Earth

Since it was first introduced in 2016, transparent wood has been developed by researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology as an innovative structural material for building construction. It lets natural light through and can even store thermal energy.

The key to making wood into a transparent composite material is to strip out its lignin, the major light-absorbing component in wood. But the empty pores left behind by the absence of lignin need to be filled with something that restores the wood's strength and allows light to permeate.

In earlier versions of the composite, researchers at KTH's Wallenberg Wood Science Centre used fossil-based polymers. Now, the researchers have successfully tested an eco-friendly alternative: limonene acrylate, a monomer made from limonene. They reported their results in Advanced Science.

"The new limonene acrylate it is made from renewable citrus, such as peel waste that can be recycled from the orange juice industry," says lead author, PhD student Céline Montanari.

An extract from orange juice production is used to create the polymer that restores delignified wood's strength and allows light to pass through.

The new composite offers optical transmittance of 90 percent at 1.2 mm thickness and remarkably low haze of 30 percent, the researchers report. Unlike other transparent wood composites developed during the past five years, the material developed at KTH is intended for structural use. It shows heavy-duty mechanical performance: with a strength of 174 MPa (25.2 ksi) and elasticity of 17 GPa (or about 2.5 Mpsi).

Yet all along, sustainability has been a priority for the research group, says Professor Lars Berglund, the head of the KTH's Department of Fibre and Polymer Technology.

"Replacing the fossil-based polymers has been one of the challenges we have had in making sustainable transparent wood," Berglund says.

Environmental considerations and so-called green chemistry permeate the entire work, he says. The material is made with no solvents, and all chemicals are derived from bio-based raw materials.

The new advances could enable a yet unexplored range of applications, such as in wood nanotechnology, Berglund says. Possibilities include smart windows, wood for heat-storage, wood that has built-in lighting function - even a wooden laser.

"We have looked at where the light goes, and what happens when it hits the cellulose," Berglund says. "Some of the light goes straight through the wood, and makes the material transparent. Some of the light is refracted and scattered at different angles and gives pleasant effects in lighting applications."

The team is also working with Sergei Popov's photonics group at KTH to explore the nanotechnology possibilities even further.

Cancer has been recently shown to be affected by protein clusters, particularly by the aggregation of mutant variants of the tumor suppressor protein p53, which are present in more than half of malignant tumors. However, how the aggregates are formed is not yet fully understood. The understanding of this process is expected to provide new therapeutic tools able to prevent proteins to clump and cancer progression.

In Brazil, researchers at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro have identified a key mechanism behind the mutant p53 aggregation process, linked to cancer pathology, opening new paths for the development of novels drugs against the disease.

The latest findings have been published in advance in the scientific journal Chemical Science, by The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Led by the Prof. Jerson Lima Silva, the research team discovered that the formation of aggregates of p53 is preceded by liquid-to-liquid phase separation, a chemical segregation of a homogenous fluid, that then progresses to phase transition, or phase changes, resulting in ether a gel-like state or a solid-like state of the protein. Once a phase transition to a solid state is established, the aggregates of mutant p53 comparable to amyloids observed in neurodegenerative diseases are formed, thereby playing a crucial role in cancer development. This process was shown to occur in the nucleus, particular in nuclear compartments, by the use of different biophysical and fluorescence microscopy tools.

In the present study, it is shown that polyanions, such as heparin and RNA, were able to modulate the phase separation and phase transition in vitro. Heparin leads the p53 condensates into a gel-like state, whereas RNA resulted in the conversion into a solid-like state of the protein.

The new findings extend the concept of phase separation and of the amyloid-like aggregation found in neurodegenerative diseases to malignant tumors involving mutant p53.

The study also points out that the phase transitions to solid-like amorphous and amyloid-like states of mutant p53 are formidable targets for the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies against cancer.

"By providing insight into the formation of p53 condensates and identifying the exact conditions that lead to the formation of aggregated structures, we can now work towards developing strategies to prevent their formation. In the end, this may lead to new therapies for treating different malignant tumors, such as breast, ovarian and prostate cancer", explains the project's lead investigator Lima Silva, whose laboratory at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro has been studying p53 mutations and aggregation for over 18 years.

A team of University of Alberta researchers has discovered a way to use 3-D bioprinting technology to create custom-shaped cartilage for use in surgical procedures. The work aims to make it easier for surgeons to safely restore the features of skin cancer patients living with nasal cartilage defects after surgery.

