Culture

What The Study Did: This research letter reports on diabetes screening in barbershops to identify undiagnosed black men.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

Authors: David C. Lee, M.D., of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York, is the corresponding author.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.6867)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

Bottom Line: Twenty years of survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were used to examine the unmet need to see a physician and for services among insured and uninsured adults from 1998 to 2017, a time of change in the U.S. health care system that included passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The proportion of adults who reported being unable to see a physician because of cost increased, with worsening access among insured adults whose numbers increased over time. The proportion of adults with chronic medical conditions unable to see a physician because of cost also increased for most conditions. A bigger share of adults received guideline-recommended cholesterol tests and flu shots but the proportion of women receiving mammograms decreased. A limitation of the study was the use of self-reported data.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

Authors: Laura Hawks, M.D., Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and coauthors.

(doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.6538)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest and funding/support disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

Many cells are covered with mysterious large holes, pores that have been associated with the sense of taste as well as Alzheimer's disease, depression, and even asthma. Knowing the structure of these varied holes will help researchers better understand this range of associations and provide a blueprint for developing new therapies.

"One of the most recently discovered of these 'large holes' are called calcium homeostasis modulators (CALHMs)," said Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Professor Furukawa. "They're basically pores on the surface of some cells such as neurons," that let various molecules enter and exit the cell.

As described recently in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, researchers from Furukawa's lab showcased the detailed structure of two CALHMs and how they function.

"If you have large holes in cells, you'd think the cells would burst open or shrink," said Johanna Syrjanen, a postdoctoral researcher who helped lead the research. However, she added, cells with functioning pores "remain quite happily as they are."

That suggests these pores are important for maintaining cell health. To investigate this, the researchers studied two kinds of pores. The pore CALHM1 is involved in sensing bitter or sweet tastes, and even that savory fifth taste known as umami. This pore is also involved in controlling the airways in your lungs, which implicates it in asthma. Additionally, mutations in the genes that shape CALHM1 have been associated with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers also studied another pore, CALHM2 that might be involved in depression. To their surprise, they found that CALHM2 has much larger pore size compared to CALHM1.

"Presumably the opening and closing of these pores is tightly regulated in some way," said Syrjanen. This opening and closing might be key to how the pores influence taste or are associated with disease. To make sense of this, "we first have to be able to visualize them and use that information as a guide for further experiments," she explained.

To visualize the structure of CALHM1 and CALHM2, Furukawa's lab used cryo-electron microscopy, which fires a powerful electron through a rapidly frozen specimen to obtain images. They then carefully compound the images in various orientations into a 3-D model that highlights the finite details of each pore's structure.

"We've provided science with the first blueprint of these pores to design therapeutic compounds," said Furukawa. "The hope is that such compounds could be effective in treating diseases and disorders like Alzheimer's and depression, and potentially in asthma."

Methane is present in the natural gas that is very abundant in the earth's crust and has found many uses in modern applications, mainly as a burning fuel. Alternatively, methane can be converted into a useful mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, called "synthesis gas," by reaction with carbon dioxide in what is referred to as dry reforming of methane (DRM). This DRM reaction is termed "uphill" because it requires the consumption of external energy; thermal reactors have to be at a high temperature of more than 800 °C for efficient conversion. Reaching such high temperatures requires burning other fuels, resulting in massive greenhouse gas emissions, which are the leading cause of climate change. In addition, the use of high temperatures also causes the deactivation of commonly used catalysts due to aggregation and carbon precipitation (so-called coking).

Instead of dealing with such drawbacks of thermal catalysis systems for DRM reaction, researchers have attempted to drive the conversion of methane at dramatically lower temperatures using photocatalysts activated by light. Although various photocatalyst-like materials have been proposed, it has proven challenging to obtain acceptable conversion performance at low temperatures.

Fortunately, a team of researchers, including Prof. Mashiro Miyauchi, identified a promising combination of materials that can act as an effective photocatalyst for methane conversion into synthesis gas. More specifically, the researchers found that strontium titanate combined with rhodium nanoparticles converted methane and carbon dioxide into synthesis gas under light irradiation at much lower temperatures that those required in thermal reactors.

