Culture

Hip-hop is one of the world's most popular musical genres. Seven of the 10 most streamed artists in the US are rappers. With almost 50 years of history, hip-hop has evolved to give rise to many sub-genres that appeal to different people in diverse ways.

With social media being a contributing factor, more than ever before, hip-hop artists are publicly acknowledging their mental health struggles, promoting anti-stigma campaigns around mental health, and encouraging people to seek professional treatment.

The Hip Hop Psych co-founders said: "Hip-hop can be a vehicle to tackle stigma around mental health and address cultural imbalances. Hip-hop connects with hard-to-reach groups, particularly men within the Black community.

"Underrepresented communities are at a higher risk of developing mental health problems, and they are more likely to experience worsened mental health outcomes. This is in part, due to socioeconomic disparities. They are also less likely to use mental health services. Stigma around mental health issues is prevalent in underserved communities and it is a significant barrier to accessing health services.

"Discrimination, bias, and a lack of cultural competence from healthcare professionals can also lead to unmet needs, late presentation of symptoms, and poorer quality of care."

In their article, the researchers highlight various hip-hop artists and songs that have helped shape the narrative around mental health.

Hip Hop Psych added: "Since the genre's conception almost 50 years ago, hip-hop's progressive narratives have increasingly spoken up about mental health and there is no denying that it is helping to tackle stigma. Hip-hop artists are speaking candidly through their art form, and it may be helping people around the world to acknowledge their own inner struggles."

Among the artists and songs highlighted in the article are:

The Message - Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five

In the 1970s, pioneering rappers such as Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five were 'street epidemiologists' who documented the harsh living conditions and social inequalities that could be damaging to mental health. Their 1982 hit The Message describes a world of financial hardship, deprivation, and inner city violence.

Drop The World - Lil Wayne (featuring Eminem)

The relationship between mental health and masculinity is complex, as societies sometimes promote narratives like 'strong men don't cry' or 'his emotions got the best of him'. Such negative views of men expressing their emotions are seen as a 'sign of weakness'; however, men under the age of 50 are at an increased risk of taking their own lives and are less likely to seek help when experiencing a mental health crisis. A jarring inner conflict between anger and sadness is portrayed in Lil Wayne's song 'Drop The World' (featuring Eminem).

Cleaning Out My Closet - Angel Haze

In 2012, Angel Haze remixed Eminem's song Cleanin' Out My Closet, producing a song she went on to describe as "...probably the realest song I ever recorded", a candid, explicit and disturbing song about childhood sexual abuse.

1-800-273-8255 - Logic

The rapper Logic partnered with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, releasing a song called "1-800-273-8255" about a suicidal hotline caller getting support. When Logic performed the song at the Grammys alongside suicide survivors, calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline tripled.

Sell Out - Rico Nasty

A number of female artists have also addressed mental health through hip-hop. On her most recent album Anger Management, Rico Nasty channels expressions of rage and anger into a form of empowerment. The track Sell Out describes how her "...expression of anger is a form of rejuvenation" and how she has used to her emotions to help herself and others.

Man on the Moon - Kid Cudi

In recent years, as well as opening up about their troubles, some notable rappers have helped reduce stigma by endorsing therapy. One such advocate is rapper, Kid Cudi, who posted on social media about going to an inpatient mental health treatment centre, triggering a hugely positive reaction from his fans. His songs such as Man on the Moon resonate with his fans emotionally - one comment under the YouTube video for this track reads: "If you're listening to this it's probably for a reason, keep your head up guys(: everything will be okay".

4:44 - Jay Z

Another major therapy advocate is Jay Z, who in 2018 talked to CNN's Van Jones about the "ridiculousness" of stigma surrounding mental health problems and said that he would like to see therapists in schools. His album 4:44 documents his own experiences in therapy, leading to songs such as the title track where Jay Z apologises for his behaviour, trying to make amends for what he has done.

Drs Sule and Inkster set up Hip Hop Psych as a social venture in November 2011, aiming to bridge the gap between the medical community and hip-hop culture and working directly with health professionals and the public. They analyse hip-hop lyrics for mental health themes and translate medical information in an accessible manner for the public, which generates culturally sensitive resources.

Hip Hop Psych also perform anti-stigma events in various settings including prisons, nightclubs and African and Caribbean societies. In addition, they use this same approach to educate health professionals and academics to help broaden their awareness and appreciation of some of the different ways in which people communicate and use language in their daily lives to describe their personal experiences with mental health.

A clinical trial involving researchers at University of Limerick, Ireland has demonstrated the potential benefits of new drugs in protecting kidney function in diabetes.

The new study has found that combining two treatments that lower uric acid concentrations in the blood reduces the leakage of albumin in the urine, one of the earliest signs of kidney damage in diabetes.

The discovery could help to prevent kidney failure in diabetes patients, the UL researchers believe.

Researchers from the University of Limerick School of Medicine and University Hospital Limerick, working with investigators from the University of California San Diego, USA and AstraZeneca, found that the combination of Verinurad and Febuxostat reduced albuminuria in the urine by 39.4% in patients with Type 2 diabetes after 12 weeks of treatment compared to placebo.

The results of this AstraZeneca sponsored Phase 2a clinical trial were recently published in the American Journal of Kidney Disease.

Verinurad is a novel inhibitor of the uric acid transporter (URAT1) and is currently under investigation for the treatment of hyperuricaemia and kidney disease. Febuxostat is a potent, selective xanthine oxidase inhibitor used to lower urate levels in patients with gout and hyperuricaemia.

The CITRINE clinical trial results show that the combination of drugs reduces the leaking of protein through the kidney.

"This is exciting news as leaking of protein is the earliest clinical sign of kidney damage," said Professor Austin Stack, Foundation Chair of Medicine at UL's School of Medicine and Consultant Nephrologist at University Hospital Limerick, who was lead author of the study.

