Culture

SPOKANE, Wash. - New research led by scientists at Washington State University has found that a protein known as GBP5 appears to play a key role in suppressing inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis, a potentially debilitating disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's own joint tissues.

Published in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatology, the discovery could someday lead to new treatments to slow or halt the progress of the disease, which affects an estimated 1.5 million Americans. The researchers said it may also have applications in other inflammatory diseases.

First author Mahamudul Haque first stumbled upon GBP5 back in 2015, when he was working toward a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences in WSU's College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Now a postdoctoral research associate in the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, Haque had been tasked with comparing the expression of different genes in joint tissue from rheumatoid arthritis patients and non-diseased joint tissue. Among the thousands of genes included in his analysis, one gene stood out in particular because its expression level was several times greater in rheumatoid arthritis tissue. That gene was guanylate binding protein 5 (GBP5), which helps produce the GBP5 protein.

"That caught our attention and interest," said senior author Salah-Uddin Ahmed, a professor in the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences who oversaw the work.

As far as Ahmed and Haque could tell, no other studies had looked at the role of GBP5 in rheumatoid arthritis or other auto-immune diseases, so they decided to take on the task.

The inflammation seen in rheumatoid arthritis causes painful swelling of joint tissues that can result in bone loss and deformed joints. Previous research conducted by Ahmed and his team has suggested that this inflammation is driven primarily by a cytokine protein known as interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta). To find out what role GBP5 plays, the researchers designed a series of experiments using rheumatoid arthritis synovial fibroblasts, a type of cell located in the tissue that lines joints and is known to play a role in inflammation and joint destruction. When they manipulated the cells to stop producing GBP5 and then added IL-1 beta to induce inflammation, they saw much higher levels of inflammation in cells that lacked GBP5 versus in non-manipulated cells. What's more, when they increased levels of GBP5 in those same cells, inflammation triggered by IL-1 beta went down.

"Our initial thought had been that the GBP5 protein played a role in causing the disease, but as we worked to decipher the mechanism of GBP5 in rheumatoid arthritis we found that it was induced in response to inflammation and was trying to cut back inflammation before it goes out of control," Ahmed said.

In addition, their research revealed how GBP5 interacts with interferon gamma, another cytokine that has been shown to fight inflammation under certain circumstances. When they silenced the GBP5 gene, the researchers found that it reduced interferon gamma's ability to fight the inflammation triggered by IL-1 beta. This suggests that, on top of having its own anti-inflammatory effect, GBP5 also supports the anti-inflammatory function of interferon gamma.

Finally, the researchers confirmed their findings in a rodent model of rheumatoid arthritis, which showed that joint inflammation and bone loss increased when the GBP5 gene was turned off.

Ahmed said he and his team are conducting additional research to confirm that their findings hold up in other pre-clinical models of rheumatoid arthritis. Pending further, clinical studies to test this concept in rheumatoid arthritis patients at different stages of the disease, Ahmed said their findings could someday lead to the development of new combination therapies that could boost GBP5 levels to reduce inflammation and bone loss.

"What we would like to understand is, if we introduced this protein very early during the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, could we reverse or suppress the course of the disease?" Ahmed said.

Haque also suggested that researchers should take a closer look at the role of GBP5 in other conditions that involve inflammation. This includes other types of arthritis, such as gout and osteoarthritis.

EU imports of products including palm oil, soybeans, and beef contribute significantly to deforestation in other parts of the world. In a new study, researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and the University of Louvain, Belgium, evaluated over a thousand policy proposals for how the EU could reduce this impact, to assess which would have the largest potential to reduce deforestation - while also being politically feasible.

"Unsurprisingly, there is weaker support for tougher regulations, such as import restrictions on certain goods. But our study shows that there is broad support in general, including for certain policies that have real potential to reduce imported deforestation," says Martin Persson, Associate Professor of Physical Resource Theory at Chalmers University of Technology.

Previous research from Chalmers University of Technology has already shown the EU's great impact in this area. More than half of tropical deforestation is linked to production of food and animal feed, such as palm oil, soybeans, wood products, cocoa and coffee - goods which the EU imports in vast quantities. The question is, what can the EU do to reduce its contribution to deforestation?

"This issue is particularly interesting now, as this year the EU is planning to present legislative proposals for reducing deforestation caused by European consumption. The question has been discussed by the EU since 2008, but now something political is actually happening," says Simon Bager, a doctoral student at the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and lead author of the study.

The authors of the article mapped 1141 different proposals, originating from open consultations and workshops, where the EU has collected ideas from companies, interest groups and think tanks. The researchers also compiled proposals from a large number of research reports, policy briefs and other publications, where different stakeholders have put forward various policy proposals. After grouping together similar proposals, they arrived at 86 unique suggestions.

Two suggestions stand out from the crowd

Finding proposals for measures that would have the desired effect but are also possible to implement in practice, and enjoy the necessary political support, is no easy task. But after their extensive survey, the researchers identify two policy options in particular which show promise. The first is to make importers of produce responsible for any deforestation in their supply chains, by requiring them to carry out the requisite due diligence.

"If the importing companies' suppliers have products that contribute to deforestation, the company may be held responsible for this. We consider such a system to be credible and possible to implement both politically and practically - there are already examples from France and England where similar systems have been implemented or are in the process thereof," says Simon Bager.

"Due diligence is also the measure which is most common in our survey, put forward by many different types of actors, and there is broad support for this proposal. However, it is important to emphasise that for such a system to have an impact on deforestation, it must be carefully designed, including which companies are affected by the requirements, and which sanctions and liability options exist."

The other possibility is to support multi-stakeholder forums, where companies, civil society organisations, and politicians come together to agree on possible measures for ridding a supply-chain, commodity, or area, of deforestation. There are positive examples here too, the most notable being the Amazon Soy Moratorium from 2006, when actors including Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature gathered with soy producers and exporters and agreed to end soy exports from deforested areas in the Amazon rainforest.

