resources and Environment, director of the Global Change Center, and associate executive director of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. "Freshwater salt pollution has become a major focus for diverse researchers at Virginia Tech because the problem is so widespread, getting worse, and affects both the environment and society. Fortunately, the team's research advances our understanding of important sources of salt pollution so that evidence-based interventions can be identified and implemented. The study has far reaching implications globally as we try to solve this complex environmental problem."

This study reflects the exciting convergent approach the NSF-funded project is taking.

"While the biophysical findings are front-and-center here, it acknowledges the complex socio-political contexts in which that information will be applied and foreshadows the collaborative, multi-stakeholder approaches to tackling the freshwater salt pollution problem that we are currently advancing," said Todd Schenk, assistant professor in the School of Public and International Affairs in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies and affiliated faculty member of the Global Change Center and Center for Coastal Studies.

Screening for a sometimes fatal condition among patients with a rare autoimmune disease could soon - thanks to a computer algorithm - become even more accurate.

Researchers at Michigan Medicine found that an internet application improved their ability to spot pulmonary arterial hypertension in patients with systemic sclerosis, or scleroderma. The unpredictable condition is marked by tightening of the skin that can damage internal organs.

The algorithm, aptly named DETECT, outperformed standard methods used to identify the form of high blood pressure in the lungs that causes the heart to weaken and fail.

"We've been advocating for a long time that every scleroderma patient should be screened on an annual basis using DETECT, and this data supports that," says Dinesh Khanna, M.B.B.S., M.Sc., senior author of the study and director of Michigan Medicine's Scleroderma Program. "Pulmonary arterial hypertension is a leading cause of death for these patients, and we want to diagnose them early."

The DETECT algorithm is a two-step algorithm that uses six different clinical variables to determine whether a patient requires an echocardiogram, or ultrasound, of the heart. The second step then informs whether the patient should be referred for a right heart catheterization.

Researchers found the algorithm correctly identified all 10 patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension in a study of 68 subjects.

"It didn't miss a single patient; it can't get better than that," Khanna says. "This is a highly sensitive screening tool and can be very useful."

Of the times DETECT identified signs of pulmonary hypertension during the study, however, only 20% of patients who had right heart catheterizations actually suffered the debilitating condition. Khanna says it's better to be cautious.

"That's the trade-off of having such a sensitive test," he says. "The right heart catheterization is invasive, but because the mortality of [pulmonary arterial hypertension] is so high, and the prevalence is so high, the benefits outweigh the risks."

Around 10% of patients with scleroderma, which affects around 70,000 people in the U.S. each year, develop pulmonary hypertension. Under current guidelines, physicians screening scleroderma patients for the condition observe an annual echocardiogram.

While it's an effective diagnostic tool for symptomatic patients, the ultrasounds don't predict the condition accurately in asymptomatic people or early in the disease, Khanna says. That inaccuracy motivated both him and principal investigator and rheumatologist Amber Young, M.D., to conduct the study.

"These ultrasounds miss around one in three patients who may have pulmonary arterial hypertension," he says. "And by the time we diagnose a patient so late, the story is over - the patient will likely die in the next two or three years," he says.

This study was the first that compared the algorithm to echocardiogram guidelines published in 2015. The research team hopes more physicians will consider using DETECT, allowing them to treat the complication earlier. And Khanna expects more studies will conclude with similar recommendations.

"I'm sure people around the globe will be doing this work and validating it," Khanna says. "Early diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension will lead to better outcomes, including improved quality of life and survival in people with scleroderma."

The diagnosis of diseases like cancer almost always needs a biopsy - a procedure where a clinician removes a piece of suspect tissue from the body to examine it, typically under a microscope. Many areas of diagnostic medicine, especially cancer management, have seen huge advances in technology, with genetic sequencing, molecular biology and artificial intelligence all rapidly increasing doctors' ability to work out what's wrong with a patient. However the technology of medical needles hasn't changed dramatically in 150 years, and - in the context of cancer management - needles are struggling to provide adequate tissue samples for new diagnostic techniques. Now researchers have shown that modifying the biopsy needle to vibrate rapidly at 30,000 times per second not only provides sufficient data for 21st century diagnostic needs, but is also potentially less painful and less traumatic for patients.

"Biopsy yields – the amount of tissue extracted – are often inadequate, with some studies showing that up to a third of fine-needle biopsies struggle to get enough tissue for a reliable diagnosis,” says Professor Heikki Nieminen, at Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering. “A biopsy can be painful, and the wait for the results from a diagnostic test can be a highly distressing time for the patient and family, especially if diagnosis needs re-biopsies to be conclusive. We wanted to make the procedure more gentle for the patient, and increase the certainty that the test will be able to give us an answer on the first attempt.” Professor Nieminen was visiting the University of Toronto, Canada, to work with Professor Kenneth Pritzker, a Pathologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, as well as a university researcher in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. It was while they were at lunch one day that Pritzker suggested that maybe the solution to the problem could be addressed with the help of ultrasound.

