Culture

Who says you can't get hotter with age?

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and other institutions have found that, on average, the temperature of galaxy clusters today is 4 million degrees Fahrenheit. That is 10 times hotter than 10 billion years ago, and four times hotter than the Sun's outermost atmosphere called the corona. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"We have measured temperatures throughout the history of the universe," said Brice Ménard, a Johns Hopkins professor of physics and astronomy. "As time has gone on, all those clusters of galaxies are getting hotter and hotter because their gravity pulls more and more gas toward them."

Yi-Kuan Chiang, lead author of the study who was a Johns Hopkins post-doctoral researcher until moving to Ohio State University last year, added: "This drag is so violent that more and more gas is shocked and heated up."

Imagine all those gas atoms being sucked towards galaxies like they were myriads of meteoroids piercing Earth's atmosphere, Ménard said. They accelerate as gravity pulls them toward the Earth's surface and heat up due to friction with the atmosphere before burning into what are seen as shooting stars, he added. This pattern of heating due to gravitational forces can be applied to entire galaxies, clusters of galaxies and beyond into the "large scale structures" of the universe formed by gravity - a theory attributed to James Peebles, the 2019 Nobel laureate in physics.

"Our measurements are a great confirmation of that theory," Ménard said.

To perform this analysis, the team used data collected by the astronomical community over two decades, first from a telescope on the ground that conducted the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and then the Planck mission, a space telescope led by the European Space Agency.

The team used a technique that Ménard developed with Chiang. With it, they estimated the "redshift" of gas concentrations seen in images of microwave light going back in time all the way to 10 billion years ago. "Redshift" describes the way wavelengths of light lengthen due to the expansion of the universe. The farther away something is, the longer its wavelength - and the older its origin.

The method allowed them to measure the gradual increase in the gas temperature as a function of the age of the universe. This trend is also predicted by numerical simulations showing how dark matter and the atoms present in the gas evolve with time. As illustrated in the figure, these visualizations show gas temperatures changing from a cool blue canvas from 10 billion years ago into one speckled with hot red today.

The warming of the universe has nothing to do with climate warming on Earth, Ménard said. It is a consequence of gravitational attraction that had been predicted but which now can be precisely measured with these novel techniques.

Scientists have shown that the size and makeup of groups of social birds can predict how efficiently they use and move through their habitat, according to new findings published today in eLife.

The study suggests that intermediate-sized groups of vulturine guineafowl - a ground-dwelling social bird found in east African savannahs - exhibit the most effective balance between a decreased ability to coordinate movements and increased accuracy of navigation.

These findings add to our understanding of a key question in animal sociality - namely, whether groups have an optimal size - by showing that the number of individuals in a group determines the ability of that group to make the most effective use of their environment.

"For many social animals, larger groups benefit from information pooling, where inputs from multiple individuals allow for more accurate decisions about navigation," explains first author Danai Papageorgiou, IMPRS Doctoral Student at the Department of Collective Behaviour, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and at the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Germany. "However, as groups become larger they start to face challenges in coordinating their actions, such as reaching a consensus about where to go next or maintaining cohesion as they move through vegetation."

Papageorgiou and her PhD advisor, Professor Damien Farine, investigated the relationship between the size and collective movement of groups of vulturine guineafowl. They predicted that the optimal group size of these birds would be determined by the balance between their ability to coordinate movement and their ability to make accurate decisions when navigating.

The team fitted individual birds from 21 distinct social groups with GPS tags and collected movement data over five two-month-long seasons. They used these data to calculate the groups' habitat use, including their home-range size, the distance that they travelled each day and their movement speed while 'on the go'. By observing the groups each week, they could also measure the size of each group and record their makeup. Specifically, they recorded the number of chicks in each group, as they predicted that the birds' movement abilities may be restricted when there are more chicks because they are slower and much more vulnerable to predators.

The researchers found that intermediate-sized groups, consisting of 33-37 birds, ranged over larger areas and achieved this by travelling shorter distances each day, compared to smaller and larger groups. They also explored the most new areas. These results suggest that intermediate-sized groups were more efficient in using the space, potentially encountering more resources while spending less energy and lowering their chances of being tracked by predators. Additionally, data collected on the birds' reproductive success reinforced the fact that intermediate-sized groups benefited from these movement characteristics, as they also had more chicks.

However, the study also found interesting consequences of having a beneficial group size for movements. Groups with many chicks, despite being the optimal size, had more restricted home ranges. This was likely because the chicks needed more protection from predators, and therefore stayed in the protected vegetation for longer periods of time, and their small sizes slowed down the group while moving.

As a result, the study showed that intermediate-sized groups were in fact rarer than smaller and larger groups. Papageorgiou and Farine suggest this is because the benefits of being in an optimal-sized group makes the size of these groups less stable. For example, higher reproductive success inevitably pushes the group past its optimal group size.

"Our study highlights how all groups are not equal, with the effects of group size and composition playing a major role in shaping how social species use their habitat," Farine says. "What is particularly interesting is that optimally sized groups are not expected to be common. Future studies should investigate whether these relationships change across different environmental conditions, and how animal groups cope with the different challenges that each season brings."

Medical diagnoses involving alcohol-related disorders, substance-related disorders and suicidal thoughts and behaviors -- commonly referred to as diseases of despair -- increased in Pennsylvania health insurance claims between the years 2007 and 2018, according to researchers from Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute and Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics.

Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton proposed the concept of deaths of despair in 2015. Case and Deaton's research observed a decline in life expectancy of middle-aged white men and women between 1999 and 2015 -- the first such decline since the flu pandemic of 1918. They theorized that this decline is associated with the social and economic downturn in rural communities and small towns. These changes include loss of industry, falling wages, lower marriage rates, increasing barriers to higher education, an increase in one-parent homes and a loss of social infrastructure.

"It is theorized that these changes have fostered growing feelings of despair including disillusionment, precariousness and resignation in many peoples' lives," Daniel George, associate professor of humanities and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine, said. "Despair can trigger emotional, cognitive, behavioral and even biological changes, increasing the likelihood of diseases that can progress and ultimately culminate in deaths of despair."

With the commonwealth's considerable rural and small-town population, particularly around Penn State campuses, Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute led a research study to understand the rate of diseases of despair in Pennsylvania. Institute researchers collaborated with Highmark Health, one of the state's largest health insurance providers. Highmark provides employer-sponsored, individual, Affordable Care Act and Medicare plans.

Highmark Health's Enterprise Analytics team analyzed the claims of more than 12 million people on their plans from 2007 to 2018. Penn State did not have access to Highmark member data or individual private health information. Although the insurance claims included members from neighboring states, including West Virginia, Delaware, and Ohio, the majority of the claims were from Pennsylvania residents. Researchers reported their results in BMJ Open.

The researchers defined diseases of despair as diagnoses related to alcohol use, substance use and suicidal thoughts or behaviors. They searched the claims data for the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes related to these diagnoses. ICD codes form a standardized system maintained by the World Health Organization and are used in health records and for billing.

The researchers found that the rate of diagnoses related to diseases of despair increased significantly in the Highmark claims in the past decade. Nearly one in 20 people in the study sample was diagnosed with a disease of despair. Between 2009 and 2018, the rates of alcohol-, substance-, and suicide-related diagnoses increased by 37%, 94% and 170%. Following Case and Deaton's findings, the researchers saw the most substantial percentage increase in disease of despair diagnoses among men ages 35 to 74, followed by women ages 55 to 74 and 18 to 34.

The rate of alcohol-related diagnoses significantly increased among men and women ages 18 and over. The most dramatic increases were among men and women ages 55 to 74. Rates increased for men in this age group by 50% and 80% for women.

The rate of substance-related diagnoses roughly doubled for men and women ages 35 to 54 and increased by 170% in ages 55 to 74. In 2018, the most recent year of claims included in the study, rates of substance-use diagnoses were highest in 18-to-34-year-olds.

The rate of diagnoses related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors increased for all age groups. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, rates increased by at least 200%. The rate for all other age groups increased by at least 60%.

The type of insurance patients had also mattered. People with Medicare insurance had 1.5 times higher odds of having a disease of despair diagnosis and those with Affordable Care Act insurance had 1.3 times higher odds.

One increase stood out to researchers: among infants, substance-related diagnoses doubled.

"This increase was entirely attributable to neonatal abstinence syndrome and corresponded closely with increases in substance-related disorders among women of childbearing age," Emily Brignone, senior research scientist, Highmark Health Enterprise Analytics, said.

Neonatal abstinence syndrome occurs when a baby withdraws from substances, especially opioids, exposed to in the womb.

Future research can concentrate on identifying "hot spots" of diseases of despair diagnoses in the commonwealth to then study the social and economic conditions in these areas. With this data, researchers can potentially create predictive models to identify communities at risk and develop interventions.

"We found a broad view of who is impacted by increases in diseases of despair, which cross racial, ethnic and geographic groups," Jennifer Kraschnewski, professor of medicine, public health sciences and pediatrics, said. "Although originally thought to mostly affect rural communities, these increases in all middle-aged adults across the rural-urban continuum likely foreshadows future premature deaths."

For adults, the goal of exercise is often to shed some pounds, but new research from the University of Georgia suggests the objective should be different for kids.

Physical education should focus on improving students' physical skills, knowledge of the benefits of exercise and motivation to be active. The goal should be to build students' cardiorespiratory endurance, a measure of how well the body handles long periods of exercise--not to help them lose weight, according to the study's authors. Kids can be overweight (as measured by the Body Mass Index, or BMI) and still able to reach the recommended 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day. And students who are more active during PE, despite their weight, are more likely to stay active after school as well.

"Research has shown that even in young children, people who are fitter in terms of cardiorespiratory endurance participate in more intense physical activities," said lead author Sami Yli-Piipari, an associate professor in UGA's Mary Frances Early College of Education. "It's not really your weight that matters. Children can be a little bit overweight but still be relatively fit."

The study followed 450 children, ages 10 through 12, who took 90 minutes of mandatory PE every week. The students wore an accelerometer on their right hip during the day to track their total physical activity for a week, and simple tests--such as being able to do a regular or modified pushup or crunch-- were used to determine their mastery of physical skills. The researchers also explored whether students enjoyed PE or participated out of obligation.

"Physical education matters," Yli-Piipari said. "It's not only where students learn the skills, abilities and motivation to be active; it's where students are having to do something active at a higher intensity than they probably would after school."

The study took place in Finland, where children have more PE on average than American students, and the class also focuses on the importance of exercise and how to incorporate it into everyday life. In keeping with previous research, boys tended to be more active than girls. But surprisingly, muscle strength and motor skills didn't play a role in activity levels. Neither did motivation--whether the child wanted to participate in PE--nor enjoyment of PE classes.

