Culture

Representation of Female Authors in Family Medicine Academic Journals is Trending Upward

After decades of underrepresentation in medicine, women are now entering many specialties in the United States, including family medicine, at higher rates than men. Despite the rising proportion of female physicians in family medicine, they continue to be underrepresented in the highest levels of professional attainment, particularly in academic settings. This study from the Robert Graham Center examines female authorship of research published in three leading U.S. family medicine journals over time. They found a statistically significant increase in female authorship of published research over time, with a 13-point jump in original research with female senior authors, from 29 percent in 2008 to 42 percent by 2017. In that same time period, the gender composition of the journals' editorial boards remained roughly the same. Published research was more likely to be male led if it did not have grant funding or if there were no other co-authors. This study's authors discuss the importance of increasing female representation in peer-reviewed publications, closing the gender gaps in the highest levels of academic medicine, and ensuring appropriate representation of thoughts and ideas in the field of family medicine.

Has Female Authorship Distribution in Family Medicine Research Evolved Over Time?
Yalda Jabbarpour, MD, et al
Robert Graham Center, Washington, D.C.
https://www.annfammed.org/content/18/6/496

Most women are receiving fewer than half the services recommended during their comprehensive postpartum medical checkup, according to a study by University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers.

"These findings underscore the importance of efforts to reconceptualize postpartum care to ensure women have access to a range of supports to manage their health during this sensitive period," concludes the study, published Nov. 10 in JAMA Network Open. "There is substantial room to improve the delivery of postpartum care."

Authors Kimberley Geissler and Laura Attanasio, both assistant professors of health policy and management in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, were joined in the study by graduate student Brittany Ranchoff and undergraduate Michael Cooper. The study received funding from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

"This research is very important because we were able to look at care that was actually provided and really understand what happened during health care visits, not just that the visits are happening. This information is critical for improving the quality of care," says Geissler.

The medical visits averaged about 17 minutes, the researchers found, which may help explain the incomplete postpartum care. "Is that enough time to provide these services? I don't know," Geissler says. "The pressure to see more patients in an increasingly short time is a known issue in the U.S. health care system, so it's not surprising we see that here, too."

In one of the most startling findings, despite an increased awareness of perinatal depression, only one in 11 patients received a screening for depression, part of the assessment of physical, social and psychological well-being recommended by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

"We need to look at why depression screening is not happening," Attanasio says. "This is an important factor in women's health for the rest of their lives. Even if you're missing some of the recommended services, this one should be universal among this population."

Previous studies have shown that women with Medicaid insurance receive fewer preventive services than women with private insurance, leading the UMass Amherst team to examine insurance type in their review. "We hypothesized recommended services would be less frequently provided during postpartum visits for women with Medicaid insurance compared to women with other coverage types," the researchers write.

However, Attanasio says, "we found that there were not significant differences in the services received between women with Medicaid coverage and private insurance. That could reflect the fact that a lot of these services were not provided to most of the women."

The researchers analyzed data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, which represented more than 20 million postpartum office visits to an ob-gyn or family medicine doctor from 2009 to 2016.

Recommended services include blood pressure screening; depression screening; pelvic exam; pap test; breast exam; blood glucose exam; contraceptive counseling or provision; counseling for weight reduction, exercise, stress management, diet/nutrition, and/or tobacco use; medication review; and referral to another physician, if needed.

The study calculated the percentage of visits during which the recommended postpartum care services were provided, including the following:

Blood pressure, 91.1%

Depression screening, 8.7%

Pelvic exam, 47.3%

Pap test, 15.9%

Breast exam, 21.9%

Contraceptive counseling or provision, 43.8%

The first mining experiments conducted in space could pave the way for new technologies to help humans explore and establish settlements on distant worlds, a study suggests.

Tests performed by astronauts on the International Space Station suggest that bacteria can extract useful materials from rocks on Mars and the Moon.

The findings could aid efforts to develop ways of sourcing metals and minerals - such as iron and magnesium - essential for survival in space.

Bacteria could one day be used to break rocks down into soil for growing crops, or to provide minerals for life support systems that produce air and water, researchers say.

Matchbox-sized mining devices - called biomining reactors - were developed by scientists at the UK Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh over a 10-year period.

Eighteen of the devices were transported to the space station - which orbits the Earth at an altitude of around 250 miles - aboard a SpaceX rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, US, in July 2019.

Small pieces of basalt - a common rock on the Moon and Mars - were loaded into each device and submerged in bacterial solution. The three-week experiment was conducted under space gravity conditions to simulate environments on Mars and the Moon.

The team's findings suggest bacteria could enhance the removal of rare earth elements from basalt in lunar and Martian landscapes by up to around 400 per cent. Rare earth elements are widely used in technologies including mobile phones, computers and magnets.

Microbes are also routinely used on Earth in the process of so-called biomining to extract economically useful elements such as copper and gold from rocks. The new experiments have also provided new data on how gravity influences the growth of communities of microbes here on Earth, researchers say.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, received funding from the UK Space Agency and the European Space Agency. The research was supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. The miniature mining reactors used in the experiment were built by engineering company Kayser Italia.