The researchers determined that the proposed photocatalyst not only was much more stable than previously tested catalysts, but that it also avoided other issues, such as the aggregation (clumping) and coking ("sooting") of the catalyst particles. Most importantly, as stated by Prof. Miyauchi, "The proposed photocatalyst allowed us to vastly surpass the limitations of thermal catalysts, yielding high performance for synthetic gas production."

The researchers also elucidated the physical mechanisms by which the proposed photocatalyst leads to an enhanced conversion of methane. This insight is especially important because of the implications it has for other types of methane reactions. The current system requires ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation, which is just a small part of solar light. However, "The present study provides a strategic way to perform uphill reactions using methane and creates a connection between the fossil fuel industry and renewable energy applications. Now we are developing the visible-light-sensitive system." concludes Prof. Miyauchi. These findings will hopefully lead to more ecofriendly developments and help reduce carbon emissions in the future.

A material revolution replacing cement and steel in urban construction by wood can have double benefits for climate stabilization, a new study shows. First, it can avoid greenhouse gas emissions from cement and steel production. Second, it can turn buildings into a carbon sink as they store the CO2 taken up from the air by trees that are harvested and used as engineered timber. However while the required amount of timber harvest is available in theory, such an upscaling would clearly need most careful, sustainable forest management and governance, the international team of authors stresses.

"Urbanization and population growth will create a vast demand for the construction of new housing and commercial buildings - hence the production of cement and steel will remain a major source of greenhouse gas emissions unless appropriately addressed," says the study's lead-author Galina Churkina who is affiliated to both the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in the US and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany (PIK). "Yet, this risk for the global climate system could be transformed into a powerful means to mitigate climate change by substantially increasing the use of engineered timber for construction worldwide. Our analysis reveals, that this potential can be realized under two conditions. First, the harvested forests are sustainably managed. Second, wood from demolished timber buildings is preserved on land in various forms."

+++ Four scenarios of timber use to help climate stabilization +++

Four scenarios have been computed by the scientists for the next thirty years. Assuming business as usual, just 0.5 percent of new buildings are constructed with timber by 2050. This could be driven up to 10 percent or 50 percent, if mass timber manufacturing increases accordingly. If countries with current low industrialization level also make the transition, even 90 percent timber is conceivable, the scientists say. This could result in storing between 10 million tons of carbon per year in the lowest scenario and close to 700 million tons in the highest scenario. In addition, constructing timber buildings reduces cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases from steel and cement manufacturing at least by half. This might seem not so much compared to the current amount of roughly 11000 million tons of carbon emissions per year, yet the shift to timber would make quite a difference for achieving the climate stabilization targets of the Paris agreement.

Assuming a continued building with concrete and steel and assuming an increase in the floor area per person, following past trends, the cumulative emissions from mineral-based construction materials might reach up to one fifth of the CO2 emissions budget up to 2050 - a budget that should not be exceeded if we want to keep warming at well below 2°C as promised by governments in the Paris agreement. Importantly, to reach net zero emissions by mid-century, societies need some kind of CO2 sinks to balance remaining hard-to-avoid emissions namely from agriculture.

Buildings could be such a sink - if made from timber. A five-story residential building structured in laminated timber can store up to 180 kilos of carbon per square meter, three times more than in the above ground biomass of natural forests with high carbon density. Still, even in the 90 percent timber scenario the carbon accumulated in timber cities over thirty years would sum up to less than one tenth of the overall amount of carbon stored aboveground in forests worldwide.

+++ "Protecting forests from unsustainable logging is key" +++

"Protecting forests from unsustainable logging and a wide range of other threats is thus key if timber use was to be substantially increased," co-author Christopher Reyer from PIK emphasizes. "Our vision for sustainable forest management and governance could indeed improve the situation for forests worldwide as they are valued more."

The scientists summarize multiple lines of evidence from official harvest statistics to complex simulation modelling to find that, theoretically, unexploited wood harvest potentials would cover the demand of the 10 percent timber scenario. It might even cover the demand of the 50 and 90 percent timber scenario if the floor area per person in buildings worldwide would not increase but stay at the current average. "There's quite some uncertainty involved, yet it seems very worth exploring," says Reyer. "Additionally, plantations would be needed to cover the demand, including the cultivation of fast-growing Bamboo by small-scale landowners in tropical and subtropical regions."

