Culture

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, studied the ecological function of linalool, a naturally abundant volatile organic compound, in wild Nicotiana attenuata tobacco plants. They found the gene responsible for linalool synthesis and release which vary considerably in plants of the same species. Females of the tobacco hawkmoth (Manduca sexta) prefer to lay eggs on plants with a higher naturally occurring linalool. At the same time, the more linalool a plant released, the more eggs and freshly hatched larvae were predated on by bugs. Behavioral assays in increasingly complex environments showed that the effects of linalool are quite variable, depending on the natural environment and the genetic makeup of the plant (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1818585116).

Interactions between tobacco plants, tobacco hawkmoths, and predatory bugs

Plants have evolved multiple strategies to defend themselves against herbivorous animals, especially insects. In addition to mechanical defenses, such as thorns and spines, plants also produce chemical defense compounds that hold insects and other herbivores at bay. These substances include volatile organic compounds, often only produced by plants after insect attack. Linalool is such a plant volatile organic compound; it mediates different ecological interactions with insects. Its complex mode of action has already been the subject of previous investigations. It is known that linalool in tobacco plants can attract predatory Geocoris bugs to show them the way to their prey: the eggs or freshly hatched larvae of tobacco hawkmoths. However, as a floral scent component, linalool is also attractive for adult hawkmoths and influences mated female moths in their decision to lay their eggs on a plant. A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology lead by Meredith Schuman and Ian Baldwin has now studied the ecological functions of the monoterpene linalool in wild Nicotiana attenuata plants in more detail.

The genetic analysis of linalool synthesis

The researchers observed a correlation between the rate of Manduca sexta eggs predated by Geocoris bugs and the amount of linalool produced by the respective plants. They didn't observe such a correlation between five similar organic compounds emitted by tobacco plants and the egg predation rate. This indicates that linalool, in fact, functions as the plants' chemical cry for help and attracts predatory bugs that attack herbivorous larvae. "Tobacco plants vary a lot in their linalool emission. If linalool mainly has a defensive effect, that is attracting predators and repelling hawkmoths, we would expect there to be less variation. Obviously, linalool emission is not always advantageous for the plant. Therefore we wanted to explore systematically, which ecological interactions result from differences in linalool production," Jun He, the first author of the study, explains.

The scientists were able to identify the enzyme that regulates linalool synthesis in Nicotiana attenuata and to determine its genetic basis. To achieve this, they crossed plants from native populations in Arizona which were high in linalool production, with plants from Utah which produced considerably less linalool. This approach, which is called forward genetics, allowed for an identification of genes underlying the natural variation of linalool synthesis.

Mirror images of molecules and their different effects

Linalool occurs in two different forms, so called enantiomers. Both enantiomers, (R)-(?)-linalool and (S)-(+)-linalool, are almost identical, however, their three-dimensional structures are mirror images of each other. Although only (S)-(+)-linalool was found in natural Nicotiana attenuata populations in Utah and Arizona, the researchers also used plants in their experiments which produced its mirror image, (R)-(?)-linalool. Both enantiomers are perceived as two different compounds by hawkmoths, resulting in different effects on their behavior.

Experiments in an increasingly complex context

The scientists tested the effect of these plants in behavioral assays with tobacco hawkmoths. They observed the behavior of mated females exposed to two different experimental plants in a choice assay in a wind tunnel in order to answer the question how linalool blends affect oviposition. Amazingly, egg-laying was only partially influenced by a manipulated production of the two linalool enantiomers. In fact, the genetic background of the plants, that is, whether a Utah or an Arizona plant had been modified to produce more linalool, had a much higher impact on the moths' preferences. "It was surprising to us that experimental context mattered even more than the two different enantiomers", Richard Fandino, who designed the wind tunnel experiments, explains. The researchers performed further experiments with moths and different tobacco plants in oviposition chambers and a large experimental tent, where moths were able to fly around. However, the differences in the moths' responses to linalool emission vanished, the more complex the environment became.

The meaning of signals in context

Context is a linguistic term. It points to the problem that words or vocabulary may have different meanings depending on the communication situation in which they are used. This is also true for the "chemical vocabulary" component, linalool. Originally, the authors of the study expected that a chemical compound triggers a certain behavior. "However, our study showed that moths pay attention to many different features of plants when choosing where to feed or oviposit. Then, they integrate this information in order to choose among the available plants. Thus, differences in other plant properties as well as the availability of alternative plants and their characteristics, are likely to determine the importance of any individual cue: in this case, linalool", Meredith Schuman, one of the main authors of the publication, summarizes.

