Earth

Former Tropical Storm Wilfred weakened in the Central Atlantic Ocean and NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image after the storm became a trough or elongated area of low pressure.

On Sunday, Sept. 20 at 11 p.m. EDT, NOAA's National Hurricane Center issued their final advisory on Wilfred. Wilfred degenerated into a trough of low or elongated areas of low pressure. At that time, the remnants of Wilfred were located near latitude 15.9 degrees north latitude and longitude 47.4 degrees west. The remnants were moving toward the west near 17 mph (28 kph), and this general motion should continue during the next day or two.

Maximum sustained winds were near 35 mph (55 kph) and forecasters expect winds to continue decreasing over the next couple of days.

Northwesterly vertical wind shear continued to take a toll on Wilfred. Infrared satellite imagery along with scatterometer (wind) data indicated that Wilfred's low-level circulation had become an open trough of low pressure. Therefore, Wilfred was no longer a tropical cyclone.

On Sept. 20, the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of Wilfred as it opened up into an elongated area of low pressure in the Central North Atlantic Ocean. The remaining thunderstorm development appeared to have a linear shape. Those storms appear to be the result of the system interacting with an upper-level trough located to its northwest.

The trough should continue to move westward at a slightly slower forward speed until it weakens and dissipates within a few days.

NASA Researches Tropical Cyclones

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

For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration.

A new study finds middle-aged Americans are now reporting more pain than the elderly -- and it has to do with their level of education and that pain is rising more quickly in younger people.

Using survey responses from more than 2.5 million adults in the United States and the European Union, researchers found pain is more prevalent among the two-thirds of U.S. adults without a four-year college degree than among older Americans. Strikingly, each generation of less-educated Americans is experiencing higher pain throughout their lives than older generations.

The study was published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Our expectation was that pain would increase as one's age increases, due to physical deterioration and higher probability of chronic illnesses," said study author Arthur Stone, professor of psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and director of the Dornsife Center for Self-Report Science. "But our research found middle-aged Americans had higher levels of pain than the elderly, which is especially pronounced for people without a college degree, and the question was, why?"

The study authors also found this pain pattern is unique to the United States compared to other wealthy nations. They say if pain prevalence continues to increase with each generation, tomorrow's elderly will be sicker than today's elderly. The findings have serious implications for the American healthcare system.

"Pain undermines quality of life, and pain is getting worse for less-educated Americans," said study author Sir Angus Deaton, Presidential Professor of Economics at USC Dornsife, fellow at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University. "This not only makes their lives worse but will pose long-term problems for a dysfunctional healthcare system that is not good at treating pain."

Decoding the mystery of pain

The research team used multiple data sets and definitions of pain from surveys conducted by Gallup, the U.S. Census Bureau and the European Union. Reports of pain were recorded between 2006 and 2018 among adults aged 25-79 in the U.S. and 20 other wealthy countries. The American data included only Black and white non-Hispanics adults.

The authors looked at different birth cohorts born between 1930 and 1990 using data from four U.S. surveys: the Gallup Health and Wellbeing Index, the Census Bureau's National Health Interview Survey, the Department of Health and Human Services' Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and the University of Michigan's Health and Retirement Study.

In their first set of analyses, they found that men and women living outside of the United States report more pain as they age -- the expected result. In their second analysis, after examining education level, they found this to also be true for Americans with a bachelor's degree but not for the two-thirds of U.S. adults without a college degree, who reported more pain in midlife.

The key to the mystery was examining when people of different ages were born. For example, researchers compared three groups or cohorts of 52-year-olds with less education: those born in 1955, 1960, and 1965. Forty percent of the 1965 cohort reported pain at age 52, compared with 32% of the 1955 cohort. For these less-educated cohorts, each year of age is associated with an increase in pain prevalence of around one percentage point per year.

Less-educated Americans also experience more pain as they age. But because each birth cohort reports higher levels of pain throughout their adult life than the cohort before them, those who are middle-aged report more pain at any given age than older adults, who have had lower pain levels throughout their lives.

"The connection between less-educated Americans and pain is shaped by a number of factors from income to social isolation to rising deaths of despair. It's of great concern to us, as researchers, that it seems to be worsening," said study author Anne Case, the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Emeritus at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.

The high cost of increasing pain

More than 100 million Americans experience pain, costing the U.S. as much as $635 billion each year, according to the Institute of Medicine.

Deaton, Case and Stone say the rise in pain from cohort to cohort in the new study signals increasing chronic intergenerational distress. Causes may include the fact that less-educated people are experiencing more social isolation, more fragile home lives, less marriage and more divorce, declining labor force participation and falling wages.

Pain plays an important role in the ongoing epidemic of rising "deaths of despair" from suicides, drugs and alcoholic liver disease concentrated among less-educated Americans. Combined with stalled progress for heart disease mortality rates, these deaths brought a three-year decline in life expectancy at birth for the first time in a century, according to prior research by Case and Deaton.