"The results are very promising as they demonstrate an important reduction in albuminuria and hyperuricaemia in patients with type 2 diabetes when treated with a combination of Verinurad and Febuxostat.

"If we can intervene early on then we are more likely to prevent patients from going into kidney failure. The findings raise hope for the 350 million people with type 2 diabetes globally who are at increased risk of kidney failure," added Professor Stack, director of the National Kidney Disease Surveillance System (NKDSS).

In the multicentre randomised clinical trial, 60 patients with type 2 diabetes with albuminuria and elevated uric acid levels were randomised to receive either Verinurad 9mg, and Febuxostat 80mg or placebo. The patients were followed up for 24 weeks.

The primary endpoint of the study was met and showed a 39% reduction in albuminuria, after 12 weeks with combined treatment of Verinurad and Febuxostat versus placebo. This effect persisted at 24 weeks with an overall 49% reduction in albuminuria. Treated patients also experienced a 57% reduction in uric acid levels at 12 weeks. Both Verinurad and Febuxostat were well tolerated by patients, according to the study.

"One of the earliest signals of kidney disease is development of albuminuria (leaking of albumin into the urine) and recent studies have shown that this can be associated with high levels of uric acid," said Professor Stack, a HRB-funded principal investigator whose work in this area has raised the profile of uric acid as a potential risk factor for kidney and heart disease.

"A key goal in protecting kidney function is the lowering of albuminuria in the urine, as patients with high levels are at risk of progressing to kidney failure. This clinical trial was designed to examine the effects of an intensive uric acid lowering strategy on albuminuria by combining Verinurad with Febuxostat in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus with pre-existing albuminuria.

"Although these are early clinical findings, our results show that combined treatment with Verinurad and Febuxostat in patients with diabetes results in a rapid reduction in albuminuria that was sustained through week 24," Professor Stack added.

A larger clinical trial, the SAPPHIRE study, is currently underway to determine whether an intensive uric acid lowering strategy combining Verinurad with a xanthine oxidase inhibitor will slow the progression of chronic kidney disease.

"Diabetes is the greatest contributor to the 850 million globally with chronic kidney disease," explained Professor Stack.

"More than 40% of patients with diabetes are at risk for developing kidney disease and significant number of these will progress to kidney failure. Preventing kidney failure is a key goal in all healthcare systems to reduce morbidity of diabetes and improve patient outcomes," he added.

Nurses only group with higher risk once community exposure considered

Largest cohort of health care worker risk for SARS CoV-2

Only high-flow oxygen therapy and hemodialysis linked to more antibodies to SARS-CoV-2

CHICAGO --- In a well-resourced health system with adequate PPE (Personal Protection Equipment), health care worker risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection was more strongly driven by community exposure than patient exposure early in the pandemic, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.

The study of 6,510 health care workers is the largest systematically collected cohort study of health care worker risk for SARS CoV-2 in the United States.

Nurses were the only occupation group with higher risks once community exposure was accounted for, the study reports.

Participation in high-flow oxygen therapy and hemodialysis were associated with a higher likelihood for having antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, but other high-risk procedures were not associated with higher risk.

"This suggests that PPE is highly effective in acute exposures to SARS-CoV-2, but some longer exposures may still expose health care workers to increased risks for infection," said co-lead author Dr. John Wilkins, an associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a Northwestern Medicine physician. "Fortunately, with adequate PPE and vigilant infection control policies, we can keep most providers safe while they are at work."

The paper will be published Dec. 8 in the journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found 11% of the total number of reported COVID-19 cases in the U.S. were health care workers. As of November 2020, there have been 797 deaths among health care workers in the U.S. It is a high priority to identify factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in health care settings to protect the essential workforce that delivers care.

A total of 6,510 health care workers, including 1,794 nurses, 1,260 doctors, 904 non-patient facing administrators and 2,552 other staff members were included in the study. The academic health care system included 10 hospitals, 18 immediate care centers and 325 outpatient practices in the Chicago area and surrounding Illinois.

Co-lead author Dr. Charlesnika Evans, professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern, said hospitals may need to enhance infection control approaches for nurses and other health care workers exposed to hemodialysis and high-flow oxygen therapy.

"Continued infection prevention vigilance is needed within and outside of health care settings," Evans said.

Wilkins and Evans will continue to follow this cohort over time and understand the incidence rates of infection and their predictors.

A research breakthrough from the University of Virginia School of Engineering demonstrates a new mechanism to control temperature and extend the lifetime of electronic and photonic devices such as sensors, smart phones and transistors.

The discovery, from UVA's experiments and simulations in thermal engineering research group, challenges a fundamental assumption about heat transfer in semiconductor design. In devices, electrical contacts form at the junction of a metal and a semiconducting material. Traditionally, materials and device engineers have assumed that electron energy moves across this junction through a process called charge injection, said group leader Patrick Hopkins, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering with courtesy appointments in materials science and engineering and physics.

Charge injection posits that with the flow of the electrical charge, electrons physically jump from the metal into the semiconductor, taking their excess heat with them. This changes the electrical composition and properties of the insulating or semiconducting materials. The cooling that goes hand-in-hand with charge injection can significantly degrade device efficiency and performance.

Hopkins' group discovered a new heat transfer path that embraces the benefits of cooling associated with charge injection without any of the drawbacks of the electrons physically moving into the semiconductor device. They call this mechanism ballistic thermal injection.

As described by Hopkins' advisee John Tomko, a Ph.D. student of materials science and engineering: "The electron gets to the bridge between its metal and the semiconductor, sees another electron across the bridge and interacts with it, transferring its heat but staying on its own side of the bridge. The semiconducting material absorbs a lot of heat, but the number of electrons remains constant."