A better understanding of context-appropriate plant defense against herbivores might help to overcome problems in standardized industrial agriculture, such as the evolution of resistance to commonly used pesticides.

Female bedbugs are able to cleverly control their immune systems ahead of mating, to boost their defence against mating-related infection

Male bedbugs are more attracted to females who have recently feasted on blood as they will lay lots of eggs and their bigger size means they cannot fight back against traumatic insemination

This ability to 'manage' immune systems might be shared by other insects

Findings may pinpoint ways of making female bedbugs more susceptible to natural routes of infection, something that in turn may help us control them

Female bedbugs who are 'full bellied' and therefore more attractive mates for males, are able to boost their immune systems in anticipation of catching sexually transmitted infections, research has found.

Led by the University of Sheffield, the research discovered a correlation between fed females and the chances of them being inseminated and therefore infected as a result.

To mitigate this, female bedbugs that have just dined on blood and are therefore full, are able to cleverly manage their simple immune system in anticipation of mating. This is in comparison to female bedbugs that do not get regular food, do not mate regularly and therefore do not have the same need to boost their immune system in defence of infection.

Mating amongst bedbugs involves the male critter inserting its needle-like penis into the female bedbug's abdomen, in a process known as traumatic insemination.

The study found that females who boost their immune system in anticipation of this traumatic insemination also benefit from a longer lifespan - by being better able to resist the effects of infection - and have greater reproductive success. This is despite laying eggs at the same rate as 'hungry' females.

While it was previously known that insects can aid their offspring when in a parasite rich environment, this is the first evidence that an individual bedbug can regulate immunity in anticipation of infection. The team now believe this ability to 'manage' immune systems might be shared by other insects.

Professor Mike Siva-Jothy, from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, who led the research, said: "This is a pretty clever skill that bedbugs have developed to protect themselves against infection from what is quite a brutal mating ritual.

"This ability for bedbugs to do complex things with their simple immune systems thanks to some clever management may well also be something other insects have grasped the ability to do.

"Everyone knows bedbugs are some of the most unwanted human bed-mates. We hope the findings might therefore help us pinpoint ways of making females more susceptible to natural routes of infection, something that may help us find new ways of controlling them."

The study looked at 100s of bedbugs over several years, during experiments that lasted two-three months.

The experts believe the key reason why male bedbugs are attracted to recently fed females is because they are full of blood and will therefore lay lots of eggs. In addition, these full females will be fat from their blood feast and so cannot fight back against traumatic insemination.

Professor Siva-Jothy added: "We now need to understand how this boost to the immune system is switched on and off in reproductive cycles and whether other organisms use similar systems to minimise infection by sexually transmitted diseases.

Every American hospital has two front doors: The real one, and an imaginary revolving door.

Any patient who winds up back in the hospital within a few weeks of getting out travels through that imaginary door. And the more of them there are, the more money their hospital stands to lose from the Medicare system.

This readmission penalty, as it's called, aims to spur hospitals to prevent unnecessary costly care.

But a new study shows that after several years of rapid improvements in readmissions, the readmission penalty program may be spinning its wheels more than it's slowing the spinning of the revolving hospital door.

Writing in the journal Health Affairs, a team from the University of Michigan reports findings from their analysis of data from nearly 2.5 million Medicare patients. They focused on those who had hip or knee replacement surgery before and after penalties affecting these operations were announced.

In fact, the study shows, the readmission rate for these patients had already started dropping by the time the idea of readmission penalties was announced as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

Soon after that, the readmissions rate for these surgical patients started dropping faster--even though the penalties announced in the ACA did not apply to surgical patients.

The rate kept dropping rapidly for several years -- even though hospitals weren't getting penalized yet for hip and knee replacement-related readmissions.

But that improvement started to slow down.

After the government announced in late 2013 that penalties would expand to hip and knee replacement, the rate of readmissions for these patients kept dropping, but at nearly half the rate.

In other words, improvements in surgical readmissions slowed to the same trend they had before any penalties were announced in 2010.

"These findings raise the question of whether we're about to reach the floor in our ability to reduce readmissions for these patients," says Karan Chhabra, M.D., M.Sc., the study's lead author.

Trends beyond readmissions

At the same time the readmission rates were changing, the average cost of caring for a Medicare hip or knee replacement patient did too, the new study shows.

In fact, it dropped by more than $3,000 from 2008 to 2016.

And hip and knee patients' chance of heading home from the hospital, rather than to a skilled nursing facility or other setting, has increased over that time, the researchers report. So has the likelihood that they will have home health aide help when they get home.