Pain has been used to justify both the approval and prescription of opioids, fueling another catastrophic American epidemic. The authors point to evidence that pharmaceutical companies targeted areas of labor market disintegration, so that the social collapse and opioid explanations for rising pain in middle age are interconnected.

The study lists possible caveats and considered alternative explanations for the findings. First, people could be reporting more minor pain than in the past. Second, obesity is also a major public health problem in America and with more weight comes more strain on the body. Third, Americans have moved into worse jobs that bring more painful tasks with an increased risk of injury. The researchers say the third explanation has been extensively investigated and can be ruled out because "assembly lines or coal mines are more dangerous than call centers, fast food restaurants or Amazon warehouses."

NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that the 2020 minimum extent, which was likely reached on Sept. 15, measured 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers).

In winter, frozen seawater covers almost the entire Arctic Ocean and neighboring seas. This sea ice undergoes seasonal patterns of change - thinning and shrinking during late spring and summer, and thickening and expanding during fall and winter. The extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic can impact local ecosystems, regional and global weather patterns, and ocean circulation. In the last two decades, the minimum extent of Arctic sea ice in the summer has dropped markedly. The lowest extent on record was set in 2012, and last year's extent was tied for second - until this year's.

A Siberian heat wave in spring 2020 began this year's Arctic sea ice melt season early, and with Arctic temperatures being 14 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (8 to 10 degrees Celsius) warmer than average, the ice extent kept declining. The 2020 minimum extent was 958,000 square miles (2.48 million square kilometers) below the 1981-2010 average of yearly minimum extents, and 2020 is only the second time on record that the minimum extent has fallen below 1.5 million square miles (4 million square kilometers).

"It was just really warm in the Arctic this year, and the melt seasons have been starting earlier and earlier," said Nathan Kurtz, a sea ice scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The earlier the melt season starts, the more ice you generally lose."

Thin ice also melts quicker than thicker floes. Dramatic drops in sea ice extent in 2007 and 2012, along with generally declining summer extent, has led to fewer regions of thick, multi-year ice that has built up over multiple winters. In addition, a recent study showed that warmer water from the Atlantic Ocean, which is typically deep below the colder Arctic waters, is creeping up closer to the bottom of the sea ice and warming it from below.

There are cascading effects in the Arctic, said Mark Serreze, director of NSIDC. Warmer ocean temperatures eat away at the thicker multiyear ice, and also result in thinner ice to start the spring melt season. Melt early in the season results in more open water, which absorbs heat from the Sun and increases water temperatures.

"As the sea ice cover extent declines, what we're seeing is we're continuing to lose that multiyear ice," Serreze said. "The ice is shrinking in the summer, but it's also getting thinner. You're losing extent, and you're losing the thick ice as well. It's a double whammy."

The second-lowest extent of sea ice on record is just one of many signs of a warming climate in the north, he said, pointing to the Siberian heat waves, forest fires, hotter-than-average temperatures over the Central Arctic, and the thawing permafrost that led to a Russian fuel spill.

ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University scientists have engineered a key plant enzyme and introduced it in Escherichia coli bacteria in order to create an optimal experimental environment for studying how to speed up photosynthesis, a holy grail for improving crop yields.

The method is described in a paper, "Small subunits can determine enzyme kinetics of tobacco Rubisco expressed in Escherichia coli," published in the journal Nature Plants.

Scientists have known that crop yields would increase if they could accelerate the photosynthesis process, where plants convert carbon dioxide (CO2), water and light into oxygen and eventually into sucrose, a sugar used for energy and for building new plant tissue.

Researchers have focused on Rubisco, a slow enzyme that pulls (or fixes) carbon from carbon dioxide to create sucrose. Along with CO2, Rubisco sometimes catalyzes a reaction with oxygen from the air, and when it does, it creates a toxic byproduct and wastes energy, thereby making photosynthesis inefficient.

"You would like Rubisco to not interact with oxygen and to also work faster," said Maureen Hanson, professor of plant molecular biology at Cornell.

In an effort to achieve that, the researchers took Rubisco from tobacco plants and engineered it into E. coli. Tobacco serves as a common model plant in research. "We can now make mutations to try to improve the enzyme and then test it in E. coli," Hanson said.

The advantage is that since bacteria reproduce so rapidly, researchers may test an altered Rubisco in E. coli and get results the next day. "If you introduce a new Rubisco into a plant, you have to wait a few months" to get results, she said.

Initial work by another group that engineered tobacco Rubisco into E. coli led to very weak expression of the enzyme. In plants, Rubisco is composed of eight large and eight small subunits. A single gene encodes each large subunit, but many genes encode each small subunit. The complex process of enzyme assembly and the presence of multiple versions of the enzyme in plants has made it very hard to experiment with Rubisco.

Led by Myat Lin, a postdoctoral research associate in Hanson's lab and the paper's first author, the researchers were able to break down the process and express a single type of large subunit and a single type of small subunit together in E. coli, to understand the enzyme's properties. By doing this, they attained expression of the enzyme in E. coli that matched what was found in plants.