"Examples such as these demonstrate the effect that multi-stakeholder forums can have. And in our opinion, it is a measure that is easier to get acceptance for, because it is an opportunity for the affected parties to be directly involved in helping design the measures themselves," says Martin.

Such discussions can also be adapted to the relevant areas or regions, increasing the likelihood of local support for the initiatives.

A delicate balance

The researchers also investigated how to deal with the trade-off between policy impacts and feasibility. An important part of this is combining different complementary measures. Trade regulations on their own, for example, risk hitting poorer producing countries harder, and should therefore be combined with targeted aid to help introduce more sustainable production methods, increasing yields without having to resort to deforestation. This would also reduce the risk of goods that are produced on deforested land simply being sold in markets other than the EU.

"If the EU now focuses on its contribution to deforestation, the effect may be that what is produced on newly deforested land is sold to other countries, while the EU gets the 'good' products. Therefore, our assessment is that the EU should ensure that the measures introduced are combined with those which contribute to an overall transition to sustainable land use in producing countries," says Simon Bager.

In conclusion, the researchers summarise three essential principles needed for new measures, if the EU is serious about reducing its impact on tropical deforestation.

"First, enact measures that actually are able to bring about change. Second, use a range of measures, combining different tools and instruments to contribute to reduced deforestation. Finally, ensure the direct involvement of supply chain actors within particularly important regions, expanding and broadening the measures over time," concludes Simon Bager.

The authors hope that the research and identified policy options can serve as inspiration for policy makers, NGOs, industries, and other stakeholders working to address the EU's deforestation footprint. With at least 86 different unique alternatives, there is a wide range of opportunities to focus on the problem - very few of these are political 'non-starters' or proposals which would have no effect on the issue.

The full study, Eighty-six EU policy options for reducing imported deforestation is available open-access in the journal One Earth.

For more information, contact:

Martin Persson, Associate Professor, Physical Resource Theory at Chalmers University of Technology, martin.persson@chalmers.se, +46 31 772 2148

Simon Bager, Ph.D. candidate UCLouvain and MSCA fellow COUPLED, simon.bager@uclouvain.be, +45 2721 7414

More detailed information regarding how the study was conducted:

To investigate the potential impact and political feasibility of the 1141 proposals, the researchers first categorised them based on who submitted the proposal, who the policy would affect, and what type of policy is proposed. Since many of the proposals were essentially the same or similar, they were then summarised, resulting in 86 unique suggestions. The majority are based on weaker measures, such as making more information and types of support available to producers, rather than statutory restrictions and regulations on imports and exports. The researchers interpret this as meaning that there is greater support for softer proposals. However, the researchers themselves consider these proposals to be less effective.

"One example is eco-labelling, where the purpose is to influence consumers to stop buying products that contribute to deforestation. The intent is good, but previous research does not support the argument that this changes consumer behaviour to such a level that production itself is affected. But if import restrictions are instead introduced on goods that are linked to deforestation, it is already known that this has direct effects," says Martin Persson.

After evaluating the likely effects, the next step was to see which proposals could actually receive political support, and how complex and costly the formulation and implementation was likely to be. For this evaluation, methodological innovations were required.

"After categorising the 1141 proposals, we could see how many stakeholders, and of which kind, proposed a certain type of measure. If the same option was proposed by many actors, of different kinds - environmental organisations, companies, and authorities - we interpreted that as strong, broad support for the proposal," explains Martin Persson.

The last two steps in the assessment of the measures were then about how complicated and expensive it would be to realise the proposals.

"For example, commissioning a research institute to investigate, at a detailed level, what drives deforestation - that would be quite easy. But a new tax or punitive duty at EU-wide level would be very difficult and costly to successfully implement. There are some measures, which the EU can take alone, while others require cooperation with the individual member states or third countries. And there we simply rated the institutional difficulty for implementation of each proposal," says Simon Bager.

The last aspect for assessing the political feasibility was looking at the economic impact of the proposal.

"If you influence a large import flow, that will result in major economic consequences. Directing the EU aid budget to support less forest-intensive production, meanwhile, would have a significantly smaller financial impact," says Martin Persson.

The consequences for the economy also depend on how much of a market is affected. It is important that a will to change taxation or regulation in the area exists.

A Japanese research group combined motion analysis that uses smartphone application and machine learning that uses an anomaly detection method, thereby developing a technique to easily screen for carpal tunnel syndrome. Carpal tunnel syndrome is common amongst middle-aged women. The disease causes compressed nerves in the wrist, causing numbness and difficulty with finger movements. While an accurate diagnosis can be reached with nerve conduction study, this is not widely used because it requires expensive devices and specialized skills. Thus, a simple screen tool that does not require any specialized knowledge or techniques is desired.

The research group of Dr. Koji Fujita of Tokyo Medical and Dental University and associate professor Yuta Sugiura of Keio University focused on increasingly poor movements of the thumb with the advancement of the disease, and analyzed its characteristics. They developed a game application for smartphones that is played using the thumbs and prepared a program that acquires the trajectory of the thumb during a game play and estimates the possibility of the disease with machine learning. The application can screen for possible carpal tunnel syndrome using a simple game that can be played in 30 sec - 1 minute. Even without gathering patient data, they were able to effectively construct an estimate mode from the data of 12 asymptomatic participants using the anomaly detection method. When this program was applied to 15 new asymptomatic subjects and 36 patients with carpal tunnel syndrome to verify its accuracy, the result was promising with 93% sensitivity, 69% specificity, and 0.86 Area Under the Curve (AUC)(1). This is equivalent or better than the results of physical examinations by expert orthopedic surgeons.

