Culture

For humans, trade is second nature and civilizations have flourished and fallen with the fate of their trade. In fact, the mutual scratching of backs is a cornerstone of many animal societies. On the other hand, deep and sustained mutualisms across species were long thought to be quirks of evolution, where radically different players managed to stick together and trade for mutual benefit. Famous examples include mitochondria (ex-bacterial cells), which are embedded in and power animal and plant cells. These ancient mutualisms are incredibly fascinating; for how could such delicate relationships survive the travails of time and evolution?

In the past two decades, new genetic tools to find and identify microbes have upended the notion of rare mutualisms. It turns out that most animals and plants house complex and structured microbial communities, providing them food, safety, and even passage to new hosts. What's more, the microbes pay rent! Some manufacture enzymes or vitamins for their hosts, while others take care of toxins and enemies. The currency is varied and rich, with hundreds of examples of fascinating mutualisms. Especially in insects, such associations are so common that they are proposed to have driven the incredible diversification of insects across the earth.

Against this backdrop of rampant mutualism, recent work from Deepa Agashe's group at NCBS presents a jarring contrast. Her team found that unlike other insects, neither butterflies nor dragonflies seem to have evolved strong mutualisms with their bacterial guests. Instead, bacteria seem to be transient acquaintances, sampled randomly from species encountered in the diet or environment.

The case of dragonflies is interesting, because they are thought to be generalist predators of aquatic ecosystems. Their protein-rich diet could perhaps be more easily digested with the help of bacterial enzymes. Postdoctoral fellow Rittik Deb and project assistant Ashwin Nair dissected the guts of many dragonflies, and used genetic tools to identify the bacterial residents and insect prey. Strong host-bacterial mutualism should lead to consistent and similar bacterial communities across individual hosts. Instead, the team found that dragonflies with more diverse diets also housed varied bacterial communities. The work also provided some of the first evidence that dragonflies are not generalist predators. Different dragonfly species - even those living by the same pond on the NCBS campus - specialize on different insect prey, acquiring different bacteria in the process.

Most butterfly caterpillars also only eat specific plants. PhD student Kruttika Phalnikar thus expected that different butterflies should have tailored mutualisms with different bacteria. But as they mature into adults, leaf-eating caterpillars transition to sipping nectar, which should entail a dramatic shift in the bacterial community. Collaborating with butterfly expert Krushnamegh Kunte, Phalnikar analysed bacterial communities from several wild-caught butterflies. Surprisingly, she found similar bacteria on plant leaves; in caterpillars that ate the leaves; and in mature adult butterflies. Caterpillars of different species also housed more similar bacteria than expected. Parallel results from an independent study in the neotropics indicated that butterflies may generally lack a stable microbiome.

Could we go a step further with this idea? Unlike dragonflies, butterflies can be reared in a greenhouse, and the team could directly test whether losing bacterial communities was costly. Using antibiotics, Phalnikar killed bacteria found in the caterpillars of two butterfly species. Indeed, the caterpillars developed just as well as control (unmanipulated) larvae. Even when she added fecal microbes back into the diet, caterpillar growth and survival was unaffected. Thus, butterflies do not seem to rely on bacteria to digest toxins in their food plants, or to acquire essential nutrients.

Together, these studies suggest a remarkable independence from bacterial mutualists in two very different insect groups. On the one hand this is puzzling, because establishing alliances is a very powerful (and oft-used) way to get ahead in life. The spectacular diversification of butterflies (India alone has ~1400 species) is also associated with the ability to eat a wide range of plants; many of which are toxic, difficult to digest, or offer poor nutrition. It seems incredible that butterflies managed to colonize all these niches on their own. On the other hand, it is not easy to find good partners, and even harder to maintain long-term relationships. Co-dependence is fraught with danger: partners may drift apart, go extinct, or turn on each other. We thus circle back to the idea that mutualisms should be rare.

These results open up new and exciting questions. How do butterflies and dragonflies manage without bacterial help? How did other insects successfully negotiate the pitfalls of co-dependence? More generally, can we predict when symbiosis will succeed? The wide spectrum of insect-bacterial mutualisms offers a unique opportunity to understand how trade partnerships establish, evolve, and dissolve over time.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Feb. 17, 2020) -- New University of Kentucky research shows that the immune system may target other remote areas of the brain to improve recovery after a stroke.

The study in mice, published in PNAS by researchers from UK's College of Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and University of Pennsylvania reveals that after a stroke, B cells migrate to remote regions of the brain that are known to generate new neuronal cells as well as regulate cognitive and motor functions.

B cells are a type of white blood cell that makes antibodies. Less known and studied, however, is that B cells can produce neurotrophins that regulate the development and growth of neurons in the brain.

An ischemic stroke is the most common type of stroke that happens when an artery in the brain becomes clogged, typically by a blood clot. After ischemic stroke, it is well-known that B cells travel to the site of the stroke as part of the immune response. But this new study shows that B cells may also move into multiple areas of the brain - both injured and uninjured.

"This is rather unique because it broadens our idea that we need to look at other areas of the brain when studying stroke," says Ann Stowe, UK associate professor in the Department of Neurology and senior author of the study. "These areas are really critical for functional recovery so they could potentially be targets for drug development or therapies."

