Culture

Lockdowns, job losses and social isolation have been the hallmarks of 2020 as COVID-19 tightens its grip on the world, not only infecting millions and leaving a mounting death toll, but also denying humans the most basic sense - touch.

In the absence of human-to-human contact, in millions of households worldwide, animals have stepped into the breach for many people, providing much-needed comfort via cuddles, pats and a constant physical presence.

A new study published by University of South Australia researchers points to the lifesaving role that pets have played in 2020 and why governments need to sit up and take notice.

The Journal of Behavioural Economics for Policy (JBEP) paper outlines how pets have a crucial role to play in an era where human-human contact can be life endangering.

Lead author Dr Janette Young says physical touch is a sense that has been taken for granted - even overlooked - until COVID-19 visited our door earlier this year.

"In a year when human contact has been so limited and people have been deprived of touch, the health impacts on our quality of life have been enormous," Dr Young says.

"To fill the void of loneliness and provide a buffer against stress, there has been a global upsurge in people adopting dogs and cats from animal shelters during lockdowns. Breeders have also been inundated, with demands for puppies quadrupling some waiting lists."

Spending on pets was already hitting record levels, topping $13 billion in Australia and in the region of US$260 billion globally in 2020, but this is bound to be surpassed.

It is estimated that more than half the global population share their lives with one or more pets. The health benefits have been widely reported, but little data exists regarding the specific benefits that pets bring to humans in terms of touch.

"Pets seem to be particularly important when people are socially isolated or excluded, providing comfort, companionship and a sense of self-worth," Dr Young says.

"Touch is an understudied sense, but existing evidence indicates it is crucial for growth, development and health, as well as reducing the levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the body. It is also thought that touch may be particularly important for older people as other senses decline."

In interviews with 32 people, more than 90 per cent said touching their pets both comforted and relaxed them - and the pets seemed to need it as well.

Examples of dogs and cats touching their owners when the latter were distressed, sad, or traumatised were cited.

Many people referenced pets' innate ability to just "know" when their human counterparts weren't feeling well and to want to get physically close to them.

"The feedback we received was that pets themselves seem to get just as much pleasure from the tactile interaction as humans," Dr Young says.

Not just dogs and cats either. Interviewees mentioned birds, sheep, horses and even reptiles who reciprocate touch.

"Animals, like people, are living, breathing others, with individual interests, styles and preferences. While culturally, animals are not seen as 'human', they are still seen as individuals with likes and dislikes.

"In the era of COVID-19, social distancing, sudden lockdowns and societal upheaval, our pets may be the only living beings that many people are able to touch and draw comfort from.

"Humans have an innate need to connect with others but in the absence of human touch, pets are helping to fill this void. They need to be considered from a policy angle, therefore, to help mitigate some of the mental and physical stressors that people are experiencing during this time."

Dr Young says hospitals, hospices and aged care facilities should be encouraging pet connections with residents.

"Residential aged care is yet to recognise the value of human-animal relationships. Had more pets being living with their owners in aged care when COVID-19 restrictions were applied, it could have helped people immeasurably," she says.

New Rochelle, NY, November 30, 2020--A standardized "Artificial Pancreas (AP) Dashboard" should provide easy to use single-page hybrid closed-loop system (HCL) reporting for insulin requiring patients with diabetes. The AP Dashboard will help standardize HCL reporting similar to standardized CGM reporting and an electrocardiogram (EKG) and will be likely to help improve glycemic control and reduce hypoglycemia. It is described in the peer-reviewed journal Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics (DTT). Click here to read the article now.

The developers of the AP Dashboard concept propose a single-page report comprised of seven main components. These provide detailed information and visualization of glucose, insulin, and HCL-specific metrics. They include glucose metrics, hypoglycemia, insulin, user experience, hyperglycemia, glucose modal-day profile, and insight. Each main component may be divided into subcomponents. For example, glucose metrics include four variables: mean glucose; standard deviation; glucose management indicator; and a visual graph displaying the recommended continuous glucose monitor metrics, such as time-in-range, time-above-range, and time-below-range. The recommendations also include the optimal sampling duration for HCL data download and color coding for visualization ease.

"Successful use of an HCL system requires interpretation of the glucose and insulin metrics and optimization of HCL settings," state coauthors Viral Shah, MD and Satish Garg, MD, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. "We believe it is time to standardize the terminology and reporting of different HCL systems. We recommend various HCL metrics and visualizations for a standardized HCL reporting similar to an EKG. We realize that this is only a starting point and fully understand that this can and will be improved with others' input."

Anecdotal reports claim that the incidence of cancer in sharks is very low, but there is not enough data to confirm this estimate categorically. A study published in the journal Genomics, however, presents strong evidence of anti-tumor activity in the genome of the Shortfin mako shark, Isurus oxyrinchus.