The same efforts that hospitals may have launched to prevent readmission of medical patients may have extended to these surgical patients, the authors speculate.

These might include care coordination programs and telephone check-ins with recently discharged patients, or better patient education about home care or changes to their medications.

Implications for expansion

The Hospital Readmission Reduction Program, or HRRP, still carries large penalties - up to 3% of what a hospital earns for certain Medicare patients. Not only that, it has expanded to include more conditions, including heart bypass surgery and more types of pneumonia including those with sepsis.

But Chhabra and his colleagues say that adding more conditions to the program is not likely to result in much more readmission prevention or cost savings.

"Based on the experience so far, it's hard to believe that adding on penalties for more conditions will further bend the curve of readmission," says Chhabra, a National Clinician Scholar at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation who is also a resident in the Department of Surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Recent research by other groups has suggested that non-surgical patients may actually be harmed by the drive to reduce readmissions, including being more likely to die at home. Safety net hospitals, which take care of poorer and sicker patients, are also penalized more often by the program.

Says Chhabra, "We may be approaching the point for these surgical patients where the unintended consequences of readmissions reduction efforts begin to dominate. When you've squeezed the possible benefits out, all you have left are harms."

Potential alternatives

In the end, some readmissions are inevitable, the authors say, and trying to drive rates lower through penalties may mean some patients who should have been readmitted to deal with an issue won't be.

Instead, the researchers suggest that more use of bundled payments - where Medicare sets a defined amount of money it will pay for the episode of care surrounding a surgical patient's operation - could produce better results.

This is because bundled payments ensure hospitals focus on costs and complications around the entire episode of care, not just one narrow metric like readmissions.

In the meantime, Chhabra says, patients who get hospitalized for surgery or any other reason should make sure to know what their lines of communication back to their care team at all hours after they leave the hospital.

Patients and the loved ones who will care for them should also make sure they understand the instructions they received at hospital discharge, and know what kinds of symptoms or changes should prompt them to contact their team. Often, their surgical teams can provide instructions or reassurance that can prevent a bounce back to the emergency department.

That kind of open communication can make the difference between an appropriate and an inappropriate rehospitalization.

'Back to school asthma'--a seasonal peak in cases associated with the start of the school year in September--is linked to a tripling in the rate of family doctor (GP) appointments across England, reveals research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

The phenomenon seems to particularly affect the under 5s and boys, national monitoring data show.

The prevalence of asthma and associated deaths and use of healthcare services in the UK are thought to be the highest in the world. And 'back to school asthma' accounts for up to a quarter of serious bouts of the condition in many northern hemisphere countries.

But it's not clear where the resulting pressure points on healthcare services might be. In a bid to find out, the researchers analysed routine monitoring data for family doctor consultations about worsening asthma, both within and outside normal practice hours, as well as related visits to hospital emergency care departments between 2012 and 2016.

They looked at the time and sex specific trends for 0-4 and 5-14 year olds for the last four weeks of the summer holiday up to the first 6 to 7 weeks of the autumn term.

All three sources of data indicated similar age and sex specific patterns, with use of health services for asthma up to 2.4 times higher among boys in both age groups than among girls.

The highest rate of asthma cases was among 5 to 14 year old boys for each of the three services.

Rates of GP in hours appointments for asthma fell during school holidays, followed by an increase in the first two to three weeks of each of the autumn half terms, with the sharpest rise at the start of the school year in September.

Patterns for GP out of hours services were similar to those of in hour consultations. And emergency care department visits for worsening asthma also peaked at the start of the school year for both age groups.

Across the entire study period, the average delay between the start of the school year and the 'back to school' effect varied for each of the years, beginning as late as 17 days afterwards and as early as 7 days before.

But after taking account of these annual variations and sex differences, the daily in hours consultation rate for worsening bouts of asthma was more than three times as high in the back to school period as during the summer holidays for children up to the age of 4. And it was 2.5 times as high for 5-14 year olds.

For GP out of hours consultations, the rates were around twice as high for both age groups.

No such obvious peaks were seen for children aged 15 and older.

This is an observational epidemiological study, and as such, can't establish cause. The coding applied to surveillance data may vary in quality, acknowledge the researchers. And it can be difficult to accurately diagnose asthma in young children because of the range of other factors than can produce similar respiratory symptoms.

But the very large number of children studied over several years lends weight to the findings, say the researchers, who suggest that multiple factors are likely to be involved.