The students who didn't participate in after-school sports were also typically less active during their down time. For many of these students, PE was the only time they exercised hard enough to work up a sweat, which makes it even more important to use class time effectively in a way that will get students moving and motivated to keep it up.

To help children learn to be physically literate, Yli-Piipari suggests teaching them in a way that gets students up and active.

Don't just lecture and tell kids to do something. Take them to places, get them moving, and let them try different things themselves.

Variety is key. Introduce children to multiple ways they can get their heart pumping and explain why it's important to stay active.

Finally, model lifestyle and behaviors that show that physical activity and exercise have an important value for you. Help connect the dots from exercising to the positive physical and mental health effects it can have on an individual.

November 10, 2020 - A growing body of evidence supports the effectiveness of mindfulness approaches to promote positive changes in health behaviors. New neurobiologically based models of "mindful self-regulation" help to explain the how mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) work to help people make healthy behavior changes, according to a review in the November/December issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

Mindfulness approaches can help patients with a wide range of physical and mental health conditions to initiate and sustain changes in health behaviors, according to the article by Zev Schuman-Olivier, MD, of Harvard Medical School and colleagues. They present an integrated model that "synthesizes the neuroscience of mindfulness and integrates motivation and learning mechanisms within a mindful self-regulation model for understanding the complex effects of mindfulness on behavior change." Dr. Schuman-Olivier is Director of the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at the Cambridge Health Alliance.

MBIs help patients regulate attention, emotions, and thoughts

Changing unhealthy behaviors can be "exceptionally difficult" - but it's the key to prevention and treatment of many chronic medical and psychiatric illnesses. Mindfulness has been described as "the awareness that arises when paying attention to the present moment nonjudgmentally." The process for cultivating mindfulness often includes various approaches to mindfulness meditation - although the authors emphasize that "not all meditation is mindfulness and not all mindfulness is meditation."

In their comprehensive review of the field, Dr. Schuman-Olivier and colleagues seek to "describe and expand existing models of mindful self-regulation based on neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness, motivation, and learning." Self-regulation refers to the ability to adapt one's attention, emotions, thoughts, and behavior to respond effectively to internal and external demands.

The article gives an updated account of current neuroscientific understanding of the systems involved in healthy self-regulation - including attentional and cognitive control, emotion regulation, and self-related processes - and the way these neural systems interact with those involved in motivation and learning.

In the authors' proposed model, MBIs can help patients regulate their attention, emotions, and thoughts. Mindfulness training increases the capacity for interoceptive awareness: the ability to identify, access, understand, and respond appropriately to the patterns of internal bodily signals. Patients become aware of negative and self-critical thought patterns, and better able to respond kindly to themselves when they are suffering, make mistakes, or have difficulty (self-compassion).

The authors differentiate between a traditional "cool" pathway for teaching mindfulness, focused solely on attention; and an emerging "warm" pathway that may aid in preventing adverse events and increasing accessibility to MBIs for those who have experienced trauma. The "warm" pathway encourages finding a "window of tolerance" and cultivating inner warmth and self-kindness - alongside attentional and interoceptive awareness training. This approach helps patients learn, develop, and integrate key self-regulatory capacities for "warmly being with present-moment experience."

Dr. Schuman-Olivier and colleagues highlight some key areas of research on mindfulness and behavior change, including alcohol and substance abuse disorders. In addition to general changes in self-regulation, MBIs can address disease-specific issues such as cravings for alcohol and drugs.

Research finds MBIs effective for food-related behaviors and weight loss, including reductions in binge eating and emotional eating. Studies of tobacco smoking suggest that MBIs may provide better outcomes than other accepted treatments. Mindfulness interventions have also led to improvements in self-care for patients with chronic illness and show promise in reducing aggressive behavior, suicide, and self-injury.

The authors draw attention to the need to monitor adverse events and to ensure that mindfulness programs are trauma-informed and accessible to diverse populations. Dr. Schuman-Olivier and colleagues conclude: "While evidence supports the impact of mindfulness on behavior change for key health behaviors related to psychiatric practice, more high-quality research is needed, especially with objective measures, larger samples, replication studies, active controls, and formal monitoring of adverse events."

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have explored all COVID-19 research published during the initial phase of the pandemic. The results, which were achieved by using a machine learning-based approach and published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, will make it easier to direct future research to where it is most needed.

In the wake of the rapid spread of COVID-19, research on the disease has escalated dramatically. Over 60,000 COVID-19-related articles have been indexed to date in the medical database PubMed. This body of research is too large to be assessed by traditional methods, such as systematic and scoping reviews, which makes it difficult to gain a comprehensive overview of the science.

"Despite COVID-19 being a novel disease, several systematic reviews have already been published," says Andreas Älgå, medical doctor and researcher at the Department of Clinical Science and Education, Sodersjukhuset at Karolinska Institutet. "However, such reviews are extremely time- and resource-consuming, generally lag far behind the latest published evidence, and only focus on a specific aspect of the pandemic."

To obtain a fuller overview, Andreas Älgå and his colleagues have employed a machine learning technique that enables them to map key areas of a research field and track the development over time. This present study included 16,670 scientific papers on COVID-19 published from 14 February to 1 June 2020, divided into 14 different topics.

