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Blackcurrants have a beneficial effect on post-meal glucose response, and the required portion size is much smaller than previously thought, a new study from the University of Eastern Finland shows.

Blackcurrants have a beneficial effect on the blood glucose response after a meal. They balance the glucose response of ingested sugar by attenuating its rise and delaying its fall. The effect is likely associated with berry-derived polyphenolic compounds, anthocyanins, which are rich in blackcurrants.

The beneficial health effect of blackcurrants was supported by a recent study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland. In the clinical meal study (Maqua) the beneficial effect on postprandial glucose response was achieved by 75 g (1.5 dL) of blackcurrants, a remarkably smaller portion size than in earlier studies. Blackcurrants are often consumed with added sugar because of their natural sourness, which may be a cause of concern for health-conscious consumers. However, it seems that sugar consumed with blackcurrants is not as unhealthy as sugar consumed without berries.

The study was conducted in collaboration between the Institute of Public Health and Clinical Nutrition at the University of Eastern Finland and Savonia University of Applied Sciences by utilizing the regional Food Valley ecosystem.

Berries are an important component of a healthy diet, being rich in vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre and polyphenols. So far, however, the EU has not authorised health claims for berries. In recent years, there have been many studies monitoring the effects of berries on glucose metabolism, with the dark berries, such as blackcurrant and bilberry, having the most convincing results. Black-coloured berries, rich in anthocyanins, seem to attenuate the blood glucose response to added sugar, compared to a control product having the same amount of sugar. The same effect is demonstrated by anthocyanins extracted from blackcurrants. Polyphenolic compounds may slow down the absorption of glucose from the small intestine by interacting with carbohydrate-digesting enzymes and glucose transport proteins. In addition, polyphenolic compounds may reduce oxidative stress and inflammation.

In the Maqua study, 26 healthy participants (22 female, 4 male) consumed three different test products and sugar water as a control product at four separate study visits. The test products were a blackcurrant purée with added sugar, a blackcurrant product containing fermented quinoa, and a blackcurrant product base without blackcurrants. Each of them and the control product contained 31 g of available carbohydrates and had a similar composition of sugar components. Blood samples were taken before the meals in fasting state and postprandially in 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120 and 180 minutes after consuming the meal, and analysed for glucose, insulin, and free fatty acids.

Compared to sugar water, both blackcurrant products had attenuated postprandial glycaemic response, which was seen in reduced maximum glucose and insulin, delayed fall of glucose, and delayed rise of free fatty acids because of hypoglycaemia. The effect was enhanced for the blackcurrant product because of the innovative product base. The results support earlier findings on the beneficial effects of blackcurrant on blood glucose response after a meal, showing the effect with a smaller portion size. Over a longer period of time, smaller variations in the blood glucose and insulin levels, and improved insulin sensitivity, may decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes.

Blackcurrants are an interesting raw material for the food industry because of their high content of anthocyanins and easy availability. Blackcurrants have potential for being developed into new healthy and tasty products.

Over the last decade, growing food industry led demand for hazelnuts has not been satisfied globally with a corresponding expansion in supply. Most worldwide commercial hazelnut orchards are traditionally concentrated in a select few areas: in fact, more than half of the global production of in-shell hazelnuts is concentrated in Turkey, followed by Italy, Oregon and Azerbaijan.

The growing demand for nuts and the necessary diversification of supply are urging for production in additional areas that are suitable for hazelnut tree cultivation around the world. But the new territories suitable for hazelnut farming should be chosen carefully, taking into consideration not only the current climatic conditions, but also the climate of the future, its changes and the expected impacts, in order to meet the thermal and water requirements of hazelnut growth and development.

Given the long-term nature of the investment needed to establish new orchards - around 10 years after planting before full production - and given the global changes expected for the future, businesses and decision makers need support from the world of research in defining the right strategies.

Climate sciences can offer an ex-ante evaluation of the future production trends, thus highlighting opportunities for the future of hazelnut cultivation. This has been done for the case of Australia, where an increase in hazelnut imports by more than 60% from 1992 to 2015, highlighted the need to enlarge domestic production through the establishment of new hazelnut plantations.

With the aim of supporting private and public bodies to design new investment plans and promote legislative measures aimed at encouraging hazelnut cultivation in Australia, an international team of researchers conducted the study "Climate change impacts on phenology and yield of hazelnut in Australia", just released in the Agricultural Systems Journal and carried out with the cooperation and contribution of the Hazelnut company division of Ferrero Group. The study evaluates for the first time the projected impacts of climate change on hazelnut yield and production in a vast area in southeastern Australia, using an ensemble of regional circulation models bound by four global climate models.

Results show a strong agreement between models. The effect of climate change on hazelnut farming is expected to induce a yield increase in the near future (2020-2039), ranging from 18 to 52% in the southeastern coast of Australia. The impacts of climate change are still uncertain in other regions: while the entire domain of analysis is expecting a warmup in the next twenty years, there is still a lack of agreement among climate models on the future changes in precipitation and the degree of temperature increase in other inland agro-climatic zones of the country. Thus, hazelnut production potential varies according to the model considered, and yield will likely remain stable or decrease in the inland areas, despite some models projecting yield increase.

"This study represents a first important step toward an assessment of actual opportunities for the future of hazelnut cultivation in Australia", affirmed Stefano Materia and Antonio Trabucco, the CMCC researchers who collaborated in the paper. "Nevertheless, there is a need for additional field trials to further validate these results, and many other socio-political components should be considered to optimize decisions on where to start hazelnut farming. For example, in this area water resources are subject to complex regulations and limits for agricultural use, but results could be different if we considered the implementation of irrigation systems beside the effects of climate change."