This large pelagic species, which can be as long as 4 meters, inhabits temperate and tropical seas worldwide. It is classified as endangered by IUCN, owing mainly to non-selective longline fishing with hundreds of hooks by factory ships that capture many animals in a single pass. They spend up to two months at sea, bringing back hundreds or even thousands of tons of fish.

Fishery observers with the Portuguese Institute for Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA) collected tissue samples of various organs from four mako sharks on one of these ships. Brazilian researchers genetically sequenced eye and liver tissue samples, finding that nine out of the ten most overexpressed genes in the animal's liver relate to tumor suppression in humans.

"Because these fishing cruises stay out at sea for such a long time, few of the tissue samples had well-conserved RNA. We managed to retrieve genetic material only from four livers and three eyes, but even so they produced surprising results," said Rodrigo Domingues, first author of the paper. The study was conducted while Domingues was on a postdoctoral internship at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) in its Department of Marine Sciences in Santos, Brazil, under the supervision of Fernando Mendonça.

Domingues performed part of the analysis while he was an intern at the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR) in Portugal, also with a scholarship from FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation). The research is part of a project involving Brazil-Portugal collaboration, funded by FAPESP and Portugal's Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

The analysis revealed 3,774 differentially expressed genes in the two organs - 1,612 in the eye and 2,162 in the liver. Most of the genes that were overexpressed in the eye related to the structure of the organ and visual signaling to the brain. Few genes relating to light reception were found, suggesting that the mako probably has monochrome vision and can see only shades of the same color, like all other sharks known to science.

The recently completed genome sequencing of the Great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias), the largest sequencing of any shark species, revealed two positively selected genes with anti-tumor activity. Hence the Brazilian researchers' surprise on finding that out of the top ten overexpressed genes in the mako's genome, no fewer than nine are cancer-related.

From colon cancer to glioma

Among the genes with above-normal activity in the liver, HABP2 is known to reduce colony formation and cellular migration in thyroid tumors, while PON3 encodes an enzyme that can act as a cellular antioxidant, protecting cells from oxidative stress, which is a significant factor in cancer.

NIT2, RMC1 and FGFRK1 are expressed in various tissues and are potential tumor suppressants. The first two relate to suppression of colon cancer cells, while the third has a negative effect on cell proliferation in the initiation and progression of prostate cancer.

ITIH3 is involved in inflammatory diseases, schizophrenia, depression, heart attack, and stomach cancer. CBS and A1CF are involved in the progression of colon, ovarian, and breast cancer, although CBS has tumor-suppressant effects in glioma, a common type of brain cancer. SERPIND1 plays a role in rapid wound healing in sharks, and in inflammation, blood clotting, and cancer metastasis in humans.

"To find out if any compounds from shark livers could act on human cells, we would need to make an extract from the organ and test it on tumor cells. If such bioactive compounds were found to produce a significant benefit, other groups could synthesize them and possibly use them to produce a new drug for therapeutic use," Domingues said.

The authors note that the mako is already being overfished by commercial fleets, which sell its fins to Asian markets and its meat in Brazil. "We, therefore, discourage increased fishing of the species and a further population decline for this additional purpose. On the other hand, it might be possible to combine research activities in order to optimize the sampling of this endangered shark species, especially when scientific observers are on commercial vessels and can continue to take samples from specimens that are already dead when captured," they write.

To contribute to the conservation of the species, the researchers are now looking for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which can act as biological markers to locate mutations and help explain whether there are several population groups in this or that ocean, for example. If differences are found in certain regions of the genome in 200 samples from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, it may be possible to use them to identify oceanographic factors (water temperature and salinity, chlorophyll levels etc.) that contribute to this separation into groups. If so, the information can be used to formulate fishery policy, including a ban on shark fishing in certain areas.

Defensive behaviours are common responses when people feel personally attacked but can undermine our ability to identify problems and find solutions.

Addressing why defensiveness manifests will help relationships, conflict management and decision making to reduce defensiveness meet people's psychological need for belonging, according to a study.

Research published in the British Journal of Social Psychology has shown that defensiveness in response to wrongdoing is exacerbated by making the wrong doer feel like they're an outcast.

Psychological defensiveness includes the many ways that we let ourselves off the hook when we do wrong: misrepresenting or misremembering what occurred, not paying attention to information that is critical deflecting blame to others, minimising any harm caused, denying responsibility or disengaging entirely from the situation.

The research conducted at Flinders University by Professor Michael Wenzel, Associate Professor Lydia Woodyatt, and Dr Ben McLean, from the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work, is focused on understanding and reducing defensive responses.

"This research shows that defensiveness is strengthened by negative social responses, but is reduced when people feel secure in their group identity, respected and valued," says Associate Professor Woodyatt.

"Based on our research over the past several years, our recommendations for reducing defensiveness when dealing with someone who may have done something wrong is to emphasise respect and value for the person, even if you disagree with their views or actions. Also provide opportunity for the person to express their values prior to talking about the specific problem."