The study shows that the most common research topics were health care response, clinical manifestations, and psychosocial impact. Some topics, like health care response, declined over time, while others, such as clinical manifestations and protective measures, showed a growing trend of publications.

Protective measures, immunology, and clinical manifestations were the research topics published in journals with the highest average scientific ranking. The countries that accounted for the majority of publications (the USA, China, Italy and the UK) were also amongst the ones hardest hit by the pandemic.

"Our results indicate how the scientific community has reacted to the current pandemic, what issues were prioritised during the early phase and where in the world the research was conducted," says fellow-researcher Martin Nordberg, medical doctor and researcher at the Department of Clinical Science and Education, Sodersjukhuset.

The researchers have also developed a website, where regular updates on the evolution of the COVID-19 evidence base can be found.

"We hope that our results, including the website, could help researchers and policy makers to form a structured view of the research on COVID-19 and direct future research efforts accordingly," says Dr Älgå.

There's bad news for parents who frequently plop their kids in front of the TV to give themselves a break: It might actually end up leaving moms and dads more stressed.

Why? Because the more television that kids watch, the more they're exposed to advertising messages. The more advertising they see, the more likely they are to insist on purchasing items when they go with their parents to the store - and perhaps make a fuss if told "no." All that, researchers say, may contribute to parents' overall stress levels, well beyond a single shopping trip.

The findings come from a University of Arizona-led study, published in the International Journal of Advertising, that explores the potential effects of children's television watching habits on their parents' stress levels.

"The more advertising children see, the more they ask for things and the more conflict is generated," said lead study author Matthew Lapierre, an assistant professor in the UArizona Department of Communication in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. "What we haven't looked at before is what the potential effect is on parents. We know kids ask for things, we know it leads to conflict, but we wanted to ask the next question: Could this be contributing to parents' overall stress?"

The study suggests that it could.

There are a few things parents can do, perhaps the most obvious of which is limiting screen time.

"Commercial content is there for a reason: to elicit purchasing behavior. So, if this is a problem, maybe shut off the TV," Lapierre said.

Of course, that can be easier said than done, he acknowledged.

Another thing parents can try, especially as advertising geared toward children ramps up around the holidays: Consider how they talk to their kids about consumerism.

The researchers looked at the effectiveness of three types of parent-child consumer-related communication:

--Collaborative communication is when a parent seeks child input on family purchasing decisions - for example, saying things such as, "I will listen to your advice on certain products or brands."
--Control communication is when a parent exhibits total control in parent-child consumer related interactions - for example, saying things such as, "Don't argue with me when I say no to your product request."
--Advertising communication is when parents talk to their children about advertising messages - for example, saying things such as, "Commercials will say anything to get you to buy something."

They found that, in general, collaborative communication is associated with less parent stress. However, the protective effect of collaborative communication decreases as children's purchase initiation and coercive behaviors - such as arguing, whining or throwing temper tantrums - increase.

Both control communication and advertising communication are associated with more purchase initiations and children's coercive behavior, the researchers found, suggesting that engaging less in those communication styles could be beneficial.

However, when children have higher levels of television exposure, the protective effect of engaging in less advertising communication decreases.

"Overall, we found that collaborative communication between parents and children was a better strategy for reducing stress in parents. However, this communicative strategy shows diminishing returns when children ask for more products or engage in more consumer conflict with parents," said study co-author Eunjoo Choi, a UArizona doctoral student in communication.

The study is based on survey data from 433 parents of children ages 2 to 12. The researchers focused on younger children because they have less independent purchasing power and spend more time shopping with their parents than older kids, Lapierre said.

In addition to answering questions about their communication styles, the parents in the study also responded to questions designed to measure:

--How much television their child watches in a day.
--How often their child ask for or demands a product during shopping trips, or touches a product without asking.
--How often their child engages in specific coercive behaviors during shopping trips.
--Parent stress levels.

Advertisers Find a Way

Lapierre acknowledged that the way people consume entertainment is changing. With the rise of the DVR and streaming services, many viewers are no longer being exposed to the traditional advertising of network or cable TV. However, advertisers are finding creative ways around that, through tactics such as product placement and integrated branding - incorporating product or company names into a show's narrative - Lapierre said. And advertising toward children remains a multibillion-dollar industry.

"In general, more television exposure means more exposure to commercialized content. Even if I'm streaming, if I I'm watching more of it, I'm likely seeing more integrated branding," Lapierre said.

Advertising aimed at children - which often features lots of bright colors, upbeat music and flashy characters - can be especially persuasive, since, developmentally, children aren't fully capable of understanding advertising's intent, Lapierre said.

"Advertising for kids is generated to makes them feel excited. They do a lot of things in kids' advertising to emotionally jack up the child," Lapierre said. "Children don't have the cognitive and emotional resources to pull themselves back, and that's why it's a particular issue for them."

A kidney transplant is often denied to patients who are obese due to an increased risk of surgical complications, particularly infections. Surgeons at UI Heath -- the clinical and academic health enterprise of the University of Illinois Chicago -- have pioneered the use of robotic-assisted surgery for kidney transplants in obese patients to successfully reduce surgical complications. The procedure has opened up a life-saving door to patients who would otherwise be stuck on dialysis to treat their kidney disease, which carries its own serious risks.

The UIC team, led by Dr. Enrico Benedetti, professor and Warren H. Cole Chair of Surgery, has shown that robotic-assisted kidney transplant and weight loss surgery can be performed safely. Their results are published in the American Journal of Transplantation.