Researchers studied the post-stroke recovery of mice and through whole-brain imaging saw that B cells not only migrated to the infarction, or site of the stroke, but to other areas supporting motor and cognitive recovery. Mice with depleted B cells experienced reduced recovery in these areas, confirming these findings.

The results could lead to new therapeutic avenues for stroke patients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that stroke is a leading cause of adult disability and the fifth leading cause of death in the U.S. Currently, there are only two FDA-approved treatments for acute stroke and no effective therapeutics to promote long-term repair in the brain after stroke damage.

"This study suggests that B cells might have a more neurotrophic role," Stowe says. "Hopefully from this, we can better understand the inflammatory processes after stroke - and long term, possibly identify what subsets of immune cells can support stroke recovery."

Researchers from the University of Sydney have conducted the first global review of herbal medicines for weight loss in 19 years, finding insufficient evidence to recommend any current treatments.

Senior author Dr Nick Fuller said with overweight and obesity rates reaching epidemic proportions worldwide, many people are turning to herbal supplements as an alternative approach to maintain or lose weight.

"The problem with supplements is that unlike pharmaceutical drugs, clinical evidence is not required before they are made available to the public in supermarkets or chemists," said Dr Fuller from the University of Sydney's Boden Collaboration for Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise and Eating Disorders based at its Charles Perkins Centre.

The systematic review and meta-analysis, published in Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism, analysed the latest international research in this area finding 54 randomised controlled trials comparing the effect of herbal medicines to placebo for weight loss in over 4000 participants.

Results of the review and metanalysis

The research team found that despite some of the herbal medicines showing statistically greater weight loss than placebo, weight loss was less than 2.5kg and therefore not of clinical significance.

"This finding suggests there is insufficient evidence to recommend any of these herbal medicines for the treatment of weight loss. Furthermore, many studies had poor research methods or reporting and even though most supplements appear safe for short-term consumption, they are expensive and are not going to provide a weight loss that is clinically meaningful," said Dr Fuller.

About herbal medicines for weight loss

The most recent data on the use of weight loss supplements, from a US study, showed that among people trying to lose weight 16 percent (12 percent of men and 19 percent of women) reported past-year use.

Herbal medicines, or 'herbal supplements' as they are commonly known, are products containing a plant or combinations of plants as the active ingredient. They come in various forms including pills, powders or liquids.

Common herbal supplements used for weight loss include green tea, garcinia cambogia, white kidney bean and African mango.

The authors write that between 1996 and 2006, 1000 dietary supplements for weight loss were listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods without evaluation of efficacy.

These substances can be sold and marketed to the public with sponsors (those who import, export or manufacture goods) only required to hold, but not necessarily produce, evidence substantiating their claims. The authors note that only 20 percent of new listings are audited annually to ensure they meet this requirement.

In some countries, the only requirement is that the supplement contains acceptable levels of non?medicinal substances.

"The growth in the industry and popularity of these products highlights the importance of conducting more robust studies on the effectiveness and safety of these supplements for weight loss," said Dr Fuller.

The review excluded studies where the herbal medicine did not include the whole plant, was comprised of plant oils or combined with other dietary supplements such as fibres and proteins. This analysis will be reported in a future paper.

Research by Cass Business School academics has presented a methodology for identifying how winter tourism operators can protect themselves against the risk of decreasing visitor numbers to ski destinations and lost revenues.

Due to the effects of climate change, ski tourism in the Alps is becoming endangered by decreasing levels of snow caused by rising winter temperatures.

Focusing on the use of weather derivatives as a means of revenue protection, the study uses a series of models to design useful weather derivatives payoff - where operators 'sell' risk to financial markets for a premium - by predicting visitor numbers and revenues in a given month. The methodology is based on more than 50 years' worth of snowfall and temperature data recorded at a resort in Austria.

Highlight findings from the report include:

Visitor numbers to resorts vary considerably within the ski season itself, depending on snow depth and temperature.

As snow depth decreases, companies become more heavily reliant on the traditionally busier days - such as Christmas Day and other public holidays, school holidays and weekends - to provide the necessary sustainable footfall.

Greater depths of snow on the first day of a ski season reduce the dependence of these popular days for visitors to provide revenues - showing that snowfall and temperature consistency is important out of season as well as in it.

Due to the variation of visitor numbers, financial markets and winter tourism operators should base weather derivative contracts on historical average monthly revenues - fluctuating strike prices every month to form different contracts for each.

On the other hand, a single contract based on cumulative snow fall at the season end is highly risky for all parties and attracts the highest profit and loss variance out of all options that were tested.

Figures from the study included 20,774 historic daily weather observations of Sonnblick, Austria, from the European Climate Assessment (ECA), with the assumption that a ski season runs annually from 1st December through to 15th April.

A '100-day' rule is used as a critical threshold for visitor numbers, with the study considering 30cm of snow for at least 100 days during the winter season as a minimum requirement for testing reliability of ski operations.

Co-author Dr Laura Ballotta, Reader in Financial Mathematics at Cass Business School, said the report's findings should encourage ski tourism companies to purchase weather derivatives and think more strategically about the risk involved:

"Treatment of premises through artificial 'snowmaking' and landscaping is costly and could release potentially harmful additives into the environment. Diversifying activities beyond traditional ski and snow sports activities can also have expensive investment costs, so we believe that accessing financial markets for weather derivatives and sharing risk is the most viable option.