Bird species that have lost the ability to fly through evolution have become extinct more often than birds that have retained their ability to fly, according to new research from the University of Gothenburg.

Today, we know that human influence on the environment has caused large numbers of plants and animals to die out. Human impact has fundamentally changed ecosystems and, globally, has driven hundreds of animal species to extinction.

One of the consequences of this is that biological pattens have become distorted. This, in turn, means that researchers have a harder time interpreting current data on species diversity, i.e. variations of species within an ecosystem or area.

"Studying human-caused species extinction can influence our understanding of evolution and help us to better understand the loss of species not caused by chance," says Søren Faurby, senior author behind the new study and a researcher at the University of Gothenburg.

Together with his research colleagues, he has studied a larger evolutionary transition: the development of flightlessness among birds. For the first time, a study of this transition includes data from all known flightless species driven to extinction by humans.

"We have found that, in many cases, the extinctions have had anthropogenic origins, which are effects that can be traced back to human activities.

Flightless birds are more common than the researchers believed

Birds that have lost their ability to fly are a more common phenomenon than research has assumed up until now, according to the study. These species have then been impacted by human activities.

"Many bird species can develop flightlessness in environments without large predators, such as on islands, but they also become easier prey for both humans and animals, such as rats and cats," says Ferran Sayol, the lead author behind this study and previously a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg.

The researchers have compiled a list of 581 bird species from 85 different families that have gone extinct during the past 126,000 years.

"Based on morphological descriptions, we have determined that 166 of these species lacked the ability to fly. This is equivalent to 29 per cent of the extinct bird species. Currently, there are only 60 living flightless bird species. If we add the 166 species that have gone extinct, this totals 226 both existing and extinct flightless bird species."

The study shows that by adding these extinct birds to the global picture of bird diversity, it becomes clear that flightlessness developed at least four times as often as if the researchers only looked at living species.

"We show that the development of flightlessness in birds is a widespread phenomenon. If humans had not caused some of these extinctions, we would still share the planet with more than 150 independently developed flightless groups of birds. Unfortunately, only 60[Accent1] of these remain," says Ferran Sayol.

Analyses by KAUST researchers of sand temperatures at marine turtle nesting sites around the Red Sea indicate that turtle hatchlings born in the region could now be predominantly female. These findings hold significant implications for the survival of marine turtle species as temperature increases take hold, driven by anthropogenic climate change.

"Marine turtles are particularly vulnerable to temperature shifts because they demonstrate temperature-dependent sex determination, meaning that the sex of hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the nest during incubation," says Lyndsey Tanabe, a KAUST Ph.D. student investigating the nesting ecology and conservation strategies of marine turtles, under the supervision of Michael Berumen.

The Red Sea is home to five out of seven species of sea turtles, with endangered green turtles and critically endangered hawksbill turtles nesting along its coastlines. Current research suggests that the pivotal temperature to maintain a 50:50 sex ratio is 29.2 degrees Celsius, above which hatchlings are predominantly female. Temperatures above 33 degrees Celsius can cause hatchling deformities and even mass mortality.

"Marine turtles have survived since the late Triassic period and have adapted to past climatic shifts," says Tanabe. "The current rate of anthropogenic-driven temperature change is unprecedented."

"We examined sand temperature profiles at Red Sea nesting sites to improve our understanding of the current turtle population," explains Tanabe.

The team selected five sites distributed across the region that are favored by hawksbill and green turtles. Automated data loggers collected sand temperature data at the nest depths of both species every 15 minutes for five months (May to September 2018, corresponding to the presumed nesting season).

The sand temperature exceeded 29.2 degrees Celsius at all study sites, with the exception of Small Gobal Island in the northern Red Sea. These results suggest that feminization of hatchlings could already be occurring.

"We must be cautious in claiming that feminization is definitely happening," says Tanabe. "The Red Sea is generally warmer than other nesting beaches around the world, so these turtles may have already adapted to a higher pivotal temperature threshold. It is concerning, however, that sand temperatures as high as 36 degrees Celsius were measured at some sites. This could pose a considerable threat to their survival."

Tanabe's findings will contribute to ongoing national consultations on marine conservation, particularly in light of the proposed megadevelopments along Red Sea coasts. "I hope these development projects prioritize the conservation of turtle nesting sites, especially those likely to produce balanced sex ratios," she says.

Tanabe is also studying turtle population dynamics and genetics, and threats such as plastic and heavy metal pollution. She notes that understanding these factors is critical to the success of conservation strategies.

For Black youth, an encounter with police by eighth grade predicts they will be arrested by young adulthood - but the same is not true for white youth, a new University of Washington study finds.

Black young adults are 11 times more likely to be arrested by age 20 if they had an initial encounter with law enforcement in their early teens than Black youth who don't have that first contact.

In contrast, white young adults with early police contact are not significantly more likely to be arrested later, compared with white peers without that history.

The study's authors found that Black youth are more likely than white youth to be treated as "usual suspects" after a first encounter with police, leading to subsequent arrests over time. Even as white young adults report engaging in significantly more illegal behavior, Black young adults face more criminal penalties, the study finds.

Researchers also said it's not just the number of stops, but what transpires during a police stop that sets the tone for future interactions with police.