Reducing the use of roundwood for fuel - currently roughly half of the roundwood harvest is burnt, also adding to emissions - would make more of it available for building with engineered timber. Moreover, re-using wood from demolished buildings can add to the supply.

+++ The technology of trees - "to build ourselves a safe home on Earth" +++

Timber as a building material comes with a number of interesting features detailed out in the analysis. For instance, large structural timbers are comparatively fire resistant - their inner core gets protected by a charring layer if burnt, so it is hard for a fire to really destroy them. This is in contrast to popular assumptions fostered by fires in light-frame buildings. Many national building codes already recognize these properties.

"Trees offer us a technology of unparalleled perfection," Hans Joachim Schellnhuber says, co-author of the study and Director Emeritus of PIK. "They take CO2 out of our atmosphere and smoothly transform it into oxygen for us to breathe and carbon in their trunks for us to use. There's no safer way of storing carbon I can think of. Societies have made good use of wood for buildings for many centuries, yet now the challenge of climate stabilization calls for a very serious upscaling. If we engineer the wood into modern building materials and smartly manage harvest and construction, we humans can build ourselves a safe home on Earth."

PULLMAN, Wash. - For organic farms, size matters: not so much the size of the farm itself, but the size of the neighboring fields.

A large-scale analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Jan. 27 found that organic agriculture sites had 34% more biodiversity and 50% more profits than conventional agriculture sites, even though the organic sites had 18% lower crop yields.

Yet the study, produced by a Washington State University student "journal club," also found that as the size of the fields surrounding the organic farms increased, those values shifted: the organic farms' advantage in biodiversity increased, but they lost some of their edge in profitability in comparison to conventional farms in similar areas.

"A landscape with large field sizes might be an indicator of agricultural intensification in general, with many fields with only one crop and heavier pesticide and herbicide use," said Olivia Smith, a recent WSU Ph.D. graduate and the lead author on the study. "That's a place where there's not a lot of natural habitat animals can use. An organic farm on that kind of landscape becomes a refuge for species."

The study also revealed that price premiums for organic food played a big role in profitability, according to Associate Professor Dave Crowder, an author on the paper and the journal club's faculty advisor.

"The areas that get the greatest price premium for organic food are those that have small field sizes, which are often located in more urban areas that are more connected to large consumer bases," said Crowder. "For example, all else being equal, an organic farmer who is in the middle of Iowa may not do nearly as well as an organic farmer near Seattle where there are more consumers willing to pay higher prices for organic food."

The WSU journal club is a group of graduate students who meet to discuss research papers and look for gaps in the scientific literature. Finding that other analyses had overlooked the impacts of landscape context on organic yield and profitability margins, the students pooled their efforts to conduct a large meta-analysis, synthesizing the data from 148 studies around the world spanning 60 different types of crops.

The resulting paper is the first of its kind to take landscape context into account while looking at the three factors of biodiversity, crop yields and profitability. The WSU study suggests that these three factors are separate: that what makes one increase or decrease has less to do with the others than with the landscape context, farming practices or socioeconomic issues.

While this was a large-scale analysis, the authors noted limitations in available data as most studies were focused on developed countries, and the only available studies on profitability with location information were in the U.S. Smith said more research is needed from less developed parts of the world, particularly in the tropics.

Tauopathies are a group of neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the accumulation of phospho-tau, in other words tau associated to phosphate groups. Globular Glial Tauopathy, as well as Alzheimer's, are members of this large group. It is characterized by the accumulation of phospho-tau in neurons and by the formation of protein inclusions in glial cells astrocytes or oligodendrocytes. The majority of this kind of tauopathy is spontaneous, but some of them are caused by specific mutations.

