Culture

People who play drums regularly for years differ from unmusical people in their brain structure and function. The results of a study by researchers from Bochum suggest that they have fewer, but thicker fibres in the main connecting tract between the two halves of the brain. In addition, their motor brain areas are organised more efficiently. This is the conclusion drawn by a research team headed by Dr. Lara Schlaffke from the Bergmannsheil university clinic in Bochum and Associate Professor Dr. Sebastian Ocklenburg from the biopsychology research unit at Ruhr-Universität Bochum following a study with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The results have been published in the journal Brain and Behavior, online on 4 December 2019.

Drummers were never previously studied

"It has long been understood that playing a musical instrument can change the brain via neuroplastic processes," says Sarah Friedrich, who wrote her bachelor's thesis on this project. "But no one had previously looked specifically into drummers," she adds.

The researchers from Bochum were interested in this group because their motor coordination far surpasses that of untrained people. "Most people can only perform fine motor tasks with one hand and have problems playing different rhythms with both hands at the same time," explains Lara Schlaffke. "Drummers can do things that are impossible for untrained people."

Drumming first, then brain scans

The team intended to gain new insights into the organisation of complex motor processes in the brain by identifying the changes in the brain caused by this training. The researchers tested 20 professional drummers who have played their instrument for an average of 17 years and currently practice for more than ten hours per week. They examined them using various MRI imaging techniques that provide insights into the structure and function of the brain. They then compared the data with measurements of 24 unmusical control subjects. In the first step, both groups had to play drums to test their abilities and were then examined in the MRI scanner.

More efficient motor processing

Drummers presented clear differences in the front part of the corpus callosum, a brain structure that connects the two hemispheres and whose front part is responsible for motor planning. The data indicated that the drummers had fewer but thicker fibres in this important connecting tract between the brain hemispheres. This allows musicians to exchange information between the hemispheres more quickly than the controls. The structure of the corpus callosum also predicted the performance in the drum test: the higher the measure of the thickness of the fibres in the corpus callosum, the better the drumming performance.

Moreover, the brain of drummers was less active in motor tasks than that of control subjects. This phenomenon is referred to as sparse sampling: a more efficient brain organisation in the areas leads to less activation in professionals.

Older participants wanted for new study

"We would like to thank our highly motivated participants who took part in the study," says Lara Schlaffke. "It was great fun working with you."

Ludwig-Maximilian-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich researchers have discovered a novel type of chemical modification in bacterial RNAs. The modification is apparently attached to molecules only when cells are under stress, and is rapidly removed during recovery.

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is chemically closely related to the DNA that serves as the carrier of hereditary information in all cells. Indeed, RNA itself plays a central role in the process that converts the genetic messages into proteins, which catalyze chemical transformations and serve as structural elements in cells and organisms. Like DNA, RNA molecules are made up of sequences of four different types of subunits called nucleobases, which are connected to each other by means of sugar-phosphate links. In all organisms, these subunits can be selectively modified in order to regulate their interactions and functions. Now Dr. Stefanie Kellner, who heads an Emmy Noether Junior Research Group in the Department of Chemistry, in cooperation with Kirsten Jung (Professor of Microbiology at LMU), has identified a novel - and biochemically rather unusual - modification in bacterial RNAs. The modification is attached when microorganisms are subjected to stress, and can be promptly removed when conditions return to normal. The new findings appear in the online journal Nature Communications.

Both DNA and RNA can be modified by methylation, i.e. the attachment of methyl (CH3) substituents to nucleotides. In addition, bacteria modify RNAs with functional groups that contain sulfur atoms as a means of regulating protein synthesis. One such modification replaces the oxygen at position 2 in the cytidine base. In the rod-shaped bacterium Escherichia coli, Kellner and her colleagues have now identified a previously unknown form of this modified sulfur-containing base. "In this case, the bacteria are methylated at the sulfur of cytidine," says Kellner. "Coupling via a sulfur substituent converts the cytidine into a 2-methylthiocytidine, or ms2C for short."

Further experiments revealed that ms2C appears in RNA mainly when the bacteria are placed under stress, by the addition of deleterious chemicals or antibiotics to the growth medium. Although the damage negatively impacts protein translation, it is not a death sentence to the bacteria.

Interestingly, the bacterium possesses an enzyme that can subsequently remove the methylation damage. The team succeeded in characterizing the repair mechanism directly with the aid of a relatively new analytical technique called NAIL-MS (Nucleic Acid Isotope Labeling coupled Mass Spectrometry). This involves labeling of the sample with a heavy isotope prior to analysis by high-sensitivity mass spectrometry, which enables one to follow the fate of the modified RNAs after the stressor has been removed. "In this way, we were able to show, in living cells, that the modified RNA is not degraded.

Instead, it is repaired by enzymatic detachment of the methyl group," as Kellner explains.

Since the repair process is completed within 1-2 hours after modification of the RNA, the researchers believe that the cell is already 'prepared' to deal with the damage. It is conceivable that the sulfur-containing RNA bases act as scavengers of free methyl groups that are produced as a direct result of stress, thus preventing them from modifying the DNA or other proteins. Since bacterial cells are full of RNA molecules, these could function as an efficient detoxification mechanism to mop up reactive chemical groups.