One of the least painful biopsy methods is called 'fine-needle biopsy', which uses a needle the same thickness as in many other medical procedures. However for more advanced diagnostic treatments - like those used in cancer - fine-needles alone don't get enough material routinely enough, so the current practice is often to use a much thicker needle, called a core needle. "They are painful for the patient and can also cause bleeding - you don't want to use a core needle unless you have to." says Pritzker. "At body temperature, human tissue exists as something that behaves part-way between being a solid and a liquid. The breakthrough here is that by making the needle tip vibrate ultrasonically, we're able to make the tissue flow more like a liquid, which allows us to extract more of it through a narrow needle."

Feels like a regular needle

In a new paper, published in Scientific Reports, the team is sharing with the wider world how well these ultrasonic vibrating needles work. "The vibrations provide energy to the tissue to make it more fluid-like," explains the first author of the paper, Emanuele Perra, who works in Nieminen's group at Aalto University. "The vibrations are localised to just the tip, so it doesn't affect any other tissue except a small region around the needle. We were able to show that the ultrasonic vibrations increase the biopsy yield by 3 to 6 times compared to the same needle without ultrasound, which was even greater than we hoped for." The vibrations are far above the hearing range for humans, and the amplitude of the waves is small enough that it shouldn't feel much different to a normal blood test.

The big increase in the amount of tissue extracted in the biopsy means it is very useful for the growing trend for high-tech cancer treatment. One such example is molecular diagnostics, which examine the chemical makeup of tumours, to allow doctors to target treatment more effectively to a specific cancer type. "Molecular diagnostics is an expensive process, and it is an expensive waste of money to have it fail because the quality of the material gathered in the biopsy wasn't previously good enough," explains Pritzker.

The technology that powers the needle is non-linear acoustics, where vibrations passing through a material have such large amplitude that they interact with the material itself. These interactions allowed the needle's designers to focus all the energy to just the tip of the needle, and measure their effects. "We've been able to characterise the vibrations at the end of the needle really well. We've used high speed cameras that have allowed us to study the physical effects of the vibrating needle on boundaries between fluids, solids and air in unprecedented detail," says Nieminen. "The rich understanding we've managed to get of the physics allowed us to design the medical device and understand how it could be used for different medical purposes."

Medical trials getting underway

The needle is expected soon to move into studies with real cancer patients, although for the time being only four-legged ones. A specialist veterinary hospital in Canada is soon expected to be trialing the device on domestic pets with cancer, and if all goes as expected, the team hopes that their needles will be used in human patients soon after.

"Modern oncology doesn't just take a biopsy at the beginning of treatment", explains Nieminen. "Increasingly, oncologists want to be able to take multiple biopsies to track how the tumors are changing and responding over the course of the treatment. We want the tools for these biopsies to be as effective and painless as possible."

While the team is preparing the needles for the real world biopsies, they are also excited about future applications that they are still researching. "The effect that ultrasonic vibrations have on tissue might also be able to work the other way" explains Perra, "the vibrations might make it easier to deliver pharmaceuticals in a targeted way to tissue like the liver. They might also be able to break up small hard objects in soft tissue, like kidney stones, or even small tumours - all minimally invasively." By combining experts in acoustics physics with experts in medical technology, the team hopes that many more innovations will arise from their 21st century upgrade of the humble medical needle.

Scientists have spotted the largest flare ever recorded from the sun's nearest neighbor, the star Proxima Centauri.

The research, which appears today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, was led by the University of Colorado Boulder and could help to shape the hunt for life beyond Earth's solar system.

CU Boulder astrophysicist Meredith MacGregor explained that Proxima Centauri is a small but mighty star. It sits just four light-years or more than 20 trillion miles from our own sun and hosts at least two planets, one of which may look something like Earth. It's also a "red dwarf," the name for a class of stars that are unusually petite and dim.

Proxima Centauri has roughly one-eighth the mass of our own sun. But don't let that fool you.

In their new study, MacGregor and her colleagues observed Proxima Centauri for 40 hours using nine telescopes on the ground and in space. In the process, they got a surprise: Proxima Centauri ejected a flare, or a burst of radiation that begins near the surface of a star, that ranks as one of the most violent seen anywhere in the galaxy.

"The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," said MacGregor, an assistant professor at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy (CASA) and Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS) at CU Boulder.

The team's findings hint at new physics that could change the way scientists think about stellar flares. They also don't bode well for any squishy organism brave enough to live near the volatile star.

"If there was life on the planet nearest to Proxima Centauri, it would have to look very different than anything on Earth," MacGregor said. "A human being on this planet would have a bad time."

Active stars

The star has long been a target for scientists hoping to find life beyond Earth's solar system. Proxima Centauri is nearby, for a start. It also hosts one planet, designated Proxima Centauri b, that resides in what researchers call the "habitable zone"--a region around a star that has the right range of temperatures for harboring liquid water on the surface of a planet.

But there's a twist, MacGregor said: Red dwarves, which rank as the most common stars in the galaxy, are also unusually lively.

"A lot of the exoplanets that we've found so far are around these types of stars," she said. "But the catch is that they're way more active than our sun. They flare much more frequently and intensely."

To see just how much Proxima Centauri flares, she and her colleagues pulled off what approaches a coup in the field of astrophysics: They pointed nine different instruments at the star for 40 hours over the course of several months in 2019. Those eyes included the Hubble Space Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Five of them recorded the massive flare from Proxima Centauri, capturing the event as it produced a wide spectrum of radiation.