Professor Charles Cockell, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy, who led the project, said: "Our experiments lend support to the scientific and technical feasibility of biologically enhanced elemental mining across the Solar System. While it is not economically viable to mine these elements in space and bring them to Earth, space biomining could potentially support a self-sustaining human presence in space.

"For example, our results suggest that the construction of robotic and human-tended mines in the Oceanus Procellarum region of the Moon, which has rocks with enriched concentrations of rare earth elements, could be one fruitful direction of human scientific and economic development beyond Earth."

Dr Rosa Santomartino, a postdoctoral scientist in the University's School of Physics and Astronomy, who worked on the project, said: "Microorganisms are very versatile and as we move into space, they can be used to accomplish a diversity of processes. Elemental mining is potentially one of them."

Libby Jackson, Human Exploration Programme Manager at the UK Space Agency, said: "It is wonderful to see the scientific findings of BioRock published. Experiments like this is show how the UK, through the UK Space Agency, is playing a pivotal role in the European Space Agency's exploration programme.

"Findings from experiments like BioRock will not only help develop technology that will allow humans to explore our Solar System further, but also helps scientists from a wide range of disciplines gain knowledge that can benefit all of us on Earth."

There was a time when the idea of growing organs in the lab was the stuff of science fiction. Today, stem cell biology and tissue engineering are turning fiction into reality with the advent of organoids: tiny lab-grown tissues and organs that are anatomically correct and physiologically functional.

The appeal of organoids is obvious. Essentially, they can provide us with an on-demand production of tissues and mini-organs for pharmaceutical and medical research, without constantly having to rely on donors. And although that goal might still be a long way off, we're slowly getting closer.

EPFL has been involved in the development of organoids for a while now, with the lab of Matthias Lütolf at the School of Life Sciences leading the charge. This year alone, Lütolf's group has published papers on standardizing organoid growth, 3D-printing organoids, and actually producing a functional organoid-based mini-intestine - a groundbreaking Nature paper that is leading the way in this field.

Now, Lütolf's lab has successfully produced a mouse heart organoid in its early embryonic stages. The project was led by Giuliana Rossi, a post-doctoral researcher from Lütolf's laboratory, and published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

The researchers grew their organoids from mouse embryonic stem cells, which, under the right conditions, can self-organize into structures that "mimic aspects of the architecture, cellular composition, and function of tissues found in real organs", as the researchers put it in the paper. Placed in cell-culture under specific conditions, the embryonic stem cells form a three-dimensional aggregate called a "gastruloid", which can follow the developmental stages of the mouse embryo.

The idea behind this study was that the mouse gastruloid can be used to mimic the early stages of heart development in the embryo. This is a rather unexplored use of organoids, which are generally grown to mimic adult tissues and organs. But there are three features of mouse gastruloids that make them a suitable template for mimicking embryonic development: they establish a body plan like real embryos, and they show similar gene expression patterns. And when it comes to the heart, which is the first organ to form and function in the embryo, the mouse gastruloid also preserves important tissue-tissue interactions that are necessary to grow one.

Armed with this, the researchers exposed mouse embryonic stem cells to a "cocktail" of three factors known to promote heart growth. After 168 hours, the resulting gastruloids showed signs of early heart development: they expressed several genes that regulate cardiovascular development in the embryo, and they even generated what resembled a vascular network.

But more importantly, the researchers found that the gastruloids developed what they call an "anterior cardiac crescent-like domain". This structure produced a beating heart tissue, similar to the embryonic heart. And much like the muscle cells of the embryonic heart, the beating compartment was also sensitive to calcium ions.

Opening up an entirely new dimension to organoids, the breakthrough work shows they can also be used to mimic embryonic stages of development. "One of the advantages of embryonic organoids is that, through the co-development of multiple tissues, they preserve crucial interactions that are necessary for embryonic organogenesis," says Giuliana Rossi. "The emerging cardiac cells are thus exposed to a context similar to the one that they encounter in the embryo."

The research suggests that teaching materials science, mechanical engineering, computer science, biology and chemistry as a combined discipline could help students develop the skills they need to create lifelike artificially intelligent (AI) robots as researchers.

Known as Physical AI, these robots would be designed to look and behave like humans or other animals while possessing intellectual capabilities normally associated with biological organisms. These robots could in future help humans at work and in daily living, performing tasks that are dangerous for humans, and assisting in medicine, caregiving, security, building and industry.

Although machines and biological beings exist separately, the intelligence capabilities of the two have not yet been combined. There have so far been no autonomous robots that interact with the surrounding environment and with humans in a similar way to how current computer and smartphone-based AI does.

Co-lead author Professor Mirko Kovac of Imperial's Department of Aeronautics and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa)'s Materials and Technology Centre of Robotics said: "The development of robot 'bodies' has significantly lagged behind the development of robot 'brains'. Unlike digital AI, which has been intensively explored in the last few decades, breathing physical intelligence into them has remained comparatively unexplored."

