Culture

Bottom Line: The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to make a recommendation about screening for vitamin D deficiency in asymptomatic adults. Vitamin D performs an important role in bone metabolism. Requirements may vary by individual and no one blood vitamin D level defines deficiency. The USPSTF routinely makes recommendations about the effectiveness of preventive care services and this recommendation updates and is consistent with its 2014 statement.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jama.2021.3069)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

Note: More information about the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, its process, and its recommendations can be found on the newsroom page of its website.

WHAT:

A large study of children has uncovered evidence that behavioral problems in children who snore may be associated with changes in the structure of their brain's frontal lobe. The findings support early evaluation of children with habitual snoring (snoring three or more nights a week). The research, published in Nature Communications, was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and nine other Institutes, Centers, and Offices of the National Institutes of Health.

Large, population-based studies have established a clear link between snoring and behavioral problems, such as inattention or hyperactivity, but the exact nature of this relationship is not fully understood. While a few small studies have reported a correlation between sleep apnea--when pauses in breathing are prolonged--and certain brain changes, little is known about whether these changes contribute to the behaviors seen in some children with obstructive sleep-disordered breathing (oSDB), a group of conditions commonly associated with snoring that are characterized by resistance to breathing during sleep.

To address this knowledge gap, researchers led by Amal Isaiah, M.D., D.Phil., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, capitalized on the large and diverse dataset provided by the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a long-term study of child health and brain development in the United States. The team of researchers mined this wealth of data from more than 11,000 9- and 10-year-old children to examine the relationships among snoring, brain structure, and behavioral problems.

Confirming the results of previous work, their statistical analysis revealed a positive correlation between habitual snoring and behavioral problems, with the children who most frequently snored generally exhibiting worse behavior according to an assessment completed by parents. The findings further showed that snoring is linked to smaller volumes of multiple regions of the brain's frontal lobe, an area involved in cognitive functions such as problem solving, impulse control, and social interactions. The statistical analysis also suggested that the brain differences seen in children who snore may contribute to behavioral problems, but additional work on how snoring, brain structure, and behavioral problems change over time is needed to confirm a causal link.

This study's findings point to oSDB as a potential reversible cause of behavioral problems, suggesting that children routinely be screened for snoring. Children who habitually snore may then be referred for follow-up care. Such care may include assessment and treatment for conditions that contribute to oSDB, such as obesity, or evaluation for surgical removal of the adenoids and tonsils.

The ABCD Study, the largest of its kind in the United States, is tracking nearly 12,000 youth as they grow into young adults. Investigators regularly measure participants' brain structure and activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, and collect psychological, environmental, and cognitive information, as well as biological samples. The goal of the study is to define standards for normal brain and cognitive development and to identify factors that can enhance or disrupt a young person's life trajectory.

(Boston)--How could studying gastrointestinal cells help the fight against COVD-19, which is a respiratory disease? According to a team led by Gustavo Mostoslavsky, MD, PhD, at the BU/BMC Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) and Elke Mühlberger, PhD, from the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at Boston University, testing how SARS-CoV-2 affects the gut can potentially serve to test novel therapeutics for COVID-19.

In order to study SARS-CoV-2, models are needed that can duplicate disease development in humans, identify potential targets and enable drug testing. BU researchers have created human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)-derived intestinal organoids or 3-D models that can be infected and replicated with SARS-CoV-2.

iPSC are stem cells derived from the donated skin or blood cells that are reprogrammed back to an embryonic stem cell-like state and then can be developed into any cell type in the body.

"Human induced pluripotent stem cell derived intestinal organoids represent an inexhaustible cellular resource that could serve as a valuable tool to study SARS-CoV-2, as well as other intestinal viruses that infect the intestinal epithelium," explained corresponding author Mostoslavsky, associate professor of microbiology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and co-director of the CReM.

Using human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) the researchers differentiated the iPSC cells into colonic and small intestine 3D organoids. The organoids were then passed along to the Mühlberger lab at the NEIDL where they were infected with SARS-CoV-2 to analyze the effect of infection on the cells by staining against markers, by electron microscopy and by RNA-sequencing.

"Our findings suggests that different epithelial tissues (such as the lung and the gut) react in similar manner to SARS-CoV-2 infection and therefore can help identify common mechanisms of disease that can be targeted by drugs," added Mühlberger, director of Integrated Science Services at the NEIDL and professor of microbiology at BUSM.

Asthma afflicts more than 300 million people worldwide. The most severe manifestation, known as non-Th2, or non-atopic childhood asthma, represents the majority of the cases, greater than 85%, particularly in low-income countries, according to Hyunok Choi (https://health.lehigh.edu/faculty/choi-hyunok), an associate professor at the Lehigh University College of Health (https://health.lehigh.edu/). Yet, whether non-Th2 is a distinct disease (or endotype) or simply a unique set of symptoms (or phenotype) remains unknown.

"Non-Th2 asthma is associated with very poor prognosis in children and great, life-long suffering due to the absence of effective therapies," says Choi. "There is an urgent need to better understand its mechanistic origin to enable early diagnosis and to stop the progression of the disease before it becomes severe."