"It's the first time we've ever had this kind of multi-wavelength coverage of a stellar flare," MacGregor said. "Usually, you're lucky if you can get two instruments."

Crispy planet

The technique delivered one of the most in-depth anatomies of a flare from any star in the galaxy.

The event in question was observed on May 1, 2019 and lasted just 7 seconds. While it didn't produce a lot of visible light, it generated a huge surge in both ultraviolet and radio, or "millimeter," radiation.

"In the past, we didn't know that stars could flare in the millimeter range, so this is the first time we have gone looking for millimeter flares," MacGregor said.

Those millimeter signals, MacGregor added, could help researchers gather more information about how stars generate flares. Currently, scientists suspect that these bursts of energy occur when magnetic fields near a star's surface twist and snap with explosive consequences.

In all, the observed flare was roughly 100 times more powerful than any similar flare seen from Earth's sun. Over time, such energy can strip away a planet's atmosphere and even expose life forms to deadly radiation.

That type of flare may not be a rare occurrence on Proxima Centauri. In addition to the big boom in May 2019, the researchers recorded many other flares during the 40 hours they spent watching the star.

"Proxima Centauri's planets are getting hit by something like this not once in a century, but at least once a day if not several times a day," MacGregor said.

The findings suggest that there may be more surprises in store from the sun's closest companion.

"There will probably be even more weird types of flares that demonstrate different types of physics that we haven't thought about before," MacGregor said.

Women at high risk of breast cancer face cost-associated barriers to care even when they have health insurance, a new study has found.

The findings suggest the need for more transparency in pricing of health care and policies to eliminate financial obstacles to catching cancer early.

The study led by researchers at The Ohio State University included in-depth interviews with 50 women - 30 white, 20 Black - deemed at high risk of breast cancer based on family history and other factors. It appears in the Journal of Genetic Counseling.

The researchers considered it a given that women without any insurance would face serious barriers to preventive care including genetic counseling and testing, prophylactic mastectomy and advanced breast imaging.

But they wanted to better understand the nuances - how finances played into decision-making in other ways and for women who had insurance.

"Financial barriers seem to regularly impede access to critical information that high-risk women can only get through genetic counseling and testing, and keep them from using regular screenings that could catch cancers in the earliest and most treatable stages," said co-lead author Tasleem Padamsee, assistant professor of health services management and policy at Ohio State.

"For women at the highest levels of risk, financial impediments can also put the most effective preventive surgeries and medications entirely out of reach," said Padamsee, who is also part of Ohio State's Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The study provided several new insights about barriers to care, including:

Financial constraints not only affect the health care and preventive choices of low-income women or uninsured women. Across the financial spectrum, women reported worrying about the financial impacts of prevention choices and avoiding taking steps they can't afford or don't know if they can afford.

When women decide whether or not they can afford a procedure or test, they aren't just considering the expense of that specific care - they are balancing these costs with other financial demands they face, from medical debt to child care to other illnesses they may be paying to treat for themselves or a family member. Competing demands play a unique role in cancer prevention care, the authors said.

Financial considerations are influenced by more than the financial realities of women's lives. They are also influenced by broader social and political issues such as lack of price transparency on the part of insurance companies, which often results in women having to guess which services are covered and which are not.

"Underinsurance was a really big factor - even for those women who have private insurance, they come across a lot of hurdles with requesting coverage for genetic testing, counseling, risk-reducing surgeries and enhanced breast screening," said study co-lead author Rachel J. Meadows, who worked on the research as a doctoral student at Ohio State's College of Public Health.

"These women are managing other priorities, including weighing paying for care for chronic diseases they currently have against managing a future risk. And they have other financial demands, including raising children and supporting other family members," said Meadows, who currently works at the Center for Outcomes Research at the JPS Health Network in Fort Worth, Texas.

Many high-risk women also worry about the risk of future discrimination if they have genetic testing, she said, although current law prevents genetic discrimination.

Often, studies simply look at the association of income and insurance status with use of health care services, but this work's detailed conversations with women can help advocates, providers and others better understand the subtleties of decision-making, the researchers said.

"All this information is critical to our ability to improve care. Knowing that a wide range of high-risk women are affected by financial constraints suggests that they might be better served by providers who are trained and ready to share information about insurance coverage, costs and financial assistance programs alongside information about potentially helpful tests and procedures," Padamsee said.

The findings from the study also suggest a need for regulatory changes such as long-term guarantees against genetic discrimination and stronger requirements that insurance companies disclose their full benefits and co-pays in more transparent and comprehensible ways, she said.

"These changes could improve women's ability to access high-risk care, reduce the number and severity of future cancers, and avoid future cancer treatment costs for both patients and payers."

Another new study involving the same group of women found that 45% of participants - and only 21% of Black participants - were aware of their options for taking medications to reduce their risk of developing breast cancer. Women were more likely to have heard of these drugs, usually tamoxifen or raloxifene, if they had access to care from a specialist. The study appears in the journal BMC Women's Health.

"Lack of chemoprevention awareness is a critical gap in women's ability to make health-protective choices," Padamsee said.

East Hanover, NJ. April 21, 2021. Kessler Foundation researchers showed that people with multiple sclerosis (MS) experience subtle language impairments that standard neuropsychological tests may incorrectly attribute to impaired executive functions. The article, "The role of language ability in verbal fluency of individuals with multiple sclerosis" (doi: 10.1016/j.msard.2021.102846) was published on February 16, 2021, in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders.