"The ability to cool electrical contacts by keeping charge densities constant offers a new direction in electronic cooling without impacting the electrical and optical performance of the device," Hopkins said. "The ability to independently optimize optical, electrical and thermal behavior of materials and devices improves device performance and longevity."

Tomko's expertise in laser metrology--measuring energy transfer at the nanoscale--revealed ballistic thermal injection as a new path for device self-cooling. Tomko's measurement technique, more specifically optical laser spectroscopy, is an entirely new way to measure heat transfer across the metal-semiconductor interface.

"Previous methods of measurement and observation could not decompose the heat transfer mechanism separately from charge injection," Tomko said.

For their experiments, Hopkins' research team selected cadmium oxide, a transparent electricity-conducting oxide that looks like glass. Cadmium oxide was a pragmatic choice because its unique optical properties are well suited to Tomko's laser spectroscopy measurement method.

Cadmium oxide perfectly absorbs mid-infrared photons in the form of plasmons, quasiparticles composed of synchronized electrons that are an incredibly efficient way of coupling light into a material. Tomko used ballistic thermal injection to move the light wavelength at which perfect absorption occurs, essentially tuning the optical properties of cadmium oxide through injected heat.

"Our observations of tuning enable us to say definitively that heat transfer happens without swapping electrons," Tomko said.

Tomko probed the plasmons to extract information on the number of free electrons on each side of the bridge between the metal and the semiconductor. In this way, Tomko captured the measurement of electrons' placement before and after the metal was heated and cooled.

The team's discovery offers promise for infrared sensing technologies as well. Tomko's observations reveal that the optical tuning lasts as long as the cadmium oxide remains hot, keeping in mind that time is relative--a trillionth rather than a quadrillionth of a second.

Ballistic thermal injection can control plasmon absorption and therefore the optical response of non-metal materials. Such control enables highly efficient plasmon absorption at mid-infrared length. One benefit of this development is that night vision devices can be made more responsive to a sudden, intense change in heat that would otherwise leave the device temporarily blind.

"The realization of this ballistic thermal injection process across metal/cadmium oxide interfaces for ultrafast plasmonic applications opens the door for us to use this process for efficient cooling of other device-relevant material interfaces," Hopkins said.

Tomko first-authored a paper documenting these findings. Nature Nanotechnology published the team's paper, Long-lived Modulation of Plasmonic Absorption by Ballistic Thermal Injection, on November 9; the paper was also promoted in the journal editors' News and Views. The Nature Nanotechnology paper adds to a long list of publications for Tomko, who has co-authored more than 30 papers and can now claim first-authorship of two Nature Nanotechnology papers as a graduate student.

The research paper culminates a two-year, collaborative effort funded by a U.S. Army Research Office Multi-University Research Initiative. Jon-Paul Maria, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State University, is the principal investigator for the MURI grant, which includes the University of Southern California as well as UVA. This MURI team also collaborated with Josh Caldwell, associate professor of mechanical engineering and electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University.

The team's breakthrough relied on Penn State's expertise in making the cadmium oxide samples, Vanderbilt's expertise in optical modeling, the University of Southern California's computational modeling, and UVA's expertise in energy transport, charge flow, and photonic interactions with plasmons at heterogeneous interfaces, including the development of a novel ultrafast-pump-probe laser experiment to monitor this novel ballistic thermal injection process.

As the roof of the world, the Third Pole centered on the Tibetan Plateau can be easily considered a permanent presence. However, it is not. The place where Mount Everest stands today was once underwater. Exactly when the Third Pole grew to its current height has been a topic of debate for years. However, a recent study published in Science Advances proves, through fossil analysis, that much of the Third Pole only grew to its modern height over the past 10 million to 20 million years, rather than 40 million years ago (Ma) as previously inferred.

Using magnetostratigraphic and radiochronologic dating, the study found that low-elevation tropical fossils retrieved from the central Third Pole were deposited about 40 million years ago. However, an analysis of paleosols (fossil soils) using oxygen paleoaltimetry showed that paleosols corresponding with the elevation of the present day date from about 25.5 Ma to 21 Ma, rather than over 35 Ma - the figure often previously used to date the age of the Tibetan Plateau.

"This means the Third Pole was still lower than 2300 m about 40 million years ago," said FANG Xiaomin, lead author of the study from Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). "It only grew to 3500 m and above around 26 million to 21 million years ago."

"What we found is not entirely news," observed FANG, referring to findings of the First Tibetan Plateau Expedition and Research (FTEP). That project, which dated from the 1970s and was CAS's first to focus on the Third Pole, had already suggested approximately the same period for the "birth" of the plateau, based on research involving over a thousand scientists from 18 countries. However, the FTEP finding was largely discredited and discarded over the years as later oxygen-isotope-based estimates argued that a fully elevated plateau existed at least 35 million years ago. Interestingly, FANG's study, which "reconciles the FTEP results," was actually part of the Second Tibetan Plateau Expedition and Research (STEP), a science project launched in 2018 by CAS to reassess the environment of the Third Pole given rapid climate changes over recent years.

The much debated "birthday" of the roof of the world is not just an academic issue concerning how the Third Pole uplifted over history. It also helps shape our understanding of several processes highly relevant to regional and global climate. These include continental collision and uplift geodynamic mechanisms, Asian atmospheric circulation, surface processes and biotic evolution. With this recalibrated elevation history, there is still much rethinking to do.

The pandemic has disrupted economic activity and worsened social problems in many countries. In Brazil, its impact has been especially severe. “The level of employment, defined as the number of people in work divided by the working-age population, fell below 50% in April 2020. It remained low until July when it bottomed out at 47%. This means over half the working-age population was unemployed,” said Rogério Barbosa, a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro’s Institute for Social and Political Studies (IESP-UERJ) and a former researcher at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CEM), one of FAPESP’s Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs).