"What we know about police contacts and youth generally is that Black youth are more likely to be stopped by police to begin with, and are more likely to have a negative experience when that happens," said first author Annie McGlynn-Wright, a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University who led the study while pursuing her doctorate at the UW. "What we haven't known previously is the long-term effects of police contacts in terms of criminal justice outcomes."

McGlynn-Wright added that the study, published Oct. 31 in the journal Social Problems, shows these early contacts with police create a "system response" to Black youth not experienced by white youth.

Racial differences in who is stopped, why and for what penalty have been well documented, the researchers said. Also, police stops have been linked to individuals' later run-ins with law enforcement.

For this study, UW researchers wanted to examine the effects of the first stop on the lives of Black and white adolescents, and whether a stop in the early teen years is associated with "secondary sanctioning," or a "usual suspects" treatment by police that plays out over future stops and/or arrests. The study is among the first to explore the racial differences in police contact over time.

Using longitudinal data from more than 300 Seattle young adults, researchers found stark differences in the law enforcement trajectory of adolescents based on race, from the numbers of Black and white youth who encounter police by middle school, to the numbers arrested in high school and beyond.

It also comes during a period of significant reckoning over race and policing in the United States, after a series of law enforcement killings of Black people around the country. As communities grapple with how to address institutionalized racism, police procedures and accountability, many school districts, including Seattle, have ended their contracts with law enforcement agencies for school resource officers, the personnel who are assigned to specific school buildings. Research has shown that students of color are disproportionately subject to discipline and monitoring by school resource officers.

The UW study launched nearly 20 years ago, with students at 18 Seattle schools. Nearly half of the 331 students were Black. Researchers surveyed students and parents, then followed up with participants in 10th grade and at age 20 to learn more about behavior and consequences. Full data are available on 261 participants.

Differences were clear early on. While there were no differences in self-reported illegal behavior between Black and white youth at 8th grade, 37% of Black teens said they had had some sort of contact with police, compared to 22% of white eighth-graders.

Researchers examined two trends at age 20: whether study participants had been arrested in the past year and whether they had engaged in any illegal activity, from violent crime to drug use to other criminal behavior, such as drawing graffiti, stealing from a store or breaking into private property. The idea, researchers said, was to determine not only who was being arrested, but also who was not.

Significantly more white participants reported engaging in some level of criminal behavior: 53% of white young adults, compared to 32% of Black young adults. But at age 20, Black youth were more than twice as likely to be arrested as white youth (15% compared to 6%). When the eighth-grade police contact is taken into account, it shows that early police contact for Black youth was uniquely predictive of being arrested by age 20, but not for white youth.

Simply put, Black respondents experiencing police contact by eighth grade have an 11 times greater chance of reporting an arrest by age 20 than Black respondents who did not experience early police contact. This was not the case for white youth.

The study was unable to explore the reasons behind these differences, but researchers said the results are clear:

"White people are engaging in more illegal behavior, largely because of their greater drug use, and getting arrested less often at age 20 than Black people, who are committing fewer crimes and getting arrested more," said co-author Kevin Haggerty, a professor in the UW School of Social Work and director of the Social Development Research Group.

Of the 261 respondents surveyed as young adults, white respondents were more likely to report illegal behavior than Black respondents (53% and 32%, respectively), primarily because they were substantially more likely than Blacks to report illegal drug use (40% and 14%, respectively).

While the data was collected in Seattle, researchers say the patterns they found are likely occurring in cities around the country -- Seattle is "more like every other town" than some larger metro areas like Chicago and Philadelphia, where many criminal justice studies are located, noted co-author Robert Crutchfield, a professor emeritus of sociology at the UW.

The bulk of the UW research was conducted before the 2012 Seattle Police Department consent decree with the U.S. Justice Department, whereby the department was to address an excessive use of force, Crutchfield pointed out.

Still, the indisputable differences in the experiences of Black and white youth raise a number of policy and institutional issues. The authors note that it's not just the quantity but the quality of stops - what are often called "investigatory stops" of a young person that raise alarm.

"When police interact with communities, and young people in communities, they have to be especially mindful of the nature and substance of the encounters, and police really need training to avoid negative interactions," Crutchfield said. "What we found is that contact matters. In this study, we couldn't parse out the nature of the interactions, but I suspect most kids experienced the interaction in a negative way. The message is, cops need to do better to minimize unnecessary contacts, and when they do contact people, to treat them better."

The paper's findings also may support the choice by some school districts to end the practice of deploying police officers in schools, the authors said. Given the tendency for school resource officers to get involved in school discipline -- though their primary assignment is to enforce the law and keep buildings safe -- it presents another situation where Black students are often treated differently than white students.

KINGSTON, R.I. -- Dec. 3, 2020 -- An international research team that included three scientists from the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography has discovered single-celled microorganisms in a location where they didn't expect to find them.

"Water boils on the (Earth's) surface at 100 degrees Celsius, and we found organisms living in sediments at 120 degrees Celsius," said URI Professor of Oceanography Arthur Spivack, who led the geochemistry efforts of the 2016 expedition organized by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and Germany's MARUM-Center for Marine and Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen. The study was carried out as part of the work of Expedition 370 of the International Ocean Discovery Program.

The research results from a two-month-long expedition in 2016 will be published today in the journal Science.

The news follows an announcement in October that microbial diversity below the seafloor is as rich as on Earth's surface. Researchers on that project from the Japan marine-earth science group, Bremen University, the University of Hyogo, University of Kochi and University of Rhode Island, discovered 40,000 different types of microorganisms from core samples from 40 sites around the globe.

