Culture

The famous seed vault in Spitsbergen and national gene banks retain hundreds of thousands of seed samples to preserve old varieties of crop plants and the genetic diversity associated with them. Are these seed banks gold mines or seed cemeteries?

Researchers around the globe are investigating whether retained samples contain genes that have been lost through breeding which could be beneficial in counteracting climate change. A research team led by Chris-Carolin Schön, Professor of Plant Breeding at the TUM, is now presenting a solution to harness the genetic potential of old varieties, so-called landraces.

Have good plant characteristics been lost through breeding?

Since the 1960s, maize has been grown in Europe's fields mainly in the form of hybrid varieties. Hybrid varieties are developed through a specific breeding scheme and, for example are "trimmed" for high yield per hectare or low susceptibility to pests. In order to breed the best variety, a kit of characteristics is needed that could be relevant both today and in the future. Thus, genetic diversity is the basic prerequisite for breeding improved crop plants.

Hybrid varieties, however, carry only a small selection of traits compared to old varieties, the landraces. The question then is whether in addition to undesirable traits, beneficial traits have been lost in the course of many breeding generations. Therefore, the call for landraces has recently been revived, as they are characterized by high biodiversity and are considered a natural source of new genetic variation for breeding. Genetic variation reflects different variants of a gene and can be recognized by differences in the plant's appearance.

Cold-tolerant varieties: Are they the winners in times of climate change?

The early development of young plants is of particular importance in times of climate change. Drought and heat are the conditions most damaging to crops, such as maize, when they occur during flowering. When a plant can be cultivated early in the year because it can cope with cold, it has already left its flowering period behind when temperatures are particularly high in summer. This means that it is less damaged and yield losses can be avoided.

Professor Schön and her colleagues have been examining landrace varieties for cold tolerance characteristics. For this purpose, they have developed a genome-based method of identifying and making targeted use of beneficial gene resources. After a preliminary study, in which the researchers identified the genetic differences of individual varieties, the researchers selected three landraces for cultivation in different locations with varying climatic conditions within Europe.

Landraces provide advantageous genes for crop improvement

The research team focused on traits related to early plant development and also took into account the stability of the plant (How well does it withstand wind?) and the growth form (straight or bushy?). Using molecular methods that scan the entire genome, they were able to link the data from the field trials to genes relevant to the specific traits.

"We have shown how to find new genetic variation for important traits in agricultural production. The variation in these traits is determined by many genes and is not sufficiently available in current breeding material," says Manfred Mayer, lead author of the study. "This opens the door to the development of improved climate-adapted hybrid varieties."

Massive explosions of energy happening thousands of light-years from Earth may have left traces in our planet's biology and geology, according to new research by University of Colorado Boulder geoscientist Robert Brakenridge.

The study, published this month in the International Journal of Astrobiology, probes the impacts of supernovas, some of the most violent events in the known universe. In the span of just a few months, a single one of these eruptions can release as much energy as the sun will during its entire lifetime. They're also bright--really bright.

"We see supernovas in other galaxies all the time," said Brakenridge, a senior research associate at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder. "Through a telescope, a galaxy is a little misty spot. Then, all of a sudden, a star appears and may be as bright as the rest of the galaxy."

A very nearby supernova could be capable of wiping human civilization off the face of the Earth. But even from farther away, these explosions may still take a toll, Brakenridge said, bathing our planet in dangerous radiation and damaging its protective ozone layer.

To study those possible impacts, Brakenridge searched through the planet's tree ring records for the fingerprints of these distant, cosmic explosions. His findings suggest that relatively close supernovas could theoretically have triggered at least four disruptions to Earth's climate over the last 40,000 years.

The results are far from conclusive, but they offer tantalizing hints that, when it comes to the stability of life on Earth, what happens in space doesn't always stay in space.

"These are extreme events, and their potential effects seem to match tree ring records," Brakenridge said.

Radiocarbon spikes

His research hinges on the case of a curious atom. Brakenridge explained that carbon-14, also known as radiocarbon, is a carbon isotope that occurs only in tiny amounts on Earth. It's not from around here, either. Radiocarbon is formed when cosmic rays from space bombard our planet's atmosphere on an almost constant basis.

"There's generally a steady amount year after year," Brakenridge said. "Trees pick up carbon dioxide and some of that carbon will be radiocarbon."

Sometimes, however, the amount of radiocarbon that trees pick up isn't steady. Scientists have discovered a handful of cases in which the concentration of this isotope inside tree rings spikes--suddenly and for no apparent earthly reason. Many scientists have hypothesized that these several-year-long spikes could be due to solar flares or huge ejections of energy from the surface of the sun.

Brakenridge and a handful of other researchers have had their eye on events much farther from home.

