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DARIEN, IL - A study shows that a deep neural network model can accurately predict the brain age of healthy patients based on electroencephalogram data recorded during an overnight sleep study, and EEG-predicted brain age indices display unique characteristics within populations with different diseases.

The study found that the model predicted age with a mean absolute error of only 4.6 years. There was a statistically significant relationship between the Absolute Brain Age Index and: epilepsy and seizure disorders, stroke, elevated markers of sleep-disordered breathing (i.e., apnea-hypopnea index and arousal index), and low sleep efficiency. The study also found that patients with diabetes, depression, severe excessive daytime sleepiness, hypertension, and/or memory and concentration problems showed, on average, an elevated Brain Age Index compared with the healthy population sample.

According to the authors, the results demonstrate that these health conditions are associated with deviations of one's predicted age from one's chronological age.

"While clinicians can only grossly estimate or quantify the age of a patient based on their EEG, this study shows an artificial intelligence model can predict a patient's age with high precision," said lead author Yoav Nygate, senior AI engineer at EnsoData. "The model's precision enables shifts in the predicted age from the chronological age to express correlations with major disease families and comorbidities. This presents the potential for identifying novel clinical phenotypes that exist within physiological signals utilizing AI model deviations."

The researchers trained a deep neural network model to predict the age of patients using raw EEG signals recorded during clinical sleep studies performed using overnight polysomnography. The model was trained on 126,241 sleep studies, validated on 6,638 studies, and tested on a holdout set of 1,172 studies. Brain age was assessed by subtracting individuals' chronological age from their EEG-predicted age (i.e., Brain Age Index), and then taking the absolute value of this variable (i.e., Absolute Brain Age Index). Analyses controlled for factors such as sex and body mass index.

"The results in this study provide initial evidence for the potential of utilizing AI to assess the brain age of a patient," said Nygate. "Our hope is that with continued investigation, research, and clinical studies, a brain age index will one day become a diagnostic biomarker of brain health, much like high blood pressure is for risks of stroke and other cardiovascular disorders."

The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep and will be presented as a poster beginning June 9 during Virtual SLEEP 2021. SLEEP is the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, a joint venture of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society.

DURHAM, N.C. - Engineers at Duke University have demonstrated a prototype X-ray scanning machine that reveals not just the shape of an object but its molecular composition. With unprecedented resolution and accuracy, the technology could revolutionize a wide range of fields such as cancer surgery, pathology, drug inspection and geology.

Many of the ideas behind the prototype were originally conceived in the pursuit of performing better bomb detection for aviation security. In the new paper, published online May 19 in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers adapted the technology for several targeted scientific and medical applications.

"Whether you're trying to spot a bomb in a bag or a tumor in a body, the physics is more or less the same," said Joel Greenberg, associate research professor of electrical and computer engineering and faculty of the medical physics program. "But from an engineering point of view, the constraints on the two are very different. We built this smaller, higher-resolution device to demonstrate that our approach could be used for a number of different applications."

The technology is a hybrid X-ray system that combines conventional X-ray transmission radiography with X-ray diffraction tomography. The former involves measuring the X-rays that pass straight through an object. The latter involves gathering deflection angle and wavelength information from X-rays that have scattered (or bounced) off of an object, which provide a sort of "fingerprint" unique to that material's atomic structure.

One of the hurdles to adopting this technology is that the scattered X-ray signal is typically very weak and complex. This results in very few X-rays reaching the detector with each image captured, which leads to long delays while the scanner gathers enough data for the job at hand.

The Duke team's approach uses a coded aperture, a sort of pierced shield that allows X-rays travelling at many different angles to pass through its holes. The trick is in knowing the exact pattern being used to block the X-rays, which a computer can then use to process the larger, more complex signal. This allows the researchers to gather enough deflected X-rays to ID the material in a shorter time span.

In the paper, the researchers developed a new method for creating high-quality, 3D coded apertures, designed a new machine end-to-end with a user interface and compact footprint, and built a prototype using off-the-shelf components regularly used in medical imaging.

"Designing improved algorithms and implementing advanced manufacturing was essential to achieving the desired imaging performance" said Stefan Stryker, a PhD student and first author on the paper.

"Security scanning systems have different goals than an oncology lab," said Anuj Kapadia, who was an associate professor of radiology and faculty in Duke medical physics at the time of performing the research but is now at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. "Security systems need to peer through tens of centimeters of random objects in a matter of seconds, whereas our goal was to get a high-resolution image of a small, well-defined specimen with less of a time restraint."

The biggest challenge tackled by the prototype scanner involved making accurate diagnoses of potentially cancerous tissues. Working with colleagues at Duke Health, the researchers scanned tissue biopsies before they were sent to the resident pathologists for their clinical workups. The scanner not only matched the clinical diagnosis accurately, but it also reliably distinguished between the subtypes of tissue in and around the cancerous tissue.

"Our eventual goal is to have one of these scanners in every operating room so that surgeons can get an instantaneous diagnosis as soon as the cancer is removed, and they can immediately check to see if any cancerous cells are present on the edges," said Kapadia. "That way, if there's any suspicion that they missed some of the cancer, they can immediately go back and get the rest."