The researchers used a specially designed hydrogel--a material similar to Jell-O--that could be mixed with cells harvested from a patient and then printed in a specific shape captured through 3-D imaging. Over a matter of weeks, the material is cultured in a lab to become functional cartilage.

"It takes a lifetime to make cartilage in an individual, while this method takes about four weeks. So you still expect that there will be some degree of maturity that it has to go through, especially when implanted in the body. But functionally it's able to do the things that cartilage does," said Adetola Adesida, a professor of surgery in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry.

"It has to have certain mechanical properties and it has to have strength. This meets those requirements with a material that (at the outset) is 92 per cent water," added Yaman Boluk, a professor in the Faculty of Engineering.

Adesida, Boluk and graduate student Xiaoyi Lan led the project to create the 3-D printed cartilage in hopes of providing a better solution for a clinical problem facing many patients with skin cancer.

Each year upwards of three million people in North America are diagnosed with non-melanoma skin cancer. Of those, 40 per cent will have lesions on their noses, with many requiring surgery to remove them. As part of the procedure, many patients may have cartilage removed, leaving facial disfiguration.

Traditionally, surgeons would take cartilage from one of the patient's ribs and reshape it to fit the needed size and shape for reconstructive surgery. But the procedure comes with complications.

"When the surgeons restructure the nose, it is straight. But when it adapts to its new environment, it goes through a period of remodelling where it warps, almost like the curvature of the rib," said Adesida. "Visually on the face, that's a problem.

"The other issue is that you're opening the rib compartment, which protects the lungs, just to restructure the nose. It's a very vital anatomical location. The patient could have a collapsed lung and has a much higher risk of dying," he added.

The researchers say their work is an example of both precision medicine and regenerative medicine. Lab-grown cartilage printed specifically for the patient can remove the risk of lung collapse, infection in the lungs and severe scarring at the site of a patient's ribs.

"This is to the benefit of the patient. They can go on the operating table, have a small biopsy taken from their nose in about 30 minutes, and from there we can build different shapes of cartilage specifically for them," said Adesida. "We can even bank the cells and use them later to build everything needed for the surgery. This is what this technology allows you to do."

The team is continuing its research and is now testing whether the lab-grown cartilage retains its properties after transplantation in animal models. The team hopes to move the work to a clinical trial within the next two to three years.

Metallacages prepared via coordination-driven self-assembly have received extensive attention because of their three-dimensional layout and cavity-cored nature. The construction of light-emitting materials employing metallacages as a platform has also gained significant interest due to their good modularity in photophysical properties, which bring emerging applications in fields as diverse as sensing, biomedicine, and catalysis.

However, the luminescence efficiency of conventional luminophores significantly decreases in the aggregate state because they encounter unfavorable aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ). Therefore, it was quite a challenge to fabricate light-emitting metallacages with high luminescence efficiency in various physical states.

In 2001, Tang's group discovered aggregation-induced emission (AIE) phenomenon that some nonluminous or weakly emissive materials in molecular state are highly emissive in aggregate state. The underlying mechanism accounting for the AIE effect was disclosed as restriction of intramolecular movements. So far, AIE has been a promising research field for more than 20 years, and brings a new opportunity to construct light-emitting metallacages with high luminescence efficiency.

In a recent review published in the Beijing-based National Science Review, scientists at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China, and at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, United States, the latest advances in light-emitting self-assembled metallacages are summarized. The scientists presented the strategies for the rational design of light-emitting metallacages and highlighted the structural chemistry of AIE-active metallacages that display AIE, a novel photophysical phenomenon, as well as their emerging applications as chemical sensors, functional emissive materials, light-harvesting systems, and theranostic agents. These scientists likewise outline the potential future challenges in the development of light-emitting metallacages.

"The well-defined, highly tunable metallacage structures render them particularly attractive for investigating the properties of luminophores, as well as for inducing novel photophysical characters that enable widespread applications," they state in an article titled "Light-emitting self-assembled metallacages."

Studies on light-emitting metallacages stemmed from the use of rigid organic molecules as the building blocks for coordination-driven self-assembly. "Many of these molecules include large conjugated systems and are inherently photo-physically active, thus endowing the resulting SCCs with light-emitting properties," they added. "To date, researchers have employed luminophores as donor or acceptor building blocks, or encapsulated guest molecules inside the cavity of the metallacages."

"The almost limitless structural versatility of metallacages provides modularity over the photophysical profiles of the incorporated luminophore. These benefits are exemplified by studies on metallacages comprising luminophores with aggregation-induced emission (AIE) character," the researchers stated.