Studies show that nearly 50% of the children whose asthma is poorly controlled are expected to emerge as severe adult cases. Yet, a one-size-fits-all treatment approach, currently the norm for asthma, is ineffective and, says Choi, and partially responsible for asthma's growing economic burden.

"The primary reason for lack of therapeutic and preventive measures is that no etiologic, or causal, driver has ever been identified for the non-Th2 asthma," says Choi.

Now, for the first time, an epidemiological study, led by Choi, has shown that not only is non-Th2 a distinct disease, its likely inducer is early childhood exposure to airborne Benzo[a]pyrene, a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion. Choi and her colleagues are the first to demonstrate air pollution as a driver of the most challenging type of asthma, the severe subtype which is non-responsive to current therapies.

The team describes their results in an article (https://rdcu.be/cip0w) recently published online in Environmental Health Journal called "Airborne Benzo[a]Pyrene May Contribute to Divergent Pheno-Endotypes in Children." (https://rdcu.be/cip0w) Additional authors: Miroslav Dostal, Anna Pastorkova, Pavel Rossner, Jr., and Radim J. Sram from the Department of Genetic Toxicology and Nanotoxicology, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic.

What is termed asthma is an umbrella word for multiple diseases with common symptoms. Asthma has been broadly classified as two major sets of symptoms: T helper cell high (Th2-high) and T helper cell low (non-Th2). Th2-high is associated with early-childhood allergies to common pollutants such as pet dander, tree pollens, or mold. In contrast, non-TH2 is not related to an allergic response. The non-Th2 type, marked explicitly by being non-allergy-related, is far less understood than the TH-2 type and could transform into severe or difficult to treat type.

"The identification of non-Th2 asthma as a distinct disease, with early exposure to Benzo[a]pyrene as a driver, has the potential to impact tens of millions of sufferers, since this would make it possible to intervene before the onset of irreversible respiratory injuries," says Choi.

The team tested two comparable groups of children from an industrial city, Ostrava, and the surrounding semi-rural area of Southern Bohemia, in the Czech Republic: 194 children with asthma and a control group consisting of 191 children. According to the study, Ostrava is an industrial city with a high level of coal mining activities, coal processing, and metallurgical refinement. The district-level ambient mean for Benzo[a]pyrene at the time of their investigation November 2008) was 11-times higher than the recommended outdoor and indoor air quality standard.

Not only was elevated exposure to Benzo[a]pyrene associated with correspondingly elevated odds of non-Th2 asthma, it was also associated with depressed systemic oxidant levels.

"Contrary to the current body of evidence supporting adult onset of non-atopic asthma, our data suggest for the first time that the lung function deficit and suppressed oxidative stress levels during early childhood are critical sentinel events preceding non-atopic asthma," says Choi.

The top priority in the field of transplantation is to ensure that donor organs are allocated to the patients with the greatest need.

In a large-scale joint international project conducted by the Medical University of Vienna and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (USA), researchers from the Department of General Surgery and the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology of MedUni Vienna's Department of Medicine III, have made a significant step forward to improve prediction of survival on the waiting list for liver transplantation by including additional laboratory parameters.

Donor livers are allocated to patients on the waiting list for a liver transplant on the basis of their individual medical need. Currently, patients are ranked by means of a score made up of 3 (+/- sodium) blood values (Model for End Stage Liver Disease or MELD score). However, over the past few years, significant limitations of the MELD-based system have been identified and waitlist mortality remains at 20%.

A particular challenge in this context is the ability to identify patients with a high risk of complications due to portal hypertension or acute-on-chronic liver failure, as the MELD score might not adequately map these conditions.

"We have now attempted to address these existing weaknesses in the MELD-based allocation system and to identify patients with a high mortality risk, despite having a comparatively low MELD score," explains Principal Investigator Patrick Starlinger from MedUni Vienna's Department of General Surgery, who is currently also working at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. "It was particularly important to us to confirm our findings internationally and thereby document the potential improvement of organ allocation at other transplant centres and in another transplantat systems."

Simple blood test for assessing risk

von Willebrand factor (vWF) is a central component of the blood clotting system but the vWF antigen level in the blood is also an excellent marker for portal hypertension. This offers the great advantage as the vWF antigen value can readily be determined by taking a blood sample when listing patients. C-reactive protein (CRP) is likewise an easily measured routine parameter that is involved in inflammatory processes in the body of patients with liver disease even before infections develop or acute-on-chronic liver failure occurs.

Patrick Starlinger's study, which was produced in collaboration with researchers from the Medical University of Vienna and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, found that the prediction of waitlist mortality could be significantly improved by expanding the currently used MELD score to include the vWF antigen level and the CRP value. This was also confirmed in the US patient cohort. "We also managed to show that both blood parameters reflect pathophysiological processes that drive the development of acute life-threatening complications in patients on the waiting list for a liver transplant. Having established vWF-Ag and CRP as valuable markers for portal hypertension and inflammatory processes in liver cirrhosis patients in our previous papers, this study represents another important step towards the application of this blood test in clinical care," says Mattias Mandorfer, Head of the Hepatic Hemodynamic Laboratory at the Medical University of Vienna.