A penalty shootout at the Soccer World Cup. All eyes are on the best striker of the team. He should take the decisive shot, preferably past the goalkeeper. The striker must decide whether to aim for the right or left corner of the goal. In his brain, he plans both options before making the decision. If the goalkeeper's posture indicates that he will jump to the right at the decisive moment, the striker will develop a temporary preference for planning a movement to the left corner. But what effect will this tendency have on the final decision if the goalkeeper changes his posture just before the shot? Will the striker still shoot to the left? And how is this process controlled at the level of the nerve cells? Neuroscientists at the German Primate Center (DPZ) - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research in Göttingen have investigated these questions in a study with rhesus monkeys. They were able to show that two different nerve cell types in the same brain area are responsible for the decision-making process. A preliminary tendency for an action plan influences the final decision and the weighing of both options is already visible on the neuronal level. The striker is therefore likely to shoot to the left even if the goalkeeper suddenly changes his posture - and the penalty may fail (eLife).

The scientists have trained two rhesus monkeys to perform a task on a screen. At the same time, the activity of the nerve cells in their brain was measured. Circular signals appeared on the touch screen the monkeys should touch. The circles appeared on the right or left, at the top or bottom of the screen. The place where they appeared was random, but the monkeys received a hint in the form of small arrows where the next signal could appear. For example, if there was a large purple arrow pointing to the left and a small blue arrow pointing to the right at the same time, it was more likely that the signal would appear on the left. However, this expectation was violated every now and then by the signal appearing exactly opposite the previously indicated direction or by both signals appearing simultaneously on the right and left, which could then be freely selected.

The researchers observed that the monkeys developed a tendency towards the direction indicated by the arrows previously shown. If the signal appeared on the expected side, they solved the task correctly and quickly. If, contrary to expectations, the signal appeared on the opposite side, the reaction times increased and the monkeys made more mistakes. If the animals had the free choice, they preferred in most cases those signals, which appeared on the before indicated side, even if both possibilities were objectively considered equivalent.

"A preliminary action tendency influences subsequent decisions, even if the facts change in the meantime," says Lalitta Suriya-Arunroj, first author of the study. "Even though the monkeys had a free choice, they opted for their provisional plan of action. The striker in front of the goal has a similar situation. He sees that the goalkeeper wants to jump to the right and plans the left corner first. Even if the goalkeeper takes a neutral posture at the last moment, in most cases he will keep this direction and the penalty kick may be intercepted."

At the level of nerve cells, the scientists were also able to make a new discovery: Decision-making and the weighing between several action alternatives are mapped as a dual process on the neuronal level. Two different types of nerve cells are responsible for this. The first group is responsible for coding the preferred target. As long as there is no tendency, they are not active, they only fire when a preference for an action option arises. The stronger the tendency for this option, the more active the cells become. The second group of nerve cells shows all given alternatives from the beginning. It is decided which of the options for action is out of the question. The nerve cells that code for the non-preferred option are the more strongly down-regulated the less the option is considered. According the choice-by-elimination principle, the option that represents the best choice remains.

"The fact that two different nerve cells in the same brain area are responsible for the decision-making process is a new finding of this study," says Alexander Gail, head of the sensorimotor research group at the DPZ and also author of the study. "The planning in the brain is thus controlled by a dual process that reflects strong tendencies to act as well as all other possibilities that can be eliminated one after the other by the choice-by-elimination principle. Thus, the brain enables us to make balanced and flexible decisions. The striker in front of the goal, despite his first preference, is thus able not to immediately exclude the other corner of the goal as an option, can change the direction of the shot at the last moment and thus possibly still score a goal."

A team of scientists from Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) together with their colleagues developed a method of targeted drug delivery to cancer cells. The discovery is based on the use of mesenchymal stem cells and microcapsules made of polymeric compounds. The results were published in the Biomaterials Science journal. In the future the discovery may secure more precise treatment of tumors without causing damage to healthy tissues.

Different types of tissues, including fat, muscle, cartilage, and bone, originate from mesenchymal stem cells (MSC). Moreover, these cells can migrate to tumors and react with them. The reason for it is chemokines -- protein-like substances that are actively released by neoplasms. Chemokines attract the cells that have specific receptors on their surface, and the migration of such cells is aligned with the growth of chemokine concentration. The CXCR4 receptor on the surface of MSC reacts with the SDF-1 chemokine and makes the cells move closer to the tumor.

"The development of drug delivery systems based on living cells is a burning issue in biomed. This strategy provides for the use of cell cultures that are able to react with tumors. MSC are considered one of the most promising among the potential drug delivery platforms because they are relatively easy to obtain and grow in a lab," explained Timofey Karpov, a co-developer of the method, an associate at the Laboratory for Microencapsulation and Controlled Delivery of Biologically Active Compounds, RASA-SPbPU Center.

The new technology allows one to pack different biologically active substances, including anti-cancer drugs. The team selected vincristine as a sample drug because it affects different types of growths and is actively used in chemotherapy. Vincristine was put inside special microcapsules made of polymeric compounds and gold nanorods. By means of phagocytosis the capsules got into the MSC, and after that the cells were treated with infrared light that penetrates the tissues deeply without damaging them. As a result, gold particles in the capsules absorbed large amounts of energy and heated up. The heat destroyed the polymeric structures, and the drug was released into MSC. A part of vincristine remained inside, but another part got into the intercellular space and affected the tumor.

"The new technology for the synthesis of sub- and micron-sized polymeric capsules provides for the packaging of different biologically active substances. Based on it, platforms for the delivery of a wide range of antitumor substances can be developed, and drugs for different areas of modern medicine can be created. Infrared light has been widely used for a long time and is almost harmless when the irradiation parameters are set up correctly," said Timofey Karpov.

Targeted drug delivery can help reduce the toxic effects of chemotherapy by minimizing the negative impact on healthy cells.