"Winter tourism is vital to Alpine regions, not just in terms of snow sport facilities but also accommodation, catering, entertainment and retail opportunities that come with it. Higher temperatures are reducing snow levels each year, which could have major ramifications on tourism to an area that depends so heavily on the revenues it generates.

"By using our methodology based on more than 50 years' worth of snowfall and temperature data, companies can optimise weather derivative contracts to protect themselves from financial ruin if snow levels are insufficient."

The first detailed cell atlas of the immune cells and gut bacteria within the human colon has been created by researchers. The study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute and collaborators revealed different immune niches, showing changes in the bacterial microbiome and immune cells throughout the colon. As part of the Human Cell Atlas initiative to map every human cell type, these results will enable new studies into diseases which affect specific regions of the colon, such as ulcerative colitis and colorectal cancer.

Published today (17 February) in Nature Immunology, this study revealed the interaction between the microbiome and our immune cells. These results form an important resource, which will help scientists to understand how these microbial cells are tolerated by the immune system in health.

The gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem composed of millions of microbes, and these bacteria are thought to play important roles in digestion, in regulating the immune system and in protecting against disease. They are essential to human health, and imbalances in our gut microbiome can contribute to autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases and asthma.

The gut also has a rich community of immune cells, which help to repair tissues and defend against infection. However, there is little detailed information on how the microbiome interacts with the gut resident immune cells, which immune cells co-exist with bacteria in different locations, and why different diseases affect distinct areas of the gut.

To shed light on this, researchers studied three different parts of the healthy colon from organ donors*, simultaneously analysing the immune cells and the bacterial microbiome from each area. By sequencing the active genes of 41,000 individual immune cells, they were able to identify cell type specific genes that were switched on in different immune cell populations in each location. They also identified the bacteria present in the same colon region, to reveal how the immune system and bacteria interact.

Dr Kylie James, a first author on the study from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "The gut microbiome plays a major role in health and disease, and understanding how this interacts with the immune system is vital. Our unique approach allowed us to create the first in-depth map of immune cells and their neighbouring bacteria in the healthy human colon, and revealed that surprisingly, there are distinct immune niches across the colon, with different cell activation states in different areas."

The study revealed that not only were there differences between the immune cells in different parts of the colon, but that the microbiome also subtly changed, with a broader range of bacteria further down the colon.

Dr Trevor Lawley, an author on the paper from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "We are made up of as many bacteria as human cells and there is a symbiotic relationship between humans and their microbiome. We know this is linked to many aspects of health, with imbalances in gut bacteria associated with immune diseases ranging from Inflammatory Bowel Disease to asthma. By revealing the diversity of the microbiome in specific locations in the colon, and the interactions with immune cells, we can start to understand the biology behind this, and inform future research on site-specific gut bacteria."

Previous work on mice had shown that immune cells in lymph nodes could be targeted to particular destinations - like an immune satnav. For the first time, this study showed that regulatory immune cells, which dampen down an immune response, moved from lymph nodes to the colon. This could be one way the intestine tolerates or even welcomes the microbiome.

Dr Sarah Teichmann, the senior author on the paper from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and co-chair of the Human Cell Atlas Organising Committee, said: "This study is part of the global Human Cell Atlas initiative to map every cell type in the human body. It gives a new understanding of the relationship between immune cells and the microbiome in healthy colon tissue and by allowing us to hone in on cells in particular areas, it will be a critical reference for ongoing work into diseases that affect specific regions of the colon."

Potato virus Y is the most economically important and devastating aphid-transmitted virus, affecting both tuber yield and quality. The virus is also a major cause of seed potato degeneration, which leads to regular flushing out of seed potatoes after limited field production cycles. There is no remedy for this virus and once a plant becomes infected, it stays sick for life.

Current control methods focus on preventing the virus from infecting potato crops and current research focuses on enhancing preventative measures. In order to increase the efficiency of management of potato virus Y, University of Idaho scientists conducted research to determine when potato plants are most susceptible to infection.

In this study, the scientists matched a North American potato cultivar, Yukon Gold, and a North American isolate of potato virus Y. They discovered that potato plants are most susceptible to infection during the first three weeks of the growing season--these infected plants produced fewer tubers of smaller size and experienced a 70 percent yield reduction compared to plants inoculated during weeks five through eight. These plants did not suffer any yield or quality issues.

This research shows that potatoes develop an age-related resistance that prevents infection and suggests that management programs should focus on the early stages of potato development. These scientists are now conducting follow-up research on other potato cultivars and potato virus Y strains and research that will identify ways for potato growers to protect their crops during the most vulnerable period.

"As plant virologists in a land-grant university, we are interested in applied research that directly benefits the potato industry. This research project is in array with our view and mission," said first author Mohamad Chikh-Ali. "The most surprising results was the dramatic increase in potato resistance to virus infection as potato plants aged. We are very interested in this mechanism due to the great potential on the control of plant virus diseases."

For more information about this study, read "Effects of the Age-Related Resistance to Potato virus Y in Potato on the Systemic Spread of the Virus, Incidence of the Potato Tuber Necrotic Ringspot Disease, Tuber Yield, and Translocation Rates Into Progeny Tubers" published in the January issue of Plant Disease.