This study could therefore have a significant and long lasting influence on the existing allocation system for donor livers and ultimately significantly reduce waitlist mortality among patients.

In recent years the boom in streaming platforms and video on demand services has led to disruption in audiences, representing a difficulty when measuring the number of viewers of the content distributed by these platforms.

This new situation has not only altered the traditional television and film viewing model, but also has impacted the advertising market, which is a fundamental factor in funding and the business of audiovisual entertainment.

In this context, real and objective audience measurement (which is not influenced by the interests of the platforms) has become a key objective; it is fundamental to obtain real-time data on the reach of each production released so as to analyse its performance, know its market position, meet user demands and develop profitable services.

A recent study performed by researchers from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) analysed audience behaviour and measurement systems on the Netflix streaming platform and video on demand service. Their aim was to establish a more reliable audience measurement model.

"The audience has been the main financial driving force of television while advertising has been its main source of income, and therefore, for an evolving audiovisual sector, it is crucial to have accurate viewer and user numbers," explained Elena Neira, a researcher from the GAME group of the UOC Faculty of Information and Communication Sciences and the main author of the study.

New consumer habits influence audience measurement

The proliferation of streaming platforms and video on demand services has exponentially increased the quantity of content offered to users, leading them to change the way in which they watch series and films.

These new consumer habits have generated a new TV and video ecosystem which, among other factors, stems from a wider variety of devices on which people can view content, such as Smart TVs, smartphones, computers or tablets.

"At present, viewers can decide how, where and when to watch a series or a film, and therefore the traditional audience measurement models are not capable of covering the new consumer reality fully. Indeed, the idea of an audience in the sphere of streaming goes far beyond and is much more complex than the simple accumulation of viewings," said Neira, who also stressed that, at present, nobody knows the market share or average use of the platforms, or how many people have abandoned traditional television because they can watch content online.

"Our objective is to offer a starting point and to study in depth the real market share of streaming in the framework of the system's structure. ?We also want to offer some certainty and information that is of value to everyone but in particular for the television companies and the creators," the UOC researcher underlined.

To analyse this new TV and video ecosystem, the experts chose to assess the production Money Heist, since it allowed them to measure the success and popularity of the series through different channels such as traditional television and a streaming and video on demand platform, Netflix.

Since being included among the content offered by Netflix, this Spanish-made production has become a worldwide phenomenon, for which there are no specific audience data.

New parameters for reliable audience measurement

The researchers from the UOC indicate that the concept of audience has been altered in this new TV and video ecosystem. This is due to the evolution of its parameters, which now include new metrics such as audience retention or the popularity of the content, which are difficult to standardize for measurement.

It is thought that, in order to be able to carry out better audience measurements, factors should be taken into account such as audience fragmentation, the need to weight the data collected, giving importance to variables such as viewing intensity - the famous binge watching - or the volatility of the streaming platform's users. In this respect, the researcher Elena Neira stressed that "we must include new dimensions, since the new concept of audience includes aspects that are especially relevant such as the users' commitment to or involvement with the content and the depth of attention of each viewer."

The heterogeneity intrinsic in the business model of these platforms introduces elements which greatly hinder the construction of a standard and global audience concept. ?For example, unlike traditional television channels, there is not a level playing field for streaming platforms as regards household consumption and penetration, market share and availability.

All this leads to audience measurement distortions, which may be more biased on taking into account the lifecycle of the content on a streaming platform, since this will be a significant factor determining the number of viewers.

Other external factors which may influence reliable audience measurement are the impact achieved on social media, the number of downloads or the number of searches carried out on search engines like Google.

"The use of streaming platforms is a mainstream activity; they are gaining more and more hours of the population's entertainment time. This not only affects the sector, but also has legislative implications, since these business models do not have the same regulations as traditional television companies and should have certain obligations to be able to determine the size of their contribution to the state coffers," said Neira, who warned about how the platforms only tend to provide overall audience data, without figures that are specific to each territory.

This UOC research supports sustainable development goal (SDG) 8, decent work and economic growth, and industry, innovation and infrastructure.

The semiconductor industry and pretty much all of electronics today are dominated by silicon. In transistors, computer chips, and solar cells, silicon has been a standard component for decades. But all this may change soon, with gallium nitride (GaN) emerging as a powerful, even superior, alternative. While not very heard of, GaN semiconductors have been in the electronics market since 1990s and are often employed in power electronic devices due to their relatively larger bandgap than silicon--an aspect that makes it a better candidate for high-voltage and high-temperature applications. Moreover, current travels quicker through GaN, which ensures fewer switching losses during switching applications.

Not everything about GaN is perfect, however. While impurities are usually desirable in semiconductors, unwanted impurities can often degrade their performance. In GaN, impurities such as carbon atoms often lead to poorer switching performance due to trapping of charge carriers in "deep levels," energy levels created by the impurity defects in the GaN crystal layers and thought to originate from the presence of a carbon impurity on a nitrogen site.