The researchers say that the reason for this gap might be that no systematic educational approach has yet been developed for teaching students and researchers to create robot bodies and brains combined as whole units.

This new research, which is published today in Nature Machine Intelligence defines the term Physical AI. It also suggests an approach for overcoming the gap in skills by integrating scientific disciplines to help future researchers create lifelike robots with capabilities associated with intelligent organisms, such as developing bodily control, autonomy and sensing at the same time.

The authors identified five main disciplines that are essential for creating Physical AI: materials science, mechanical engineering, computer science, biology and chemistry.

Professor Kovac said: "The notion of AI is often confined to computers, smartphones and data intensive computation. We are proposing to think of AI in a broader sense and co-develop physical morphologies, learning systems, embedded sensors, fluid logic and integrated actuation. This Physical AI is the new frontier in robotics research and will have major impact in the decades to come, and co-evolving students' skills in an integrative and multidisciplinary way could unlock some key ideas for students and researchers alike."

The researchers say that achieving nature-like functionality in robots requires combining conventional robotics and AI with other disciplines to create Physical AI as its own discipline.

Professor Kovac said: "We envision Physical AI robots being evolved and grown in the lab by using a variety of unconventional materials and research methods. Researchers will need a much broader stock of skills for building lifelike robots. Cross-disciplinary collaborations and partnerships will be very important."

One example of such a partnership is the Imperial-Empa joint Materials and Technology Centre of Robotics that links up Empa's material science expertise with Imperial's Aerial Robotics Laboratory.

The authors also propose intensifying research activities in Physical AI by supporting teachers on both the institutional and community level. They suggest hiring and supporting faculty members whose priority will be multidisciplinary Physical AI research.

Co-lead author Dr Aslan Miriyev of Empa and the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial said: "Such backing is especially needed as working in the multidisciplinary playground requires daring to leave the comfort zones of narrow disciplinary knowledge for the sake of a high-risk research and career uncertainty.

"Creating lifelike robots has thus far been an impossible task, but it could be made possible by including Physical AI in the higher education system. Developing skills and research in Physical AI could bring us closer than ever to redefining human-robot and robot-environment interaction."

The researchers hope that their work will encourage active discussion of the topic and will lead to integration of Physical AI disciplines in the educational mainstream.

The researchers intend to implement the Physical AI methodology in their research and education activities to pave the way to human-robot ecosystems.

Before an effective treatment can be devised, we have to be able to understand the specific effect of an anti-cancer substance on the cell type, or even the cell, that produces metastases in the enormous cellular heterogeneity of tumours. A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) used a pioneering technique, spiked-scRNAseq, that links the transcriptomic to single cell metastatic phenotypes of colon cancer tumour cells. The importance of the VSIG1 gene involved in intercellular interactions has been identified: it prevents metastases. In addition to this discovery--which offers hope for developing future treatments--the article published in Cell Reports validates the use of this technology for testing drugs that are active against metastases, including for personalised approaches.

Most drug treatments for cancer do not work optimally against metastases. In fact, they have been developed to have a global action and the greatest possible effect on the average patient. To be effective, however, "Drugs should be targeted only to cells that generate metastases," explains Professor Ariel Ruiz i Altaba at UNIGE's Faculty of Medicine. Tumours are made up of cells that are very heterogeneous, some of which will produce metastases while others will not. The question is how to target the right type of tumour cells as a means to beat cancer.

The team led by Professor Ruiz i Altaba set up a methodology for defining the cellular phenotypes for tumours, as well as cloning and tracing them, using a cell-scale analysis of both the genome and the resulting mRNA expression. As a reminder, the genes of a cell, or its genotype, are first copied into messenger RNA which is then often used for protein synthesis. These proteins are the visible expression of genes, and their action underlies measurable characteristics of the cell, i.e. its phenotype. "Our approach means it's possible to identify the missing pieces of the tumour puzzle by linking the expressed genotype to the cellular phenotype. In essence, we want to know how cells become metastatic and where they come from."

Model Validation

By developing and using the spiked-scRNAseq technique, which combines omic approaches and phenotype determination of single cells that are then "spiked" into the original, heterogeneous cell population, the researchers succeeded in precisely defining the composition of the tumour populations while determining their phenotype at the cellular level. To do this, they first genetically labelled several types of tumour cells so they could observe their metastatic behaviour. Once the phenotype was known, cells of the same clone were "spiked" into the heterogeneous colon cancer primary cell population and subjected to single cell sequencing. The molecular profile of cells with metastatic potential was thus identified by the homing of spiked metastatic cells to a specific cell group or cluster.

Based on this approach, drugs and their anti-metastatic effects could be precisely tested. "In other words, we can use this approach to analyse compounds for their action on the cells that generate metastasis in individual patients," explains Dr. Marianna Silvano, a postdoctoral fellow at UNIGE and co-first author of the study.