They also discovered that a Rubisco subunit found in trichomes (tiny hairs on plant leaves) worked faster than any of the subunits found in leaf cells.

"We now have the ability to engineer new versions of plant Rubisco in E. coli and find out whether the properties of an enzyme are better," Hanson said. "Then, we can take the enzyme that's improved and put that into a crop plant."

A new study looking at the link between peanut and tree-nut anaphylaxis in children and holidays found spikes at Halloween and Easter. The study, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) found that most were previously unknown allergies, calling for increased awareness http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.200034.

"Identifying certain times associated with an increased risk of anaphylaxis could help to raise community awareness, support and vigilance," write Dr. Melanie Leung, 4th-year medical student at McGill University and Dr. Moshe Ben-Shoshan, McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Quebec, with coauthors. "This information would identify the best timing for public awareness campaigns to prevent allergic reactions."

Researchers compared anaphylaxis at Halloween, Easter, Christmas, Diwali, Chinese New Year and Eid al-Adha.

The study included 1390 patients visiting participating pediatric emergency departments between 2011 and 2020 in 4 Canadian provinces: Quebec, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and British Columbia. The median age of patients was 5.4 years and 62% were boys.

For peanut-triggered anaphylaxis, there was an 85% increase in daily average cases during Halloween and a 60% increase during Easter compared with the rest of the year. For anaphylaxis triggered by unknown nuts, there was a 70% increase during Halloween and Easter compared with the rest of the year. However, the researchers did not find an increase at Christmas, Diwali, Chinese New Year or Eid al-Adha.

"The difference in the anaphylaxis incidence among holidays may have been due to the social setting in which each holiday takes place," write the authors. "At Halloween and Easter, children often receive candies and other treats from people who may be unaware of their allergies. The absence of such an association at Christmas may be because Christmas is a more intimate celebration among family members and close friends, who are more vigilant regarding allergen exposure."

Canadian labelling may also be a factor, as individual packages of candies and snacks, which are exempt from labelling requirements listing ingredients, are popular at Halloween and Easter.

The authors suggest education and awareness may help reduce the risk of anaphylaxis.

"Our findings suggest that educational tools to increase vigilance regarding the presence of potential allergens is required among children with food allergies, their families and lay people interacting with children who have food allergies. Newer strategies targeting intervals associated with high anaphylaxis risk are required."

Arnhem (The Netherlands), 21 September 2020. Awareness of erectile dysfunction (ED) is alarmingly low in men and women aged 20 to 70, a new survey commissioned by the European Association of Urology (EAU) has revealed. Majority of the respondents do not know what ED exactly entails, and one in four has never heard of any of the seven most common treatments for ED.

The survey examined the knowledge of and experience with ED of 3,032 men and women of different age groups between 20 and 70 years old in Spain, France, Germany, and the UK. ED is defined as the inability to get or keep an erection. When asked what ED is, the majority of respondents either gave incorrect answers (34%) or stated they do not know what ED is (17%). Those who are single are the least likely to know the definition of ED. German respondents scored worst on this question; only 49% answered correctly, compared to Spain where a solid majority (78%) did.

"As ED is actually a common male medical condition, it is surprising that a majority does not know what ED is," comments Prof. Christopher Chapple, Secretary General of the EAU.

Indeed, the EAU Guidelines 2020 on Sexual and Reproductive Health state that "epidemiological data have shown a high prevalence and incidence of ED worldwide." The Guidelines mention, among others, a study that reports an overall ED prevalence of 52% in men aged 40-70 years. In the EAU survey, when asked what percentage of men in their country aged 50-80 suffer from ED, respondents most often selected "21-30%".

"The risk of having ED increases with age, but it affects men of all ages and ethnicities," Prof. Chapple continues. "As a result, there should not be any taboo about it. Although I am happy to see that the majority of the respondents who have experience with ED say to talk about it, there is still room for improvement."

Of the 17% of the respondents who have or have a partner who has ever experienced ED, approximately one in four (26%) admitted to not talking about it with anyone. Worrisome is that of those in a relationship (those who live with a partner, are married, have a civil partnership, or are just in a relationship), an average of only 29% talk to each other about ED. German respondents most often gave "feeling uncomfortable to talk about ED" as their reason for not seeking professional help.

Communication is the key

"Clearly ED is a common medical condition. There's absolutely no need for shame," Prof. Chapple emphasises. "Talk about it with each other. This will provide relief and will take away some of the pressure. Communication is the key to breaking the taboo."

A small majority of 53% sought medical advice from a healthcare professional (a GP, urologist, sexologist, sexual therapist or psychologist). Interestingly, those aged 20-30 years old are the least likely to see a GP, but the most likely to see a sexual therapist or psychologist. Respondents who didn't seek medical advice were most likely to have no reason for it. "This could mean that they are not aware they can seek professional help," Prof. Chapple says. "But ED is always treatable."