These might include changes in the weather, air pollution, the stress of starting a new school year, and seasonal increases in circulating viruses, particularly rhinovirus, which is implicated in worsening childhood asthma.

"The underlying aetiology of ['back to school'] asthma is complex and in addition to the established contribution of respiratory infections, environmental determinants may be involved: the role of fungal spores (which show autumnal seasonality) could be an area for future research to investigate aetiology and thus determine potential future interventions," suggest the researchers.

"These results support the need for further preventable work to reduce the impact of [back to school] asthma in children," they conclude.

UK politicians (MPs) at Westminster are more likely to have mental health issues than either the general public or other people in comparable professions/managerial posts, suggest the responses to a survey of parliamentarians, published in the online journal BMJ Open.

What's more, awareness of confidential parliamentary support services or how to access them is low, as is a willingness to open up about their mental health to either appointed party officials (Whips) or fellow MPs, the responses indicate.

The response rate was relatively low. But that in itself might be quite revealing, and possibly indicative of the persisting stigma associated with mental illness and the nature of an MP's life lived in the public eye, the researchers suggest.

Very little research has been published on the mental health of UK parliamentarians and how this compares with that of the general public and employees in comparable professions/managerial roles.

In a bid to plug this knowledge gap, the researchers devised an anonymous online survey at the House of Commons in December 2016, which was sent to all 650 sitting MPs at Westminster.

The questions focused on a wide range of issues from the ability to concentrate, through stress levels and capacity to cope, to perceptions of unhappiness, depression, and self worth.

MPs were also asked if they knew about the mental health support services available to them, as well as their willingness to talk about their mental health with party Whips or other MPs.

Responses were compared with those for the nationally representative annual Health Survey for England (HSE) 2014, divided into four categories: total population; corporate managers; all managers; and those in high income groups.

And mental health for both sets of survey participants was assessed using the General Health Questionnaire, or GHQ-12 for short--a validated measure of mental health.

Around one in five MPs (146; 22.4%) returned completed questionnaires. Compared with the four categories of HSE respondents, MPs had poorer mental health and reported higher levels of worthlessness, unhappiness, and depression.

When the responses were combined, a higher proportion of MPs probably had mental ill health than any of the other groups, with women faring worse than their male colleagues.

Most MPs were unaware of the anonymous Parliamentary Health and Wellbeing Service, which was set up in 2013 for their workplace health needs.

More than three out of four respondents (77%) didn't know about this service, while over half (55%) didn't know how to access it. And around half said they were unwilling to open up about their mental health to party Whips (52%) or to other MPs (48%).

This is an observational study, which didn't set out to establish cause and the survey response rate was relatively low. What's more, those who responded might have been more likely to do so because they had mental health issues, the researchers point out.

"However, there is also a potential risk of under reporting from people who might be reluctant to take part in the study because they are affected by mental health problems or because of the stigma associated with the topic," they write.

"Prior experiences of, or fears of stalking and harassment, which might result from their disclosure, may decrease the willingness of MPs to participate in the survey," they add.

Better support, both to stave off mental ill health and deal with it promptly, is needed, they conclude. "Due to their working routine and hours, MPs spend a majority of their working time far from the support provided by NHS services in their own constituencies. In addition to their high-performance work life, this adds to the increased stress on MPs' mental health."

City College of New York-led researchers have published a breakthrough in understanding previously unknown inner workings related to the lateralization of speech processing in the brain. Their study, headed by biologist Hysell V. Oviedo of CCNY's Division of Science and published in the journal "Nature Communications," could shine a light on miswiring of brain circuits in neurodevelopmental communication disorders.

"The lateralization of language processing in the auditory cortical areas of the brain has been known for more than 150 years, but the function, neural mechanisms, and development of this hemispheric specialization is still unknown," said Oviedo, who's also affiliated with the Graduate Center, CUNY.

Lateralization is referred to as the specialization of functions in the brain, commonly attributed to its left hemisphere and right hemisphere.

"This division of labor between the left and right auditory cortices in processing social communication is not unique to humans but is widespread in many species including mice. Using the mouse as an animal model, our study is the first to show that there are significant differences in the wiring diagram of the language centers in the brain that could underlie their distinct speech processing capabilities," added Oviedo.

On possible outcomes of their research, Oviedo noted that communication deficits are the most common disabilities in children, affecting 8-12% of preschoolers.

"Although the causes of communication deficits vary, the underlying pathological mechanism routinely involves miswiring of the connections between neurons in the language centers of the brain.