The first attempt to explore the AIE behavior of self-assembled metallacages in 2015 has resulted in a new class of AIE-active metallacages with high luminescence efficiency in both dilute solutions and in the aggregated states, thereby bridging the gap between AIE and ACQ. These two photophysical phenomena are often considered to be diametrically opposed.

"Initial studies in this area focused on examining their "turn-on" luminescence in both solutions and aggregated states and their levels of responsiveness towards different solvents," they stated. Advances of AIE-active metallacages based on tetraphenylethylene (TPE) and its derivatives (Table 1) have promoted investigations of factors that influence their emission properties and inspired applications utilizing this unique photophysical behavior. "Notably, combining metallacage chemistry with AIE has led to the development of AIE-active metallacages displaying favorable photophysical properties such as high luminescence efficiency and good modularity and having impressive relevance to a wide variety of areas such as sensing, energy conversion, and the development of theranostic agents," they stated.

"The use of AIEgens with properties such as multiphoton absorption, red/near-infrared emission, enhanced solubility, and biocompatibility -- that is, properties more desirable than those of the extensively studied based on TPE -- is expected to result in the development of supramolecular luminophores with broader potentials," the authors predicted. "Overall, with the rapid advances of both coordination-driven self-assembly and luminophores with favorable photophysical properties such as AIE, it is expected that research on light-emitting self-assembled metallacages will continue to flourish."

Spinning or rotating objects are commonplace, from toy tops, fidget spinners, and figure skaters to water circling a drain, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

In physics, there are two kinds of rotational motion: spin and orbital. Earth's motion in our solar system illustrates these; the daily 360-degree rotation of Earth around its own axis is spin rotation, while Earth's yearly trip around the sun is orbital rotation.

The quantity in physics defined to describe such motion is angular momentum (AM). AM is a conserved quantity: given an initial amount of it, it can be broken up and redistributed among particles such as atoms and photons, but the total AM must remain the same. AM is also a vector: it is a quantity that has a direction, and this direction is perpendicular to the plane in which the rotational circulation occurs.

For particles of light in laser beams - photons - these two kinds of AM are present. Photons have spin, but don't rotate on their own axes; instead, the spin angular momentum (SAM) comes from the rotation of the photon's electric field, and SAM can only point forward or backward with respect to the beam direction.

Photons in laser beams can also have orbital angular momentum (OAM). The simplest laser beam in which photons have OAM is the donut beam: if you shine such a beam on the wall, it will look like a bright donut or ring with a dark center. The OAM vector also points forward or backward, and the OAM is the same for every photon in the beam.

In a paper published in the journal Optica, University of Maryland Professor Howard Milchberg and research group demonstrate the surprising result that photons in vacuum can have OAM vectors pointing sideways, at 90 degrees to the direction of propagation - a result literally orthogonal to the decades-long expectation that OAM vectors could only point forward or backward.

The research team, which in addition to Milchberg includes graduate student and lead author Scott Hancock and postdoctoral researcher Sina Zahedpour, did this by generating a donut pulse they dub an "edge-first flying donut" (its more technical name is spatio-temporal optical vortex, or STOV). Here, the donut hole is oriented sideways, and because the rotational circulation now occurs around the ring, the AM vector points at right angles to the plane containing the ring. To prove that this sideways-pointing OAM is associated with individual photons and not just the overall shape of the flying donut, the team sent the pulse through a nonlinear crystal to undergo a process called second harmonic generation, where two red photons are converted into a single blue photon with double the frequency. This reduces the number of photons by a factor of 2, which means each blue photon should have twice the sideways-pointing OAM - which is exactly what the team's measurements showed. The AM of the flying donut or STOV is the composite effect of a swarm of photons somersaulting in lockstep.

There are numerous potential applications of STOVs. For example, the AM conservation embodied by somersaulting photons may make STOV beams resistant to breakup by atmospheric turbulence, with potential application to free-space optical communications. In addition, because STOV photons must occur in pulses of light, such pulses could be used to dynamically excite a wide range of materials or to probe them in ways that exploit the OAM and the donut hole.

"STOV pulses could play a big role in nonlinear optics," says Milchberg, "where beams can control the material they propagate in, enabling novel applications in beam focusing, steering, and switching."

DAVIS, CA, May 4, 2021 - In a randomized, controlled study* published online in the journal, Nutrients, researchers found that including mixed tree nuts in a weight management program resulted in significant weight loss and improved satiety.

