Culture

Chestnut Hill, Mass. (4/6/2021) -- Compact logos can encourage favorable brand evaluations by signaling product safety, according to a new study by researchers at Boston College's Carroll School of Management and Indian Institute of Management Udaipur, who reviewed the opinions of 17,000 consumers and conducted additional experiments with a variety of logos.

The findings reveal that typography -- specifically tracking, or the spacing between letters in a word -- can influence consumers' interpretations of brand logos. Further, the interpretation is influenced by cultural factors, the researchers reported in a recent edition of the Journal of Consumer Research.

In addition to the survey data, the results were confirmed in experiments, even during the Covid-19 pandemic, when public health guidance on social or physical distancing put a new emphasis on space, Hagtvedt said.

"We found fairly consistent patterns in these responses, even during the pandemic, when some brands were experimenting with placing the letters of logos farther apart to emulate a social distancing signal," said Boston College Associate Professor of Marketing Henrik Hagtvedt, who co-authored the paper with IIM's Tanvi Gupta.

The researchers analyzed data from 17,000 consumers rating 629 brands. Hagtvedt and Gupta found compact logos, where tight tracking leaves less space, encouraged favorable brand attitudes when compared to loose logos, where loose tracking creates a more spacious appearance. According to consumers, compact logos signaled that the brand was reliable, secure, and trustworthy.

Logos are central to the ways brands communicate with consumers. Logos that appear physically robust imply a brand's products are safe to use, Hagtvedt said. Compact logos were shown to send a message to consumers implying their products were sturdy and secure. This is particularly the case with textual logos, where consumers show sensitivity to the spacing between letters. Tight lettering equates to sturdiness in the minds of most consumers, whereas too much space may imply vulnerability, Hagtvedt said.

Cultural influences are also at play, according to the new report, titled "Safe Together, Vulnerable Apart: How Interstitial Space in Text Logos Impacts Brand Attitudes in Tight versus Loose Cultures." Drawing on the work of anthropologists, the researchers focused on two groups of consumers: those considered culturally "tight" or "loose." Tight cultures are a function of adapting to threats, such as violence or natural disasters. Individuals from this group are likely to favor the appearance of tight structure.

In the US, studies have shown southern states tend to display cultural tightness, while states in the west and northeast reveal looser structure. Factors such as religion, organization, or industry, can influence cultural tightness.

Gupta and Hagtvedt report that consumers tended to favor compact logos over spacious ones, regardless of cultural tightness, under ordinary circumstances. However, when the experiments involved contexts with potential safety concerns (such as products related to pharmaceuticals or mobile financial services), only culturally tight consumers responded more favorably to the compact logos.

The researchers suspect that the latter findings stem from culturally loose individuals associating space with freedom or autonomy, and being especially sensitive to that signal when safety is threatened. Among these individuals, the restrictive associations of compact logos can balance out the positive security signal.

The findings add to the understanding of how people draw meaning from visual communications, a key insight for brand managers and businesses of all sizes, said Hagtvedt. At the same time, they provide practical tips to organizations and individuals seeking to signal safety, depending on the context as well as the relevant culture.

Developing better quantitative standards can help organizations better assess how their designs may be perceived, rather than going on "gut" intuition about what makes a successful logo.

"It is important to know what kind of signal a logo sends," said Hagtvedt. "Businesses spend millions on not just designing their logos, but on using their logos in brand communications. It is arguably the most prominent representation of a brand, wherever that brand operates. It has an enormous influence on consumers. To design and deploy a logo haphazardly is a questionable practice."

Fossil discoveries often help answer long-standing questions about how our modern world came to be. However, sometimes they only deepen the mystery--as a recent discovery of four new species of ancient insects in British Columbia and Washington state is proving.

The fossil species, recently discovered by paleontologists Bruce Archibald of Simon Fraser University and Vladimir Makarkin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, are from a group of insects known as snakeflies, now shown to have lived in the region some 50 million years ago. The findings, published in Zootaxa, raise more questions about the evolutionary history of the distinctly elongated insects and why they live where they do today.

Snakeflies are slender, predatory insects that are native to the Northern Hemisphere and noticeably absent from tropical regions. Scientists have traditionally believed that they require cold winters to trigger development into adults, restricting them almost exclusively to regions that experience winter frost days or colder. However, the fossil sites where the ancient species were found experienced a climate that doesn't fit with this explanation.

"The average yearly climate was moderate like Vancouver or Seattle today, but importantly, with very mild winters of few or no frost days," says Archibald. "We can see this by the presence of frost intolerant plants like palms living in these forests along with more northerly plants like spruce."

The fossil sites where the ancient species were discovered span 1,000 kilometers of an ancient upland from Driftwood Canyon in northwest B.C. to the McAbee fossil site in southern B.C., and all the way to the city of Republic in northern Washington.

According to Archibald, the paleontologists found species of two families of snakeflies in these fossil sites, both of which had previously been thought to require cold winters to survive. Each family appears to have independently adapted to cold winters after these fossil species lived.

"Now we know that earlier in their evolutionary history, snakeflies were living in climates with very mild winters and so the question becomes why didn't they keep their ability to live in such regions? Why aren't snakeflies found in the tropics today?"

