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Circularly polarized light exhibits promising applications in future displays and photonic technologies. Traditionally, circularly polarized light is converted from unpolarized light by the linear polarizer and the quarter-wave plate. During this indirectly physical process, at least 50% of energy will be lost. Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) from chiral luminophores provides an ideal approach to directly generate circularly polarized light, in which the energy loss induced by polarized filter can be reduced. Among various chiral luminophores, organic micro-/nano-structures have attracted increasing attention owing to the high quantum efficiency and luminescence dissymmetry factor (glum).

In a new paper published in Light: Science & Application, Chinese scientists from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (NUPT) have summarized the latest progress of CPL-active organic micro-/nano-structures.

This review expounded the design principles of CPL-active organic micro-/nano-structures from the aspect of the construction of micro-/nano-structure and the introduction of chirality, and some typical organic micro-/nano-structures with CPL activity were introduced in detail, including self-assembly of small molecules and π-conjugated polymers, and self-assembly on micro-/nanoscale architectures.

The formation of organic micro-/nano-structures is driven by intermolecular non-covalent interactions, which is dynamic and sensitive to external stimuli. In this review, they discussed the external stimuli that can regulate CPL performance, including solvents, pH value, metal ions, mechanical force, and temperature.

The potential applications were also discussed:

1. In a conventional organic light-emitting diode (OLED), it is usually necessary to use a circular polarizer to reduce the reflectivity of the surrounding environment. Thus, only half of the emitted light can reach the eyes, causing great loss of brightness and energy efficiency. The OLED based on CPL-active materials can directly emit circularly polarized light with the same handedness as the circular polarizer, reducing the energy loss.

2. In the fields of optical information recording and encryption, materials with CPL activity can achieve higher storage density and security through both optical signals and chiral signals.

3. Compared with other optical sensing technologies, sensing based on CPL-active materials can eliminate the interference of background fluorescence and unpolarized light, providing higher sensitivity and resolution.

Furthermore, asymmetric quantum efficiency (φa), a new indicator, was proposed to evaluate the comprehensive performance of CPL-active materials, which was defined as the ratio of left- or right-CPL light intensity to incident light intensity. The φa can intuitively reflect the degree of energy loss, and the larger φa represents the lower energy loss.

This review provides an understanding of the relationship among molecular designs, assembly structures, and chiroptical properties, and will provide a guide for the design of excellent CPL-active materials. It is hoped that this review will encourage more researchers to explore this emerging and rapidly developing research area.

Tsukuba, Japan - Tropical cyclones like typhoons may invoke imagery of violent winds and storm surges flooding coastal areas, but with the heavy rainfall these storms may bring, another major hazard they can cause is landslides--sometimes a whole series of landslides across an affected area over a short time. Detecting these landslides is often difficult during the hazardous weather conditions that trigger them. New methods to rapidly detect and respond to these events can help mitigate their harm, as well as better understand the physical processes themselves.

In a new study published in Geophysical Journal International, a research team led by the University of Tsukuba developed a new method to identify and locate landslide events based on seismic surface wave data and applied this method to detect landslides in Japan associated with the transit of Typhoon Talas in 2011.

As study first author Professor Ryo Okuwaki explains, "Our surface-wave detection to locate seismic events was based on the AELUMA method, short for Automated Event Location Using a Mesh of Arrays. One hundred and three seismic stations across Japan were divided into triangular subarrays, and data from the days of the typhoon were analyzed to differentiate earthquake-related events from landslide signals."

Using this method, multiple landslides that occurred during Typhoon Talas were identified, including one in the Tenryu Ward of Shizuoka Prefecture, about 400 km east of the typhoon's track. In 2011, it took 3 days for this landslide to be detected, after the storm had cleared and conventional observation methods became possible. This shows the potential usefulness of applying this new method to more rapidly identify landslide events. The Tenryu landslide was much smaller than landslides previously identified based on globally recorded surface waves, and it was detected as far as 3,000 km from the epicenter using the new approach.

According to Professor Okuwaki, "We found that both small and large landslides may follow the same empirical scaling relationships. This allows previous research based on larger landslides to be applied to better understand the behavior of smaller landslides detected by using our novel method, which will have important implications in further research."

This new method, based on data from a sparse seismic network, is a promising step forward for monitoring landslide occurrences down to a scale of about 100 meters across a broad region in real time, which may help with development of emergency alert technology in the future.

What The Study Did: Changes in quality of diet from different sources of food among U.S. children and adults from 2003 to 2018 were examined in this survey study.

Authors: Junxiu Liu, Ph.D., of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, 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.2021.5262)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflicts 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: Researchers compared the risk of death between infants with and without prenatal opioid exposure and also the difference in risk if diagnosed with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome.

Authors: JoAnna K. Leyenaar, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., of Children's Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, 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.2021.6364)

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.

