Culture

An international survey that included 600 smokers in the UK has found that cessation messaging focused on easing the burden on our health system is most effective in encouraging people to quit.

The research, which was conducted in April-May 2020, randomly assigned participants to view one of four quit smoking messages, two of which explicitly referenced health implications and COVID-19, one referred more vaguely to risk of chest infection, and one highlighted financial motivations for quitting.

"We wanted to explore the effectiveness of smoking cessation messaging at a time when health systems the world over are beleaguered, and all our lives have had to pivot into pandemic-response mode," said Professor Simone Pettigrew (Head of Food Policy at The George Institute for Global Health), who led the research.

All four messages were effective in terms of increasing participants' intentions to quit within a fortnight and prompting them to seek additional information around COVID-19 risk, with the two messages that specifically mentioned COVID-19 the most impactful:

MESSAGE A. By quitting now, you can reduce your chances of experiencing complications from the coronavirus if you become infected. This will help our overstretched health services to cope with the huge increase in patients.

MESSAGE B. Quit now - it's never too late. Smoking damages your lungs so they don't work as well. This means smokers are more likely to have severe complications if infected by the coronavirus.

Message A (referring to both personal consequences and to the impact on the functioning of the health system) landed best with participants, 34% of whom reported intention to quit and 44% sought additional information about the risks of COVID for smokers.

The latest figures from NHS England reflect a heavily loaded health system, with adult critical care bed occupancy at 67% across England. Public Health England is advising smokers to quit to improve their chances of avoiding infection and surviving COVID-19 if contracted.

This research can help tailor such communication for optimal impact, prioritising messages that reference COVID-related health risk.

A new study suggests that clearing the invasive woody weed Prosopis julifora and grassland restoration in Baringo County, Kenya, may have significant financial benefits for local stakeholders and contribute to climate change mitigation.

Climate change, land degradation, and invasive alien species (IAS) such as Prosopis julifora are major threats to people's livelihoods in arid and semi-arid areas with each of these having negative impacts on ecosystem services - including vegetation biomass, which is a prime resource for pastoralists and agro-pastoralists.

The team, comprising PhD students and established scientists from four countries and different disciplinary backgrounds, developed land use scenarios and assess what the implications of Prosopis management and grassland restoration are for soil carbon accumulation and local communities.

The scientists studied the impacts of Prosopis invasion and grassland degradation on soil organic carbon (SOC) in nine sublocations in Baringo County where it was introduced in the 1980s and promoted by the Kenyan government to provide wind breaks, a source of timber, fuelwood and charcoal.

The study combined data collected by several PhD students of the Woody Weeds project, such as socio-economic data to determine the size of the budget available for Prosopis management (Bekele et al. 2018) and the financial benefits of making charcoal from removed trees, soil measurements to assess changes in SOC following Prosopis removal (Mbaabu et al. 2020) and establishment of grassland. The data were linked to spatially-explicit land cover and land use maps derived from satellite data (Mbaabu et al. 2019). Then, spatially explicit Invasive Alien Species (IAS) management and restoration scenarios were generated.

Dr René Eschen, an ecologist working for CABI in Switzerland and lead author of the paper, said, "While Prosopis does provide these benefits, it has also spread rapidly across a large area, leading to a loss of native vegetation, agricultural areas and grazing land. These changes are primarily driven by Prosopis invasion, along with human activities like deforestation, land clearing, overgrazing, and climate change.

"Our results show that the one-off budget based on the average willingness to pay expressed by inhabitants of Baringo would suffice to manage a considerable area of
Prosopis in Baringo in a single year, and that the conversion of invaded areas into grassland would provide significant financial benefits. A sustained effort over several years might enable sustainable management of a large part of the areas invaded with Prosopis in most sublocations.

"The results also indicate what generates the financial benefit and which areas could be prioritized for treatment. Although Prosopis management is expensive, the results suggest that a large part of the costs in Baringo can be offset by immediate financial benefits from the sale of charcoal. This is important, because the affected communities have limited human and financial resources for environmental management."