When emerging plant pathogens go undetected, they have the potential to negatively affect food industries, conservation efforts, and even human health. And, just like emerging human pathogens, such as the 2019 novel Coronavirus, emerging plant pathogens need to be diagnosed as soon as possible to prevent them from spreading.

Genetic sequencing technologies are powerful tools that are used for the early detection and precise identification of pathogens; they have shown great improvement over the past 20 years. Using these novel technologies, scientists can identify pathogens down to their distinct DNA sequences, without the time- and labor-intensive need to grow pathogens in the lab.

Scientists at Virginia Tech are taking advantage of this technological revolution by developing a way to apply these technologies to identifying diseases in crops.

"We truly try to take advantage of the DNA sequencing revolution. However, it's not enough to just sequence DNA. What we focus on in the lab is to combine the power of DNA sequencing with the power of new computer algorithms to interpret the DNA sequences to precisely and quickly identify these pathogens," said Boris Vinatzer, professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and an affiliated faculty member of the Fralin Life Sciences Institute.

Vinatzer recently published his findings in the journal Phytopathology, along with his graduate students and collaborators Song Li, an assistant professor in the School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, and Lenwood Heath, a professor of the Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering.

For this study, Vinatzer's team wanted to determine if an Oxford Nanopore Sequencing MinION device and a combination of different bioinformatic programs and sequence databases would be successful in identifying bacterial pathogens down to the exact outbreak strain.

When tested on tomato plants grown on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the MinION device recognized Xanthomonas perforans, a proteobacteria responsible for bacterial leaf spot in tomato plants, as the pathogen in question.

What was even more impressive is the fact that the team was able to make their identifications down to the strain level. Strain identification poses a serious challenge to scientists because strains can be difficult to distinguish from one another. Without the proper technology and databases, new strains could be misidentified and the diseases they cause go untreated.

"If you want to know if it's a new strain that is causing a disease outbreak, you need to fine-tune your method. We have successfully done that. In fact, we didn't just find out that the pathogen that causes the disease in Virginia tomatoes belongs to the species X. perforans, we also identified which group of strains within the species it belongs to. Luckily, in this case, we found that the pathogen belongs to a group of strains that is common in Florida that has been circulating in the U.S. for years. Therefore, eradication will not be necessary," said Vinatzer.

In the past, scientists would have to run a separate test for every possible pathogen that could be in a sample. With new sequencing technologies, just one test can be used to identify anything and everything that is in a plant sample - including bacteria, fungi, and viruses.

After the DNA sequences are obtained, scientists must then feed sequence data into a database to compare them with reference sequences, which will tell them exactly what pathogen they are facing. Since databases can be accessed worldwide, local scientists can easily identify emerging pathogens by using data from where the pathogen has already been established.

However, at the time of the study, a comprehensive database that could precisely identify plant pathogens did not exist. Therefore, Vinatzer and Heath decided to take matters into their own hands and create their own database, LINbase. This database is unique in its use of Life Identification Numbers (LINs), which are like GPS coordinates. Each bacterial isolate has a number that scientists can reference and then use to classify and identify bacterial genome sequences to the strain level.

The lab's ultimate goal is to improve and then transfer their new sequencing technology and computer algorithms to the Plant Disease Clinic at Virginia Tech, which provides plant disease diagnostic services to farmers, nurseries, and homeowners as part of Virginia Cooperative Extension. Eventually, the lab hopes to extend its reach to other plant disease clinics from around the world.

The technology could eventually be deployed in the field, along with automated sampling devices from the SmartFarm Innovation Network, an initiative of Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, to develop and deploy innovative technologies in food, agricultural, and natural resources production systems in Virginia.

"The Oxford Nanopore Sequencing MinION device is one of those technologies that will really have an impact and I think it will save growers a lot of money. By being fast and more precise in identifying diseases, growers can intervene early and manage diseases effectively, thus reducing losses in crop yield and quality," said Vinatzer.

With the success of their recent study, the lab's next steps involve further reducing the amount of time that it takes for pathogen identification. The goal is to decrease the time that it takes from receiving a plant sample to identifying the pathogen strain from days to hours.

HOUSTON - (Feb. 17, 2020) - Lugging a heavy backpack to school probably seems like a burden to most public school students, but it might explain a health advantage over home-schooled children: A heartier core.

A study by Rice University kinesiologists compares specific health metrics between two sets of students age 12 to 17 who have been a focus of the group over the past couple of years.

While previous work showed home-schoolers should expect no added risk to their general health over time, the new study, also led by Rice lecturer Laura Kabiri, draws a few disparities from a dataset she gathered at Texas Woman's University.

It specifically notes home-schooled adolescents had significantly lower abdominal strength and endurance than public school students required to take part in physical education programs. This was despite no significant difference between the two groups in measurements of body mass index.

The new study appears in the American Journal of Health Education. The second author is a Rice undergraduate student, Kendall Brice.

Public school students in the study proved significantly better at performing curl-ups, a metric that measures abdominal strength and endurance. The researchers wrote that could be explained by their daily use of backpacks weighing up to 25% of their body weight, sufficient to engage core-stabilizing muscles.

"This is actually a hot topic in pediatric health and wellness and I don't want anyone to think we are encouraging students to carry heavy loads in their backpacks," Kabiri said. "We all know that carrying heavy backpacks can lead to musculoskeletal problems. In fact, the American Chiropractic Association recommends a backpack weigh no more than 5-10% of a student's body weight.