"We're seeing terrestrial events that are begging for an explanation," Brakenridge said. "There are really only two possibilities: A solar flare or a supernova. I think the supernova hypothesis has been dismissed too quickly."

Beware Betelgeuse

He noted that scientists have recorded supernovas in other galaxies that have produced a stupendous amount of gamma radiation--the same kind of radiation that can trigger the formation of radiocarbon atoms on Earth. While these isotopes aren't dangerous on their own, a spike in their levels could indicate that energy from a distant supernova has traveled hundreds to thousands of light-years to our planet.

To test the hypothesis, Brakenridge turned to the past. He assembled a list of supernovas that occurred relatively close to Earth over the last 40,000 years. Scientists can study these events by observing the nebulas they left behind. He then compared the estimated ages of those galactic fireworks to the tree ring record on the ground.

He found that of the eight closest supernovas studied, all seemed to be associated with unexplained spikes in the radiocarbon record on Earth. He considers four of these to be especially promising candidates. Take the case of a former star in the Vela constellation. This celestial body, which once sat about 815 lightyears from Earth, went supernova roughly 13,000 years ago. Not long after that, radiocarbon levels jumped up by nearly 3% on Earth--a staggering increase.

The findings aren't anywhere close to a smoking gun, or star, in this case. Scientists still have trouble dating past supernovas, making the timing of the Vela explosion uncertain with a possible error of as much as 1,500 years. It's also not clear what the impacts of such a disruption might have been for plants and animals on Earth at the time. But Brakenridge believes that the question is worth a lot more research.

"What keeps me going is when I look at the terrestrial record and I say, 'My God, the predicted and modeled effects do appear to be there.'"

He hopes that humanity won't have to see those effects for itself anytime soon. Some astronomers think they've picked up signs that Betelgeuse, a red giant star in the constellation Orion, might be on the verge of collapsing and going supernova. And it's only 642.5 light-years from Earth, much closer than Vela.

"We can hope that's not what's about to happen because Betelgeuse is really close," he said said.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Both of Andrew Kiselica's grandfathers developed dementia when he was in graduate school. As Kiselica was going through neuropsychology training in graduate school, he saw his mother's father become unable to walk or speak due to severe dementia. The University of Missouri researcher said that personal experience has motivated his work to identify and prevent neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.

Now an assistant professor of health psychology, Kiselica recently finished a study that has resulted in procedures for defining the preclinical stages of Alzheimer's disease. Since there are no current treatments to reverse the course of Alzheimer's, this finding can help drug developers identify who could potentially benefit from a future Alzheimer's treatment before symptoms of cognitive decline start to arise.

"Most families have had this experience of watching someone who is vibrant and full of life essentially turn into someone they can barely recognize," said Kiselica, an assistant professor in the School of Health Professions. "I don't want people to have to go through that as their last phase of life. The experience with my grandparents has been the driving force behind my desire to study this disease."

Defined by cognitive changes that impact one's ability to complete basic activities in daily life, dementia is most commonly caused by Alzheimer's disease, a brain disorder where a buildup of amyloid plaque in the brain leads to memory loss and other cognitive issues.

By looking at datasets from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center, Kiselica examined more than 400 individuals who had been declared "cognitively normal," and particularly focused on 101 of these individuals who had a buildup of amyloid plaque in the brain that is associated with Alzheimer's disease.

After analyzing test results that provided data on their memory and attention, caregiver observations of signs of cognitive decline, and neurobehavioral symptoms like anxiety and depression, Kiselica found that those with the amyloid plaque in their brain were more likely to show Alzheimer's-related symptoms compared to those without the amyloid plaque, as expected. More significantly, Kiselica found that 42% of those with the amyloid plaque showed no signs of cognitive decline at all.

"We have developed clear procedures for classifying individuals who are asymptomatic or symptomatic in the preclinical stages of Alzheimer's disease," Kiselica said. "This is important because if a drug to treat Alzheimer's is approved by the FDA down the road, the drug will likely be most effective on those with Alzheimer's-related changes in the brain but no outward signs of cognitive decline yet."

Kiselica added that if those with Alzheimer's-related brain pathology and outward signs of cognitive decline take a proposed Alzheimer's drug in the future, it is possible it will be ineffective because the disease will not be able to reverse course once symptoms start to show up. Therefore, his research can help the developers of future drugs designed to treat Alzheimer's disease or dementia know what type of people to include in their clinical trials.

"This is one of the first studies to demonstrate procedures for defining people in preclinical stages of Alzheimer's disease who do and do not show signs of cognitive and behavioral changes," Kiselica said. "I hope in some small way, my research can lead to improving quality of life for people suffering with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's."