Convenience and access win out over reputation when people over 50 look for a doctor for themselves, a new study finds.

But online ratings and reviews of physicians play an important role, and should receive attention from providers and policymakers, the researchers say.

About 20% of older adults called such ratings very important to them, but 43% said they had checked such reviews in the past for physicians they were considering for themselves.

Still, factors like insurance acceptance, appointment availability, location and hours won out over reputational information, although about 40% said a recommendation from another physician was very important to them. Recommendations from family and friends were rated as very important by about 20% of older adults.

The new paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine is based on data from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, based at the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and supported by AARP and Michigan Medicine. The new paper includes data and analysis not previously contained in a poll report issued in early 2020.

Use of physician rating sites was more common among women, those with higher levels of education, and those with chronic medical conditions.

The ratings were more likely to be considered very important by members of racial and ethnic minorities, and less likely to be seen as very important by those with bachelor's degrees and above.

"The information found on physician rating sites can vary in level of detail, and often lacks information on the clinical quality of the care the physician provides," says Jeffrey Kullgren, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., the paper's first author and co-director of the poll. "As a result, patients may be skeptical. If someone is using online ratings, they should consider what's most important to them, and understand the potential upsides and downsides of the information they find online."

Kullgren is a primary care physician and researcher at Michigan Medicine, U-M's academic medical center, and at the VA Center for Clinical Management Research.

Physicians, other providers and the health systems they may be part of could also use the new findings to shape how they offer information on their own websites.

For instance, Michigan Medicine now offers physician ratings from standardized post-visit surveys of its patients, but only for physicians who have received enough ratings that address the physician's care. These can be seen in the Michigan Medicine provider index.

Online physician ratings and reviews are increasingly available to the public through commercial rating sites and health systems. Although older adults visit physicians more than any other age group in the United States, little is known about how they use and perceive online ratings and reviews when choosing physicians.

Kullgren and his colleagues say the findings should prompt policymakers and clinicians to ensure the validity and reliability of online rating information and educate patients about how to best use this information in their decision making.

Both people and tomatoes come in different shapes and sizes. That is because every individual has a unique set of genetic variations--mutations--that affect how genes act and function. Added together, millions of small genetic variations make it hard to predict how a particular mutation will impact any individual. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Zach Lippman showed how genetic variations in tomatoes can influence the way a specific mutation affects the plant. He is working toward being able to predict the effects of mutations on different tomato varieties.

In this study, Lippman and his team used CRISPR, a highly accurate and targeted gene-editing tool, on two tomato genes that control fruit size, SlCV3 and SlWUS. They generated over 60 tomato mutants by removing little pieces of DNA in the promoter regions, areas near the genes that control their expression. In some cases, individual mutations increased the size of the tomatoes by a little bit. Some pairs of mutations did not change fruit size at all. A few synergistic combinations caused a dramatic, unpredicted increase in fruit size. Lippman says:

"The real Holy Grail in all this for crop breeding is predictability. If I mutate this sequence, I'm going to get this effect. Because there is this sea of other variants that nature has accumulated nearby the mutation that you're engineering, as well as scattered throughout the genome, many of which could be influencing the specific mutation that you're creating."

This range of interactions for any two mutations models the consequences of a single mutation occurring in different genetic backgrounds. The effect is comparable to those found in some human diseases, where some people might have certain pre-existing mutations that protect them from disease-causing mutations.

Lippman and his team will continue quantifying how individual and combined mutations affect certain crop traits. So far, they have measured interactions between two individual mutations, but genomes have millions of variations. Lippman hopes to study enough measurable interactions to make breeding more predictable and efficient.

A unique residential study has concluded that, contrary to perceived wisdom, people with eating disorders do not lose self-control - leading to binge-eating - in response to stress. The findings of the Cambridge-led research are published today in the Journal of Neuroscience.

People who experience bulimia nervosa and a subset of those affected by anorexia nervosa share certain key symptoms, namely recurrent binge-eating and compensatory behaviours, such as vomiting. The two disorders are largely differentiated by body mass index (BMI): adults affected by anorexia nervosa tend to have BMI of less than 18.5 kg/m2. More than 1.6 million people in the UK are thought to have an eating disorder, three-quarters of whom are women.

One prominent theory of binge-eating is that it is a result of stress, which causes individuals to experience difficulties with self-control. However, until now, this theory has not been directly tested in patients.

To examine this theory, researchers at the University of Cambridge, working with clinicians at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, invited 85 women - 22 with anorexia nervosa, 33 with bulimia nervosa and 30 healthy controls - to attend a two-day stay at Wellcome Trust-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science Translational Research Facility (TRF). The facility, which includes an Eating Behaviour Unit, is designed so that a volunteer's diet and environment can be strictly controlled and their metabolic status studied in detail during a residential status. The setting is intended to be as naturalistic as possible.

