Culture

Eczema is a very common skin problem affecting around one in five children in the UK. Eczema usually starts in infancy, and a generally dry skin is often one of the first symptoms in babies who go on to develop the condition.

It is thought that a faulty skin barrier could be the first step in the development of eczema. Moisturisers improve skin barrier function by providing a covering to the outermost layer of skin and trapping in water.

Some healthcare workers recommend that parents regularly use moisturisers to prevent eczema in newborn babies. The aim of the BEEP study was to determine whether such advice had any impact on preventing the development of eczema.

The team looked at 1394 newborn babies who were born to families with eczema, asthma or hayfever. The babies were randomly split into two groups. One group was advised to apply moisturiser all over their baby every day until their first birthday. The other group was asked not to use moisturiser. Both groups were given general skin care guidance.

The study found no evidence that the daily use of moisturiser during the first year of life could prevent eczema in the studied children. There was however, a small increase in the risk of skin infections. The results also showed early indications that daily use of these creams may increase the risk of food allergy.

Professor Hywel Williams, a dermatologist at the University of Nottingham who led the study, said "Much progress has been made in recent years on the treatment of severe eczema, but the goal of preventing eczema from developing in the first place remains elusive. Other small studies suggested that moisturisers from birth might prevent eczema, and we were surprised when our large study showed no effect at all.

"Whilst this is disappointing for sufferers who thought that was an option for their children, we can now recommend that this advice is not given to parents and begin looking at what other possible preventative options there may be. It is important not to confuse our study on moisturisers for eczema prevention with the use of moisturisers for people who have eczema, where the evidence of benefit is much greater".

Analysis of Paleolithic-era teeth from a 28,500-year-old fossil site in the Czech Republic provides supporting evidence for two groups of canids - one dog-like and the other wolf-like - with differing diets, which is consistent with the early domestication of dogs.

The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, was co-directed by Peter Ungar, Distinguished Professor of anthropology at the University of Arkansas.

The researchers performed dental microwear texture analysis on a sample of fossils from the Předmostí site, which contains both wolf-like and dog-like canids. Canids are simply mammals of the dog family. The researchers identified distinctive microwear patterns for each canid morphotype. Compared to the wolf-like canids, the teeth of the early dog canids - called "protodogs" by the researchers - had larger wear scars, indicating a diet that included hard, brittle foods. The teeth of the wolf-like canids had smaller scars, suggesting they consumed more flesh, likely from mammoth, as shown by previous research.

This greater durophagy - animal eating behavior suggesting the consumption of hard objects - among the dog-like canids means they likely consumed bones and other less desirable food scraps within human settlement areas, Ungar said. It provides supporting evidence that there were two types of canids at the site, each with a distinct diet, which is consistent with other evidence of early-stage domestication.

"Our primary goal was to test whether these two morphotypes expressed notable differences in behavior, based on wear patterns," said Ungar. "Dental microwear is a behavioral signal that can appear generations before morphological changes are established in a population, and it shows great promise in using the archaeological record to distinguish protodogs from wolves."

Dog domestication is the earliest example of animal husbandry and the only type of domestication that occurred well before the earliest definitive evidence of agriculture. However, there is robust scientific debate about the timing and circumstances of the initial domestication of dogs, with estimates varying between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, well into the Ice Age, when people had a hunter-gatherer way of life. There is also debate about why wolves were first domesticated to become dogs. From an anthropological perspective, the timing of the domestication process is important for understanding early cognition, behavior and the ecology of early Homo sapiens.

East Hanover, NJ. February 19, 2020. A team of researchers reported preliminary findings for efficacy of the Spanish version of the modified Story Memory Technique, a cognitive intervention developed at Kessler Foundation (KF-mSMT™). Their study, conducted in Mexicans with multiple sclerosis, is an important step toward addressing the void in evidence-based rehabilitative interventions for treating the cognitive effects of multiple sclerosis across diverse cultural populations. The article, "Efficacy of the Spanish modified Story Memory Technique in Mexicans with multiple sclerosis: A pilot randomized controlled trial," (doi: 10.3233/NRE-192808) was epublished on November 28, 2019 by NeuroRehabilitation.

The authors are Denise Krch, PhD, Anthony Lequerica, PhD, and Nancy Chiaravalloti, PhD, of Kessler Foundation, Adriana Aguayo Arelis, MSc, and Brenda V. Rabago Barajas, MS, of Universidad Enrique D´?az de Leon and the Mexican MS Foundation, Guadalajara, Mexico, and Juan Carlos Arango-Lasprilla, MD, of Cruces University Hospital, Bizkaia, Spain, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain, and University of the Basque Country, Leoia, Spain.

While problems with learning and memory occur across populations with multiple sclerosis around the world, the availability of evidence-based cognitive interventions in different languages is limited. The lack of interventions in Spanish presents a barrier to the rehabilitation of many individuals in the Hispanic community who have cognitive deficits caused by multiple sclerosis. An international team of researchers has adapted the English language KF-mSMT into Spanish, for use in the cognitive rehabilitation of Mexicans with multiple sclerosis.