One in four respondents has never heard of any treatments for ED

He refers to another alarming outcome; one in four of the respondents (26%) has never heard of any of the treatments for ED listed in the survey: medication, sexual education and relationship therapy, a vacuum erection device, penile injections, penile implants, shockwave therapy, and topical therapies. Knowledge about ED treatment is most limited in the UK; 31% have never heard of any of the treatments listed (compared to 18% in Spain) and only 50% think ED is treatable (whereas 68% in Spain believe so).

Prof. Chapple: "I understand that ED might feel like a private matter to you. But this should not prevent you from improving your quality of life. Please talk about it and seek help."

About the survey

The new survey was commissioned by the European Association of Urology (EAU) for its annual Urology Week (21-25 September 2020). Over 3,000 members of the public from Spain, France, Germany and the UK were asked about their knowledge of and experience with erectile dysfunction (ED). The survey was supported by an educational grant of Boston Scientific.

Breakdown of 3,032 respondents per country:

* Spain: 766

* France: 759

* Germany: 755

* UK: 752

The information was sourced in July 2020.

Researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) in collaboration with Takeda-CiRA program and other international institutions have developed a Polygenic Risk Score to help predict drug-induced liver injury, validated by patients' genomic data, cell cultures and organoids

Tokyo, Japan - The ancient Romans studied the livers of sacrificial animals to read omens and make prophesies. Now researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) and Takeda-CiRA program along with a world-wide team of collaborators, have devised a polygenic risk score (PRS) based on liver genomics that can predict the likelihood of medications causing liver damage.

Introducing new drugs is a demanding process. Pharmaceutical research continually proffers potential drugs that need to be clinically trialed. These candidates are often more efficacious, but may have unacceptable or unsuspected side-effects. Unfortunately, adverse outcomes often require termination of new drug trials, and even drugs in common use may show a cumulated trend of undesired effects hitherto unpredicted; identifying patients at risk can greatly reduce this.

The liver is the primary site where most drugs, indeed any foreign potentially toxic chemical, is metabolized into an inactive form for excretion by the body. As a "frontliner", it bears the brunt of most adverse effects that manifest as hepatocyte injury. Indeed, drug-induced-liver-injury (DILI) is the main reason why drugs are withdrawn at different stages of development, trial and usage, often after significant, and avoidable, morbidity and expense.

"We formulated our risk score by mathematically analyzing previous genome-wide association studies that had flagged variants likely to predict susceptibility to DILI," explains Masaru Koido, lead author. "We validated it across a spectrum of potentially hepatotoxic drugs, on genomic data, primary hepatocyte cultures and organoids from multiple donors. Noteworthy was our use of organoids--mini-organs bioengineered from three-dimensional tissue cultures derived from stem cells that replicate their microanatomy and functional complexity."

The researchers also analyzed the derived scores to delineate pathways underlying susceptibility to DILI. From the data they inferred that genetic variation at the hepatocyte level contributed to DILI susceptibility; moreover, DILI predictivity was shared across a variety of discrete drugs suggesting that the PRS related to intracellular mechanisms of hepatotoxicity.

"Our "polygenicity-in-a-dish" strategy allows safe, specific and multidimensional investigation into the pathogenesis of DILI," explains senior author Takanori Takebe. "A genetic test score will enable clinicians to tailor medication choice, dosage, and monitoring based on the patient's estimated risk. Furthermore, drug trials could be made safer and better focused by excluding vulnerable subjects. However, further research is needed to upscale our PRS into a valid and reliable instrument for widespread screening of novel pharmaceuticals in clinical practice."

How do birds make decisions and which brain regions are particularly active when they solve tasks? Researchers from the Department of Biopsychology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) are investigating these questions. So far, only anesthetized birds and therefore passive experiments could be examined using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Thus, the examination of brain processes during active tasks was not possible. Now the cognitive neuroscientists at the Biopsychology lab have constructed an experimental set-up which allows them to carry out fMRI examinations on awake pigeons and thus also investigate cognitive processes for the first time. They published their results online in the journal "Nature Communications" on 18 September 2020.

Opening and closing the beak

Within the new experimental setup, the animals can be presented with tasks that they actively work on. During this time, fMRI recordings are continuously made so that the activity of the brain areas that are active during task processing is recorded. In contrast to fMRI examinations in humans, in which the participants can respond to tasks by pressing buttons, the pigeons respond by opening and closing their beak, which is registered by a sensor below the beak.

The researchers checked the quality of the gained fMRI images in a test study. The pigeons had to learn to differentiate between two colours. The animals learned to react to the appearance of the correct colour by opening their beak and received a reward for correct answers. "This study was just a test run to show whether the scan in awake behaving birds works as we had expected," explains Mehdi Behroozi, the first author of the study.