The research published in Science today focused on the Nankai Trough off the coast of Japan, where the deep-sea scientific vessel, Chinkyu, drilled a hole 1,180 meters deep to reach sediment at 120 degrees Celsius. The leader of the study is Professor Kai-Uwe Hinrichs of MARUM.

Spivack, who was joined by recent Ph.D. graduates, Kira Homola and Justine Sauvage, on the URI team, said one way to identify life is to look for evidence of metabolism.

"We found chemical evidence of the organisms' use of organic material in the sediment that allows them to survive," Spivack said. The URI team also developed a model for the temperature regime of the site.

"This research tells us that deep sediment is habitable in places that we did not think possible," he added.

While this is exciting news on its own, Spivack said the research could point to the possibility of life in harsh environments on other planets.

According to the study, sediments that lie deep below the ocean floor are harsh habitats. Temperature and pressure steadily increase with depth, while the energy supply becomes increasingly scarce. It has only been known for about 30 years that, in spite of these conditions, microorganisms do inhabit the seabed at depths of several kilometers. The deep biosphere is still not well understood, and this brings up fundamental questions: Where are the limits of life, and what factors determine them? To study how high temperatures affect life in the low-energy deep biosphere over the long-term, extensive deep-sea drilling is necessary.

"Only a few scientific drilling sites have yet reached depths where temperatures in the sediments are greater than 30 degrees Celsius," explains study leader Hinrichs of MARUM. "The goal of the T-Limit Expedition, therefore, was to drill a thousand-meter deep hole into sediments with a temperature of up to 120 degrees Celsius - and we succeeded."

Like the search for life in outer space, determining the limits of life on the Earth is fraught with great technological challenges, the research study says.

"Surprisingly, the microbial population density collapsed at a temperature of only about 45 degrees," says co-chief scientist Fumio Inagaki of JAMSTEC. "It is fascinating - in the high-temperature ocean floor, there are broad depth intervals that are almost lifeless. But then we were able to detect cells and microbial activity again in deeper, even hotter zones - up to a temperature of 120 degrees."

Spivack said the project was like going back to his roots, as he and David Smith, professor of oceanography and associate dean of URI's oceanography school, where they were involved in a drilling expedition at the same site about 20 years ago, an expedition that helped initiate the study of the deeply buried marine biosphere.

As for the current project, Spivack said studies will continue on the samples the team collected. "The technology to examine samples collected from the moon took several years to be developed, and the same will be true for these samples from deep in the ocean sediments. We are developing the technology now to continue our research."

PARAMUS, N.J. (December 3, 2020) - Octapharma USA will present multiple clinical research posters focused on the efficacy and safety of fibryga®, Fibrinogen (Human) Lyophilized Powder for Reconstitution, for Intravenous Use in the treatment of congenital and acquired bleeding disorders during the 62nd American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition, a virtual medical congress to be held December 5 - 8.

The research focused on fibryga® addresses the therapy's safety and efficacy to treat congenital fibrinogen (Factor 1) deficiency, a rare, inherited blood disorder where the blood does not clot normally, during on-demand bleeding episodes and surgical prophylaxis in adults and pediatrics. Additionally, Octapharma will present fibryga® research evaluating the product's hemostatic efficacy in acquired fibrinogen deficiency, a condition affecting non-surgical and surgical bleeding patients, including cardiac surgery, post-partum hemorrhage and trauma patients.

"Octapharma is determined to advance clinical research and treatment options for people with life-threatening bleeding disorders, including Factor 1 deficiency and other rare conditions," said Octapharma USA President Flemming Nielsen. "The National Hemophilia Foundation recently updated its treatment guidelines for Factor 1 deficiency to include fibryga® so the ASH research we will be presenting continues to add important clinical treatment data for this therapy. We look forward to sharing the latest research developments with the medical community."

The fibryga® focused research includes:

"Efficacy and Safety of Human Fibrinogen Concentrate for the Treatment of Patients with Congenital Fibrinogen Deficiency: Combined Results of the FORMA-02 and FORMA-04 Clinical Trials": Fibryga® was shown to be efficacious for on-demand treatment of bleeding episodes and perioperative prophylaxis in a rare congenital fibrinogen deficiency (CFD) population, across two Phase 3 clinical trials. Hemostatic efficacy was comparable for adult, adolescent and pediatric patients. A favorable safety profile was seen for the treatment of patients with congenital afibrinogenemia with fibryga®. Presenter: Claudia Khayat, MD, BS, Hotel Dieu de France, Beirut, Lebanon.

"Fiirst-2: Prospective, Randomized Study Comparing Administration of Clotting Factor Concentrates with Standard Massive Hemorrhage Protocol in Severely Bleeding Trauma Patients": FiiRST-2 will determine if early hemostatic therapy with fibryga® and prothrombin complex concentrate (PCC) is superior to standard massive hemorrhage protocol (MHP) packs in bleeding trauma patients. Results could have a major impact on clinical practice and improve management and outcomes in this high-risk group of patients. Presenter: Luis Da Luz, MD, University of Toronto, Canada.

"Real-world Experience with a New Human Fibrinogen Concentrate (Fibryga®) in France for the Treatment of Bleeding Episodes and Surgical Prophylaxis": Fibryga® was used mostly for bleeding control in specific subpopulations, including patients undergoing cardiac surgery and women with post-partum hemorrhage (PPH). Presenter: François Stephan, Hôpital Marie Lannelongue, Le Plessis Robinson, France.