During their stay, each morning the women would receive controlled meals provided by a nutritionist. The women then underwent a fasting period during which they were taken to the next door Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, where they performed tasks while their brain activity was monitored using a functional MRI scanner.

The first tasks involved stopping the progression of a bar rising up a computer screen by pressing a key. The main task involved stopping the moving bar as it reached the middle line. On a minority of trials, stop-signals were presented, where the moving bar stopped automatically before reaching the middle line; participants were instructed to withhold their response in the event of a stop-signal.

The women then performed a task aimed at raising their stress levels. They were asked to carry out a series of mental arithmetic tests while receiving mild but unpredictable electric shocks, and were told that if they failed to meet the performance criterion, their data would be dismissed from the study. They were given feedback throughout the task, such as 'Your performance is below average'.

The women then repeated the stop-signal task again.

Once the tasks had been completed - but while the volunteers might still be expected to be in a heightened state of stress - they returned to the Eating Behaviour Unit, where they were offered an 'all you can eat' buffet in its relaxing lounge and were told they could eat as much or as little as they would like.

On the second day of their study, the volunteers carried out the same tasks, but without the added stress of unpleasant electric shocks and pressure to perform. (For some participants, the order of the days was reversed.)

Dr Margaret Westwater, who led the research while a PhD student at Cambridge's Department of Psychiatry, said: "The idea was to see what happened when these women were stressed. Did it affect key regions of the brain important for self-control, and did that in turn lead to increases in food intake? What we found surprised us and goes counter to the prevailing theory."

The team found that even when they were not stressed, those women with bulimia nervosa performed worse on the main task, where they had to stop the rising bar as it reached the middle bar - but this was not the case for those women affected by anorexia nervosa. This impairment occurred alongside increased activity in a region in the prefrontal cortex, which the team say could mean these particular women were unable to recruit some other regions required by the brain to perform the task optimally.

Interestingly - and contrary to the theory - stress did not affect the actual performance in any way for either of the patient groups or the controls. However, the patient groups showed some differences in brain activity when they were stressed - and this activity differed between women with anorexia and those with bulimia.

While the researchers observed that the patients in general ate less in the buffet than the controls, the amount that they ate did not differ between the stress and control days. However, activity levels in two key brain regions were associated with the amount of calories consumed in all three groups, suggesting that these regions are important for dietary control.

Dr Westwater added: "Even though these two eating disorders are similar in many respects, there are clear differences at the level of the brain. In particular, women with bulimia seem to have a problem with pre-emptively slowing down in response to changes in their environment, which we think might lead them to make hasty decisions, leaving them vulnerable to binge-eating in some way.

"The theory suggests that these women should have eaten more when they were stressed, but that's actually not what we found. Clearly, when we're thinking about eating behaviour in these disorders, we need to take a more nuanced approach."

In findings published last year, the team took blood samples from the women as they performed their tasks, to look at metabolic markers that are important for our sense of feeling hungry or feeling full. They found that levels of these hormones are affected by stress.

Under stress, patients with anorexia nervosa had an increase in ghrelin, a hormone that tells us when we are hungry. But they also had an increase in peptide tyrosine tyrosine (PYY), a satiety hormone. In other words, when they are stressed, people with anorexia nervosa produce more of the hunger hormone, but contradictorily also more of a hormone that should tell them that they are full, so their bodies are sending them confusing signals about what to do around food.

The situation with bulimia nervosa was again different: while the team saw no differences in levels of ghrelin or PYY, they did see lower levels of cortisol, the 'stress hormone', than in healthy volunteers. In times of acute stress, people who are chronically stressed or are experiencing depression are known to show this paradoxical low cortisol phenomenon.

Professor Paul Fletcher, joint senior author at the Department of Psychiatry, said: "It's clear from our work that the relationship between stress and binge-eating is very complicated. It's about the environment around us, our psychological state and how our body signals to us that we're hungry or full.

"If we can get a better understanding of the mechanisms behind how our gut shapes those higher order cognitive processes related to self-control or decision-making, we may be in a better position to help people affected by these extremely debilitating illnesses. To do this, we need to take a much more integrated approach to studying these illnesses. That's where facilities such as Cambridge's new Translational Research Facility can play a vital role, allowing us to monitor within a relatively naturalistic environment factors such as an individual's behaviour, hormone levels and, brain activity."

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have identified and tested a drug combination that exploits a weakness in small cell lung cancer (SCLC), an aggressive, dangerous cancer. The scientists targeted a vulnerability in how the cancer cells reproduce, increasing already high levels of replication stress ¬¬-- a hallmark of out-of-control cell growth in many cancers that can damage DNA and force cancer cells to constantly work to repair themselves. In a small clinical trial, the drug duo shrank the tumors of SCLC patients. The team reported its findings April 12 in Cancer Cell.