"An initial empirical operationalization of the earliest stages of the Alzheimer's continuum" was recently published in

East Hanover, NJ. November 11, 2020. Kessler Foundation researchers have linked balance dysfunction in individuals with traumatic brain injury with diminished sensory acuity. This study used a psychophysical approach to develop a new metric called the perturbation perception threshold (PPT) for objectively quantifying impaired sensory acuity after traumatic brain injury. The article, "Evaluating sensory acuity as a marker of balance dysfunction after a traumatic brain injury: A psychophysical approach" (doi: 10.3389/fnins.2020.00836), was published August 11, 2020 in Frontiers in Neuroscience. It is available open access at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7431558

The authors are Rakesh Pilkar, PhD, Kiran Karunakaran, PhD, Akhila Veerubhotla, PhD, Naphtaly Ehrenberg, MS, Oluwaseun Ibironke, and Karen Nolan, PhD, from the Center for Mobility and Rehabilitation Engineering Research at Kessler Foundation.

Balance problems limit independence, and increase the risk of falls and/or injury after traumatic brain injury. To improve rehabilitation interventions, more knowledge is needed about the integration of the visual, vestibular and somatosensory factors that contribute to balance, and how brain injury can adversely affect this complex system of balance control.

Despite the importance of accurately perceiving external perturbations to maintaining balance, limited research has been done on the contributions of sensory acuity to balance dysfunction after traumatic brain injury, according to lead author Dr. Pilkar, the research scientist who directs the Center's Balance Assessment and Training Laboratory.

Study investigators sought to quantify the threshold for perceiving perturbation in individuals with and without traumatic brain injury, and determine the influence on static and dynamic balance. They provoked body sway during standing and measured response thresholds. Lower thresholds for perceiving these perturbations indicate better body awareness to maintain balance in dynamic settings.

Participants included ten individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI group) and 11 healthy controls (control group), all of whom underwent comprehensive baseline balance assessment (Berg Balance Scale, Timed-Up and Go, 5-min Walk Test, and 10-meter Walk Test). Using a responsive platform called the Neurocom Smart Equitest Clinical Research System, researchers delivered measured stimuli in three frequencies that briefly moved the platform in an anterior-posterior direction. Participants were asked to respond to 21 trials randomized for movement (perturbation) or no movement (nonperturbation). Each individual's responses to these trials were recorded while standing on the platform, to establish their PPT.

Results revealed significant differences in PPT between the TBI and control groups. Compared with the control group, the TBI group had higher PPT and lower functional scores on static and dynamic balance. While further research is needed, these findings have important implications for the rehabilitation of individuals with TBI. "As a means of detecting and quantifying sensory acuity PPT may serve as a novel marker for the sensory integration deficits that underlie balance impairments in individuals recovering from traumatic brain injury," said Dr. Pilkar. "This line of research will provide the information we need to develop new rehabilitative treatments that restore balance and reduce the risk for falls, and improve long-term outcomes after traumatic brain injury."

Most people closing in on a high school or college degree, and even those casting their career fates without a diploma, at some point take an interest assessment to help determine how their interests relate to different jobs. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, The Occupational Information Network's (O*NET) My Next Move website, which hosts the Interest Profiler, averages over 1 million site visits per month.

And now it can be told - a report by a University of Houston researcher reveals that your interest in an occupation does not matter as much as you might think when it comes to job satisfaction.

"Our main finding was that interest fit significantly predicts satisfaction, but it's not as strong of a relation as people expect," reports Kevin Hoff, assistant professor of industrial-organizational psychology, in the Journal of Vocational Behavior. "Other things that lead to satisfaction include the organization you work for, your supervisor, colleagues and pay."

For those forging a career, the takeaway seems hopeful.

"To be satisfied with a job, you don't have to worry too much about finding a perfect fit for your interests because we know other things matter, too. As long as it's something you don't hate doing, you may find yourself very satisfied if you have a good supervisor, like your coworkers, and are treated fairly by your organization," said Hoff.

To reach these conclusions, Hoff and team systematically reviewed data from 65 years of research conducted between 1949 and 2016 on the link between interest fit and job satisfaction. They examined 105 studies with 39,602 participants.

The research also indicates that the relationship between interest fit and job performance is more critical than the link to satisfaction.

"Being interested in your work seems more important for job performance and the downstream consequences of performing well, like raises or promotions," said Hoff.

The use of vocational interests to predict job satisfaction dates to the 1940's when interest assessments were first described as a tool to help people discover satisfying work.

"In popular career guidance literature, it is widely assumed that interest fit is important for job satisfaction. Our results show that people who are more interested in their jobs tend to be slightly more satisfied, but interest assessments are more useful for guiding people towards jobs in which they will perform better and make more money" reports Hoff.

HOUSTON - (Nov. 11, 2020) - It's a long-standing assumption that the presence of water influences how proteins fold. A new study is challenging the details.

A paper in the American Chemical Society's Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters shows proteins that presumably evolved to avoid water as they fold may actually behave in ways scientists did not anticipate.