"While margins can often be evaluated by pathologists while the patient is still in the operating room, for tissues like breast, specimens removed at surgery require a 24-hour processing cycle before their margins can be properly assessed," said Shannon McCall, associate professor of pathology, vice chair for translational research in the department of pathology, and director of the Duke BioRepository & Precision Pathology Center (Duke BRPC). "If this new instrument allowed us to accurately assess the margins of these types of tissues while the patient was still in the operating room, that would be fantastic. Women could potentially be spared additional surgical procedures."

The researchers then showed that the scanner could provide a real-time analysis of pharmaceuticals. Not only could this help manufacturers ensure their product is reliable, but it could also be used by police forensics departments or public health campaigns to make sure people are not selling or overdosing on tainted drugs.

The scanner also proved capable of quickly analyzing rocks lent to them by an amateur collector, Greenberg's nine-year-old daughter, Madelyn. Such analyses could be useful for archaeologists studying fossils or miners making decisions about which ore to use in their extraction facilities.

Moving forward, the research team has a grant from the National Institutes of Health to optimize the scanner for tissue samples. Quadridox Inc., which was founded by Greenberg and Kapadia along with colleagues Michael Gehm (Duke) and Amit Ashok (University of Arizona), is pursuing translating the technology into products that might instead be optimized for larger rocks, quicker pharmaceutical scans or biospecimen analyses.

"We built this scanner to show all of the different types of things that it could accomplish," said Greenberg. "But a commercial machine for each application might have its own set of engineering variations, such as the way in which we make measurements, the choice of sensors or the architecture."

"If you were going to design a projector, you would need to know if it was going to be used in a dark theater or in broad daylight. The specifications would be completely different," added Kapadia. "Similarly here, our goal is to find many applications where these sorts of scans could be useful, and then engineer a variety of scanners to fit their specific needs."

Watching honeybees buzz among flowers, it's easy to see how the expression "busy as a bee" arose. One of many movements a bee's body makes is the repetitive curving and straightening of its abdomen. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have found that tiny hairs reduce friction from these motions, saving energy for the industrious insects' daily activities while reducing wear and tear. This knowledge could help researchers design longer-lasting moving parts.

A bee's abdomen is divided into several tough outer plates that make up its exoskeleton. When the abdomen flexes and extends, these segments slide over each other, creating friction. However, the overlapping portions of the segments show very little wear and tear, a finding that has puzzled scientists. Jieliang Zhao, Shaoze Yan and colleagues wanted to investigate the anti-friction mechanism of the honeybee abdomen, which could someday be used to extend the lifetime of engineered soft devices, such as actuators and hinges.

The researchers observed honeybee abdomens under a scanning electron microscope, finding numerous branched hairs on the outer surface. Then, using atomic force microscopy, they measured the friction caused by moving an exoskeletal segment across either a hairy or hairless surface. Under the same load, the friction for the hairy surface was lower than that for a smooth surface. As the load increased, friction for the hairless surface rose, whereas no obvious rise in friction was observed for the hairy surface. The researchers calculated that the hairy surface reduced abrasion during abdominal contraction by about 60% and also saved energy with each contraction. This adds up to a large amount of conserved energy that is essential for conducting bees' daily activities, the researchers say.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University engineers have developed a method to transform existing cloth items into battery-free wearables resistant to laundry. These smart clothes are powered wirelessly through a flexible, silk-based coil sewn on the textile.

In the near future, all your clothes will become smart. These smart cloths will outperform conventional passive garments, thanks to their miniaturized electronic circuits and sensors, which will allow you to seamlessly communicate with your phone, computer, car and other machines. This smart clothing will not only make you more productive but also check on your health status and even call for help if you suffer an accident. The reason why this smart clothing is not all over your closet yet is that the fabrication of this smart clothing is quite challenging, as clothes need to be periodically washed and electronics despise water.

Purdue engineers have developed a new spray/sewing method to transform any conventional cloth items into battery-free wearables that can be cleaned in the washing machine.

"By spray-coating smart clothes with highly hydrophobic molecules, we are able to render them repellent to water, oil and mud," said Ramses Martinez, an assistant professor in Purdue's School of Industrial Engineering and in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering in Purdue's College of Engineering. "These smart clothes are almost impossible to stain and can be used underwater and washed in conventional washing machines without damaging the electronic components sewn on their surface."

This technology is published in the May 25 edition of Nano Energy. Martinez's laboratory group has several videos about the technology on its dedicated YouTube channel:

"Wireless non-contact voltage detection glove"

"Powering OSC-based e-textiles underwater"

"Wirelessly powered washable textiles"

The rigidity of typical waterproof garments and their reduced breathability make them feel uncomfortable after being worn for a few hours.

"Thanks to their ultrathin coating, our smart clothes remain as flexible, stretchable and breathable as conventional cotton T-shirts," Martinez said.

Unlike common wearables, the Purdue smart clothes do not require batteries for powering. By simply harvesting energy from Wi-Fi or radio waves in the environment, the clothes are capable of powering the circuitry sewn on the textile.

One example is a battery-free glove that illuminates its fingertips every time the user is near a live cable to warn about the possibility of an electric shock. Another is a miniaturized cardiac monitoring system sewn on a washable sweatband capable of monitoring the health status of the wearer.

"Such wearable devices, powered by ubiquitous Wi-Fi signals, will make us not only think of clothing as just a garment that keeps us warm but also as wearable tools designed to help us in our daily life, monitor our health and protect us from accidents," Martinez said.

"I envision smart clothes will be able to transmit information about the posture and motion of the wearer to mobile apps, allowing machines to understand human intent without the need of other interfaces, expanding the way we communicate, interact with devices, and play video games."