An article entitled “The Impact of COVID-19 in Brazil: Labour Market and Social Protection Responses” by Barbosa and Ian Prates, a researcher at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), a São Paulo-based think tank, is published in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics. The study was supported by FAPESP via a postdoctoral scholarship awarded to Barbosa.

“We used data for June 2020 in the study. But since then we’ve published other studies with more up-to-date statistics based on the National Household Sample Survey [PNAD, an official Brazilian government survey conducted by IBGE, the national census bureau] – both the Continuous PNAD and the COVID-19 PNAD. This dataset confirmed the forecast we made at the start of the pandemic,” Barbosa said.

“Back then, we cross-tabulated two parameters: formal or informal employment, including self-employment, and employment in essential or non-essential sectors. Based on this, we predicted that black people and women would be the most affected: blacks because they mostly work in the informal sector, and women because so many work in sectors considered non-essential. In both cases, this status derives from the historical formation of Brazil. The PNAD data confirmed this prediction. For every formal worker terminated, three informal workers lost their jobs. The non-essential sectors involving service provision by individuals were the worst affected” (read more at: agencia.fapesp.br/33354).

According to Barbosa, the level of employment in Brazil has always been in the range of 60%. It fell during the 2014 crisis, but then rebounded. The pandemic produced a drop below 50% for the first time. “A new category of unemployment appeared: ‘unemployment concealed by social distancing’. The unemployment rate, which we can call ‘open unemployment’, is typically the percentage of people who are unsuccessfully seeking employment. With the pandemic, between 17 million and 19 million people simply stopped looking, either because of the risk of contagion or because many vacancies disappeared. If we add this ‘hidden unemployment’ to ‘open unemployment’, the total number of unemployed people reached almost 30% of the workforce in July 2020,” he said.

“This percentage is the national average. The level of unemployment varied significantly between states. In some states, it exceeded 50%. When the social isolation measures were relaxed, it improved moderately, but it’s still well below the level seen before the pandemic.”

According to Barbosa, the emergency aid doled out by the federal government to low-income workers affected by COVID-19 lockdowns and similar measures that halted economic activity was effective, despite bungled implementation logistics and fraudulent claims by individuals who were not eligible. “It acted as a safety net for the poorest 30%, whose incomes had declined systematically since 2014. They were at the bottom of the income curve when it arrived. It offset some of the losses caused by the pandemic and prior losses,” he said. “However, we need to understand that while the emergency aid reduced the monetary indicators of poverty, it didn’t affect poverty as such, which encompasses other dimensions besides the strictly monetary aspect, such as housing conditions, for example. When it ended, the poorest remained as poor as they were before.”

The Emergency Program to Maintain Employment and Income benefited large employers, who avoided the expense of terminations, he explained. It also acted as a relief for workers in formal employment, who kept their jobs, albeit with lower earnings; income held steady only for those on the minimum wage. “But small and medium enterprises, which account for most jobs in Brazil, weren’t covered by the program. When the economy reopens, there will be a shortage of vacancies because many SMEs have had to close their doors for good,” Barbosa said.

Working from home has proved effective in the developed countries of Europe, but in Brazil, WFH benefits only 10% of the workforce, mainly white-collar workers with a relatively high standard of living. The vast majority have a university degree and do managerial or administrative work. Most jobs open to workers with little formal schooling cannot be done remotely. Even those workers who can work from home often lack the technical resources to do so, such as broadband internet access. “Before the pandemic, Brazil was more or less at the same level as the rich countries in terms of remote working. Now we’re way behind,” Barbosa said.

In crime scene investigations, a single strand of hair can make a huge difference in the evolution of a case or trial. In most cases, forensic scientists must look for clues hidden in minuscule amounts of substances or materials found at crime scenes. If a fallen strand of hair with root cells attached is found, a DNA test can reveal the identity of a criminal; unfortunately, this seldom happens. Even though other types of DNA analysis can be conducted using the "mitochondrial DNA" embedded in the hair shaft itself, such tests are not sufficient to reliably identify a person and usually call for additional evidence.

But what if a bit of fashion consciousness could inspire a new forensic technique? In a recent study published in Analytical Sciences, scientists at the Tokyo University of Science, Japan, developed a strategy for identifying criminals from a single strand of hair, leveraging the fact that hair dyes are becoming increasingly common. Their approach involves finding out if two individual strands of hair belong to the same person based on the composition of hair dye products found on them. To do this, they employed two well-known analytical methods: surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis.

Raman spectroscopy is an analytical technique based on the physical phenomenon of Raman scattering, which models certain energetic interactions that occur when photons collide with matter. SERS is a special type of Raman spectroscopy that provides a "structural fingerprint" of a material even when very few molecules are present in the target sample. On the other hand, XRF analysis involves irradiating a material with X-rays and examining the energies of photons re-emitted when the electrons in the sample leave the excited states. XRF analysis is especially useful to determine which metallic elements are present in a material.

The scientists conducted SERS and XRF analyses using portable devices to see if they could distinguish between single strands of hog hairs dyed with different products. Associate Professor Shinsuke Kunimura, who led the study, explains why both analytical methods had to be used in combination, "SERS can easily detect the overall differences in composition between different types of hair dyes, such as permanent, semi-permanent, or natural dyes. However, it is not enough to distinguish between hair coloring products that contain or produce similar dyes. To do this, we also relied on XRF analysis, which can detect the presence of metallic elements used in the ingredients of hair dye products." Using both techniques, the scientists were able to easily distinguish between five different dyes applied to individual strands of hog hair.

Because both analytical methods used are almost non-destructive, the strategy proposed in this study could be used to quickly analyze hairs found in crime scenes on-site before they are sent for DNA analysis. "Our approach provides supportive information for more reliably identifying whose hair was found in a crime scene," remarks first author Momona Horiguchi. "This could help us clarify if someone is a criminal, meaning that our methodology could greatly contribute to forensic investigations."