This study published at Acta Neuropathologica journal, was led by Dr. Isidre Ferrer, from Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL), Medicine and Health Science Faculty from Barcelona University (UB) and Bellvitge Hospital (HUB), with the collaboration of Dr. José Antonio del Río from Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and Biology Faculty from UB, both of them are members of Neuroscience Institute (UBNeuro) from UB. They studied several cases of patients with kind of tauopathy, genetic or spontaneous. The study shows that the addition of phosphate groups, is not specific to tau many other proteins are abnormally phosphorylated. This hyperphosphorylation induces protein disfunction and accumulation, which generates cell damage. Navarra Hospital also participates in these observations performing the proteomic and phosphorylation analysis.

Another relevant aspect of the study is that protein accumulation not only affects neurons, glial cells associated to them are also impaired, specifically astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Glial cell affectation could promote the loss of some neural connections. Moreover, these inclusions can travel neuron to neuron or glial cell to glial cell, which facilitates the damage spreading to other cerebral regions.

These findings provide new information for the design of new drugs that stop disease progression. Firstly, new drugs must act in other proteins apart from tau since tau is not the only protein with increased phosphorylation. On the other hand, a new player has emerged in the scene, glial cells that not only are interfering in the cerebral damage, but they also participate in the spreading of protein inclusions. Finally, new drugs that stop cellular transmission of protein inclusions could be an interesting target for this disease.

January 27, 2020-Rome: In a study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, ISS researchers estimated about 680,000 cases of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), in a total of 12,730,960 migrants, aged between 60 and 89 years, living in the European Union (EU) in 2018. The proportion of cases among migrants (compared to the total in the resident population) ranged from 1.1% in Romania to 54.1% in Liechtenstein, with an overall increase over four years of 34%, rising from 511,624 cases in 2014 to 686,000 in 2018. In Italy, 34,655 cases were estimated among migrants (916,865 in the general population), equal to 3.8% of the foreign-born residents in our country.

"MCI and dementia represent, and presumably, will increasingly constitute a relevant issue in terms of public health in migrants living in Europe - says Marco Canevelli, the ISS researcher, coordinator of the study - These estimates, besides their particular relevance in the light of the socio-demographic changes taking place, confirm the need to develop and adopt models of care and assistance that are sensitive to diversity and inclusive towards a population which, from an ethnocultural point of view, is extremely varied. For this reason, it is necessary to develop and adopt tools that enable a cross-cultural cognitive assessment".

In this regard, the expert goes on to say, "it would be appropriate to consider the possible involvement of professionals such as interpreters and cultural mediators, considering that the identification of MCI can be affected and complicated by various ethnocultural determinants that can influence the personal and social perception of individual cognitive functioning as well as the reliability of cognitive evaluation".

"In a context of a clear increase in migration flows from developing countries to Western countries, which also implies a change in public health provisions - says Nicola Vanacore, scientific director of the ISS Dementia Observatory - 'counting' becomes important. In this sense, the estimates produced in this study represent the foundation on which to build on within in the ImmiDem project - Dementia in Immigrants and ethnic minorities: clinical-epidemiological aspects and public health perspectives - the first dedicated to the prevalence of dementia in the immigrant population and ethnic minorities, coordinated by the ISS, with the aim of assessing the use of dedicated healthcare resources and services and promoting adequate treatment pathways".

The number of MCI cases in older migrants (60 years) residing in the 28 EU countries, and in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland as of January 2018 was calculated by multiplying the number of migrants provided by Eurostat, updated to 2019, and the age-specific MCI prevalence rates derived from the harmonised data produced by the COSMIC collaboration.

Dementia in the world

The WHO Report provides alarming growth estimates for dementia: 35.6 million cases in 2010 that will double in 2030 and triple in 2050 with 7.7 million new cases per year (one every four seconds) and whose economic impact on health systems will be about $604 billion per year, and progressively increasing.

In Italy, the total number of patients with dementia is estimated at over one million (of which about 600 thousand with Alzheimer's dementia) and about three million people are directly or indirectly involved in caring for their loved ones.

Sport and Exercise Science has been described as the "Cinderella" subject of Wales and a key part of the Welsh economy, according to new labour market data being released at an event in the Assembly tomorrow (Tuesday).

In the first analysis of its kind, Sport and Exercise Science students in Wales have been shown to be employed in sectors as diverse as health care, legal services and research. The economic analysis shows that across the UK, SES education provides an impact of almost £4 billion to the economy every year.