This technology can be fabricated in conventional, large-scale sewing facilities, which are expected to accelerate the development and commercialization of future smart clothes.

WASHINGTON--After their initial blast, space rockets shoot away from the Earth with rumbles in infrasound, soundwaves too low to be heard by human ears that can travel thousands of miles.

New research used a system for monitoring nuclear tests to track the infrasound from 1,001 rocket launches. The research identified the distinctive sounds from seven different types of rockets, including the Space Shuttles, Falcon 9 rockets, various Soyuz rockets, the European Space Agency's Ariane 5, Russian Protons and several types of Chinese Long March rockets.

In some cases, like the Space Shuttle and the Falcon 9, the researchers were also able to identify the various stages of the rockets' journey.

https://youtu.be/IfMtEcNkkho

The new information could be useful for finding problems and identifying the atmospheric re-entry or splashdown locations of rocket stages, according to the new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, AGU's journal for high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences.

Infrasound represents acoustic soundwaves below the general threshold of frequency that humans can hear. But while higher frequency noises are louder close to the source of things like nuclear explosions, low-frequency infrasound travels longer distances. Infrasound is produced by natural events as well as technological sources, and has been used to detect remote volcanic eruptions or the hum of the ocean swell.

To listen in on rocket launches, the authors tapped into a global monitoring network. After the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, scientists set up the International Monitoring System (IMS). This system is currently characterized by a series of 53 certified and operational infrasound stations around the world. Micro barometers at the IMS stations can detect the infrasound released by large nuclear explosions.

These stations also gather the infrasonic sounds released by other large explosions such as volcanic eruptions or space rocket launches. The researchers wanted to see if they could detect and characterize the launch of space rockets around the world.

https://youtu.be/prfELKKiciw

They examined 7,637 infrasound signatures recorded at IMS stations from 2009 to mid-2020, a period that included 1,001 rocket launches. The team only examined rocket launches that occurred up to 5,000 kilometers from an IMS station, but found the acoustic signals from rocket launches could sometimes be detected up to 9,000 kilometers away, according to author Patrick Hupe, a researcher at the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.

The researchers found infrasonic signatures for up to 73% of these rockets, or 733. The other 27% of launches they couldn't detect because the rockets had smaller thrusts or the atmospheric conditions didn't favor the propagation over long distances.

For the ones they did detect, they could determine the type of rockets launched, everything from the Space Shuttles, the last of which launched in 2011, to Russian Soyuz rockets. In total, they examined the signatures for seven rocket types to derive a relation between the measured amplitude and the rocket thrust: Space Shuttles; Falcon 9s; various Soyuz rockets; the European Space Agency's Ariane 5; Russian Protons; Chinese Long March 2Cs, 2Ds, 3As, 4Bs, and 4Cs; and Long March 3Bs.

Space Shuttle vs Falcon 9

The researchers also took a closer look at two different rocket types - the Space Shuttle and the Falcon 9.

They found they could identify the infrasonic signals of various stages of flight for these rockets. For the first, a Space Shuttle launched from Kennedy Space Center in November 2009, the team detected the infrasound created by the splash down of the fuel boosters before they detected the acoustic signal of the initial rocket launch because they dropped down closer to the infrasound station than the launch site. In other words, the rocket was faster than sound.

"The rocket was faster than the infrasound propagated through the atmosphere," Hupe said.

They also examined the launch and descent of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which has a partially reusable rocket that reentered the atmosphere and landed successfully on a drone ship in the ocean in January 2020. Hupe's team could detect both the takeoff of the rocket and the landing of the first booster.

"By processing the data and also applying different quality criteria to the infrasonic signatures we were able to separate different rocket stages," Hupe said.

"The ability to detect different types of rockets could be helpful," said Adrian Peter, a professor of computer engineering and sciences at the Florida Institute of Technology that wasn't involved in Hupe's work but who has studied the infrasonic signatures of rockets before.

He said the characterization of different stages of rocket launches could be useful for determining future problems. For example, if a rocket didn't launch properly or exploded, researchers might be able to detect what went wrong by analyzing the infrasonic signature, especially when the information is correlated with sensor readings from the rockets themselves.

Peter adds that it's great to see researchers harnessing the information gathered by a monitoring network that was initially only intended to watch for nuclear launches and explosions.

"Now we're leveraging it for other scientific applications," he said, adding that there are likely further uses for this type of data.

University of Illinois Chicago researchers studying birth outcomes in marmoset monkeys found there were no adult maternal characteristics like age or weight gain during pregnancy to predict stillbirth or early neonatal death, but that a mother's birth weight or litter size were associated with early neonatal death.

"Our findings of early life contributions to adult pregnancy outcomes in the common marmoset disrupt mother-blaming narratives of pregnancy outcomes in humans," the paper states.

Julienne Rutherford, associate professor at UIC's School of Nursing, is lead author of "Womb to Womb: Maternal litter size and birth weight but not adult characteristics predict early neonatal death of offspring in the common marmoset monkey" published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Marmosets are primates who naturally produce twins, triplets and quadruplets in litters, which allow researchers to look at how different prenatal environments influence female reproductive biology. Earlier research by Rutherford and colleagues suggests that for marmoset triplets, in utero fetal life is more crowded and competitive, and they sought to find out if those factors influence pregnancy success in adulthood, a concept Rutherford calls womb-to-womb.