A curious experimental manifestation of deep levels is the appearance of a long-lived yellow luminescence in the photoluminescence spectrum of GaN along with a long charge carrier recombination time reported by characterization techniques like time-resolved photoluminescence (TR-PL) and microwave photoconductivity decay (μ-PCD). However, the mechanism underlying this longevity is unclear.

In a recent study published in Journal of Applied Physics scientists from Japan explored the effect of deep levels on the yellow luminescence decay time and carrier recombination by observing how the TR-PL and μ-PCD signals changed with temperature. "Only after understanding the impacts of impurities in GaN power semiconductor devices can we push for the development of impurity control technologies in GaN crystal growth," says Prof. Masashi Kato from Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan, who led the study.

The scientists prepared two samples of GaN layers grown on GaN substrates, one doped with silicon and the other with iron. The unintentional doping of carbon impurities happened during the silicon doping process. For the TR-PL measurements, the team recorded signals for temperatures up to 350°C while for μ-PCD up to 250°C due to system limitations. They used a 1 nanosecond-long UV laser pulse to excite the samples and measured the reflection of microwaves from the samples for μ-PCD.

The TR-PL signals for both samples showed a slower (decay) component with a decay time of 0.2-0.4 milliseconds. Additionally, the use of a long-pass filter with a cut-off at 461 nm confirmed that yellow light was involved. In both samples, and for both TR-PL and μ-PCD measurements, the decay time declined above 200°C, consistent with previous reports.

To explain these findings, the scientists resorted to numerical calculations, which revealed that the deep levels essentially trapped "holes" (absence of electrons) that eventually recombined with free electrons but took long to do so due to the extremely small chance of an electron being captured by the deep level. However, at high temperatures, the holes managed to escape from the trap and recombined with the electrons through a much faster recombination channel, explaining the decline in decay time.

"To reduce the effects of the slow decay component, we must either maintain a low carbon concentration or adopt device structures with suppressed hole injections," says Prof. Kato.

With these insights, it is perhaps only a matter of time before scientists figure out how to avoid these pitfalls. But with GaN's rise to power, will it be just better electronics?

Prof. Kato thinks otherwise. "GaN enables lower power losses in electronic devices and therefore saves energy. I think it can go a long way in mitigating greenhouse effects and climate change," he concludes optimistically. These findings on impurities may thus be what lead us to a cleaner, greener future!

People who have recovered from COVID-19, especially those with pre-existing cardiovascular conditions, may be at risk of developing blood clots due to a lingering and overactive immune response, according to a study led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU) scientists.

The team of researchers, led by NTU Assistant Professor Christine Cheung, investigated the possible link between COVID-19 and an increased risk of blood clot formation, shedding new light on "long-haul COVID" - the name given to the medium- and long-term health consequences of COVID-19.

The findings may help to explain why some people who have recovered from COVID-19 exhibit symptoms of blood clotting complications after their initial recovery. In some cases, they are at increased risk of heart attack, stroke or organ failure when blood clots block major arteries to vital organs.

The team, comprising researchers from NTU, Agency for Science, Technology and Research's (A*STAR) Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), and the National Centre of Infectious Diseases, Singapore (NCID), collected and analysed blood samples from 30 COVID-19 patients a month after they had recovered from the infection and were discharged from hospital. They found that all recovered COVID-19 patients had signs of blood vessel damage, possibly from a lingering immune response, which may trigger the formation of blood clots.

Their findings were published on 23 March in the peer-reviewed scientific journal eLife.

"With more people recovering from COVID-19, we started hearing from clinicians about patients returning with blood clotting issues after they had been discharged and cleared of the virus," said Asst Prof Christine Cheung from NTU's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. "This makes a strong case for the close monitoring of recovered COVID-19 patients, especially those with pre-existing cardiovascular conditions like hypertension and diabetes who have weakened blood vessels."

Blood vessel damage due to post-recovery overactive immune system

The team found that recovered COVID-19 patients had twice the normal number of circulating endothelial cells (CECs) that had been shed from damaged blood vessel walls. The elevated levels of CECs indicate that blood vessel injury is still apparent after recovering from viral infection.

The researchers also found that recovered COVID-19 patients continued to produce high levels of cytokines - proteins produced by immune cells that activate the immune response against pathogens - even in the absence of the virus.

Unusually high numbers of immune cells, known as T cells, that attack and destroy viruses were also present in the blood of recovered COVID-19 patients.

The presence of both cytokines and higher levels of immune cells suggest that the immune systems of recovered COVID-19 patients remained activated even once the virus was gone.

The researchers hypothesise that these persistently activated immune responses may attack the blood vessels of recovered COVID-19 patients, causing even more damage and increasing the risk of blood clot formation further.

The study's first author Florence Chioh, a Research Assistant at NTU's Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, said: "While COVID-19 is mainly a respiratory infection, the virus may also attack the linings of blood vessels, causing inflammation and damage. Leakage from these damaged vessels triggers the formation of blood clots that may result in the sort of complications seen in the patients during hospitalisation."