There is a huge opportunity for SES graduates, with around 750,000 jobs in industry sectors in Wales employing SES students. Across the UK, for every £1 that a student invests in their education in SES they will earn £5.50 in higher future wages. Graduates can expect to earn nearly £670,000 more over the course of their working life as a result of their SES education, compared to their peers that do not graduate from university.

Jobs for SES graduates are also geographically spread throughout Wales. Although Cardiff, Swansea and Newport make up just under half of the 2,440 new job postings for roles requiring an SES skillset between July 2018 and June of the following year, both Wrexham and Rhyl had 49 or more unique job postings in roles such as family support worker and personal trainer.

This newly published analysis also highlights the broader benefits to society for sport and exercise science. As well as generating over £6 billion across the UK in income from higher student lifetime earnings and increased business investment, the scientific research done by sport and exercise scientists is helping people live longer, healthier lives. For example, research being undertaken by the University of South Wales into exercise regimes before an operation is helping reduce mortality following major surgery in cancer and vascular patients.

The analysis was commissioned by The Physiological Society and GuildHE and carried out by the labour market economic consultancy, Emsi. It will be launched at a reception in the Welsh Assembly on Tuesday, with Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Dafydd Elis-Thomas AM. The Minister will be joined by Public Health Wales, Sport Wales, the Older People's Commissioner for Wales and physiologists from Bangor University and the University of South Wales.

Ahead of the launch event, Professor Bridget Lumb, President of The Physiological Society, said:

"In many ways Sport and Exercise Science is the "Cinderella subject" of Wales. It plays a vital role in the health and wealth of Wales but too often doesn't get the recognition it deserves. We hope to raise the profile of sport and exercise science and show how the research done in this field is changing peoples' lives.

"With 2020 being designated 'Year of the Outdoors' by Visit Wales, this is an ideal time to be launching this new analysis. Sport and Exercise Science brings huge benefits to the Welsh economy, with graduates working in sectors as diverse as healthcare and legal services. For every £1 a student invests in their SES education, they will make £5.50 back in higher wages."

"Welsh universities are driving scientific innovation in Sport and Exercise Science, which is improving the quality of life of patients with life-threatening diseases such as cancers, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. These conditions cost the NHS billions every year and this research will become ever more important as we face the challenges of an ageing population."

People who eat high fiber diets are more likely to experience bloating if their high fiber diet is protein-rich as compared to carbohydrate-rich, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The researchers, whose findings were published online January 15 in the journal Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology, analyzed data from a clinical trial of high fiber diets. They determined that when the 164 trial participants ate versions of a heart-healthy, high-fiber diet that was relatively rich in plant protein, they were about 40 percent more likely to report bloating symptoms than when eating a carbohydrate-rich version of the same high fiber diet.

The study suggests that people who want to eat a high fiber diet would be less likely to experience bloating if the diet were relatively carb-rich versus protein-rich.

High-fiber diets are believed to cause bloating by boosting certain populations of healthful fiber-digesting gut bacteria species, which produce gas as a byproduct. The findings thus also hint at a role for "macronutrients" such as carbs and proteins in modifying the gut bacteria population--the microbiome.

"It's possible that in this study, the protein-rich version of the diet caused more bloating because it caused more of a healthy shift in the composition of the microbiome," says study co-senior author Noel Mueller, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Bloomberg School. "Notably, the protein in these diets was mostly from vegetable sources such as beans, legumes, and nuts."

Bloating affects about 20 percent of the U.S. adult population, and is so common as a side effect of high fiber diets that it deters many people from adopting such diets. Mueller and colleagues in recent years have been re-examining data from past, high quality clinical trials to find dietary factors that might modify bloating frequency in the context of a high fiber diet. Last year, Mueller and colleagues reported that salt appeared to be one such factor. It was associated with more bloating in a trial of a heart-healthy, high-fiber diet, suggesting that cutting back on salt could be one easy way to reduce bloating.