The researchers also argue that there are financial and immaterial benefits of restoring grasslands that may re-establish within 30 years if they are not overgrazed. They say that part of the benefits could, in fact, be realized within less than 10 years with only the full accumulation of SOC needing three decades.

Dr Sandra Eckert, remote sensing specialist of the Centre for Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland, said, "Grasslands provide non-monetary benefits, including cultural and regulating services including the regulation of climate, floods and erosion. However, the likelihood of grasses establishing depends on suitable climatic conditions and grazing management.

"With climate change and the associated higher variability of the beginning and duration of the various seasons, grass is considered a more secure crop compared to local staple crops like maize or beans; particularly perennial grass species require less rain for completion of a cropping cycle. Growing grass for seed production is widespread in some of the sublocations, and farmers can also sell the hay."

"Spatial and integrative management scenarios should be used more extensively to support land management decisions, especially where natural as well as financial resources are scarce and where the costs and benefits of managing IAS are unequally distributed among local stakeholders."

This study of Prosopis in Baringo County shows that relatively small investment in IAS clearing and restoration of degraded grassland in Eastern Africa may result in significant benefits for local communities managing the land that will support traditional livelihoods and increase SOC in the long term.

Dr Charles Kilawe, an ecologist from Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania, said that the benefits realized from the management of Prosopis juliflora revealed by this study should not be used to promote the introduction of the species to new areas, as this would likely cause serious negative environmental and livelihood impacts.

Dr Eschen concluded, "Addressing climate change and land degradation are major issues that affect livelihoods of many people and that require targeted use of scarce financial resources. This study describes IAS management scenarios using a novel spatial and integrated approach using various detailed data about IAS distribution and density, management costs, financial benefits and land use history.

"Integrating and linking such data may be particularly useful to develop accurate and realistic IAS management scenarios that can be used to illustrate costs and benefits of management interventions, where they are most needed and most cost-effective, and thus help stakeholders select the most appropriate and feasible approach that suits their needs."

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0010, Yidan Wang, Gary Tse and Guoliang Li from The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Shaanxi, China and Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin, China consider how running with face masks or respirators can be detrimental to the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.

The use of face masks and respirators is an important public health measure to reduce or prevent transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Here the authors discuss the hypothetical mechanisms by which exercise with face masks or respirators can induce detrimental effects on the cardiovascular system, potentially explaining adverse events such as cardiac arrhythmias and spontaneous pneumothorax. Although sudden death associated with the wearing of a face mask during running is a rare event, the risk is higher especially in those with existing cardiac comorbidities. In such cases, a mask designed specifically for runners with no or few side effects of oxygen deficiency should be considered instead.

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0009, Wenxiu Liu, Yutong Guo, Yue Liu, Jiaxing Sun and Xinhua Yin from The First Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Heilongjiang, China consider calcium-sensing receptors of immune cells and diseases.

The authors review current knowledge of the role of CaSR in immune cells. Calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR), which was initially found in the parathyroid gland, is ubiquitously expressed and exerts specific functions in multiple cells, including immune cells. CaSR is functionally expressed on neutrophils, monocytes/macrophages, and T lymphocytes, but not B lymphocytes, and regulates cell functions, such as cytokine secretion, chemotaxis, phenotype switching, and ligand delivery. In these immune cells, CaSR is involved in the development of many diseases, such as sepsis, cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes, rheumatism, myocardial infarction, diabetes, and peripheral artery disease. Since its discovery, it has been controversial whether CaSR is expressed and plays a role in immune cells.

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0006, Li Jingxiu, Zhang Fujun, Wei Xijin and Peng Ding from Anhui Provincial Hospital, Hefei, China, Chizhou Second People's Hospital, Chizhou, China, The Affiliated Hospital of Shandong University of TCM, Jinan, China and The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Qingyuan, China consider using three-dimensional Lorenz Scatter Plots to detect patients with atrioventricular node double path caused by interpolated ventricular premature systoles.