Overall, this study showcases how analytical tools normally used in chemistry and materials science can be creatively adapted to vastly different fields, such as forensic investigations. Hopefully, in the future, it will prevent criminals from escaping by a hair's breadth!

Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings", Thanos in the "Avengers", Snoke in "Star Wars", the Na'vi in "Avatar": we have all experienced the wonders of motion-capture, a cinema technique that tracks an actor's movements and "translates" them into computer animation to create a moving, emoting - and maybe one day Oscar-winning - digital character.

But what many might not realize is that motion capture isn't limited to the big screen, but extends into science. Behavioral scientists have been developing and using similar tools to study and analyze the posture and movement of animals under a variety of conditions. But motion-capture approaches also require that the subject wears a complex suit with markers that let the computer "know" where each part of the body is in three-dimensional space. That might be okay for a professional actor, but animals tend to resist dressing up.

To solve the problem, scientists have begun combining motion-capture with deep learning, a method that lets a computer essentially teach itself how to optimize performing a task, e.g., recognizing a specific "key-point" in videos. The idea is to teach the computer to track and even predict the movements or posture of an animal without the need for motion capture markers.

But to be of meaningful use to behavioral science, "marker-less" tracking tools must also allow scientists to quickly - literally in real-time - control or stimulate the neural activity of the animal. This is particularly important in experiments that try to work out which part of the nervous system underlies a specific movement of posture.

DeepLabCut: deep-learning, marker-less posture tracking

One of the scientists spearheading the marker-less approach is Mackenzie Mathis who recently joined EPFL's School of Life Sciences from Harvard. Mathis' lab has been developing a deep-learning software toolbox named DeepLabCut, that can track and identify animal movements in real time directly from video. Now, in a paper published in eLife, Mathis and her Harvard post-doctoral fellow Gary Kane present a new version named DeepLabCut-Live! (DLC-Live!), which features low-latency (within 15 msec at over 100 FPS) - or with a module we provide to forward-predict posture one can achieve zero latency feedback - and can be integrated into other software packages.

DeepLabCut was originally developed in order to study and analyze the way animals adapt their posture in response to changes in their environment. "We're interested in how neural circuits control behavior and in particular in how animals adapt to quick changes in their environment," says Mathis.

"For example, you pour coffee in a mug and when it's full it has a particular weight. But, as you drink it the weight changes, yet you don't need to actively think about changing your grip force or how much you have to lift your arm to reach your mouth. This is a very natural thing we do and we can adapt to these changes very quickly. But this actually involves a massive amount of interconnected neurocircuitry, from the cortex all the way to the spinal cord."

DLC-Live!, the new update to a state-of-the-art "animal pose estimation package" that uses tailored networks to predict the posture of animals based on video frames, which offline allows for up to 2,500 FPS on a standard GPU. Its high-throughput analysis makes it invaluable for studying and probing the neural mechanisms of behavior. Now, with this new package, it's low-latency allows researchers to give animals feedback in real time and test the behavioral functions of specific neural circuits. And, more importantly, it can interface with hardware used in posture studies to provide feedback to the animals.

"This is important for things in our own research program where you want to be able to manipulate the behavior of an animal," says Mathis. "For example, in one behavioral study we do, we train a mouse to play a video game in the lab, and we want to shut down particular neurons or brain circuits in a really specific time window, i.e., trigger a laser to do optogenetics or trigger an external reward."

"We wanted to make DLC-Live! super user-friendly and make it work for any species in any setting," she adds. "It's really modular and can be used in a lot of different contexts; the person who's running the experiments can set up kind of the conditions and what they want to trigger quite easily with our graphical user interface. And we've also built in the ability to use it with other common neuroscience platforms." Two of those commonly used platforms are Bonsai and Autopilot, and in the paper, Mathis and her colleagues who developed those software packages show how DLC-Live! can easily work with them.

"It's economical, it's scalable, and we hope it's a technical advance that allows even more questions to be asked about how the brain controls behavior," says Mathis.

Awareness of guidelines to prevent COVID-19 is high among young asthma sufferers but around a third do not comply with them, according to a new survey published in the Journal of Asthma. The results also reveal that a fifth of asthmatics believe they have no risk of suffering from COVID-19.

While asthma patients can be assumed to be at higher risk of developing respiratory complications from COVID-19, little is known about their adherence to prevention measures. To find out more, Professor Francisco Vázquez-Nava of the Autonomous University of Tamaulipas, in Mexico, and colleagues surveyed 2,372 young adults aged 16-24 years from the Tampico-Madero-Altamira area, northwest of Mexico City, via an emailed questionnaire.

The researchers found that more than half (53.1%) of all respondents were not complying with the guidelines for COVID-19 prevention. Of those with asthma (12.2%), 100% were aware of the guidelines and measures established to prevent COVID-19 but 30.8% said they did not comply with them. A fifth (20.4%) of asthmatic participants believed they had no risk of suffering from COVID-19, and 3.8% stated that the disease did not exist.

Being male, a smoker and believing that COVID-19 is not more severe for people suffering from asthma made respondents less likely to follow measures for the prevention of COVID-19. The authors believe this is the first study to show such a relationship.

The study also found that 44.3% of patients with asthma hadn't received instructions from their doctor about the measures they should take to prevent COVID-19, and 20.4% were not advised by their treating doctor about the
use of medications to control asthma during the pandemic. This is of particular concern as 20.4% of the
asthmatic participants thought they had no risk of suffering from COVID-19, and 3.8% stated that the disease did not exist.