One of the co-authors of the paper, Professor Lisa Ng, Executive Director of A*STAR Infectious Diseases Labs and previously Senior Principal Investigator at SIgN, said: "We assessed the levels of immune mediators in these patients, which revealed several proinflammatory and activated T lymphocyte-associated cytokines sustained from infection to recovery phase. This correlated positively with CEC measure, implying cytokine-driven vessel damage. We found that COVID-19 patients with vascular complications have a higher frequency of T cells, which may in turn attack the blood vessels. Preventive therapy may be needed for these patients."

Emphasising post- hospitalisation care for at-risk COVID-19 patients

The study's key findings can help inform guidelines for post-hospitalisation care of COVID-19 patients who might be susceptible to 'long-haul COVID' symptoms, said the research team.

In January this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a recommendation in their revised clinical management guidelines, targeted at the risk of blood clot formation. For hospitalised patients, WHO recommended the use of low dose anticoagulants for preventing the blood clots forming in blood vessels.

Asst Prof Cheung added: "Those with cardiovascular conditions need to be more cautious since their underlying conditions already weaken their vascular systems. It's a double blow with COVID-19. As we gain greater understanding of complications COVID 'long-haulers' face, there is hope to encourage vaccine take-up rate to protect oneself from both the virus and its long-term complications."

Moving forward, the team is investigating the longer-term effects of COVID-19 in patients who have recovered from the infection for at least six months or longer.

Evolutionary anthropologists from the University of Vienna and colleagues now present evidence for a different explanation, published in PNAS. A larger bony pelvic canal is disadvantageous for the pelvic floor's ability to support the fetus and the inner organs and predisposes to incontinence.

The human pelvis is simultaneously subject to obstetric selection, favoring a more spacious birth canal, and an opposing selective force that favors a smaller pelvic canal. Previous work of scientists from the University of Vienna has already led to a relatively good understanding of this evolutionary "trade-off" and how it results in the high rates of obstructed labor in modern humans. However, it has remained unclear what the advantage of a narrow birth canal is, given its disadvantage for childbirth. It has long been thought that a smaller birth canal is advantageous for bipedal locomotor performance. A different, less prominent explanation is that it enhances pelvic floor functionality. The muscles of the human pelvic floor play a vital role in supporting our inner organs and a heavy fetus, and in maintaining continence. A larger pelvic canal would increase the downward deformation of the pelvic floor, increasing the risk of pelvic floor disorders, such as pelvic organ prolapse and incontinence. However, this "pelvic floor hypothesis" has been challenging to prove.

A team of evolutionary anthropologists and engineers from the University of Vienna, the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, and the University of Texas at Austin (USA) used a new approach to test this hypothesis. The researchers, led by Katya Stansfield and Nicole Grunstra from the Department of Evolutionary Biology, simulated a Finite Element model of a human pelvic floor across a range of different surface areas and thicknesses and investigated the deformation in response to pressure. "Finite Element analysis allowed us to isolate the effect of pelvic floor geometry by controlling for other risk factors, such as age, number of births, and tissue weakness," says Stansfield. This approach also enabled the team to model pelvic floor size across a broader range of variation than can be observed in the human population, "because natural selection may prevent the occurrence of such 'extreme' sizes precisely because of the disadvantages for pelvic floor functionality," explains Grunstra.

As predicted by the pelvic floor hypothesis, larger pelvic floors deformed disproportionately more than smaller pelvic floors. "Our results support the notion that smaller pelvic floors - and thus smaller birth canals - are biomechanically advantageous for organ and fetal support despite their disadvantage for childbirth," says Stansfield.

The researchers also found that thicker pelvic floors were more resistant to bending and stretching, which partly compensated for the increase in pelvic floor deformation as a result of increased surface area. So why did natural selection not result in a larger birth canal that eases childbirth, along with a disproportionately thicker pelvic floor that compensates for the extra deformation? "We found that thicker pelvic floors require quite a bit higher intra-abdominal pressures in order to undergo stretching, which is actually necessary during childbirth," says Grunstra. The pressures generated by women in labor are among the highest recorded intra-abdominal pressures and they may be difficult to increase further. "Being unable to push the baby through a resistant pelvic floor would equally complicate childbirth, and so we think we have identified a second evolutionary trade-off, this time in the thickness of the pelvic floor," concludes Grunstra. "Both the size of the birth canal and the thickness of the pelvic floor appear to be evolutionary 'compromises' enforced by multiple opposing selective pressures," says co-author Philipp Mitteroecker.

The (when stretched) two-metre-long DNA molecule in each human cell is continuously being unpacked and packed again to enable the expression of genetic information. When genes must be accessed for transcription, the DNA double helix unwinds and the strands separate from each other so that all the elements needed for gene expression can access the relevant DNA region. This process results in the accumulation of DNA supercoiling that needs to be resolved. A study recently published by Felipe Cortés, Head of the Topology and DNA Breaks Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), and the members of his team, in cooperation with Silvia Jimeno González, Professor at the University of Seville and Head of the Transcription and mRNA Processing Group at the Centro Andaluz de Biología Molecular y Medicina Regenerativa (CABIMER), reveals that DNA supercoiling is involved in regulating gene expression rather than just being collateral damage that must be fixed, as was previously believed. The results of the study were published in Cell Reports.