Rutherford and colleagues explored whether pregnancy outcomes were predicted independently by maternal adult weight versus maternal litter size and birth weight in marmoset monkeys. The study also explored whether stillbirth and early neonatal death were differentially predicted by maternal variables.

The study found that female marmosets who were triplet-born or born at lower birth weights had greater rates of infant loss during the first week of life when they became mothers. No adult maternal characteristic predicted early infant loss, and no maternal characteristic - whether when she was born or when she was an adult - predicted stillbirth in this study.

The infant marmosets who died during their first week lost significantly more weight compared with infants who survived but otherwise showed no other deficits at birth that would have predicted their deaths.

"Significant weight loss suggests they are not eating and that presents a potential pathway for asking more questions about how a mother's early life development might shape her milk production as an adult and feeding behaviors in her own babies," Rutherford said.

Rutherford said the study's findings suggest that our current approach to understanding perinatal mortality is incomplete. The causes and pathways for stillbirths versus infant death need to be understood independently. And the rigid focus on adult health and lifestyle as risk factors leaves out a huge sphere of experience and impact on pregnancy outcomes, she added.

"So much guilt and shame around pregnancy loss at every time point is in part because of our focus on lifestyle, and the individualist emphasis on personal responsibility complicates our ability to address the problems that are deeper, structural and intergenerational," Rutherford said.

"Millions of pregnancies end in really sad losses for parents, and we are still not great at understanding why that happens," Rutherford said. "Most of the things you would look at to be predictive risks focus on the woman's health history around the time of pregnancy, or race, which is really a reflection of racism. There is a lot of obsession about weight and other kinds of 'lifestyle' decisions, things that fall under individual responsibility. But these risks don't predict all these losses. Neonatal deaths still happen even when people do all the 'right' things."

Rutherford added she hopes this research can contribute to the larger view of health equity.

"What does monkey biology tell us about justice?" Rutherford said. "I see an opportunity in this kind of work to think about reimagining the way we approach human health and human health care that is just and biologically sound."

For older adults, participating in social activities can protect against physical and mental signs of aging, but it may also pose risks, especially for women.

A new analysis of national data led by UC San Francisco found that older women who were broadly engaged in social activities before the COVID pandemic had 76 percent higher odds of experiencing emotional abuse or mistreatment than women who were less engaged.

The paper is published June 9, 2021 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

"Given widespread discussion about the negative effects of social isolation of older adults during the COVID pandemic, we wanted to understand whether older adults' participation in social activities could affect their risk of abuse or mistreatment," said senior author Alison J. Huang, MD, an internal medicine specialist and clinical epidemiologist at UCSF.

"We expected that older adults who regularly take part in community-based social activities would report lower rates of abuse or mistreatment than older adults who were more socially withdrawn," said Huang. "But we found that the opposite was the case for older women."

In this study, researchers analyzed data from the 2015-2016 National Social Health and Aging Project to examine older adults' patterns of formal social participation, such as community volunteering, or attending religious services or organized meetings, as well as informal social participation, such as socializing with family and friends.

The analysis involved 2,241 older adults - 1,268 women, 973 men. The mean age for women was 75, for men it was 76. Nearly half the women and about a quarter of the men were married or living with a partner. Two thirds of the women and 60 percent of men reported at least one chronic health condition, but more than three quarters reported good to excellent physical health, and the vast majority reported good to excellent mental health.

The analysis centered on three areas of elder mistreatment - emotional, financial, and physical - starting at age 60.

Researchers found that 40 percent of the older women and 22 percent of men reported at least one form of mistreatment. Older women who were broadly engaged in organized community social activities had higher, not lower, rates of some kinds of elder abuse or mistreatment, compared to those without broad engagement. In contrast, older women who reported more "informal" socialization with friends or family had lower rates of elder abuse or mistreatment.

According to Ashwin A. Kotwal, MD, a UCSF geriatrician researcher who is the second author of the paper, there are multiple possible explanations for the study's findings. "One explanation is that older women who engage in more community social activities have more opportunities and contact points for experiencing mistreatment," he said. "These women may experience abuse from people they encounter outside the home.

"But another possibility is that older women who are already experiencing abuse may try to get more involved in the community to seek support in coping with abuse," said Kotwal.

The researchers concluded that while social engagement can connect people with valuable community support, clinicians and geriatric researchers should be on guard for unintended consequences.

"Different types of social activities can lead to both positive and negative social interactions for older adults," said first author Emmy Yang, BS, a student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She conducted her research as part of the Medical Student Training in Aging Research program through the UCSF Division of Geriatrics.

"Most importantly, our paper shows that clinicians and others shouldn't assume that older adults who appear actively engaged in the community are not experiencing mistreatment," said Yang. "Asking about older adults' social activities could be a window into identifying sources of mistreatment and support."

Research from the University of Washington shows that endangered blue whales are present and singing off the southwest coast of India. The results suggest that conservation measures should include this region, which is considering expanding tourism.

Analysis of recordings from late 2018 to early 2020 in Lakshadweep, an archipelago of 36 low-lying islands west of the Indian state of Kerala, detected whales with a peak activity in April and May.

The study was published in May in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

"The presence of blue whales in Indian waters is well known from several strandings and some live sightings of blue whales," said lead author Divya Panicker, a UW doctoral student in oceanography. "But basic questions such as where blue whales are found, what songs do they sing, what do they eat, how long do they spend in Indian waters and in what seasons are still largely a mystery."