"Our discovery of the wiring diagram relevant to communicative functions provides the opportunity to use the mouse as a model to study the molecular phenotypes that shape the development of vocalization processing and how it goes awry in neurodevelopmental communication disorders," she concluded.

Scientists working on unravelling the mysteries of star cluster formation have found an innovative way of sharing their work with the general public. Taking inspiration from a 19th century magic trick, researchers from the University of Leeds have developed 3D holograms that allow people to watch massive stars forming before their eyes.

Dr Anne Buckner will be demonstrating the holograms at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Lancaster on 1- 4 July 2019.

"Our research focusses on how massive stars form" she explains, "it's inherently an abstract and complex topic to non-experts, so we developed the 3D holograms to help explain it in an easy to understand and visually engaging way".

Funded by a two-year STFC Public Engagement SPARKS award, a the team have developed a one-hour workshop which takes participants through the story of star formation (using a combination of presentation slides and holograms), and then explains how the hologram technology works. The holograms are created using an upside-down Perspex pyramid placed on a 65-inch monitor that plays a specially formatted video.

In addition to the 65-inch monitor for events at the University of Leeds, a "travel-sized" version of the kit (with a 32-inch monitor) allows the team to take their research to schools, conferences, and public events such as festivals. Participants are given the chance to make their own smart-phone size hologram creator which they can take home with them.

Attempting to imagine evolving star clusters - thousands of light-years away - is challenging (even for experts in the field) and although 2D images from telescopes or computer simulations, are regularly used as visual aids, the StarFormMapper team were keen to find a way to demonstrate star formation in 3D.

Researchers on the StarFormMapper project use a combination of observational and theoretical data to understand the mechanisms underlying massive star, and star cluster, formation. With the advent of ESA's Gaia and Herschel missions, an increasing amount of data is available to the researchers, who are ultimately hoping their scientific results will underpin the study of how all galaxies evolve.

"We wanted to excite school kids about astrophysics" says Buckner. Virtual reality headsets were an obvious choice, but they were too expensive, and would be impractical for large audiences, so Buckner took inspiration from an unlikely source: 19th century magic shows.

"As a fan of magic I was aware of an illusion called 'Pepper's Ghost' which has been around since the 1800s" she says. "We wondered if we could adapt something similar to this to work for astronomy, and as a result we have the ability to project 3D holograms bringing millions of years of stellar evolution to life".

Initial audience feedback has been positive, and it appears that the holograms are helping people to better understand the research. Buckner plans to take the workshop on tour and deliver it to secondary school students in West Yorkshire, and there is an app in development which will enable people to watch millions of years of stars forming and evolving in 3D on their smartphone or tablet.

A consensus is building that air pollution can cause neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, but how fine, sooty particles cause problems in the brain is still an unanswered question. Now a team of Penn State researchers, using mice, have found a possible way, but more research is still needed.

The researchers looked at how cerebrospinal fluid, the liquid that flows around the brain and spinal cord, flows out through the nose, and what happens when the flow of fluid is stopped.

"There has been a lot of interest in understanding cerebrospinal fluid movement in the last 5 years," said Patrick Drew, Huck Distinguished Associate Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Neurosurgery and Biomedical Engineering. "More and more it is realized that it does not just cushion the brain, but may also transfer stuff out of the brain and spinal column area."

The question, however, is how does the cerebrospinal fluid -- or CSF -- leave the enclosed area of the brain and spinal column and where does it go? Research into old scientific papers indicated that some scientists had speculated that one exit pathway was through the nose.

"I was trying to label cerebrospinal fluid with a dye for another experiment," said Jordan N. Norwood, graduate student in cellular and developmental biology and Drew's student. "We started seeing this dyed cerebrospinal fluid drain out through the nose."

More research into old scientific papers showed that not only had others suggested that the cerebrospinal fluid left through the nose, but that there was a connection to the sense of smell. The researchers also found that there is a long-held connection between loss of smell and the early beginnings of such neurological diseases as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

Using chemical ablation, the researchers destroyed the olfactory sensory nerves that come through the mouse's hard palate. Destruction of these nerves causes loss of the sense of smell, but also caused the flow of cerebrospinal fluid to stop.

"The mice seem normal after we used zinc sulfate to ablate the nerves in the nose," said Drew.

Because the flow of fluid from the nose stopped, the researchers checked to see if the pressure around the brain and in the spinal cord increased.

"Animals and people are constantly making CSF so if it doesn't go out, pressure will go up," said Drew. "But we found that the pressure did not increase after the flow from the nose stopped."