The researchers outline why defensive responses to transgressions undermine our ability to identify a problem correctly and act to solve it, negatively impacting on decision-making within government and organizations, in relationships, and even in relation to our own individual wellbeing.

"Of course these responses do not always feel natural or easy - especially when faced with someone who we think has done wrong to us. Our instinct is also self-protective. As a result when people are caught doing something wrong in our society we often stigmatise, reject or punish them, but this is likely only strengthening those defensive responses over time, not just of that person but of other people in similar situations."

Psychological defensiveness is an evolved self-protective response, and in some mild forms may have some benefits such as helping us to bounce back after failures and helping us to maintain optimism and self-esteem- but defensiveness also has costs.

"Defensiveness creates blind spots in decision-making. When individual and groups respond defensively problems go unrecognised, victims go unacknowledged, and relationships deteriorate."

The researchers examined defensiveness in response to interpersonal transgressions and perceived ethical violations. In these contexts, defensiveness (denying responsibility, deflecting blame, minimising harm, and moral justifications) increased when people felt stigmatised or rejected.

"Humans have a primary psychological need to be valued and included by others, to feel that they are good and appropriate group members or relationship partners," says Associate Professor Woodyatt.

"When people do something wrong this primary psychological need is threatened, driving a defensive response. But addressing that psychological need to belong can reduce their defensiveness."

Alternatively, people were less defensive when they were secure in their own group identity- achieved through reinforcing their own values prior to discussing the underlying event.

"While it is beyond this research, we suggest that Restorative practices and Acceptance Commitment Therapy are both readily available frameworks that can help an individual or group when working through wrongdoing and will likely reduce defensiveness because both approaches provide strategies in line with these recommendations."

A repurposed mouse model can develop symptoms of both severe COVID-19 (lung damage, blood clots, abnormal blood vessels, and death) and also of milder disease, including loss of the sense of smell, according to a recent University of Iowa study published in Nature.

The study also showed that convalescent plasma from a patient who had recovered from COVID-19 protected the mice against lethal disease. The findings suggest the K18-hACE2 mouse model is useful for understanding a spectrum of COVID-19 disease symptoms, and for developing and testing new treatments.

When COVID-19 started spreading across the world earlier this year, UI researchers Stanley Perlman, MD, PhD, and Paul McCray, MD, realized that a mouse model they had created a decade earlier to study SARS might be an invaluable tool for understanding the concerning new disease and for testing potential treatments.

In the new study, Perlman, McCray, and colleagues present a detailed characterization of the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection in these K18-hACE2 mice, which are now readily available from Jackson Laboratories.

Infection with a high dose of the virus produced many of the signs of illness seen in people with severe COVID-19, including severe lung damage, abnormalities in blood vessels known as vasculitis, blood clots, and death.

"The mouse develops pretty robust lung disease that is on the severe end of the spectrum. That gives us an opportunity to investigate what's going on with lung disease with COVID," says McCray, UI professor of pediatrics-pulmonology, and of microbiology and immunology, and the Roy J. Carver Chair in Pulmonary Research. "Also, people who die from this disease often have vasculitis, which is unusual for coronavirus infections, and we found that the mice may develop signs of vasculitis in the liver, lung, and brain."

One particularly interesting finding was that the infected mice lost their sense of smell. This effect, also known as anosmia, is seen in a large proportion of people who get COVID-19, but is not well understood.

The study showed that K18-hACE2 mice treated with convalescent plasma and then infected with SARS-CoV-2 infection did not succumb to the infection but, like many infected patients with mild disease, had loss of smell as a major symptom.

Further investigation of the cells in the nasal passage suggested that the anosmia results from initial infection and damage to a type of cell that helps to support the function of neighboring sensory neurons that detect smell.

"The loss of sense of smell or taste occurs in a large proportion of patients who have COVID-19, whether they're really sick or if that's the only sign of illness they have. Most people recover their sense of smell pretty quickly, but some don't," says Perlman, UI professor of pediatrics, and of microbiology and immunology, and the Mark Stinski Chair in Virology. "This mouse model opens up the possibility of learning more about how that happens, and if we could understand the mechanisms of why people lose their sense of smell, this will help us treat people."

Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed new and improved probes, known as positive controls, that could make it easier to validate rapid, point-of-care diagnostic tests for COVID-19 across the globe.

The positive controls, made from virus-like particles, are stable and easy to manufacture. Researchers say the controls have the potential to improve the accuracy of new COVID-19 tests that are simpler, faster and cheaper, making it possible to expand testing outside the lab.

"Our goal is to make an impact not necessarily in the hospital, where you have state-of-the-art facilities, but in low-resource, underserved areas that may not have the sophisticated infrastructure or trained personnel," said Nicole Steinmetz, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

Positive controls are a staple in the lab--they are used to verify that a test or experiment indeed works. The positive controls that are primarily used to validate today's COVID-19 tests are naked synthetic RNAs, plasmids or RNA samples from infected patients. But the issue is RNA and plasmids are not stable like viral particles. They can degrade easily and require refrigeration, making them inconvenient and costly to ship around the world or store for long periods of time.