Answers to those questions will be important for the region, which is also experiencing effects of climate change.

"This study provides conclusive evidence for the persistent occurrence of blue whales in Lakshadweep," Panicker said. "It is critical to answer these questions to draw up science-based management and conservation plans here."

While enormous blue whales feed in the waters around Antarctica, smaller pygmy blue whale populations are known to inhabit the Indian Ocean, the third-largest ocean in the world.

In previous preliminary research, Panicker -- who grew up in Cochin, India -- talked to local fishers who reported seeing whale blows during the spring months.

But since whales surface only occasionally and soundwaves travel well in water, the best way to study whales is the same way they communicate.

The typical blue whale song is a series of one to six low moans, each up to 20 seconds long, below the threshold of human hearing. The pattern and number of moans varies for different populations. Songs provide insights into this poorly studied population; a possible new song was recently reported in the central Indian Ocean and off the coasts of Madagascar and Oman.

For the new study, scuba divers placed underwater microphones at two ends of Kavaratti Island. Other studies in nearby waters suggested that the presence of blue whales would be seasonal, and recordings confirmed their presence between the winter and summer monsoons.

"Our study extends the known range of this song type a further 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northwest of Sri Lanka," Panicker said. "Our study provides the first evidence for northern Indian Ocean blue whale songs in Indian waters."

The researchers believe that the whales are likely resident to the northern Indian Ocean, and come to the Lakshadweep atoll seasonally.

"The Indian Ocean is clearly important habitat for blue whales -- an endangered species that is only very slowly recovering from 20th-century commercial and illegal whaling, especially in the Indian Ocean," said senior author Kate Stafford, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists working to understand the cellular processes linking high cholesterol to breast cancer recurrence and metastasis report that a byproduct of cholesterol metabolism causes some cells to send out cancer-promoting signals to other cells. These signals are packaged in membrane-bound compartments called extracellular vesicles.

Reported in the journal Endocrinology, the discovery could lead to the development of new anti-cancer therapies, researchers say.

"Extracellular vesicles play an important role in normal physiology, but they also have been implicated before in cancer biology," said study lead Erik Nelson, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "These particles carry cargo from one cell to another. This cargo is important because it's diverse and acts as a communication network. But very little is known about what regulates the vesicles."

In earlier studies, Nelson and his colleagues found that 27-hydroxycholesterol, a byproduct of cholesterol metabolism, promotes tumor growth by binding to estrogen receptors on various tissues, spurring estrogen-responsive cancer cells to proliferate and grow. The researchers also discovered that 27HC suppresses immune function.

To understand more precisely how 27HC acts on cells, in the new study the team exposed several types of cells to the metabolite - including immune cells known as polymorphonuclear neutrophils.

"When we treated neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, with 27-hydroxycholesterol, they started spewing out extracellular vesicles," Nelson said.

The vesicles contained a unique collection of signaling molecules, the researchers found. And when injected into mouse models of mammary cancer, the vesicles "promoted both breast tumor growth and breast cancer metastasis," Nelson said.

"This is an important study because it establishes that a hormone or a metabolite can regulate these extracellular vesicles," Nelson said. "Understanding how this system works might prove to be therapeutically useful."

Nelson also is a professor of nutritional sciences and an affiliate of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the Cancer Center at Illinois.

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (06/08/2021) -- New research from the University of Minnesota Medical School and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic reveals a possible new approach to preventing death and severe disease in elderly people infected with SARS-CoV-2.

The researchers demonstrated in a preclinical study that senolytic drugs significantly reduced mortality upon infection from a beta-coronavirus closely related to SARS-CoV-2 in older mice. The study published in Science was co-led by Laura Niedernhofer, MD, PhD and Paul Robbins, PhD, both professors in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics and co-directors of the Institute on the Biology of Aging and Metabolism at the U of M Medical School, and Sara Hamilton, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology.

Senescent cells -- which are cells in the body that are damaged -- contribute to inflammation, multiple chronic diseases and age-related loss of resilience, and they accumulate in our body as we age. Senolytic drugs, previously co-discovered by the U of M Medical School and the Mayo Clinic researchers, selectively remove senescent cells from the body.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the pronounced vulnerability of the elderly and chronically-ill to morbidity and mortality induced by SARS-CoV-2. The research team sought to discover why older people are more vulnerable to these adverse outcomes. The team hypothesized it was senescent cells and removing them with senolytics would dial back inflammation and enable an improved response to viral infection.

"We wanted to determine if therapeutically targeting fundamental aging mechanisms, such as cellular senescence, could reduce morbidity and mortality following viral infection," said Christina Camell, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, and a first author of the study.

The researchers found that older mice exposed for the first time to a mouse beta-coronavirus experienced nearly 100% mortality, whereas young mice barely got sick. When they treated the older mice with senolytic drugs following infection, their survival rate increased to 50%. The senolytic drugs reduced mortality, cellular senescence and inflammatory markers and increased anti-viral antibodies.

"We have been working on a new approach to help the elderly remain healthy, which is to find therapeutics to treat aging rather than treating each individual disease associated with old age. The fact that senolytics worked to protect old organisms from a viral infection proves that approach is accurate," Robbins said. "By getting rid of a piece of aging biology, senescent cells, with senolytics, the older mice were able to withstand the stress of infection. This suggests that reducing the burden of senescent cells in ill or elderly individuals could improve their resilience and reduce their risk of dying from COVID-19."