"Our results help us understand that DNA supercoiling is an important contributor to the control of gene expression and not just a problem related to DNA metabolism" says Cortés.

This study reveals that this type of regulation occurs mainly in specific genes that are massively activated (in the order of a hundred-fold) in a few minutes in response to different types of stimuli like cellular stress, cell division signals, hormones or neuronal activation.

TOP2A and the control of immediate early gene expression

Topoisomerases are proteins that relieve DNA topological stress by removing both positive and negative supercoiling, that is, over- and under-winding of DNA strand as compared to its relaxed state.

The authors of the research show that topoisomerase TOP2A relieves negative supercoiling at gene promoters, resulting thus in an increase in the number of twists of the DNA strands in these regions. This is an obstacle to the continuous opening of the helix that prevents the advance RNA polymerase, remaining in a poised state ready to trigger gene expression as soon as needed.

"Topoisomerases are considered to facilitate gene activation, but our study shows that TOP2A acts in promoter regions of genes like c-FOS [whose codified protein is involved in cell proliferation] silencing them and creating a topological context that facilitates rapid activation to respond quickly to stimuli," says Cortés.

The authors of the study point at the possibility that supercoiled DNA might have other functions, such as facilitating a three-dimensional configuration of the genome that enables the interaction of gene expression regulatory factors.

DNA supercoiling as a mechanism of gene regulation might be particularly relevant for fundamental biological processes that require a considerable rewiring of gene expression programmes, like cell differentiation or reprogramming, or tumour transformation and progression.

"Our work opens a way for the use of topoisomerase inhibitors as modulators in these processes and cell responses, and also even as cancer therapies," Cortés adds.

Altering a mosquito's gut genes to make them spread antimalarial genes to the next generation of their species shows promise as an approach to curb malaria, suggests a preliminary study published today in eLife.

The study is the latest in a series of steps toward using CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to make changes in mosquito genes that could reduce their ability to spread malaria. If further studies support this approach, it could provide a new way to reduce illnesses and deaths caused by malaria.

Growing mosquito resistance to pesticides, as well as malaria parasite resistance to antimalarial drugs, has created an urgent need for new ways to fight the disease. Gene drives are being tested as a new approach. They work by creating genetically modified mosquitoes that, when released into the environment, would spread genes that either reduce mosquito populations or make the insects less likely to spread the malaria parasite. But scientists must prove that this approach is safe and effective before releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into the wild.

"Gene drives are promising tools for malaria control," says first author Astrid Hoermann, Research Associate at Imperial College London, UK. "But we wanted a clear pathway for safely testing such tools in countries where the disease most commonly occurs."

In the study, Hoermann and colleagues genetically modified the malaria-transmitting mosquito Anopheles gambiae. They used the CRISPR-Cas9 technology to insert a gene that encodes an antimalarial protein amidst genes that are turned on after the mosquito eats a blood meal. The team did this in a manner that allowed the whole section of DNA to also function as a gene drive that could be passed on to most of the mosquitoes' offspring. They initially inserted the gene along with a fluorescent marker to help them track it in three different spots in the DNA, and then later removed the marker, leaving only a minor genetic modification behind.

Next, the team bred the mosquitoes to see if they were able to successfully reproduce and remain healthy. They also tested how well the malaria parasite developed in the mosquitoes' guts. Their experiments provide preliminary evidence that this approach to genetic modifications could create successful gene drives.

"These genetic modifications are passive, and could be tested in the field and undergo a stringent regulatory process to ensure they are safe and effective in blocking the parasite without raising concerns of accidental spread in the environment," explains senior author Nikolai Windbichler, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London. "However, once we combine them with other mosquitoes with an active gene drive, they turn into gene drives themselves without the need for any further changes. Our approach thus brings gene drives one step closer to being tested in the field as a malaria elimination strategy."

Many consumers are willing to pay for improved environmental quality and thus non-market values of impacts of food production on e.g. water quality, C sequestration, biodiversity, pollution, erosion or GHG emissions may even be comparable to the market value of agricultural production. Diverfarming project elucidated how consumers value agroecosystem services enabled by diversification and provided consumer perspectives for developing future agricultural and food policies to better support cropping diversification.

The researchers quantified consumers' willingness to pay for the benefits of increased farm and regional scale diversity of cultivation practices and crop rotations. Three valuation scenarios were presented to a representative sample of consumers: the first one focused on agroecosystem services on cropland, the second on wider socio-cultural effects and the third was a combination of them. A total of 600 consumers finished the questionnaire.

It was found that 79% of households were willing to pay extra for cropping diversification and that this corresponds to a significant monetary value of ecosystem services. The calculated total non-market value of cropping diversification at the country level can be as high as 47-95% compared to the annual market revenues of cereals, and 15-32% compared to the total market revenues in agriculture in Finland. The sum the consumers were willing to pay was on the average €228 per household annually which equals to €245 per hectare of cultivated cropland.