Researchers at UCLA compared 95 overweight/obese men and women (BMI 27.0-35.0 kg/m2) ages 30-68 years who consumed either 1.5 ounces of mixed tree nuts or a pretzel snack. Both snacks provided the same number of calories, as part of a hypocaloric weight loss diet (500 calories less than resting metabolic rate) over 12 weeks. This was followed by an isocaloric weight maintenance program for an additional 12 weeks.

Participants experienced significant weight loss (12 weeks: -1.6 kg and -1.9 kg and 24 weeks: -1.5 kg and -1.4 kg) in the tree nut and pretzel snack groups, respectively. Both groups also showed a significant decrease in BMI at 12 weeks, compared to baseline. However, satiety was significantly higher at the end of week 24 in the mixed tree nut group, and there was a trend toward greater weight maintenance compared to the pretzel group. Moreover, the dropout rate was significantly lower in the mixed tree nut group (16.4%) compared to the pretzel (35.9%) group. And, heart rate was decreased significantly, compared to baseline, in those consuming tree nuts, but not pretzels.

"Tree nuts (almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts) are a great source of protein, healthy fats and fiber," explained lead researcher, Zhaoping Li, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Clinical Nutrition at UCLA. "This makes them so satiating and may be a major reason why we saw less weight gain in the tree nut group during weight maintenance, and a significantly lower dropout rate compared to the pretzel group."

Recent research has shown that more than 40 percent of Americans are overweight or obese.** During the past year many Americans have gained weight while sheltering in place, partly due to less exercise and more snacking. One study estimates a weight gain of 1.5 pounds per month.*** "We know most people get about 25% of their calories each day from snacks and a large proportion come from desserts, sugar-sweetened beverages, sweets and salty snacks," states Dr. Li. "By replacing just one of those snacks with 1.5 ounces of tree nuts may result in a positive impact on weight and overall health."

According to Maureen Ternus, M.S., R.D.N, Executive Director of the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research & Education Foundation (INC NREF), "This latest study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that nut consumption may be a useful tool in weight management."

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University improved HIV care by gamifying it with a mobile gaming application.

Gaming features -- like those used to drive airline loyalty and track daily steps -- helped young men living with HIV achieve viral suppression and doubled their chances for reaching near perfect adherence to medication plans, according to a study in AIDS and Behavior.

Gamification can inspire changes in behavior when a doctor's advice or a patient's good intentions are not enough. In this case, motivating those living with HIV to stick to the antiretroviral therapy (ART) that can keep them healthy by suppressing the HIV virus.

Study authors include Lisa Hightow-Weidman and Kate Muessig, health behavior specialists at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, Alyssa Vecchio of the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, and Alyssa Platt and Joseph R. Egger of the Duke Global Health Institute.

"The app delivered daily health messages in a digestible form that was more fun than sitting in a class and more consistent than a clinic visit scheduled every three to six months," said lead study author Hightow-Weidman, professor of medicine and health behavior and mHealth researcher who directs the UNC Behavior and Technology Lab in the UNC School of Medicine.

Gamifying health promotion

Researchers teamed up with the web application development company Caktus Group to create a mobile phone app that could help patients to better adhere to HIV medication plans.

Specifically, the app was designed with the goal of improving medication adherence among young men who have sex with men who are living with HIV. It's the population most affected by HIV in the United States.

The app made use of game mechanics and social networking features to improve adherence to HIV medications. In addition to medication reminders and adherence tracking, Epic Allies used gaming elements to create a compelling and engaging experience that could motivate and support behavior change.

Gamers were awarded points and badges for their own successes and providing support and encouragement to others.

Rates of viral suppression and ART adherence increased over the course of the study among its 146 participants, even among those who were randomized to receive the control app -- weekly text-based information about adherence.

At 26 weeks, viral suppression among app users was 62.9% while viral suppression in the control group was 73.5%. When use of the Epic Allies app, which is no longer available, ended, viral suppression leveled out to about 64% for all study participants, who were ages 16-24.

Notably, the app appeared to provide a head start to controlling the HIV virus. Participants who used the app regularly - four or more days a week - had a reported 56% higher likelihood of achieving viral suppression at 13 weeks compared to those who didn't use the app. Regular app users were more than twice as likely to report near perfect ART adherence at both 13 weeks and 26 weeks compared to non-app users.

Digital bridges to care

Study limitations include the small sample size and authors write that issues with app use metrics limit the ability to say that the app was effective in causing behavior changes that improved health.

But Hightow-Weidman said technology is emerging to support high-risk patients who may have life circumstances - homelessness, mental health issues, substance abuse issues - that may make it harder for them to focus on the long term. For young people, it can be especially difficult to connect today's decisions to future health, she said.