Pervious fossil insect discoveries in these sites have shown connections with Europe, Pacific coastal Russia, and even Australia.

Archibald emphasizes that understanding how life adapts to climate by looking deep into the past helps explain why species are distributed across the globe today, and can perhaps help foresee how further change in climate may affect that pattern.

"Such discoveries are coming out of these fossil sites all the time," says Archibald. "They're an important part of our heritage."

Starting your day by thinking about what kind of leader you want to be can make you more effective at work, a new study finds.

"It's as simple as taking a few moments in the morning while you're drinking your coffee to reflect on who you want to be as a leader," said Remy Jennings, a doctoral student in the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business, who authored the study in the journal Personnel Psychology with UF management professor Klodiana Lanaj.

When study participants took that step, they were more likely to report helping co-workers and providing strategic vision than on days they didn't do the morning reflection. They also felt more leaderlike on those days, perceiving more power and influence in the office.

The effects also extended to aspiring leaders.

"Leadership is really challenging, so a lot of people are hesitant to tackle leadership roles or assignments," Lanaj said. "Reflecting a few minutes in the morning really makes a difference."

And unlike being given extra responsibility or leading a team project, a morning reflection is under the employee's control.

"They're not dependent on their organization to provide formal opportunities. They don't have to wait until they have that title that says they're a leader to take on leadership in their work," Jennings said.

Want to try a morning leadership boost? Here are some prompts recommended by the researchers.

What are some of your proudest leadership moments?

What qualities do you have that make you a good leader, or will in the future?

Think about who you aspire to be as a leader, then imagine everything has gone as well as it possibly could in this leader role. What does that look like?

What effect do you want to have on your employees? Do you want to motivate them? Inspire them? Identify and develop their talents? What skills or traits do you have that can help with those goals?

Whether you're the boss or on your way up the ladder, "this is a tool to be more effective at work." Lanaj said. "Just a few minutes can entirely change your focus for the rest of your day."

A revolutionary technology developed within the Trabolsi Research Group at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) could dramatically improve the well-being of diabetic patients through a simple and straightforward way: an insulin oral delivery system that could replace traditional subcutaneous injections without the side effects caused by frequent injection.

Using prepared layers of nanosheets with insulin loaded in between layers to protect it, researchers developed gastro-resistant imine-linked-covalent organic framework nanoparticles (nCOFs) that exhibited insulin protection in the stomach as well in diabetic test subjects whose sugar levels completely returned to normal within two hours after swallowing the nanoparticles. Led by NYUAD's Research Scientist Farah Benyettou and Program Head of Chemistry Ali Trabolsi, the findings were published today in Chemical Science.

Compared to the two FDA-approved technologies for the oral delivery of insulin, the system developed at NYUAD is biocompatible, highly stable in the stomach, specific, and able to deliver the right amount of insulin based on the diabetic subject's blood sugar levels. This treatment represents a step forward in treating this disease that is the seventh leading cause of death worldwide.

"Our work overcomes insulin oral delivery barriers by using insulin-loaded nCOF nanoparticles which exhibit insulin protection in the stomach as well as a glucose-responsive release," said Benyettou. "This technology responds quickly to an elevation in blood sugar, but would promptly shut off to prevent insulin overdose and will dramatically improve the well-being of diabetic patients across the UAE and worldwide," she added.

The development of this treatment was in collaboration with an international team of researchers from Algeria, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom. The project was completed with the help of NYUAD's Core Platform Technology. A US patent application is pending for this innovative technology.

OAK BROOK, Ill. - Screening with digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) reduces the rate of interval breast cancers compared to screening with digital mammography, according to a study published in Radiology. The study adds to a growing body of evidence supporting DBT as a breast cancer screening tool with important advantages over mammography.

DBT works by capturing a series of X-ray images of the breast from different angles. Previous research has shown that it has a higher sensitivity for breast cancer detection than digital mammography.

The impact of these additional DBT-detected cancers is not fully understood. While they may constitute a screening benefit, they could also contribute to overdiagnosis, a term for the diagnosis of early-stage, slow-growing cancers that would not have caused harm to the patient in their lifetime.

The rate of interval cancers--cancers that arise between routine screenings--offers one way to better elucidate screening benefits. They are considered more aggressive than cancers detected during a screening exam.

"Interval cancers have, in general, a more aggressive biological profile than screen-detected cancers," said study lead author Kristin Johnson, M.D., radiology resident at Skåne University Hospital in Malmö, and Ph.D. student at Lund University, Sweden. "This means that the prognosis is less favorable for interval cancers compared to screen-detected cancers."

Interval cancer detection rate reporting is required in many screening programs as an indicator of effectiveness. A reduction in the interval cancer rate when using DBT might be attributed to improved detection of rapidly growing cancers with poorer prognosis, possibly contributing to lower breast cancer mortality.

For the new study, Dr. Johnson and colleagues compared interval cancer rates in Sweden's population-based Malmö Breast Tomosynthesis Screening Trial with those from an age-matched control group of patients who underwent digital mammography at the same center.