The authors are Nancy D. Chiaravalloti, PhD, director of the Centers for Neuropsychology, Neuroscience, and Traumatic Brain Injury Research at Kessler Foundation, Lauren B. Strober, PhD, senior research scientist at the Center for Neuropsychology and Neuroscience Research, and Amy L. Lebkuecher, MS, of Pennsylvania State University, formerly of Kessler Foundation. Drs. Chiaravalotti and Strober also have research faculty appointments at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.

Assessing language ability in people with MS is a complicated endeavor, given the vast spectrum of individual clinical experiences within this population. Yet the ability to identify any form of language impairment, not just severe language disorder, is essential to fully understanding a patient's cognitive profile and providing optimal interventions.

While some early research suggested that language ability is largely intact in people with MS, newer studies indicate that milder language impairments may exist but are too subtle to be quantified by standard neuropsychological tests. As a result, verbal fluency deficits observed in MS are often attributed to impaired processing speed and executive functions rather than language ability. Because individuals with MS have been presumed to have intact language ability, more comprehensive tests are rarely performed, according to lead author Dr. Lebkuecher.

In this study, the Kessler research team challenged the assumption that impaired verbal fluency of individuals with MS solely reflects executive dysfunction. The team analyzed pre-existing data from 74 individuals with MS to evaluate the contribution of various cognitive factors to verbal fluency, including language ability, oral-motor speed, processing speed, and executive functions. They conducted linear multiple regression analyses with letter and category verbal fluency--which relate to a person's ability to produce words starting with a given letter or within a semantic category--as outcome variables.

The results showed that vocabulary and processing speed predicted letter fluency, while only vocabulary predicted category fluency. Although further research is needed to better understand the relationship between verbal fluency and vocabulary and processing speed, the results suggest the observed verbal fluency deficits in MS may reflect both impaired language ability and processing speed.

"Our results indicate that language ability and domain-general factors were predictive of verbal fluency in individuals with MS," summarized Dr. Chiaravalloti. "Specifically, language ability played a significant role. This could indicate that verbal fluency deficits in MS reflect underlying language impairment," she added, "Our findings further demonstrate the need for more comprehensive examination of language in people with MS."

Washington, DC-- A team of astronomers including Carnegie's Alycia Weinberger and former-Carnegie postdoc Meredith MacGregor, now an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, spotted an extreme outburst, or flare, from the Sun's nearest neighbor--the star Proxima Centauri.

Their work, which could help guide the search for life beyond our Solar System, is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Proxima Centauri is a "red dwarf" with about one-eighth the mass of our Sun, which sits just four light-years, or almost 25 trillion miles, from the center of our Solar System and hosts at least two planets, one of which may look something like Earth.

In a worldwide campaign carried out over several months, the researchers observed Proxima Centauri using nine ground- and space-based telescopes. They caught the extreme flare on May 1, 2019, with five telescopes that traced its timing and energy in unprecedented detail.

"The star went from normal to 14,000 times brighter when seen in ultraviolet wavelengths over the span of a few seconds," said MacGregor.

Stellar flares happen when a shift in the star's magnetic field accelerates electrons to speeds approaching that of light. The accelerated electrons interact with the highly charged plasma that makes up most of the star, causing an eruption that produces emission across the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

"Proxima Centauri is of similar age to the Sun, so it's been blasting its planets with high energy flares for billions of years," said Weinberger. "Studying these extreme flares with multiple observatories lets us understand what its planets have endured and how they might have changed."

Like many red dwarfs--the most-common stars in the galaxy and hosts to many of the thousands of known exoplanets--Proxima Centauri is very lively.

"If there was life on the planet nearest to Proxima Centauri, it would have to look very different than anything on Earth," MacGregor said. "A human being on this planet would have a bad time."

To see just how much Proxima Centauri flares, the researchers pulled off what approaches a coup in the field of astrophysics: They pointed nine different instruments at the star for 40 hours over the course of several months in 2019. Those eyes included the the duPont Telescope at Carnegie's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), and NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Five of them recorded the massive May 1 flare from Proxima Centauri, capturing the event as it produced a wide spectrum of radiation. This marked first time astronomers have ever had this kind of multi-wavelength coverage of a stellar flare. Usually, it's considered lucky to get observations from two instruments.

"Now we know these very different observatories operating at very different wavelengths can see the same fast, energetic impulse," Weinberger said.

The technique delivered one of the most in-depth anatomies of a flare from any star in the galaxy. While it didn't produce a lot of visible light, it generated a huge surge in both ultraviolet and radio, or "millimeter," radiation. These signals could help researchers gather more information about how stars generate flares.

They also suggest that there may be more surprises in store from the Sun's "next door" neighbor.

Going forward, "there will probably be even more weird types of flares that demonstrate different types of physics that we haven't thought about before," MacGregor concluded.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society has found that listening to music can help older adults sleep better.

Researchers from the National Cheng Kung University Hospital in Taiwan combined the results of past studies to understand the effect that listening to music can have on the quality of older adults' sleep. Their work suggests that:

- Older adults (ages 60 and up) living at home sleep better when they listen to music for 30 minutes to one hour at bedtime.