The way is open for more complex investigations

"The fMRI data of the test study showed that even with this simple discrimination task, a whole network of areas in the pigeon's brain is active, which could not yet be represented in its entirety," says Onur Güntürkün, Professor of Biopsychology at RUB about the results of the test study. "Now the way is open for investigations with more complex cognitive tasks. Especially at a time when we are amazed to find out more and more how intelligent birds are, this breakthrough will help to identify the brain basis of these abilities," adds Güntürkün.

About functional magnetic resonance imaging

In functional magnetic resonance tomography, slice images of the brain are generated using a strong magnet. They show how well individual parts of the brain are supplied with oxygen. Brain areas that are very active have a lower oxygen saturation than less active areas. Therefore one can for instance see which areas of the brain are particularly challenged when solving a task.

Large volcanic eruptions can help to forecast the monsoon over India - the seasonal rainfall that is key for the country's agriculture and thus for feeding one billion people. As erratic as they are, volcanic eruptions improve the predictability, an Indian-German research team finds. What seems to be a paradox is in fact due to a stronger coupling between the monsoon over large parts of South and South-East Asia and the El Niño phenomenon after an eruption. Combining data from meteorological observations, climate records, computer model simulations, and geological archives such as tree-rings, corals and ice-cores from past millennia of Earth history, the researchers found that a synchronization of the monsoon with the strongest mode of natural climate variability, the El Niño, makes it easier to anticipate the strength of seasonal rainfall in the Indian subcontinent.

"The tiny particles and gases that a large volcano blasts into the air enter into the stratosphere and remain there for a few years. While the volcanic matter in the stratosphere to some extent blocks sunshine from reaching the Earth's surface , the reduced solar forcing increases the probability of an El Niño event in the next year," says R. Krishnan from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune. "This is because less sunshine means less warmth and hence a change of temperature differences between the Northern and Southern hemisphere, which in turn affects the atmospheric large-scale circulation and precipitation dynamics. Advanced data analysis now reveals that large volcanic eruptions are more likely to promote the coincidence of warm El Niño events over the Pacific and Indian monsoon droughts - or, in contrast, cool La Niña events over the Pacific and Indian monsoon excess.

The Indian monsoon strongly depends on the El Niño / Southern Oscillation - a climatic phenomenon in the tropical Pacific Ocean whose Spanish name means 'the boy', referring to the Christ child because the water near South America is often at its warmest near Christmas. "The synchronization between tropical Pacific Ocean and Indian monsoon is changing over time, with human-made global warming being one of the factors, worsening the accurate prediction of the monsoon," says Norbert Marwan from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "This in fact confirms a hypothesis that our colleagues Maraun and Kurths launched 15 years ago. The new findings now suggest a novel, additional path for monsoon predictions that are crucial for agricultural planning in India." Previous research from PIK already substantially improved Monsoon prediction for years without volcanic eruptions.

The findings can also help further developing climate models and could in fact also help assessing the regional implications of geo-engineering experiments. To reduce global warming from human-made greenhouse gases, some scientists envision solar radiation management - basically to block a portion of sunrays from warming Earth's surface by putting dust in the high atmosphere, similar to what the natural phenomenon of a volcanic eruption does. Artificially blocking sunshine, however, might dangerously interfere with a number of processes in the atmosphere. Understanding the mechanisms at play is thus important.

Researchers observed three chimpanzee communities of the Tai National Park. They kept full demographic records and collected fecal samples to conduct paternity tests on all new community members, for up to 30 years. Catherine Crockford, the lead author, says: "When we study our closest living relatives, like chimpanzees, we can learn about the ancient environmental factors that made us human. Our study shows that a mother's presence and support throughout the prolonged childhood years was also likely a trait in the last common ancestor that humans shared with chimpanzees six to eight million years ago. This trait is likely to have been fundamental in shaping both chimpanzee and human evolution".

Major theories in human evolution argue that parents continuing to provide food to their offspring until they have grown up has enabled our species to have the largest brains of any species on the planet relative to our body size. Brains are expensive tissue and grow slowly leading to long childhoods. Ongoing parental care through long childhoods allow children time to learn the skills they need to survive in adulthood. Such long childhoods are rare across animals, equaled only by other great apes, like chimpanzees.

Chimpanzees may have long childhoods, but mothers rarely directly provide them with food after ages four to five years when they are weaned. Mostly mothers let their offspring forage for themselves. So then what do chimpanzee mothers provide their sons that gives them a competitive edge over orphaned sons? We do not yet know the answer but scientists do have some ideas.

"One idea is that mothers know where to find the best food and how to use tools to extract hidden and very nutritious foods, like insects, honey and nuts", Crockford points out. "Offspring gradually learn these skills through their infant and juvenile years. We can speculate that one reason offspring continue to travel and feed close to their mothers every day until they are teenagers, is that watching their mothers helps them to learn." Acquiring skills which enable them to eat more nutritious foods may be why great apes can afford much bigger brains relative to their body size than other primates.