In this pilot study, 20 participants with multiple sclerosis, relapsing-remitting type, were randomized to either treatment (n?=?10) or placebo control (n?=?10) groups. The treatment group received the Spanish adaptation of the KF-mSMT, a 10-session intervention that teaches imagery and context to facilitate learning. The control group participated in 10 sessions based on similar content and presentation. All participants underwent baseline and follow-up neuropsychological assessments. Individuals in the treatment group showed significant improvements in learning and life satisfaction relative to the control group, suggesting that that this adaptation of the KF-mSMT may be an effective rehabilitative tool in Spanish-speaking populations with MS, according to Dr. Krch, senior research scientist in the Center for Traumatic Brain Injury Research.

"This is an example of how cultural adaptation can be an effective way to extend evidence-based interventions to non-English speaking populations," said Dr. Krch. "The positive outcomes seen in this pilot study of urban-based Mexicans have important implications," she noted. "While further testing is needed, we anticipate that this adaptation of the modified Story Memory Technique will be applicable to the diverse Spanish-speaking population in the U.S., in addition to those with Mexican heritage."

CLEVELAND, Ohio (February 19, 2020)--A healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables is known to benefit the human body in so many ways. Now a new study suggests that it may also play a role in lessening various menopause symptoms. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

Although hormone therapy has been proven to be an acceptable method for treatment of menopause-related symptoms for many women, the search for nonpharmacologic treatment options is ongoing, especially for women with certain risk factors and those who are not candidates for hormone therapy. Specifically, there has been a focus on identifying modifiable lifestyle factors that might prevent or alleviate menopause symptoms.

Previous studies have suggested that dietary factors may play a critical role in estrogen production, metabolism, and consequently, menopause symptoms. In particular, the consumption of fruits or a Mediterranean-style diet, characterized by a high content of vegetables, fruits, cereals, and nuts, was linked to fewer menopause symptoms and complaints. This new study goes a step further in looking at specific fruits and vegetables and their effects on various menopause symptoms.

Researchers concluded that, although some subgroups of fruits and vegetables had an inverse association with menopause symptoms, a higher intake of other subgroups appeared to be associated with more urogenital problems. Citrus fruits, for example, were called out as having an adverse effect on urogenital scores compared with other types of fruits, as were green leafy or dark yellow vegetables compared with other vegetables.

Study results appear in the article "Higher intakes of fruits and vegetables are related to fewer menopausal symptoms: a cross-sectional study."

"This small cross-sectional study provides some preliminary evidence regarding the influence of fruit and vegetable intake on menopause symptoms. There is ample evidence that a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables has a beneficial effect on health in a myriad of ways, but additional study is needed to determine whether various menopause symptoms may be affected by dietary choices," says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.

LA JOLLA--(February 18, 2020) People with bipolar disorder experience dramatic shifts in mood, oscillating between often debilitating periods of mania and depression. While a third of people with bipolar disorder can be successfully treated with the drug lithium, the majority of patients struggle to find treatment options that work.

Now, a sweeping new set of findings by Salk researchers reveals previously unknown details explaining why some neurons in bipolar patients swing between being overly or under excited. In two papers published in the journal Biological Psychiatry in February 2020 and October 2019, Salk researchers used experimental and computational techniques to describe how variations in potassium and sodium currents in the brain cells of people with bipolar disorder may help to further explain why some patients respond to lithium and others do not.

"This is exciting progress toward understanding the cellular mechanisms that cause bipolar disorder," says Salk Professor Rusty Gage, the study's senior author and president of the Institute. "It also brings us one step closer to being able to develop new therapeutics to treat the disorder."

In 2015, Gage and his colleagues discovered for the first time the initial differences between brain cells of patients who respond to lithium and those who don't. In both cases, neurons from the brain's dentate gyrus (DG) region were hyperexcitable--more easily stimulated--compared to DG neurons from people without bipolar disorder. But when exposed to lithium, only the cells from known lithium-responders were calmed by the drug.

In the new research, Gage's team--curious whether the results held true across different brain areas--conducted similar experiments but with more in-depth probes and using a different type of neuron than before. They grew the neurons--called CA3 pyramidal neurons--from six people with bipolar disorder, three of whom responded to lithium.

While in previous studies DG neurons from all bipolar patients were hyperexcitable, in the new study, only CA3 neurons from lithium responders were hyperexcitable all the time.

"The neurons were very different between responders and non-responders," says Salk research associate Shani Stern, first author of both papers. "It's almost as if it's two different diseases."

Studying the CA3 neurons from lithium responders more closely, the team found that these cells had higher than usual numbers of potassium channels as well as stronger potassium currents through these channels. The increased potassium currents, the scientists showed, were responsible for the hyperactivity of the CA3 neurons: when they exposed the cells to a potassium channel blocker, the hyperactivity disappeared. Intriguingly, when they exposed the cells to lithium, the drug not only reversed the hyperactivity but reduced potassium currents at the same time.

In addition, the team initially observed that the CA3 neurons from lithium non-responders, on average, had normal excitability. But when they looked more closely at individual cells over time, they found a different story.