Octapharma will also present research focused on Octaplas™, Pooled Plasma (Human), Solvent/Detergent (S/D) Treated Solution for Intravenous Infusion, entitled, "Retrospective Analysis of the Efficacy of Solvent/Detergent Treated Pooled Plasma As Compared to Fresh Frozen Plasma in Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (TTP): A Single Center Experience." The study confirmed previously reported efficacy of Octaplas™ for treating suspected/confirmed TTP. There were no significant differences in thromboembolic or bleeding events between patients who received FFP as compared to Octaplas™. Presenter: Catherine Klapheke, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, N.Y.

Finally, ASH attendees will have the opportunity to review research focused on another product, octaplex® Human Prothrombin Complex, freeze dried powder and solvent for solution for injection, which is not licensed in the U.S. The posters are:

"The Association of Prothrombin Complex Concentrates with Transfusion Requirement and Postoperative Outcomes in Cardiac Surgery: A Post-Hoc Analysis of the FIBRES Randomized Controlled Trial": In cardiac surgical patients with post-cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) bleeding who received cryoprecipitate or fibryga®, PCC use was associated with decreased red blood cell and platelet transfusion compared to frozen plasma, without a significant increase in adverse events. Presenter: Justyna Bartoszko, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Toronto General Hospital, Canada.

"The FARES Study: A Multicenter, Randomized, Active-Control, Pragmatic, Phase 2 Pilot Study Comparing Prothrombin Complex Concentrate (PCC) versus Frozen Plasma (FP) in Bleeding Adult Cardiac Surgical Patients" will determine the feasibility, and inform the design and primary outcome parameter, of a definitive Phase 3 trial comparing the efficacy and safety of PCC versus FP in bleeding cardiac surgical patients requiring coagulation factor replacement. The pilot study results will also be used in sample size calculations and to aid detection of any early safety issues. Presenter: Keyvan Karkouti, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Toronto General Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada.

Otago researchers have found the "missing link between stress and infertility".

Published in The Journal of Neuroscience, and led by Professor Greg Anderson of the Centre for Neuroendocrinology, the research has confirmed in laboratory testing that a population of nerve cells near the base of the brain - the RFRP neurons - become active in stressful situations and then suppress the reproductive system.

"A revolutionary step forward that has become available to neuroscientists in recent years is the ability to control the activity of selected groups of neurons - to either silence or ramp up their activity, and then monitor the outcomes," Professor Anderson says.

"We used cutting edge transgenic techniques to show that when the activity of the RFRP cells is increased, reproductive hormones are suppressed - in a similar manner to what happens during stress, or during exposure to the stress hormone cortisol.

"Amazingly, when we used cortisol to suppress the reproductive hormones but also silenced the RFRP neurons, the reproductive system continued to function as if cortisol wasn't there at all - proving that the RFRP neurons are a critical piece of the puzzle in stress-induced suppression of reproduction."

The reaction was most evident in females.

Professor Anderson started researching the role of RFRP neurons in controlling fertility in mammals about a decade ago.

"I became interested in whether these neurons might be what causes fertility to be suppressed during chronic stress, after reading that these cells become active during stress. This is a question that has remained stubbornly unanswered over the past decades.

"Although it is known that stress steroids - like cortisol - are probably part of the mechanism involved, it is also known that the brain cells that control reproduction are unable to respond to cortisol, so there seemed to be a missing link in the circuit somewhere.

"We have now shown that the RFRP neurons are indeed the missing link between stress and infertility. They become active in stressful situations - perhaps by sensing the increasing levels of cortisol - and they then suppress the reproductive system."

It is possible drugs could be used to block the actions of the RFRP neurons, and that will be the focus of further research for Professor Anderson.

"We'd like to see if we can overcome stress-induced infertility using drugs which block the actions of the RFRP neurons.

"For women struggling with infertility, drugs which block the actions of the RFRP neurons may prove to be a novel therapy. From what we know about these neurons, such a drug wouldn't have any side-effects.

"There are such drugs available, but they're not approved for human use and they would likely need refining," he says.

There would be at least four times as many flightless bird species on Earth today if it were not for human influences, finds a study led by UCL researchers.
The study, published in Science Advances, finds that flightlessness evolved much more frequently among birds than would be expected if you only looked at current species.

Researchers say their findings show how human-driven extinctions have biased our understanding of evolution.

Lead author Dr Ferran Sayol (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research and University of Gothenburg, Sweden) said: "Human impacts have substantially altered most ecosystems worldwide, and caused the extinction of hundreds of animal species.

"This can distort evolutionary patterns, especially if the characteristics being studied, such as flightlessness in birds, make species more vulnerable to extinction. We get a biased picture of how evolution really happens."

For the study, the researchers compiled an exhaustive list of all bird species known to have gone extinct since the rise of humans. They identified 581 bird species that went extinct from the Late Pleistocene (126,000 years ago) to the present, almost all of which were likely due to human influences.

The fossils or other records show that 166 of these extinct species lacked the ability to fly. Only 60 flightless bird species survive today.

Birds that cannot fly were much more diverse than previous studies had assumed, the study shows. The findings also confirm that flightless species were also much more likely to go extinct than species that could fly.