A series of related electrophysiology phenomena can be caused by the occurrence of interpolated ventricular premature contraction. The authors recent three-dimensional Lorenz R-R scatter plot research showed that atrioventricular node double path caused by interpolated ventricular premature contraction imprints a specific pattern on three-dimensional Lorenz plots generated from 24-hour Holter recordings.

The authors found two independent subclusters separated from the interpolated premature beat precluster, the interpolated premature beat cluster, and the interpolated premature beat postcluster, respectively. Combined with use of the trajectory tracking function and the leap phenomenon, the results reveal the presence of the atrioventricular node double conduction path.

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0001, Zesen Han, Lihong Lai, Zhaokun Pu and Lan Yang from The People's Hospital of Hua County, Henan, China and Henan University of Science and Technology, Henan, China consider the use of nomograms to predict patients with obstructive coronary artery disease.

The authors developed and validated clinical prediction models for the development of a nomogram to estimate the probability of patients having coronary artery disease (CAD).

An individualized clinical prediction model for patients with CAD allowed an accurate estimation in Chinese populations. The Akaike information criterion is a better method in screening risk factors. The net reclassification improvement and integrated discrimination improvement are better than the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve in discrimination. Decision curve analysis can be used to evaluate the efficiency of clinical prediction models.

In a new publication from Cardiovascular Innovations and Applications; DOI https://doi.org/10.15212/CVIA.2021.0002, Pei Huang, Yi Zhang, Yi Tang, Qinghua Fu, Zhaofen Zheng, Xiaoyan Yang, Yingli Yu from The First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Normal University) Chang Sha, China and Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Tianjin, China consider the study of the left atrial function index in cardiovascular disease.

Some studies have shown that left ventricular structure and function play an important role in the risk stratification and prognosis of cardiovascular disease. The clinical application of left atrial function in cardiovascular disease has gradually attracted attention in the cardiovascular field.

There are many traditional methods to evaluate left atrial function. Left atrial function related indexes measured by echocardiography has been identified as a powerful predictor of cardiovascular disease in recent years, but they have some limitations. The left atrial function index has been found to evaluate left atrial function more effectively than traditional parameters. Furthermore, it is a valuable predictor of the risk stratification and prognosis in patients with clinical cardiovascular disease such as heart failure, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, and coronary heart disease.

One million species are under threat of extinction worldwide, primarily due to adverse human impact. The loss of a species is an ethical tragedy, but additionally, it can have dramatic effects on the functioning of ecosystems on Earth. In each ecosystem, species have their roles, just like actors do in a play. These roles depend on the characteristics of the species, like their size, weight, shape, reproductive capacity, or the food resources they use. If some species are similar, they can sometimes substitute each other and keep the ecosystem going even if one of them is lost. However, the accumulated loss of many species can lead to ecosystem degradation with a direct adverse effect on human well-being.

There are so many different species of various kinds that it is extremely difficult to generalize the global functional variation and understand the functional consequences of biodiversity loss. A research group from the University of Tartu took the challenge and compiled data on characteristics of more than 75,000 species of plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, and freshwater fish. The unprecedented global summary of organisms' functions was just published in Science Advances.

All species were projected onto a so-called functional space - a mathematical abstraction of their form and function. In this functional space, similar species are located close to each other, and dissimilar species are far. Overall, the functional space has some "regions" with plenty of species and others with just a few. The leading author, Dr Carlos P. Carmona, notes, "A very interesting result that we found is that, in all these groups, more than half of the species are responsible for less than 20% of the functions performed by the group, therefore implying that 80% of the remaining functions are performed by few species which are functionally unique."