These results in mice supported the initiation of two clinical trials to reduce mortality in elderly COVID-19 patients. The team also plans to study if senescent cells contribute to the long-hauler effect in many COVID-19 survivors.

The Late Triassic Tianqiaoling flora is well-known in China, and its discovery has changed our understanding of Chinese Late Triassic phytogeographical divisions. More broadly, this flora has great significance for the study of phytogeography in East Asia during this time. However, the previous dating of this flora was only evidenced by plant fossils and stratigraphic correlation, and the accurate dating has still not been achieved. Recently, the team of Dr. Yuhui FENG of Shenyang Normal University collected isotope dating samples from the bottom of the Tianqiaoling Formation, which is conformally contacted the Tianqiaoling flora-bearing beds (Figure 1). The results of new U-Pb dating gave ages for the rhyolites of 212.8±2.5 Ma, indicating the end of Malugou Formation and initial Tianqiaoling Formation in deposition occurred in the late Norian (~227-208.5 Ma), which is contemporaneous with the peak of the Tianqiaoling flora in development.

The Tianqiaoling of Wangqing, eastern Jilin, NE China, has extensive non-marine Upper Triassic strata yielding the well-known Late Triassic Tianqiaoling flora. The discovery of this flora is interested and very significant for the Late Triassic phytogeography in East Asia. Since the Tianqiaoling flora has the floristic characteristics of "Southern type flora" (Dictyophyllum-Clathropteris flora) in China and is found in the Northeast China, it has changed our understanding of the Late Triassic phytogeographical divisions in China, and provided new data for floral comparison and stratigraphic correlation of flora-bearing beds in the eastern Jilin of China, South Primorye of Russia and Southwest Japan.

However, the previous dating of the Tianqiaoling flora was based only on the evidences of the fossil plants and stratigraphic correlation of the Tianqiaoling with those of the South Primorye (Russia) and southwestern Japan dated by marine beds, while the accurate dating of this flora has still not been achieved. The Tianqiaoling flora and its strata are lack of isotopic dating, which has been puzzled and regretted for the paleobotanists concerned.

Recently, on the basis of detailed field geological profile analysis in the flora-bearing stratotype, members of the Evolution of Past Life in Northeast Asia research team from the college of Paleontology, Shenyang Normal University obtained the dating sample of the rhyolite from the bottom of the Tianqiaoling Formation (Figure 2), conformable with Tianqiaoling flora-bearing beds, which has been the best attempt to date the Tianqiaoling flora, so far.

This present dating sample was analyzed by laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) of zircon U-Pb, and produced an age of 212.8±2.5 Ma (Figure 3). The present new U-Pb age (212.8±2.5 Ma) for the bottom of the Tianqiaoling Formation suggests that the end deposition of the Malugou Formation and initial deposition of the Tianqiaoling Formation occurred in the later Norian, contemporaneous with the peak interval for the Tianqiaoling flora in development.

The new radiometric dating is not only basically consistent with those of paleobotanical data , but also provides a key anchor point for regional stratigraphic correlation between the Tianqiaoling flora and other Late Triassic floras, such as Nariwa and Yamaguchi floras and Amba flora. Thereby, this study contributes to a better understanding of the geology and phytogeography in the East Asian region covering the "triangle region" including the eastern Jilin of China, South Primorye of Russia and SW Japan during the Late Triassic.

Researchers have developed a 'library of properties' to help identify the environmental impact of nanomaterials faster and more cost effectively.

Whilst nanomaterials have benefited a wide range of industries and revolutionised everyday life, there are concerns over potential adverse effects - including toxic effects following accumulation in different organs and indirect effects from transport of co-pollutants.

The European Union H2020-funded NanoSolveIT project is developing a ground-breaking computer-based Integrated Approach to Testing and Assessment (IATA) for the environmental health and safety of nanomaterials.

Over the last two years, researchers from the University of Birmingham have worked with experts at NovaMechanics, in Nicosia, Cyprus to develop a decision support system in the form of both stand-alone open software and a Cloud platform.

The team has developed a freely available cloud library containing full physicochemical characterisation of 69 nanomaterials, plus calculated molecular descriptors to increase the value of the available information, details of which are published in NanoImpact.

Professor Iseult Lynch, from the University of Birmingham commented: "One of the limitations to widespread application of computer-based approaches is the lack of large well-organised high-quality datasets, or of data with adequate metadata that will allow dataset interoperability and their combination to create larger datasets."

"Making the library of calculated and experimental descriptors available to the community, along with the detailed description of how they were calculated is a key first step towards filling this datagap."

Development of the cloud-based nanomaterials library is the fifth freely available web-based application that the project has delivered.

Antreas Afantitis, from NovaMechanics, commented: "Over the last two years, this project has already presented some very impressive results with more than 30 publications, making NanoSolveIT one of the most active projects in the nanomaterials safety and informatics space."

Concerns about nanomaterials are also arising as risk assessment is lagging behind product development, mainly because current approaches to assessing exposure, hazard and risk are expensive and time-consuming, and frequently involve testing in animal models. The NanoSolveIT project aspires to address these challenges.

The latest development aims to enrich our knowledge of nanomaterials properties and the link from property to (cytotoxic) effect. The enriched dataset contains over 70 descriptors per nanomaterial.