While many patients with small cell lung cancer initially respond to chemotherapy, they lack an effective follow-up treatment. These patients usually live a matter of weeks after their first treatment stops working and their disease returns. Scientists at NIH's National Cancer Institute (NCI) and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) teamed up to find another option to treat these cancers, which are part of a larger group of similar diseases called small cell neuroendocrine cancers.

"We wanted to identify novel drugs and combinations to leverage this vulnerability therapeutically," said NCI's Anish Thomas, M.D., who led the study. "We saw potential opportunities because the armamentarium of new chemicals and drugs was rapidly expanding."

The NCI group collaborated with NCATS co-author Craig Thomas, Ph.D., and his team to use NCATS' matrix screening platform and expertise to explore the potential of nearly 3,000 agents from an oncology-focused library of investigational and approved drugs against SCLC cells in the laboratory.

NCATS' robotics-enabled, high-throughput screening technologies allow scientists to rapidly test thousands of different drugs and drug combinations in a variety of ways. Scientists can examine the most promising drugs and drug combinations, determine the most effective doses of each drug and learn more about the possible mechanisms by which these drugs act.

The research team found multiple drug combinations involving commonly used chemotherapy drugs that cause DNA damage and drugs designed to block DNA repair. One of the most effective combinations was the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved chemotherapy drug topotecan and an investigational drug M6620, or berzosertib, which blocks an enzyme, called ATR, that plays a role in DNA repair.

"A lot of exciting advances have led to the clinical availability of ATR inhibitors, including berzosertib," said NCATS translational scientist Michele Ceribelli, Ph.D., a co-author. "Blocking the ATR enzyme means cancer cells can't respond to DNA damaging agents properly. This makes chemotherapy even more effective."

The NCI researchers tested the berzosertib-topotecan drug combination in a clinical trial involving SCLC patients who either had relapsed after initial treatment or for whom their therapy had stopped working. They found that the drug combination helped more than one-third of participants (9 of 25) improve in some way. In some cases, the improvement lasted for six months.

"There are a lot of unknowns within the translational process," said Craig Thomas. "Such large combination screening experiments can reveal pharmacologic relationships from an increasingly diverse collection of compounds and drugs. In the best-case scenario, the outcomes of these screens can help clinical teams prioritize their efforts."

When the scientists looked more closely at the tumor samples, they discovered that the patients whose tumors became smaller in response to treatment showed more activity in genes involved in rapid cell growth and DNA repair. The findings suggest that researchers could develop a more personalized approach in treating SCLC patients as well as other types of small cell neuroendocrine cancers.

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...April 13, 2021 - Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have for the first time identified new drug candidates based on molecules isolated from probiotic Kefir yogurt for combating pathogenic bacteria and treating various inflammatory conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and COVID-19 related cytokine storms.

The research, published in Microbiome, a leading peer-reviewed publication was led by Orit Malka, a Ph.D. student of Prof. Raz Jelinek, GU vice president and dean for research and development.

"These results are notable, since this is the first demonstration that virulence of human pathogenic bacteria can be mitigated by molecules secreted in probiotic milk products, such as yogurt or kefir," said Prof. Jelinek. "Our research illuminates the mechanism by which milk fermented probiotics can protect against pathogenic infections and aid the immune system. Following promising results in animal models, we look forward to administering these drug candidates to patients who are experiencing a cytokine storm due to COVID-19 infection, or people suffering from acute inflammatory bowel pathologies, such as Crohn's disease."

Kefir is a fermented probiotic dairy drink made by infusing cow or goat milk with kefir grains containing yeast and lactic acid bacteria. Probiotics are widely perceived as helping immune functions, affecting balanced microbial populations in the digestive system, and potentially protecting the body against bacterial infections.

"The healthy properties of probiotics in yogurt have been widely recognized, but our remarkable BGU researchers have shown how they actually have the potential to be highly effective drugs," says Doug Seserman, chief executive officer, American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. "It is another example of groundbreaking research and innovation at BGU."

The BGU researchers demonstrated that the kefir-secreted molecules were able to significantly reduce virulence of Vibrio cholerae - which causes cholera. The anti-bacterial effect was based on disrupting communication among the bacterial cells which is a promising approach against antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In a follow-up study, the scientists observed that the isolated molecules had dramatic anti-inflammatory properties in various pathological conditions and disease models. For example, experimental results revealed that the molecules effectively healed mice inflicted with a lethal "cytokine storm" - the extreme immune response which is one of the main causes of death in COVID-19 patients. The molecules not only eliminated the cytokine storm, but also restored balance to the immune system, an extraordinary feat pointing to significant therapeutic potential.

The researchers have formed a new company to develop and commercialize the technology through BGN Technologies, the BGU technology transfer company.