In the new study, the researchers examined a dietary clinical trial that was conducted in 2003 and 2005 at the Johns Hopkins ProHealth Clinical Research Unit in Baltimore and at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Known as the Optimal Macronutrient Intake Trial to Prevent Heart Disease (OmniHeart), it included 164 participants who had above-normal blood pressure. They were assigned to three different diets over consecutive six-week periods separated by two-week "washout" intervals during which participants returned to regular eating habits.

The diets were all considered high-fiber, low-sodium "DASH" diets, and had the same number of calories, but varied in their macronutrient emphases: a carbohydrate-rich version was, by calories, 58 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein, and 27 percent fat; a plant-protein-rich version was 48 percent carbs, 25 percent protein, 27 percent fat; and a fat-rich version was 48 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein, and 37 percent fat.

The primary results of the OmniHeart trial, published in 2005, suggested that the plant-protein-rich and fat-rich diets were the most effective in reducing blood pressure and improving measures of blood cholesterol (reducing LDL and triglycerides; increasing HDL).

In their new analysis of this data, Mueller and colleagues examined how participants' reports of bloating--which were among the secondary data collected in that trial--varied as participants ate the three OmniHeart diets. A key finding was that the prevalence of bloating went from 18 percent before the diets to 24, 33, and 30 percent, respectively, on the carb-, protein-, and fat-rich diets--indicating that these high fiber diets did indeed appear to increase bloating.

The researchers also analyzed the relative changes among the diets, and linked the protein-rich diet to a significantly greater chance of bloating--roughly 40 percent greater--in comparison with the carb-rich diet.

The results suggest that substituting high quality carb calories, such as whole grain, for protein calories might reduce bloating for those on high fiber diets, making such diets more tolerable.

There is the possibility, however, that making high fiber diets more tolerable in this way would also make them less healthy. The plant- protein- and fat-rich diets in the study, which led to higher bloating prevalence, also appeared, in the original OmniHeart trial analysis, to lower blood pressure and improve blood lipid measures more than the carb-rich diet.

Researchers have been uncovering evidence that many of the effects of a healthier diet come from shifts in the gut microbiome that result in greater microbial production of health-promoting molecules called metabolites. Mueller suspects that the plant-protein-rich diet caused more bloating because it caused a greater and healthier shift in the microbiome.

"Bloating may be just a consequence of a healthy shift in the microbiome, so that if somebody is able to put up with the bloating caused by a high-protein, high-fiber diet, they may ultimately benefit more in other health measures," Mueller says.

He and his colleagues are working on a follow-on study of the effects of similar dietary patterns on the gut microbiome.

České Budějovice/Gatersleben, 27.01.2020 Whenever the European dodder, Cuscuta europaea, is under scientific scrutiny, it usually is due to its lack of chloroplasts and its concomitant parasitic lifestyle. However, since the beginning of this year its chromosomes became the new centre of attention, when researchers discovered a new type of centromere inherent to C. europaea. Whilst the positioning of the centromeres on the chromosome is normally determined by the locations of CENH3 histones, the centromeres of C. europaea were positioned in some chromosomal regions also independently from the plant's occurrence of CENH3.

The European dodder Cuscuta europaea is mainly known as a parasitic plant - instead of doing photosynthesis, it grows on other plants and lives of their products. In some cases, it even lives as an epiparasite, living off related plant species. When looking into the plants' cytogenetics, researchers from the Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Ceské Budejovice, in collaboration with researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), recently discovered that C. europaea showcases a unique kind of centromere.

The centromere is a region on a chromosome, at which the kinetochore assembles. This, in turn, guides the attachment of the microtubules of the spindle apparatus during the cellular processes mitosis and meiosis. In most eukaryotic species, the positioning of the centromere is determined by a centromere-specific histone H3 variant called CENH3, which also plays an essential role in the formation and function of kinetochores. Based on the distribution of centromeres on the chromosome, species are thought of as having either monocentric or holocentric centromere types. In monocentric species, CENH3 and thus centromere activity is confined to a single region per chromosome, whilst in holocentric species, both are found along the entire length of the chromosome.