"Obesity is a major risk factor for kidney disease," said Dr. Pierpaolo Di Cocco, assistant professor of surgery at UIC and co-author of the paper. "Performing robotic-assisted weight loss surgery together with kidney transplant is the logical next step because with one surgery, we give the transplant a better shot at success because the weight loss the patient will experience helps improve cardiac function and reduce stress on the new organ."

"With this simultaneous surgical approach, we can address end-stage kidney disease obesity -- a major player in kidney disease -- at the same time with a single operation and a single course of anesthesia," said Dr. Tzvetanov, associate professor of surgery, chief of transplantation and a co-author on the paper.

Obesity is considered a worldwide epidemic, according to the World Health Organization. By 2030, the number of overweight and obese individuals worldwide is projected to reach 2.16 billion and 1.12 billion, respectively.

Obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which in turn affects the progression of chronic kidney disease. Often patients are treated with dialysis for years before they receive a kidney transplant, which remains the best treatment for end-stage kidney disease. But for patients with obesity, a kidney transplant may not be approved.

Sleeve gastrectomy is a procedure that reduces the size of the stomach by approximately 75% and is one of the most common weight-loss surgeries.

Di Cocco and colleagues enrolled 20 patients into the study between 2012 and 2019. On average, patients had body mass indices, or BMI, of 44. A BMI of 30 or above is indicative of obesity.

Eleven patients received a robotic-assisted kidney transplant and sleeve gastrectomy and nine patients received robotic-assisted kidney transplantation alone.

All patients received weight-loss education and participated in a medically supervised weight loss program, which consisted of exercise and diet recommendations as well as visits with a multidisciplinary team of bariatric surgeons, nurse practitioners, medical consultants, dietitians, psychologists and exercise physiologists.

Patients who underwent both procedures were under anesthesia approximately 1 hour longer than those who underwent kidney transplantation alone. Two patients in the kidney transplant group experienced organ rejection at one year and three years post-surgery. No patients in the kidney-transplant-plus-sleeve-gastrectomy group experienced organ rejection.

A year after the surgery, BMI dropped an average of nine points in the group who received the combined robotic sleeve gastrectomy and robotic-assisted kidney transplants. The transplant-only group gained an average of two points. Patients in the dual-procedure group experienced a 50% drop in excess weight, approximately.

"While it is encouraging that patients can safely undergo both robotic-assisted kidney transplant and weight loss surgery safely, it will take more follow-up time for us to understand all the potential benefits of this procedure," Tsvetanov said.

Even with decades of unprecedented development in computational power, the human brain still holds many advantages over modern computing technologies. Our brains are extremely efficient for many cognitive tasks and do not separate memory and computing, unlike standard computer chips.

In the last decade, the new paradigm of neuromorphic computing has emerged, inspired by neural networks of the brain and based on energy-efficient hardware for information processing.

To create devices that mimic what occurs in our brain's neurons and synapses, researchers need to overcome a fundamental molecular engineering challenge: how to design devices that exhibit controllable and energy-efficient transition between different resistive states triggered by incoming stimuli.

In a recent study, scientists at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago were able to predict design rules for such devices.

Published November 10 in npj Computational Materials, the study predicted new ways of engineering and triggering changes in electronic properties in several classes of transition metal oxides, which could be used to form the basis of neuromorphic computing architectures.

"We used quantum mechanical calculations to unravel the mechanism of the transition, highlighting exactly how it happens at the atomistic scale," said Giulia Galli, Liew Family Professor at Pritzker Molecular Engineering, professor of chemistry, and co-author of the study. "We further devised a model to predict how to trigger the transition, showing good agreement with available measurements."

The impact of defects on electronic properties

The researchers investigated oxide materials that exhibit a change of electronic properties from a metal - which conducts electricity - to an insulator - which does not allow electricity to pass through - with various concentrations of defects. Defects can be missing atoms or some impurities that substitute for the atoms present in a perfect crystal.

To understand how defects change the state of the material from a metal to an insulator, the authors calculated the electronic structure at different defect concentrations using methods based on quantum mechanics.

"Understanding the intricate interdependency of the charge of these defects, the way atoms rearrange in the material and the way spin properties vary is crucial to controlling and eventually triggering the desired transition," said Shenli Zhang, a UChicago postdoctoral researcher and first author of the paper.

"Compared to traditional semiconductors, the oxide materials we studied require much less energy to switch between two totally different states: from a metal to an insulator," Zhang continued. "This feature makes these materials promising candidates to be used as artificial neurons or artificial synapses for large-scale neuromorphic architectures."

The study, published by Zhang and Galli, was conducted within the Quantum Materials for Energy Efficient Neuromorphic Computing (QMEENC) research center, which is funded by the Department of Energy and led by Prof. Ivan Schuller at UC San Diego.

"Understanding quantum materials will provide the key solutions to many scientific and technological problems, including the reduction of energy consumption in computational devices," said Schuller. "Given the complexity of quantum materials, the Edisonian approach of trial and error is no longer feasible, and quantitative theories are needed."

Such high-level theories are computationally demanding and have been the target of a long line of work.

"First principles calculations are playing a key role in driving the molecular engineering of neuromorphic computing. It is exciting to see the methods that we have developed for years coming to fruition," said Galli.