"In a world where antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming an imminent threat, the novel molecules discovered by BGU scientists pave a completely new path for fighting bacterial infections by disrupting cell-cell communications in pathogenic bacteria," said Josh Peleg, CEO of BGN Technologies. "Moreover, the dramatic anti-inflammatory activities of the molecules may open new avenues for therapeutics and scientifically proven probiotic food products." "Years of breakthrough research have now reached a validation point that led to the establishment of a biopharma company for the further development and clinical evaluation of this exciting new technology that can potentially revolutionize the treatment of bacterial infections as well as inflammatory conditions."

GEOGRAFI A new study by a University of Copenhagen researcher finds that thawing permafrost in Alaska causes colder water in smaller rivers and streams. This surprising consequence of climate change could affect the survival of fish species in the Arctic's offshore waters.

Arctic stream

The study's researchers discovered that thawing permafrost causes groundwater to run deeper, where it becomes cooler than when it flows near the soil surface.

Rising global temperatures are causing frozen Arctic soil - permafrost - to thaw. In a new study, researchers have discovered something surprising: small rivers, creeks and streams that flow into larger lakes and coastal waters seem be to getting colder as permafrost melts. The phenomenon was previously documented in Russian rivers in the Arctic. But until now, no one had studied why the water was getting colder, even as air temperatures are warming and the permafrost is thawing.

Together with researchers from the US Geological Survey Alaska Science Center, Associate Professor Ylva Sjöberg of UCPH's Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management has shed new light on this cold water. The study's researchers discovered that thawing permafrost causes groundwater to run deeper, where it becomes cooler than when it flows near the soil surface.

"Permafrost is found just beneath the ground's surface. When permafrost is intact, groundwater flows from springs and the mountains and atop the permafrost layer, where it is significantly heated throughout summer. However, as permafrost disappears, runoff seeps deeper into the ground, where it cools before making its way into nearby streams, rivers and lakes," explains Ylva Sjöberg, the study's lead author.

Yet another climate change complication

In their study, the researchers studied the Noatak National Preserve in northwest Alaska. As with other Arctic areas, the Noatak is experiencing higher temperature due to climate change.

However, very little data is available for how climate change affects the temperature of smaller water flows. The researchers positioned 62 measuring sensors in different streams in areas both with and without permafrost. Here, they observed that water temperatures were warmer in permafrost-covered areas.

Using a computer model, the researchers were able to calculate that the summer water temperatures would average 11 degrees in areas of permafrost, while in areas without permafrost, it would be 4 degrees.

"We have no reason to believe that our observations in Alaska would be any different in other Arctic regions with analogous landscapes. This complicates the effects of climate change, as it seems that areas with permafrost are not subject to the same simple ratio of temperature increases in air and water as are used elsewhere," explains Ylva Sjöberg.

Could affect fish stocks

Salmon, grayling and sculpin are a few of the fish species that spawn and grow in these streams. Fish biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Alaska Science Center made initial observations of how cooler water temperatures might affect fish.

"Stream temperature ultimately determines a fish's ability to reproduce and survive. We suspect that colder water may limit how large a fish grows and likely limits whether they will thrive," explains Michael P. Carey, USGS fish biologist.

According to the biologists, who are now busy with analysing the study data, thawing permafrost can also introduce other factors that may disturb the aquatic environments of these fish.

"Streams draining from areas of thawing permafrost will likely show not only temperature fluctuations but also an increase in carbon and nutrient runoff," concludes Carey.

Researchers at the University of Calgary and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), in Toronto, have discovered genetic risk factors for OCD that could help pave the way for earlier diagnosis and improved treatment for children and youth.

"Our group made the first finding of a genome-wide significant risk gene relevant to childhood OCD," says Dr. Paul Arnold, MD, PhD, co-principal investigator, a professor and director of The Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education at the Cumming School of Medicine. "We've known that OCD runs in families, but we hadn't identified and validated specific genetic risks of OCD symptoms in children and youth until now."

The research drew on the Spit for Science study, a research project led by SickKids looking at how genes interact with the environment to impact physical and mental health. Participants from the community were recruited via an innovative research design run out of the Ontario Science Centre, which has generated a diverse sample of 23,000 participants thus far. Participants provide a DNA sample through their saliva, do a cognitive task, and complete questionnaires on their health, lifestyle and behaviours.

In this study, saliva samples from over 5,000 children and youth were scanned and compared to participant responses using the Toronto Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (TOCS). The TOCS is a questionnaire used to evaluate obsessive-compulsive traits developed by Dr. Arnold and the team at SickKids. After looking across millions of genetic variants from the saliva samples, the team identified that children and youth with a genetic variant in the gene PTPRD had a greater risk for more obsessive-compulsive traits. The findings are published in Translational Psychiatry.