The researchers believe that some other pathway may increase its flow or CSF to compensate for what would normally go out through the nose. These other pathways could include those around the brain that drain into the lymphatic system.

Another possibility is that the production of CSF decreases in response to stoppage of CSF flow through the nose.

The researchers suggest in a recent issue of eLife, "that damage to olfactory sensory neurons (such as from air pollution) could contribute to altered CSF turnover and flow, providing a potential mechanism for neurological disease." They also state that "reduced CSF turnover may be a contributing factor to the buildup of toxic metabolites and proteins that cause neurodegenerative disorders."

Both the effects of pollution and the effects of reduced CSF turnover might explain the origin of some of these diseases.

"By ablating the neurons, we were able to disrupt and disable flow in the nose," said Norwood. "People in areas with heavy air pollution may be breathing stuff that does the same thing as our experiments.

"Next we would like to collaborate with a lab in the Materials Research Institute that is working with soot or jet fuel particles to see if we get the same effect," she added.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A collaboration led by scientists at Oregon State University, the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and Erasmus University in The Netherlands has identified a new genetic mutation behind the premature fusing of the bony plates that make up the skull.

The findings are a key step toward preventing a serious cranial condition that affects roughly one child in 2,250, and also toward understanding how the protein the gene encodes works in the development and function of other organ systems such as skin, teeth and the immune system.

In the skull, when one or more of the fibrous joints, called skull sutures, between cranial bones close too soon - a condition known as craniosynostosis - the resulting early plate fusion disrupts proper growth of the skull and brain.

Pressure inside the cranium can lead to a variety of medical problems including impaired vision, respiration and mental function, as well as abnormal head shape. Males are affected at slightly higher rates, and most cases are termed "sporadic" - meaning they occur by chance.

"As an individual grows, sutures are supposed to close gradually, with complete fusion taking place in the third decade of life," said Oregon State researcher Mark Leid. "Proper suture formation, maintenance and ossification require an exquisitely choreographed balance - stem cells and their progeny need to proliferate and differentiate at just the right time."

Leid, professor and interim dean of the OSU College of Pharmacy, and scientists Stephen Twigg of Oxford and Irene Mathijssen of Erasmus University in Rotterdam performed whole-genome sequencing on a male craniosynostosis patient and found a mutation in a gene known as BCL11B.

Neither of the patient's parents had symptoms of craniosynostosis, a family history of the condition, or carried the mutation, which generated a single amino acid change in the BCL11B protein.

The international research group proved that the human patient's mutation was causative for craniosynostosis by utilizing a mouse model harboring the same mutation. Like the human patient, the genetically modified mouse exhibited craniosynostosis at birth.

"Our data demonstrate that the identified amino acid substitution caused craniosynostosis in the patient we studied," Leid said. "The mouse model that we created should be useful in dissecting the mechanisms behind the role of the BCL11B protein in keeping sutures open, as well as the role of the protein in the development and function of other organ systems."

A new study from the University of Göttingen and international partners has analysed the effects of Fairtrade certification on poor rural workers in Africa. The results show that Fairtrade improves the situation of employees in agricultural cooperatives, but not of workers in the smallholder farm sector, who are often particularly disadvantaged. The study was published in "Nature Sustainability".

When consumers of cocoa, coffee and other tropical goods, decide to purchase products with the Fairtrade label, they pay a certain premium, expecting to help improve the socioeconomic conditions in developing countries. The study authors wanted to know whether Fairtrade really benefits poor rural workers in Africa. For the study, they collected representative data from 1000 cocoa farmers and workers in 50 different cooperatives in Cote d'Ivoire. Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa is the largest cocoa producer and exporter worldwide.

"Previous studies had analysed the effects of Fairtrade on smallholder farmers, ignoring that these farmers also employ agricultural workers for crop cultivation and harvesting", says Matin Qaim, an agricultural economist at the University of Göttingen. "Workers in the small farm sector constitute a large group. They are often neglected by development initiatives, although they typically belong to the poorest of the poor", he adds.

Fairtrade requires minimum wages and fair labour conditions for workers and employees in certified value chains. "These conditions are met for the employees in cocoa cooperatives. At the cooperative level, Fairtrade requirements are regularly monitored", says Eva-Marie Meemken from Cornell University in the USA. "However, our data show no effects on the livelihoods of farmworkers, even though the farmers themselves benefit from Fairtrade certification. Monitoring the wages and labour conditions on thousands of small farms is costly and therefore rarely done. But it doesn't work without monitoring", Meemken states. "Better solutions have to be found in order to implement the fairness model more comprehensively."