That discovery could change how scientists think about hydrophobic (water-avoiding) and hydrophilic (water-attracting) interactions in solutions, according to a Rice University engineer.

Collaborators from Rice and Tulane universities and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine created atom-level models of polypeptides that showed folding is also influenced by thermal expansion of the solvents they occupy, but not in ways that match previous assumptions.

The long-held view is that hydrophobic amino acids, which avoid water by coming together as efficiently as possible, are a dominant force in protein folding, said Dilip Asthagiri, an associate research professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice's Brown School of Engineering.

The new study shows temperature, a factor not always included in protein folding models, also influences the phenomenon. That should prompt a reassessment of how proteins folding in a solution are stabilized, according to the researchers.

"There are many proteins that are intrinsically disordered that don't fold at all," Asthagiri said. "One way the non-folding has been rationalized has been to look at the balance of hydrophobic groups and charged groups and, assuming the latter dominate, conclude the polypeptide does not fold.

"We showed in 2017 that in a model of an intrinsically disordered peptide that has no side chains, hydrophilic effects can in fact overwhelm the collapse driven by the still-substantial hydrophobic effects and drive the unfolding, even in the absence of charged residues," he said. "That study and the one published earlier in 2016 highlighted the role of hydrophilic effects. But we didn't look at temperature effects."

So the team led by Asthagiri set out to model precisely how polypeptides, a classification that includes proteins in biological systems, fold and unfold as they connect with water at various temperatures.

When the researchers calculated the free energy of a hydrated deca-alanine peptide sequence, along with its side-chains, they found that forces of attraction between the solvent and peptide play a role as well, particularly when more than one peptide is involved.

They found that in the temperature ranges they modeled, the matrix of solvent around the polypeptides expands when heated, decreasing the population of solvent molecules that are around and contacting the peptides. This can make binding interactions between the solvent and peptides less favorable.

They noted the effect is minor for small molecules in a solvent, but amplified for larger peptides and proteins. They also said the theory suggests hydrophilic effects can contribute to the denaturation, or unfolding, of proteins in cold solutions.

"The solution environment is an important contributor to the structure of proteins," said Tulane chemical engineer and co-corresponding author Lawrence Pratt, a longtime mentor to Asthagiri. "Everything the solution does, including the water, has to do with how these proteins put themselves together and the functions they perform."

He said hydrophobic effects in protein folding have been recognized since the 1940s. "It's a rather tricky thing, though, because it has unusual temperature dependencies," Pratt said. "You know, things live or die if you change the temperatures.

"Some hydrophobic effects get stronger when you raise the temperature, so things get to be more stable," he said. "But Dilip shows this increase in strength with increasing temperature can come from other places, including effects that all chemists would say are hydrophilic.

"Both hydrophobic and hydrophilic effects come into play," he said. "And they're competing, and they're collaborating. And so being able to distinguish them individually in a very convincing way is a big step in sorting all this behavior out."

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, old and young individuals did not differ in taking precautions, but over time, older people quickly adopted preventive behaviors and they engaged in more preventive behaviors. Older people engaged in fewer risky behaviors relative to younger people on month after the beginning of the pandemic and this age difference persisted over time; both young and older people started engaging in more potentially risky behaviors. These findings come from a new study by Jung Ki Kim at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, published November 10 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

The risk of dying from COVID-19 dramatically increases with age, because the elderly are more likely to have underlying health conditions and a weaker immune system. To see if older individuals were more likely to take precautions against COVID-19, such as handwashing, quarantining and social distancing, Kim and her USC colleague, Eileen Crimmins, examined data on COVID-19-related behaviors from a nationally representative sample of American households participating in the Understanding America Study.

They discovered that early on, old and young people were equally likely to take precautions, but a month into the pandemic, young people were more likely to engage in some risky behaviors, like visiting friends. As the pandemic progressed, however, both old and younger people resumed some potentially risky activities. The researchers also found that people who are female, of higher socioeconomic status, a member of a racial or ethnic minority group, or left-of-center politically, or who live in a place with high numbers of COVID-19 cases, were more likely to try to limit their risk of infection.

Overall, the new study shows that people of different ages responded differently to the threat posed by COVID-19, and that these responses changed with the course of the pandemic. Given the more severe consequences for older people who are infected - and the lack of a cure - the authors encourage older individuals to continue taking precautions and to avoid risky behaviors until a vaccine can be developed and distributed.

The authors add: "It is encouraging to observe older people taking more preventive personal behaviors as the pandemic progressed. This may have alleviated their risk of infection. However, at the same time, it is concerning that people increased risky social behaviors over time, particularly older people, who could have more adverse consequences from meeting with family and friends."