In a paper published Nov. 25 in ACS Nano, UC San Diego researchers led by Steinmetz report that by packaging segments of RNA from the SARS-CoV-2 virus into virus-like particles, they can create positive controls for COVID-19 tests that are stable--they can be stored for a week at temperatures up to 40 C (104 F), and retain 70% of their activity even after one month of storage--and can pass detection as the novel coronavirus without being infectious.

The team developed two different controls: one made from plant virus nanoparticles, the other from bacteriophage nanoparticles. Using them is simple. The controls are run and analyzed right alongside a patient sample, providing a reliable benchmark for what a positive test result should look like.

To make the plant virus-based controls, the researchers use the cowpea chlorotic mottle virus, which infects black-eyed pea plants. They essentially open the virus, remove its RNA contents, replace them with a synthesized RNA template containing specific sequences from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, then close everything back up.

The process to make the bacteriophage-based controls starts with plasmids, which are rings of DNA. Inserted into these plasmids are the gene sequences of interest from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as well as genes coding for surface proteins of the bacteriophage Qbeta. These plasmids are then taken up by bacteria. This process reprograms the bacteria to produce virus-like particles with SARS-CoV-2 RNA sequences on the inside and Qbeta bacteriophage proteins on the outside.

Both controls were validated with clinical samples. A big advantage, the researchers point out, is that unlike the positive controls used today, these can be used in all steps of a COVID-19 test.

"We can use these as full process controls--we can run the analysis in parallel with the patient sample starting all the way from RNA extraction," said first author Soo Khim Chan, a postdoctoral researcher in Steinmetz's lab. "Other controls are usually added at a later step. So if something went wrong in the first steps, you won't be able to know."

So far, the researchers have adapted their controls for use in the CDC-authorized RT-PCR test. While this is currently the gold standard for COVID-19 testing, it is expensive, complex, and can take days to return results due to the logistics of sending samples off to a lab with PCR capability.

Steinmetz, Chan and colleagues are now working on adapting the controls for use in less complex diagnostic tests like the RT-LAMP test that can be done on the spot, out of the lab and provide results right away.

"It's a relatively simple nanotechnology approach to make low-tech assays more accurate," Steinmetz said. "This could help break down some of the barriers to mass testing of underserved populations in the U.S. and across the world."

It is conventional to believe that the police role in society centers on violence. A forthcoming article in the December issue of Current Anthropology explores that belief and shows how the weakness of police power can be treated as an index for the strength of democratic values institutionalized in the wider political environment.

In "Weak Police, Strong Democracy: Civic Ritual and Performative Peace in Contemporary Taiwan," Jeffrey Martin argues that, in a democratic society, the police role should be defined by their capacity to resolve problems without violence. As an example of what this actually looks like, the author presents an ethnographic study of policing in Taiwan, centering on the relationship between neighborhood police and a locally powerful union. His focal question is: How do police who lack the capacity to impose order by force effectively keep the peace? The author proposes a normative ideal of "weak policing" as the democratic midpoint between the excesses of violent control and the deficiency of uncontrolled violence.

BINGHAMTON, NY -- In the lizard world, flashy colors attract the interest of females looking for mates. But they can make colorful males desirable to other eyes, too -- as lunch.

Assistant Research Professor of Biological Sciences Lindsey Swierk is the first author of an article in the journal Evolutionary Ecology on the topic. Called "Intrasexual variability of a conspicuous social signal influences attach rate of lizard models in an experimental test," the article details an experiment involving clay models of water anoles (Anolis aquaticus), a species of lizard only found in Costa Rica and a small slice of Panama. The researchers conducted the experiment at the Las Cruces Biological Station in Costa Rica, which is one of the Organization for Tropical Studies' field stations.

To attract females' notice, male anoles have dewlaps: colorful extendable flaps of skin under their chins. In most species of anole, dewlaps evolved to be as noticeable as possible within the environment, given an environment's predominant colors and lighting conditions.

"Even so, we see a lot of variation within a species in just how bright dewlaps are," Swierk said.

While some water anoles have dramatic red-orange flaps, others have more muted colors, more of a dull brownish-red. Researchers wanted to determine the effect these color variations had on their risk of predation.

While it's widely assumed that flashier males will attract more attention from predators, few studies actually test this assumption. Logistics may be a factor: Researchers have to separate the effects of sexual colors from other aspects of a creature's body and behavior, a difficult task when using real animals. As a result, many studies show correlation but not causation.

To prove that flashier males face greater risks of being attacked, the researchers created clay models with colored dewlaps -- some bright, some more muted. Many visual predators use a stereotyped "search image" to identify prey, so the models only had to approximate anoles' general size, color and shape. The dewlap color, however, required special attention.