The developed tool can be used to screen for possible carpal tunnel syndrome at sites where no expert is present, such as at home or at a health center. In the future, the research group aims to develop a system that is able to encourage an examination by an expert when the disease is suspected in order to prevent exacerbation. It would prevent inconvenience and social loss associated with exacerbation of a disease, which is more common among women, and contribute to creating a society where women play an active role.

Astronomers found a number of stellar eggs containing baby stars around the center of the Milky Way using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Previous studies had suggested that the environment there is too harsh to form stars. These findings indicate that star formation is more resilient than researchers thought.

Stars form in stellar eggs, cosmic clouds of gas and dust which collapse due to gravity. If something interferes with the gravity driven contraction, star formation will be suppressed. There are many potential sources of interference near the Galactic Center. Strong turbulence can stir up the clouds and prevent them from contracting, or strong magnetic fields can support the gas against self-gravitational collapse. Previous observations indicated that star formation near the Galactic Center is much less efficient.

To investigate the mysteries of the suppressed star formation, a team led by Xing Lu, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, used ALMA to observe regions near the Galactic Center which contain ample gas, but no known star formation. Surprisingly, the team discovered more than 800 dense cores of gas and dust.

"The discovery leads to the question of whether they are actually 'stellar eggs' or not." explains Lu. To answer this question, the team again used ALMA to search for energetic gas outflows which are indicative of stars forming in stellar eggs. Thanks to ALMA's high sensitivity and high spatial resolution, they detected 43 small and faint outflows in the clouds. Lu comments, "our observations prove that even in the strongly disturbed areas around the Galactic Center, baby stars still form."

The research team is now analyzing ALMA's higher resolution observation data to better understand the processes driving the gas outflows and star formation near the Galactic Center.

Japan -- The tooth fairy is a welcome guest for any child who has lost a tooth. Not only will the fairy leave a small gift under the pillow, but the child can be assured of a new tooth in a few months. The same cannot be said of adults who have lost their teeth.

A new study by scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Fukui, however, may offer some hope. The team reports that an antibody for one gene -- uterine sensitization associated gene-1 or USAG-1 -- can stimulate tooth growth in mice suffering from tooth agenesis, a congenital condition. The paper was published in Science Advances.

Although the normal adult mouth has 32 teeth, about 1% of the population has more or fewer due to congenital conditions. Scientists have explored the genetic causes for cases having too many teeth as clues for regenerating teeth in adults.

According to Katsu Takahashi, one of the lead authors of the study and a senior lecturer at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, the fundamental molecules responsible for tooth development have already been identified.

"The morphogenesis of individual teeth depends on the interactions of several molecules including BMP, or bone morphogenetic protein, and Wnt signaling," says Takahashi.

BMP and Wnt are involved in much more than tooth development. They modulate the growth of multiple organs and tissues well before the human body is even the size of a raisin. Consequently, drugs that directly affect their activity are commonly avoided, since side effects could affect the entire body.

Guessing that targeting the factors that antagonize BMP and Wnt specifically in tooth development could be safer, the team considered the gene USAG-1.

"We knew that suppressing USAG-1 benefits tooth growth. What we did not know was whether it would be enough," adds Takahashi.

The scientists therefore investigated the effects of several monoclonal antibodies for USAG-1. Monoclonal antibodies are commonly used to treat cancers, arthritis, and vaccine development.

USAG-1 interacts with both BMP and Wnt. As a result, several of the antibodies led to poor birth and survival rates of the mice, affirming the importance of both BMP and Wnt on whole body growth. One promising antibody, however, disrupted the interaction of USAG-1 with BMP only.

Experiments with this antibody revealed that BMP signaling is essential for determining the number of teeth in mice. Moreover, a single administration was enough to generate a whole tooth. Subsequent experiments showed the same benefits in ferrets.

"Ferrets are diphyodont animals with similar dental patterns to humans. Our next plan is to test the antibodies on other animals such as pigs and dogs," explains Takahashi.

The study is the first to show the benefits of monoclonal antibodies on tooth regeneration and provides a new therapeutic framework for a clinical problem that can currently only be resolved with implants and other artificial measures.

"Conventional tissue engineering is not suitable for tooth regeneration. Our study shows that cell-free molecular therapy is effective for a wide range of congenital tooth agenesis," concludes Manabu Sugai of the University of Fukui, another author of the study.

A group of researchers from Russia, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland contest the common belief that resource-based economies have higher levels of within-country inequality than resource-scarce economies. The researchers document a direct causal link between natural resources and within-country inequality and conclude that the extraction of oil and gas can reduce inequality or has no significant effect on it. The results were published in the journal Empirical Economics.

"When we compare the natural resource rents to GDP 10 years after the discovery of natural resources vs. 1 year before the discovery, we observe that the resource rents increase by approximately 3 times in Denmark, 13 times in Norway, and 42 times in the Netherlands," says an associate professor of the department of economics at Ural Federal University and a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, co-author of the study Olga Popova. "However, we did not observe an increase in income inequality in the studied countries compared to the control ones. Moreover, in Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, inequality was significantly lower."

The researchers have examined the causal effect of natural resource discoveries on income inequality using data from 1947 to 2009 and applying the synthetic control method, a method proposed by American and European economists in early 2000s. They focused on the natural discoveries in Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway in the 1960-1970s and used top 1% and top 10% income shares as the measure of income inequality. The data was compared with the statistics of the same period on the income of the population in the control countries - Finland, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, France, Switzerland. These countries are comparable to Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands geographically and in terms of ethnic diversity, level of democracy, economic development, education, and health, but are not rich in natural resources.

The researchers believe that by the time the oil and gas were discovered in these countries, political and economic institutions were developed there. This blocked the risks of concentration of control over resources, property, and capital in the hands of the elites, expansion of the state apparatus, and the exacerbation of corruption.

"The maturity of democratic and market institutions hindered the flow of labor to the extractive industries and regions, prevented inflation, degradation of education, and technological lags. Combining these achievements, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands have avoided the "resource curse" and, ultimately, an increase in inequality," the researchers state.