"There were days I'd measure the cells and the whole group would be hyperexcitable, and other days they'd all be hypoexcitable," says Stern. "And then there were times when the cells would be split; some would be very hyperexcitable and others very hypoexcitable."

To better understand what was causing these fluctuations, the researchers designed a computational simulation of CA3 neuron activity. The computer simulation revealed that drastic reductions in sodium currents and an increase in the amplitude of potassium currents could lead to the same kind of neuronal instability in CA3 neurons--explaining both hyperexcitability and hypoexcitability. When the researchers then exposed CA3 neurons from non-responders to potassium channel blockers, their excitability became closer to control levels. The findings strengthened the case that potassium currents play a role in bipolar disorder--in both lithium responders and non-responders?and can help researchers understand how to better target drugs.

The team is planning additional studies on what happens to large networks of neurons when they alternate between hyperexcitable and hypoexcitable phases to understand if these shifts may be driving the manic and depressive moods seen in bipolar disorder.

Other researchers on the papers were Anindita Sarkar, Dekel Galor, Tchelet Stern, Arianna Mei, Yam Stern, Ana P. D. Mendes, Lynne Randolph-Moore, Renata Santos, Maria C. Marchetto, Gabriela Goldberg, Thao Nguyen and Yongsung Kim of Salk; Guy Rouleau of the McGill University; Anne Bang of Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute; and Martin Alda of Dalhousie University.

The work and researchers involved were supported by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the National Cooperative Reprogrammed Cell Research Groups, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the JPB Foundation, Annette C. Merle-Smith, the Robert and Mary Jane Engman Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health.

About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
Every cure has a starting point. The Salk Institute embodies Jonas Salk's mission to dare to make dreams into reality. Its internationally renowned and award-winning scientists explore the very foundations of life, seeking new understandings in neuroscience, genetics, immunology, plant biology and more. The Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark: small by choice, intimate by nature and fearless in the face of any challenge. Be it cancer or Alzheimer's, aging or diabetes, Salk is where cures begin. Learn more at: salk.edu.

Laval, February 19 2020--Fresh produce is a major vehicle for noroviruses, a group of viruses that are the most common cause of gastroenteritis in developed countries. However, the viruses are quite resistant to cold pasteurization treatments such as irradiation, which are used to destroy bacteria, moulds, parasites, and insects. The irradiation process uses gamma rays or X-rays to destroy these viruses but at the dose needed to eliminate them, it can affect the physicochemical properties of fresh produce.

Professor Monique Lacroix, a researcher at Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), has developed an edible coating based on cranberry juice and citrus extract that makes noroviruses more sensitive to gamma irradiation, making it possible to eliminate them while preserving the quality of food, all without risk to consumers.

A fruit extract spray

The idea is to spray fresh produce such as lettuce or strawberries and then treat it with cold pasteurization such as irradiation. The organic acids and polyphenol in cranberry juice and citrus extract would alter the viral protein and help inhibit its activity.

"Noroviruses usually require an irradiation dose of three kilograys (kGy), but we have shown that the treatment time is reduced by half with this fruit mixture spray, which acts as a natural antimicrobial. Using these natural antimicrobials prevents cell breakdown or brown discolouration," reports Monique Lacroix, lead author on the study whose results were published online on February 12 in the Journal of Applied Microbiology.

Professor Lacroix's team is the first to test the cranberry juice and citrus extract mixture in a combined treatment. "Both the juice and extract have the ability to remove noroviruses when used alone, but when combined with cold pasteurization in the same treatment, the fruit concentrations required are significantly lower," says the food science expert.

Norovirus Contamination

Norovirus contamination can occur before and after harvest. Contaminated water runoff from fields can bring in fecal matter. Food can be contaminated by infected people who handle it.

"Unlike bacteria, noroviruses do not multiply on food. They are deposited there and remain there until a human being is infected," says Alexandra Gobeil, first author of the study and a recent master's graduate in Applied Microbiology at INRS.

Monique Lacroix and her team have tested the coating on lettuce, one of the most fragile vegetables in terms of preservation. She hopes to eventually develop a partnership with the food industry to test combinations of treatments involving natural fruit extracts and cold pasteurization (e.g., UV-C, X-ray, gamma ray, or ozonation) on a commercial scale.

Merely a brief introduction to mindfulness helps people deal with physical pain and negative emotions, a new study by researchers at Yale, Columbia, and Dartmouth shows.

The effect of mindfulness was so pronounced, they found, that even when participants were subjected to high heat on their forearm, their brain responded as if it was experiencing normal temperature.

"It's as if the brain was responding to warm temperature, not very high heat," said Yale's Hedy Kober, associate professor of psychiatry and psychology and corresponding author of the paper, which appeared in the journal Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience.

Mindfulness -- the awareness and acceptance of a situation without judgment -- has been shown to have benefits in treating many conditions such as anxiety and depression. But Kober and colleagues wanted to know whether people with no formal training in meditation and mindfulness might benefit from a brief 20-minute introduction into mindfulness concepts.