Identifying a Metastasis Suppressor Gene

The researchers then applied this approach to understanding tumour behaviour. "We set about defining the pre-metastatic status of a tumour and assessing its metastatic potential," continues Dr Silvano. The Geneva research team discovered that by mixing cells that have a metastatic phenotype with non-metastatic cells, the former stopped the migration of the latter. "This indicates that restrictive cellular interactions are important in the process of metastasis formation," explains Professor Ruiz i Altaba.

On the back of these results--and with genomic and transcriptomic analyses in hand--the research team focused on the genes involved in the signalling pathways that are important for cellular interactions. Dr Carolina Bernal, a postdoctoral fellow and co-first author of the study, identified the VSIG1 gene and she and Dr Silvano nailed it as critical of the restrictive interaction between non-metastatic and metastatic tumour cells. "By expressing it in a tumour cell, metastases are reduced in vivo and in vitro. If it's removed, we find an increase in metastases," concludes Dr Silvano. Metastatic cells in primary tumours can be pinpointed with spiked-scRNAseq, and essential genes and active drugs identified to develop new and effective treatments for colon and other cancers.

Loneliness is a prevalent and serious public health problem impacting health, well-being and longevity. Seeking to develop effective interventions, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine examined the psychological and environmental factors that lead to patterns of loneliness in different age groups.

Researchers used a web-based survey of 2,843 participants, ages 20 to 69 years, from across the United States.

The study, published in the November 10, 2020 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found that levels of loneliness were highest in the 20s and lowest in the 60s, with another peak in the mid-40s.

"What we found was a range of predictors of loneliness across the lifespan," said corresponding senior author Dilip V. Jeste, MD, senior associate dean for Healthy Aging and Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

The researchers noted that lower levels of empathy and compassion, smaller social networks, not having a spouse or a partner and greater sleep disturbances were consistent predictors of loneliness across all decades. Lower social self-efficacy -- or the ability to reflect confidence in exerting control over one's own motivation, behavior and social environment -- and higher anxiety were associated with worse loneliness in all age decades, except the 60s.

Loneliness was also associated with a lower level of decisiveness in the 50s.

The study confirmed previous reports of a strong inverse association between loneliness and wisdom, especially the pro-social behaviors component (empathy and compassion).

"Compassion seems to reduce the level of loneliness at all ages, probably by enabling individuals to accurately perceive and interpret others' emotions along with helpful behavior toward others, and thereby increasing their own social self-efficacy and social networks," said Jeste.

The survey suggested that people in their 20s were dealing with high stress and pressure while trying to establish a career and find a life partner.

"A lot of people in this decade are also constantly comparing themselves on social media and are concerned about how many likes and followers they have," said Tanya Nguyen, PhD, first author of the study and assistant clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "The lower level of self-efficacy may lead to greater loneliness."

People in their 40s start to experience physical challenges and health issues, such as high blood pressure and diabetes.

"Individuals may start to lose loved ones close to them and their children are growing up and are becoming more independent. This greatly impacts self-purpose and may cause a shift in self-identify, resulting in increased loneliness," said Nguyen.

Jeste said the findings are especially relevant during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

"We want to understand what strategies may be effective in reducing loneliness during this challenging time," said Jeste. "Loneliness is worsened by the physical distancing that is necessary to stop the spread of the pandemic."

Nguyen said intervention and prevention efforts should consider stage-of-life issues. "There is a need for a personalized and nuanced prioritizing of prevention targets in different groups of people," said Jeste.

Researchers have developed a neuron-growing ink that uses the body's own electrical signals to precisely guide the growth of nerve cells.

The bioconductive ink can be printed in lines to direct where neurons grow, cracking a major challenge in the emerging field of nerve engineering.

The team of researchers from Australia, India and Bangladesh have tested the ink on a biocompatible scaffold, with their promising lab results published in the journal RSC Advances.

Lead author, RMIT University's Dr Shadi Houshyar, said concentrating the growth of nerve cells in precisely ordered lines was essential to be able to reconnect nerves and heal traumatic nerve injuries.

"Nerve cells need to be meticulously guided to regrow between the broken ends of a nerve - if they just build up anywhere they will cause more pain or sensory problems," Houshyar said.

"With our bioconductive ink, we can concentrate the neuron growth where we need it.

"Our research is in early stages but with further development, we hope one day to enable damaged nerves to be fully reconnected, to improve the lives of millions of people worldwide."

Currently, there are limited options for rebuilding function when an injury results in large peripheral nerve gaps.

Nerve grafts, where surgeons harvest nerves from elsewhere in the body to bridge across a gap, can lead to complications including painful neuromas, misalignment of neural cell growth and injury at the harvest site.

Although emerging alternative techniques such as artificial nerve guides exist, they often fail to achieve full functional or sensory recovery because they don't properly replicate nerve tissue.