Equal and fair redistribution of resource rents ensured real accountability of the government to voters, and an open and transparent economy. This happened, for example, with the help of national reserve fund and high taxes. This stimulated further economic growth, including in high-tech industries, the development of the social sphere, the creation of new jobs, and a salary growth. Moreover, these developments have occurred soon after the start of production and export of oil and gas resources. The result is the creation of welfare states and, at the same time, a 5-10% reduction in taxes on personal and corporate income by the end of the last decade.

"The key to understanding the causal link between the availability and use of natural resources, on the one hand, and income inequality, on the other, should be sought in the history of the producing countries, in the prevailing political and economic structures and principles," says Olga Popova.

Pedestrian movements are tricky to track, but now the first large-scale statistical analysis of pedestrian flow using anonymous phone data collected in three European capital cities, London, Amsterdam and Stockholm, has been conducted by researchers from KAUST with Swedish colleagues from Gothenburg.

Analyzing the flow of pedestrians through city streets provides insights into how city design influences walking behavior. Studies of pedestrian flow inform new urban developments, enable designers to define quieter areas and "urban buzz" zones and reveal how spaces are used at different times.

"In a previous study, we found strong links between the total number of people walking on a given street in one day and certain characteristics of the urban environment," says David Bolin at KAUST. Specifically, built density type, which is a variable based on the total floor space and ground space taken up by buildings on a street, correlated with the intensity of pedestrian flow, while the relative position of each street in a city -- its "centrality" or street type -- explained flow variations within each area.

Many similar studies have been hampered by methodological inconsistencies and small datasets, but this one had a large dataset.

"We took advantage of the power of large-scale data collection to determine if these same variables (density and street type) could explain both the full-day counts in different streets and the variations in flow over the day," says Bolin. "We developed a functional ANOVA model to explore our results."

Data was collected over three weeks in October 2017 from detection devices on almost 700 street segments across 53 neighborhoods. The detectors collected anonymous signals from mobile phones traveling at under 6 kilometers per hour to differentiate pedestrians from people traveling on transport.

"We chose streets that provided a wide mix of street types and density types from each city," says Bolin.

Daily total pedestrian counts were influenced by built density, street type and a street's "attraction variables", such as the presence of local markets or public transport stops. Built density explained the fluctuations in flow across the day but street type did not. There were also differences between each city, especially in the highest density built-up areas, making it difficult to generalize the findings to other cities. The model predicted pedestrian flow for certain parts of the three cities better than others.

"The results provide insights into the importance of street and density types in designing areas with different qualities," says Bolin. "Accurate predictions for other cities would require more data from multiple cities in different seasons."

Dwindling water supplies and a growing population will halve per capita water use in Jordan by the end of this century. Without intervention, few households in the arid nation will have access to even 40 liters (10.5 gallons) of piped water per person per day.

Low-income neighborhoods will be the hardest hit, with 91 percent of households receiving less than 40 liters daily for 11 consecutive months per year by 2100.

Those are among the sobering predictions of a peer-reviewed paper by an international team of 17 researchers published March 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Jordan's deepening water crisis offers a glimpse of challenges that loom elsewhere as a result of climate change, population growth, intensifying water use, demographic shocks and heightened competition for water across boundaries, said study co-author and Stanford hydrologist Steve Gorelick, who directs the Global Freshwater Initiative at Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment. The World Health Organization estimates half of humanity may live in water-stressed areas by 2025, and the United Nations anticipates water scarcity could displace 700 million people by 2030.

In Jordan, flows in the region's biggest river system - the Jordan-Yarmouk - have declined as a result of upstream diversion in Israel and Syria. Groundwater levels in some areas have dropped by more than 1 meter per year, and a major aquifer along Jordan's boundary with Saudi Arabia is heavily pumped on both sides of the border.

Demand for water has climbed largely because of population growth punctuated by waves of refugees, including more than 1 million Syrian refugees in the past decade.

Extreme water scarcity and wide disparities in public water supplies are potent ingredients for conflict. Jordan's water situation - long deemed a crisis - is now on the brink of "boiling over" into instability, said lead study author Jim Yoon, a water security and resilience scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

"Jordan's unique role as a bastion of peace in the region makes these findings all the more cause for concern," said Yoon, who began work on the study as a PhD student at Stanford University.

The U.N. has committed to ensuring sustainable freshwater management and universal access to clean water and sanitation as one of its 17 sustainable development goals. But until now, analytic frameworks have been lacking, said Gorelick, who led the Jordan Water Project and its continuation, the FUSE Project (Food-water-energy for Urban Sustainable Environments).

The new predictions derive from a first-of-its-kind computer model of Jordan's freshwater system that simulates interactions among natural processes and human behaviors. Under a range of climate and socioeconomic scenarios, the researchers quantified the effects of maintaining status quo versus introducing measures such as fixing leaky pipes, eliminating water theft, raising tariffs for big water users and reallocating a quarter of water from farms to cities.

The team's modeling suggests efforts to simultaneously increase supply, slash demand and reform distribution are likely to deliver "exponential" improvements in national water security.

Access to Jordan's public water supply today is highly unequal, with wealthier households and firms often supplementing rationed municipal supplies with costly deliveries from private tanker truck operators. German economist and study co-author Christian Klassert said, "Avoiding large disparities in public water supply will be necessary to avoid water stress under growing water scarcity in Jordan and regions around the world."

The many facets of Jordan's water crisis make it an especially valuable place to explore the impacts of individual versus simultaneous interventions, Gorelick said. Now that a model exists for this complex environment, it can be adapted with relative ease to other regions.

The single most effective step Jordan can take is to increase supply through large-scale desalination. One proposal among many Jordan has pursued to this end since the 1960s would desalinate water from the Red Sea in the south, transport freshwater north to the capital city Amman and dispose of the leftover highly saline water in the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea.