When the state of Michigan expanded its Medicaid program to provide health coverage to more low-income residents, its leaders built special features into the plan, different from most states. They wanted to encourage enrollees to understand their individual health risks, and incentivize them to prevent future health problems, or find them early.

According to two new studies, that effort has paid off.

The percentage of enrollees in the Healthy Michigan Plan who saw a primary care doctor in a given year doubled, and many of those visits included a discussion of healthy behaviors that could improve their long-term health, the studies show.

Half of the enrollees said they completed the Healthy Michigan Plan "health risk assessment" questionnaire and went over it with a physician. A majority of enrollees got preventive care, such as cancer screenings or dental visits.

It appears that the special financial incentives that the state built into the program played only a partial role in completion of the health risk assessment. In fact, many of the enrollees didn't even know they could get a cost-sharing discount by filling it out and discussing it with their doctor.

The new findings appear in two papers published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine by several members of the Healthy Michigan Plan evaluation team from the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

A focus on primary care and prevention

The studies are based on results from a survey of more than 4,000 Michiganders, out of the more than 1 million who have gotten coverage from the Healthy Michigan Plan since its launch in 2014.

The program currently covers more than 642,000 state residents who make less than about $16,000 a year for an individual, or $33,000 for a family of four. Among those surveyed, over two-thirds are working, going to school, retired or unable to work.

"Customizing Medicaid expansion to emphasize primary care and prevention took extra effort, but appears successful, at least according to the snapshot of enrollees that these data represent," says Susan Dorr Goold, M.D., MHSA, M.A., the lead author of one of the two papers and a professor of internal medicine at U-M.

Former IHPI National Clinician Scholar Taylor Kelley, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc., now at the University of Utah, notes, "While too early to tell whether the program will lead to sustained behavior change, it is clear more conversations are happening between doctors and patients about lifestyle change, and patients have been surprisingly eager to commit to healthy behaviors." Kelley is lead author of the other of the two papers.

"The role of primary care providers, and their teams, in helping low-income and working-poor people understand what health risks they face, and encouraging them to modify the risk factors they can change, is crucial," says Renuka Tipirneni, M.D., M.Sc., senior author of the paper led by Kelley and an assistant professor of internal medicine.

Goold, Kelley, Tipirneni and many of their co-authors have been part of the IHPI team that is carrying out the official evaluation of the Healthy Michigan Plan for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

The team surveyed 4,090 HMP participants between the ages of 19 and 64 years who had been enrolled in the program for more than a year, using their preferred language of English, Spanish, or Arabic. The survey was carried out in 2016, and claims data were also used to examine enrollees' use of health care services.

Some of their key findings:

Insurance status:

Nearly 58% of those surveyed had not had health insurance in the year before they enrolled in HMP, and half of the rest said they had previously had insurance through Medicaid or another state program.

One-third said they hadn't gotten care they needed in the 12 months before enrolling, mostly because of cost or a lack of insurance coverage. Nearly two-thirds of this subgroup said they'd gone without dental care they needed.

Nearly 90% said that having HMP coverage had reduced their stress and worry; those who had been uninsured before they obtained HMP coverage were even more likely to say so.

Where they received care:

One in five enrollees said they hadn't had a primary care visit in the five years before their HMP coverage began, and only two-fifths had seen a primary care provider in the year before they enrolled in HMP coverage.

Nearly 90% of enrollees had seen a primary care provider since enrolling, and nearly 95% of those enrollees said they had discussed wellness and prevention as part of a primary care visit.

Ninety-two percent said that they now had a regular source of medical care, compared to under 73% before they were covered by HMP.

The percentage who said that their regular source of care was an emergency room or urgent care center dropped from 25.3% before enrollment, to 7% after they enrolled in HMP.

Getting covered didn't automatically mean access to care: 15% said that despite their HMP coverage, they had still gone without needed care in the past 12 months, for varied reasons including costs and their health plan's coverage provisions.

59% said their HMP coverage had helped them get access to prescription drugs, and 46% said it had helped them get access to dental care.

Health risk assessments

Half of enrollees said they had completed a health risk assessment, or HRA.

Nearly four-fifths of those who completed an HRA chose to work on a healthy behavior, and the percentage was even higher among those with chronic illnesses. More than half of them chose to work on eating healthier and/or exercising more.

Nearly a fifth of those who chose a healthy behavior to work on said they would try to stop smoking, that percentage was even higher among those with a mental health condition or substance use disorder.

Only 31.5% of enrollees said that completing the HRA hadn't been helpful because they already knew what they needed to do to improve their health.

Nearly half of those who completed an HRA said they did it because their primary care provider had encouraged it. Only 2.5% said that the promise of a monetary reward spurred them to complete an HRA, and only 28% said they had known that they could get a reduction in the amount they would have to pay.

Preventive health care

More than 70% of the women over 50 had received breast cancer screening in the past 12 months under HMP, and more than half of adults over 50 had received colon cancer screening. Cancer screenings, and other proven preventive screenings and vaccinations, are covered by the Healthy Michigan Plan with no co-pay.

Sixty percent of enrollees had seen a dentist in the past year through their HMP coverage.

More than 10% of enrollees who reported using tobacco had gotten a prescription for an FDA-approved product to help them break their nicotine habit.

Those who knew that preventive health services were available at no cost to them were more likely to receive them. But knowledge that completing an HRA could reduce their fees didn't increase use.