Powering nerve cell regeneration

The new nerve-regenerating ink combines the neurotransmitter dopamine - known to help nerve cell survival - with a conductive carbon nanofibre and polymer.

The nanofibre and polymer enables the controlled release of dopamine from the ink, supporting the survival of developing neurons for longer.

Because it is conductive, the nanofibre can also harness the power of bioelectricity - the electrical signals generated by the nervous system that play a key role in maintaining biological function and can accelerate wound healing.

"Using conductive materials allows free movement of electrons, stimulates cell growth and helps connect injured neural tissue," Houshyar, a Vice-Chancellor's Research Fellow in the RMIT School of Engineering, said.

As part of the research, the team also developed a biocompatible scaffold, so the ink could be printed in lines and tested with human cells.

The study found the printed lines supported neural cell attachment and migration - both important for nerve regeneration.

Cell differentiation was also boosted, with the neural cells becoming more specialised as they grew along the lines.

"This supports proper communication with other neurons, which is promising for the establishment of neural circuits for sensory and motor processing - offering hope the technology could lead to a real recovery of nerve function," Houshyar said.

The next stage for the research is testing the ink and scaffold in pre-clinical animal trials, as well as exploring other applications.

"Our end goal is a nerve engineering solution that can direct the growth of the right nerve cells in the right places," she said.

"We're also keen to investigate how we can expand the potential uses of this technology, for speeding up wound healing and improving patient recovery."

A team of scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has invented an artificial olfactory system that mimics the mammalian nose to assess the freshness of meat accurately.

The 'electronic nose' (e-nose) comprises a 'barcode' that changes colour over time in reaction to the gases produced by meat as it decays, and a barcode 'reader' in the form of a smartphone app powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The e-nose has been trained to recognise and predict meat freshness from a large library of barcode colours.

When tested on commercially packaged chicken, fish and beef meat samples that were left to age, the team found that their deep convolutional neural network AI algorithm that powers the e-nose predicted the freshness of the meats with a 98.5 per cent accuracy. As a comparison, the research team assessed the prediction accuracy of a commonly used algorithm to measure the response of sensors like the barcode used in this e-nose. This type of analysis showed an overall accuracy of 61.7 per cent.

The e-nose, described in a paper published in the scientific journal Advanced Materials in October, could help to reduce food wastage by confirming to consumers whether meat is fit for consumption, more accurately than a 'Best Before' label could, said the research team from NTU Singapore, who collaborated with scientists from Jiangnan University, China, and Monash University, Australia.

Co-lead author Professor Chen Xiaodong, the Director of Innovative Centre for Flexible Devices at NTU, said: "Our proof-of-concept artificial olfactory system, which we tested in real-life scenarios, can be easily integrated into packaging materials and yields results in a short time without the bulky wiring used for electrical signal collection in some e-noses that were developed recently.

"These barcodes help consumers to save money by ensuring that they do not discard products that are still fit for consumption, which also helps the environment. The biodegradable and non-toxic nature of the barcodes also means they could be safely applied in all parts of the food supply chain to ensure food freshness."

A patent has been filed for this method of real-time monitoring of food freshness, and the team is now working with a Singapore agribusiness company to extend this concept to other types of perishables.

A nose for freshness

The e-nose developed by NTU scientists and their collaborators comprises two elements: a coloured 'barcode' that reacts with gases produced by decaying meat; and a barcode 'reader' that uses AI to interpret the combination of colours on the barcode. To make the e-nose portable, the scientists integrated it into a smartphone app that can yield results in 30 seconds.

The e-nose mimics how a mammalian nose works. When gases produced by decaying meat bind to receptors in the mammalian nose, signals are generated and transmitted to the brain. The brain then collects these responses and organises them into patterns, allowing the mammal to identify the odour present as meat ages and rots.

In the e-nose, the 20 bars in the barcode act as the receptors. Each bar is made of chitosan (a natural sugar) embedded on a cellulose derivative and loaded with a different type of dye. These dyes react with the gases emitted by decaying meat and change colour in response to the different types and concentrations of gases, resulting in a unique combination of colours that serves as a 'scent fingerprint' for the state of any meat.

For instance, the first bar in the barcode contains a yellow dye that is weakly acidic. When exposed to nitrogen-containing compounds produced by decaying meat (called bioamines), this yellow dye changes into blue as the dye reacts with these compounds. The colour intensity changes with an increasing concentration of bioamines as meat decays further.

For this study, the scientists first developed a classification system (fresh, less fresh, or spoiled) using an international standard that determines meat freshness. This is done by extracting and measuring the amount of ammonia and two other bioamines found in fish packages wrapped in widely-used transparent PVC (polyvinyl chloride) packaging film and stored at 4°C (39°Fahrenheit) over five days at different intervals.

They concurrently monitored the freshness of these fish packages with barcodes glued on the inner side of the PVC film without touching the fish. Images of these barcodes were taken at different intervals over five days.