"Discovering the genes involved in OCD is critical to help improve patients' lives. It is still early days, but our hope is these findings will lead us to understand the causes of OCD, which in turn could help identify people with OCD sooner and develop better treatments," says Dr. Christie Burton, PhD, lead author and research associate in the Neurosciences & Mental Health program at SickKids.

The research team, which also includes co-principal investigators, Drs. Jennifer Crosbie, PhD, Clinical Psychologist at SickKids, and Russell Schachar, MD, Psychiatrist at SickKids, highlight that a greater understanding of the underlying genetics may eventually be an important complement to clinical assessment and could help guide treatment options in the future.

"OCD can present very differently and at various ages in each individual, adding to the challenge of treatment and diagnosis," says Crosbie, who is also an associate scientist in the Neurosciences & Mental Health program at SickKids. "Studies like this one are an important step towards developing precision medicine approaches for mental health."

Sam, 17, lives with OCD and with therapy and medication, he says he has been able to face his obsessions and compulsions, ride out the anxiety and control his actions. Looking back at his childhood, Sam says he had some OCD tendencies as early as elementary school, but neither he nor his family realized he had a mental illness. The researchers hope that by understanding the genetics of OCD they can develop better treatments, improve outcomes and diagnose youth like Sam earlier.

"At first I wasn't sure what to do with the diagnosis, it was very foreign, I didn't want to perceive myself as having a mental health issue," says Sam. "But, knowing I have OCD helped me overcome the challenges. With therapy and medication, I've stopped OCD from overtaking my life and taken back control."

Sam is a real teenager, but Sam isn't his real name. He says due to the stigma around OCD he would prefer to remain anonymous.

Blood vessels deliver nutrients and oxygen to each organ in our body. They are difficult to completely restore to their original conditions once damaged by myocardial infarction or severe ischemic diseases. This is because various angiogenic growth factors must be applied sequentially in order to restore the vascular structure. Recently, a research team at POSTECH has bioengineered a novel adhesive patch platform that can efficiently deliver blood vessel-forming growth factors spatiotemporally using mussel adhesive protein (MAP), a bio-adhesive material that is made from mussels harmless to humans.

A POSTECH research team led by Professor Hyung Joon Cha and Dr. Tae Yoon Park of the Department of Chemical Engineering has developed a drug-delivering adhesive patch using two formulations - coacervate-based microparticles and light activation-based crosslinked hydrogels - that can be mass-produced. The team verified their effectiveness in tissue regeneration including neovascularization using a rat model for myocardial infarction and excisional wound model incapable of self-healing.

The research team produced microparticles by instantaneously encapsulating and crosslinking platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) required for the late-phase angiogenesis during the process of forming coacervate microdroplets formed by the electrostatic interaction of MAP and hyaluronic acid.

In addition, PDGF-loaded microparticles and the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) required for initial-phase angiogenic factor are simultaneously encapsulated in a MAP-based crosslinked hydrogel, spatially separated and mounted the two factors easily and quickly.

This effective novel angiogenesis-inducing platform showed that PDGF was secreted and delivered 1.9 times later in time despite its smaller size than VEGF. In addition, the team confirmed that the platform allows crosslinking to occur instantaneously so that it can easily adhere even to uneven curved surfaces.

"We have developed a new platform that can efficiently deliver angiogenic factors spatiotemporally by using the formulation property of MAP, an original biomaterial," remarked Professor Hyung Joon Cha who has long devoted himself to studying the MAP. "It is of great significance that we have confirmed the functional recovery beyond effective neovascularization by applying it to actual animal model of myocardial infarction and severely damaged skin model."

"It will be successfully applicable to chronic and ischemic diseases in a similar environment." He added eagerly, "This platform can play a key role in the neovascularization treatment market as it uses biocompatible biomaterials that are harmless to the human body."

Researchers at the Laboratory of Cluster Catalysis at St Petersburg University have synthesised polymers from biomass. What makes them different is that they can be easily recycled.

Today, our life is simply unthinkable without polymers. Plastics, fibres, films, paint and lacquer coating - they are all polymers. We use them both in our everyday life and in industry. Yet the goods made from polymers, e.g. bottles, bags, or disposable tableware, are used just once or for a short period of time before they are thrown away. Due to the chemical compounds that they may release during recycling, they pose a real threat to our environment.

There are few polymers that can be recycled many times. This stirs up interest in secondary recycling. However, the goods made from secondary raw materials are lower in quality compared to the goods from primary raw materials.

The new polymers are based on biomass compounds. Biomass is a renewable source of raw materials for the chemical industry of the future. The key component of these polymers is terpenols, i.e. compounds from natural alcohols. Among them are such well-known examples as: menthol derived from the essential oil in mint; and borneol - a large quantity of which can be found in the essential oil in the white fir tree.