Some particular functions performed by a taxonomic group, such as plants, mammals or freshwater fish, may be shared among many species or only supported by a few species. For example, on a global scale, there are many species of grasses that have similar features and perform similar functions, but there are not many species with the features of a redwood. In the case of functions performed by many species, it is unlikely that the extinction of some of these species will strongly affect the functions of the whole group. On the contrary, if certain functions are performed by only one or a few species, their disappearance will lead to a reduction in the range of functions performed by the entire group.

The research group also explored how much we can lose from the functional space if these one million threatened species do go extinct. Dr Carmona continues, "We wanted to explore how extinctions will affect the functioning of different groups of organisms. We found that large, long-lived, and low-fertility species are universally more likely to be threatened. This is bad news because we know that the largest plants and animals play a hugely important role in functions such as soil fertility, seed dispersion or carbon storage. Their extinction would therefore cause an overall reorganization of the range of functions performed."

Since many species can substitute each other's roles, the functional decline would be up to 5%, with the most dramatic losses happening to freshwater fish. This percentage is lower than the potential loss of species numbers. Still, it can have a major influence on the ecosystem services to humans, like clean air and water, soil fertility, our own food, medicines, building material, or good physical and mental health. In addition, a very large part of the functional space will rely on a much lower number of species, and possible subsequent biodiversity loss will already have a much more dramatic effect.

Dr Carmona also has a clear suggestion to nature conservation authorities: "We propose that species providing unique trait combinations should have a top conservation priority because losing them would imply the complete disappearance of their functions from Earth."

For people with tooth decay, drinking a cold beverage can be agony.

"It's a unique kind of pain," says David Clapham, vice president and chief scientific officer of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). "It's just excruciating."

Now, he and an international team of scientists have figured out how teeth sense the cold and pinpointed the molecular and cellular players involved. In both mice and humans, tooth cells called odontoblasts contain cold-sensitive proteins that detect temperature drops, the team reports March 26, 2021, in the journal Science Advances. Signals from these cells can ultimately trigger a jolt of pain to the brain.

The work offers an explanation for how one age-old home remedy eases toothaches. The main ingredient in clove oil, which has been used for centuries in dentistry, contains a chemical that blocks the "cold sensor"protein, says electrophysiologist Katharina Zimmermann, who led the work at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany.

Developing drugs that target this sensor even more specifically could potentially eliminate tooth sensitivity to cold, Zimmermann says. "Once you have a molecule to target, there is a possibility of treatment."

Mystery channel

Teeth decay when films of bacteria and acid eat away at the enamel, the hard, whitish covering of teeth. As enamel erodes, pits called cavities form. Roughly 2.4 billion people - about a third of the world's population - have untreated cavities in permanent teeth, which can cause intense pain, including extreme cold sensitivity.

No one really knew how teeth sensed the cold, though scientists had proposed one main theory. Tiny canals inside the teeth contain fluid that moves when the temperature changes. Somehow, nerves can sense the direction of this movement, which signals whether a tooth is hot or cold, some researchers have suggested.

"We can't rule this theory out," but there wasn't any direct evidence for it, says Clapham a neurobiologist at HHMI's Janelia Research Campus. Fluid movement in teeth - and tooth biology in general - is difficult to study. Scientists have to cut through the enamel - the hardest substance in the human body - and another tough layer called dentin, all without pulverizing the tooth's soft pulp and the blood vessels and nerves within it. Sometimes, the whole tooth "will just fall to pieces," Zimmermann says.

Zimmerman, Clapham, and their colleagues didn't set out to study teeth. Their work focused primarily on ion channels, pores in cells' membranes that act like molecular gates. After detecting a signal - a chemical message or temperature change, for example - the channels either clamp shut or open wide and let ions flood into the cell. This creates an electrical pulse that zips from cell to cell. It's a rapid way to send information, and crucial in the brain, heart, and other tissues.