Co-author Professor Tim Blackburn (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research and the Institute of Zoology, ZSL) said: "Many bird species can become flightless in environments without their usual predators, for example on islands. Flying expends a lot of energy that birds can use for other purposes if they don't need to take to the air. Unfortunately, though, this makes them easier prey if humans - and their associated rats and cats - suddenly turn up.

"Extinction has all too often been the result, and is likely to continue as flightless birds are overrepresented, compared to avian species, on global lists of animals under threat."

The researchers report that most island groups worldwide had flightless birds before humans arrived, occupying ecological niches that otherwise would have been filled by mammals, with particular hotspots in New Zealand (26 species such as the extinct moa) and Hawaii (23 species, all of which are extinct, such as the flightless goose).

Adding extinct birds to the global picture of bird diversity reveals that flightlessness evolved in birds at least four times as often as we would expect if we only looked at living birds.

Dr Sayol said: "Our study shows that the evolution of flightlessness in birds is a widespread phenomenon. Today, most flightless species are penguins, rails or ostriches and their relatives. Now, only 12 bird families have flightless species, but before humans caused extinctions, the number was at least 40. Without those extinctions we would be sharing the planet with flightless owls, woodpeckers and ibises, but all of these have now sadly disappeared."

Elite athletes can be persuaded not to take banned substances - either by appealing to their sense of morality or educating them about the risks of using performance-enhancing drugs, according to a new study.

Researchers developed two separate intervention programmes - one targeting moral factors associated with doping likelihood, the other introducing doping and providing information about the health consequences of banned substances and the risks of sport supplements.

They tested both programmes on young elite athletes from the UK and Greece, finding that both approaches were equally effective at deterring the sportspeople from taking banned substances over a six-month period.

Led by sports science experts at the University of Birmingham and funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the international research group's findings are published today in Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology.

Dr Maria Kavussanu, from the School of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Birmingham, commented: "We must take action to reduce doping in sport -evidence suggests that banned substances are being used at alarming levels, particularly among elite athletes, where over 50% of competitors may be using these drugs based on some estimates.

"Our research group is the first to develop and evaluate an intervention focussing on moral variables and compare it with an educational intervention of equal duration. Both programmes were effective in reducing doping likelihood in two countries - effects which were sustained six months after the interventions finished."

The moral intervention targeted three variables known to be associated with doping likelihood: moral identity - focussing on honesty and fairness; moral disengagement - how individuals absolve themselves of responsibility; and moral atmosphere - whether doping was likely to be condoned or condemned by teammates.

Researchers formulated the educational intervention to introduce the doping control process and discuss healthy nutrition, whilst providing information about the consequences of taking banned substances and sport supplements. Whistle-blowing was also covered.

"Our findings suggest that alongside their typical content such as providing information about the harms of banned substances, anti-doping education programs should consider targeting moral variables," added Dr Kavussanu.

"That the two interventions produced sustained changes across the UK and Greece suggests that they contained highly effective elements that cut across cultures and are relevant to athletes from different countries."

The 'moral' programme saw young athletes comparing different approaches to success - winning at-all-costs versus being the best-you-can-be. They learned about the importance of honesty and fair play in sport and how doping undermines this.

Participants reflected on justifications athletes use for doping and the consequences of doping for others - stories of athletes awarded medals retrospectively such as Kelly Sotherton, Adam Nelson and Valerie Adams.

The 'educational' programme introduced participants to WADA and its role in regulating doping in sport, setting out the doping control process and introducing banned substances and the consequences they can have on athletes' health.

Risks associated with common types of banned performance-enhancing substances such as anabolic steroids, stimulants and erythropoietin were explained. Athletes also learned about risks associated with sport supplements such as protein, energy drinks and creatine.

They also discussed the role of nutrition and its benefits for performance and recovery - examining their own nutrition using the MyFitnessPal app and identifying the areas of their diet that could be improved.

Shape, color, and gloss.

Those are an object's three most salient visual features. Currently, 3D printers can reproduce shape and color reasonably well. Gloss, however, remains a challenge. That's because 3D printing hardware isn't designed to deal with the different viscosities of the varnishes that lend surfaces a glossy or matte look.

MIT researcher Michael Foshey and his colleagues may have a solution. They've developed a combined hardware and software printing system that uses off-the-shelf varnishes to finish objects with realistic, spatially varying gloss patterns. Foshey calls the advance "a chapter in the book of how to do high-fidelity appearance reproduction using a 3D printer."

He envisions a range of applications for the technology. It might be used to faithfully reproduce fine art, allowing near-flawless replicas to be distributed to museums without access to originals. It might also help create more realistic-looking prosthetics. Foshey hopes the advance represents a step toward visually perfect 3D printing, "where you could almost not tell the difference between the object and the reproduction."

Foshey, a mechanical engineer in the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), will present the paper at next month's SIGGRAPH Asia conference, along with lead author Michal Piovarči of the University of Lugano in Switzerland. Co-authors include MIT's Wojciech Matusik, Vahid Babaei of the Max Planck Institute, Szymon Rusinkiewicz of Princeton University, and Piotr Didyk of the University of Lugano.

Glossiness is simply a measure of how much light is reflected from a surface. A high gloss surface is reflective, like a mirror. A low gloss, or matte, surface is unreflective, like concrete. Varnishes that lend a glossy finish tend to be less viscous and to dry into a smooth surface. Varnishes that lend a matte finish are more viscous -- closer to honey than water. They contain large polymers that, when dried, protrude randomly from the surface and absorb light. "You have a bunch of these particles popping out of the surface, which gives you that roughness," says Foshey.