"However, we are hypothesizing that heavy backpack use among public schoolers could be one explanation for the difference in core strength seen in our study," she said. "Improper instruction and form for abdominal exercises among home-schoolers is another. We really don't know the root cause but do see a difference. This is why we as health and wellness professionals need to do a better job reaching out to the home-school community."

The metrics were drawn from 132 participants evenly split between home and public school students. The home-schoolers took standardized fitness tests to measure body mass index, the ability to run for endurance and the capacity to perform curl-ups and push-ups. These results were matched to public school student data collected as required by states.

Push-up numbers revealed another interesting disparity. Public school students were on average able to meet requirements, but home-schooled students narrowly missed them.

"There was no significant difference in the mean for the push-up test, but it was significant for their health classification," said Brice, who will graduate from Rice this May.

For instance, she gave an example in which 17-year-old boys in public schools might be required to do 20 push-ups and averaged 20.4, while home-schoolers did only 19. "There's no significant difference there, but what we see is that more home-school kids dropped out of the healthy category," which mirrors the actual results of the study, Brice said.

"How does that happen? From my experience, our coaches and PE teachers often told us, 'You have to do 20,'" she recalled. "Or we'd ask how many we have to do. So the mean is similar, but public school kids knew the boundary, so they were able to push just past it."

Kabiri said home-school adolescents' fitness deficits could impact their health in the near term and in the future. The solution is to provide better advice for those students and their parents.

"The main conclusion is that we need to do a better job as health professionals in reaching out to this community," Kabiri said. "They're very well intended, and very willing to learn about technique and proper forms for doing these exercises."

ITHACA, N.Y. - Patients' ratings of hospitals and willingness to recommend them have almost no correlation to the quality of medical care provided or to patient survival rates, according to new Cornell University research.

Would you choose a hospital based on its Yelp reviews? Relying on hospitals' patient satisfaction scores as a guide amounts to much the same thing, according to the new study.

The scores - collected in surveys by hospitals and a top priority in the era of consumer-driven health care - overwhelmingly reflect patients' satisfaction with hotel-like amenities and hospitality services such as quiet rooms, better food and friendly nurses, said Cristobal Young, associate professor of sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University.

"The No. 1 thing that ultimately matters to patients - are you going to survive your operation? Can they fix you? - does not really factor into patient satisfaction scores," said Young. "There's very little awareness that these are essentially Yelp reviews."

Young is the lead author of "Patients as Consumers in the Market for Medicine: The Halo Effect of Hospitality," co-written with Xinxiang Chen of Minzu University in China and published in the journal Social Forces.

Young and Chen analyzed Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services data on patient satisfaction, mortality and technical medical quality for roughly two-thirds of U.S. general and acute-care hospitals - more than 3,000 hospitals - between 2007 and 2010.

They found patient satisfaction was higher at hospitals with the lowest death rates - but barely. Scores were only 2 percentage points lower at hospitals with the highest death rates.

"Patients do not have much awareness of their hospital's patient safety standards," the researchers wrote.

In contrast, interpersonal communication by nurses - such as their responsiveness and compassion (not their technical skill) - was a far bigger factor in patient satisfaction, with scores varying by nearly 27 percentage points.

The tidiness and quietness of rooms also had much bigger impacts on satisfaction than death rates or medical quality.

The fundamental problem, Young said, is one of visibility. Patients generally can only see and understand a hospital's "front stage" room-and-board presentation.

"They know when the food is cold and tasteless, when their room is loud and overcrowded, when the nurses are too busy to tend to their pains and frustrations," the researchers wrote.

They have little insight, however, into the "backstage" operations where critical medical care happens - sometimes while patients are heavily medicated or completely sedated. As a result, the study concludes, front stage room-and-board care creates a "halo effect" of patient goodwill, but the backstage delivery of medical excellence does not.

At the same time, research has shown, many hospitals, particularly in competitive markets, have invested heavily in hotel-like amenities: Grand atriums with waterfalls; private rooms with patios and scenic views; "healing gardens"; artwork; music; gourmet food; Wi-Fi; and premium TV channels.

Those investments, Young said, represent a distraction and a shifting of resources away from hospitals' core mission: excellent medical care.

"No one would object to nurses being friendly or to patients having private rooms and great food and manicured gardens," Young said. "But none of those things are medical treatment. They won't fix your health problem. And hospitals have limited resources and razor-thin margins."

Hospitals' growing emphasis on patient satisfaction is unexpected, Young said, in a U.S. health care system that is roughly twice as expensive as other high-income countries but has worse outcomes - lower life expectancy and higher rates of illness, according to the study.

"If I'm a patient, I know that three days in the hospital will be rough," he said. "Just make it worthwhile - give me the best medical treatment and the highest survival rate."

A fireball in the sky, accompanied by a bang, amazed hundreds of eyewitnesses in northern Germany in mid-September last year. The reason for the spectacle was a meteoroid entering the Earth's atmosphere and partially burning up. One day after the observations, a citizen in Flensburg found a stone weighing 24.5 grams and having a fresh black fusion crust on the lawn of his garden.