"Our results show that a substantial percentage of asthma patients do not comply with COVID-19 mitigation
measures. Moreover, an important proportion of asthmatic patients smoke and consider that COVID-19 is not a serious disease for them. It's important that people who suffer from asthma be advised by a health professional during the COVID-19 outbreak regarding compliance with basic measures of protection against the disease and the timely use of medications for asthma control," the authors conclude.

A joint research project of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the University of Siegen, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and the Elettra Synchrotron Trieste has achieved a new milestone for the ultra-fast control of magnetism. The international team has been working on magnetization configurations that exhibit chiral twisting. Chirality is a symmetry breaking, which occurs, for example, in nature in molecules that are essential for life. Chirality is also referred to as handedness, since hands are an everyday example of two items that - arranged in a mirror-inverted manner - cannot be superimposed onto each other. Magnetization configurations with a fixed chirality are currently investigated intensively due to their fascinating properties such as enhanced stability and efficient manipulation by current. These magnetic textures thus promise applications in the field of ultrafast chiral spintronics, for example in ultrafast writing and controlling of chiral topological magnetic objects such as magnetic skyrmions, i.e., specially twisted magnetization configurations with exciting properties.

The new insights published in Nature Communications shed light on the ultrafast dynamics after optical excitation of chiral spin structures compared to collinear spin structures. According to the researchers' findings, the chiral order restores faster compared to the collinear order after excitation by an infrared laser.

The research team performed small angle x-ray scattering experiments on magnetic thin film samples stabilizing chiral magnetic configurations at the free electron laser (FEL) facility FERMI in Trieste in Italy. The facility provides the unique possibility to study the magnetization dynamics with femtosecond time resolution by using circular left polarized or right polarized light. The results indicate a faster recovery of chiral order compared to collinear magnetic order dynamics, which means that twists are more stable than straight magnetic configurations.

Cooperation with leading international partners as the cornerstone of successful research

"We have worked on this experiment for a long time. Now that we know that the ultrafast dynamics of chiral and collinear spin structures differs, we can focus on tackling the dependence of ultrafast dynamics on material properties such as the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, an interaction that can lead to the stabilization of chiral spin structures," said Nico Kerber of the Institute of Physics at Mainz University, lead author of the article.

"We are especially grateful to our Italian colleagues who performed a part of the experiment during the first coronavirus lockdown in Europe. These additional scans were vital for our study and we are happy that video support and the mail-in of samples worked out here. But we are also looking forward to being able to perform these experiments again in person with our colleagues at FERMI," added Professor Christian Gutt from the University of Siegen, corresponding author of the paper.

"I am very happy to see the next step taken to enable the use of chiral magnetization configurations in novel spintronic devices. The international collaboration with major facilities such as FERMI is crucial to enable such work. Collaborations like this are a cornerstone of our graduate education programs and research centers," emphasized Professor Mathias Kläui from JGU, supervisor of the first author and director of the Dynamics and Topology (TopDyn) excellence project. "We foster these collaborations with funding from the Collaborative Research Center CRC/TRR 173 Spin+X, the two graduate programs Materials Science in Mainz (MAINZ) and Max Planck Graduate Center with Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (MPGC), and the TopDyn research area."

In cells transfer RNA (tRNA) translates genetic information from the encoding messenger RNA (mRNA) for protein synthesis. New results from ultrafast spectroscopy and in-depth theoretical calculations demonstrate that the complex folded structure of tRNA is stabilized by magnesium ions in direct contact with phosphate groups at the RNA surface.

RNA structures consist of long sequences of nucleotides which are composed of a nucleobase, e.g., adenine, uracil, cytosine or guanine, a negatively charged phosphate group, and a sugar unit. The phosphate groups together with the sugars form the backbone of the macromolecule which exists as a folded structure in the cellular environment, the so-called tertiary structure. The tertiary structure of tRNA from yeast has been determined by x-ray diffraction and is shown in Figure 1. For maintaining this structure, a basic prerequisite for its cellular function, the repulsive electric force between the negatively charged phosphate groups needs to be compensated by positively charged ions and by water molecules of the environment. How this works at the molecular level has remained unclear so far, there are conflicting pictures of ion and water arrangements and interactions in the scientific literature.

Scientists from the Max-Born-Institute in Berlin have now identified contact pairs of positively charged magnesium ions and negatively charged phosphate groups as a decisive structural element for minimizing the electrostatic energy of tRNA and, thus, stabilizing its tertiary structure. Their study which has been published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, combines spectroscopic experiments and detailed theoretical calculations of molecular interactions and dynamics.

Molecular vibrations of the phosphate groups serve as noninvasive probes of the coupling between tRNA and its aqueous environment. The frequency and infrared absorption strength of such vibrations directly reflects the interactions with ions and water molecules. Vibrational spectroscopy of tRNA samples of different magnesium content together with two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy in the femtosecond time domain allow for discerning specific local geometries in which phosphate groups couple to ions and the water shell (Figure 2). The presence of a magnesium ion in the immediate neighborhood of a phosphate group shifts the asymmetric phosphate stretching vibration to a higher frequency and generates a characteristic infrared absorption band used for detection of the molecular species.

Experiments at different concentrations of magnesium ions show that a single tRNA structure forms up to six contact ion pairs, preferentially at locations where the distance between neighboring phosphate groups is small and the corresponding negative charge density high. The contact ion pairs make the decisive contribution to lowering the electrostatic energy and, consequently, stabilizing the tertiary tRNA structure. This picture is confirmed in a quantitative way by an in-depth theoretical analysis. The ion pairs impose an electrical force on water molecules nearby and orient them in space, again reducing the electrostatic energy. In contrast, mobile ions in the first five to six water layers around tRNA make a smaller contribution to stabilizing tRNA structure.

The new results give detailed quantitative insight in the electric properties of a key biomolecule. They underscore the high relevance of molecular probes for elucidating the relevant molecular interactions and the need for theoretical descriptions at the molecular level.