Certain parts of our body, such as the skin or liver, can repair themselves after a damage. Known as cell regeneration, this phenomenon describes how cells that are still functional start to proliferate to compensate for the loss. For the past 30 years, scientists have been investigating the regenerative potential of beta cells, pancreatic cells in charge of the production of insulin. Beta-cell population is indeed partially destroyed when diabetes occurs, and regenerating these cells represents an outstanding clinical challenge. By studying diabetic mice, scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG, observed that this regeneration mechanism was under the influence of circadian rhythms - the molecular clocks regulating metabolic functions according to a 24-hour cycle of alternating day-night. In addition, the scientists identified the essential role of the core clock component BMAL1 in this process. These results, to be read in the journal Gene and Development, allow new perspectives to be envisaged to promote beta cell regeneration.

Compensatory proliferation, in which cells begin to actively divide to replace those that have been damaged, is a biological mechanism that is both well-known and poorly understood. &laquoAnd this is particularly true for pancreatic beta cells, whose regenerative mechanism stays largely unexplored despite decades of research,» explains Dr Charna Dibner, head of the Circadian Endocrinology Laboratory at UNIGE Faculty of Medicine's the Departments of Medicine and Cell Physiology and Metabolism, as well as at the Diabetes Centre, and at the HUG. &laquoHowever, deciphering this phenomenon and above all finding out how to promote it could be a game changer for controlling diabetes.»

Day-night rotation is essential

To explore the connection between internal biological clocks and beta cell regeneration, Charna Dibner's team first observed two groups of mice with only 20% beta cells remaining after targeted massive ablation. Mice in a first group were arrhythmic, whereas the control group had perfectly functional clocks. &laquoThe result was very clear: the mice bearing dysfunctional clocks were unable to regenerate their beta cells, and suffered from severe diabetes, while the control group animals had their beta cells regenerated; in just a few weeks, their diabetes was under control,» says Volodymyr Petrenko, a researcher in Dr. Dibner's laboratory and the leading scientist in this study. By measuring the number of dividing beta cells across 24 hours, the scientists also noted that regeneration is significantly greater at night, when the mice are active.

The BMAL1 gene, metronome of cell activity

The arrhythmic mice were lacking the BMAL1 gene, which codes for the protein of the same name, a transcription factor known for its key action in the functioning of circadian clock. &laquoOur analyses show that the BMAL1 gene is essential for the regeneration of beta cells,» adds Volodymyr Petrenko. In addition, large-scale transcriptomic analyses over a 24-hour period, conducted in collaboration with Prof. Bart Vandereycken at the Mathematics Department of the UNIGE, revealed that the genes responsible for regulating cell cycle and proliferation were not only upregulated, but also acquired circadian rhythmicity. "BMAL1 seems to be indeed central for our investigation," stresses Charna Dibner. "However, whether the regeneration requires functional circadian clocks themselves, or only BMAL1, whose range of functions goes beyond clocks remains unclear. That is what we would like to find out at present." The scientists also want to explore the function of alpha cells, which produce glucagon, the hormone that antagonises insulin, in this model. The arrhythmic mice indeed showed very high levels of glucagon in the blood. "A detailed understanding of these mechanisms must now be pursued, in an attempt to explore the possibility of triggering beta cell regeneration in humans in the future" conclude the authors.

A new study from the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology shows that the behavioral responses to COVID-19 differed by age. The research, led by Jung Ki Kim, research associate professor at the USC Leonard Davis School, examined how age affected the practice of preventive and risky behaviors in response to COVID-19 and how these behaviors changed over the first three months of the pandemic.

The article was co-authored by University Professor Eileen Crimmins, holder of the AARP Chair in Gerontology, and appeared online in the journal PLOS One on November 10, 2020.

Among the study's findings:

At the beginning of the quarantine period, older people were no more likely than younger people to practice preventive behaviors in response to the pandemic. In fact, in March, older people were no different from younger people in their engagement in wearing a facemask, washing hands frequently, canceling personal and social activities, and avoiding high-risk people, public places and eating at restaurants. However by May, older people were more likely to implement such behaviors.

Except for wearing a mask, people adopted preventive activities in the first month but then reduced the modification of their behaviors somewhat after April, so that the percentage of people taking these preventive behaviors was lower in May than April. However, the use of facemasks continued to increase over time such that the percentage in May was about double that of April.

In terms of risky behaviors, older people were less likely than younger people to have close contact with non-household people and less likely to go to other people's homes a month after the pandemic started. However, both younger and older people tended to resume these potentially risky social behaviors as the pandemic progressed.

"It is encouraging to observe older people taking more preventive personal behaviors as the pandemic progressed as this may have alleviated their risk of infection," said Kim. "However, at the same time, it is concerning that people increased risky social behaviors over time, particularly older people, who could have more adverse consequences from meeting with family and friends."

The researchers speculate that some risky behaviors, such as visiting or being visited by non-household friends and relatives, may be behaviors that people, regardless of age, cannot forgo for months.