The study group included almost 15,000 women who were screened with DBT and digital mammography between 2010 and 2015. Those women were matched with a control group of more than 26,000 women who had only digital mammography screening during the same time period.

The interval cancer rate in the patients screened with DBT and digital mammography was 1.6 per 1,000 screened, significantly lower than 2.8 per 1000 in the group screened with digital mammography only. The interval cancers in the trial generally had non-favorable characteristics.

The reduced interval cancer rate after screening with DBT could translate into screening benefits, according to Dr. Johnson.

"One could speculate that some of the additional cancers detected in DBT screening would have been diagnosed as interval cancers if not detected by DBT," she said.

The results support the growing evidence of DBT as a screening modality with potential to replace digital mammography in future breast cancer screening. However, Dr. Johnson cautioned that other trials have not shown significantly reduced interval cancer rates in DBT screening compared to digital mammography screening. And interval cancer rates, while important, are not the only measure when evaluating the potential benefits from DBT in screening.

"Other factors, such as cancer types detected and cost-benefit, have to be taken into account," Dr. Johnson said.

Toward that end, the researchers are working on a cost-benefit analysis of the Malmö Breast Tomosynthesis Screening Trial. They are also analyzing the trial for false positive recalls, those instances when patients are called back for additional screening for suspicious findings that end up being benign.

TUCSON, Ariz., April 6, 2021 - Dry periods between rainstorms have become longer and annual rainfall has become more erratic across most of the western United States during the past 50 years, according to a new study published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and the University of Arizona

Against the backdrop of steadily warming temperatures and decreasing total yearly rainfall, rain has been falling in fewer and sometimes larger storms, with longer dry intervals between. Total yearly rainfall has decreased by an average of 0.4 inches over the last half century, while the longest dry period in each year increased from 20 to 32 days across the West, explained co-senior author Joel Biederman, a research hydrologist with the ARS Southwest Watershed Research Center in Tucson, Arizona.

"The greatest changes in drought length have taken place in the desert Southwest. The average dry period between storms in the 1970s was about 30 days; now that has grown to 45 days," Biederman said.

Extreme droughts are also occurring more often in the majority of the West according to historical weather data as there has been an increase in the year-to-year variation of both total rainfall amounts and the duration of dry periods.

Biederman emphasized the growing fluctuations in drought and rain patterns as the most significant change.

"Consistency of rainfall, or the lack of it, is often more important than the total amount of rain when it comes to forage continuing to grow for livestock and wildlife, for dryland farmers to produce crops, and for the mitigation of wildfire risks," Biederman said.

The rate of increasing variability of rainfall within each year and between years also appears to be accelerating, with greater portions of the West showing longer drought intervals since 2000 compared to previous years.

Notable exceptions to these drought patterns were seen in Washington, Oregon and Idaho and the Northern Plains region of Montana, Wyoming, and the most western parts of North and South Dakota. In these regions, the researchers found some increases in total annual rainfall and decreases in drought intervals. Together, these changes support what models have predicted as a consequence of climate change: a northward shift in the mid-latitude jet stream, which brings moisture from the Pacific Ocean to the western United States, according to Biederman.

A critical aspect of this study is the use of actual rainfall data from 337 weather stations spread across the western United States. Biederman contrasted this with the more common use of "gridded" data, which relies on interpolations between reporting stations and tends to smooth out some of the variability revealed by this work.

"Fangyue Zhang, lead author of the manuscript and a post-doctoral researcher on our team, did the hard, painstaking work of compiling and analyzing data from more than 300 weather stations with complete daily records to reveal these changing drought and rainfall patterns," Biederman said.

"We were surprised to find widespread changes in precipitation have already occurred across large regions of the West. For regions such as the desert Southwest, where changes clearly indicate a trend towards longer, more erratic droughts, research is urgently needed to help mitigate detrimental impacts on ecosystem carbon uptake, forage availability, wildfire activity, and water availability for people," said co-senior author William K. Smith, assistant professor, University of Arizona.

Seafood is a pillar of global food security--long recognized for its protein content. But research is highlighting a critical new link between the biodiversity of aquatic ecosystems and the micronutrient-rich seafood diets that help combat micronutrient deficiencies, or 'hidden hunger', in vulnerable populations.

"Getting the most nutritional value per gram of seafood is crucial in fighting hidden hunger and meeting United Nations Sustainable Development Goals," says Dr. Joey Bernhardt, an ecologist from the University of British Columbia (UBC) who led the study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We've found that aquatic species contain distinct and complementary sets of micronutrients, so the most efficient way to fulfill our nutritional requirements is to fill our diets with small amounts of a variety of species. In order to be able to do that, we need to preserve the biodiversity of our aquatic ecosystems locally and globally."

Dr. Bernhardt and UBC biodiversity researcher Dr. Mary O'Connor analyzed nutrient concentrations in the edible portions of 547 aquatic finfish and shellfish species. While different animals offered similar amounts of protein, they varied greatly in concentrations of micronutrients like iron, zinc, calcium and two fatty acids (docosahexaenoic and eicosapentaenoic acid, known as DHA and EPA). This variation is critical to the value of biodiversity to human well-being.