Participants in the study were tested in two contexts while undergoing brain imaging scans -- one for assessing response to physical pain induced by applying high heat to the forearm and another for gauging their response when presented with negative images. In both contexts, researchers found significant differences in brain signaling pathways when participants were asked to employ mindfulness techniques compared to when they were asked to respond as they normally would.

Specifically, participants reported less pain and negative emotions when employing mindfulness techniques, and at the same time their brains showed significant reductions in activity associated with pain and negative emotions. These neurological changes did not occur in the prefrontal cortex, which regulates conscious or rational decision-making, and so were not the result of conscious willpower, the authors note.

"The ability to stay in the moment when experiencing pain or negative emotions suggests there may be clinical benefits to mindfulness practice in chronic conditions as well -- even without long meditation practice," Kober said.

Two particularly tenacious species of bacteria have colonized the potable water dispenser aboard the International Space Station (ISS), but a new study suggests that they are no more dangerous than closely related strains on Earth. Aubrie O'Rourke of the J. Craig Venter Institute and colleagues report these findings in a new paper published February 19, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Shortly after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) installed the water dispenser aboard the ISS in 2009, periodic sampling showed that two bacteria, Burkholderia cepacia and later on, Burkholderia contaminans were contaminating the drinking water. These microbes belong to a group of related Burkholderia species that cause opportunistic lung infections in people with underlying health conditions and are very difficult to kill using common sterilization techniques. The bacteria have persisted in the water dispenser despite periodic flushing with an extra-strength iodine cleaning solution.

To learn more about these bacteria, researchers sequenced the genomes of 24 strains collected from 2010 to 2014. All of the B. cepacia and B. contaminans strains were highly similar, and likely descended from original populations of these two bacteria that were present in the water dispenser when it left Earth.

The researchers conclude that the two bacterial species living within the dispenser are no more dangerous than similar strains that might be encountered on Earth. In the event of an infection, the bacteria can still be treated with common antibiotics.

The authors add: "Within each species, the 19 B. cepacia and 5 B. contaminans recovered from the ISS were highly similar on a whole genome scale, suggesting each population may have stemmed from two distinct founding strains. The differences that can be observed among the isolates of the same species are primarily located within putative plasmids. We find that the populations of Burkholderia present in the ISS PWS are likely are not more virulent than those that might be encountered on planet, as they maintain a baseline ability to lyse macrophage, but remain susceptible to clinically used antibiotics."

On April 13, 2029, an icy chunk of space rock, wider than the Eiffel Tower is tall, will streak by Earth at 30 kilometers per second, grazing the planet's sphere of geostationary satellites. It will be the closest approach by one of the largest asteroids crossing Earth's orbit in the next decade.

Observations of the asteroid, known as 99942 Apophis, for the Egyptian god of chaos, once suggested that its 2029 flyby would take it through a gravitational keyhole -- a location in Earth's gravity field that would tug the asteroid's trajectory such that on its next flyby, in the year 2036, it would likely make a devastating impact.

Thankfully, more recent observations have confirmed that the asteroid will sling by Earth without incident in both 2029 and 2036. Nevertheless, most scientists believe it is never too early to consider strategies for deflecting an asteroid if one were ever on a crash course with our home planet.

Now MIT researchers have devised a framework for deciding which type of mission would be most successful in deflecting an incoming asteroid. Their decision method takes into account an asteroid's mass and momentum, its proximity to a gravitational keyhole, and the amount of warning time that scientists have of an impending collision -- all of which have degrees of uncertainty, which the researchers also factor in to identify the most successful mission for a given asteroid.

The researchers applied their method to Apophis, and Bennu, another near-Earth asteroid which is the target of OSIRIS-REx, an operational NASA mission that plans to return a sample of Bennu's surface material to Earth in 2023. REXIS, an instrument designed and built by students at MIT, is also part of this mission and its task is to characterize the abundance of chemical elements at the surface.

In a paper appearing this month in the journal Acta Astronautica, the researchers use their decision map to lay out the type of mission that would likely have the most success in deflecting Apophis and Bennu, in various scenarios in which the asteroids may be headed toward a gravitational keyhole. They say the method could be used to design the optimal mission configuration and campaign to deflect a potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid.

"People have mostly considered strategies of last-minute deflection, when the asteroid has already passed through a keyhole and is heading toward a collision with Earth," says Sung Wook Paek, lead author of the study and a former graduate student in MIT's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "I'm interested in preventing keyhole passage well before Earth impact. It's like a preemptive strike, with less mess."

Paek's co-authors at MIT are Olivier de Weck, Jeffrey Hoffman, Richard Binzel, and David Miller.

Deflecting a planet-killer

In 2007, NASA concluded in a report submitted to the U.S. Congress that in the event that an asteroid were headed toward Earth, the most effective way to deflect it would be to launch a nuclear bomb into space. The force of its detonation would blast the asteroid away, though the planet would then have to contend with any nuclear fallout. The use of nuclear weapons to mitigate asteroid impacts remains a controversial issue in the planetary defense community.

The second best option was to send up a "kinetic impactor" -- a spacecraft, rocket, or other projectile that, if aimed at just the right direction, with adequate speed, should collide with the asteroid, transfer some fraction of its momentum, and veer it off course.