Dieter Heinlein, coordinator of the German part of the European Fireball Network at the German Aerospace Center in Augsburg, directly recognized the stone as a meteorite and delivered the rock to experts at the "Institut für Planetologie" at Münster University (Germany). Prof. Addi Bischoff and PhD student Markus Patzek have been studying the stone mineralogically and chemically ever since. About 15 university and research institutes in Germany, France, and Switzerland now take part in the science consortium.

The first research results show that the meteorite "Flensburg", named after the location of the fall, belongs to an extremely rare type of carbonaceous chondrites. Scanning electron microscopic analyses prove that it contains minerals, especially sheet silicates and carbonates that formed in the presence of water on small planetesimals in the early history of our solar system. Thus, these types of early parent bodies can be regarded as possible building blocks of the Earth that delivered water.

"The meteorite of Flensburg belongs to an extremely rare meteorite class and is the only meteorite fall of this class in Germany proving that 4.56 billion years ago there must have been small bodies in the early solar system storing liquid water. Perhaps such bodies also delivered water to the Earth," Addi Bischoff said.

Meteorites provide information on the development of the Earth

The new German meteorite "Flensburg" fully fits into the research program of the Collaborative Research Centre „TRR170 - Late Accretion onto Terrestrial Planets", a science cooperation between institutions in Münster and Berlin. The major aim of the Collaborative Research Centre TRR170 is to understand the late growth history of the terrestrial planets. This leads to the question about the possible building blocks of the Earth. In order to find answers to this question, the researchers investigate various aspects including meteorites - most of them are fragments of asteroids and can be regarded as the oldest rocks of our solar system. Thus, studying them allows scientists to gain insight into the formation processes of the first solids and accretion and evolution of small bodies and planets in our solar system.

First details on the Flensburg meteorite have just been published in the "Meteoritical Bulletin Database" of the "Meteoritical Society".

In addition to helping us chew and swallow, keeping the mouth moist and protecting us against germs, saliva can also be used for early detection of the risk of developing diseases associated with surplus body fat.

Researchers at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) and the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil performed a study in which they used the level of uric acid in saliva to predict body fat percentages in teenagers and identify those with surplus fat even if they had no symptoms of chronic obesity-related disease.

The study was supported by FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation). The results are published in the journal Nutrition Research.

The goal of the study was to identify reliable biomarkers in saliva that correlated with those found in the blood as a contribution to the development of quick tests to monitor health, especially in children.

"The idea is to enable saliva to be more widely used as an alternative biological sample for clinical analysis. The advantage of saliva is that it can be collected several times noninvasively and painlessly, like urine," Paula Midori Castelo, a professor at UNIFESP in Diadema and principal investigator for the project, told Agência FAPESP.

According to Castelo, the study showed the level of salivary uric acid to be a good predictor of body fat percentage even in adolescents considered healthy, although the link between these two factors is poorly understood and will have to be investigated further.

Uric acid is the end-product of the metabolic breakdown of purines, which are nitrogenous bases in DNA and RNA. It accumulates in the blood and, in much smaller proportions, in the saliva. Although uric acid acts as an antioxidant, when levels become too high in the blood and saliva owing to dysregulated purine degradation, it can lead to a predisposition to develop hypertension, inflammation and cardiovascular disease.

Methods

The researchers collected saliva samples from 129 girls and 119 boys. In addition to uric acid, they measured the levels of several other substances, including cholesterol and vitamin D.

The subjects were aged 14-17 and were students at public schools in Piracicaba, São Paulo State. They first answered a questionnaire on their medical and dental history. They also underwent an oral examination to exclude participants with cavities and/or periodontal disease (gum inflammation).

"Cavities and periodontal disease are known to influence salivary parameters such as pH [acidity], electrolytic composition and biochemistry. Both relate to the secretion of substances that can change the composition of saliva," Castelo explained.

The remaining participants then submitted to an anthropometric evaluation that included measures of height, weight and body fat percentage, as well as skeletal muscle mass, using a bioelectrical impedance analyzer, which gauges resistance to a weak current as it passes through the body.

Saliva was sampled at home after the subjects had fasted for 12 hours. The samples were collected using a Salivette, a plastic tube containing a cotton swab. Levels of cholesterol, uric acid and other substances were measured by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), an analytical chemistry technique that separates, identifies and quantifies each component in a mixture.

Statistical analysis of the data showed that the adolescents with a high level of salivary uric acid also had a higher body fat percentage.

Using linear regression (a statistical technique that analyzes the relationships between variables), the researchers were also able to predict body fat percentage based on the level of salivary uric acid.

"The level of this compound in saliva proved to be a reliable indicator of body fat accumulation, even in adolescents who were not being treated for chronic disease. It could be the basis for an accurate noninvasive method of monitoring dietary health and achieving early detection of changes in nutritional state," Castelo said.

Hazardous air pollutants like benzene found in gasoline have been linked to cancer, asthma, autism, reduced fertility, and lower intelligence in humans.

With a $2.3 million award from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an interdisciplinary team of Virginia Tech researchers led by Masoud Agah, the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is working to revolutionize a testing process for these harmful pollutants, in particular for truck drivers.

According to Agah, a renowned researcher in chip-scale gas chromatography and Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation Faculty Fellow, the development of effective strategies for reducing occupational exposure to pollutants requires accurate, time-resolved measurement of exposure.

Current practice typically requires collection of an air sample using specialized equipment, transport of the sample to the lab, and time-consuming analysis using expensive equipment to identify and quantify the pollutants present in the environment. The results are not available for several days, and they only provide an average measure of a worker's exposure.