For a caterpillar that lives surrounded by ants, there are two ways of avoiding attack: going unnoticed or offering the ants a sugary treat in exchange for protection. This is the main conclusion of a study funded by FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation) and published in Ecological Entomology.

Based on chemical analysis of interacting plants, caterpillars and ants, researchers in Brazil affiliated with the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) found that some caterpillars are chemically very similar to the plants on which they live and feed and that this helps them hide from ants. However, there are chemically different species that have developed a strategy of coexistence through the production of a caloric reward for the ants.

"Ants prey on many insects that live on plants and establish mutualist interactions that benefit both ants and plants. To live on plants that have ants, caterpillars develop strategies that enable them to coexist with the ants. There are many advantages to living near ants. Many ants are aggressive and limit the occurrence of certain organisms. So if any animal is able to live close to ants without being attacked by them, it may acquire an adaptive advantage," said Lucas Augusto Kaminski, a researcher in UFRGS's Zoology Department and principal investigator for the study.

He did part of the research during a postdoctoral internship at UNICAMP's Institute of Biology with a scholarship from FAPESP and collaboration by José Roberto Trigo, a professor at the institute who died in 2017 and was also supported by FAPESP. The first author of the article is Luan Dias Lima, who performed the other part of the research while studying for a doctorate at UFRGS.

Selective pressure

In the 2000s, Trigo published scientific articles that showed how cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) come under selective pressure from ants. CHCs cover the cuticle (outermost layer) of virtually all insects and plants, serving as a waterproofing agent and communication signal. Ants have limited vision and perceive the world chemically, via their feelers or antennae. Some species of caterpillar and insects like leafhoppers have evolved so as to present the same CHCs as the plants on which they live, and ants do not perceive them as different from the plants, unwittingly protecting them against attackers. This type of relationship can be classified as commensalism - beneficial for the caterpillar and neutral for the ant.

In the latest study, the researchers used mass spectrometry and gas chromatography to compare CHC composition in six caterpillar species, three plant species, and two ant species. The caterpillars were all myrmecophilous ("ant-loving").

The results of the analysis showed about 95% similarity in caterpillar and plant CHCs in most cases, and no similarity with ant CHCs. The conclusion had to be that chemical camouflage was involved. This was as the researchers expected. However, in some cases, the similarity was much lower, between 34% and 55%, so that the caterpillars concerned must be entirely "visible" to ants.

"This information apparently led nowhere," Kaminski said. The researchers now had an insight: What if the very conspicuousness of these species was an evolutionary advantage? Then they noticed another difference.

Some caterpillars are known to have organs dedicated to interacting with ants, such as structures that produce substrate vibrations and minute bristles (setae) used in chemical communication. Other key organs include glands that produce a sugary liquid as a caloric reward for ants.

In camouflaged species, production of this "nectar" was scant or the glands were inert. In conspicuous species, these organs were well-developed and produced a significant amount of the fluid.

"If a caterpillar stays hidden, it doesn't need to give ants anything, but if it produces a reward it must be conspicuous. What's involved here is the evolution of the caterpillar's communication with the ant," Barbosa said.

According to the authors, these characteristics may lead species with nectar-producing glands to become more and more chemically similar. The phenomenon is known as mimicry and is common among insects.

Resembling a poisonous or reward-giving species, for example, may be an adaptive advantage. The researchers now propose that a kind of reward-based mimicry may also occur in chemical terms.

The summer 2018 eruption of K?lauea Volcano on the Island of Hawai'i was one of the most significant in the volcano's history, collapsing a large portion of the summit caldera, erupting massively from its flank and triggering a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the process. Through it all, scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory were installing new geophysical stations, processing data and making real-time reports to local authorities and neighborhoods.

In the journal Seismological Research Letters, U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Brian Shiro and colleagues describe their unprecedented efforts to observe and analyze a volcano that was destroying instruments and severing data connections. The paper is part of the journal's upcoming focus section on monitoring during crisis.

The researchers had been monitoring signs of imminent eruption before the 30 April 2018 collapse of the Pu'u '?'? vent, which had been erupting continually since 1983. Within a few hours, an unexpected magma intrusion began migrating through the volcano's East Rift Zone, and "we knew this would not be the next episode of the Pu'u '?'? eruption," said Shiro. "Within a day or so when the intrusion was approaching the populated area of Leilani Estates, we knew this could potentially be devastating."

When the 2018 event was finished, lava had covered a 35-kilometer square area and 716 structures had been destroyed by the flow, displacing more than 2,500 people. Sulfur dioxide emissions rates were among the highest measured on the island and more than 60,000 earthquakes were recorded.

Shiro and others at the observatory sprang into action to continue monitoring the volcano even as lava, fires, ashfall and collapsing cliffs destroyed geophysical monitoring stations. They also deployed new temporary stations to the sparsely instrumented lower East Rift Zone. The team was able to respond quickly by leveraging capacities that had been established earlier, they write.

Since 2014, the observatory had been building portable solar power and electronic systems for monitoring stations that could be delivered by pickup truck and helicopter slings. They had also designed the island's network structure so that data could be quickly rerouted in case of station or network relay failure. And only four months before the eruption, the observatory had rebuilt and migrated all its seismic data processing systems to live on virtual machines that could be backed up to cloud servers.

"To monitor a hazard, we need both the instruments in the field to collect the data and a way to get the data back to the scientists and decision makers to make use of it. Having a pre-assembled set of stations ready for rapid deployment can be a key capability to help monitor an emerging, changeable hazard," Shiro explained.

In the wake of multiple earthquakes during May 2018, the researchers had to permanently evacuate their facilities at the volcano's summit, setting up two temporary facilities in Hilo. "This is where the virtual machines or VMs came in handy for HVO," said Shiro. "Since we had to evacuate our facility, threatening our data center, we were able to easily move those VMs elsewhere and assure no downtime with data processing."