"The basic physics principle is sort of like playing billiards," Paek explains.

For any kinetic impactor to be successful, however, de Weck, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics and engineering systems, says the properties of the asteroid, such as its mass, momentum, trajectory, and surface composition must be known "as precisely as possible." That means that, in designing a deflection mission, scientists and mission managers need to take uncertainty into account.

"Does it matter if the probability of success of a mission is 99.9 percent or only 90 percent? When it comes to deflecting a potential planet-killer, you bet it does," de Weck says. "Therefore we have to be smarter when we design missions as a function of the level of uncertainty. No one has looked at the problem this way before."

Closing a keyhole

Paek and his colleagues developed a simulation code to identify the type of asteroid deflection mission that would have the best possibility of success, given an asteroid's set of uncertain properties.

The missions they considered include a basic kinetic impactor, in which a projectile is shot into space to nudge an asteroid off course. Other variations involved sending a scout to first measure the asteroid to hone the specs of a projectile that would be sent up later, or sending two scouts, one to measure the asteroid and the other to push the asteroid slightly off course before a larger projectile is subsequently launched to make the asteroid miss Earth with near certainty.

The researchers fed into the simulation specific variables such as the asteroid's mass, momentum, and trajectory, as well as the range of uncertainty in each of these variables. Most importantly, they factored in an asteroid's proximity to a gravitational keyhole, as well as the amount of time scientists have before an asteroid passes through the keyhole.

"A keyhole is like a door -- once it's open, the asteroid will impact Earth soon after, with high probability," Paek says.

The researchers tested their simulation on Apophis and Bennu, two of only a handful of asteroids for which the locations of their gravitational keyholes with respect to Earth are known. They simulated various distances between each asteroid and their respective keyhole, and also calculated for each distance a "safe harbor" region where an asteroid would have to be deflected so that it would avoid both an impact with Earth and passing through any other nearby keyhole.

They then evaluated which of the three main mission types would be most successful at deflecting the asteroid into a safe harbor, depending on the amount of time scientists have to prepare.

For instance, if Apophis will pass through a keyhole in five years or more, then there is enough time to send two scouts -- one to measure the asteroid's dimensions and the other to nudge it slightly off track as a test -- before sending a main impactor. If keyhole passage occurs within two to five years, there may be time to send one scout to measure the asteroid and tune the parameters of a larger projectile before sending the impactor up to divert the asteroid. If Apophis passes through its keyhole within one Earth year or less, Paek says it may be too late.

"Even a main impactor may not be able to reach the asteroid within this timeframe," Paek says.

Bennu is a similar case, although scientists know a bit more about its material composition, which means that it may not be necessary to send up investigatory scouts before launching a projectile.

With the team's new simulation tool, Peak plans to estimate the success of other deflection missions in the future.

"Instead of changing the size of a projectile, we may be able to change the number of launches and send up multiple smaller spacecraft to collide with an asteroid, one by one. Or we could launch projectiles from the moon or use defunct satellites as kinetic impactors," Paek says. "We've created a decision map which can help in prototyping a mission."

Perennial grasses can be converted into everything from ethanol to bioplastics, but it's unclear which bioproducts hold the greatest potential.

BioSTEAM, a new open-source simulation software package in Python developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, gives scientists, engineers, biotechnology companies, and funding agencies a fast, flexible tool to analyze the economics of producing different biofuels and bioproducts -- in a matter of seconds.

BioSTEAM -- Biorefinery Simulation and Techno-Economic Analysis Modules -- allows researchers to quickly compare and prioritize strategies for converting biomass to fuels and products. It also generates data that can be used to evaluate the environmental impact of biorefineries, including greenhouse gas emissions, paving the way for a sustainable bioeconomy.

The project by lead developer Yoel Cortes-Pena, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and his advisor, Associate Professor Jeremy Guest, was published in the latest issue of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. Both researchers are part of the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), a U.S. Department of Energy-funded Bioenergy Research Center.

"Understanding the economic and environmental implications of technology is particularly helpful early in the development pipeline, so we can prioritize research and development in directions that can be most impactful," Cortes-Pena said.

Techno-economic analysis (TEA) provides critical information on the economic viability, technological hurdles, and venture risk of producing biofuels and bioproducts. Typically, that requires specialized researchers who prepare detailed designs of biorefineries and run simulations -- a burdensome process that is time-consuming, expensive, and a barrier to early stage research, the researchers said.

"It can take months to do an analysis of a single design for a single idea, and after that the analytical tools are still only accessible to researchers who specialize in techno-economic analysis," Guest said.

Those evaluations typically neglect technological, environmental, and market-driven uncertainties, Cortes-Pena said. And many existing simulation tools are proprietary, so comparing models is difficult. BioSTEAM provides the building blocks to simulate a biorefinery, and its flexible framework allows for design, simulation, and TEA that incorporates uncertainties as a key feature.

The researchers used BioSTEAM to model the co-production of biodiesel and ethanol from lipid-cane (also known as oil cane), and the production of second-generation ethanol from corn stover.