But those polymers pose a dilemma for 3D printers, whose skinny fluid channels and nozzles aren't built for honey. "They're very small, and they can get clogged easily," says Foshey.

The state-of-the-art way to reproduce a surface with spatially varying gloss is labor-intensive: The object is initially printed with high gloss and with support structures covering the spots where a matte finish is ultimately desired. Then the support material is removed to lend roughness to the final surface. "There's no way of instructing the printer to produce a matte finish in one area, or a glossy finish in another," says Foshey. So, his team devised one.

They designed a printer with large nozzles and the ability to deposit varnish droplets of varying sizes. The varnish is stored in the printer's pressurized reservoir, and a needle valve opens and closes to release varnish droplets onto the printing surface. A variety of droplet sizes is achieved by controlling factors like the reservoir pressure and the speed of the needle valve's movements. The more varnish released, the larger the droplet deposited. The same goes for the speed of the droplet's release. "The faster it goes, the more it spreads out once it impacts the surface," says Foshey. "So we essentially vary all these parameters to get the droplet size we want."

The printer achieves spatially varying gloss through halftoning. In this technique, discrete varnish droplets are arranged in patterns that, when viewed from a distance, appear like a continuous surface. "Our eyes actually do the mixing itself," says Foshey. The printer uses just three off-the-shelf varnishes -- one glossy, one matte, and one in between. By incorporating these varnishes into its preprogrammed halftoning pattern, the printer can yield continuous, spatially varying shades of glossiness across the printing surface.

Along with the hardware, Foshey's team produced a software pipeline to control the printer's output. First, the user indicates their desired gloss pattern on the surface to be printed. Next, the printer runs a calibration, trying various halftoning patterns of the three supplied varnishes. Based on the reflectance of those calibration patterns, the printer determines the proper halftoning pattern to use on the final print job to achieve the best possible reproduction. The researchers demonstrated their results on a variety of "2.5D" objects -- mostly-flat printouts with textures that varied by half a centimeter in height. "They were impressive," says Foshey. "They definitely have more of a feel of what you're actually trying to reproduce."

The team plans to continue developing the hardware for use on fully-3D objects. Didyk says "the system is designed in such a way that the future integration with commercial 3D printers is possible."

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation and the European Research council.

Practice makes perfect. In the complex world of medicine too, where just a millimetre can make the difference between success and failure. In partnership with the University of Manizales (Colombia), the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is hosting a project to create a low-cost surgery simulator; a much more accessible tool than those currently available and which could be used to train both surgeons who are in the early stages of their career and those who are more experienced.

The project creates a 3D virtual environment in which users can put their psychomotor skills to the test. But unlike real surgery, the operations carried out in the simulator consist of manoeuvring within a series of geometric shapes. The programme provides real-time feedback on the precision with which users carry out the movements and their overall performance in the exercises. Because "a virtual environment without metrics, feedback or validation is nothing more than a video game," explained Fernando Álvarez-López, a paediatric surgeon who has created this project as part of his doctoral degree in Education and ITC at the UOC together with the University of Manizalez in Colombia and within the framework of the CYTED - RITMOS Network (Ibero-American Network of Mobile Technologies in Health [RITMOS]).

The advantage of this tool, according to its developers, would be its low cost and its accessibility. Many of the virtual reality environments implemented to date are very expensive and require complicated machinery to operate. The simulator developed by the UOC, on the other hand, may cost less than half the price of its competitors, putting this technology within the reach of professionals from low- or middle-income countries.

Paradigm shift in learning

"This type of tool represents a paradigm shift in medicine," said Francesc Saigí-Rubió, a professor at the UOC's Faculty of Health Sciences, researcher at the I2TIC lab and co-creator of this project together with Marcelo Maina, professor at the Psychology and Education Sciences Department and researcher at the Edul@b group. "In surgery, you have to learn a series of movements, watch your time and follow protocols; in a way, like when you learn to drive. These simulators will allow surgeons to train from their office, or even from home, until they perfect their technique," added Álvarez.

The ability to perform very precise movements is one of the keys to success in minimally invasive surgery, performed using tiny surgical instruments inserted through small incisions made in the body. Patient recovery can be quicker and easier with this type of surgery, but considerable skill is required to ensure success. Hence the importance of creating environments in which surgeons can practise over and over again all the movements that must be performed for a successful operation.

The project's present and future

The tool has already been tested by 148 users: 100 undergraduates, 20 surgical residents and 28 experts. Among others, professionals from the Vall d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona have taken part in these tests. The results of the study, published in the specialized open access journal JMIR Publications, endorse the tool's validity for improving surgeons' psychomotor skills at different stages in their career. It is equally useful for those who are already familiar with virtual reality platforms and for those who have no prior experience.

The researchers are currently working to take this tool to hospital environments. The programme's creators hope to develop a version that can be downloaded directly from the internet. Among other things, users will be able to adjust the level of difficulty to their profile and the needs of the time. In the future, it may even be possible to create a more enveloping experience through the use of virtual reality glasses. "Technology is constantly moving forward, so we want to continue improving this project in line with the needs of the moment," concluded Álvarez.

An international study has found a link between the brain's network connections and grey matter atrophy caused by certain types of epilepsy, a major step forward in our understanding of the disease.

In neuroscience, it is becoming increasingly clear that the brain's connectome is as important as its anatomy when studying human disease. The connectome is a map of neural connections that describes how brain regions interact and work together to perform certain tasks. While connectome research in epilepsy has moved forward in recent years, there is still a lot we do not know about its role in the disorder.