>E-nose achieves 98.5 per cent overall accuracy

A type of AI algorithm known as deep convolutional neural networks was then trained with images of different barcodes to identify patterns in the scent fingerprint that correspond to each category of freshness.

To gauge the prediction accuracy of their e-nose, the NTU scientists then monitored the freshness of commercially packed chicken, fish, and beef with barcodes glued on the packaging film, and stored at 25°C (77°Fahrenheit). Over 4,000 images of the barcodes from six meat packages were taken at different time intervals over 48 hours without opening the different meat packages.

The research team first trained their system to pick out patterns among the scent fingerprints captured in 3,475 barcode images, before testing the system's accuracy on the remaining images.

The results revealed an overall 98.5 per cent accuracy - 100 per cent accuracy in identifying spoiled meats, and a 96 to 99 per cent accuracy for fresh and less fresh meats.

As a comparison, the research team randomly selected 20 barcode images from each freshness category to assess the prediction accuracy of Euclidean distance analysis, a commonly used method to measure the response of sensors like the barcode used in this e-nose. This analysis showed an overall accuracy of 61.7 per cent.

Prof Chen, President's Chair Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at NTU, said: "While e-noses have been extensively researched, there are still bottlenecks to their commercialisation due to current prototypes' issues with accurately detecting and identifying the odour. We need a system that has both a robust sensor setup and a data analysis method that can accurately predict scent fingerprints, which is what our e-nose offers.

"Its non-destructive, automated and real-time monitoring capability could also be used to recognise the types of gases that other types of perishable food emit as they become less fresh, providing a broadly applicable new platform for food quality control, which is what we are working towards now."

Radiation esophagitis, characterized by the inflammation of the esophagus, is the most common acute adverse effect of radiation therapy that causes swallowing problems. This eventually causes dehydration and leaves the body unfit for further treatment. Unfortunately, no direct cure currently exists for patients suffering from such conditions. To this, a POSTECH research team has developed esophageal stents that biodegrade in the body using 3D printers, opening up the possibility of treating the condition.

A joint research team led by Professor Dong-Woo Cho and Ph.D. candidate Suhun Chae in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at POSTECH and Dr. Dong-Heon Ha of EDmicBio, Inc. has together produced biodegradable stents with esophageal-derived bioink to directly treat radiation esophagitis and verified their therapeutic effects in animal models. These research findings were recently published in Biomaterials, an academic journal with international authority in the biomaterials field.

Various treatment methods are being developed to treat cancer, but radiation therapy is still one of the common treatments along with surgery and chemotherapy. If radiation esophagitis occurs during radiation therapy, treatment is limited to cataclysmic therapy that relieves the pain depending on the symptoms that appear, or inserting a stent to open the swollen esophagus to allow drinking or eating. However, these methods do not treat the damaged tissues directly.

The research team first produced bioink that removed cell components from esophageal tissues and extracted only extracellular matrix through the decellularization process. They produced a dumbbell-type stent that can carry this bioink using a 3D printing system. By inserting this stent into the inflamed esophagus of an animal, they confirmed that it promotes tissue regeneration while mitigating inflammatory reactions.

"The effectiveness of treatment is negated if proper nutrition cannot be delivered due to the pain," explained Dong-Woo Cho who led the study. He added, "If this esophageal stent implantation is applied clinically, we expect that the patients will have better prognosis and higher quality of life."

This research was conducted as part of the Research Leader Program the National Research Foundation of Korea and in cooperation with EDmicBio, Inc. which specializes in commercializing 3D organs-on-chips and medical devices.

Australian schools are unfairly suspending and excluding students - particularly boys, Indigenous students, and students with a disability - according to new research from the University of South Australia.

Auditing exclusionary policies and practices in Australian schools across 2019, researchers found that discrimination is disturbingly prominent across the Australian education sector.

Of all suspensions and expulsions researchers found that:

Indigenous students received:

25 per cent of all suspensions and permanent exclusions in Queensland, despite comprising just over10 per cent of student enrolments;

25 per cent of all suspensions in New South Wales (NSW), despite representing just eight per cent of student enrolments;

6.5 per cent of all expulsions in Victoria (a large percentage given the group represents only 2.3 per cent of the student population).

Male students received:

77 per cent of all suspensions in South Australia (three times that of girls);

Over 80 per cent of permanent exclusions in Victoria (four times that of girls);

Around three quarters of all suspensions in in NSW.

Students with disability funding received 14 per cent of all permanent exclusions in Victoria, while comprising only 4.5 per cent of all government school enrolments.

Lead researcher and Director of UniSA's Research for Educational and Social Inclusion Group, Associate Professor Anna Sullivan says the research will establish an evidence base for policy and school-based interventions to enhance the health, welfare and academic achievement of vulnerable children in our schools.

"Every child has a right to education and to participate in a school environment that is safe, fair and supportive," Assoc Prof Sullivan says.

"Yet what these statistics show is that disciplinary actions are being disproportionately applied to certain groups of students in Australia, and concerningly, marginalised groups including Indigenous children and children with a disability.