Shiro recalls discussing the dangers with the scientist in charge at HVO in mid-May 2018. The flank eruption was devastating, he said, but he thought the bigger problems might come at the summit. "Within a few days from that conversation she made the call to abandon the facility as the seismic shaking only continued to worsen," he said. "It was the right call given the emerging evidence of structural damage that had begun to show and worsened over the next three months."

The scientists divided into three main teams to collect data in the field, to analyze and interpret the data and to communicate and coordinate with government officials and communities. The observatory's full-time staff of 29 grew to 90, with people joining from other USGS offices, universities and volunteers.

"In a sense, the staff members of all five USGS volcano observatories acted as one for the K?lauea response, providing valuable cross-training for everyone and helping us all get to know one another so that we will be even better prepared for the next crisis," Shiro said.

Accidental shootings of unarmed victims are tragically common, and sometimes they happen because the shooter misperceived the victim as also having a gun.

Nearly a decade ago, cognitive psychologist Jessica Witt wondered if the mere act of wielding a firearm could bias someone to perceive another person as wielding one, too - and more importantly, if such a bias could be scientifically measured. A series of experiments later, Witt and her research team concluded, yes and yes.

The team has recently published a new set of experiments further underscoring what they call the "gun embodiment effect" in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications. Their original research was published in 2012 when Witt, now a professor in CSU's Department of Psychology, was a researcher at Purdue University. For this recent study, they've replicated the experiments with larger sample sizes and more confidence in their claims that the gun bias exists; that it can be measured via controlled laboratory experiments; and that it seems universal - that is, not changed by an individual's prior experiences, general attitudes about firearms, or personality traits.

"To prove something is universal, you have to rule out all possible alternatives," said Witt, an expert in the intricate links between human vision and cognition. "We have not done that yet, but we have some really good first steps."

Speed and accuracy

Witt's team recruited over 200 CSU students to help suss out the original hypothesis. Participants, holding either a fake gun or a spatula, were hooked up to a motion-tracking system. The system recorded both the speed and accuracy of their reactions to images on a screen of people holding either a gun or a neutral object - in this case, a shoe.

The researchers found strong evidence that when holding a gun, participants were a little slower to make their judgment about whether the other person was also holding a gun. The difference was about 8 milliseconds - a small effect, but it was unmistakable. They read this result as the person needing to take the time to inhibit a primed response caused by carrying a gun themselves.

They also found that holding a gun affected participants' accuracy, with a 1% greater likelihood to misperceive the other person as having a gun too. "It's as if, when they're holding a gun, they are prone to see a gun," Witt said.

The effects they saw in the lab were mercifully small. "But if you have this small effect, and put it on a national scale, and you talk about how many people have guns in this country, even these small effects are important," Witt said. "For example, if 100 officers wielding guns interact with 10 unarmed people a day for 100 days, in these 100,000 interactions, our data suggest there were will be 1,000 misperceptions of an unarmed person as holding a gun."

Addressing the replication problem

The subtlety of the gun embodiment effect challenged Witt's team to strengthen their original work, in part in response to the replication crisis in psychology experiments that's plagued so many research teams. "Our study ended up serving as a replication check and revision to our earlier claims," Witt said.

They hope they can next dive into what circumstances might change the bias for people holding guns. For this recent test, they looked at a host of possibilities, like participants' attitudes toward guns, personality traits, and measures of their impulsivity. None of these individual circumstances seemed to change the gun bias, but the absence only sparks more questions. For example, does the bias change depending on the situation? If the shooter is scared? Or fatigued?

If she can secure more funding, Witt hopes to answer such questions, and delve into them using a more diverse sample among the general public, with better representation across ages, races, education levels and prior experiences with guns.

Securing food supplies around the globe is a major challenge facing humanity, especially in light of the predicted increase in the world's population to almost ten billion people by 2050 and the effects of climate change. Greater crop diversity in agriculture is seen as a stabilising factor for food security. Yet crop diversity alone is not sufficient. In an article for Nature, a team of researchers coordinated by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) argue that it is also essential that crops differ in their temporal production patterns.

Crop diversity is a key factor in securing agricultural production. Having a wider variety of crops reduces the risk of total harvest failure when certain crops are affected by plant diseases and protects against poor harvests resulting from extreme weather events, such as droughts, or pest infestation. "However, asynchrony is at least equally important in securing production," says Lukas Egli, UFZ agroecologist and first author of the study. Differences in the temporal sequence in which crops are sown and harvested on arable land or the variation in phenology, i.e. differing development over time during the vegetation period, are both examples of factors that lead to greater asynchrony. "The more heterogeneously crops are distributed in time and respond to the effects of extreme events, natural disasters and economic crises, the less the agricultural production of a country as a whole will fluctuate," says Egli. For example, when different types of crops become ready to harvest at the same time this increases the likelihood of the entire harvest being destroyed in a storm or flood. Asynchrony prevents such total failure, for instance by varying sowing and harvesting times, growing crops with different climate and cultivation requirements and mixed cropping.

The analysis of data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) revealed that India, Mexico and China are among the countries with a high level of production stability and asynchrony, whereas Russia, Australia and Argentina have a low level of stability and asynchrony. At present, one observes that asynchrony in agriculture is decreasing at the global level. "Globalised agricultural markets allow crop failures in one region to be compensated by trade with other regions. Trade itself is therefore a stabilising factor and could make the cultivation of a wide variety of crops with different growth patterns seem less important," says Prof Dr Ralf Seppelt, UFZ landscape ecologist and co-author. Nevertheless, countries should give greater consideration to highly diversified and asynchronous crops than they have done in the past to make food production less vulnerable to the uncertainties of the global market.