"Another idea is that mothers pass on social skills", Roman Wittig, last author on the study and director of the Ta? Chimpanzee Project, adds. "Again a bit like humans, chimpanzees live in a complex social world of alliances and competition. It might be that they learn through watching their mothers when to build alliances and when to fight".

Tropical Storm Noul made landfall in central Vietnam on Sept. 17 and NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of the storm over Laos. Noul was weakening as it moves toward Thailand where it is forecast to dissipate.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported that the system made landfall just north of Hue, Vietnam at about 0100 UTC on Sept. 18 (9 p.m. EDT on Sept. 17) and had begun to track inland.

On Sept. 18 at 3 a.m. EDT (0700 UTC/2 p.m. Vietnam local time), the VIIRS instrument aboard the Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of Noul as it moved into Thailand. The storm appeared shapeless and the low-level center was difficult to find. Deep convection is obscuring the low-level circulation center which has tracked inland and is located over Laos.

By 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), JTWC issued the final bulletin on the storm. At that time, Tropical storm Noul was located near latitude 16.4 degrees north and longitude 104.4 degrees east, about 174 nautical miles west of Da Nang, Vietnam and over Laos. It was moving to the west and had maximum sustained winds 40 knots (46 mph/74 kph).

Noul is now dissipating as it moves toward Thailand.

NASA Researches Tropical Cyclones

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

For more than five decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to understand and explore our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA brings together technology, science, and unique global Earth observations to provide societal benefits and strengthen our nation. Advancing knowledge of our home planet contributes directly to America's leadership in space and scientific exploration.

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided an infrared image of Tropical Depression 22 in the Gulf of Mexico during the early morning hours of Sept. 18. TD22 is expected to become a tropical storm, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

NASA's Night-Time View  

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard Suomi NPP provided a nighttime image of Tropical Depression 22. The nighttime image taken on Sept. 18 at 3:40 a.m. EDT (0740 UTC) showed Tropical Depression 22, centered in the Gulf of Mexico, east of northern Mexico.

The image was created using the NASA Worldview application at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

By 11 a.m. EDT, the National Hurricane Center noted satellite imagery showed Tropical Depression 22 was getting better organized, with gradually increasing convective banding (of thunderstorms) in the northeastern semicircle.

NHC Senior Hurricane Specialist Jack Beven noted, "Given the lack of organization seen in earlier scatterometer data, the intensity will be held at 30 knots pending the data from the next set of scatterometer overpasses.  It should be noted that the Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft that was scheduled to investigate the depression had to turn back after getting hit by lightning."

TD22's Status on Friday, Sept. 18

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC), the center of Tropical Depression 22 was located near latitude 23.8 degrees north and longitude 93.9 degrees west. The depression is moving toward the north-northeast near 7 mph (11 kph), and this general motion is expected through early Saturday. Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph (55 kph) with higher gusts. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1005 millibars.

TD22's Forecast

A slow westward motion is forecast to begin late Saturday afternoon or Saturday night, and this motion will likely continue into early next week. Strengthening is forecast during the next few days, and the depression is expected to become a tropical storm later today. The system could be near or at hurricane strength by Sunday.

NHC Key Messages for TD22

The National Hurricane Center issued three key messages for Tropical Depression 22:

Tropical Depression 22 is expected to strengthen to a tropical storm, and possibly a hurricane, while moving slowly over the western Gulf of Mexico during the next few days.

There is an increasing risk of heavy rainfall and flooding along the Texas coast from Sunday through at least the middle of next week as the system is forecast to move slowly near the Texas coast.

While it is too early to determine what areas could see direct wind and storm surge impacts from this system, interests throughout the western Gulf of Mexico should monitor the progress of this system and future updates to the forecast.

Frozen water can take on up to three forms at the same time when it melts: liquid, ice and gas. This principle, which states that many substances can occur in up to three phases simultaneously, was explained 150 years ago by the Gibbs phase rule. Today, researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and University Paris-Saclay are defying this classical theory, with proof of a five-phase equilibrium, something that many scholars considered impossible. This new knowledge yields useful insights for industries that work with complex mixtures, such as in the production of mayonnaise, paint or LCD's. The researchers have published their results in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The founder of contemporary thermodynamics and physical chemistry is the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs. In the 1870s he derived the phase rule, which describes the maximum number of different phases a substance or mixture of substances can assume simultaneously. For pure substances, the Gibbs Phase Rule predicts a maximum of 3 phases.

Professor Remco Tuinier, of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems: "At the time, Einstein called Gibbs' thermodynamics the only theory he really trusted. If we take water as an example, there is one point, with a specific temperature and pressure, where water occurs as gas, liquid and ice at the same time. The so-called triple point." Assistant professor Mark Vis, from the same research group as Tuinier, adds: "This classic Gibbs phase rule is as solid as a rock and has never been defied."