"Of course, Australian schools, like elsewhere, commonly use exclusionary practices, such as suspensions and exclusions to help address poor student behaviour. But how these are applied, and which students are impacted is quite clearly unfair.

"We need to find ways for vulnerable children to be better supported at school, and ways for schools to better manage challenging behaviours.

"Only when we have a fair and equitable education system will Australian children, from all cultures, backgrounds and of all abilities be able to thrive and survive."

In the Netherlands, whole genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks on 16 mink farms has revealed virus transmission between human to mink, as well as from mink to human. The virus was initially introduced from humans, the study's authors say, and it has since evolved. "More research in minks and other mustelid species is important to understand if these species are at risk of becoming a reservoir of SARS-CoV-2," they write. Although several animals have been shown to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, the zoonotic origin of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is still unknown. In the Netherlands, the virus was first diagnosed on two mink farms in late April of 2020. In response, the Dutch national response system for zoonotic diseases was activated, and an extensive surveillance system was set up. Bas B. Oude Munnink et al. performed an in-depth investigation among the first 16 infected mink farms in the Netherlands. Their analysis combined SARS-CoV-2 diagnostics, whole-genome sequencing and in-depth interviews with farm workers. By the end of June, 66 of 97 (68%) of the mink farm residents, employees and/or contacts tested had evidence for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Analysis of the mink virus genomes on these farms revealed a diversity of sequences. These large clusters of infection were initiated by human COVID-19 cases with viruses that bear the D614G mutation, say the authors. Sequencing also revealed that some people were infected with strains of the virus with an animal sequence signature, providing evidence of animal to human transmission. Further analysis indicated no spillover to people living in close proximity to mink farms. They authors write: "It is imperative that fur production and trading sector should not become a reservoir for future spillover of SARS-CoV-2 to humans."

A team of linguists from RUDN University established that a person's ability to accurately differentiate between vowel sounds of a foreign language correlates with the size of their vocabulary in said language. The results of the study were published in the Language Learning and Development journal.

In linguistics, a second language (or L2) is any language that a person acquires after their mother tongue. The first language, or L1, affects the use of the second one: for example if L1 does not have many variations of vowel pronunciation, and L2 is rich in them, it would be more difficult for a speaker to perceive and reproduce the vowel sounds of the second language. It can be hard for a native Spanish speaker to feel the difference between the sounds [i] and [i:] in English because in Spanish only [i] is used. A team of linguists from RUDN University studied the effect of L2 vocabulary size on the speakers' ability to tell the difference between L2 vowel sounds.

"For our study, we chose Russian and English languages, because the former contains only five vowel sounds while the latter has a complex system of vowels. Therefore, we assumed that it would be difficult for Russian speakers to differentiate between English vowels," said Georgios Georgiou, Ph.D., a postdoc, and a researcher at the Department of General and Russian Linguistics, Philological Faculty of RUDN.

To describe vowel sounds, scientists use a set of parameters called formants. They indicate vibration frequency and are measured in hertz. Based on the values of formants, a linguist can understand how a human tongue moves when a vowel sound is pronounced. For example, the first formant shows the height of the tongue in the mouth and the second indicates its proximity to teeth. Russian language (L1) has five vowel phonemes ( [i, e, a, o, u]), and English (L2)--11. The team placed L1 and L2 vowel sounds on a reference plane and marked the values of the first and the second formant on the axes. When a set of points was created on the plane, the team measured the distance between them and used it as an indicator of differences between the sounds. Based on the measured distances, the team identified two English vowel pairs, [i:]/[I] and [e]/[??], that were the easiest to differentiate from one another. Then, an experiment was conducted to confirm this hypothesis and to study the correlation between differentiation abilities and vocabulary size.

The team chose 28 Russian-speaking students from 17 to 19 years of age. All of them spent eight years on average studying English (RP) at public or language schools and never lived in an English-speaking country for more than a month. Their English proficiency level was B2, and their proficiency in any other foreign language did not exceed A2. The participants were divided into two groups with small (around 5,500 words) and large (7,150 words) vocabulary based on the results of an online test with multiple-choice questions. In the test, the participants were asked to choose the correct definitions of English words, which gave the researchers an understanding of their average vocabulary size. After that, both groups took a psychoacoustic test that consisted of two parts. First, the students listened to English words and matched the vowels in them with the vowels of their native language. Then, they listened to groups of three words and had to identify whether the vowel in the second word matched that in the first or the third word.

It turned out that one's ability to associate L2 vowels with the vowels of one's mother tongue does not depend on their vocabulary. The participants with a small vocabulary managed to match Russian and English sounds in 95% of cases and students with a large vocabulary--in 94.7% of cases. However, the vocabulary size affected the participants' ability to tell the difference between vowels in similar words. For example, students with a large vocabulary differentiated between [?] and [i?] in 71% of cases, and the participants from the other group--only in 59%.

"In the future, we plan to study the effect of additional external factors, such as fluency in another foreign language, on the differentiation of L2 sounds," added Georgios Georgiou.