About fifteen years ago, when Zimmermann was a postdoc in Clapham's lab, the team discovered that an ion channel called TRPC5 was highly sensitive to the cold. But the team didn't know where in the body TRPC5's cold-sensing ability came into play. It wasn't the skin, they found. Mice that lacked the ion channel could still sense the cold, the team reported in 2011 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

After that, "we hit a dead end," Zimmermann says. The team was sitting at lunch one day discussing the problem when the idea finally hit. "David said, 'Well, what other tissues in the body sense the cold?' Zimmermann recalls. The answer was teeth.

The whole tooth

TRPC5 does reside in teeth - and more so in teeth with cavities, study coauthor Jochen Lennerz, a pathologist from Massachusetts General Hospital, discovered after examining specimens from human adults.

A novel experimental set up in mice convinced the researchers that TRPC5 indeed functions as a cold sensor. Instead of cracking a tooth open and solely examining its cells in a dish, Zimmermann's team looked at the whole system: jawbone, teeth, and tooth nerves. The team recorded neural activity as an ice-cold solution touched the tooth. In normal mice, this frigid dip sparked nerve activity, indicating the tooth was sensing the cold. Not so in mice lacking TRPC5 or in teeth treated with a chemical that blocked the ion channel. That was a key clue that the ion channel could detect cold, Zimmermann says. One other ion channel the team studied, TRPA1, also seemed to play a role.

The team traced TRPC5's location to a specific cell type, the odontoblast, that resides between the pulp and the dentin. When someone with a a dentin-exposed tooth bites down on a popsicle, for example, those TRPC5-packed cells pick up on the cold sensation and an "ow!" signal speeds to the brain.

That sharp sensation hasn't been as extensively studied as other areas of science, Clapham says. Tooth pain may not be considered a trendy subject, he says, "but it is important and it affects a lot of people."

Zimmermann points out that the team's journey towards this discovery spanned more than a decade. Figuring out the function of particular molecules and cells is difficult, she says. "And good research can take a long time."

Water scarcity is often understood as a problem for regions experiencing drought, but a new study led by Tufts University researchers finds that not only can localized water shortages impact the global economy, but changes in global demand can have positive and negative ripple effects in river basins across the globe.

In addition to Tufts engineers, the team included experts from the Joint Global Change Research Institute at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Cornell University.

"We're finding that water scarcity dynamics are more complicated than traditionally acknowledged," said Flannery Dolan, a graduate student at Tufts University and lead author of the study. "Changing water supply due to climate change is only part of the story. Regional water scarcity is also driven by changes in global water demands that are often hard to anticipate."

The study, "Evaluating the economic impact of water scarcity in a changing world," was published March 26 in Nature Communications, and uniquely captures the interdependent effects of global trade, population and technological growth, climate change, and land management decisions on regional river basins' water scarcity and economic capacity to adapt to that scarcity.

The researchers used a computer model to simulate thousands of scenarios that reflect a broad array of potential climate, socioeconomic, and hydrologic (earth water cycles and management) conditions in 235 major river basins to better understand how regional water scarcity can have far-ranging impacts on the global economy. Those effects can include altering global trade and consumption patterns in industries such as agriculture, energy, transportation, and manufacturing.

"We are looking at water scarcity as a globally connected and multi-sector phenomenon," said Jonathan Lamontagne, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Tufts University and corresponding author of the study. "As a result, the study reveals some interesting and sometimes unexpected insights into how local conditions can have reverberations across the globe."

The research found that global trade dynamics and market adaptations to regional water scarcity can result in positive or negative economic outcomes in every regional river basin considered in the study, depending on both water supply (rainfall, snowmelt, and ground water), and demand-side factors like agricultural production, power generation, and municipal use.

For instance, in the lower Colorado River basin, the worst economic outcomes arise from limited groundwater availability and high population growth, but that high population growth can also prove beneficial under some hydrologic conditions. In contrast, the future economic outcomes in the Indus Basin depend largely on global land-use policies that discourage carbon emissions that can, in turn, encourage overuse of groundwater supplies.