In biotech these days, CRISPR/Cas9 is a hot topic, because of its utility as a precise gene editing tool. Before humans repurposed it, CRISPR/Cas9 was a sort of internal immune system bacteria use to defend themselves against phages, or viruses that infect bacteria, by slicing up the phages' DNA.

Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine and the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens have found that the "scissors" component of CRISPR/Cas9 sometimes gets stuck.

Cas9, an enzyme that cuts DNA, can also block gene activity without doing any cutting. In the pathogenic bacterium Francisella novicida, Cas9 regulates genes that need to be shut off for the bacteria to cause disease.

The results were published June 27 in Molecular Cell.

Emory microbiologist David Weiss, PhD and colleagues had identified Cas9 several years ago when looking for genes that regulated F. novicida's virulence. F. novicida is a close relative of the bacterium that causes tularemia, and it grows inside mammalian cells. For the current paper elucidating why Cas9 is important for virulence, his lab teamed up with researchers in Germany led by Emmanuelle Charpentier, PhD, whose work on CRISPR/Cas9 led to its use as a gene editing tool.

The researchers found that in F. novicida, Cas9 regulates just four genes, all of which must be turned off so that the bacteria can cause disease. In its DNA scissors/phage defense role, Cas9 is guided by an RNA that is complementary to the target. When Cas9 is acting to block gene activity, Cas9 uses a different RNA guide sequence, which doesn't allow the scissors to cut because of its shorter length.

In other types of bacteria, Cas9 also appears to be important for the ability to cause disease.

"These findings raise the possibility that turning genes on and off may be a broad function of Cas9 in diverse bacteria," says graduate student Hannah Ratner, the first author of the paper. "A question raised by this study is whether the ability of Cas9 to repress transcription can help explain the vast number of unidentified Cas9 targets."

In addition, the researchers were able to re-engineer Cas9 to repress a new target, a gene that makes the bacteria resistant to a last-line antibiotic, re-sensitizing the bacteria to antibiotic treatment.

"The programmability of the same protein for multiple different functions highlights and expands the incredible versatility of Cas9 for genome engineering applications," Ratner says.

Imagine slow-motion fireworks that started exploding 170 years ago and are still continuing. This type of firework is not launched into Earth's atmosphere, but rather into space by a doomed super-massive star, called Eta Carinae, the largest member of a double-star system. A new view from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which includes ultraviolet light, shows the star's hot, expanding gases glowing in red, white and blue. Eta Carinae resides 7,500 light-years away.

The celestial outburst takes the shape of a pair of ballooning lobes of dust and gas and other filaments that were blown out from the petulant star. The star may have initially weighed more than 150 Suns. For decades, astronomers have speculated about whether it is on the brink of total destruction.

The fireworks started in the 1840s when Eta Carinae went through a titanic outburst, called the Great Eruption, making it the second-brightest star visible in the sky for over a decade. Eta Carinae, in fact, was so bright that for a time it became an important navigational star for mariners in the southern seas.

The star has faded since that eruption and is now barely visible to the unaided eye. But the fireworks aren't over yet because Eta Carinae still survives. Astronomers have used almost every instrument on Hubble over the past 25 years to study the rambunctious star.

Using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to map the ultraviolet-light glow of magnesium embedded in warm gas (shown in blue), astronomers were surprised to discover the gas in places they had not seen it before.

Scientists have long known that the outer material thrown off in the 1840s eruption has been heated by shock waves after crashing into the doomed star's previously ejected material. In the new images, the team had expected to find light from magnesium coming from the same complicated array of filaments as seen in the glowing nitrogen (shown in red). Instead, a completely new luminous magnesium structure was found in the space between the dusty bipolar bubbles and the outer shock-heated nitrogen-rich filaments.

"We've discovered a large amount of warm gas that was ejected in the Great Eruption but hasn't yet collided with the other material surrounding Eta Carinae," explained Nathan Smith of Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, lead investigator of the Hubble program. "Most of the emission is located where we expected to find an empty cavity. This extra material is fast, and it 'ups the ante' in terms of the total energy for an already powerful stellar blast."

The newly revealed gas is important for understanding how the eruption began, because it represents the fast and energetic ejection of material that may have been expelled by the star shortly before the expulsion of the bipolar lobes. Astronomers need more observations to measure exactly how fast the material is moving and when it was ejected.