"Because different animals have different visual sensitivities than we do as humans, getting the colors right was an important consideration in our model design," Swierk explained. "We ran some pilot trials before this experiment to make sure our models were convincing as 'lizards' -- and they certainly seemed to be, as many birds and other lizards took bites out of them!"

Researchers were able to identity predators from bite marks in the clay models. They included many species of bird, including the strikingly beautiful motmot with its serrated beak. Basilisks and whiptail lizards were also among the likely attackers. The results proved that flashier lizards really do end up as lunch more often.

If bright colors have deadly consequences, why do female anoles prefer them? One answer is that brighter males have either high-quality genetic material or resources that allow them to handle the risk of getting eaten, Swierk explained.

"Because every individual's evolutionary 'mission' in life is to pass on as many copies of its genes as it can, conspicuous traits like these can evolve if they give an individual a high level of reproductive success -- even if the flashy trait ends up killing them in the end," Swierk said.

BINGHAMTON, NY -- Bacterial infections have become one of the biggest health problems worldwide, and a recent study shows that COVID-19 patients have a much greater chance of acquiring secondary bacterial infections, which significantly increases the mortality rate.

Combatting the infections is no easy task, though. When antibiotics are carelessly and excessively prescribed, that leads to the rapid emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant genes in bacteria -- creating an even larger problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections happen in the U.S. each year, and more than 35,000 people die from of them.

One factor slowing down the fight against antibiotic-resistant bacteria is the amount of time needed to test for it. The conventional method uses extracted bacteria from a patient and compares lab cultures grown with and without antibiotics, but results can take one to two days, increasing the mortality rate, the length of hospital stay and overall cost of care.

Associate Professor Seokheun "Sean" Choi -- a faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton University's Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science -- is researching a faster way to test bacteria for antibiotic resistance.

"To effectively treat the infections, we need to select the right antibiotics with the exact dose for the appropriate duration," he said. "There's a need to develop an antibiotic-susceptibility testing method and offer effective guidelines to treat these infections."

In the past few years, Choi has developed several projects that cross "papertronics" with biology, such as one that developed biobatteries using human sweat.

This new research -- titled "A simple, inexpensive, and rapid method to assess antibiotic effectiveness against exoelectrogenic bacteria" and published in November's issue of the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics -- relies on the same principles as the batteries: Bacterial electron transfer, a chemical process that certain microorganisms use for growth, overall cell maintenance and information exchange with surrounding microorganisms.

"We leverage this biochemical event for a new technique to assess the antibiotic effectiveness against bacteria without monitoring the whole bacterial growth," Choi said. "As far as I know, we are the first to demonstrate this technique in a rapid and high-throughput manner by using paper as a substrate."

Working with PhD students Yang Gao (who earned his degree in May and is now working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin), Jihyun Ryu and Lin Liu, Choi developed a testing device that continuously monitors bacteria's extracellular electron transfer.

A medical team would extract a sample from a patient, inoculate the bacteria with various antibiotics over a few hours and then measure the electron transfer rate. A lower rate would mean that the antibiotics are working.

"The hypothesis is that the antiviral exposure could cause sufficient inhibition to the bacterial electron transfer, so the readout by the device would be sensitive enough to show small variations in the electrical output caused by changes in antibiotic effectiveness," Choi said.

The device could provide results about antibiotic resistance in just five hours, which would serve as an important point-of-care diagnostic tool, especially in areas with limited resources.

The prototype -- built in part with funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Office of Naval Research -- has eight sensors printed on its paper surface, but that could be extended to 64 or 96 sensors if medical professionals wanted to build other tests into the device.

Building on this research, Choi already knows where he and his students would like to go next: "Although many bacteria are energy-producing, some pathogens do not perform extracellular electron transfer and may not be used directly in our platform. However, various chemical compounds can assist the electron transfer from non-electricity-producing bacteria.

"For instance, E. coli cannot transfer electrons from the inside of the cell to the outside, but with the addition of some chemical compounds, they can generate electricity. Now we are working on how to make this technique general to all bacteria cells."

Children engrossed in popular kids' TV programmes such as Peppa Pig, or films like Toy Story or Frozen, are exposed to up to nine incidents of pain for every hour of TV watched, according to new research from psychologists.

A new study - published today [Wednesday 2 December 2020] in the international journal Pain from researchers at the universities of Bath (UK) and Calgary (Canada) - analysed how characters' experiences of pain were depicted across different media aimed at 4 to 6-year olds.

The team behind the research were interested in assessing what painful incidents characters were subject to, as well as how they and others around them responded.

Their analysis looked at 10 family movies from 2009 onwards (Despicable Me 2, The Secret Life of Pets, Toy Story 3 & 4, Incredibles 2, Inside Out, Up, Zootopia, Frozen and Finding Dory), as well as popular kids' TV programmes (Sofia the First, Shimmer and Shine, Paw Patrol, Octonauts, Peppa Pig, Daniel Tiger's Neighbourhood).