The study, led by researchers from The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital), analyzed data from 1,021 individuals with epilepsy and 1,564 healthy controls over 19 sites around the world from the ENIGMA database, a collection of neuroimaging data available to researchers under Open Science principles. They used this data to map grey matter atrophy, a characteristic of epilepsy, in the patients.

They then collected data from another database called the Human Connectome Project, which provides connectome data from a large group of healthy controls. Their hypothesis was that grey matter atrophy would appear most often in parts of the brain where connectivity was highest, known as hubs.

"Hub regions are known to participate in brain signalling, have high plasticity, and high metabolic activity, making them a candidate for epilepsy-related atrophy," says Sara Larivière, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate at The Neuro.

The team found that areas of high atrophy in patients with both idiopathic generalized epilepsy and temporal lobe epilepsy also tended to be hub regions. Using further analyses, they were able to show their model could predict the damage the epilepsy did to the grey matter of individual patients over time.

"Our multi-site findings show that brain connectivity contributes to the effect that epilepsy has on whole brain structure," says Boris Bernhardt, a researcher at The Neuro and the study's senior author. "This will be important to understand common functional deficits in individual patients and to assess the effect of the disease over time."

In a study published this week in The Cryosphere, researchers from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and University of Reading demonstrate how climate change could lead to irreversible sea level rise as temperatures continue to rise and the Greenland ice sheet continues to decline.

The massive ice sheet faces a point of no return, beyond which it will no longer fully regrow, permanently changing sea levels around the world.

The Greenland ice sheet is seven times the area of the UK, and stores a large amount of the Earth's frozen water. At current rates of melting, it contributes almost 1mm to sea level per year, and accounts for around a quarter of total sea level rise.

Since 2003, despite seasonal periods of growth, Greenland's ice sheet has lost three and a half trillion tonnes of ice.

Rising sea levels are one of the most severe effects of climate change, threatening coastal areas around the world, and putting millions of people who live in low-lying areas at risk. Bangladesh, Florida, and eastern England are among many areas known to be particularly vulnerable.

Under scenarios in which global warming goes beyond 2°C, the Paris Agreement target, we should expect significant ice loss and several metres of global sea level rise to persist for tens of thousands of years, according to the new research. The warmer the climate, the greater the sea-level rise.

In addition, even if temperatures later return to current levels, scientists have shown that the Greenland ice sheet will never fully regrow once it melts beyond a critical point. After that point, sea levels would permanently remain two meters higher than now, regardless of other factors contributing to sea level rise.

This is because the ice sheet is so large that it has a substantial impact on its local climate, and as it declines, Greenland would experience warmer temperatures and less snowfall.

Once the ice-sheet retreats from the Northern part of the island, the area would remain ice-free.

To avoid the irreversible sea level rise the melting would cause, scientists say that climate change must be reversed before the ice sheet has declined to the threshold mass, which would be reached in about 600 years at the highest rate of mass loss within the likely range of the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Professor Jonathan Gregory, Climate Scientist from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and University of Reading, said: "Our experiments underline the importance of mitigating global temperature rise. To avoid partially irreversible loss of the ice sheet, climate change must be reversed - not just stabilised - before we reach the critical point where the ice sheet has declined too far."

To study the ice-sheet, scientists from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science simulated the effects of Greenland ice sheet melting under a range of possible temperature rises, ranging from minimal warming to worst-case scenarios.

Under all future climates like the present or warmer, the ice-sheet declined in size and contributed to some degree of sea-level rise.

Importantly, there were scenarios in which the ice sheet melting could be reversed. But, they rely on actions to counteract global warming before it's too late.

This is the first time that the Greenland ice-sheet has been studied in such detail, using a computer model that combines climate and ice-sheet models.

Data analysis of a 12-year longitudinal study examining the importance of personality changes during young adulthood indicates personality growth has real-world career benefits. Kevin Hoff, assistant professor of industrial-organizational psychology at the University of Houston, found young people who develop higher levels of conscientiousness and emotional stability during the transition to employment tend to be more successful in some aspects of their early careers. The study findings are published in Psychological Science.

"Results revealed that certain patterns of personality growth predicted career outcomes over and above adolescent personality and ability," reports Hoff, adding that the findings support potential policy actions meant to help young people develop personality-based skills.

Hoff's study is the first to assess the predictive power of personality changes for a broad range of career outcomes across more than a decade of young adulthood.

For adolescents who have experienced difficulties or are dissatisfied with aspects of their personality, good news there, too.

"The study showed you're not just stuck with your personality traits, and if you change over time in positive ways, that can have a big impact on your career," said Hoff.

Hoff's team tracked two representative samples of Icelandic youth for approximately 12 years, from late adolescence (about 17 years old) to young adulthood (about 29 years old) and found individuals who developed higher trait levels achieved greater success as young adults. Across both samples, he found the strongest effects for growth in conscientiousness, emotional stability and extraversion. Specifically, conscientiousness changes predicted career satisfaction; emotional stability changes were tied closely to income and career satisfaction; and extraversion changes were linked to career and job satisfaction.

Given the focus on personality changes as predictors, Hoff said it was important to include a replication sample and data from more than two time points. He used data from three and five time points.

"Adolescent trait levels also predicted career success, highlighting the long-term predictive power of personality. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of personality development throughout childhood, adolescence and young adulthood for promoting different aspects of career success," said Hoff.