While water policy debates often present selected supply and demand interventions as opposing alternatives, the authors write, suites of interventions in both modes actually work best in concert.

"You would think that any one of these interventions would have a greater impact. But it turns out you have to do everything," Gorelick said.

For a country whose economic output per person is less than one-tenth that of the U.S., the scale and cost of near-total reform of its water sector are particularly daunting. "In water-scarce regions where sustainability planning is most needed, it is challenging to think beyond how to distribute scarce freshwater tomorrow, next month, and to some extent, in the next several years," Gorelick said. "It's in these places where our long-term policy evaluations are most valuable."

When humans look out at a visual landscape like a sunset or a beautiful overlook, we experience something -- we have a conscious awareness of what that scene looks like. This awareness of the visual world around us is central to our everyday existence, but are humans the only species that experiences the world consciously? Or do other non-human animals have the same sort of conscious experience we do?

Scientists and philosophers have asked versions of this question for millennia, yet finding answers -- or even appropriate ways to ask the question -- has proved elusive. But a team of Yale researchers recently devised an ingenious way to try to solve this riddle.

Writing on March 29 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they make the case that one non-human species -- the rhesus macaque -- also has a conscious awareness of the world around it.

"People have wondered for a long time whether animals experience the world the way we do, but it's been difficult to figure out a good way to test this question empirically," said Moshe Shay Ben-Haim, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale and first author of the paper.

Researchers have known for a long time that people can be influenced by unconscious subliminal cues -- visual stimuli presented just outside of our threshold for conscious awareness, said Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale who is co-senior author of the study along with her colleague Steve Chang, associate professor of psychology and of neuroscience, and Ran Hassin of Hebrew University.

"We tend to show different patterns of learning when presented with subliminal stimuli than we do for consciously experienced, or supraliminal stimuli," she said.

If monkeys show the same "double dissociation" pattern that humans do, it would mean that monkeys probably experience the supraliminally presented stimuli in the same way as people do -- as a conscious visual experience.

Ben-Haim, Santos, and their team thought of a novel way to explore whether macaques also exhibit a difference in learning when stimuli are experienced consciously versus non-consciously.

In a series of experiments, they had monkeys and humans guess whether a target image would appear on the left or right side of a screen. Before the target appeared, participants received a visual cue -- a small star-- on the side opposite of where the target would subsequently appear. The researchers varied whether the cue was presented supraliminally or subliminally. When the cue was presented for a few seconds, human participants successfully learned that the target would appear in the opposite location from the cue. But when the cue was presented subliminally -- quickly enough that it escaped people's conscious perception -- participants showed a different pattern of performance; they continued to choose the side that was subliminally cued, failing to learn the rule that the cue predicted the opposite side.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that monkeys showed exactly the same response patterns as the people did: like humans, macaques were able to successfully look to the target location when the cues were presented consciously, but showed the reverse pattern for subliminal cues. This striking result suggests that monkeys have two levels of processing just as humans do, one of which must be conscious.

"These results show that at least one non-human animal exhibits both non-conscious perception as well as human-like conscious visual awareness." said Ben-Haim. "We now have a new non-verbal method for assessing whether other non-human creatures experience visual awareness in the same way as humans."

Paris, Nairobi, London, 29 March 2021 - Five major cooling suppliers are racing to net zero but they represent fewer than ten per cent of the 54 suppliers assessed in a new report, meaning the industry has a lot of work to do to catch up on climate action and reduce pollution from the sector, currently estimated at 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

With the world still falling short of meeting the Paris Agreement goals of holding global temperature rise this century to under 2 degrees C, and pursue 1.5 degrees C, action to reduce the climate impact of cooling will be essential.

According to the International Energy Agency, emissions from cooling are expected to double by 2030 and triple by 2100, driven by heat waves, population growth, urbanization, and a growing middle class. By 2050, space cooling alone will consume as much electricity as China and India today.

The UN has identified cooling as a key sector for action in its Race to Zero Breakthroughs, which are intended to galvanise action ahead of the next global climate meeting, COP26, which is due to take place later this year.

However, Cooling Suppliers: Who's Winning the Race to Net Zero (available at https://bit.ly/3sBhnt0), finds that 49 out of 54 companies assessed have yet to commit to ambitious net-zero targets, despite some efforts to reduce their emissions.

The report - released by the Race to Zero campaign, the Kigali Cooling Efficiency Program (K-CEP), Carbon Trust and other partners in the UN Environment Programme-hosted Cool Coalition - assesses cooling firms against three key impact areas defined in the Cooling Climate Action Pathway.

These are:

Super-efficient equipment and appliances: Making super-efficient cooling equipment and smart appliances powered by zero-carbon energy the norm;

Ultra-low global warming potential refrigerants; and

Passive cooling: Widespread adoption of measures that avoid or reduce the need for mechanical cooling, including reductions in cooling loads, human-centric design and urban planning.

The report calls on cooling firms to show increased ambition to line up with net-zero commitments from over 100 governments and many other private sector actors.

One company that recently announced new commitments is Johnson Controls, a global leader for smart, healthy and sustainable buildings and producer of cooling equipment. The company has committed to moving its operations to net-zero emissions by 2040. Johnson Controls, which employs 100,000 people in more than 150 countries, is also a member of the Cool Coalition - a group of over 100 companies, governments, cities and organizations working to lower the climate impact of the cooling industry.

"Johnson Controls is proud of its recent commitment to achieve the most ambitious science-based targets by 2030 and net zero carbon emissions before 2040," said Clay Nesler, vice president global energy and sustainability at Johnson Controls. "Smart, healthy and sustainable cooling solutions are key to accelerating the race to zero for our company as well as our customers."