Most animals did not meet a single micronutrient recommended dietary allowance (RDA) in a 100g portion--fewer than half reached a target of 10% RDA for calcium, iron and EPA. Increasing biodiversity from one to 10 species in seafood diets was correlated with reaching more nutrient targets established by the US Institute of Medicine--and the nutritional value increased even when the seafood portion size remained constant.

"We know that biodiversity is a critical component of the many economic, cultural and ecological benefits humans enjoy from healthy natural ecosystems--from elevated forest production to water quality to nutrient cycling. Our analysis proves that biodiversity also enhances nutritional metrics in aquatic systems, and this benefit is at least as great as the biodiversity benefits we've seen in other sectors," says Dr. O'Connor.

"And this study further demonstrates the importance of biodiversity, measured as the number of different kinds of animals out there, for human-wellbeing in wild ecosystems--showing that protecting biodiversity in nature is as important as maintaining agro-biodiversity."

The finding is of particular importance coastal communities, including many Indigenous communities, who eat on average 15 times more seafood than other groups--and tend to rely more on locally available seafood.

"Aquatic ecosystems are under threat from human activities, and we're observing major changes in biodiversity patterns worldwide," adds Dr. Bernhardt.

"Until now, we didn't understand the consequences of these aquatic biodiversity changes for human nutrition and health. With this new work, we have bridged the gap between biodiversity science and human nutrition science, demonstrating that aquatic biodiversity change can have direct and immediate impact on human nutrition and well-being."

LOS ANGELES (April 5, 2021) -- New research from the Smidt Heart Institute shows that more patients--specifically those with medical risk factors or from underserved communities--opted into telehealth appointments for their cardiovascular care during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data also suggests these telehealth patients underwent fewer diagnostic tests and received fewer medications than patients who saw their doctors in person.

The findings, published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Network Open, point to "digital shifts" in cardiovascular care amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

"We were encouraged to learn that access to cardiovascular care was maintained for high-risk and underserved communities during the pandemic," said Joseph Ebinger, MD, director of Clinical Analytics in the Smidt Heart Institute and senior author of the study. "This same study, however, identified some differences in care that we need to delve into further to better understand."

The researchers examined data collected from 87,182 pre-COVID in-person visits, 74,498 COVID-era in-person visits, 4,720 COVID-era telehealth video visits and 10,381 COVID-era telephone visits.

Across all categories, patients accessing COVID-era remote visits were more likely to be from racial or ethnic minority groups, have private insurance and have cardiovascular conditions such as hypertension, coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation and heart failure.

Researchers then compared how often medications or follow-up tests, including electrocardiograms and echocardiograms, were ordered. Findings suggest a decrease when compared to pre-COVID visits.

"Our data reveal a reduced rate of testing and prescribing, likely due to a number of factors," said Ebinger. "We see these results as being not obviously negative or positive but a trend that is important to understand. For instance, lower rates of testing and prescribing may-in many instances-reflect reductions in the types of care that are not really needed to achieve good health outcomes while adding costs to the system."

Benefits and Pitfalls of Telehealth

One of the key benefits to telehealth visits, researchers say, is access to a cardiologist at a distance, which is vital for individuals who cannot--or do not want to--travel for care due to concerns over virus exposure, lack of transportation, increased family demands or inability to take time off of work. Without telehealth visits, Ebinger said, many of these patients may well not have received any healthcare at all.

But researchers also note the importance of recognizing potential pitfalls of telehealth services, many of which disproportionately affect communities of color.

"Being a relatively new platform for patients and providers alike, there is a learning curve with telehealth, both technically and with respect to comfort and confidence," said Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, MMSc, associate professor, Cedars-Sinai Department of Cardiology, director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology at the Smidt Heart Institute, and an author on the study.

As an example, Cheng notes that patients must have access to a device that allows them to connect with their provider. Similarly, patients must be comfortable with the telehealth platform and feel confident around how to access and use it effectively.

Notwithstanding the challenges of telehealth, there are also conveniences. Researchers say past reports have indicated that racial and ethnic minority populations make up a disproportionate size of the essential job market. Essential worker schedules have been even busier during the pandemic, making it more difficult to fit in an in-person medical appointment during regular business hours. This factor could have contributed to the higher rates of telehealth use among racial and ethnic minority patients.

As a next step, researchers plan to determine whether the changes in clinician practices during the pandemic will lead to changes in patient outcomes.

"We plan to next examine if the ordering of fewer tests, such as stress tests, might predispose to missed diagnoses," said Ebinger. "To understand the balance of risks and benefits, we are also investigating whether the fewer tests ordered might actually represent opportunities to streamline away from certain types of care that were not important contributors to health in the prior system of only in-person visits."

Tsukuba, Japan - With a prevalence of about one in 10 people worldwide, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a global health problem. It also often goes undetected, leading to a range of negative health outcomes, including death. Catching it at an early stage and adjusting nutrition and lifestyle can improve and extend life, but only if there are economically feasible systems in place to promote and educate on this.