The streaks visible in the blue region outside the lower-left lobe are a striking feature in the image. These streaks are created when the star's light rays poke through the dust clumps scattered along the bubble's surface. Wherever the ultraviolet light strikes the dense dust, it leaves a long, thin shadow that extends beyond the lobe into the surrounding gas. "The pattern of light and shadow is reminiscent of sunbeams that we see in our atmosphere when sunlight streams past the edge of a cloud, though the physical mechanism creating Eta Carinae's light is different," noted team member Jon Morse of BoldlyGo Institute in New York.

This technique of searching in ultraviolet light for warm gas could be used to study other stars and gaseous nebulas, the researchers say.

"We had used Hubble for decades to study Eta Carinae in visible and infrared light, and we thought we had a pretty full accounting of its ejected debris. But this new ultraviolet-light image looks astonishingly different, revealing gas we did not see in other visible-light or infrared images," Smith said. "We're excited by the prospect that this type of ultraviolet magnesium emission may also expose previously hidden gas in other types of objects that eject material, such as protostars or other dying stars. Only Hubble can take these kinds of pictures."

Eta Carinae has had a violent history, prone to chaotic eruptions that blast parts of itself into space like an interstellar geyser. One explanation for the monster star's antics is that the convulsions were caused by a complex interplay of as many as three stars, all gravitationally bound in one system. In this scenario, the most massive member would have swallowed one of the stars, igniting the massive Great Eruption of the mid-1800s. Evidence for that event lies in the huge, expanding bipolar lobes of hot gas surrounding the system.

A fortuitous trick of nature also allowed astronomers in a previous Hubble study to analyze the Great Eruption in detail. Some of the light from the eruption took an indirect path to Earth and is just arriving now. The wayward light was heading away from our planet when it bounced off dust clouds lingering far from the turbulent stars and was rerouted to Earth, an effect called a "light echo."

The stellar behemoth will eventually reach its fireworks show finale when it explodes as a supernova. This may have already happened, although the geyser of light from such a brilliant blast hasn't yet reached Earth.

Researchers have identified a network of brain regions that work together to determine if a robot is a worthy social partner, according to a new study published in JNeurosci.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, Astrid Rosenthal-von der Pütten, Fabien Grabenhorst and colleagues evaluated brain activity from the prefrontal cortex and amygdala as human participants scored images of robots on their likability, familiarly, and human-likeness. The participants also chose the robot from which they would prefer to receive a gift, indicating their social value.

Participants preferred more lifelike robots, but disliked the ones that appeared "too human," including artificially altered humans. Activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex followed the same pattern, increasing with the more lifelike robots until dropping significantly in relation to the most lifelike choice. The scientists concluded that each of several brain regions had a unique role in assessing the images, and the combination of their inputs determined whether or not a robot was likeable.

This direct representation of a psychological pattern in the brain provides insight into how people respond to and assess artificial social partners. The findings may also apply to the evaluation of human social partners.

Stem cell stimulation shows promise as a potential noninvasive stroke treatment, according to research in mice published in JNeurosci. If extended to humans, this technique could greatly improve patients' quality of life.

Ling Wei, Shang Ping Yu, and colleagues at Emory University injected neural stem cells into the brains of mice after a stroke and activated the cells through nasal administration of a protein. The stem cells activated by this new, noninvasive technique called optochemogenetics grew healthier and formed more connections compared to the stem cells that did not receive stimulation. Additionally, the mice that received both stem cells and stimulation displayed the most recovery, with some behaviors returning to pre-stroke levels.

The combination of stem cell injection and stimulation increased the likelihood of a successful stroke recovery in mice. Instead of just injecting stem cells in the damaged area of the brain, following up with stimulation creates an ideal environment for the cells to develop and form connections with surrounding neurons.

Synapses in the hippocampus are larger and stronger after sleep deprivation, according to new research in mice published in JNeurosci. Overall, this study supports the idea that sleep may universally weaken synapses that are strengthened from learning, allowing for new learning to occur after waking.

Sleep is thought to recalibrate synaptic strength after a day of learning, allowing for new learning to take place the next day. Chiara Cirelli and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined how synapses in the hippocampus, a structure involved in learning, changed following sleep and sleep deprivation in mice.

Consistent with previous studies in the cortex, the researchers observed that synapses were larger, and therefore stronger, after the mice were awake for six to seven hours compared to after they were asleep for the same amount of time. Additionally, the researchers found that the synapses were strongest when the mice were forced to stay awake and interact with new stimuli, compared to mice that stayed awake on their own. This is consistent with the hippocampus' role in learning, and suggests that synaptic changes take place when learning occurs, not merely from being awake.