SHAPE MATTERS
According to this phase rule, the mixture studied by the researchers would also exhibit a maximum of three phases at one specific point at the same time. But Tuinier and his colleagues now show that in this mixture there is a whole series of circumstances in which four phases exist at the same time. There is even one point at which there are five coexisting phases. Two too many, according to Gibbs. At that specific one point, also called a five-phase equilibrium, a gas phase, two liquid crystal phases, and two solid phases with 'ordinary' crystals exist simultaneously. And that has never been seen before. "This is the first time that the famous Gibbs rule has been broken," Vis says enthusiastically.

The crux lies in the shape of the particles in the mixture. Gibbs did not take this into consideration, but the Eindhoven scientists now show that it is precisely the specific length and diameter of the particles that play a major role. Tuinier: "In addition to the known variables of temperature and pressure, you get two additional variables: the length of the particle in relation to its diameter, and the diameter of the particle in relation to the diameter of other particles in the solution."

RANKED RODS

In their theoretical models, the researchers worked with a mixture of two substances in a background solvent: rods and polymers. This is also called a colloidal system, in which the particles are solid and the medium is liquid. Because the particles cannot occupy exactly the same space, they interact with each other. "This is also called the excluded volume effect; it causes the rods to want to sit together. They are, as it were, pushed towards each other by the polymer chains. In this way, you get a region in the mixture that mainly contains rods, and an area that is rich in polymers," explains Tuinier.

He continues: "The rods then sink to the bottom, because they're usually heavier. That's the beginning of segregation, creating phases." The lower part, which mainly contains rods, will eventually become so crowded that the rods will interfere with each other. They then take up a preferential position, so that they are less in each other's way.

With the rods it looks like a neat arrangement next to each other. Eventually you get five different phases, a gas phase with unaligned rods at the top (an isotropic phase), a liquid phase with rods pointing in about the same direction (nematic liquid crystal), a liquid phase with rods lying in different layers (smectic liquid crystal), and two solid phases at the bottom.

MAYONNAISE AND MONITORS

Vis: "Our research contributes to the fundamental knowledge about this kind of phase transition and helps to understand and predict more precisely when these kinds of transition occur." And that is useful in many areas. Think of pumping complex mixtures around in industrial reactors, making complex products like colloidal mixtures such as mayonnaise and paint, or ice that forms on car windows and black ice on roads.

Even in liquid crystals in monitors, these processes play a role. "Most industries choose to work with a single-phase system, where there is no segregation. But if the exact transitions are clearly described, then the industry can actually use those different phases instead of avoiding them," says Vis.

CHANCE

It was more or less chance that the researchers arrived at an equilibrium of more than three phases. When simulating and programming plate-shaped particles and polymers, PhD students Álvaro González García and Vincent Peters from Tuinier's group saw a four-phase equilibrium. Tuinier: "Álvaro came to me one day and asked me what had gone wrong. Because four phases just couldn't be right."

Then the researchers tried out multiple shapes, such as cubes and also rods. Tuinier: "With the rods, most phases turned out to be possible, we even found a five-phase equilibrium. That could also mean that even more complicated equilibria are possible, as long as you search long enough for complex different particle shapes."

School closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted access to low or no-cost school breakfast and lunch programs for millions of low-income children. States and school districts developed innovative solutions to meet the nutritional needs of children and respond to the rapidly growing food insecurity crisis, yet the number of replacement meals is likely far short of what they provided prior to the pandemic, according to a study led by a researcher at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health.

First author Eliza W. Kinsey, PhD, associate research scientist in epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and colleagues estimate that more than 1.15 billion breakfasts and lunches for American students who receive free and reduced-price meals were not served in school as a result of school closures during the nine-week period between March 9 and May 1.

By the week of March 23, all states had mandated statewide school closures as a result of the pandemic, and the number of weekly missed breakfasts and lunches served at school reached a peak of approximately 169.6 million (this weekly estimate remained steady through the final week of April). In Maryland, which the researchers studied in depth, every day schools were closed, 493,917 free or reduced-price meals were not served in school (the equivalent of 2,469,585 meals per week). While Maryland estimates that by the week of April 20, they were distributing 1 million replacement meals to students weekly, this still represents a roughly 1.5 million meal weekly shortfall. Similarly, major cities like New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco provided far fewer meals than they would have otherwise.

These shortfalls came despite significant efforts at all levels. The USDA issued waivers that allowed states and localities to find new ways to provide meals to students who need them. Due to increased community need, some districts offered grab-and-go meals in outdoor locations and expanded meal distribution to seven days per week. Home delivery has been another common approach, especially in rural districts, and in many districts, school meal access was expanded to include to any child age up to age 18 years and students with disabilities up to age 26.

Some districts provided up to one week of meals at once to decrease staff exposure and improve convenience for parents and students. Even so, concerns about viral exposure remain, as staff, students, or families gather to prepare, distribute, or pick up meals. Several districts suspended meal service, particularly after employees tested positive for the virus. While efforts to facilitate contactless delivery support social distancing, foodservice staff who lack access to personal protective equipment including gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer--items in short supply across all sectors--have expressed concerns about being exposed to the virus and transmitting it to others.