The synthesised polymers may well be used for primary and secondary recycling. During secondary recycling, the polymer-based products can be converted into the primary compounds. This may be further followed by polymerisation. These polymers can be recycled at moderate temperatures.

'This can be said about recycling the materials based on our polymers. If they are recycled without oxygen, we can get natural alcohols or their derivatives that can be restored to the same alcohols. Because they are widely found in nature, they do not harm the environment,' said Svetlana Metlyaeva, the first author of the article and a researcher at the Laboratory of Cluster Catalysis at St Petersburg University.

The polymers of this type can be melted at about 120°C and shaped in another way, she said. When cooling, they become hard. Interestingly, the chemists repeated this cycle seven times and concluded that the polymers, when melted more than once, did not change their properties.

The researchers are planning to continue their work at the Research Park at St Petersburg University. They will study the mechanical properties of the polymers, including resilience, elasticity, strength, and others. This is an important step towards our understating of how to use them in industry.

'What we have achieved so far is only the ability to synthesise these polymers. Yet the properties of the polymer-based materials can vary. This depends on the way in which we synthesise them and what compounds we use. Now we have to modify the polymers themselves and the materials based on them. Then we will be able to talk about how we can use them,' said Svetlana Metlyaeva.

A new study conducted jointly by the Univerisyt of Liege (Belgium) and the University of Reading (England) suggests that 34% of the Antarctic ice shelves could disappear by the end of the century if the planet warms up by 4°C compared with pre-industrial temperatures. This melting could lead to a significant rise in sea levels. This study is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Since the early 2000s, scientists have observed that the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass at a rate that is accelerating. The ice sheet is a very thick expanse of ice that can cover an entire continent. There are only two ice sheets on Earth: the Greenland ice sheet, which is limited to the land cover, and the Antarctic ice sheet, which extends beyond the continent into the ocean to form large floating platforms. "These ice shelves act like dams and keep the ice on the continent," explains Christoph Kittel, a researcher at the University of Liege Climatology Laboratory and co-author of the study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (1). Without these platforms, huge amounts of ice would flow directly into the ocean, leading to a consequent rise in sea levels."

In summer, the snow on the surface of these platforms melts and water seeps into the small empty spaces in the deep snow layers where it can refreeze and restore the strength of the platform. If the melt is too great, then the excess water seeps deeper into the ice or forms lakes on the surface. The seepage and increased weight of the water as a result of lake formation tends to fracture the ice. And when the ice melt is greater than the snowfall, there is a high risk of platform failure. "The break-up and disappearance of the Larsen B platform in 2002 showed how sensitive these barriers are to melting," explains Ella Gilbert, co-author of the scientific paper and a researcher in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading. "In a few days, about 3250 km2 of ice has been dumped into the ocean."

For their study, the researchers used the Regional Atmospheric Model (MAR) developed by the Climatology Laboratory of the University of Liege - one of the best models in the world for studying polar climates. The model allowed them to calculate the evolution of conditions that lead to platform failures in Antarctica under different levels of climate warming ranging from 1.5°C to 4°C. All these scenarios are possible for the end of the century.

"As temperatures rise, intense summer melt events will be repeated and, above all, will become more intense," says Christoph Kittel. The meltwater will no longer be able to be absorbed by the snow to refreeze, but will form lakes and seep deeper into the ice of the platforms, which will lead to break-ups." The study identified platforms where the risk of break-up is high. Four platforms - Larsen C, Shackleton, Pine Island and Wilkins - are therefore considered 'at risk' because of their location and predicted melt.

"If temperatures continue to rise at the current rate, we could see even more platform collapse events in the next few years," says Gilbert. This echoes a previous study by Christoph Kittel, recently published in the journal The Cryosphere (2), which suggests that climate change in Antarctica may have been underestimated in previous IPCC reports for the year 2100. The climate scientists stress the importance of meeting the targets set by the Paris Agreement as soon as possible, which would limit global warming and the risks of destroying Antarctic platforms. "It is important to act quickly, because we are talking about ten years or even 2040 at the very most before the most pessimistic scenario stands out. Limiting global warming is not just good for Antarctica, preserving the ice shelves means reducing the rise in sea level and therefore the impact that this will have on all our lives," conclude the two researchers.

Inland waters are an important component of the global carbon cycle and function as active reactors, transporting and transforming large quantities of naturally- and anthropogenically-derived carbon. Previous studies suggest that inland waters are major sources for greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere, yet these emissions are poorly constrained (Note 1).

As a primary greenhouse gas that drives global climate change, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from inland waters play a key role in assessing global carbon cycle. While most efforts over the last decade have focused on refining the emission flux estimates at the regional and global scales, scientists do not fully understand the responsiveness of regional CO2 emissions from inland waters to global change. Recent studies demonstrate that they are subject to upward revisions because key regions, such as China, have not been properly included.