Amid finite health-care resources, any CKD intervention must be both practical and cost-effective. A team of researchers centered at the University of Tsukuba now believe they have found a CKD behavioral intervention that can be delivered at a reasonable cost. They published their findings in the Journal of Renal Nutrition.

Changing eating and lifestyle habits, and regularly visiting a doctor, are vital in managing CKD. Yet the CKD treatment guidelines under Japan's nationalized health-care system offer little economic incentive for general physicians (GPs) to recommend dietitians' valuable guidance for CKD patients.

"There's substantial evidence, including the Japanese Society of Nephrology's clinical guidelines, that dietitian-led patient education can slow the progression of CKD," study corresponding author Professor Masahide Kondo says. "But this sort of education seldom happens in Japan. We sought a way to justify such interventions and incentivize GPs to initiate them."

With a lack of economic assessments of these interventions, the researchers conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis using a Markov model, a mathematical method for finding patterns and making predictions. Based on results from the Frontier of Renal Outcome Modifications in Japan (FROM-J) study, which found success in dietitian-led education and lifestyle advice, along with periodic check-ups, they projected how such intervention would perform economically.

Naturally, a host of factors, such as disease progression and drug costs, play into this complex modeling. Key here was whether the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER), which shows the unit cost of gaining 1 extra healthy life year among the patients via the intervention, gave sufficient worth for that amount. The estimated ICER of about US$1,324 per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) was compared with the suggested social willingness to pay about US$45,455 for a 1-QALY gain. This demonstrates considerable cost-effectiveness.

"Diffusing such CKD interventions now seems justifiable, even with limited health-care resources," study first author Assistant Professor Reiko Okubo says. "We found that by adjusting the reimbursements and accessing the country's 5,000 registered dietitians, we could incentivize GPs to encourage practical behavioral interventions."

Behavior modification for CKD patients has the potential to be cost-effective within Japan's national health-care scheme. It can also improve and extend lives. Such findings could extend to other countries and encourage them to modify their guidelines. If policy can follow suit and GPs can comply with the advice, CKD can become a more manageable, and less fatal, disease.

A statistically rigorous survey of Japanese consumers has found that they have more negative opinions about the use of new gene-editing techniques on livestock than they do about use of the same technologies on vegetables.

The survey findings were reported in the journal BMC CABI Agriculture and Bioscience on March 31st, 2021.

Because humans tend to feel closer to animals than plants, and commonly express feelings regarding animal welfare but not plant welfare, the researchers, led by Naoko Kato-Nitta, a research scientist at Tokyo's Joint Support Center for Data Science Research and Institute of Statistical Mathematics, wanted to see if such moral or taxonomic distinctions would produce any difference in their attitudes towards use of emerging gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9.

Earlier surveys had shown subtle differences in consumer attitudes towards genetic modification, where foreign DNA is inserted into an organism's genome, compared to gene-editing, where an organism's genes are tweaked but no foreign DNA is introduced.

Via an online survey of just over 4,000 participants aged 20 to 69, the researchers found that there was indeed a significant difference. The participants were shown a visual diagram explaining how gene-editing works and then asked how they felt about it. The survey results showed that they were more likely to be worried about the use of gene-editing techniques on livestock than on plants.

But in a twist to the study design, the researchers split the participants into two groups. In the first, the explainer diagram included cartoon pictures of pigs, and in the second, the diagram included cartoon pictures of tomatoes.

The group that had been shown pictures of cartoon pigs were subsequently less likely to raise concerns about gene-editing of livestock than the group that had been shown pictures of cartoon tomatoes. The researchers believe that this may be because the pictures of the pigs "primed" the survey participants to be open to livestock gene-editing. "In contrast, the group shown the gene-editing of cartoon tomatoes had in effect been asked to infer how they would feel if the same thing was done on pigs" says Naoko Kato-Nitta, the lead author of the paper and a specialist in risk communication at ROIS and the Institute of Statistical Mathematics in Tokyo. "There was a higher emotional hurdle to be overcome in the second group."?"This means that public attitudes towards food can change as a result of just one small change to how information is provided," she adds. "And so experts really need to pay careful attention to the impact of how they contextualize their discussions of gene-editing."

The survey participants were also asked a series of questions assessing their level of scientific literacy. The researchers found that those with higher levels of scientific literacy were more supportive of using gene-editing to deliver improvements in vegetables, and more supportive of using gene-editing to make livestock more resistant to disease. Those with higher levels of scientific literacy thus may be more open to medical applications of biotechnology than agri-food applications.

In the 1990s, strong public opposition to genetically modified crops led to the Japanese government's introduction of strict regulations on such techniques, as well as the labeling of GM food items. Currently there is no commercial cultivation of GM crops in the country. And so the researchers now want to perform the study again in other countries in order to see if the plant-animal consumer distinction is culturally specific to Japan.

Scientists from the Genomic Integrity and Structural Biology Group led by Rafael Fernández-Leiro at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have discovered how certain proteins ensure the repair of errors introduced into the DNA during its replication. Using cryo-electron microscopy, they made the MutS protein, also known as the guardian of our genome, visible. That enabled them to describe how this single protein is able to coordinate the essential DNA repair process from beginning to end.