"Truck drivers have a higher risk of lung cancer that is associated with exposure to diesel exhaust," said Linsey Marr, the Charles P. Lunsford Professor in the Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a co-investigator on this project. "Diesel exhaust is a complex mixture of particles and gases and the specific component responsible for health effects has not been identified. Some of the gaseous compounds are known or suspected carcinogens. We are focusing on measuring some of these compounds."

The team will work to develop an intelligent wearable analyzer for vapor exposure, otherwise called iWAVE, that can be used to measure hazardous air pollutants in real-time in transportation-related and other workplaces.

The small, unobtrusive, wearable, direct-read device will provide a time resolution for exposure assessment in five short minutes and is expected to revolutionize the way drivers, mechanics, movers, loading dock workers, and similar occupations surrounding airplanes, trains, and ships combat harmful pollutants that they encounter on a daily basis.

"iWAVE will employ microelectromechanical systems technology, advanced microelectronics components and systems, and state-of-the-art micro gas chromatography and telecommunication techniques," said Leyla Nazhandali, an associate professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and co-investigator on this project. "The low-power, low-cost micro gas analyzer with its embedded system can replace cumbersome sampling methods that must be followed by costly analysis in a laboratory and is programmable through smartphone apps and can send alarms in case of high levels of exposures beyond the predefined set point."

The team will evaluate the performance of iWAVE and compare it to that of conventional industrial hygiene sampling train and analytical methods during experiments in which participants perform two transportation work tasks at VTTI: heavy-truck refueling and fuel-injection mechanical maintenance.

Other co-investigators of this award include Andrew Miller, research associate at the Center for Truck and Bus Safety at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute; Andrew Alden, executive director of the I-81 Coalition at Virginia Tech Transportation Institute; Julia Gohlke, associate professor of environmental health in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine; and Inyoung Kim, associate professor of statistics in the College of Science.

You can't call it a dictionary just yet, but University of Delaware neuroscientist Joshua Neunuebel is starting to break the code mice use to communicate with each other.

So far, it's all action-specific. Mice sound one way when they are being chased, quite another when they are the chaser, not much at all when they are not in motion.

He knows this because he and his research team have found a way to identify precisely which mouse is making which sound, where and when.

Their findings, which were just published in Nature Neuroscience, provide a foundation for examining the neural circuits that link sensory cues -- specifically these ultrasonic mouse calls -- to social behavior.

"This is fundamental science that will allow us to potentially get at more complicated problems," Neunuebel said. That includes a broad range of communication disorders, including autism.

The work is supported by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, the University of Delaware Research Foundation and Delaware's General University Research Program.

Humans can't hear the majority of mouse-to-mouse vocal interactions at all because they happen on a scale our ears don't catch. This is likely one of life's hidden blessings, since mice like to scurry around in our walls, attics, basements and other human habitats.

But studying their communication patterns can help researchers understand the neurobiology of social behavior and bring valuable insight--not just into the secret life of rodents, but possibly into the mechanics of human communication. Research shows that about 98 percent of human genes are shared by mice.

To study these mouse interactions, Neunuebel's team gathered data as four mice -- two males, two females -- got acquainted. The mice interacted for five hours at a time in a chamber fitted with eight microphones and a video camera. Researchers recorded 10 similar encounters using different mice each time, studying a total of 44 mice.

They collected enormous amounts of data, with each microphone capturing 250,000 audio samples per second and the video camera capturing 30 frames per second. Each five-hour encounter produced more than 100 gigabytes of data.

Using machine-learning programs along with other computational approaches, they were able to show that specific sounds were associated with distinct behaviors.

"To make sense of the mountain of data, we wrote a lot of computer programs," Neunuebel said. "Everybody in the lab now writes code -- and that's a huge attribute of what my lab does. I think it's essential for deciphering very complex behavior."

That code is available -- free of charge -- to other interested researchers, he said.

Among their findings:

Mouse calls are different depending on the position of the mouse -- whether they are chasing or fleeing.

Decreasing pitch was related to dominant signals, while increasing pitch was related to non-dominant behavior.

A significant link was found between certain calls and behavior that followed.

The sounds affect only the mouse who is interacting, not those who are nearby but not involved in the action.

Different situations produced different types of calls.

Another recent study by Neunuebel's team drew on the same microphone/camera setup and showed how specific social interactions differ.

In that study, published by Scientific Reports, the calls of female mice were analyzed by their interaction with male mice or with other female mice.

They found two new distinctives in this study. First, female mice almost always vocalize at close range to other mice, while male mice call out at widely varying distances. Second, female mice vocalize sooner when in the company of male mice than in the company of other females.

The team said the most compelling finding of this study was that mouse behavior changes depending on the vocalizations of other mice. For example, the male accelerates after a female vocalizes if she is moving faster than he has been.

Neunuebel said his lab's setup -- where the mice mingle freely -- is much more dynamic than more standard approaches that allow animals to see each other but keep them separated to make it easier to quantify an animal's social behavior.

"Here there is free interaction," he said. "It is complex and the mice emit a lot of vocalizations.... We know who is vocalizing and we can see how they all respond to specific types of calls."

That is information that may soon produce much more insight into how a mouse's brain circuitry works -- the way messages are sent, interpreted and acted upon.