Climate change is not just resulting in a steady increase in temperatures, but also in an increased frequency and severity of extreme climatic events, like droughts, heat waves, and floods. These extreme conditions are particularly damaging for agriculture. Climate variability is responsible for at least 30% of the annual fluctuations in worldwide agricultural yield. Under "normal" climatic conditions, the global food system can compensate for local crop losses through grain storage and trade. However, it is doubtful whether the current system is resilient to more extreme climatic conditions.

In a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, IIASA researcher Franziska Gaupp and colleagues looked at the risk of simultaneous breadbasket failures due to climatic extremes, and how the risk has changed over time. "Climatic connections between global phenomena such as the El Niño Southern Oscilliation (ENSO) and regional climate extremes such as Indian heatwaves, or flood risks around the globe pose a risk to the global food system," notes lead author Gaupp. "Climatic shocks to agricultural production contribute to food price spikes and famine, with the potential to trigger other systemic risks, including political unrest and migration. This analysis can provide the basis for a more efficient allocation of resources to contingency plans and strategic crop reserves that would enhance the resilience of the global food system."

The study looks at climatic and crop yield data for the main agricultural regions within the highest crop producing countries by mass from 1967 to 2012. The analysis shows that there has been a significant increase in the probability of multiple global breadbasket failures for particularly wheat, maize, and soybeans. For soybeans, for example, the implications of crop failure in all major breadbaskets associated with climate risk would be at least 12.55 million tons of crop losses. This exceeds the 7.2 million tons of losses in 1988-1989, one of the largest historical soybean production shocks.

On a global scale, there are both negative and positive correlations between the world's breadbaskets and climatic dependence. Precipitation-based risks for soybean breadbaskets in India and Argentina are negatively correlated. This means that heavy rainfall in India will negatively affect the local soybean harvest, but this can be mitigated by imports from Argentina - in this way, crop losses can be balanced out.

On the other hand, there is a positive correlation between the maximum temperature in the EU and Australia, for example. The risk of increasing temperatures in Australia due to climate change could affect the amount of wheat they are able to export to the EU. This could then place additional pressure on the EU in case of drought during the wheat season.
This is the first study of this type and scale. While the possibility of a climatic extreme hitting more than one global breadbasket has been a growing cause for concern, only a few studies have investigated the probability of simultaneous production shocks. "Our approach is able to estimate simultaneous large-scale extreme climatic events in a risk-based manner, and therefore enables the development of new risk response strategies", says study coauthor Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler, researcher with the Risk and Resilience Program at IIASA.

Data on emission amounts and sources have an important role to play in shaping policy on climate protection and air quality. Now, scientists from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, have presented the first high-resolution inventory to record emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants in Nepal over an extended period of time. Their research reveals that the air pollution problem is growing at a much faster rate than the economy.

"Over eighty percent of Nepal's energy needs are met by biomass, in particular, wood. This gives rise to considerable amounts of particulate matter and ozone precursors, which adversely affect the climate, air quality, human health, crops and the cryosphere, those parts of the Earth's surface where water is in solid form. The emissions inventory helps us identify the main causes of emissions, the proportional contributions of individual sources or sectors, and critical regions," explains lead author Pankaj Sadavarte. The researchers estimated emissions from fuel consumption due to technology use in private households, industry, agriculture, the transport sector, and other economic sectors in the period from 2001 to 2016.

Wood-burning stoves a major source of air pollution

In Nepal, private households account for a much larger share of fuel consumption and hence emissions, especially particulates, than in industrial nations like Germany. For example, in 2011 they were responsible for 58 per cent of emissions of soot, one of the main components of particulate matter. The traditional low-efficiency wood-burning stoves used in most Nepalese homes for cooking and heating are the main culprits here. As well as being detrimental to human health, soot is an important climate forcer, the second largest after carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide emissions in the same year came mainly from industries (46%), notably cement factories, followed by private households (31%), and transport (14%).

The significant increase in total emissions from industry and the transport sector is particularly striking. In the period from 2001 to 2016 industrial emissions tripled and emissions from transport more than quadrupled. By contrast, the increase in emissions from private households, though still the dominant source, was only marginal over the same period. "Fossil-based energy consumption increased manifold during the investigation period. For example, consumption of LPG, petrol and diesel rose by a factor of 7, 6 and 4 respectively. But the national gross domestic product increased by only 74% from around US$11.42 billion in 2001. This means that the pollution problem is growing at a much faster rate than the economy - a trend that should ideally be reversed," says co-author Maheswar Rupakheti.

Emissions inventory informs policy measures

The researchers are currently working on part 2 of the inventory, which will present data on emissions from open fires, like agriculture waste and municipal solid waste. According to Rupakheti, as well as advancing research, the data can make a valuable contribution to analysing the mitigation potential of various measures and designing evidence-based policies. "They are helpful when it comes to evaluating potential air quality solutions with co-befits to climate and other associated issues. We have calculated, for example, that the most important air pollutants can be reduced by 30 per cent if so-called superemitters -highly polluting vehicles - are removed from the transport system. So that would be a good immediate policy target." With this new emissions inventory and the forthcoming second part, the researchers are working to develop further air quality and climate protection strategies together with stakeholders on the ground in Nepal.

Ageing is a dramatic public health issue in the face of the current demographic changes: the proportion of 60 and over in the world's population will almost double by 2050. In this context, a new discovery has just broadened scientific knowledge. Researchers from the Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Department at the Institut Pasteur shed light on the mechanisms of senescence, by identifying a key protein associated with ageing.

Currently, most of older people die of noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, rather than infectious or parasitic diseases, even in developing countries. Thus, ageing is a major public health issue and the Institut Pasteur is committed to being a major player in research in this area.