And as telehealth and virtual visits gained momentum during COVID-19 shutdowns, lessons were learned about providing needed care for everyone.

"Apps and digital tools are a bridge to care," she said. "They cannot replace a network of doctors and nurses and care management, but they can be a bridge to that real world and inspire change."

The project was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Almost half of the parents who have children together with a parent with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, are themselves burdened by psychological issues. This can affect family life and the children. This is shown in the research result from the major Danish psychiatry project iPSYCH.

We typically choose a partner who resembles us in relation to social status, education and, to some extent, also income. Research has previously established this. A new study now shows that almost half of the parents who have children with a partner who suffers from schizophrenia or bipolar disorder themselves meet the criteria for a mental disorder. By comparison, this is 18 percent for parents in the control group.

The results stem from The Danish High-Risk and Resilience Study, which is part of iPSYCH. A total of 872 parents participated in the study. The parental couples were selected such that one of the parents was registered in the National Patient Register with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Their partner and the parents from the control group were not registered with these disorders. At the time of the study, all of the parents had a seven-year-old child.

Met the criteria themselves

"In the Danish registers we used, each child only had one parent registered with a mental disorder, but the diagnostic interview carried out as part of our study showed that almost half of the partners also fulfilled the criteria for such a disorder. In addition, the partners had a lower functional level compared to the control group," says PhD and Psychologist Aja Neergaard Greve, who is behind the study.

"The most frequent diagnosis among the partners was depression. We were surprised that six per cent of the partners to people with schizophrenia also met the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia themselves. In the control group, it was only one per cent," she says.

Care is often dependent on the other person

According to the researcher, the results - which have been published in the scientific journal Schizophrenia Bulletin - indicate possible risk factors for children who grow up in families with a parent with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

"When one of the parents has a severe mental disorder, caring for the child will often be more dependent on the other parent, who perhaps also has much of their attention directed towards the ill parent. If the parent who we thought was healthy and well-functioning also in some cases has a mental disorder, and/or has a lower functional level and is emotionally and practically burdened by the general family situation, then this can have significance for the whole family's well-being," explains Aja Neergaard Greve.

Already at increased risk

Children born to parents with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have an increased risk of themselves developing mental disorders - in fact, the familial risk is the highest known risk factor for later development of these disorders. If both parents have a mental disorder, the overall risk for the children increases.

"This increased risk is both genetic and environmental. Cognitive functions such as intelligence are e.g. hereditary, but if the parents have cognitive difficulties there will also be an effect on the environment the child grows up in if the parents therefore don't have the opportunity to create good stable routines and predictability or to stimulate the child sufficiently," she says and continues:

"Some of these families are particularly vulnerable and struggle with more than one issue and they therefore need extra help and support. Our study suggests that there is a need for increased attention on some of the families where one or both parents have a mental disorder. There is a need for specialised and targeted efforts for families already early in the child's life," says Aja Neergaard Greve.

The researchers will follow the families from the study up through the child's upbringing and hope to learn more about how the children develop, as well as which factors have greatest importance for the well-being of the families.

Background for the results

The Danish High-Risk and Resilience Study is a nationwide, representative group consisting of 522 children born to parents with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or parents from the control group. The children and both the child's biological parents have been interviewed and examined. The results of this study stem from data from 872 parents.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, most of the coral reef ecosystems on our planet - whether in Australia, the Maldives or the Caribbean - will have disappeared or be in very bad shape by the end of this century. That's because global warming is pushing ocean temperatures above the limit that single-cell algae, which are corals' main allies, can withstand. These algae live inside coral tissue for protection and, in exchange, provide corals with essential nutrients produced through photosynthesis. Because the algae contain a variety of pigments and therefore give coral reefs their famous colors, if they are lost the corals turn white, which is known as coral bleaching. But in spite of the real threat caused by global warming, corals in the Red Sea look set to keep their vibrant color.

"We already knew that corals in the Gulf of Aqaba, at the northern tip of the Red Sea, were particularly resistant to higher temperatures. But we wanted to study the full molecular mechanism behind this resistance," says Romain Savary, a postdoc at EPFL's Laboratory for Biological Geochemistry (LGB) and lead author of the study, which appears today in PNAS. What the scientists found was telling: those corals, as well as the algae and bacteria they live in symbiosis with, can withstand average temperatures some 5°C higher than what they typically experience. And despite the severity with which climate change is taking place, it's unlikely that Red Sea temperatures will rise more than 5°C by the end of the century. "This gives us real hope that we can save at least one major coral reef ecosystem for future generations," says Anders Meibom, head of the LGB.