Washington, DC-- Aerosol emissions from burning coal and wood are dangerous to human health, but it turns out that by cooling the Earth they also diminish global economic inequality, according to a new study by Carnegie's Yixuan Zheng, Geeta Persad, and Ken Caldeira, along with UC Irvine's Steven Davis. Their findings are published by Nature Climate Change.

Tiny particles spewed into the atmosphere by human activity, called "anthropogenic aerosols," interact with clouds and reflect some of the Sun's energy back into space. They have a short-term cooling effect that's similar to how particles from major volcanic eruptions can cause global temperatures to drop. This masks some of the warming caused by much-longer-lived greenhouse gases, which trap the Sun's heat in the planet's atmosphere.

"Estimates indicate that aerosol pollution emitted by humans is offsetting about 0.7 degrees Celsius, or about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, of the warming due to greenhouse gas emissions," said lead author Zheng. "This translates to a 40-year delay in the effects of climate change. Without cooling caused by aerosol emissions, we would have achieved 2010-level global mean temperatures in 1970."

Previous research has shown that climate change provides some economic benefits to countries in cool regions--which would be warmed to temperatures that are ideal for agricultural productivity and human labor--and economic harm to countries in already hot regions.

Does aerosol-related cooling have a similar distribution of economic impacts?

The four researchers set out to investigate the economic effects of cooling caused by aerosol emissions in different parts of the world. They found that, opposite to greenhouse gases, the cooling effect of aerosols benefitted the economies of tropical, developing countries and harmed the economies of high latitude, developed countries.

"Although aerosols have many negative impacts, our simulations demonstrated that aerosol-induced cooling, in particular, could actually diminish global economic inequality," Persad said.

"However, when you look at the whole world at once, rather than region by region, the net economic effect of this cooling is likely to be small due to these effects between latitudes," added Davis.

Despite this, the team noted that aerosols are dangerous and that the public health benefits of cleaning them up would far outweigh the economic benefits of continuing to release them.

"We need to understand how human activities affect our planet so we can make informed decisions that can protect the environment while giving everyone a high quality of life," Caldeira concluded. "Aerosol pollution might appear to have some upsides, but at the end of the day their profound harm far outweighs their meager benefits."

Many younger Americans are aware of new products that heat tobacco to produce a breathable aerosol, and individuals who use other tobacco products are those most likely to use them, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

About 12% of the young adults surveyed were aware of heated tobacco products and 5% reported using the products at some point in their life. The devices heat -- but do not burn -- tobacco to produce a nicotine-containing aerosol that is inhaled, similar to what occurs in smoking cigarettes or vaping e-cigarettes.

Previous use of tobacco products, use of marijuana or other drugs, and use of multiple tobacco products all were associated with a higher chance that a young adult had used heated tobacco products.

The study, published online by the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, is one of the first to ask young adults in the U.S. about their awareness and use of heated tobacco products.

"Most people don't even know about these products, but they are what we will see promoted by the tobacco industry in the U.S. market over the next couple years," said Michael S. Dunbar, the study's lead author and a behavioral scientist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "While some of these products are relatively new to the U.S., we found evidence that they may be making inroads among some young people."

Heated tobacco products are a diverse group of devices that heat tobacco to temperatures below combustion to produce an aerosol instead of smoke. They are different from vaping products, which heat a liquid containing nicotine to produce a vapor. As with vaping products, some heated tobacco products devices -- such as dry herb vaporizers -- also can be used to consume tobacco mixed with marijuana or marijuana alone.

Because they do not burn tobacco, heated tobacco products may expose consumers to lower levels of toxic chemicals as cigarettes. However, the health effects associated with heated tobacco products and their public health risks are unknown.

Although versions of heated tobacco products have been available for many years, tobacco companies have just recently begun to market new-generation products as alternatives to cigarettes. Sales of these newer products are expected to increase exponentially in the future.

RAND researchers surveyed 2,497 young adults during 2018-2019 who have been long-term participants in an ongoing RAND project examining multiple factors about the use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs. Most of those in the study lived in California.

Men were more likely to report awareness and use of heated tobacco products than women, while use and knowledge about the products were lower among those in college compared to those who were not enrolled.

While some people see novel devices such as heated tobacco products as a way for those who smoke to reduce cigarette use and lower the harms caused by smoking, others see these products as yet another way to use tobacco in an increasingly diverse tobacco product landscape.

More than 40 percent of those who reported awareness or lifetime use of heated tobacco products had used some other tobacco product during the past month. Among young people who currently smoked cigarettes, rates of heated tobacco product use were higher in those who were more dependent on smoking, those who currently used multiple types of tobacco products and those who used marijuana.

"Earlier research suggests that using multiple tobacco products and smoking marijuana can make it harder for people to quit cigarettes in the future," Dunbar said. "Further work is needed to understand patterns and motivations for using heated tobacco products, including whether or not young people are actually using these products as a way to transition entirely off of smoking cigarettes."

The study also found that a sizable proportion of people (14%) who reported using heated tobacco products said they had not previously used any other tobacco products.

"This suggests that heated tobacco products may not exclusively appeal to people who already use tobacco," Dunbar said. "As these new products become increasingly accessible in the U.S., monitoring their use among tobacco-naïve individuals will be critical to understanding their potential public health impact."