The dataset was used to develop a computer-based workflow to predict nanomaterials' effective surface charge (zeta-potential) based on a set of descriptors that can be used to help design and produce safer and more functional nanomaterials.

The resulting predictive read-across model has been made publicly and freely available as a web service through the Horizon 2020 (H2020) NanoCommons project (http://enaloscloud.novamechanics.com/nanocommons/mszeta/ ) and via the H2020 NanoSolveIT Cloud Platform (https://mszeta.cloud.nanosolveit.eu/ ) to ensure accessibility to the community and interested stakeholders.

In addition, the full data set, ready for further computational modeling, is available through the NanoPharos database, as the project consortium supports the FAIR data principles - committing to making its data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable.

In a study of healthy volunteers, National Institutes of Health researchers have mapped out the brain activity that flows when we learn a new skill, such as playing a new song on the piano, and discovered why taking short breaks from practice is a key to learning. The researchers found that during rest the volunteers' brains rapidly and repeatedly replayed faster versions of the activity seen while they practiced typing a code. The more a volunteer replayed the activity the better they performed during subsequent practice sessions, suggesting rest strengthened memories.

"Our results support the idea that wakeful rest plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced," said Leonardo G. Cohen, M.D., senior investigator at the NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the senior author of the study published in Cell Reports. "Understanding this role of neural replay may not only help shape how we learn new skills but also how we help patients recover skills lost after neurological injury like stroke."

The study was conducted at the NIH Clinical Center. Dr. Cohen's team used a highly sensitive scanning technique, called magnetoencephalography, to record the brain waves of 33 healthy, right-handed volunteers as they learned to type a five-digit test code with their left hands. The subjects sat in a chair and under the scanner's long, cone-shaped cap. An experiment began when a subject was shown the code "41234" on a screen and asked to type it out as many times as possible for 10 seconds and then take a 10 second break. Subjects were asked to repeat this cycle of alternating practice and rest sessions a total of 35 times.

During the first few trials, the speed at which subjects correctly typed the code improved dramatically and then leveled off around the 11th cycle. In a previous study, led by former NIH postdoctoral fellow Marlene Bönstrup, M.D., Dr. Cohen's team showed that most of these gains happened during short rests, and not when the subjects were typing. Moreover, the gains were greater than those made after a night's sleep and were correlated with a decrease in the size of brain waves, called beta rhythms. In this new report, the researchers searched for something different in the subjects' brain waves.

"We wanted to explore the mechanisms behind memory strengthening seen during wakeful rest. Several forms of memory appear to rely on the replaying of neural activity, so we decided to test this idea out for procedural skill learning," said Ethan R. Buch, Ph.D., a staff scientist on Dr. Cohen's team and leader of the study.

To do this, Leonardo Claudino, Ph.D., a former postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Cohen's lab, helped Dr. Buch develop a computer program which allowed the team to decipher the brain wave activity associated with typing each number in the test code.

The program helped them discover that a much faster version - about 20 times faster - of the brain activity seen during typing was replayed during the rest periods. Over the course of the first eleven practice trials, these compressed versions of the activity were replayed many times - about 25 times - per rest period. This was two to three times more often than the activity seen during later rest periods or after the experiments had ended.

Interestingly, they found that the frequency of replay during rest predicted memory strengthening. In other words, the subjects whose brains replayed the typing activity more often showed greater jumps in performance after each trial than those who replayed it less often.

"During the early part of the learning curve we saw that wakeful rest replay was compressed in time, frequent, and a good predictor of variability in learning a new skill across individuals," said Dr. Buch. "This suggests that during wakeful rest the brain binds together the memories required to learn a new skill."

As expected, the team discovered that the replay activity often happened in the sensorimotor regions of the brain, which are responsible for controlling movements. However, they also saw activity in other brain regions, namely the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex.

"We were a bit surprised by these last results. Traditionally, it was thought that the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex may not play such a substantive role in procedural memory. In contrast, our results suggest that these regions are rapidly chattering with the sensorimotor cortex when learning these types of skills," said Dr. Cohen. "Overall, our results support the idea that manipulating replay activity during waking rest may be a powerful tool that researchers can use to help individuals learn new skills faster and possibly facilitate rehabilitation from stroke."

Last year, Anupam Mazumdar, a physicist from the University of Groningen, jointly proposed an experiment together with colleagues from the UK that could conclusively prove whether gravity is a quantum phenomenon. This experiment would focus on observing two relatively large, entangled quantum systems in free fall. In a new article, published on 4 June in Physical Review Research, the scientists describe in more detail how two types of noise could be reduced. They suggest that quantum interference could be applied in the production of a sensitive instrument that could detect movements of objects ranging from butterflies to burglars and black holes.

Is gravity a quantum phenomenon? That is one of the major outstanding questions in physics. Last year, together with colleagues, Assistant Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Groningen Anupam Mazumdar jointly proposed an experiment that could settle this question. Central to this experiment is a minuscule diamond, just a few nanometres in size, in which one of the carbon atoms has been replaced by a nitrogen atom. According to quantum physics, the extra electron in this atom would either absorb or not absorb the photon energy of a laser.

Diamond

Absorption of the energy would alter the electron's spin value, a magnetic moment that can be either up or down. 'Just like Schrödinger's cat, which is dead and alive at the same time, this electron spin does and does not absorb the photon energy, so its spin is both up and down', Mazumdar explains. This process results in quantum superposition of the entire diamond. By applying a magnetic field, it is possible to separate the two quantum states. When these quantum states are brought together again by turning off the magnetic field, they will create an interference pattern.