Rank in social hierarchy is a condition not solely claimed by humans. In the animal kingdom, male peacocks exhibit brightly colored plumes to illustrate dominance, and underwater, male fish show pops of bright colors to do the same. Despite the links identified between social status, physiology and behavior, the molecular basis of social status has not been known, until now.

"We discovered that two paralogous androgen receptor genes control social status in African cichlid fish," reports Beau Alward in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Alward is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Houston with a joint appointment in biology and biochemistry. Paralogs are duplicate genes; androgens are hormones like testosterone necessary for male sexual development.

"Testosterone binds to androgen receptors to exert its effects. What we found through genome editing is that the two genes encoding these receptors are required for different aspects of social status," said Alward. "This type of coordination of social status may be fundamental across species that rely on social information to optimally guide physiology and behavior."

To make his discovery, Alward used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing, often referred to as "genetic scissors." The developers of the CRISPR method recently won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their invention. The technique allowed Alward to test what regulates physiological and behavioral changes.

Alward found that the two androgen-receptor (AR) paralogs - AR alpha (ARα) and AR beta (ARβ) that exist in cichlid fish - regulate traits that determine their survival and mating opportunities.

"We've shown that ARβ controls coloration, a super key function because females prefer to mate with those that are brightly colored, and that ARα controls behavior, which can change rapidly due to social cues and also determines mating success," said Alward.

This independent regulation of changes in color and behaviors by two receptors suggests there are independent mechanisms in the brain, and that allows Alward and his team to study them in isolation.

"The fact that these are independent implies that this is how flexible social status could be regulated by similar independent mechanisms in other species, including humans," said Alward.

As the weather turns cooler and people move activities indoors, the number of new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases being reported in the United States is rising. This mirrors COVID-19 activity already seen in Europe and elsewhere across the globe.

Meanwhile, supply-chain problems are likely to cause limited supplies of filtering facepiece respirators, such as N95 masks. Yet strategies to decontaminate personal protective equipment, or PPE, remain unresolved in many hospitals with limited resources, both in the United States and abroad.

University of Delaware researchers, led by biomedical engineer Jason Gleghorn, have devised a system for decontaminating N95 masks using off-the-shelf materials available at any hardware store combined with ultraviolet type C (UV-C) lights found in shuttered research laboratories.

The UD-developed method offers comparable decontamination to more expensive methods at an affordable cost of about $50 in materials.

"We focused on frugal science -- how do you decontaminate PPE in a very simple way that is easily scalable for high throughput so that any health care facility can use it globally," said Gleghorn, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at UD.

A simple solution

The project was inspired earlier this year by Rachel Gilbert, a doctoral candidate in the Gleghorn lab, after she learned that friends in the medical field were repeatedly donning the same N95 mask day after day.

"This is more widely known today, of course, thanks to media publicity around this issue, but it got me thinking," said Gilbert.

She knew that UV-C light was routinely used for sterilization of various materials and equipment found in research labs. She wondered if this technique could be repurposed to decontaminate specialized masks, specifically for front line workers, in a low-cost, scalable way.

Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) has been validated as an effective method to decontaminate masks between use. UVGI systems are routinely used to decontaminate work environments and surgical suites, equipment and ambulances, but not all healthcare facilities have access to this expensive commercial sterilization equipment. That said, many UV-C bulbs are sitting idle in biosafety cabinets in university labs and research facilities that may be empty due to restrictions arising from the pandemic.

"Being able to provide something that can be on-site, as opposed to other methods that require surgical-suite UV systems costing tens of thousands of dollars or shipping masks out for decontamination and relying on them coming back in a timely manner, was important," added Gilbert.

When she discussed the idea with Gleghorn, a former firefighter and critical care medic, he immediately agreed. Gilbert called the effort a "huge, collaborative team effort" with many lab members collectively reading the literature, figuring out a solution and then going to the hardware store and creating the setup in the peak of the pandemic in April, all while working from home.

It only took a few weeks to solve the problem and put the system together, but securing peer-review took longer.

"Peer-review is an important part of the process. And while we wish it could move faster, there is a reason that innovations are rigorously examined in the scientific community," said Gleghorn. "We need to make sure the science is sound and the methods we develop are safe for people."

Using basic resources

Now, more about how the method works.

Lay two N95 masks side-by-side and it is impossible to tell which mask, if either, is contaminated with the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 that causes the disease COVID-19. It's not like dirt, which you can see.

The system the research team constructed modifies common fluorescent light fixtures to hold and power the specialized UVGI light bulbs. That, in addition to specific light placement arrangements and tin foil covered cardboard for reflectors, creates multiple decontamination arrangements people can make. To confirm the UV-C lights were effective, the researchers did copious mathematical calculations and modeling to make sure the intensity of UV radiation that the repurposed lights emit was correct and the N95 masks received the correct UV exposure to decontaminate the masks.

The team developed freely downloadable build instructions in simple, easy-to-understand language with a lot of pictures and made them freely available on the Gleghorn lab website. The directions emphasize UV safety and focus on use in healthcare because of the need for specialized equipment, like a UV-C intensity meter. They also include precautions to measure UV-C intensity to ensure confidence the system is delivering the correct degree of UV intensity for enough time to decontaminate.

The detailed setup instructions include granular information, too, such as how far apart to space the masks for maximum effectiveness. This is critical because placing them too close together can create shadows that prevent comprehensive UV-C decontamination.