Kim and Crimmins analyzed three waves of response data from the Understanding America Study's COVID-19 panel on how often more than 5000 participants, ranging in age from 18 to 101 and categorized into age groups of 18-34, 35-54, 55-64, and 65+, performed five virus-mitigating behaviors during the months of March, April and May of the coronavirus pandemic: (1) wearing a face mask, (2) washing hands with soap or using hand sanitizer several times per day, (3) canceling or postponing personal or social activities, (4) avoiding eating at restaurants, (5) and avoiding public spaces, gatherings or crowds. In addition, they also looked at risky health behaviors: going to another person's residence; having outside visitors such as friends, neighbors or relatives at one's home; attending a gathering with more than 10 people, such as a party, concert or religious service; or having close contact (within six feet) with someone who doesn't live with the respondent.

"Because there is no immediate cure and little treatment for the condition, while scientists are attempting to develop and distribute a vaccine, proper personal and social practices may be the only route to reducing infection for older people," said Kim. "Given more severe consequences for older people once infected, older people should be strongly encouraged to continue taking
preventive personal behaviors and not to increase risky behaviors since the virus could be transmitted during these activities."

In addition to age, the researchers also found that other characteristics are related to behavior during the ongoing pandemic: being female, Black, Hispanic or Asian; having a higher education; having underlying conditions; residing in a state where the COVID-19 outbreak was more prevalent; and trusting CNN more than Fox News were all linked to practicing more preventive behaviors in response to COVID-19.

The researchers say that the consistently higher preventive behavioral response of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians may reflect the knowledge that the pandemic was differentially affecting communities of color. They add that proper work accommodations and protective guidelines may need to be made for persons who are engaging in risky behaviors out of necessity. They also say that people may also respond to state and local government mandates and campaigns on the importance of face covering in states where infection cases are greater, and that apolitical, scientifically based recommendations for behavior through the media could have changed behaviors.

Arguably, almost all truly intriguing systems are ones that are far away from equilibrium -- such as stars, planetary atmospheres, and even digital circuits. But, until now, systems far from thermal equilibrium couldn't be analyzed with conventional thermodynamics and statistical physics.

When physicists first explored thermodynamics and statistical physics during the 1800s, and through the 1900s, they focused on analyzing physical systems that are at or near equilibrium. Conventional thermodynamics and statistical physics have also focused on macroscopic systems, which contain few, if any, explicitly distinguished subsystems.

In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, physicist David Wolpert of the Santa Fe Institute presents a new hybrid formalism to overcome all of these limitations.

Fortunately, at the turn of the millennium, "a formalism now known as nonequilibrium statistical physics was developed," says Wolpert. "It applies to systems that are arbitrarily far away from equilibrium and of any size."

Nonequilibrium statistical physics is so powerful that it has resolved one of the deepest mysteries about the nature of time: how does entropy evolve within an intermediate regime? This is the space between the macroscopic world, where the second law of thermodynamics tells us that it must always increase, and the microscopic world where it can't ever change.

We now know it's only the expected entropy of a system that can't decrease with time. "There's always a non-zero probability that any particular sample of the dynamics of a system will result in decreasing entropy -- and the probability of shrinking entropy grows as the system gets smaller," he says.

At the same time that this revolution in statistical physics was occurring, major advances involving so-called graphical models were being made within the machine learning community.

In particular, the formalism of Bayesian networks was developed, which provides a method to specify systems with many subsystems that interact probabilistically with each other. Bayes nets can be used to formally describe the synchronous evolution of the elements of a digital circuit -- fully accounting for noise within that evolution.

Wolpert combined these advances into a hybrid formalism, which is allowing him to explore thermodynamics of off-equilibrium systems that have many explicitly distinguished subsystems coevolving according to a Bayes net.

As an example of the power of this new formalism, Wolpert derived results showing the relationship between three quantities of interest in studying nanoscale systems like biological cells: the statistical precision of any arbitrarily defined current within the subsystem (such as the probabilities that the currents differ from their average values), the heat generated by running the overall Bayes net composed of those subsystems, and the graphical structure of that Bayes net.

"Now we can start to analyze how the thermodynamics of systems ranging from cells to digital circuits depend on the network structures connecting the subsystems of those systems," says Wolpert.

On 29 October 2020, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced the "successful recovery" of the US gray wolf population, with US Secretary of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt stating that the species had "exceeded all conservation goals for recovery." These claims have been rebutted by numerous experts, who argue that the delisting decision is premature.
Writing in BioScience, independent ecologist Carlos Carroll and colleagues argue that the declarations of recovery should be based on a more ambitious definition of recovery than one requiring the existence of a single secure population. Instead, they propose a framework for the "conservation of adaptive potential," which builds on existing agency practice to enhance the effectiveness of the Act. The authors argue that such an approach is particularly crucial in light of climate change and other ongoing threats to species.
On this episode of BioScience Talks, Dr. Carroll is joined by coauthors Adrian Treves, Bridgett vonHoldt, and Dan Rohlf to discuss the recent USFWS action as well as prospects for gray wolf conservation.