The analysis factored in 94 parameters for the lipid-cane biorefinery simulation and 228 for corn stover -- everything from financial assumptions to the performance of each individual operation, such as the efficiency of a separation process or how well the microorganisms convert sugar to ethanol. It also embraced the uncertainty of those factors, providing a range of values and allowing for more flexible simulations.

Why is that important? Other models might estimate the cost of biofuel or bioproducts with a single number -- a dollars-per-gallon figure -- but in reality many assumptions feed into that number, and they aren't certain or transparent, Guest said. BioSTEAM provides a range of numbers to more accurately represent the likely cost. It also allows researchers to do rigorous sensitivity analyses -- for example, to determine which factors fuel costs are most sensitive to.

Case in point: The study demonstrated that a key driver of fuel costs is the size of the biorefinery, in particular how much corn stover it processes, Guest said. The larger the facility, the lower the per-gallon cost. That information can be linked to work by other researchers who study supply chains or what land is suitable to grow crops, to help site biorefineries. In the past, models generally assumed one size for a facility, without quantifying the implications of that assumption.

BioSTEAM's speed is transformative. It was able to evaluate 31,000 different biorefinery designs, across a continuum of feedstock compositions, in less than 50 minutes. The results matched benchmark models and, through sensitivity analysis, revealed key bottlenecks for research and development.

Using BioSTEAM, anyone can design a new biorefinery and simulate it in the software, Guest said.

"But it's also set up so that each time we write the code for a new biorefinery, that code can be made publicly available. Anyone working on those types of technologies can go in and easily change the scenario and explore the data for themselves," he said. Users could plug in different policies, financial incentives, tax structures, feedstocks, or technologies and immediately understand the implications of those changes.

The goal is to make TEA more available to researchers who have ideas about how to improve feedstocks, or how to develop new conversion technologies to produce new biofuels or bioproducts, and help them make rapid decisions about which to pursue, Guest said. That would include anyone in technology development -- researchers, companies, and investors working on emerging technology, or funding agencies that have to prioritize research and development.

"The intent here is to expedite innovation," he said, "... and more quickly get concepts to deployment to bring down the cost of biofuels so they are more financially viable and environmentally sustainable."

Eventually, he said, DOE would like all petroleum products -- from fuel to plastics -- to be made from sustainable alternatives. "The intent is to replace the entire barrel of oil with biologically derived products," he said.

BioSTEAM is available online through the Python Package Index, at Pypi.org. A life cycle assessment (LCA) add-on to BioSTEAM to quantify the environmental impacts of biorefineries -- developed by CABBI Postdoctoral Researcher Rui Shi and the Guest Research Group -- is also set to be released in March 2020. To further increase availability of these tools, Guest's team is also designing a website with a graphical user interface where researchers can plug new parameters for a biorefinery simulation into existing configurations, and download results within minutes.

BioSTEAM's creators drew on open-source software developed by other researchers, including a data bank with 20,000 chemicals and their thermodynamic properties.

"That's part of what makes this possible -- communities of researchers who are working to make these tools more available to everyone," Guest said.

In a heavily polluted environment, does it make more sense for a company to keep polluting or start cleaning up its act? If it chooses to employ cleaner technologies and the environment becomes healthier, does the same calculus apply?

These feedbacks between decision strategy and the environment come up in fields as diverse as fisheries, economics, and human social interactions. Game theorists have explored these so-called feedbacks using individual models to apply to particular scenarios. But in a new publication in Nature Communications, researchers from Penn's School of Arts and Sciences present a unifying model that explains these diverse interactions and underscores the similarity of their features.

"What we do in our paper is try to explicitly incorporate the way in which evolutionary game dynamics can be affected by the environment and can change the environment," says Andrew Tilman, first author on the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology. "So, you get this feedback between strategies that are used in the game and environmental change."

Tilman coauthored the work with advisers Erol Akçay and Joshua Plotkin, faculty members whose work specializes in theoretical and computational approaches to biological questions.

The findings shed light on the tight-knit forces that link changes in strategic action to environmental change, and vice versa.

"Take fish stocks that go up or down depending on the fishing strategies of a population, or soil nutrient levels that go up or down depending on whether there are nitrogen fixers or nonfixing plants present," says Akçay. "How much fish or nitrogen there is will then determine the payoffs from different strategies and favor one or the other strategy. This situation crops up everywhere and while there were disparate models here and there, what Andrew did really was to tie it all together in one. He showed that you can map these models onto a common model and then analyze that model and make predictions for a lot of different systems."

"Understanding how the balance of strategic types in a population impacts the environment, and how the environment then feeds back to alter strategic interactions, is a new challenge for ecologists and behavioral scientists," says Plotkin. "It's a fun theoretical problem, but it also has a host of implications in applied settings, where we increasingly recognize the tight intercalation of human behaviors and the changing environment."

The project arose from Tilman's doctoral work, which looked at the economic incentives people face when dealing with a common-pool resource, for example a fishery or healthy environment.