Taking it in stride

To conduct their study, the scientists subjected Gulf of Aqaba corals to a range of heat stresses including the higher temperatures likely to occur in the coming decades. The average maximum monthly temperature in these waters is currently around 27°C, so the scientists exposed coral samples to temperatures of 29.5°C, 32°C and 34.5°C, over both a short time period (three hours) and a longer one (one week). The scientists measured the corals' and symbiotic algae's gene expression both during and after the heat stress test, and determined the composition of the microbiome residing in the corals.

"The main thing we found is that these corals currently live in temperatures well below the maximum they can withstand with their molecular machinery, which means they're naturally shielded against the temperature increases that will probably occur over the next 100 or even 200 years," says Savary. "Our measurements showed that at temperatures of up to 32°C, the corals and their symbiotic organisms were able to molecularly recover and acclimate to both short-term and long-term heat stress without any major consequences." This offers genuine hope to scientists - although warmer waters are not the only threat facing this exceptional natural heritage.

This is the first time scientists have conducted a genetic analysis of coral samples on such a broad scale, and their findings reveal how these heat-resistant corals respond at the most fundamental level - gene expression. They can also be used as a basis for identifying 'super corals.' According to Meibom, "Romain's research gives us insight into the specific genetic factors that allow corals to survive. His study also indicates that an entire symphony of genetic expression is at work to give corals this extraordinary power." This sets a standard for what "super coral" gene expression looks like during a heat stress and a recovery. But could Red Sea corals be used to one day repopulate the Great Barrier Reef? "Corals are highly dependent on their surroundings," says Meibom. "They can adapt to new environments only after a long, natural colonization process. What's more, the Great Barrier Reef is the size of Italy - it would be impossible to repopulate it artificially."

Sailing towards the future

The scientists' work was made possible thanks to two unique research instruments: the Red Sea Simulator (RSS), developed by the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, Israel; and the Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS), developed by a team of researchers in the US. Their findings have laid the groundwork for a much more ambitious project that will be led by the Transnational Red Sea Center (TRSC, http://www.trsc.org), which was set up at EPFL in 2019. This new project will kick off this summer and take place over four years. "We'll sail the entire Red Sea - some 2,000 km long - on the research vessel Fleur de Passion, owned by our partner the Fondation Pacifique," says Meibom. "The goal will be to map the heat tolerance levels and the diversity of all the different types of corals found in these waters. Water temperatures rise as you head further south on the Red Sea, with a 5-6°C differential between the northern and southern tips. That's what makes it a perfect real-world laboratory for studying these ecosystems. It's as if you're sailing towards the future as you head south."

And what does that glimpse into the future tell us? Some corals in the southern Red Sea are already starting to bleach. Savary believes there's just one solution: "We have to protect these corals and shield them from local stressors, which are mainly sources of pollution and physical destruction. That way we can keep a stock of 'natural super corals' for potentially recolonizing areas that have been hit particularly hard by climate-change-induced heat waves."

What The Study Did: This study of registry patients evaluates whether any changes in the in-hospital COVID-19 mortality rates during the first nine months of the pandemic were associated with individual characteristics of patients with COVID-19.

Authors: Gregory A. Roth, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Washington in Seattle, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.8828)

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

What The Study Did: Households and not schools were the major route of transmission among children and youths with COVID-19 in Hong Kong, these study results suggest.

Authors: Mike Yat Wah Kwan, M.Sc., M.R.C.P.C.H., of the Princess Margaret in Hong Kong, and Patrick Ip, M.P.H., of the University of Hong Kong, are the corresponding authors.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.8824)

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

What The Study Did: Changes in adolescents' use of e-cigarettes, cannabis and alcohol and in physical activity behaviors following the COVID-19 stay-at-home order in California are examined in this study.

Authors: Benjamin W. Chaffee, D.D.S., M.P.H., Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.0541)

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

We usually assume that inbreeding is bad and should be avoided under all circumstances. But new research performed by researchers at Stockholm University, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, shows that there is little support for this assumption.

The idea that animals should avoid mating with relatives has been the starting point for hundreds of scientific studies performed among many species. But it turns out the picture is more complicated.

"People assume that animals should avoid mating with a relative when given the chance", says Raïssa de Boer, researcher in zoology at Stockholm University. "But evolutionary theory has been telling us that animals should tolerate, or even prefer, mating with relatives under a broad range of conditions for more than four decades".