It is important to note that this is not an at-home device.

"You need proper personal protective equipment to work with UV light, which can disrupt DNA and pose safety concerns," said Gilbert.

This disruptive feature, however, is exactly what makes the UV-C light useful for decontaminating PPE.

"The UV light causes the virus DNA to break up and become ineffective," explained Gleghorn.

"So, the virus -- that little spiky thing you've seen by now -- might still stick to you, but the genetic material inside will be fragmented and will not have the correct machinery to replicate."

The research team enlisted Kim Bothi, former global engineering director and now executive director of UD's Center for Hybrid, Active, and Responsive Materials, to help think through ways to scale the project. She, too, has firefighting and emergency medical technician experience, not to mention expertise in integrating new ideas across a global spectrum.

Bothi used her global expertise and relationships to recruit volunteers across the world to translate the build instructions into multiple languages with regional-specific information. So far, the directions have been translated in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and German. To-date, the build plans have been accessed over 1,060 times from users in 52 countries.

She also is working on a policy brief to share the research team's method with Delaware's congressional delegation. Additionally, Bothi is passing information along to colleagues working with the Kenya Medical Research Institute and in other nongovernmental organizations across the world.

"Like any other technology or innovation, our off-the-shelf decontamination method will only have impact if people are aware of it," she said.

The researchers concede that mask re-use is not ideal, but they also recognize that not all hospitals or other patient care facilities are equipped with enough PPE to meet demand in a crisis, so first responders may be required to reuse masks in emergency situations.

This includes doctors, nurses and emergency response personnel, but also extends to staff behind-the-scenes who may be cleaning, disinfecting or preparing spaces for patient care. Beyond hospitals, PPE is worn in residential facilities and rural clinics around the globe that may have limited access to resources.

In a perfect world, Bothi would like to see academic and research institutions working hand-in-hand with hospital systems to collaboratively put these off-the-shelf systems in place where they are needed.

Kenya, for example, is a country in sub-Saharan Africa that has a fairly robust system for healthcare. Yet, the country is still facing incredible shortages of PPE just like here in the United States.

"The bigger benefit will be translating this to other areas of the world, where they don't have the resources," said Gleghorn.

Heidelberg, November 10, 2020: Dementia is associated with an impaired self-perception with potentially harmful consequences for health status and clinical risk classification in this patient group with an extraordinary high risk of falling. A new study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease indicates that psychological factors such as anxiety or fear of falling, cognitive sub-performances such as executive functions, as well as behavioral strategies such as support seeking and interplay with other risk factors should be considered when risk of falling is documented in PWD.

"PwD show a threefold incidence of falls and a doubled incidences of severe falls as compared to peers without dementia and an inaccurate risk-perception and associated behavioral consequences may represent a link to this traumatic event in old age", explained lead investigator Klaus Hauer, PhD, Department of Geriatric Research at the Bethanien Hospital/Geriatric center at the Heidelberg University, Germany.

Patients with neurodegenerative diseases often present with poor self-awareness that may exacerbate their already jeopardized decision-making and behavior. With respect to risk of falling and functional capacities, deficits in specific cognitive sub-performances such as executive function/working memory showed significant discriminative validity for fallers vs. non-fallers and documented restricted judgement in own motor planning while executive function also influenced overestimation of own functional abilities among fallers suggesting a potential mechanism for falling already in persons without cognitive impairment.

However other factors such as psychological- or functional status or adaptive behavioral strategies have shown high associations with incorrect fall risk perception in study samples without cognitive impairment or unspecified cognitive status and those factors may interfere with, facilitate, compensate or even superimpose the effects of impaired cognition. Studies on mismatch of subjective vs objective risk with focus on falls have so far not been published in PWD representing a highest risk group for falls.

"Although 2/3 of the study participants had a mismatch between subjective and objective risk, study results indicate that cognitive impairment per se does not lead to underestimation of risk of falling while results of specific cognitive subdomains such as less impaired executive and memory function was only associated with overestimation of risk in this group of persons with beginning to moderate stage dementia.

Other factors such as anxiety, concerns about falling, activity avoidance, history of falls, or support seeking strategies represented more relevant parameters to discriminate between match or mismatch of objective vs subjective risk of falling", commented co-investigator Ilona Dutzi, PhD, Department of Geriatric Research at the Bethanien Hospital/ Geriatric center at the Heidelberg University, Germany.

Results, especially so in the largest subgroup with underestimation of risk, may indicate a rather less negative view on life perspectives and less emotional and behavioral reactivity to adverse events such as falls, leading to a higher quality of life and allowing to be more physically active thus counterbalancing objective risks. Results seem encouraging, as they translate mismatch classification (inadequate perception) into a positive direction, documenting unexpected remaining resources in a large subgroup of persons with moderate dementia.

While traumatic fall events are associated to fear of falling, the study findings indicate that a mismatch of subjective and objective risk seems not to be a general and high impact factor for risk or falling even in PwD, allowing fewer concerns to motivate such persons to take part in active prevention programs with increased risk exposure such as exercise programs.

New Rochelle, NY, November 9, 2020--Use of thyroid hormone to boost hepatocyte proliferation enhanced the efficiency of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene correction in the mouse liver. This dietary induction of hepatocyte regeneration may be a viable clinical strategy to enhance gene repair in the liver, according to the peer-reviewed journal Human Gene Therapy. Click here to read the full-text article free through December 9, 2020.