The sweet taste of sugar is very popular worldwide. In Austria and Germany, the yearly intake per person adds up to about 33 and 34 kilograms, respectively. Thus, sugar plays an increasingly role in the nutrition and health of the population, especially with regard to body weight. However, little is known about the molecular (taste) mechanisms of sugar that influence dietary intake, independently of its caloric load.

Taste receptor and satiety regulation

"We therefore investigated the role of sweet taste receptor activation in the regulation of satiety," says Veronika Somoza, deputy head of the Department of Physiological Chemistry at the University of Vienna and director of the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich.

For this purpose, the scientists conducted a blinded, cross-over intervention study with glucose and sucrose. A total of 27 healthy, male persons, between 18 and 45 years of age, received either a 10 percent glucose or sucrose solution (weight percent) or one of the sugar solutions supplemented with 60 ppm lactisole. Lactisole is a substance that binds to a subunit of the sweet receptor and reduces the perception of sweet taste. Despite different types of sugar, all solutions with or without lactisole had the same energy content.

Two hours after drinking each of the test solutions, the participants were allowed to have as much as breakfast they wanted. Shortly before and during the 120-min waiting period, the researchers took blood samples in regular intervals and measured their body temperature.

Additional 100 kilocalories on average

After the consumption of the lactisole-containing sucrose solution, the test persons had an increased energy intake from breakfast of about 13 percent, about 100 kilocalories more, than after drinking the sucrose solution without lactisole. In addition, the subjects of this group showed lower body temperature and reduced plasma serotonin concentrations. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter and tissue hormone which, among other things, has an appetite-suppressing effect. In contrast, the researchers observed no differences after administration of the lactisole-containing glucose solution and the pure glucose solution.

"This result suggests that sucrose, regardless of its energy content, modulates the regulation of satiety and energy intake via the sweet taste receptor," says Barbara Lieder, head of Christian Doppler Laboratory for Taste Research and also deputy head of the Department of Physiological Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemistry at University of Vienna.

The first study author of the study, Kerstin Schweiger, University of Vienna adds: "We do not know yet why we could not observe the lactisole effect with glucose. However, we suspect it is because glucose and sucrose activate the sweet receptor in different ways. We also assume that mechanisms independent of the sweet receptor play a role."

"So there is still a lot of research needed to clarify the complex relationships between sugar consumption, taste receptors and satiety regulation on the molecular level," says Veronika Somoza. In particular, as sweet receptors are also found in the digestive tract and little is known about their function there. The first steps have nevertheless been taken.

In a recent study, researchers from the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen have studied how one of the world's most widespread moss species, Ceratodon pupureus, AKA fire moss, purple horn toothed moss, etc., has managed to inhabit every crevice and corner of the planet.

"We found a remarkable overlap between global wind patterns and the way in which this moss species has spread over time, one that we haven't been aware of until now," says evolutionary biologist Elisabeth Biersma of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who is the study's lead author.

According to Biersma, this means that much of the moss Danes find commingling with their lawn grass or lightly clinging to their rooftops is often part of the same population found on another continent at a similar latitude. For example, moss spores from North America are likely blown by the prevailing Westerlies across the Atlantic to Denmark.

One of the oldest plant groups on Earth

Mosses (Bryophyta) are one of the oldest plant groups on Earth and characterized by not having roots. Most groups grow in damp, shaded places, while others toleratebright and dry environments.

"Mosses are extremely resilient organisms that can both suck up a lot of water and tolerate considerable desiccation. Most other plants are far from being as resistant to harsh environments such as rooftops, sidewalks or polar climates. Along with the wind, this has been the key to the great success of mosses the world over," explains Elisabeth Biersma.

There are roughly 600 moss species in Denmark, out of roughly 12,000 species found worldwide. In the study, researchers used moss samples sourced from dried plant collections called herbaria, from around the world. Using genetic samples of the mosses, the researchers built an extensive evolutionary tree that helped them map the various moss populations.

Global wind patterns and different moss families. Illustration mos: Christiaan Sepp (Wikimedia Commons).

A better understanding of how airborne organisms spread

The researchers' analyses demonstrate that the current distribution pattern of C. purpureus has occurred over the last ~11 million years. But the fact that it has taken so long for C. purpureus to spread to the places where it is found today comes as a bit of a surprise

"This can probably be explained by the fact that global wind systems can partly disperse spores over a long distance, but also restrict global dispersion as wind systems are self-enclosed and isolated transport systems, which thereby restrict any spreading beyond them," explains Elisabeth Biersma.

This is the first time that the researcher has seen such a uniform pattern of proliferation across the globe, as demonstrated with C. pupureus. The knowledge may be transferable elsewhere.

"These findings could help us understand the spread of other organisms, such as bacteria, fungi and some plants, which are also spread via microscopic airborne particles transported by the wind. But only the future can say whether this knowledge is applicable to other organisms." concludes Biersma.