- Calm music improves older adults' sleep quality better than rhythmic music does.

- Older adults should listen to music for more than four weeks to see the most benefit from listening to music.

Why Older Adults Have Trouble Getting a Good Night's Sleep

As we age, our sleep cycles change and make a good night's sleep harder to achieve. What does it really mean to get a good night's sleep? If you wake up rested and ready to start your day, you probably slept deeply the night before. But if you're tired during the day, need coffee to keep you going, or wake up several times during the night, you may not be getting the deep sleep you need. [1] According to the National Institute on Aging, older adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night.[2]

But studies have shown that 40 to 70 percent of older adults have sleep problems and over 40 percent have insomnia, meaning they wake up often during the night or too early in the morning. Sleep problems can make you feel irritable and depressed, can cause memory problems, and can even lead to falls or accidents.

How the Researchers Studied the Effect of Music on Older Adults' Quality of Sleep

For their study, the researchers searched for past studies that tested the effect of listening to music on older adults with sleep problems who live at home. They looked at five studies with 288 participants. Half of these people listened to music; the other half got the usual or no treatment for their sleep problems. People who were treated with music listened to either calming or rhythmic music for 30 minutes to one hour, over a period ranging from two days to three months. (Calming music has slow tempo of 60 to 80 beats per minute and a smooth melody, while rhythmic music is faster and louder.) All participants answered questions about how well they thought they were sleeping. Each participant ended up with a score between 0 and 21 for the quality of their sleep.

The researchers looked at the difference in average scores for:

- people who listened to music compared to people who did not listen to music;

- people who listened to calm music compared to people who listened to rhythmic music;

- and people who listened to music for less than four weeks compared to people who listened to music for more than four weeks.

What the Researchers Learned

Listening to calming music at bedtime improved sleep quality in older adults, and calming music was much better at improving sleep quality than rhythmic music. The researchers said that calming music may improve sleep by slowing your heart rate and breathing, and lowering your blood pressure.[3] This, in turn helps lower your levels of stress and anxiety.

Researchers also learned that listening to music for longer than four weeks is better at improving sleep quality than listening to music for a shorter length of time.

Limits of the Study

- Researchers only looked at studies published in English and Chinese, meaning they may have missed studies in other languages on the effect of listening to music on sleep in older adults.

- Results may not apply to older adults with Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's disease.

- In the studies researchers used, people who listened to music received more attention from researchers than did people who got standard or no treatment for their sleep problems. This means that sleep improvements in the music therapy group could be due to that extra attention.

- Since the different studies used different kinds of music, researchers could not single out which type of calming music improved sleep the most.

- All of the people in the study had similar kinds of sleep problems. This means listening to music may not help people with other kinds of sleep problems.

What this Study Means for You

If you're having trouble sleeping, listening to music can be a safe, effective, and easy way to help you fall and stay asleep. It may also reduce your need for medication to help you sleep.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - 3D printing is transforming everything from fashion and health care to transportation and toys. But this rapidly evolving technology, also known as additive manufacturing, can threaten national security and intellectual property rights.

To reduce illicit use of 3D printers, Zhanpeng Jin, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University at Buffalo, is developing a way to track the origin of 3D-printed items.

His concern was that, as long as people have the digital design for an item, which can be downloaded from the internet, sometimes as open-source material, people can print out anything they want, which can range from computer parts and toys to fully functional handguns and assault rifles.

"So, what would be the best way to protect our intellectual property from someone else printing the same design using their own printer?" says Jin. "We wanted to find something internal. What would be the inherent signatures printed by my own 3D printer instead of another 3D printer?"

3D printers build three-dimensional objects by adding successive layers of printing materials according to the digital design for a 3D model. Each 3D printer has an "extruder," which pushes the building material along. The extruder's hot end then melts the material, and places it on the print bed to build the model.

In a paper, "ThermoTag: A Hidden ID of 3D Printers for Fingerprinting and Watermarking," published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, a research team led by Jin describes how each extruder's hot end has its own unique heating properties, which impact the precise way that the 3D model is constructed.

Those thermodynamic properties can be used to identify the specific extruder and, thus, the model of 3D printer, as uniquely as a human fingerprint, or, as Jin calls it, a "ThermoTag."

Jin compared the process to using a laptop to write a letter. Because software exists that can track keystrokes, an observer can see every step that went into the letter, including the writer's unique writing style. Similarly, because of the unique properties of each 3D printer's extruder, a researcher can examine the specific manner in which a 3D-printed object was made, and compare that to a database of various extruders until a match is made. From there, once the model printer is identified, the purchaser of said model can be tracked down if they had, say, used the printer to build an illegal assault rifle.

According to the research, Jin and his team discovered that, by examining and comparing the ThermoTag features of 45 different extruders of the same model, they were able to correctly identify the source printer with an accuracy rate of 92%.

"This ThermoTag will behave like the fingerprint of the 3D printer. When you print out a new product, you can use watermarking," Jin says, noting that watermarking can be used to invisibly embed such information as the printer's manufacturer, label and serial number in the product. "So that would make this watermark of this particular product unique."