New tools to accelerate cooling action

To help other companies and countries join the race to net zero, Cool Coalition partners are also releasing a suite of products to guide their actions - with the support of K-CEP and the technical expertise of the Carbon Trust.

The report comes alongside the Pathway to Net Zero Cooling Action Plan for the COP26 Champions Team which highlights the areas where progress is needed. The action table has been endorsed by a range of leading organisations and institutions including CLASP, E3G, the Environmental Investigation Agency, IGSD, RMI, UN Environment Programme, University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford.

A 'Cool Calculator' scenario planning tool is also being launched to help companies and governments run simple calculations on key aspects of cooling decarbonization to enable them to identify the set of solutions that works best for them.

Additionally, the UK's Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has launched a net-zero cooling product guide that will allow companies, governments and consumers to cut their cooling footprint by choosing products that are energy-efficient and run on natural refrigerants with ultra-low Global Warming Potential.

"As consumers and producers of cooling look to reduce their carbon footprint, urgent action on both refrigerants and energy efficiency is needed," said Fionnuala Walravens, Senior Campaigner at EIA. "EIA's Pathway to net-zero cooling product list offers a range of climate-friendly solutions available now."

The EIA list also calls on governments to do more to support the uptake of sustainable cooling, by outlining cooling plans in their commitments under the Paris Agreement and looking at legislation to speed up the phasing out of hydrofluorocarbons - climate-warming refrigerants that are now being phased out under an international agreement known as the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.

"The development and expansion of net-zero cooling is a critical part of our Race to Zero emissions," said Nigel Topping, UK High Level Champion for COP26. "In addition to technological breakthroughs and ambitious legislation, we also need sustainable consumer purchasing to help deliver wholesale systems change, and as such I welcome the EIA cooling products guide as an important contribution to accelerating the race."

Additional quotes:

"Efforts to race to net zero cooling present an incredible opportunity to meet ambitious climate, environment and development goals and unlock the clean energy transition" said David Aitken, Director, Innovation at the Carbon Trust. "These tools show how we can get there."

"From healthcare and agriculture, to transportation and buildings, the environmental performance of cooling impacts many sectors' pathways to zero carbon emissions," said Dan Hamza-Goodacre, K-CEP's Non-Executive Director. "We won't get to net zero without concerted and ambitious action on cooling."

One of the biggest longitudinal research studies of its kind in the world led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) suggests that positive outcomes for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are more common than previously thought.

ASD refers to a group of neurodevelopmental conditions resulting in challenges related to communication, social understanding and behaviour. One in 100 people may have ASD and although a person can be diagnosed at any time, ASD symptoms generally appear and are diagnosed in the first few years of life.

The multi-site study, published in JAMA Open on March 29, applied a strengths-based approach to outcome assessments in children with an ASD diagnosis, measuring participants' proficiency (level of competency) and growth (improvement over time) in five key developmental health areas: communication, socialization, activities of daily living and emotional health (internalizing and externalizing).

The study found that 80 per cent of children experienced growth or proficiency in at least one of the five domains and 23 per cent of children were doing well in four or more of the domains by mid childhood. Core to the study approach was shifting the definition of a 'good outcome' to 'doing well'.

"It was encouraging to find that most ASD children were doing well by 10 years old by some measure. By using different criteria to track their development apart from those used to diagnose autism -- such as ASD symptoms and cognitive ability -- we were able to reframe more holistically how we conceptualized progress in the autism field," says co-author Dr. Peter Szatmari, Psychiatrist in Chief, Department of Psychiatry and Senior Scientist, Neurosciences & Mental Health at SickKids, and Chief of the Child and Youth Mental Health Collaborative between SickKids, CAMH and the University of Toronto.

"Specifying an outcome implies that there's an end point, whereas doing well relates to an individual's circumstances at a particular point in their life's journey with autism -- especially important since these kids are just at the start of a journey."

Strengths-based approach provides more holistic view of "doing well"

Historically, research literature and outcome evaluations have focused on the deficits people with ASD may experience in intellectual or skills development and less has been studied in the Canadian paediatric context.

The researchers followed 272 children diagnosed with ASD from clinics across Canada from the ages of 2 to 10 years old, or mid childhood, a notable age as children transition to greater autonomy and increased social and academic demands.

Unique to the approach was the use of growth as a measurement, which allowed for comparison of whether an individual child improved in a domain against their younger selves.

"Changing the narrative away from a deficit-based system to one that recognizes growth and success can serve as a foundation for building up each unique child as they tackle new skills and developmental stages in life," says Dr. Katherine Cost, co-author of the paper and Research Associate in the Department of Psychiatry at SickKids.

Family context may attribute to positive outcomes

The study also examined contextual factors such as household income, parent coping and family functioning (such as positive communication and support among family members).

The findings indicated that higher household income and better family functioning were important predictors in several aspects of doing well -- suggesting that adequate income and a well-functioning family may help improve outcomes for a child with ASD.

"Contextual factors like household and family functioning remind us that an autism diagnosis exists alongside the social context in which ASD children are growing up," says Cost.

Cost says while social and environmental factors have been studied in relation to their effects on child development, there is little research among children with autism.

A strengths-based perspective on an autism diagnosis can help support a more flexible approach to developing future interventions that's tailored to each child.

"There is no one way of doing well, but these findings open up a new avenue of research to assess what types of specific interventions, such as providing more income resources or alternative treatment planning for families at an earlier stage of development, may help increase the likelihood that more children with ASD will do well over time," says Szatmari.

The team - which also included researchers from Dalhousie University, McGill University, McMaster University, Simon Fraser University, Tel Aviv University, University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Ottawa and University of Toronto - says future research will focus on outcomes among adolescents with autism as well as ways to further incorporate the perspectives of the participants themselves in outcome definition and measurement.

It's no secret. Colorado's forests have had a tough time in recent years. While natural disturbances such as insect outbreaks and wildfires occurred historically and maintained forest health over time, multiple, simultaneous insect disturbances in the greater region over the past two decades have led to rapid changes in the state's forests.