This diamond is small enough to sustain this superposition, but it is also sufficiently large to be affected by the pull of gravity. When two of these diamonds are placed next to each other under conditions of free fall, they only interact via the gravity force between them. The experiment was originally designed to test whether gravity itself is a quantum phenomenon. Simply put, as entanglement is a quantum phenomenon, the entanglement of two objects that interact only through gravity would serve as proof that gravity is a quantum phenomenon.

Collision

Any moving mass will have an effect on this very sensitive quantum system. In their latest paper, Mazumdar and colleagues describe how these disturbances can be reduced. However, it is also apparent that this system could be used to detect moving masses. The first source of noise is the collision of gas with the experimental capsule in free fall. Even the impact of photons can create a disturbance. 'Our calculations show that these effects are minimized by placing the experimental capsule inside a larger container, which creates a controlled environment', Mazumdar explains. Inside such an outer container, this noise is negligible at a pressure of 10-6 Pascal, even at room temperature. Requirements for conditions within the experimental capsule are more stringent. Currently, the scientists estimate a required pressure of 10-15 Pascal at around 1 Kelvin. Given the current state of technology, this is not yet feasible, but Mazumdar expects it could well be possible within around 20 years.

Space debris

Moving objects, even as small as a butterfly, located near the experimental site constitute a second source of noise. Calculations reveal that this noise can also be mitigated relatively easily by limiting access to the experimental site. People should maintain a distance of at least 2 metres from the experimental site, and cars should maintain a minimum distance of 10 metres from the site. Passing planes at a distance of more than 60 metres from the experimental site would not pose a problem. All of these requirements can be accomplished easily.

Once the experiment is up and running, its scope could be extended beyond an investigation of quantum gravity, according to Mazumdar. 'You could put it in a spacecraft, where it is in free fall all the time. Then, you could use it to detect incoming space debris. By using several systems, it would even be possible to get the trajectory of the debris'. Another option is to place such a system in the Kuiper belt, where it would sense the movement of our solar system in space. 'And it could detect any nearby black holes', Mazumdar adds.

Back on Earth, the quantum system would be capable of detecting tectonic movements and perhaps providing early warnings of earthquakes. And, of course, the quantum system's sensitivity to any movement occurring in proximity to it would make it an ideal, if somewhat complex, movement sensor and burglar alarm. But for now, the focus over the next few decades is on determining whether gravity is a quantum phenomenon.

Simple Science Summary

For decades, physicists have been working on a single theory that encompasses all four major forces in physics. Quantum theory unifies three of these forces but does not appear to accommodate the fourth, namely gravity. A group of physicists, including Anupam Mazumdar from the University of Groningen, recently proposed an experiment involving observations of two minuscule diamonds in free fall, which could prove whether or not gravity is a quantum phenomenon. This experimental system would also be highly sensitive to even the smallest of disturbances. In a new article, Mazumdar and colleagues show that locating the experiment within a vacuum container removes the noise caused by colliding gas particles in the experiment. Moreover, restricting access to the experimental site takes care of the interference caused by moving masses, ranging from butterflies to passing cars. Furthermore, this sensitivity to moving objects implies that the experimental system could serve as a movement sensor, with applications that include predicting earthquakes by measuring tectonic movements.

A new Alzheimer's disease drug will hit the market soon, the first in nearly two decades. But some experts say the evidence for it isn't terribly strong and worry that it may cost a lot.

Still, the announcement of its approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made headlines nationwide. The attention reflects the toll dementia takes on patients, families and society, and the lack of good treatment options.

Meanwhile, millions of adults could lower the chance that they'll ever need a drug like that. To do so, they will need to work with their primary care providers and use the power of prevention to keep their brains healthy.

That's why a national panel of experts including the University of Michigan's Deborah Levine, M.D., M.P.H., recently published a guide for primary care providers on this topic as an official Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association.

People dread Alzheimer's disease, she said. Helping people understand that they can prevent or slow future dementia by taking specific steps now could motivate them to increase their healthy behaviors for a positive effect.

The first step: to recognize that dementia risk is higher among people with seven major modifiable risk factors.

They are: depression, hypertension, physical inactivity, diabetes, obesity, hyperlipidemia, poor diet, smoking, social isolation, excessive alcohol use, sleep disorders and hearing loss.

The second step: to help patients take steps to lower their dementia risk by using medication, lifestyle change and other interventions.

Reducing blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, tobacco and alcohol use, depression symptoms and body mass index, and increasing physical activity, intake of healthy foods and social connections can all lower future dementia risk.

Decades of research has shown this, though the size of the effect varies depending on the risk factor in question.

"Dementia is not inevitable," said Levine, a primary care provider at the University of Michigan Health, part of Michigan Medicine. "Evidence is growing that people can better maintain brain health and prevent dementia by following healthy behaviors and controlling vascular risk factors."

These strategies can help preserve cognitive function and lower risk for heart attacks and strokes, said Levine, who heads the Cognitive Health Services Research Program and sees patients at the Frankel Cardiovascular Center.

"We need to address the significant disparities that lead women, Black, Hispanic and less-educated Americans to have a much higher risk of dementia," said Levine, a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.

She added that it's never too late in life to start working on cognitive risk factor control.

"We have no treatments that will halt dementia - so it's important to protect your brain health."