It's possible, Jin says, that someone could replace their extruder to try to avoid detection. That's why it's important to create a database of these parts for comparison, he says.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Treatment of an injured or diseased joint may require precise insertion of a syringe needle -- musculoskeletal sonography can help guide clinicians as they drain fluid from arthritic knees or inject corticosteroids into trigger fingers. However, there is a need for training simulators that allow practice on an inert model, before attempting treatment on a patient.

For ultrasound, such simulation trainers are called phantoms.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of South Carolina have now made a 3D-printed anatomical finger model, embedded in ballistic gelatin, as a low-cost ultrasound training phantom for procedural guidance of trigger finger injections. Though the finished product looks like a brick, the ultrasound image of the bones, ligament, tendons and the A1 annular pulley inside it appear anatomically and sonographically similar to images observed in a human finger, both pre- and post-injection. Ultrasound shows the anatomical landmarks as the needle is inserted.

This phantom cost less than $20, was easy to prepare, and mimics the human finger in anatomy and echogenic appearance. The striated appearance of the tendons was mimicked by a bundle of monofilament fishing line.

The A1 pulley is a sheath that holds the tendon that bends the finger close to the finger bone. Inflammation of the sheath can create trigger finger, where the bent finger becomes locked. The corticosteroid injection must be precisely placed inside the sheath to reduce inflammation.

The researchers found that the visual-spatial and tactile awareness required to inject the phantom under ultrasound guidance was similar to injecting human trigger fingers, say Alvin Lee Day, M.D., University of South Carolina School of Medicine, and David Resuehr, Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology and leader of the research. They are unaware of any commercially available trigger finger models.

"Many universities have 3D printers available for use, which provides an accessible means of production," Resuehr said. "Additionally, all software, including computer-aided design, was open-source or free to use under educational licensing agreements."

"Because the only area of the phantom that could be punctured was the ballistic gelatin outer portion, the 3D-printed bones and soft tissue components remain intact," he said. "Repeated needle insertions and injections create faint needle tract tracings after several injections, and the use of a hair dryer resolves the needle tracts."

The usefulness of ultrasound guidance has been shown in two small studies, Resuehr says.

A prospective study showed that only 37 percent of patients treated without ultrasound guidance received all the injection within the sheath; 17 percent received no medication within the sheath. In contrast, 50 consecutive trigger fingers treated with ultrasound-guided A1 pulley corticosteroid injections showed complete resolution in 94 percent of fingers at six months.

Resuehr and colleagues have previous experience building phantoms. Two years ago, they created the first homemade ultrasound knee phantom -- a model that was also produced with computer-aided design and a 3D printer -- to let trainees practice synovial fluid aspiration.

Co-authors with Resuehr and Day for the finger phantom study, "An ultrasound phantom for stenosing flexor tenosynovitis," published in EMJ Radiology, are Joseph Gartrell Willis, James Barrett Harris and Jordan Austin George, UAB School of Medicine. Day holds a Registered in Musculoskeletal sonography certification.

This project was supported by the Department of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology.

Decades-old aerial photos of Yudong District, Datong City in Shanxi Province, Northern China have helped researchers in their search for a fault hidden underneath the city's buildings and cement roads, researchers said at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting.

Analyzing these photos from the 1960s and 1970s allowed Junjie Ren and colleagues to reconstruct a digital elevation model along the Shuiyu fault, helping them identify the fault trace as it passes through Datong City.

Trenching along the revealed fault trace found evidence of five previously unknown earthquakes along the fault, ranging in age from 9930 years ago to 23,550 years ago, said Ren, a researcher at the National Institute of Natural Hazards, Ministry of Emergency Management of China.

"Our work is the first to determine the fault trace in the city area and find evidence of the past five surface-rupturing earthquakes in the latest Quaternary," he said.

"Given the elapsed time of about 10,000 years, the Shuiyu fault beneath the Yudong District will increase the risk of a large earthquake in the future," Ren added.

Previous mapping showed that the Shuiyu fault crossed the city, which is at the center of a basin bounded by several Holocene-age normal faults. But studies suggested the fault had not been active since 20,000 years ago, and landforms such as fault scarps that might have marked its extent had disappeared under rapid urbanization beginning in 2000.

"Generally, shallow seismic reflection imaging and drilling are used to explore the location of a potentially active fault beneath a city," Ren explained. "But these techniques are costly and time-consuming."

Aerial photos of the city from the 1960s and 1970s, however, revealed a much less densely populated and built area. Ren and his colleagues applied a technique called stereophotogrammetry to the images, using measurements from the photos to calculate the 3D coordinates of features on the landscape.

In this way, the scientists were able to recreate a digital elevation model of part of Datong City as it was before urbanization, making features like fault scarps visible again.

Ren recommends the technique for uncovering similar "invisible" potentially active faults in other densely populated and built urban areas. "A big earthquake beneath a big city will bring a massive loss to the economy and significant casualties," he said.

Concrete efforts to bring racial equity to the geosciences are receiving significant attention in the wake of new grassroots efforts and increased awareness of social justice issues in 2020, speakers said at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting.

Last year's Black in Geoscience Week, for instance, began as a grassroots movement to increase representation and raise visibility among Black researchers, as well as to foster networks and connections across the world, said Louisa Brotherson, a leader of the Black in Geoscience group.