These programmes were chosen to represent either girl-focused, boy-focused or gender-neutral TV series (dependent on the key characters).

Over the 10 movies and six TV series (which equated to over 52 hours of film / TV), the researchers identified:

454 painful incidents - a mean of 8.66 incidents of pain per hour.

Violent pain or injury being the most common type of pain depicted (occurring in over two-thirds of instances - 79%).

Boy characters much more likely to experience severe pain in comparison with girl characters (according to facial expressions).

Examples of everyday pain (i.e. a character falling over or bumping their knee), being much less common, represented in only 20% of incidents.

A general lack of empathy from other characters in responding to pain: 75% of painful instances were seen by others, yet in 41% of cases those witnessing it did not respond or where they did they were generally not empathetic.

Researchers say this work matters because what children watch on TV shapes and models their behaviours. They want producers to use their influence to re-think how pain is portrayed in order to better equip young people to cope with common, everyday pain which they are more likely to experience but is often forgotten and misunderstood. Indeed, how children's pain is often sidelined was a topic highlighted in a recent and significant Lancet Commission report, also authored by pain researchers from the University of Bath.

Dr Abbie Jordan of the Department of Psychology and Centre for Pain Research at the University of Bath explained: "How children experience, model, understand and manage pain has real lasting consequences for them as individuals but also for all of us across wider society. Pain, in particular chronic pain, can have hugely debilitating effects on the lives of children and young people right through into adulthood.

"Part of the challenge in this is how we talk about pain. We know children spend increasing amounts of time watching these influential programmes and films and that what they depict feeds through to their understanding and awareness of an issue. When it comes to pain, as we see from this study, the picture presented by these media is not reflective of children's common experiences, instead focusing much more on extreme and violent pain.

"Our assessment is that these programmes could do much more to help children understand pain by modelling it in different ways and crucially by showing more empathy when characters experience pain. That's important for how children interact with others when one of them experiences pain, such as when a friend might fall over in the playground or when they go to the doctors for routine vaccinations."

Lead researcher, Dr Melanie Noel, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology from the University of Calgary said: "We examined shows and movies that millions of young children in North America and beyond are watching. The findings were, frankly, shocking.

"It is undoubtable that the media is a powerful force in how children learn about the world. The way pain is unrealistically portrayed is teaching young children that pain is not worthy of help or empathy from others, and that it will be experienced and responded to differently if you are a boy or a girl. We have a responsibility to change these societal narratives about pain."

This work was funded by the Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute and is available via the journal Pain: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002086.

Cancer cells spread by switching on and off abilities to sense their surroundings, move, hide and grow new tumours, a new study has found.

This sensitivity to their surroundings is the key ability that makes small numbers of cancer cells better at spreading than other cells in a tumour, scientists at the University of Reading discovered.

The researchers developed a new method combining evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence techniques to study the movement and shape of cancer cells in more detail than ever, to learn why some can move more easily to different parts of the body and grow new tumours.

They found some cells displayed an apparent 'awareness' and ability to react to their surroundings, that was previously thought to be lost in of cancer. This means they may be able to adapt their shape to navigate barriers like blood vessel walls or other competing cells far more efficiently in order to replicate elsewhere.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, may help to explain why some cancers prove more aggressive than others, and could in the future allow doctors to target these 'super cells' before they spread, giving future cancer patients a greater chance of recovery.

George Butler, a mathematical biologist at the University of Reading who led the study, said: "Unlike healthy human cells, cancer cells were thought to lose their sense of what is around them early in cancer progression, meaning they are effectively blindfolded to their surroundings, focusing instead on replicating to form the primary tumour. Our observations showed for the first time that some cancer cells are able to switch this awareness back on, removing the blindfold to help them move to other locations more efficiently.

"These more spatially-aware cells react by changing shape when they encounter objects, perhaps allowing them to slide past other cells, through membranes into the blood stream and arrive in other parts of the body, where they switch back into replication mode and form new tumours."

Scientists first put a sample of breast cancer cells through a natural selection process in order to evolve sets with enhanced movement or colonisation traits.

Some cells were put into an 'obstacle course', mimicking movement around a human body, with the most successful separated into a group with strong mobility traits. Others were allowed to grow in a small piece of rat lung, resembling the kind of tissue where tumours form, to form a group of strong colonisers.

The two groups of cells were compared against a control group in the lab so scientists could examine the differences between them in detail to learn what makes some better at moving than others.

A computer programme was used to observe the behaviour of the cells in plastic dishes, to analyse their shape and movement far more quickly than a human could.

The mobile group of cells that were more closely packed together were seen to change shape more rapidly to avoid neighbouring cells, while they changed shape less frequently in more sparse environments. This suggests they are able to raise or lower their spatial awareness depending on their surroundings to make them more efficient in all environments.

The new methods of computer vision analysis developed by the team could also be used in other contexts, for example to measure the formation of blood clots or track the movements of sperm cells.

Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, most people have a strong preference for balanced conversations, where each person is able to "get their two cents in." In fact, new research published in Language and Speech shows that people take corrective action to ensure a two-way flow of conversation when situational factors, like defined roles for working together on a task, create an imbalance in how each person is able to contribute.

This corrective behavior had never before been identified or described. The researchers at UC Santa Cruz who discovered it are calling it "reciprocity in conversation." And in settings where people are working together on a task, it's actually associated with higher levels of task enjoyment. This could have fascinating implications for employee morale in work settings, but there's a catch. In order for conversation reciprocity to take place, the people collaborating on a task must make time to incorporate small talk into their work.

Andrew Guydish, a Ph.D. student in cognitive psychology and lead author on this research, said the findings couldn't have come at a better time, because they may be able to help improve remote work environments.

"An average workday now is getting the team together into a virtual meeting, where there's a very clear goal and task," Guydish said. "You're not talking to coworkers at their desk or in the hall. Everything is structured, and everything is essentially a task nowadays. So this research highlights the importance of perhaps trying to institute moments throughout the day with unstructured chat time."

It's in those moments that reciprocity works its magic. Typically, when peers are working together on a task that requires one to direct the other, it creates a natural imbalance in the conversation, where the person in the leadership role ends up doing most of the talking. But if the participants also have unstructured time available, the person leading the task-based conversation can use the opportunity to pull back on their contributions, essentially yielding air time during small talk to the other participant.

That's reciprocity. It helps balance the scales of the overall interaction. And the closer participants get to achieving balance, the higher their levels of enjoyment will be related to the task at hand.

To make this discovery, the research team--which included Guydish, psychology professor Jean Fox Tree, and anticipated 2021 Ph.D. graduate Trevor D'Arcey--analyzed an open-source UC Santa Cruz dataset called the Artwalk Corpus. It's a collection of transcripts from an experiment where one person in a lab was connected with another via video call and tasked with directing them on a walk around downtown Santa Cruz to find and photograph public art.

Researchers reviewed the transcripts from 69 artwalk conversations to identify both task-based and "off-task" communications. Then they determined the contribution balance of each participant, based on who said more words or took longer speaking turns, for each type of communication. In comparing the two, they discovered reciprocity. And when they reviewed the results of post-participation surveys, they found that more balanced conversations, with high levels of reciprocity, had higher reported levels of task enjoyment.

These findings add a new dimension to psychologists' understanding of the importance of balanced communications in collaborative settings. Prior research by Professor Jean Fox Tree, who specializes in psycholinguistics, has also shown that conversational imbalances can have negative effects on task performance by limiting feedback and engagement.

"To understand this, you could draw an analogy to a classroom," said Fox Tree. "Getting feedback from the class tells the professor how they should be explaining something, and that helps everyone in the class, not just the one person who's asking the question."

But the most effective strategies for achieving these benefits are not always intuitive. Prior research on task-based communications found that if roles and power dynamics are merely rotated during a task, the person originally assigned the leadership role often carries forward a tendency to dominate the conversation. Reciprocity shows that the way to bring balance in teamwork settings may not be switching roles, but rather removing the roles entirely and making time to just connect on a personal level.

Co-author Trevor D'Arcey said he thinks this research shows that people are "generally trying to be considerate of each other." There may just be something about small talk that gives us a boost in the right direction.

The multicentre study, in which Berufsgenossenschaftliches Universitätsklinikum Bergmannsheil, Hospital of Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), played a leading role, was published in the Journal of Internal Medicine on 12 November 2020.

Serious dysfunction of the heart muscle

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy - also known as stress cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome - has only been known as a clinical condition for about 30 years. It is characterised by an acute, serious functional disorder of the heart muscle, usually triggered by an extreme emotional and psychological stress situation. If detected at an early stage and treated correctly, the prognosis is generally favourable for most patients. However, the acute phase of the disease can lead to complicated and even life-threatening progressions. Researchers have long suspected that there is a close correlation between the occurrence of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy and diseases of the thyroid gland. A research group from Bochum and Mannheim has now systematically tested patients with Takotsubo syndrome for their thyroid metabolism in a large number of cases and compared them with healthy people and patients who have had a heart attack.

Using artificial intelligence and systems biology models, a strong correlation was found between thyroid function and Takotsubo syndrome - in two subforms. One form, the so-called endocrine type, is an overactive thyroid gland that promotes the risk of a heart disease. The second form, the so-called stress type, is caused by an elevated target value of thyroid regulation, which is probably directly related to the stress event. Here, no direct effect of the thyroid hormones on the heart can be proven.

How hormones influence heart sensitivity

"It has not yet been understood why stress events have very different effects on the heart," explains Dr. Assem Aweimer, senior physician at the cardiology clinic in Bergmannsheil. "The results of our study provide a new explanatory model that traces increased sensitivity of the heart muscle to stress hormones back to sensitisation by thyroid hormones." Associate professor Dr. Johannes Dietrich, senior physician at the medical hospital I in Bergmannsheil, adds: "The results of the study highlight the importance of psychoendocrine connections even in severe diseases. In the future, thyroid function could serve as a biomarker for the individual mechanism of Takotsubo syndrome and help optimise personalised drug therapy."