The study provides a synthesis of 139 experimental studies in 88 species spanning 40 years of research, settling the longstanding debate between theoretical and empirical expectations about if and when animals should avoid inbreeding.

"We address the 'elephant in the room' of inbreeding avoidance studies by overturning the widespread assumption that animals will avoid inbreeding whenever possible", says Raïssa de Boer.

The study demonstrates that animals rarely attempt to avoid mating with relatives, a finding that was consistent across a wide range of conditions and experimental approaches.

"Animals don't seem to care if their potential partner is a brother, sister, cousin or an unrelated individual when they are choosing who to mate with", says Regina Vega Trejo, a researcher at Stockholm University and an author of the paper.

The study also looked at inbreeding avoidance in humans, comparing the results with similar experiments with animals.

"We compared studies that asked if humans avoid inbreeding when presented with pictures of faces that were digitally manipulated to make the faces look either more or less related to studies that used similar approaches in other animals. Just like other animals, it turns out that there is no evidence that humans prefer to avoid inbreeding", says Raïssa de Boer.

"Our findings help explain why many studies failed to find clear support for the inbreeding avoidance and offer a useful roadmap to better understand how cognitive and ecologically relevant factors shape inbreeding avoidance strategies in animals", says John Fitzpatrick an associate professor in Zoology at Stockholm University and the senior author of the study.

The findings will have wide reaching implications for conservation biology. Mate choice is increasingly being used in conservation breeding programs in an attempt to the success of conservation efforts for endangered species. What does this mean?

"A primary goal of conservation efforts is to maintain genetic diversity, and mate choice is generally expected to achieve this goal. Our findings urge caution in the application of mate choice in conservation programs", says John Fitzpatrick.

Two of the most destructive forces of nature - earthquakes and tsunamis - might actually be more of a threat than current estimates according to new research conducted by scientists at The University of New Mexico and the Nanyang Technological University published today in Nature Geoscience.

The researchers developed a new method to assess earthquake and tsunami hazards represented by the most distant part of offshore subduction zones and found that the hazard might have been systematically underestimated in some areas, meaning that tsunami risk assessments should be redone given the new results. The findings have important implications for the mitigation of risk in affected areas worldwide, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rim, in the event of future earthquakes and tsunamis.

Megathrust earthquakes are among the most powerful earthquakes experienced worldwide and occur in subduction zones, where two tectonic plates converge, and one slides under the other. The plates move toward each other continuously, but if the interface, or fault, between them is stuck, then a slip deficit builds up over time. Like a debt, this slip deficit has to be paid off eventually, and for tectonic plates pay day is earthquake day. When these earthquakes affect the shallowest part of the fault near the seafloor, they have the potential to shift the seafloor upward and create devastating tsunamis as well.

Understanding the potential rupture behavior of megathrusts, particularly in the shallow offshore part of the fault where most destructive tsunamis are generated, is therefore a critical task for geoscientists forecasting seismic and tsunami inundation hazards. The likelihood of seismic behavior is often assumed to be somewhat low in the shallow part of the fault, based on laboratory studies of recovered fault zone material.

The fault's rate of slip deficit buildup can also be measured through the use of geodetic observations that track how the earth's surface moves over time, for example by using highly precise GPS sensors installed on land, together with a model that relates how slip on the fault affects the movement of these stations. However, it is hard for scientists to use this technique to "see" what is going on in the shallowest part of the fault, because it is far from land, below kilometers of water, where traditional GPS instruments cannot operate.

Now, scientists at The University of New Mexico and the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore have developed a new geodetic method for inferring this value that accounts for the interaction between different parts of the fault, resulting in a much more physically accurate result. Lindsey's team noted that previous models have failed to take into account the fact that if the deep part of the fault is stuck between earthquakes, the shallow part can't move either - it is in what they term a 'stress shadow' and there is no buildup of energy available to cause it to slip. By taking this effect into account, the team developed a technique that uses the same land-based data but results in a vast improvement in their ability to "see" the fault slip in the areas that are farthest from shore, allowing researchers to reassess the hazard presented by the offshore parts of subduction zones most prone to tsunami generation.

"We applied this technique to the Cascadia and Japan subduction zones and found that wherever deeper locked patches are present, the shallow fault must also have a high slip deficit - regardless of its own frictional properties," said Eric Lindsey, an assistant professor in the UNM Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences who conducted the research while at the Earth Observatory of Singapore at NTU. "If these areas can slip seismically, global tsunami hazard could be higher than currently recognized. Our method identifies critical locations where seafloor observations could yield information about frictional properties of these faults in order to better understand their slip behavior."