The study was carried out in collaboration with Meindert Lamers of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC, The Netherlands) and Titia Sixma of the Netherlands Cancer Institute and the Oncode Institute. Their results are published in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

One of the stages of cell division is DNA replication, during which DNA polymerase duplicates the genetic information of the cell so that it can be transferred to the daughter cell. Although this is a very precise process, errors do sometimes occur. It is essential that these errors are repaired, as they can otherwise lead to the development of tumours.

The researchers had already described in previous publications that DNA polymerase has its own repairer, an exonuclease, which allows it to correct errors that are introduced during DNA replication. But when this corrector is not sufficient, the MutS protein comes into play, which scans the copied DNA for errors and then initiates and completes the repair of any errors it detects. But until now, it was not clear how a single protein could coordinate so many different processes. The international study now published has succeeded in unravelling the mechanism.

"Using cryo-electron microscopy, we were able to observe MutS while it carried out its functions and capture its molecular structure in successive conformations. With this information, we were able to understand how a single protein can coordinate the whole process, which has to be extremely accurate," explains Rafael Fernández-Leiro.

In-depth knowledge of the DNA repair process, in which DNA polymerase, exonuclease and the MutS protein are involved, is essential to understand how alterations in any of these proteins lead to mutations and, therefore, to an increased risk of developing certain types of tumour, such as Lynch syndrome and endometrial cancer.

The researchers emphasise that unravelling protein structures is only possible due to the enormous technological advances in electron microscopy in recent years.

"Electron microscopy allows us to obtain very high-resolution images of proteins as they carry out their functions. With these images, we can reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of the protein in the computer and generate an atomic model that allows us to understand how it works," continues Fernández-Leiro.

A new study analyzing bean production and food security across 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, found COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions to significantly impact bean production. Border controls and high transport costs have led to drops in production of the key food security crop, threatening to reverse gains made in achieving Sustainable Development Goals 1 and 2, towards no poverty and zero hunger, respectively.

Even before the pandemic, 55% of the world's hungry people and 70% of the world's poorest people lived in Africa, the researchers said. In addition, food systems across Africa were already affected by the adverse impacts of climate change, disease and pests, such as the worst desert locust outbreak in 70 years impacting food security in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and other countries in eastern Africa.

Other impacts of COVID-19 restrictions, both direct and indirect, can be found in the study: "Regional impact of COVID-19 on the production and food security of common bean smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa: Implication for SDG's," published in the Global Food Security edition of peer-reviewed platform Science Direct. Direct impacts include farms and food businesses closing down; while indirect impacts are linked to lockdown, border closures, social distancing, and restricted transportation and trade.

"The food system is already highly inefficient. What we've seen is that measures taken to control the virus led to wider food security restrictions and disruptions, exacerbating those already-existing insecurities," said author Eileen Nchanji, a gender researcher at The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (The Alliance). "Pay cuts, job losses, and high food prices due to reduced food imports and closure of informal markets all disrupted food supplies, with poorer communities especially affected."

From border closures to national lockdowns, delayed cargo further exacerbated food shortages, the researchers said. For instance, 15% of imported food in Kenya before the pandemic was sourced from countries that imposed export restrictions, affecting the availability and flow of crops and food. Restrictions also led to limited access to seed, farm inputs, hired labor, and agricultural finance for smallholder farmers, especially those in Uganda, where planting was beginning.

The data, collected between March and April 2020, shows that most households in Eastern Africa ate only twice during the pandemic. Uganda was most affected, with all surveyed farmers eating only once per day during the pandemic. The research also found a 34% decrease in access to labor attributed to the fear of getting the disease, the high cost of public transportation, and social distancing measures. Farmers also noted difficulties in accessing finance, farm inputs, seed and extension information.

The research highlights that 36%, 20%, and 3% of farmers in Burundi, Uganda, and Kenya respectively lost income during the pandemic, with knock-on impacts on food security. The low number in Kenya is due to the fact that crops were already planted, and farmers were relying on maize and other crops stored from the previous harvest for food and to generate income, while in Uganda and Burundi, planting was ongoing, and so more money was spent on inputs, seed and food, as prices and costs of transport increased.

In West Africa, challenges included insecurity, political instability, social conflicts, and climate change, the report said, citing Food and Agriculture projections that 17 million people in the region will face severe food insecurity following measures to contain the virus.

Although governments across the continent have responded by offering economic stimulus packages, much needs to be done to enable the sub-sector to recover from ruins caused by the pandemic, authors said.

Cosmas Lutomia, at the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), said: "The pandemic has necessitated a much needed discussion around the complexity of our food systems. We can only achieve sustainable and resilient food systems through strengthening public-private partnerships. We implore governments across the region to strengthen the food systems' resilience to present and future shocks."

The authors called for an immediate transformation of food systems in all the sub-regions. Governments should invest directly in input supply systems and short food supply chains through digital access, mobile-based payments, credit and food delivery, they added.

3-D printing has the potential to revolutionize product design and manufacturing in a vast range of fields--from custom components for consumer products, to 3-D printed dental products and bone and medical implants that could save lives. However, the process also creates a large amount of expensive and unsustainable waste and takes a long time, making it difficult for 3-D printing to be implemented on a wide scale.