"What is happening elsewhere in the world through differences in regional choices related to energy transitions, how land is being managed, as well as different regional water demands and adaptive choices, can shape relative advantages and disadvantages of a region's water intensive economic activities," said Patrick Reed, the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell.

Restrictions in water availability usually lead to a negative regional economic impact, but the research revealed that some regions can experience a positive economic impact if they hold an advantage over other water basins and become a virtual exporter of water. The Orinoco basin in Venezuela, for example, usually has a reliable supply of water and is often in a relative position that can benefit when other regions are under stress, according to the researchers.

The study also found that small differences in projections for future climate conditions can yield very large differences in the economic outcomes for water scarcity.

"Human activities and market responses can strongly amplify the economic effects of water scarcity, but the conditions that lead to this amplification vary widely from one basin to the next," said Lamontagne.

A river basin can be considered economically robust if it is able to adapt to drought with alternative sources of water or adjust economic activity to limit usage. If a basin is unable to adapt its supply options and if prolonged water scarcity leads to persistent economic decline, then the researchers describe the loss in water basin adaptive capacity as having reached an 'economic tipping point.'

For example, in the Indus region in South Asia, the water supply is under stress due to heavy agricultural use and irrigation leading to unsustainable consumption of groundwater, which places it close to the tipping point.

The conditions that lead to these tipping points are highly variable from basin to basin, depending on a combination of local factors and global conditions. In the Arabian Peninsula, low groundwater availability and pricing of carbon emissions are key factors. In the lower Colorado River basin, a mixture of low groundwater availability, low agricultural productivity, and strong economic demands from the U.S. and Europe lead to tipping points.

"It is noteworthy that the lower Colorado River basin has some of the most uncertain and widely divergent economic outcomes of water scarcity of the basins analyzed in this study," said Reed. "This implies that assumed differences in regional, national and global human activities as well as the intensity of climate change can dramatically amplify the uncertainty in the basin's outcomes."

As climate change makes the physical and economic effects of water scarcity more challenging for policy makers to understand, the researchers hope their work will provide the basis for similar analyses and draw attention to the importance of expanded data collection to improve modeling and decision making.

What The Study Did: Insurance claims were used to assess patterns of telehealth use across surgical specialties before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Authors: Grace F.Chao, M.D., M.Sc., of the National Clinician Scholars Program at the University of Michigan and Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor in Michigan, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2021.0979)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Scientists have developed a method to use lasers to control the movement of nanodiamonds with fluorescent centers.

Scientists have long been working on improving their ability to use lasers to move small objects without actually touching them. This method of 'optical trapping and manipulation' is already utilized in optics, biological sciences and chemistry. But objects become much more difficult to control once they grow to nanoscale size.

Now, a team of scientists including Hokkaido University's Keiji Sasaki and Osaka Prefecture University and Osaka University's Hajime Ishihara have found a way to move diamond nanoparticles of about 50 nanometres in diameter, using opposing lasers. Their experiments, published in the journal Science Advances, aim to further research into the development of applications in fields like biological imaging and quantum computing.

"We believe our approach can enable a new class of optical force methodologies to investigate the characteristics of advanced nanomaterials and quantum materials and to develop state-of-the-art nanodevices," says Sasaki.

Nanodiamonds have carbon atom lattices that sometimes contain an imperfection in which two neighbouring carbon atoms are replaced with a nitrogen atom and a vacancy (fluorescent center), which affect their quantum mechanical properties; nanoparticles react to light differently depending on their quantum mechanical property. Nanodiamonds with this fluorescent center (resonant nanodiamonds) absorb green light and emit red fluorescence and are being investigated for applications in biological imaging, sensing and single-photon sources. Nanodiamonds without fluorescent centers are non-resonant.

Sasaki and his colleagues soaked an optical nanofiber in solutions of nanodiamonds with and without fluorescent centers. Shining a green laser through one end of the nanofiber trapped a single nanodiamond with fluorescent centres and transported it away from the laser.