"I was doing it in an ad hoc way, putting together a model of environmental dynamics with an evolutionary game-theory model for each one," he says. "I was inspired to work on a way to unite many different problems that are all thinking about these strategic interactions linked with a changing environment."

The researchers found that a relatively simple linear model could map the dynamics of a variety of these types of strategy-environment feedbacks.

"We created some nonlinear models as well, and some nuances can arise, but the linear models give you intuition for why those new things can happen," says Akçay. "They're surprisingly powerful."

Their analysis worked for systems like a pollution example, where environmental impact--more pollution--fades as time passes. But the model also fit scenarios where the environmental product regenerated, as in a fisheries example.

The model enabled them to predict how strategies would change, whether they would cycle or achieve an equilibrium, based on the incentives faced by the actors when both the environmental conditions and the strategies in a population were at an extreme. Again turning to the pollution model: "You could imagine that one strategy would be to emit high levels of pollution, and another would be to emit low levels of pollution, and depending on the mix of strategies being used, it will impact the level of pollution that's present," Tilman says. "We can understand what will happen in the game based on how strong the incentives are to switch to a high-pollution strategy when the environment is in a low-pollution state as well as the incentives to switch to a high-polluting strategy when the environment is in a low-polluting state."

The approach sheds light on contemporary issues, such as regulating global emissions in the face of climate change.

"We see that if everything is clean, you want to kill any incentive to be a polluter. Otherwise the cycle could tip back toward polluting strategies," says Akçay.

Looking ahead, the researchers hope to incorporate forecasting into their model. In other words, if an actor can predict how the environment will change, will they alter their strategies earlier or later than they would otherwise?

"These evolutionary and game theoretic models tend to consider the actors to be myopic, switching their strategies based on their instantaneous incentives," says Tilman. "But to more realistically mimic the decision-making processes that people engage in, we want to start thinking about incorporating forecasting into the modeling framework."

SIOP, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, has just published a video examining how to update performance management practices for success now and in the future of work. Presented by SIOP Fellow Alan Colquitt, PhD, the webinar video"Big Ideas in Performance Management 2.0" provides actionable, evidence-based insights for I-O psychologists, business leaders, and HR practitioners seeking to create better outcomes for workers and organizations through practices that foster engagement and strong workplace performance.

Industrial-era performance management paradigms and practices are outdated and ineffective in the modern VUCA work environment. Alan Colquitt sets the context for scientifically grounded recommendations for change by surveying the current state of practice, and the ideas and forces that underpin it. After outlining several reasons to change these practices, he delivers strategic and tactical recommendations for pivoting to a performance management model that is both more effective and better suited to serve organizations and workers in the developing gig economy and the VUCA business environment.

Alan Colquitt is a talent management, organizational change and human capital analytics expert, with experience in several economic sectors. He is a frequent speaker and presenter at professional meetings and conferences on a wide variety of talent management and human capital analytics topics. Author of the book, Next Generation Performance Management: The Triumph of Science Over Myth and Superstition, Colquitt was named a SIOP Fellow in January, 2020.

Exposure in the womb to phthalates, a group of endocrine-disrupting chemicals present in cosmetics and other common household products, was associated with autistic traits in boys, ages 3 and 4, but not in girls, according to a new study led by a University of Massachusetts Amherst environmental epidemiologist.

Fewer of these autistic traits - which are characterized by social behavior, repetitive behaviors and restricted interests, but do not constitute an autism diagnosis - were found among boys whose mothers had taken the recommended dose of supplementary folic acid during their first trimester of pregnancy.

"This is one of the largest cohort studies about phthalates and neurodevelopment," says lead author Youssef Oulhote, assistant professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at UMass Amherst's School of Public Health and Health Sciences. "One of the most important findings is how adequate folic acid supplementation in pregnancy may offset the potential harmful effects of phthalates in regard to autistic traits."

Published Feb. 19 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the study is the first to find this particular protective effect of folic acid supplements from phthalates.
Oulhote adds that folic acid supplementation might also block the effects of other toxic chemicals, as already has been shown for pesticides and air pollutants.

While autism spectrum disorder "undoubtedly" has an underlying genetic basis, the study's findings strengthen the evidence that prenatal exposure to toxic chemicals contributes to the development of social impairment traits. Autism spectrum disorder affects about four times more males than females. The study examined only one point in the children's development.

"We do not know if these subtle effects associated with prenatal phthalate exposure will last after the preschool period," notes child development specialist and study co-author Gina Muckle, professor at Université Laval and Quebec-CHU Research Center in Quebec City, Canada.

Oulhote and colleagues in the U.S. and Canada analyzed data from the Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) prospective cohort study, which enrolled 2,001 women during their first trimester of pregnancy from 10 cities in Canada between 2008 and 2011. Oulhote first worked on the MIREC study as a post-doctoral researcher and is still conducting additional analyses on other chemicals. So far, researchers have produced more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals from examining MIREC's data sets.