A better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that lead to ageing will pave the way towards ultimately healthier ageing, which is a major socioeconomic issue for the coming decades.

Identification of a key protein linked to ageing

Senescence, which is a process that limits proliferation of damaged cells in response to various types of stress, has been associated to ageing. Accumulation of senescent cells in tissues may contribute to organ degeneration and age-related diseases. As a result, clearance of these cells has been associated with slower ageing and longer healthspan in animal models.

Scientists from Institut Pasteur and CNRS demonstrated that progressive depletion of a protein drives proliferating cells into irreversible ageing. Moreover, such a depletion is a very early trigger, and therefore a determinant of cellular ageing, or senescence.

This factor, called CSB is involved in Cockayne syndrome, a disease affecting about one in every 200,000 people in European countries. The absence of CSB protein or its dysfunction causes early ageing, photosensitivity, progressive neurological disorders and intellectual deficit in patients with Cockayne syndrome. "We had previously shown that the absence or impairment of CSB is also responsible for dysfunction of mitochondria, the power plant of cells" says Dr. Miria Ricchetti, head of the team Stability of Nuclear and Mitochondrial DNA within the Stem Cells and Development Unit at the Institut Pasteur. "This new study reveals the very same alterations in replicative senescence, a process strictly linked to physiological ageing" say Dr. Ricchetti.

The importance of the present discovery is that it shows that a factor that was considered to be stable in normal cells is instead progressively depleted when they proliferate. When this happens, the cell is irreparably committed to the dead end of senescence.

The exhaustion of CSB is driven by epigenetic modifications (reversible and regulated modifications of gene expression, without altering the DNA) that block its expression at the DNA level. Moreover, a molecule previously identified by these researchers as being able to reverse the defects of Cockayne syndrome patient cells, is also able to attenuate the commitment of normal cells to senescence.

"These studies demonstrate an important link between the [pathological] accelerated ageing process and normal aging, and also expose the CSB protein as a key factor against cellular ageing" concludes Dr. Ricchetti.

They sport some of the most impressive headgear in the insect world, yet they're no bigger than a kernel of corn.

They live all over the world, including in Storrs, mostly found in woods and gardens, but a select few have one of the best views of campus from their cozy mesh tents inside the rooftop research greenhouses on the Biology/Physics Building - not typically a place where you'd want to house a bug that pierces plants to feast on their juices. But these aren't typical bugs.

Worldwide, there are more than 3,000 species of tiny treehoppers, known for their ornate pronotum - the dorsal topside of first of the three segments of an insect's thorax - that is commonly referred to as the treehopper's "helmet." Why the treehopper developed the enlarged, three-dimensional hood ornament that distinguishes it from the rest of the insect world remains a mystery to scientists, though it's theorized that mimicry or camouflage designed to protect it from predators is a likely reason.

But a study from researchers in UConn's Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, published today in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, is shedding new light on a long-running debate over just how treehopper's helmet evolved.

"I've always been interested in things that look really cool," said Cera Fisher Ph.D. '19, a post-doctoral researcher and UConn Outstanding Scholar Fellowship recipient who has been studying treehoppers since 2012 and is the lead author of the new study. "And, in particular, the kinds of body shapes where you're like, 'Whoa! How did that evolve?' You know, where it's just a little bit mind blowing."

The treehopper's helmet is, indeed, mind blowing: Some species resemble leaves or thorns, while others look as though ants or wasps are sitting perched atop the treehopper's head. How that unique helmet came to be has been the subject of debate amongst the entomologists and evolutionary biologists that study the small insects: Does it develop using the same genes as the rest of the body wall? Or did it have to borrow developmental genes from somewhere else - maybe the legs or wings?

"With their closest relatives - and really almost every other bug - this same body part is just a flat piece of their back," said Fisher. "With the treehopper, that body part projects in three different dimensions, giving them this whole new space in which they can evolve. They've been around for maybe 130 million years, but in that time they've evolved 3000 different shapes of this body part. That kind of diversity is really stunning."

Fisher sought to tackle the question of how the treehopper evolved its helmet by sequencing the insect's RNA, the nucleic acid present in all living cells that works as a messenger, carrying information on how genes are expressed. She developed her samples by first domesticating her own colony of Entylia carinata, which Fisher calls the "camelback treehopper" - a species that can be found in Connecticut, has an interesting c-shaped curve in its helmet, develops relatively quickly from egg to adult, and isn't quite as picky about its diet as some other species. The UConn colony dines on fast-growing and easy-to-cultivate sunflower plants.

Next, Fisher dissected the tiny bugs - a painstaking process undertaken with a microscope and extremely fine tools - and extracted samples from the treehoppers. She also extracted samples from Homalodisca vitripennis, a species of leafhopper bug that is related to treehoppers but lacks a helmet and instead displays the more-typical, smooth-surfaced pronotum.

"The leafhopper is our comparison case," said Fisher. "It's standing in for what we think the treehopper's ancestor what their common ancestor might have been more like."

Fisher then sequenced the RNA from multiple body parts in both insects and waded through more than one billion data points in search of any similarities or signals that might point to specific genes at play in the formation of the treehopper's helmet. Ultimately, while the leafhopper's RNA sequence showed that its flat pronotum was substantially similar to its also flat mesonotum, which is the topside of its second body segment, the genes of the treehopper's helmeted pronotum were most similar to its wings.