The relatively high willingness to pay for both agroecological and socio-cultural benefits provide important messages for actors in the food chain and for policy makers on future targeting of economic resources within agri-environmental schemes. This study showed that positive societal implications of cropping diversification were valued slightly higher than direct field level effects of diversification. In particular, improved maintenance of domestic food production and processing, reduced nutrient runoffs from agriculture, maintained food culture and tradition, as well as improved carbon balance of agriculture and the number of jobs in rural areas were valued high.

The effectiveness of agroecological schemes needs to be developed further but a higher contribution by consumers can also likely fund future transition towards more sustainable food production. Findings on the valuation of different ecosystem services help different actors of the food chain or policy makers to stress the most valued consequences and use the related arguments when, e.g., motivating the use of public expenditures.

However, the results also indicate that 21% of consumers were not willing to pay anything to support more diverse cropping systems. Rather traditional arguments based on ecology have been used in promoting for example organic and low-input agriculture. Effects on carbon sequestration and more resilient food production with positive effects on rural jobs and local food culture have been less emphasized. Using a larger selection of arguments would help to reach a wider variety of consumer types.

The Diverfarming project seeks a change in paradigm in European agriculture towards a more environmentally and economically sustainable agriculture through crop diversification and the reduction of inputs.

With summer around the corner, a project shows how implementing an evidence-based mindfulness program in a summer camp setting decreases emotional distress in school age children and empowers campers and counselors alike - enhancing camper-counselor relationships. Mindfulness - a state of consciousness that fosters awareness - has the potential to help regulate emotions and behaviors.

Researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing implemented an eight-week program guided by the Mindful Schools© curricula in a large urban summer day camp program (ages 3 to seventh grade). Mindfulness-based practices are intentional exercises that cultivate mindfulness and engage youth to help develop attention to self and surroundings, social skills and emotional skills.

Results of the program evaluation, published in the Journal of Pediatric Nursing (online in December 2020 ahead of final publication in issue on March 1, 2021), showed that weekly mindfulness sessions appeared to empower campers with the ability to pay attention to self and surroundings while regulating emotions and behaviors. Mindfulness sessions for counselors empowered them to intentionally role model, utilize mindful strategies when dealing with difficult behaviors of campers and reinforced mindful practices to campers between weekly Mindful Schools© sessions.

According to the counselors' observations, 40 minutes of weekly mindful sessions were most influential in affecting campers' ability to self-regulate. Counselors also reported their own ability to increase classroom/cabin management and camper behavior management skills through the use of peace corners and portable mindfulness aids such as "calm down jars," stress balls and talking timers.

Campers attended an adapted 40-minute Mindful Schools© session once a week as part of the camp curriculum. Weekly sessions began with a didactic teaching related to select Mindful Schools© lesson topics. Then campers engaged in actual practice of mindfulness content; age-appropriate hands-on experiential activities were then implemented to reiterate and practice mindful content. To ensure learned material was retained, cabin peace corners containing material that reinforced mindfulness were designed and implemented into each cabin classroom.

All Mindful Schools© sessions were delivered by a pediatric nurse practitioner and/or a master's prepared registered nurse - both of whom were certified Mindful Schools© educators. The children participated in mindful breathing, daily use of peace corners and even used mindfulness tools like the calm down jars filled with water, glitter, clear glue and food coloring. For example, campers were instructed to shake their calm down jars and focus on the falling glitter while they practiced mindful breathing. Workstations that represented each mindful lesson were set up at the completion of the eight-week program and offered for campers to select their lesson of choice(s). The purpose of the workstations were to evaluate which mindfulness activities resonated most with campers for future camp program design.

"We found that mindful breathing, mindful bodies, and mindful listening assisted in bringing awareness to campers in the program and provided skills to address stressful experiences," said Andra S. Opalinski, Ph.D., APRN, co-author, an associate professor and assistant dean of graduate studies in FAU's Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing. "Since calm down jars and mindful pebbles were the two most preferred activities - both of which are in sync with the top three mindful practices implemented by the campers - offering such adapted age appropriate experiential activities may indeed reinforce and reiterate didactic teaching and be pertinent for the intersection of playing and learning for mindful practices in children."

Because studies have found mindfulness-based practices as an effective approach to addressing self-regulation/ behavior concerns in school age children and adolescents, Opalinski and Laurie A. Martinez, Ph.D., M.S.N., M.B.A., co-author, a registered nurse and a project coordinator in FAU's Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, note that applying an evidence-based practice mindfulness program to summer camp programs, a setting in which large numbers of children participate, provides additional context for addressing and examining mental health promotion in pediatric populations.

"This application of an evidence-based program also showed that the use of Mindful Schools© allows for sustainability of the program because a nurse can be trained in the curriculum and adapt the lessons for an alternative setting to broaden the reach of mindfulness interventions to settings such as after school and summer activity programs, Boys and Girls Clubs as well as faith community programs that provide services for children and adolescents," said Martinez. "In fact, the Mindful Schools© educators are exploring the possibilities of conducting a research study to validate the effectiveness of curricula change."