The need for community and awareness among Black geoscientists is critical, Brotherson said, especially in the face of severe underrepresentation in the field. In the United States, only 6% of geoscience doctoral degrees are awarded to students from underrepresented minorities, even as individuals in these groups make up 31% of the population. In the United Kingdom, Black students represent 1.6% of geology postgraduate researchers, compared to 3.8% of the 18 to 24 year-old-population in the country.

Brotherson, an experimental seismologist at the University of Liverpool, and her colleagues helped organize a variety of events for the week, held 6-12 September 2020, on social media channels and live on Zoom and YouTube. Each day focused on a different group within the geosciences broadly, including atmospheric and marine scientists, as well as the experiences of the global diaspora of Black scientists.

The week drew over 6.1 million Twitter impressions and a 3.2% engagement rate with tweets, and feedback was "overwhelmingly positive," Brotherson said. "And we are hoping that it has started longer-term changes in attitudes and further discussions."

The Black in Geoscience group is supporting new awareness campaigns and symposia by Black marine scientists and geographers, and hopes to reach out to black geoscientists working in industry as well.

Acknowledging the colonial roots of geoscience and encouraging more equal international research collaborations are among the "next big steps," Brotherson said.

"If you're planning on doing fieldwork, look for the local scientists who are already doing the work and get them on your papers," she urged. "Don't think of them as a sort of side note."

Brotherson said the week has generated essential discussions within her own university department. "It got them to re-think the way that they go about things and the way that they think about race in academia," she said, "and just being more empathetic about the people who are already there and what we can we do for people coming up."

At the SSA meeting, physicist Ben Fernando discussed how to identify barriers to inclusion and retention of underrepresented minorities in the geosciences based on a report he and others complied for his own Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford.

The report offers specific recommendations to improve student and staff recruitment, inclusion, retention and academic experiences, with timelines and priorities attached to each recommendation.

The report brought to light "something that I think is quite difficult to talk about when there are so few people in the discipline to begin with, the importance of familial and cultural context," Fernando said.

For instance, "rather than think people from minority backgrounds don't hang out in the countryside and therefore don't go into the geosciences, we found some more fundamental reasons like the strained relationships that some of these communities have had with extractive industries in the past," he said.

One of the unexpected impacts of the report, Fernando said, is that its recommendations have been "helpful in making the department more pleasant for everyone."

Fernando cited the report's discussion of alcohol culture in the department, which tends to exclude those who do not drink for religious or cultural reasons. "There were older researchers, from what we might call more traditional backgrounds, who were like, 'actually, you know what, I think this is a problem too,'" he said, "and they would never have been able to say that if there hadn't been a forum where we were talking about it already."

The faculty has been supportive of the report recommendations, even though "by the head of the department's own admission, it was an uncomfortable experience for them at first, being faced with a list of more things we wanted them to do," Fernando said.

"The reason I think it's worked is that there was a list of suggestions, we clearly thought about how much time and effort they were going to take, and we told them specifically what they needed to do," he added.

Women who experience partner violence at a young age don't always show physical signs of abuse and don't always disclose -- or recognize -- the dangerous position they're in. A new study from Michigan State University is one of the first to examine multiple factors that influence young women's disclosure of partner violence that occurred during their first relationships, when they were just under 15 years old, on average.

"Physical abuse is widely understood as unhealthy, wrong and abusive, but sexual violence and coercive control are less understood and still pretty hidden, especially among young women," said Angie C. Kennedy, MSU associate professor of social work and lead author. "Raising awareness about these different types of partner violence is important, so survivors can label what they are experiencing, ideally early on during the relationship, share with someone and be met with nonjudgmental support."

The study was published in the Journal of Family Violence and includes co-authors Elizabeth Meier, a doctoral candidate in MSU's School of Social Work, and Kristen A. Prock, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

The researchers interviewed a diverse group of young women between the ages of 18 and 24, all of whom had endured some form of partner violence with their first boyfriends. Overall, 91% experienced physical partner violence, 58% of which was severe; 91% experienced coercive control, which involves a partner having control over a survivor's life; and 50% experienced sexual partner violence, defined as rape or attempted rape.

Further, the interviews revealed four patterns of partner violence and disclosure:

1) Nearly 20% of women experienced both physical and coercive control that was severe. The coercive control included forced isolation from others, which made it very difficult to disclose, but they all eventually told someone and were able to escape the relationship.
2) Several women who were raped by their boyfriends had experienced a lot of abuse growing up, which led them to minimize the sexual violence. Additionally, some participants who had been raped noted they had been socialized to believe that forced sex was part of their role as a girlfriend. These factors resulted in limited or no disclosure.
3) More than 80% of the women reported feeling stigmatization such as shame or self-blame related to the partner violence, which was a barrier to them disclosing.
4) Only a few participants sought help from law enforcement. Those who sought help had experienced severe physical violence or coercive control, but not sexual violence. They also had a supportive friend or family member, or a personal connection to law enforcement, which aided in their disclosure.

"I was surprised by the severity of the partner violence many experienced, oftentimes at a young age. The partner rape was especially alarming," Kennedy said. "Some of these relationships can go on for years, and while the abuse stays secret, the suffering young women experience is immense."

Kennedy says that she is encouraged by survivors going public with their experiences and using the media to share their stories and hold their abusers accountable.