To hear the whole discussion, visit this link for this latest episode of the BioScience Talks podcast.

Yale researchers have discovered a protein that helps protect hosts from infection with the tick-borne spirochete that causes Lyme Disease, a finding that may help diagnose and treat this infection, they report Nov. 11 in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

Lyme Disease is the most common vector-borne disease in North America and is transmitted by ticks infected with the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. The course of the disease varies among individuals, with the majority experiencing mild symptoms easily treated by antibiotics. However, in some cases of untreated Lyme the infection can spread to the heart, joints, nervous system, and other organs.

For the study, the Yale team expressed more than 1,000 human genes in yeast and analyzed their interactions with 36 samples of B. burgdorferi. They found that one protein, Peptidoglycan Recognition Protein 1 (PGLYRP1), acts like an early warning signal to the immune system when exposed to the bacteria. When exposed to the Lyme spirochete, mice lacking PGLYRP1 had much higher levels of B. burgdorferi than mice with the protein and showed signs of immune system dysfunction, the researchers report.

"Stimulating the ability of people to make more of this protein could help fight infection," said Yale's Erol Fikrig, the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and professor of epidemiology (microbial diseases) and of microbial pathogenesis and co-corresponding author of the study.

Fikrig and his colleagues are also investigating whether people with higher levels of PGLYRP1 may be less susceptible to infection by B. burgdorferi, which would help explain why some infected individuals have better outcomes.

Management scholars generally agree that being proactive at work yields positive outcomes. Studies show proactive -- as compared to reactive -- people tend to perform at higher levels.

A new study from the University of Notre Dame offers the first examination of proactive personality in times of immediate response to a crisis -- the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic at a hospital in Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. The general hospital where the study took place had been instructed by the central government to immediately transition to a COVID-19 hospital, and as the crisis unfolded the researchers were able to collect real-time data from more than 400 doctors and nurses who had to shift from their previous specialties to respiratory medicine -- an area for which they were not previously trained.

"When there is a will there is a way: The role of proactive personality in combating COVID-19" is forthcoming in the Journal of Applied Psychology from Mike Crant, the Mary Jo and Richard M. Kovacevich Professor of Excellence in Leadership Instruction at Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. Crant, a longtime researcher in the area of workplace behavior, is one of the creators of the proactive personality scale, the most frequently used measure of proactivity in the organizational literature.

Relying primarily on a public health care system, China's hospitals are crowded even in normal times, especially in large and fast-growing areas of the country like Wuhan.

The hospital provided a unique window through which to learn about job performance during a time of incredible stress in the formative days of the pandemic when very little was known about the nature of COVID-19 and its treatment.

The team surveyed the doctors and nurses three times during the first four months of the transition to a COVID-19 hospital. They collected information on their proactivity, how they redesigned their jobs, and COVID-related factors like exposure to the virus and routine disruption. They also asked about their well-being (resilience and thriving), collected performance data from supervisors and obtained performance bonus data from the human resources department.

Proactive individuals have a tendency to create change through personal initiative. They are better at scanning for and creating opportunities to make things better. People have unique characteristics and abilities that make them more engaged at work, and allow them to perform at higher levels. But not all jobs bring out these strengths. The transition to working exclusively with COVID-19 patients created an opportunity for proactive people to redesign their jobs in a way that allowed them to play from their strengths.

"We found that having a proactive personality was a tremendous benefit to doctors and nurses working to combat this new and deadly disease," Crant said. "More proactive doctors and nurses were able to redesign their jobs more effectively in a way that allowed them to capitalize on their personal strengths. That, in turn, led to higher job performance and greater well-being. These effects were magnified for doctors and nurses who experienced greater exposure to the virus, whose jobs were more upended because of the transition to COVID-19 medicine, and when they felt more support from their colleagues and hospital administration. This latter finding suggests that factors specific to COVID-19 strongly affected the doctors' and nurses' performance and well-being."

The team studied two elements of well-being -- resilience and thriving. Resilience refers to how you deal with adversity or how you rebound from threatening circumstances. Thriving is having a sense of vitality and learning at work. Their data also showed the doctors and nurses who redesigned their jobs more effectively to utilize their strengths suffered less insomnia during this stressful period.

"Imagine if your job were changed to another that had nothing to do with your previous work," Crant said. "And you were overwhelmed with more work than ever. Add to that an element of danger -- you significantly increased your risk of catching a deadly disease by doing this new job. That is the situation the frontline health care professionals found themselves in. Not everyone performed at the same level, nor did they deal with the stress equally effectively."