"Children across the country are missing out on the critical school meals they relied on when schools were in session. Despite the heroic efforts of school nutrition professionals, generous private sector donations, and increased program flexibility, it is unlikely that school districts will be able to replace, through emergency meal distribution programs, all meals that were previously being provided in school," the authors write.

Future studies can provide insight into factors that enabled schools to respond more effectively and the distribution models and practices that contributed to success. In addition, it will be important to understand the extent to which federal pandemic electronic benefits transfer (P-EBT)-- monetary benefits to households with children who have temporarily lost access to free or reduced-price school meals--has supplemented or replaced current meal distribution programs, and the effect each of these efforts have on child food security. (As of May 1, 2020, USDA had only approved P-EBT implementation in 18 states and few states had begun distributing benefits.)

"These findings will provide important lessons to rapidly deploy alternative nutrition assistance to families during future crises," the authors conclude.

Study co-authors include Amelie A. Hecht, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Caroline Glagola Dunn, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Ronli Levi and Hilary K. Seligman, University of California, San Francisco; Margaret A. Read, Courtney Smith, and Pamela Niesen of the Share Our Strength, No Kid Hungry Campaign; and Erin R. Hager, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

All of the authors of this publication are members of the ad hoc COVID-19 School Nutrition Implications Working Group, jointly supported by Healthy Eating Research (HER), a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and the CDC's Nutrition and Obesity Policy Research and Evaluation Network (NOPREN). This project was supported by funding from NOPREN.

People who smoke are increasingly using e-cigarettes to try to quit smoking, a study by researchers at the University of Otago, Wellington, has found.

The researchers found that between 2016 and 2018 the level of awareness, as well as the use of e-cigarettes, increased among smokers and those who had recently quit smoking.

The principal investigator of the study, Professor Richard Edwards from the University's Department of Public Health, says e-cigarette use was most common among those aged 18-24 years and among those who had recently quit smoking.

The research is part of the New Zealand arm of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation (ITC) project and involved surveys with 1,155 people between 2016 and 2017 and 1,020 people in 2018 (400 of them Māori) who smoked or had recently quit smoking.

Participants were recruited from the nationally-representative New Zealand Health Survey and were asked about their awareness and use of e-cigarettes, reasons for use and related beliefs.

The study, funded by the Health Research Council, provides the most in-depth description of patterns of vaping use among New Zealand smokers from population-based data.

The 2018 survey found there to be a high awareness of vaping devices, with 98 per cent of smokers and recent quitters saying they were aware of e-cigarettes. Seventy-seven per cent of respondents reported having tried vaping, while 22 per cent reported currently using e-cigarettes at least monthly and 11 per cent reported using them daily.

Professor Edwards says use was generally similar between Māori and non-Māori participants. Daily use was greatest among recent quitters (23 per cent) compared to current smokers (eight per cent) and among 18-24 year olds (19 per cent) compared to older age groups (10 per cent). The most common reasons given for using e-cigarettes were to help quit (78 per cent) or cut down on smoking (81 per cent).

Professor Edwards says the survey results are promising, particularly the findings that use is most common among recent quitters and that a high proportion of regular users are using e-cigarettes to quit smoking.

"This suggests e-cigarettes are contributing to reducing smoking prevalence and to achieving the goal of Aotearoa becoming smokefree by 2025.

"However, it is of concern that e-cigarette use is more prevalent among 18-24 year olds. If e-cigarettes are to make a substantial contribution to reducing smoking, their use needs to be greater among older age groups."

While the research shows more people are using e-cigarettes to quit smoking, more smokers reported using e-cigarettes on a trial basis, rather than regularly, which suggests there might be barriers to more sustained use, he says.

"The most common potential barriers identified were that 68 per cent of participants thought vaping was less satisfying than smoking and 39 per cent incorrectly believed that e-cigarettes were as or more harmful than smoking cigarettes, or were unsure (15 per cent)."

He says such beliefs underline the importance of public education, such as through the Vaping Facts website.

"This could inform smokers about the relative costs and harmfulness of smoking and e-cigarettes to encourage people who smoke to quit or switch completely to vaping, and encourage people who smoke to visit specialist retailers to get expert advice about the best vaping products for them."

The most common motivation for using e-cigarettes was to save money compared to smoking, suggesting that using the tax system to keep the price of cigarettes high relative to vaping may motivate more smokers to quit.

Professor Edwards warns New Zealand is unlikely to achieve its goal of becoming smokefree by 2025, particularly in relation to Māori and Pacific peoples, with much more action needed.

"E-cigarettes are making a useful contribution, but much more is needed to get to a Smokefree Aotearoa for all New Zealanders. A comprehensive strategy is needed that makes smoked tobacco products less appealing, addictive, and accessible to complement the impact of alternative products like e-cigarettes in reducing smoking prevalence."

Findings from the 2016-2018 International Tobacco Control (ITC) New Zealand Surveys' is published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and can be read here: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/18/6629