For the current study, researchers measured 11 different phthalate metabolites in the pregnant women's urine samples taken during their first trimester and recorded the women's folic acid supplement intake. In follow-up investigation, 601 3- and 4-year-old children of the women underwent neuropsychological assessments, including the Social Responsiveness Scale-II (SRS-2) as a measure of autistic traits and social impairment. SRS-2 is a parent-reported questionnaire that has been found to be valid and reliable method to assess autistic traits in the general population and clinical settings. It correlates well with the assessment tools that physicians use to diagnose autistic spectrum disorder, although its validity in discriminating autism from other behavioral diagnoses deserves more attention, Oulhote says.

Increases in urinary concentrations of phthalate chemicals were associated with increases in SRS scores - but only among children whose mothers did not take an adequate folic acid supplement, 400 mcg daily, during their first trimester.

Oulhote notes that most of the women in the study were white, employed, married or living with a partner, and well-educated. "These are not the higher exposures for certain phthalates you will find in low-income communities," says Oulhote, explaining that cosmetics and other personal care products free of phthalates tend to be the most expensive and not affordable for low-income communities. Phthalates are also used in certain plastics, food packaging and medical devices.

Greater use of electric vehicles might be good for the environment, but further growth hinges on continued availability of critical battery components such as cobalt. Cell phones and other electronics also depend on the element's availability. Supplies of the metal are adequate in the short term, but shortages could develop down the road if refining and recycling aren't ramped up or made more efficient, according to research published in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology.

Roughly 60% of mined cobalt is sourced from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The element is often recovered as a byproduct from mining copper and nickel, meaning that demand and pricing for those other metals affects the availability of cobalt. Half of the current supply of cobalt is incorporated into cathodes for lithium-ion batteries, and many of those batteries are used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles. Demand for these vehicles and their batteries is growing swiftly: In 2018, the global electric car fleet numbered in excess of 5.1 million, up 2 million from the prior year, according to the International Energy Agency. Elsa Olivetti and coworkers wanted to find out if planned cobalt expansions could keep pace with this brisk growth.

To determine potential cobalt supply and demand through 2030, the researchers analyzed variables, including electric vehicle demand; cobalt mining, refining and recycling capacity; battery chemistry trends; socioeconomic and political trends; and the feasibility of substituting other materials for cobalt. These variables could be affected by political instability in DRC, policy decisions favoring electric vehicles, disruptions in China (which refines around half of the cobalt supply), and fluctuations in copper and nickel prices. The researchers concluded that cobalt supply is adequate in the short-term. They estimate supply will reach 320-460 thousand metric tons by 2030, while demand will reach 235-430 thousand metric tons. The team recommends that the industry invest in additional efficient refining and recycling capacity, so it can continue to meet demand.

The variety of finch species on the remote Galapagos Islands is the most prominent example for Charles Darwin's and Alfred R. Wallace's theory of evolution through natural selection. Galapagos finch species have developed distinct beak sizes and shapes and thereby have adapted to different food sources. This exemplifies how even closely related species can effectively make use of available resources, avoid competition and thus co-occur in the same habitat.

A bloom with great effect

This principle is not limited to macrofauna. It also applies in the realm of marine microbes, the scientists from Bremen now show. Satellite photos taken from coastal areas during warm seasons often show that the ocean is green rather than blue. This color originates from immense numbers of microscopic marine algae - so-called algal blooms. Such blooms are transient: At some point, all nutrients are depleted and predators like protists and viruses have taken their share. The ensuing mass mortality of the algae leads to the release of large quantities of organic matter into the seawater, including algal polysaccharides. These algal sugars are one of the main food sources for heterotrophic marine bacteria.

Tiny niches for tiny organisms

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, have investigated the bacterial response to spring algal blooms off the island of Heligoland in the German Bight (southern North Sea) for more than a decade. A close-knit microbial community is recurrently abundant during spring blooms in most years. One of the most prominent community members is Polaribacter, a genus of the Flavobacteriia class. From 2009 to 2012, the scientists investigated Polaribacter abundances during spring blooms and identified co-occurring closely related but distinct clades. "We found that these Polaribacter clades are pretty picky when it comes to sugar", reports Burak Avci from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology. "Or, scientifically spoken: They have rather distinct niches with respect to algal polysaccharides."

This is also reflected in the timing of the clade's occurrence. Different clades tended to show up at different bloom stages. "One clade of presumed first responders is characterized by small genomes with a pronounced protein but limited sugar degradation capacity. In contrast, another clade of presumed late responders has larger genomes and the capacity to utilize more complex polysaccharides", Avci continues. Another clade seems to be tied to presence of a specific algae (genus Chattonella). It is characterized by large genomes and has the most diverse sugar menu of all investigated Polaribacter clades.

Ecological significance

Like Galapagos finches, these results exemplify how also closely-related clades of marine bacteria (here Polaribacter) can forgo direct competition by partitioning available resources (here polysaccharides). "One of the fundamental questions in microbial ecology is which factors shape the composition of a given microbial community. Studies as this one advance our understanding of the principles that govern microbial community composition in such dynamic environments", Avci concludes. This might be especially relevant for bacteria degrading algal blooms, which are an essential part of the global carbon cycle and might become more abundant following increased anthropogenic nutrient input into the oceans and global warming.