A bird's eye view can reveal much about these changes. Annual aerial surveys conducted by the Colorado State Forest Service and USDA Forest Service have provided yearly snapshots for the state. New collaborative research led by Colorado State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison now supplements this understanding with even greater spatial detail.

The study, "Effects of Bark Beetle Outbreaks on Forest Landscape Pattern in the Southern Rocky Mountains, U.S.A.," analyzed Landsat satellite imagery between 1997-2019 to quantify how outbreaks of three different insect species have impacted forests across high-elevation forests in Colorado, southern Wyoming, and northern New Mexico. The research team found that while these collective beetle outbreaks impacted around 40 percent of the area studied, the effects of these outbreak varied due to differences in forest structures and species composition across the region.

"In contrast to research that has examined the heterogeneous effects of wildfire on trees, there hasn't been much work on the landscape-level variation in bark beetle effects on forests, particularly across broad areas," said Sarah Hart, co-author and assistant professor in the Forest and Rangeland Stewardship department. "Heterogeneity plays an important role in how these forests will look in the future, where surviving trees will regenerate the forest, and what potential there is for future outbreaks."

Their results indicate that most forest stands affected by insects still have mature trees that can be sources for reestablishing seeds and conditions for the next generation of trees to grow. Areas with tree mortality greater than 90 percent were relatively small and isolated. Unlike severe wildfires that can kill all trees in its path, trees typically survive bark beetle outbreaks, facilitating forest recovery in upcoming decades.

High-resolution, field-level accuracy

Widespread outbreaks of three important bark beetle species have occurred in Colorado's forests since the turn of the century: mountain pine beetle, spruce beetle, and the western balsam beetle (that affects various fir tree species). These bark beetles primarily target large trees with reduced defenses due to lower precipitation amounts and higher temperature trends since the turn of the century.

This research team combined satellite imagery capable of identifying small groups of dead trees with a decade of extensive field data from nearly 250 plots to develop presence and severity maps for tree mortality caused by bark beetle attacks. Having this data combination gave the research team detailed information about how many trees have died in particular places, and helped to identify what may still be causing the death of individual trees.

"These maps give us unique insight into the effects of recent insect outbreaks because they span a large area but also show a lot of detail, and we are confident that they are showing us how many trees are dying because technicians counted trees on the ground," Kyle Rodman, lead author and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said.

The maps the team produced indicate that areas most impacted by bark beetles are concentrated in northern and southwestern Colorado due to higher concentrations of old lodgepole pine and spruce forests which were then infested by mountain pine beetle and spruce beetle, respectively. Western balsam beetle impacts were also widespread across the region, but these beetles tended to kill fewer trees in any single location.

"Satellite data is a crucial bridge that allows us to take detailed information from individual places and extend this localized knowledge to large areas," Rodman said. "In using these maps, we can see how the forest has changed over the past 20 years during each of these outbreaks."

Fortunately, much of the 25,000 square kilometer study area showed low to moderate levels of tree mortality, with high tree mortality being contained in small and isolated patches averaging only about nine city blocks in overall size.

"People tend to notice what has changed, rather than what has stayed the same," Rodman said. "These forests have changed a lot, but I am hopeful. It will just take a little while for them to recover, but many of these beetle-killed forests are likely to recover within a few decades."

Below please find links to new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. All coronavirus-related content published in Annals of Internal Medicine is free to the public. A complete collection is available at
https://annals.org/aim/pages/coronavirus-content.

Spatial Inequities in COVID-19 Testing, Positivity, Confirmed Cases and Mortality
Usama Bilal, PhD; Loni P. Tabb, PhD; Sharrelle Barber, ScD; Ana V. Diez Roux, PhD
Original Research
Free full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-3936

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read the full text. The corresponding author, Usama Bilal, PhD, can be reached through Gregory Richter at gdr33@drexel.edu.

Injustice in Health: Now Is the Time to Change the Story
Gbenga Ogedegbe, MD, MPH; Sharon K. Inouye, MD, MPH
Editorial
Free full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-1279

Media contacts: A PDF for this editorial is not yet available. Please click the link to read the full text. The corresponding author, Sharon K. Inouye, MD, MPH, can be reached at agingbraincenter@hsl.harvard.edu.

Toward Understanding COVID-19 Recovery: National Institutes of Health Workshop on Postacute COVID-19
Andrea M. Lerner, MD; Daphne A. Robinson, PhD; Linda Yang, PhD; Carolyn F. Williams, PhD, MPH; Lori M. Newman, MD; Joseph J. Breen, PhD; Robert W. Eisinger, PhD; Johanna S. Schneider, PhD; Adaora A. Adimora, MD, MPH; Emily J. Erbelding, MD, MPH
Special Article: Research and Reporting Methods
Free full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M21-1043

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read the full text. For an interview with the corresponding author, Andrea M. Lerner, MD, please email niaidnews@niaid.nih.gov.

Update Alert 8: Epidemiology of and Risk Factors for Coronavirus Infection in Health Care Workers
Roger Chou, MD; Tracy Dana, MLS; David I. Buckley, MD, MPH; Shelley Selph, MD, MPH; Rongwei Fu, PhD; Annette M. Totten, PhD
Update
Free full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/L21-0143

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read the full text. The corresponding author, Roger Chou, MD, can be reached through Erik Robinson at robineri@ohsu.edu.

A growing number of young people are identifying as part of the LGBTQ+ community, and many are challenging binaries in gender and sexual identity to reflect a broader spectrum of experience beyond man or woman and gay or straight. But not everyone is participating equally in these diverse forms of expression, according to new research from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Psychology Professor Phillip Hammack's latest paper, published in the Journal of Adolescent Research, is shedding light on the social factors that can either hinder or support expression of diversity in sexual and gender identity among teens and young adults. In particular, regional differences and pressures to conform to masculinity may have a dampening effect on expression.