Each time a 3-D printer produces custom objects, especially unusually-shaped products, it also needs to print supports­-printed stands that balance the object as the printer creates layer by layer, helping maintain its shape integrity. However, these supports must be manually removed after printing, which requires finishing by hand and can result in shape inaccuracies or surface roughness. The materials the supports are made from often cannot be re-used, and so they're discarded, contributing to the growing problem of 3-D printed waste material.

For the first time, researchers in USC Viterbi's Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering have created a low-cost reusable support method to reduce the need for 3-D printers to print these wasteful supports, vastly improving cost-effectiveness and sustainability for 3-D printing.

The work, led by Yong Chen, professor of industrial and systems engineering and PhD student Yang Xu, has been published in Additive Manufacturing.

Traditional 3-D printing using the Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) technique, prints layer-by-layer, directly onto a static metal surface. The new prototype instead uses a programmable, dynamically-controlled surface made of moveable metal pins to replace the printed supports. The pins rise up as the printer progressively builds the product. Chen said that testing of the new prototype has shown it saves around 35% in materials used to print objects.

"I work with biomedical doctors who 3-D print using biomaterials to build tissue or organs," Chen said. "A lot of the material they use are very expensive­-we're talking small bottles that cost between $500 to $1000 each."

"For standard FDM printers, the materials cost is something like $50 per kilogram, but for bioprinting, it's more like $50 per gram. So if we can save 30% on material that would have gone into printing these supports, that is a huge cost saving for 3-D printing for biomedical purposes," Chen said.

In addition to the environmental and cost impacts of material wastage, traditional 3-D printing processes using supports is also time-consuming, Chen said.

"When you're 3-D printing complex shapes, half of the time you are building the parts that you need, the other half of the time you're building the supports. So with this system, we're not building the supports. Therefore, in terms of printing time, we have a savings of about 40%."

Chen said that similar prototypes developed in the past relied on individual motors to raise each of the mechanical supports, resulting in highly energy-intensive products that were also much more expensive to purchase, and thus not cost-effective for 3-D printers.

"So if you had 100 moving pins and the cost of every motor is around $10, the whole thing is $1,000, in addition to 25 control boards to control 100 different motors. The whole thing would cost well over $10,000."

The research team's new prototype works by running each of its individual supports from a single motor that moves a platform. The platform raises groups of metal pins at the same time, making it a cost-effective solution. Based on the product design, the program's software would tell the user where they need to add a series of metal tubes into the base of the platform. The position of these tubes would then determine which pins would raise to defined heights to best support the 3-D printed product, while also creating the least amount of wastage from printed supports. At the end of the process, the pins can be easily removed without damaging the product.

Chen said the system could also be easily adapted for large scale manufacturing, such as in the automotive, aerospace and yacht industries.

"People are already building FDM printers for large size car and ship bodies, as well as for consumer products such as furniture. As you can imagine, their building times are really long--we're talking about a whole day," Chen said. "So if you can save half of that, your manufacturing time could be reduced to half a day. Using our approach could bring a lot of benefits for this type of 3-D printing."

Chen said the team had also recently applied for a patent for the new technology. The research was co-authored by Ziqi Wang, previously a visiting student at USC, from the School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL Switzerland, and Siyu Gong from USC Viterbi.

Likely the first extinction event of the 2000s in Europe, the sad history of the Pyrenean Ibex (Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica) is a powerful example of the ever-increasing species loss worldwide due to causes related to human activity. It can, however, give us valuable information on what should be done (or avoided) to halt this extinction vortex.

The distribution of this subspecies of Iberian Ibex was limited to the French and Spanish Pyrenees. Its first mention in an official written document, dating back to 1767, already refers to it as extremely rare. Like many other mountain goats, it was almost hunted to extinction before its killing became prohibited in 1913. Neither the institution of a national park (Ordesa & Monte Perdido), nor a conservation project with European LIFE program funding could stop the extinction of the Pyrenean Ibex eventually officialised on January 6, 2000. But the story of this charismatic animal did not end there - a controversial cloning program was started instantly with no scientific agreement, nor support from regional environmental NGOs, claiming that de-extinction was possible even in the absence of further DNA studies.

To find out more about the drivers of its extinction, an international team composed of 7 nationalities built a database of all known museum specimens and reconstructed the demographic history of the Pyrenean Ibex based on DNA evidence. Their research is published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.

The research found that after a population expansion between 14,000 and 29,000 years ago (which is quite recent from a genetic point of view), a significant loss of genetic diversity followed between approximately 15,000 and 7,500 years BP, and continued until present. By that time, the Pyrenean Ibex also lived outside the Pyrenean mountain chain, but, gradually, its distribution was reduced to only one valley in the Ordesa National Park in the Spanish Pyrenees.

Written sources confirm hunting of the Pyrenean Ibex from as early as the 14th century, and during the 19th and 20th century it became a common target for trophy hunters. Undoubtedly, hunting played an important role in reducing its population numbers and distribution area, but it is not possible - with the information currently available - to pinpoint it as the straw that broke the camel's back. Infectious diseases that originate from livestock (for instance, those caused by the bluetongue virus, BTV, and sarcopses) are capable of decimating other subspecies of Iberian Ibex in extremely short periods of time.