In order to investigate traits associated with the transition from monocentric to holocentric chromosome organisation, researchers compare the phylogenetics of related species with differing centromere types. Especially species of the genus Cuscuta are already well documented. However, when investigating C. europaea as an additional representative holocentric species, the scientists came across unexpected discrepancies. Instead of creating the expected signals along the entire chromosome, in situ immunodetection patterns showed that CENH3 occurred in up to three distinct regions per chromosome. Later, super-resolution microscopy revealed that the centromeres still showed typical holocentric activity, apparently independent of the unusual CENH3 distribution, proving that a new type of centromere had been found.

To date, only few species showing no correlation between CENH3 and kinetochore functionality, mainly holocentric insects which are lacking CENH3 genes, have been found. But through the discovery of C. europaea's unique centromere type, this short list has now been extended by one already rather exceptional parasitic plant, which will continue to inspire further research.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Many tomato growers are familiar with the scourge of bacterial canker - the wilted leaves and blistered fruit that can spoil an entire season's planting. For those whose livelihoods depend on tomatoes, this pathogen - Clavibacter michiganensis - is economically devastating.

In a new paper, Cornell University researchers showed that wild tomato varieties are less affected by bacterial canker than traditionally cultivated varieties.

The team wanted to understand how bacteria spread and colonize in wild tomatoes versus cultivated ones. They zeroed in on the plants' vascular systems - specifically their xylem vessels.

Like individual veins in a human, xylem vessels transport water and nutrients from soil throughout the plant. The team found that in cultivated species, bacterial canker spreads everywhere, while in wild species the bacteria remain confined to certain xylem vessels without moving much into surrounding tissues.

This is the first study confirming that wild tomatoes are susceptible to bacterial canker, though the infection is less severe than in cultivated varieties. But while a severe infection causes fewer symptoms in the wild plant, it can still cause lesions on the fruit.

The grim effects that climate change will have on pediatric health outcomes was the focus of a "Viewpoint" article published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by Susan E. Pacheco, MD, an expert at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Pacheco, an associate professor of pediatrics at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth, along with professors from Johns Hopkins Medicine and the George Washington University, authored a series of articles that detail how increased temperatures due to climate change will negatively affect the health of humanity. In the article authored by Pacheco, she shines a light on the startling effects the crisis has on children's health before they are even born.

Pacheco points to research published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which highlights several ways humans will experience adverse health effects from climate change, such as increased mortality and morbidity due to heat waves and fires, increased risk of food- and water-borne illnesses, and malnutrition due to food scarcity.

These negative experiences bring with them psychological trauma and mental health issues that can affect both children and their caretakers. Pacheco wrote that after Hurricane Maria in 2017, many adults in Puerto Rico experienced post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety from living weeks and months without access to necessities such as clean water, electricity, and basic medical care.

"Some were not capable of meeting the physical and emotional demands that such a disaster imposed on their children," Pacheco wrote.

The negative health effects inflicted by the climate crisis can begin while a child is still in utero, due to maternal stress, poor nutrition, exposure to air pollution, and exposure to extreme weather events brought on by climate change. Studies of women who experienced major flooding events while pregnant reported an association with outcomes such as preterm birth and low birth weights. Pacheco wrote that pregnant women exposed to climate change experience stress, respiratory disease, poor nutrition, increased infections, heat-associated illnesses, and poverty.

"We will continue to see an increase in heat-associated conditions in children, such as asthma, Lyme disease, as well as an increase in congenital heart defects," Pacheco said.

Pacheco wrote that the picture painted by research on climate change is daunting and now is not the time for indifference. In the article's conclusion, she wrote that everyone in the medical community must reflect on a personal level about what can be done with the knowledge they have on climate change and its negative health effects.

"We cannot act as if we are immune to these threats," she said. "We can jump to action or stand in complacent indifference."

Rutgers researchers have found that a test widely used to diagnose whether children have autism is less reliable than previously assumed.

The study is published in the journal Neural Computation.

The standardized test, known as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), assesses communication skills, social interaction and play for children who may have autism or other developmental disorders.

The researchers digitized the test by attaching wearable technology, like an Apple Watch, to two clinicians and 52 children who came in four times and took two different versions of the test.

When researchers looked at the scores of the entire cohort, they found they did not distribute normally - which could mean a chance of false positives inflating the prevalence of autism, among other implications.