New research by the University of Kent and the SWPS University has discovered that national narcissists are more likely to support greenwashing (misleading information about the environmental benefits of a product, a company or a policy) in order to improve their nation's public image.

Findings show that while national narcissists are not likely to support genuine pro-environmental campaigns, they are ready to support political greenwashing campaigns. In business greenwashing decreases consumers' trust and undermines both the image and the profits of the companies that use this strategy. In the realms of politics, it may garner support from those whose strong national attachment is rooted in feelings of underappreciation and belief in their nation's unrecognised greatness.

The study, published by the Journal of Environmental Psychology, highlights the importance of group-based underpinnings of anti-environmental attitudes. It shows that nation-based defensiveness is a significant barrier in introducing pro-environmental policies, as it is associated with the preoccupation of national image more than with taking actual pro-environmental action. National narcissism, characterised by a strong need to validate a grandiose ingroup image, is related to support for pretending to be green just to impress others. Thereby, those high in national narcissism support creating pro-environmental appearances (although only to the extent they believe it is a low-cost strategy).

The team of psychologists led by Dr Aleksandra Cislak (SWPS University) and Dr Aleksandra Cichocka (Kent) hypothesised that although national narcissists might not support pro-environmental actions, they would support promoting a pro-environmental image of their nation. In five studies, psychologists demonstrated that individuals high in national narcissism were less likely to support actual pro-environmental actions (Studies 2-5), but more likely to support greenwashing campaigns (Studies 1-3, 5), although not when greenwashing would involve financial costs incurred by the ingroup (Study 4). In Study 5, national narcissism predicted support for greenwashing as a political strategy. This was related to the preference for green image enhancement over green actions (controlling for pro-environmental attitudes and individual narcissism). Psychologists did not observe similar effects for national identification or right-wing political ideology.

Lead author, Dr Aleksandra Cislak from the Center for Research on Social Relations at SWPS University said: 'Greenwashing is appealing to those high in national narcissism, as it allows them to maintain external recognition while at the same time refrain from pro-environmental actions. In this, support for greenwashing, while rejecting genuinely green actions, is similar to anti-science attitudes such as vaccination hesitancy. For those high in national narcissism, it feels powerful to reject or undermine policies recommended by other groups, especially the elite.'

Dr Aleksandra Cichocka, a co-author of the research paper and a reader in political psychology at the University of Kent's School of Psychology, added: 'When it comes to green deeds that could actually help protect the environment, those with a narcissistic view of their nation may be reluctant to offer support, especially when those actions are costly or seen as being imposed by other countries.'

A five-year study of mule deer does and newborn fawns in western Wyoming shows that migrating deer have a lot to balance when it comes to birth timing.

The study led by University of Wyoming scientists challenges the long-held assumption that animals match offspring birth with the peak green-up of forage at the birth site. Instead, only deer that migrated long distances and followed the flush of spring green-up from low elevation winter ranges to higher-elevation summer ranges were able to match birth with peak green-up. Other deer migrated shorter distances and gave birth earlier, but birth was out of sync with green-up.

The researchers' work appears in the journal Ecology.

To examine the factors shaping birth timing, researchers integrated highly detailed data on female deer, including movement data from GPS collars, body condition and gestational development from ultrasonography of adult female deer, and intensive fieldwork to locate newborn fawns.

"In contrast to existing theory, which predicts that conditions at the birth site should shape optimal birth timing, our results provide a clear example of birth timing being shaped by trade-offs arising from events occurring away from the birth site and from other parts of the annual cycle," the researchers wrote.

Migration results in animals having to time important events, such as reproduction, within tight time schedules. In general, mule deer in western Wyoming give birth in early June, generally after migration is over but early enough for fawns to grow large enough to survive the onset of winter. The deer that were part of the study included animals that migrated long distances between winter and summer ranges, as well as those that migrated shorter distances.

Among the study's findings:

Most deer completed migration well before giving birth: Across the five-year period of the study, animals completed migration, on average, 23 days before giving birth.

Does that ended migration earlier gave birth earlier.

Only animals that surfed the green wave and ended migration just before giving birth matched birth with peak green-up, whereas most gave birth after peak green-up.

Although matching birth with peak green-up likely increased access to high-quality forage, doing so resulted in delayed birth and, therefore, less time for offspring to grow and develop before fall migration.

Does appear to trade off early birth and increased time of offspring growth with matching birth to peak green-up.

Animals that migrated long distances had less developed fetuses in March, thereby allowing them to complete migration before giving birth -- without sacrificing the ability to surf the green wave along their migratory route.

"Conceptualizing birth timing through the lens of the full annual cycle helps to illuminate additional trade-offs that migrants face when balancing reproduction with migration, foraging and accumulation of fat reserves," the researchers wrote.

They say the link between movement tactics and timing of birth has important conservation and management implications. For example, human-caused disturbances to migration patterns could harm deer reproduction until animals have time to adjust. Additionally, the diversity of movement behaviors among western Wyoming mule deer is important to preserve, as animal populations with greater life-history diversity have been found to be more able to withstand environmental changes.