Hammack's research focused on teens between the ages of 14 and 18, who are among the younger members of Generation Z. Researchers wanted an in-depth understanding of these young people's experiences, so they performed detailed research at a small number of field sites in the San Francisco Bay Area and California's Central Valley.

These sites were selected to represent higher and lower levels of resources, rights, and visibility for sexual and gender diversity. Within these communities, researchers surveyed 314 LGBTQ+ teens and conducted extensive interviews with 28 LGBTQ+ youth informants and 24 adult LGBTQ+ leaders.

Almost a quarter of all LGBTQ+ youth surveyed expressed some form of nonbinary gender, and use of they/them pronouns was common. But there was a difference of more than 11 percentage points in the proportion of youth expressing nonbinary gender identity in the Bay Area compared to the Central Valley. Some study participants told researchers that, while they felt diverse sexuality is becoming more broadly normalized, gender diversity is still less accepted.

Researchers found that there was also less open discussion of sexual diversity in Central Valley communities compared to the Bay Area, but in this case, there was no corresponding difference in diversity of sexuality labeling. Study participants often mentioned finding information through the internet and social media, rather than their geographic communities.

"Being online is kind of like the great equalizer for LGBTQ youth, and I think that benefits them all tremendously," Hammack said.

Researchers also noticed that teens who were assigned female at birth seemed more comfortable with diverse forms of gender expression. Among teens in the study group who identified with a nonbinary gender label, 78.7 percent were assigned female at birth. There were also notably more transgender boys in the study than transgender girls.

During interviews, study participants consistently shared stories of how those who were assigned male at birth faced strong pressures to conform to standards of masculinity. Accounts of violence against transgender women of color were common in interviews, along with other fears that it might not be safe for those assigned male at birth to express nonconforming gender or sexual identities.

Hammack said he believes harmful "regulation of masculinity" may stem from feelings of insecurity among boys as gender hierarchies are being challenged. The paper's documentation of these trends contributes to the future of LGBTQ+ research and support.

Ultimately, perceptions of gender and sexuality labels can affect which types of resources are most accessible for teens. For example, Hammack said that cisgender gay males in the research areas were noticeably missing from LGBTQ+ support groups, which may indicate that these spaces are being perceived as "feminine."

Similarly, the study found that some identity labels are racialized in ways that may make boys of color less likely to identify with them. But targeted recruitment efforts could help LGBTQ+ support groups for teens to better reflect the true diversity of the community.

Hammack hopes his research might offer a window into that diversity to create greater acceptance and recognition across all labels.

"I've actually been trying to shift my speech away from saying LGBTQ+, with that uncomfortable plus sign, because there are so many identities that are not captured within that label," Hammack said. "I've been thinking about these issues instead as phenomena of sexual and gender diversity, and I'd like to see more researchers and educators recognizing those nuances within the community."

Humans are creating or exacerbating the environmental conditions that could lead to further pandemics, new University of Sydney research finds.

Modelling from the Sydney School of Veterinary Science suggests pressure on ecosystems, climate change and economic development are key factors associated with the diversification of pathogens (disease-causing agents, like viruses and bacteria). This has potential to lead to disease outbreaks.

The research, by Dr Balbir B Singh, Professor Michael Ward, and Associate Professor Navneet Dhand, is published in the international journal, Transboundary and Emerging Diseases.

They found a greater diversity of zoonotic diseases (diseases transmitted between animals and humans) in higher income countries with larger land areas, more dense human populations, and greater forest coverage.

The study also confirms increasing population growth and density are major drivers in the emergence of zoonotic diseases. The global human population has increased from about 1.6 billion in 1900 to about 7.8 billion today, putting pressure on ecosystems.

Associate Professor Dhand said: "As the human population increases, so does the demand for housing. To meet this demand, humans are encroaching on wild habitats. This increases interactions between wildlife, domestic animals and human beings which increases the potential for bugs to jump from animals to humans."

"To date, such disease models have been limited, and we continue to be frustrated in understanding why diseases continue to emerge," said Professor Ward, an infectious diseases expert.

"This information can help inform disease mitigation and may prevent the next COVID-19."

Other zoonotic diseases that have recently devastated human populations include SARS, avian (H5N1) and swine (H1N1) flu, Ebola and Nipah - a bat-borne virus.

Factors predicting disease

The researchers discovered country-level factors predicting three categories of disease: zoonotic, emerging (newly discovered diseases, or those diseases that have increased in occurrence or occurred in new locations), and human.

Zoonotic diseases: land area, human population density, and area of forest. Areas with high zoonotic disease diversity include Europe, North America, Latin America, Australia, and China.

Emerging diseases: land area, human population density and the human development index. Areas with high emerging disease diversity include Europe, North America,
Human diseases: high per capita health expenditure, mean annual temperature, land area, human population density, human development index and rainfall. Areas with high human disease diversity include North America, Latin America, China and India.

"Countries within a longitude of -50 to -100 like Brazil, developed countries like United States and dense countries such as India were predicted to have a greater diversity of emerging diseases," Professor Ward said.

The researchers also noted weather variables, such as temperature and rainfall, could influence the diversity of human diseases. At warmer temperatures, there tend to be more emerging pathogens.

The analyses demonstrate that weather variables (temperature and
rainfall) have the potential to influence pathogen diversity
These factors combined confirm human development - including human-influenced climate change - not only damages our environment but is responsible for the emergence of infectious diseases, such as COVID-19.

Using data to help prevent outbreaks

"Our analysis suggests sustainable development is not only critical to maintaining ecosystems and slowing climate change; it can inform disease control, mitigation, or prevention," Professor Ward said.

"Due to our use of national-level data, all countries could use these models to inform their public health policies and planning for future potential pandemics."