The results showed that switching ADOS certified clinicians may change a child's scores and consequently influences the diagnosis. The researchers found similar results when they analyzed open-access data of 1,324 people ages 5 to 65, said Elizabeth Torres, associate professor of psychology in Rutgers' School of Arts and Sciences, and director of The New Jersey Autism Center of Excellence.

"The ADOS test informs and steers much of the science of autism, and it has done great work thus far," said Torres, whose expertise has brought emerging computer science technology to autism. "However, social interactions are much too complex and fast to be captured by the naked eye, particularly when the grader is biased to look for specific signs and to expect specific behaviors."

The researchers suggest combining clinical observations with data from wearable biosensors, such as smartwatches, smartphones and other off-the-shelf technology.

By doing so, they argue, researchers may make data collection less invasive, lower the rate of false positives by using empirically derived statistics rather than assumed models, shorten the time to diagnosis, and make diagnoses more reliable, and more objective for all clinicians.

Torres said autism researchers should aim for tests that capture the accelerated rate of change of neurodevelopment to help develop treatments that slow down the aging of the nervous system.

"Autism affects one out of 34 children in New Jersey," she said. "Reliance on observational tests that do not tackle the neurological conditions of the child from an early age could be dangerous. Clinical tests score a child based on expected aspects of behaviors. These data are useful, but subtle, spontaneous aspects of natural behaviors, which are more variable and less predictable, remain hidden. These hidden aspects of behavior may hold important keys for personalized treatments, like protecting nerve cells against damage, or impairment, which could delay or altogether stop progression."

Several personality traits related to psychopathy -- especially being openly antagonistic -- predict a tendency to view others as merely sex objects, finds a study by psychologists at Emory University. The journal "Personality Disorders: Theory, Research and Treatment" published the study, which the authors believe is the first to identify key personality correlates of interpersonal sexual objectification.

The #MeToo movement has raised awareness of the ongoing problem of sexual harassment and sexual assault, notes Thomas Costello, a PhD candidate in psychology at Emory and first author of the study. Much less is known, he says, about those likely to think of someone as little more than their sexual parts.

"Understanding the personality traits associated with sexual objectification allows us to identify those at risk of having this attitude and to potentially design an intervention for them," Costello says. "This is important because sexual objectification can be a precursor to sexual harassment and sexual violence."

Psychopathy is a personality disorder associated with a constellation of characteristics, such as boldness, impulsivity, narcissism, cold-heartedness, disinhibition and meanness.

Most people who have some personality traits associated with psychopathy do not fulfill the criteria for full-blown psychopathy, explains Emory psychology professor Scott Lilienfeld, senior author of the paper and an expert on personality disorders.

"These so-called 'dark' personality traits occur on a continuum, like height and weight or blood pressure," he explains. "Many people have at least some of these traits to some degree, and other people may not have any of them to a high degree."

For the current study, the researchers wanted to test whether traits underlying psychopathy -- which is associated with sexual aggression, harassment and violence -- could provide a framework for understanding and statistically predicting attitudes of sexual objectification among the general population.

The study used a self-reporting survey that included questions about attitudes, as well as behaviors, regarding sexual objectification and measurements of psychopathy-related personality traits. The researchers collected data from 800 U.S. community members drawn from Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online crowdsourcing platform.

An analysis of the data showed that meanness, or being antagonistic towards others, was the strongest predictor for attitudes of sexual objectification, followed closely by disinhibition. Cold-heartedness and boldness were also predictors, but the effect sizes were smaller.

"We were surprised that cold-heartedness -- or being a callous, detached person -- was not as good a predictor as meanness, or being openly malicious," Lilienfeld says.

The survey participants included both men and women. As expected, more men than women scored higher on the sexual objectification scale. But psychopathic traits were even better predictors of attitudes of sexual objectification in the female respondents.

"It may be that social norms are much stronger against women sexually objectifying others, so this attitude would be less likely to be expressed, except among women with higher degrees of these dark personality traits," Costello says.

He hopes that the #MeToo movement may also increase societal pressure against men perceiving others as sex objects. "The ongoing cultural conversation and growing awareness of the problem of sexual objectification is a great opportunity for research into why it occurs," he says.