"We had three different ideas for things that might have led to the evolution of the helmet," Fisher said. "We thought that maybe it was just using the same developmental pathways that normally are used in that dorsal body wall. We thought that it might be possible that it was reusing some wing-related genes, and then we thought it might be that it's reusing genes that are normally involved in leg development."

Fisher continued, "At a really high level, the RNA data indicates that the helmet is using a lot of the same genes that the wings use in development; it's being built with the same genes."

Elizabeth Jockusch, the lab director and professor overseeing Fisher's work and co-author of the study, said the biggest surprise for her was in just how large the effect on gene expression was.

"I would have thought that even if the helmet had incorporated a developmental network from some other body part," she said, "that we would still predominately see that it looked like its serial homologue," meaning the body part nearest to it, the second thoracic segment. That, however, was not the case: the genetic landscape linking the wings to the helmet was overwhelmingly clear.

Jockusch said the other surprise from the study was that, between the two species - the treehopper and the leafhopper - everything in the gene expression lines up exactly the way you think it would, except for the treehopper's helmet.

"Especially in insects, with how their body plans change, the way you get all this diversity is by these serially repeated body parts diverging from each other," Fisher said. "What is interesting about the treehopper is that it's a case of divergence of these serial homologues where it's not just acquiring a few changes gradually over the course of hundreds of millions of years. It's taking this entire suite of genes and redeploying it in this spot and, by doing so, you get a really different body part."

Fisher's study only involved one species of treehopper and one species of leafhopper, and only sampled the insects at one point in their development from immature nymphs to complete, helmeted adults. Her work on the fascinating little bugs will continue, though, with additional study that involves sampling the same species at different points in their nymphal development as well as sampling two additional species of treehoppers to see if the same RNA signaling occurs in across different members of the diverse treehopper family. The continuing study will also add another comparison species, the milkweed bug.

Fisher said that there are still questions to be answered about how the treehopper helmet came to be.

"You can try to get at the early changes, like what exactly changed to kick off all of this wing-like gene expression?" she said. "Another question is that, given that we have this wing-like gene expression, how do we get all these shapes? How do we get all this diversity? Because there's a lot of diversity in insect wings, too, and a lot of the ways that insect wings can change shape and form have been studied a lot, especially in butterflies. But we don't know how this three-dimensional thing might get tinkered with through natural selection."

When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean, water vapor data provided information about the intensity of Tropical Cyclone Belna.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Belna on Dec. 9 at 5:10 a.m. EST (1010 UTC) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument gathered water vapor content and temperature information. The MODIS image showed highest concentrations of water vapor and coldest cloud top temperatures were encircling the center. MODIS data also showed coldest cloud top temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 degrees Celsius) in those storms. Storms with cloud top temperatures that cold have the capability to produce heavy rainfall.

Water vapor analysis of tropical cyclones tells forecasters how much potential a storm has to develop. Water vapor releases latent heat as it condenses into liquid. That liquid becomes clouds and thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone. Temperature is important when trying to understand how strong storms can be. The higher the cloud tops, the colder and stronger they are.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), Belna was located near latitude 14.6 degrees south and longitude 45.6 degrees east, about 550 nautical miles northeast of Europa Island. Belna is moving south-southwest toward northwestern Madagascar. Maximum sustained winds are near 80 knots (92 mph/148 kph).

Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center expect Belna will move south-southwest and continue weakening before making landfall in northwestern Madagascar  near Soalala by Dec. 9 at 1800 UTC (1 p.m. EST) with maximum sustained winds expected near 75 knots (86 mph/139 kph).

NASA's Aqua satellite is one in a fleet of NASA satellites that provide data for hurricane research.

Tropical cyclones and hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

For updated warnings from METEO Madagascar, visit: http://www.meteomadagascar.mg/cyclone

AMES, Iowa - The United States is suffering from several different simultaneous opioid epidemics, rather than just a single crisis, according to an academic study of deaths caused by drug overdoses.

David Peters, an associate professor of sociology at Iowa State University, co-authored the study, which appeared in the academic journal Rural Sociology. Peters and his co-authors conducted a county-level analysis of death certificates from across the country that noted opioid overdoses as the cause of death. The study found regional differences in the kind of opioids that cause the most overdose deaths, and these differences should lead to policymakers considering varying strategies to address the epidemics, Peters said.

"Our results show that it's more helpful to think of the problem as several epidemics occurring at the same time rather than just one," Peters said. "And they occur in different regions of the country, so there's no single policy response that's going to address all of these epidemics. There needs to be multiple sets of policies to address these distinct challenges."

Multiple epidemics

The study describes three different opioid epidemics in the United States, as well as a syndemic, or a single population experiencing more than one epidemic:

-- A prescription drug epidemic persists in rural southern states where access to opioids centers on local pharmacies. Overdose deaths linked to pharmaceuticals peaked nationwide in 2013 and have fallen in the years since. However, some rural counties continue to struggle with prescription drugs, according to the study.

-- A heroin epidemic has taken root in states out west and in the Midwest, especially in urban areas near major interstates that experience heavy drug trafficking. The study found overdose deaths related to heroin clustered along two major corridors, one linking El Paso to Denver and another linking Texas and Chicago. Peters said those findings correspond with known routes used by cartels smuggling heroin into the United States from Mexico.

-- An epidemic of synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, has grown as a major concern in urban centers in the northeastern United States. Often these synthetic drugs are mixed with heroin or cocaine and made to resemble prescription medications. These counterfeit street mixes are highly potent and deadly.

-- A syndemic involving multiple simultaneous opioid epidemics exists in counties where the opioid crisis first erupted, particularly in mid-size cities in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia that have experienced steep job losses in manufacturing and mining.