This study is important because it calls for a reassessment of previous models of tsunami hazard on megathrusts worldwide. Because this can be done with existing data, the reassessment can be done comparatively quickly as well. Hopefully, this will lead to better preparedness among coastal communities for future events.

Researchers are now able to wirelessly record the directly measured brain activity of patients living with Parkinson's disease and to then use that information to adjust the stimulation delivered by an implanted device. Direct recording of deep and surface brain activity offers a unique look into the underlying causes of many brain disorders; however, technological challenges up to this point have limited direct human brain recordings to relatively short periods of time in controlled clinical settings.

This project, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology, was funded by the National Institutes of Health's Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.

"This is really the first example of wirelessly recording deep and surface human brain activity for an extended period of time in the participants' home environment," said Kari Ashmont, Ph.D., project manager for the NIH BRAIN Initiative. "It is also the first demonstration of adaptive deep brain stimulation at home."

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices are approved by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration for the management of Parkinson's disease symptoms by implanting a thin wire, or electrode, that sends electrical signals into the brain. In 2018, the laboratory of Philip Starr, M.D., Ph.D. at the University of California, San Francisco, developed an adaptive version of DBS that adapts its stimulation only when needed based on recorded brain activity. In this study, Dr. Starr and his colleagues made several additional improvements to the implanted technology.

"This is the first device that allows for continuous and direct wireless recording of the entire brain signal over many hours," said Dr. Starr. "That means we are able to perform whole brain recording over a long period of time while people are going about their daily lives."

The implications of this type of recording are significant. The brain activity patterns (neural signatures) normally used to identify problems such as Parkinson's disease symptoms have traditionally been recorded in clinical settings over short periods of time. This new technology makes it possible to validate those signatures during ordinary daily activities.

"If you ever hope to use in-hospital recordings to modify a disease state through adaptive stimulation, you must show that they are also valid in the real world," said Dr. Starr.

Another advantage to recording over long periods of time is that distinct changes in brain activity (biomarkers) that could predict movement disorders can now be identified for individual patients. Ro'ee Gilron, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Starr's lab and first author of this study, explained that this allows for a level of customized DBS treatment that was impossible to achieve previously.

"Because we are able to build a biomarker library for each patient, we can now program each DBS unit according to a patient's individual needs," said Dr. Gilron. "This includes personalized stimulation programs that adapt as the patient's needs change throughout the day."

One important consideration that arises is the ethical implication of (nearly) all-day brain recording. Since its beginning, the NIH BRAIN Initiative has recognized the importance of addressing potential ethical considerations pertaining to the development and use of devices that record or modulate brain activity. For instance, the NIH BRAIN Neuroethics Working Group is a group of experts in neuroethics and neuroscience that serves to provide the NIH BRAIN Initiative with input relating to neuroethics--a field that studies the ethical, legal, and societal implications of neuroscience. Alongside funding for neurotechnology research, the Initiative also funds research on the ethical implications of advancements in neurotechnology.

"We have had patients approach us with concerns regarding privacy," said Dr. Starr. "Although we are not at the point where we can distinguish specific normal behaviors from brain activity recording, it is an absolutely legitimate concern. We have told patients to feel free to remove their wearable devices and to turn off their brain recordings whenever they engage in activities they would like to keep private."

The patients were also invited to participate in NIH BRAIN Initiative-funded neuroethics projects looking to identify concerns about this new technology (MH114860). In addition, individuals who opted out of the implant project were interviewed about their decision. As recommended by a recent BRAIN 2.0 neuroethics report, this information will be used to develop ethical guidelines and protocols for future projects to achieve a healthy balance between discovery and privacy.

One unforeseen benefit of this study was that, because it required little to no direct contact with clinicians following surgery, it was ideally suited for the social distancing that is crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. The technologies used for remote patient monitoring and telehealth were originally designed for the convenience of study subjects, but they have broader applications to other research projects that have been stalled due to COVID-19.

"The technologies we developed and used to communicate and work remotely with our patients can also allow those who do not live close to a clinic to receive 'over the air' updates for their devices and telehealth visits from their neurologists as they manage increasingly complex DBS devices," said Dr. Gilron.

The importance of studying behavior in a natural environment such as the home as it relates to neural activity was emphasized in a recent BRAIN 2.0 neuroscience report. Dr. Ashmont stressed that this study is a significant step in that direction and is going to help scientists understand not only disorders but also the neural representation of behaviors in general.