Researchers at the Department of Geography of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), together with collaborators from Australia, Germany, Switzerland, China, and the USA, have for the first-time, quantified CO2 emissions from streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs in China over the last three decades and compared two time periods: 1980s and 2010s, during which China experienced unprecedented environmental and socio-economic changes. The first period refers to the 1980s prior to massive anthropogenic perturbations, while the second period (the 2010s) is posterior to extensive damming and intensive land use change. The findings have recently been published in academic journal Nature Communications.

In combination with remote sensing techniques, the research team estimated CO2 emission flux from Chinese inland waters based on historical water chemistry data collected at 1,709 locations in the 1980s and recent field sampling at 1,064 sites across China, analyzing nearly 200, 000 water samples collected over the period. The team used an unprecedented spatiotemporal dataset to reconstruct past perturbations caused by rapid environmental and socio-economic changes, and investigated their impact on CO2 emissions from Chinese inland waters.

The findings revealed an overall decrease of 29% of CO2 emission flux from Chinese inland waters over the past three decades, from 138±31 million tonnes of carbon per year (C/yr) in the 1980s to 98±19 million tonnes of C/yr in the 2010s. (Table 1)

Streams and rivers are the primary emitters, accounting for 88% to 93% of the total evasion. In 2010, total CO2 emission flux from Chinese streams and rivers has decreased to 85.8 ± 19.4 million tonnes of C/yr, at the same order of magnitude as the integrated flux for streams and rivers in the United States of 97 million tonnes of C/yr (Note 2) or one third of the estimate for African rivers with 270 to 370 million tonnes of C/yr. (Note 3)

"Our findings suggest that this unexpected decrease was driven by a combination of environmental alterations, including massive conversion of free-flowing rivers to reservoirs and widespread implementation of reforestation programmes. Conversion of free-flowing rivers to reservoirs which show physicochemical properties analogous to lakes caused a significant reduction of CO2 emissions," said lead author Dr Lishan Ran at the Department of Geography of the Faculty of Social Sciences, HKU.

The total surface area of rivers and streams during the period has decreased by 8.1 to 10.4%, while the total surface area of lakes and reservoirs has increased by 13.1% (Table 2). Overall, the total surface area of Chinese inland waters increased by about 8600 km2 on average (6%) in the 2010s when compared with the 1980s.

"China has engaged in a dam boom since the 1980s with a surging economy that spurred the need for energy and food production. With about 15,000 new reservoirs being completed between the two periods, the storage capacity of reservoirs more than doubled. Therefore, the reduction in stream surface area between the two periods has been offset by the simultaneous expansion of lakes and reservoirs." Dr Ran explained.

The Tibetan Plateau is spatially the only region showing increased emission from streams/rivers, lakes and reservoirs, with riverine and lake CO2 efflux increasing by 18% and 81%, respectively. This reflects the expansion of the stream networks and increasing flow due to melting glaciers, snow, and permafrost and increasing precipitation in the region. The stream surface area on the Tibetan Plateau increased by 8.5% and 2.5% in the dry and wet seasons, respectively. In comparison, the riverine CO2 evasion in all other regions presents strong declines of 31% to 56%.

"Since CO2 loss through inland water evasion is not yet incorporated into current carbon budgeting of China's terrestrial landscape, we conclude that ignoring carbon outgassing from inland waters will likely result in significantly overestimating the terrestrial carbon sink by ecosystems, such as forest." Dr Ran said.

From the findings, the efflux estimates could reduce the magnitude of the terrestrial carbon sink within China for the 1980s by 24% to 59%. As a result of implementation of nationwide ecological restoration programs since the early 1980s, terrestrial ecosystems across China have been greatly restored in the 2010s. Even so, accounting for the simultaneous CO2 evasion from Chinese inland waters suggests that the overall carbon sink capability of China's terrestrial ecosystems in the 2010s could be offset by 17% to 21%.

"Considering that China's diverse climatic and geomorphologic systems mimic global landscapes and comprise most of the global vegetation types, we contend that excluding inland water CO2 evasion could produce significant errors in understanding the role of terrestrial ecosystems in the global carbon balance. The research result is also significant for global carbon emission assessments. The efflux estimate from Chinese inland waters represents 5% to 7% of the global estimate and would cause about 0.1 billion tonne of carbon increase over previous global-scale estimates. "Dr Ran said.

"This study represents the first comprehensive approach to evaluating changes in aquatic CO2 emissions through time. We showed that direct management of both terrestrial and aquatic systems has the potential to significantly impact the carbon emissions from inland waters. Only an accurate assessment of CO2 emission change due to management practices, and their influence on water resources, will allow us to fully understand how to couple aquatic carbon loss with terrestrial ecosystems." Dr Ran added.