Peters said roughly a quarter of all counties in the United States fall into one of the epidemic categories noted in the study.

PRINCETON, N.J.--People perceive a person's competence partly based on subtle economic cues emanating from the person's clothing, according to a study published in Nature Human Behaviour by Princeton University. These judgments are made in a matter of milliseconds, and are very hard to avoid.

In nine studies conducted by the researchers, people rated the competence of faces wearing different upper-body clothing. Clothing perceived as "richer" by an observer -- whether it was a T-shirt, sweater, or other top -- led to higher competence ratings of the person pictured than similar clothes judged as "poorer," the researchers found.

Given that competence is often associated with social status, the findings suggest that low-income individuals may face hurdles in relation to how others perceive their abilities --
simply from looking at their clothing.

"Poverty is a place rife with challenges. Instead of respect for the struggle, people living in poverty face a persistent disregard and disrespect by the rest of society," said study co-author Eldar Shafir, Class of 1987 Professor in Behavioral Science and Public Policy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. "We found that such disrespect -- clearly unfounded, since in these studies the identical face was seen as less competent when it appeared with poorer clothing -- can have its beginnings in the first tenth of a second of an encounter."

"Wealth inequality has worsened since the late 1980s in the United States. Now the gap between the top 1% and the middle class is over 1,000,000%, a mind-numbing figure," said lead author DongWon Oh, who worked on the study as a Ph.D. student at Princeton, and is now a postdoctoral fellow in New York University's Department of Psychology. "Other labs' work has shown people are sensitive to how rich or poor other individuals appear. Our work found that people are susceptible to these cues when judging others on meaningful traits, like competence, and that these cues are hard, if not impossible, to ignore."

Oh and Shafir, who is the inaugural director of Princeton's Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Public Policy, conducted the study with Alexander Todorov, professor of psychology at Princeton.

The researchers began with images of 50 faces, each wearing clothes rated as "richer" or "poorer" by an independent group of judges who were asked, "How rich or poor does this person look?" Based on those ratings, the researchers selected 18 black and 18 white face-clothing pairs displaying the most prominent rich-poor differences. These were then used across the nine studies.

To make sure the clothes did not portray extreme wealth or poverty, the researchers asked a separate group of judges to describe the clothing seen in the images. The descriptions revealed very mild differences, and extremely positive or negative words were rare. The words "rich" or "poor," or their synonyms, occurred only once out of a total 4,725 words.

Participants were then presented with half of the faces wearing "richer" upper-body clothing, and the other half with "poorer" clothing. They were told that the researchers were interested in how people evaluate others' appearances, and were asked to rate the competence of the faces they saw, relying on their "gut feelings," on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 9 (extremely).

Participants saw the images for three different lengths of time, ranging from about one second to approximately 130 milliseconds, which is barely long enough to realize one saw a face, Shafir said. Remarkably, ratings remained consistent across all time durations.

In several of the studies that followed, the researchers made tweaks to the original design.

In some studies, they replaced all suits and ties with non-formal clothing. In others, they told participants there was no relationship between clothes and competence. In one study, they provided information about the persons' profession and income to minimize potential inferences from clothing. In another, they expanded the participant pool to nearly 200, and explicitly instructed participants to ignore the clothing.

Later, a new set of faces was used, and the participants were again advised to ignore the clothing. To further encourage participants to ignore the clothes, another study offered a monetary reward to those whose ratings were closest to ratings made by a group who saw the faces without clothes. In the final study, instead of asking for individual ratings, the researchers presented pairs of faces from the previous studies and asked participants to choose which person was more competent.

Regardless of these changes, the results remained consistent: Faces were judged as significantly more competent when the clothing was perceived as "richer." This judgment was made almost instantaneously and also when more time was provided. When warned that clothing had nothing to do with competence, or explicitly asked to ignore what the person in the photo was wearing, the biased competency judgments persisted.

Across studies, the researchers found that economic status -- captured by clothing cues -- influenced competency judgments. This persisted even when the faces were presented very briefly, when information was provided about a person's profession or income, when clothing was formal or informal, when participants were advised to ignore the clothing, when participants were warned there was no relationship between clothing and competency, and when they were offered a monetary incentive for making judgments independent of the clothing.

"To overcome a bias, one needs to not only be aware of it, but to have the time, attentional resources, and motivation to counteract the bias," the researchers wrote. "In our studies, we warned participants about the potential bias, presented them with varying lengths of exposure, gave them additional information about the targets, and offered financial incentives, all intended to alleviate the effect. But none of these interventions were effective."

An important concern for future psychological work is how to transcend first impressions, the researchers conclude.

"Knowing about a bias is often a good first step," Shafir said. "A potential, even if highly insufficient, interim solution may be to avoid exposure whenever possible. Just like teachers sometimes grade blindly so as to avoid favoring some students, interviewers and employers may want to take what measures they can, when they can, to evaluate people, say, on paper so as to circumvent indefensible yet hard to avoid competency judgments. Academic departments, for example, have long known that hiring without interviews can yield better scholars. It's also an excellent argument for school uniforms."

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Political affiliations, the presence of local environmental organizations and prior local media coverage of climate change play a role in how a community reacts to an extreme weather event, an article published today in Nature Climate Change concludes.

"Extreme weather events such as a catastrophic wildfire, a 500-year flood or a record-breaking heatwave may result in some local discussion and action around climate change, but not as much as might be expected and not in every community," said Hilary Boudet, the paper's lead author and an associate professor of public policy in Oregon State University's School of Public Policy in the College of Liberal Arts.