While the relative contribution of various factors remains largely unknown, it seems that hunting and diseases transmitted from other animals have been effective in drastically reducing the number of Pyrenean ibexes over the last two centuries, because they were acting on an already genetically weakened population. This low genetic diversity, combined with inbreeding depression and reduced fertility, brought the population beyond the minimum viable size - from that point onwards, extinction was inevitable.

This case study shows the importance of historical biological collections for genetic analyses of extinct species. A privately owned 140-year-old trophy preserved in Pau, France, was genotyped as part of this research, showing that private individuals may possess material of high value. As there is little knowledge of such resources, the authors call for the creation of an online public database of private collections hosting biological material for the benefit of biodiversity studies.

Insomnia is a common problem in patients with schizophrenia, and a new study reinforces a close association between insomnia, more suicidal thoughts and actions and increased problems like anxiety and depression in these patients.

It also provides more evidence that keeping tabs on how patients are sleeping -- and intervening when needed -- is important to their overall care.

"We are now aware that significant insomnia is putting our patients at even higher risk for suicide, so if they are having changes in sleep patterns, if they are having significant insomnia, then we really need to hone in on those questions even more related to suicidal thinking and do what we can to help," says Dr. Brian Miller, psychiatrist and schizophrenia expert at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

Schizophrenia is clearly associated with an increased risk of suicide, with a 5-10% lifetime risk of death by suicide, that is likely the greatest within the first year of diagnosis, Miller says.

The new study in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry looked at associations between insomnia, suicidal thoughts and attempts and disease severity in a large group of patients, 1,494 individuals diagnosed at 57 sites in the country, and enrolled in a comparative study of five different antipsychotics.

Miller and his colleagues looked at patient reports of insomnia and suicidal thoughts within the most recent two weeks, suicide attempts in the past six months and the state of their psychiatric illness when they enrolled in the study.

Nearly half of patients reported problems falling asleep or broken sleep, termed initial and middle insomnia, and 27% reported terminal insomnia where they wake up too early and cannot get back asleep.

They found insomnia a common symptom in patients with schizophrenia, with waking up too early particularly associated with current suicidal thoughts, and trouble falling and staying asleep significantly increasing the odds of a suicide attempt in the past six months.

Waking up too early was also most associated with more severe schizophrenia, including symptoms like anxiety and depression. But no matter which type of insomnia, it's bad for patients' overall health and disease, Miller says.

Studies indicate that 23-44% of patients with schizophrenia -- both those taking and not taking medications-- report problems with insomnia. Sleep architecture is a pattern of normal sleep, and sleep disturbances and abnormal sleep architecture have been found early in the schizophrenia disease process, findings which may correlate with disease severity. Disturbances in the natural body clocks, or circadian rhythms that help regulate sleep and wakefulness and other essential body functions, are known to be present in schizophrenia and are suspected to be a factor in patients' related sleep problems. A generally heightened state of arousal in patients who are hearing voices and/or paranoid also is likely a factor. Insomnia has been implicated as a predictor of hallucinations in patients, and there seems to be a bidirectional relationship between insomnia and paranoia, the investigators write.

"If you are hearing voices that are constantly saying negative, horrible things, berating you, interfering with your thinking and your activities, it can be hard to fall asleep," he says.

Miller says insomnia in his patients cuts across all ages, sexes and races.

While he has always been diligent asking patients at each visit about their sleep and counseling them on how to improve their sleep, the increasing evidence of the association with suicide and disease severity has heightened his diligence. While Miller says his colleagues across the country also tend to be diligent in regularly talking with patients about sleep, surveys have indicated that while patients with schizophrenia commonly report problems with insomnia, less than 20% of clinicians formally evaluate patients for it.

The new study suggests that insomnia is an important treatment target in schizophrenia. Interventions Miller offers include ensuring habits like avoiding caffeine as well as blue light from commons sources like televisions and smartphones, particularly in the hours before bedtime, as well as prescription and over-the-counter sleep aids.

Adjustments also can be made to the antipsychotic medication used to treat their schizophrenia since some, like clozapine, also have sedative effects. In fact, there is some evidence that insomnia and suicidal thoughts and actions are less likely in patients taking antipsychotics known to also have a sedative effect, they write, but just how needs exploration.

While he has not yet done a formal study, Miller has noted anecdotally that when his patients' sleep improves, generally their schizophrenia does as well.

"I can't think of anyone who says I am sleeping better and now my illness is worse. When you get a bad night's sleep, the world just isn't quite the same place the next day," Miller says. "It affects the way we think about things, the judgements we make, it affects our emotions." In fact, insomnia and increased suicide risk are associated with a variety of mental health issues, including depression.

The current study is the third group of patients in which Miller and his colleagues have found an association between insomnia and suicidal thoughts and actions.

Other investigators have associated sleep disturbances with suicidal thoughts in these patients but not actual suicide; others have shown, for example, nearly five times the risk of suicide attempts in patients experiencing insomnia at least three times a week.