The scientists demonstrated that, when a green and a red laser were shone on the nanodiamonds from opposite sides of the optical nanofiber, the movement of resonant and non-resonant nanodiamonds could be independently controlled: For the non-resonant nanodiamonds, the red laser pushes them more strongly than the green laser; however, the resonant ones absorb the red laser light and are hence pushed more strongly by the green laser. Thus, they could be sorted based on their optical properties. Furthermore, the number of fluorescent centers in the resonant nanodiamonds could be quantified by observing their movements under these conditions.

By using this technique to trap and manipulate nanodiamonds, the scientists have demonstrated a proof of concept. Their next step would be to apply it to organic dye-doped nanoparticles, which can be used as nanoprobes in biodetection systems.

Leesburg, VA, March 26, 2021--According to ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), updated United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) lung cancer screening (LCS) guidelines based solely on age, pack-years, and quit-years perpetuate eligibility disparities among racial and ethnic minorities, although incorporating certain risk prediction models may help reduce such inequalities.

By pulling data from the 2015 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), Journal of the National Cancer Institute researchers (Landy et al.) were able to "estimate the effects of USPSTF-2020 guidelines on disparities in LCS eligibility for the non-institutionalized civilian US population," wrote Massachusetts General Hospital radiologists Efrén J. Flores and Anand K. Narayan in their AJR critique. In connecting this NHIS dataset to the National Death Index, the original researchers were able to not only estimate eligibility but also model any possible effects of guideline changes on preventable lung cancer deaths.

"However," Flores and Narayan contended, "by modeling the effects of changes instead of measuring actual outcomes, the authors' conclusions that LCS disparities can be nearly eliminated by using alternative eligibility criteria reflects an aspirational goal." In fact, updated criteria must be used alongside outreach efforts to ensure equitable access and appropriate follow-up.

To define eligibility based on individual risk as well as life expectancy, Landy et al. used the Life-Years From Screening-CT (LYFS-CT) model, despite the fact that life expectancy may limit access for minorities who have shorter life expectancies. Moreover, the initial investigators assumed that LCS would reduce lung cancer mortality by 20% for all racial and ethnic groups, even though previous studies have suggested that minorities may experience greater reductions in lung cancer mortality from LCS.

Ultimately, because LYFS-CT may exclude minority patients who could benefit from LCS and underestimate the benefits of LCS, the authors of this AJR article suggested "augmenting LCS eligibility for minority patients using combinations of models"--specifically, the PLCOm2012 model in conjunction with LYFS-CT and USPSTF-2020.

Every year, millions of people around the world are displaced from their homes due to severe weather caused by climate change. According to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, 10.3 million people were displaced as a result of climate-?related events in the last six months alone - four times the number displaced by war and conflict in the same period. One of the main causes of displacement is flooding. A recent example is the situation in eastern Australia, where tens of thousands of people are having to flee their homes to seek safety from this hundred-?year flood.

An international research team led by the Weather and Climate Risks Group at ETH Zurich has just published a new study aimed at providing a better understanding of future displacement risks due to flooding from rivers overflowing their banks. Their study also evaluates the influence of climate change as well as demographic and socioeconomic factors on these risks.

Population growth greatly increases risk

Using a variety of climate, hydrology and population distribution models, the researchers show that if the population remains stable at its current level, the risk of flood-?related displacement increases by more than 50 percent (relative to 2010 levels) for each degree of global warming.

However, the world's population is growing. Even if this growth continues towards a more sustainable path, the risk of displacement will still increase significantly: assuming that the world meets the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2° Celsius, the globally averaged risk is projected to rise by up to 110 percent by the end of this century.

However, under "business as usual" climate-?change conditions and if the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, the risk is projected to increase even more dramatically. For this scenario, the researchers calculated that the risk of displacement due to flooding would be up to 350 percent higher.