The unique study confirmed the importance of being proactive rather than reactive in a novel setting, indicating that leaders of organizations facing crises should emphasize the importance of crafting employees' jobs to align with their strengths.

"Proactivity is a valuable resource in dealing with the stress associated with a crisis, so emphasizing that to employees at all levels is advisable," Crant said. "We also found that perceived organizational support played a crucial role in the success of the doctors and nurses. It is vital for employees on the frontlines of a crisis to feel that the organization and people who work there have their backs."

Artificial intelligence is supposed to make machines perform at ever more amazing levels. A robot that can do little more than a remote-controlled model car has a limited range of applications. But from an automatic machine to an autonomous robot, it is a big, almost revolutionary step. Robotics researchers Mirko Kovac and Aslan Miriyev, who both work at Empa's "Materials and Technology Center of Robotics" in Dübendorf and at the "Aerial Robotics Lab" of Imperial College London, are convinced that one decisive component can make this evolutionary step possible: Physical artificial intelligence, PAI for short. Only when the artificial intelligence of a digital "brain" is merged with an intelligent body could new types of robots be created that have properties comparable to those of intelligent living organisms. They have now published their concept in the latest issue of the renowned scientific journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

Thinking outside the box

In order to develop fully autonomous, intelligent robot systems, researchers must recognize and utilize the synergies of different disciplines, such as materials science, biology, mechanical engineering, chemistry and computer science, according to the Empa scientists. "We imagine that PAI robots will only become reality through the use of a variety of unconventional materials and by combining research methods from various disciplines," says Mirko Kovac. To do this, researchers would need a much broader range of skills than is usually seen in conventional robotics. Interdisciplinary cooperation, partnerships and an adaptation of the curriculum for young researchers are therefore called for. "Working in a multidisciplinary environment requires courage and constant learning. Researchers must leave their comfort zones and think beyond the boundaries of their own field".

Symbiosis of man and machine

The Empa researchers want to promote the vision of a society in which people are "living" together seamlessly with machines. "This symbiosis can only be achieved if safe interaction is possible and if the machines have true, Physical AI, allowing them to live like benevolent animals together with nature and people," says Kovac. The researchers now hope that their work will encourage active discussion of the topic.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- An implantable smart wrap that fits safely and securely around the bladder may one day help people who have under-active bladders, a condition that hinders patients from urinating regularly and comfortably, according to an international team of researchers.

In a study, the implant, which combines sensors and a polymer wrap, is an integrated device that can detect when the bladder needs to be completely emptied and then send a signal to a polymer web with an electronic thread that expands or contracts with the bladder. After the bladder is emptied, the band returns to its initial formation.

"Researchers have been interested in studying urinary control for a while because a lot of diseases and conditions are related to this," said Larry Cheng, the Dorothy Quiggle Professor in Engineering and an affiliate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. "There are two conditions in particular that researchers have been studying. The first condition is to force the urine out of the bladder when the muscle might be in a diseased state so that it really can't provide enough force to get the urine out. The second is an overactive bladder, in which an individual experiences the sudden or frequent tendency to urinate, which is related to urinary incontinence."

The device, which was tested in mice, uses sensors to enable precise monitoring in real-time of the bladder to address the under-active bladder condition, he added.

Cheng said that past research focused on a mechanical aid to stress the bladder and encourage urination, but the option is difficult to implement and the wrap that surrounded the bladder can slip off. The researchers, who published their findings in Science Advances, said they designed a serpentine-shaped polymer wrap to create a wrap that can stay in place, while expanding to suit the changing shape of the bladder during urination. It can also hold all the necessary sensors and wiring.

"With the serpentine design built into the structure, we can stretch it to a much bigger geometry," said Cheng. "So, if we stretch that serpentine wrap, which is placed around and against the bladder, it would provide a sufficient force to hold the electronic thread with the sensors in place so that it won't be able to slip off."

The microLEDs, which are an array of micro light-emitting diodes, on the electronic thread are designed to deliver light to the bladder for optogenetic neuromodulation, which modulates the function of the targeted organ.

Cheng said that the device is made from materials that are biologically safe and designed to operate for long-time operation in the body. The wrap does not need sutures or glue to be held in place, which is another benefit, he added.

The team used computational resources from ICDS to investigate various designs of the polymer wrap.

"The computational power is really useful because we needed to design this polymer wrap to different geometries," said Cheng. "In this case, we had two different geometries that we investigated. One is a straight line and the other is the serpentine design. And, of course, we tried a few others, so the computational power allowed us to look at different polymer designs and then single out the best one to use."

In the future, the researchers said the wrap might be re-tooled to help people who have unconscious urination due to overactive bladders. The "smart wrap" implant may also help people with other disease conditions to go from diagnostic confirmation to advanced therapeutic options in clinical medicine.