Below please find a summary and link(s) of new coronavirus-related content published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The summary below is not intended to substitute for the full article as a source of information. A collection of coronavirus-related content is free to the public at http://go.annals.org/coronavirus.

Black and Hispanic populations in the U.S. experiencing disproportionately higher rates of COVID-19

Recent data suggest the impacts of COVID-19 vary among U.S. racial and ethnic groups. Authors from the VA Evidence Synthesis Program, Oregon Health & Science University, and the National Institutes of Health conducted a systematic review to synthesize evidence on racial and ethnic disparities during the pandemic.

The data showed African American/Black and Hispanic populations experience disproportionately higher rates of SARSCoV-2 infection and COVID-19-related mortality but similar rates of case fatality. The authors call for urgent interventions to mitigate these disparities. The findings are published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. Read the full text: https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6306.

Media contacts: A PDF for this article is not yet available. Please click the link to read full text. The lead author, Katherine Mackey, MD, MPP, can be reached at through either Daniel E. Herrigstad at daniel.herrigstad@va.gov (503-402-2975) or through Erik Robinson at 503-494-7986.

Many residents of flood-prone areas of rural Nicaragua face uncertain economic futures each season. In a new paper, EGC faculty affiliate Kevin Donovan and co-author Wyatt Brooks of Arizona State University examine the role of footbridges in providing rural households reliable access to larger and higher-paying urban labor markets. They find that bridge construction increases integration, leading to substantial positive economic impact on rural economies.

The paper underscores the increased benefits of rural integration in the context where income is derived both from farming and labor markets - a common feature of households in developing countries. Moreover, it analyzes the spillover effects of improved access to the labor market on the agricultural economy and shows that bridges might have a compounding positive impact: not only does labor income rise, but agricultural investment increases along with increased profits.

In Nicaragua, both policymakers and residents cite flooding and the resulting isolation of villages as a critical development constraint. During periods of flooding, villagers are cut off from access to outside markets as crossing the river carries a risk of injury or death. Since most rural households are active in the labor market, inaccessible outside labor markets during floods limit choices available and incomes earned.

The researchers worked with an NGO to identify 15 villages in similar need of a bridge. Out of this group, bridges were built in six villages based on the feasibility criteria comprising the characteristics of the riverbed - a feature uncorrelated with any relevant village characteristics. In this quasi-experimental setting, the researchers could compare outcomes between these two sets of villages (i.e., those with and those without a bridge) using causal inference.

The researchers collected data from both annual surveys with all households in each of the 15 villages and biweekly surveys with a subset of households to understand the contemporaneous impact of flooding on household outcomes.

A bridge eliminates the loss of income during floods

In the absence of a bridge, a flood depresses weekly labor market earnings by 18 percent, and increases the probability of reporting no income from 25 percent to 32 percent compared to a week without a flood. When a bridge was constructed, both of these effects disappeared. Hence, the bridge offsets the negative impact of floods on labor income.

Certain access to outside labor markets increases labor income in non-flood periods by expanding choices

The presence of a bridge also increases labor income for households in non-flood periods by influencing choices. Men shift their time from relatively lower-paying jobs in the village to higher-paying jobs outside the village, while women increase their participation in the labor force by 65 percent. Moreover, those who stay in the village for work benefit from the general equilibrium increase: their daily wages rise as village labor supply declines.

Agricultural productivity and profits rise as farmers redirect resources toward investment

In villages with a bridge, farmers spend nearly 60 percent more on fertilizers, and farm profits increase by 75 percent. Protected from unpredictable fluctuations in income induced by floods, villagers are free to spend a larger part of their precautionary savings on productive farm activities.

Agricultural storage declines from 90 to 80 percent of the harvest, suggesting that farmers sell a greater share of their harvest and use the proceeds to invest more in their farms. These results imply that a lack of access to the outside market may have a substantial impact on long-term agricultural decisions in rural economies.

With a bridge, the increase in welfare is larger than the increase in income due to the ability to mitigate risk

According to a model produced by the authors, the introduction of the bridge increases consumption-equivalent welfare by 11 percent. This increase in welfare comes both from an increase in consumption and the decrease in the volatility of consumption. This underscores the importance of reduction in risk that comes with the presence of a bridge.

Bridges are highly cost-effective

The authors find that bridges have an internal rate of return of nearly 20%, since each bridge costs about $40,000 (or C$1,100,000), generates an annual benefit of $7800 (or C$217,000) and lasts at least 40 years. Spillover effects are critical to this calculation. A full third of this internal rate of return is due to the increase in farm profit alone. Given that other benefits are not measured comprehensively, this is likely a conservative estimate of the actual returns.