"Seeing people going public with their stories of partner violence -- especially recent examples of high-profile young women like FKA twigs and Evan Rachel Wood -- can help survivors make sense of their own experiences and lift the shame and self-blame they've been carrying," she said.

April 21, 2021 - Consuming a diet high in pro-inflammatory foods - including foods that contain refined carbohydrates and sugar as well as polyunsaturated fats - may be associated with increased odds of developing testosterone deficiency among men, suggests a study in The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

The risk of testosterone deficiency is greatest in men who are obese and consume a refined diet that scores high on the dietary inflammatory index (DII), according to the new research by Qiu Shi, MD, Zhang Chichen, MD, and colleagues of West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China. "While these findings do not prove causation, they do support previous research suggesting a pro-inflammatory diet can contribute to testosterone deficiency, among other potentially debilitating health issues," Drs. Qiu and Zhang comment.

Does diet influence testosterone levels? New study discovers link

Testosterone is a male sex hormone that plays important roles in reproduction and sexual function. However, 20 to 50 percent of US men have testosterone deficiency - defined as a testosterone level less than 300 ng/dL (nanograms per deciliter). Symptoms of testosterone deficiency may include low libido, decreased energy, poor concentration and depression. Testosterone deficiency is also associated with chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease and obesity.

Human and animal studies have linked testosterone deficiency with increased levels of inflammation in the body. Men with low testosterone have higher levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines: small proteins released by cells during injury, infection or in response to inflammatory factors in the environment. The DII has emerged as a tool for assessing the inflammatory potential of a person's diet, particularly in relation to other markers of health.

The researchers studied the association between the DII and testosterone deficiency in 4,151 men from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, all of whom completed a 24-hour dietary interview and underwent sex hormone testing. Each participant's DII was calculated based on the dietary history interview.

Calculated DII scores ranged from ?5.05 (most anti-inflammatory) to +5.48 (most pro-inflammatory). Average total testosterone level was 410.42 ng/dL in men with the most pro-inflammatory diet versus 422.71 ng/dL in those with the most anti-inflammatory diet. Overall, about 26 percent of the men had testosterone deficiency.

For men with the most pro-inflammatory diet, the odds of testosterone deficiency were about 30 percent higher compared to men with the most anti-inflammatory diet. The associations remained significant after adjustment for other characteristics, including body mass index and smoking.

In a fully adjusted analysis, the risk of testosterone deficiency was greatest in men who were obese and had a higher DII. For this group, the odds of testosterone deficiency were nearly 60 percent higher compared to men with obesity who had a lower DII.

Drs. Qiu, Zhang, and coauthors note some important limitations of their study, including the fact that the DII was calculated based on a limited number of anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory food parameters.

"Our results suggest men who eat a pro-inflammatory diet, particularly those who are obese, are more likely to have testosterone deficiency," Drs. Qiu and Zhang comment. "Since men with obesity likely already experience chronic inflammation, physicians should be aware of contributing factors, like diet, that could likely worsen this inflammation and contribute to the risk of other health conditions, such as diabetes and heart disease."

Drs. Qiu and Zhang and colleagues call for further studies to verify the causal relationship between DII and testosterone deficiency. They also suggest that consuming a more anti-inflammatory diet "could be a feasible method to reduce the accumulated inflammatory burden, [potentially] leading to an increased testosterone level."

A national strategy to ensure that families have access to food could revolutionize Canada's farms, according to a new study from Simon Fraser University's Food Systems Lab. The study proposes implementing a "right to food" framework that would support the needed funding, infrastructure, and stability that can reduce losses of edible food at the farm, while creating better access to local foods for consumers.

The study, published in the journal Resources, Conservation and Recycling, looked at the reasons for on-farm losses of edible food. Approximately 14 per cent of the world's food is lost before it ever reaches store shelves. In Canada, 35.5 million metric tonnes of food are lost or wasted annually, costing the economy $49.5 billion.

With 32 per cent of this waste considered avoidable, Food Systems Lab research director Tammara Soma and her team, Rajiv Kozhikode and Rekha Krishnan from Beedie School of Business, interviewed 40 farmers and stakeholders in the food and agricultural industry to find out why some of this wasted food never even leaves the farm.

While the reasons for farm-level food waste varied greatly - from farmers overproducing to hedge against risks, to cancelled orders, weather disruptions and even produce being rejected because it is deemed "too ugly" to sell - the study identified policies governments could implement to provide stability for farmers.

The right to food approach would make local foods more accessible, stabilize prices, help farmers better plan, and connect farmers to alternative outlets and government-funded food procurement programs. This can ensure that perfectly good food goes to families instead of being left on the ground or composted.

"The right to food approach has the potential to ensure that access to food, especially for those who are marginalized, will not depend on the vagaries of donations and rejected produce," says Soma, an assistant professor at SFU's School of Resource and Environmental Management. "Re-orientating our values and regulatory structure to ensure that Canada lives up to its commitment to recognize food as a right could also benefit farmers. It would also reduce waste by challenging unfair trading practices, providing living wages and improve supply management."

Canada is already a signatory to the international human rights agreement and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, include includes the "right to food." However, Soma says Canada's implementation of the agreement is lacking. Non-market-based approaches, such as having farms provide directly to school food programs, could help Canada meet its commitment and help farmers reduce avoidable food waste.