Rapid action needed

According to the study's authors, it is not yet too late to address and manage the risk of flood displacement through spatial and urban planning measures and protective infrastructure such as dams. "Our findings highlight the need for rapid action on both climate mitigation and adaptation agendas in order to reduce future risks, especially to vulnerable populations," says Pui Man Kam, lead author of the study and doctoral student in ETH Professor David N. Bresch's group. "Floods often affect the most socio-?economically vulnerable groups, who tend to live in more hazard-?prone areas," she explains.

To conduct their study, the researchers used a global climate-?, hydrology-? and inundation-?modelling chain to quantify the effect of global warming on displacement risk for both current and projected future population distributions. The study has just been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

"Because floods are a major driver of displacement and due to the fact that they are influenced by climate change, it is imperative that we have a better understanding of how the risks are changing," Kam says.

Apple flies have fascinated scientists right from the mid-19th century, as they are a captivating example of speciation, the beginning of a new species. Correspondence between Charles Darwin and Benjamin Walsh, who observed the apple flies and hawthorn flies in North America, began the rich history of this scientific question in evolutionary biology. When settlers in North America introduced apple trees to the region, what happened within the hawthorn flies to make them shift to this new host plant in the last 300 years?

Continuing the 160-year-old inquiry into the origins of the apple fly, a team of scientists from around the world has just published their research in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The researchers span three continents, from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, the University of Trans-Disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology, the University of Notre Dame, Free University Berlin, and Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. They have been probing the neurological processes which underlie important behavioural changes in the apple fly: preference toward a new host plant and mate choice. These behavioural changes contributed to a rapid shift from hawthorn flies into a derived race of apple-infesting flies.

Hawthorn flies and apple flies are specialist insects, they feed only on a particular fruit, either the hawthorn berries or ripe apples. They also mate on or near the fruit and lay their eggs within it. What is interesting about the apple and hawthorn flies is that each generation emerges with a specific preference for the odour of ripe fruit that they use to locate their host and a strong aversion to the odour of the other fruit. What makes these two races of flies distinct?

Using recordings of electrical activity and imaging the brains of the flies, the team identified that both apple and hawthorn flies use the same brain regions to process odours, but switch the locations of processing. In other words, where apple flies process the main apple odour (butyl hexanoate) is the same location in the brain where hawthorn flies process the major hawthorn odour (3-methyl-1-butanol), and vice versa. Thus, the locations for preference and aversion to fruit odours stay the same, while the odours that are processed there are inverted.

The scientists were able to locate the specific point where this difference emerges. It is at the very first synapse in the olfactory system, called the antennal lobe. "The most surprising part to me was actually seeing olfactory processing be so clearly different between the apple and hawthorn infesting host races. We knew these flies have divergent odour preference behaviours and patterns of genetic differentiation. Now, from this work we know their sensory neurophysiology differs as well,' says Cheyenne Tait, the first author of the study.

It is possible that a simple shift in the processing of important sensory information might be a major contributor to the diverse species we see. "We are seeing the stuff of speciation. The origin of new species is one of the great questions that has piqued the intellectual curiosity of humankind. Resolving the question of speciation is of great scientific importance and the ongoing evolution of apple and hawthorn host races of Rhagoletis is connected to life itself, or the origin of new life forms," says Jeffrey L. Feder, an expert in evolutionary biology and one of the scientists involved in the study.

Through the change in the neurological processing of the fruit odor, a change at a species scale can be triggered. Shannon Olsson explains her fascination with the flies, "What is most remarkable to me is the simplicity of the switch - these flies simply changed their minds along with their species. Such a subtle shift in the processing of important sensory information in the brain could be contributing to the change in behaviour that helps drive their evolution into new species."

This is not simply a question of the past, or the evolutionary history of one species, "This discovery has important implications for how animals such as insects can quickly adapt and change their behaviour to new environments, such as with invasive species, or respond to human-influenced changes in climate or land use," adds Shannon. Many subfields of biology came together for this study to understand more about these two flies. There is more to discover as scientists tackle evolution from new perspectives and with exciting advances in technology that can be used to study these questions.