"In terms of making links to climate change, local reactions to an extreme weather event depend both on aspects of the event itself, but also on political leanings and resources within the community before the event took place."

Boudet's work is part of a growing body of research exploring the links between personal experience with an extreme weather event and social mobilization around climate change. The study was part of a project examining community reactions to extreme weather in the U.S.

The researchers sought to better understand how extreme weather events might influence local attitudes and actions related to climate change.

Researchers conducted 164 interviews with local residents and community leaders in 15 communities across the United States that had experienced extreme weather events that caused at least four fatalities between 2012 and 2015. They also analyzed media coverage to better understand what kinds of public discussions, actions and policies around climate change occurred in those communities.

Of the 15 communities, nine showed evidence of public discussion about the event's connection to climate change in the wake of the disaster.

"Although many of the extreme events we studied spurred significant emergency response from volunteers and donations for rescue and recovery efforts, we found these events sparked little mobilization around climate change," Boudet said. "Yet there was also a distinct difference between cases where community climate change discussion occurred and where it did not, allowing us to trace pathways to that discussion."

When there was some scientific certainty that the weather event was related to climate change, discussion about the connection was more likely to occur, particularly in communities that leaned Democratic or where residents were highly educated, Boudet said.

However, even in communities where climate change was discussed in relation to the weather event, it was often a marginal issue. Other more immediate concerns, such as emergency response management and economic recovery, generated far more discussion and subsequent action.

Some of those interviewed suggested that broaching the topic of climate change amid disaster recovery efforts could be interpreted as using a tragedy to advance a political agenda, Boudet said.

"Recent shifts in U.S. opinions on climate change suggest that it may become a more acceptable topic of conversation following an extreme weather event," Boudet said. "Yet our results indicate that it may take time for such discussions to take place, particularly in Republican-leaning communities."

While the work challenges the notion that a single extreme weather event will yield rapid local social mobilization around climate change, the researchers found that communities may still make important changes post-event to ensure more effective responses to future events.

Boudet and her team are currently examining local policy action post-event to understand how such action relates to local climate change discussion.

The rapid expansion of cities around the world is having an enormous impact on biodiversity. To gain a clearer picture of the situation, an international group of scientists, including Professor Andrew Gonzalez from McGill's Biology Department, surveyed over 600 studies on the impacts of urban growth on biodiversity. They published their findings today in Nature Sustainability.

"Our understanding of the rising impacts of cities is crucial for future biodiversity targets, but we must quickly fill existing gaps in our knowledge because they impede our ability to make new policy to manage the impacts of urban growth," says Gonzalez.

The research underlines what we know about the effects of urban expansion on natural habitats:

We are living in the fastest period of urban growth in human history. By 2030, more than 2 billion additional people are expected to be living in cities, a pace of urban growth that is the equivalent to building a city the size of New York City every six weeks.

290,000 square kilometers, (an area larger in size than the entire United Kingdom) of natural habitat are forecast to be converted to urban land uses by 2030.

The direct impacts of urban expansion on biodiversity will be most severe in the tropical coastal regions such as those in China, Brazil, and Nigeria where there is a high level of biodiversity.

But the research also suggests that scientists are not studying the impacts of urban growth in the right places. The authors find that more research is needed if we are to build a complete picture of how cities are impacting nature. Key aspects for future research include:

More research into the impacts of urban expansion in lower income countries in the southern hemisphere where loss of natural habitat is projected to be most severe, particularly in the tropical rain forests, such as those along the Brazilian coast, in West Africa and in Southeast Asia.

72% of studies of direct urban impacts on biodiversity are in high-income countries, while the natural habitat loss caused by urban expansion is projected to be most severe in lower-income countries.

Comparatively few studies (only 34%) have quantified the indirect impacts of urban growth on biodiversity.

The indirect impacts of urban expansion on biodiversity, such as the food and energy needed to maintain city residents stretch far beyond the city limits and are likely to have a much greater impact than the direct impacts of the city itself. For example, the amount of agricultural land required to feed the world's cities is 36 times greater in size than the urban areas themselves.

New Rochelle, NY, December 9, 2019--A new study developed and validated a tool for assessing children's overall addiction to digital devices. The study, which found that more than 12% of children ages 9-12 years were at risk of addiction to digital devices for uses including video gaming, social media, and texting, is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. Click here to read the full-text article free on the Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking website through January 9, 2019.

The article entitled "The Digital Addiction Scale for Children: Development and Validation" was coauthored by Nazir Hawi and Maya Samaha, Notre Dame University -Louaize (Mosbeh, Lebanon), and Mark Griffiths, Nottingham Trent University (UK). The researchers based the Digital Addiction Scale for Children (DASC) on the nine diagnostic criteria for addiction. They also mapped it onto six core addiction criteria: preoccupation, tolerance, withdrawal, mood modification, conflict, and relapse. They included three additional criteria: problems (with life necessities that could become uncontrollable due to digital addiction, such as sleep, discord with parents, or academic achievement); deception (how children lie to their parents about the amount of time and what they do on their digital devices); and displacement (parental feelings of disconnectedness from their children that result in compromising the family unit).

"Using validated scales, many pediatricians proactively screen their patients for problematic and risky internet use and internet gaming disorder to identify and address issues that may negatively affect child and adolescent health and wellbeing. The DASC may prove a useful assessment tool for clinicians to also consider," says Editor-in-Chief Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCB, BCN, Interactive Media Institute, San Diego, California and Virtual Reality Medical Institute, Brussels, Belgium.