The study was done in a mouse model of tyrosinemia type 1. "In neonatal mice, a gene correction frequency of ~10.8% of hepatocytes was achieved," said Qing-Shuo Zhang, Oregon Health & Science University and coauthors. "The efficiency in adult mice was significantly lower at ~1.6%."

Use of thyroid hormone T3 to temporarily induce hepatocyte division in the adult mice led to a significant increase in the gene correction efficiency to 3.5%.

"The promise of gene editing for human gene therapy is being realized initially with ex vivo manipulation of stem cells and lymphocytes and in small organ targets like the retina. If gene editing becomes efficient enough to correct genetic defects in vivo in the liver, it could then be used to treat a much wider variety of disorders. The work in this paper moves the field closer to that goal," according to Editor-in-Chief of Human Gene Therapy Terence R. Flotte, MD, Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education and Dean, Provost, and Executive Deputy Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Osaka, Japan - Silicon has been the workhorse of electronics for decades because it is a common element, is easy to process, and has useful electronic properties. A limitation of silicon is that high temperatures damage it, which limits the operating speed of silicon-based electronics. Single-crystal diamond is a possible alternative to silicon. Researchers recently fabricated a single-crystal diamond wafer, but common methods of polishing the surface—a requirement for use in electronics—are a combination of slow and damaging.

In a study recently published in Scientific Reports, researchers from Osaka University and collaborating partners polished a single-crystal diamond wafer to be nearly atomically smooth. This procedure will be useful for helping diamond replace at least some of the silicon components of electronic devices.

Diamond is the hardest known substance and essentially does not react with chemicals. Polishing it with a similarly hard tool damages the surface and conventional polishing chemistry is slow. In this study, the researchers in essence first modified the quartz glass surface and then polished diamond with modified quartz glass tools.

"Plasma-assisted polishing is an ideal technique for single-crystal diamond," explains lead author Nian Liu. "The plasma activates the carbon atoms on the diamond surface without destroying the crystal structure, which lets a quartz glass plate gently smooth away surface irregularities."

The single-crystal diamond, before polishing, had many step-like features and was wavy overall, with an average root mean square roughness of 0.66 micrometers. After polishing, the topographical defects were gone, and the surface roughness was far less: 0.4 nanometers.

"Polishing decreased the surface roughness to near-atomic smoothness," says senior author Kazuya Yamamura. "There were no scratches on the surface, as seen in scaife mechanical smoothing approaches."

Furthermore, the researchers confirmed that the polished surface was unaltered chemically. For example, they detected no graphite—therefore, no damaged carbon. The only detected impurity was a very small amount of nitrogen from the original wafer preparation.

"Using Raman spectroscopy, the full width at half maximum of the diamond lines in the wafer were the same, and the peak positions were almost identical," says Liu. "Other polishing techniques show clear deviations from pure diamond."

With this research development, high-performance power devices and heat sinks based on single-crystal diamond are now attainable. Such technologies will dramatically lower the power use and carbon input, and improve the performance, of future electronic devices.

Some of the world's most valuable ecosystems are facing a "triple threat" to their long-term durability and survival, new research shows.

The study found that mangrove forests, their large biodiversity and the coastal protection they provide are under pressure from three distinct threats - sea-level rise, lack of mud and squeezed habitats.

The research, conducted by an international team of experts including Dr Barend van Maanen from the University of Exeter, identifies not only how these coastal forests get pushed against their shores, but also what causes the loss of their diversity.

It shows the negative effects of river dams that decrease the supply of mud that could otherwise raise mangrove soils, while buildings and seawalls largely occupy the space that mangroves require for survival.

The study is published in Environmental Research Letters.

Coastal mangrove forests are valuable, highly biodiverse ecosystems that protect coastal communities against storms.

Mangroves withstand flooding by tides and capture mud to raise their soils. But as the mangrove trees cannot survive if they are under water for too long, the combination of sea-level rise and decreasing mud supply from rivers poses a serious threat.

New computer simulations show how coastal forests retreat landward under sea-level rise, especially in coastal areas where mud in the water is declining. The simulations include interactions among tides, mud transport and, for the first time, multiple mangrove species.

Dr van Maanen, senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and supervisor of the project, said: "Both mangrove coverage loss and diversity loss go hand in hand when that landward retreat is limited by expanding cities, agriculture or flood protection works."

The model also shows that mangrove trees with dense roots trap mud more effectively and can stop it from reaching forest areas further inland.

Danghan Xie, PhD researcher at Utrecht University and lead author of the study said: "This makes the more landward-located trees flood for longer periods of time, an effect that is intensified by sea-level rise.

"Increasing landward flooding then seriously reduces biodiversity.

"Human land use prevents the mangroves 'escaping' flooding by migrating inland, narrowing the mangrove zone and further endangering biodiversity."

A narrow mangrove zone is much less effective in protecting the coast against storms, or in the worst case loses its protective properties altogether.

Co-author Dr Christian Schwarz, environmental scientist at the University of Delaware, added: "The loss of mangrove species will have dramatic ecological and economic implications, but fortunately there are ways to help safeguarding these ecosystems.

"It is essential to secure or restore mud delivery to coasts to counter negative effects of sea-level rise.

"For coasts where mud supply remains limited, removal of barriers that obstruct inland migration is of utmost importance to avoid loss of mangrove forests and biodiversity."