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Iridium is an ideal catalyst for the electrolytic production of hydrogen from water - but it is extremely expensive. But now a new kind of electrode made of highly porous material does an excellent job with just a hint of iridium.

Today, the royal road to the effective electrolysis of water for the production of hydrogen gas in so called proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzers is to reduce the amount of catalytically highly active but scare nobel metal iridium and at the same time maintain the hydrogen output. In this type of electrolyzer cell the hydrogen ions migrate via a proton exchange membrane from the oxygen producing anode to the hydrogen producing cathode. The membrane-based technique offers many advantages. The catalyst coated membrane itself is very thin, which makes the electrolytic cell itself small and more versatile, and the absence of a liquid electrolyte means that the whole system requires virtually no maintenance. Such cells also allow hydrogen production at elevated pressures facilitating and lowing the energy demand for further storage as compressed gas. Finally dynamic load operation is possible with the PEM-technology to react to fluctuations in available current within seconds which renders it suitable for the coupling to renewable energy sources.

But the technology also has one major drawback. Formation of oxygen at the anode is dependent on the use of iridium oxide (IrO2) as a catalyst. IrO2 is a very stable and efficient promoter of this reaction. The problem is that iridium itself is rarer than gold or even platinum, and it is at least as expensive as the latter. Many attempts have been made to find an alternative, but nothing yet tested approaches the long-term stability and catalytic activity of iridium oxide.

Just a dash of iridium is enough

Now Ludwig-Maximilian-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich-based chemists involved in the Cluster of Excellence e-conversion, in collaboration with a team at Forschungszentrum Jülich, have succeeded in increasing the yield of hydrogen by a factor of 8 (relative to a commercial reference electrode) by using a novel and highly porous material as catalyst. This success implies that it should be possible to develop an electrolytic cell that achieves the same efficiency as current iridium-based systems but requires only 10% as much iridium.

The new electrode was developed within the framework of the Kopernikus Power-2-X Research Network, which is funded by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Its design and performance characteristics are described in a paper published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. The system makes use of a novel high-porosity oxidic support on which iridium can be evenly dispersed as a thin film, which is easily accessible to water molecules and exhibits high catalytic activity.

Loading the catalyst into every single pore

The team first synthesized nanostructured and conductive antimony-doped tin oxide microparticles. These particles provide a highly porous scaffold for binding of the iridium catalyst. They then prepared an aqueous colloidal suspension of iridium oxide nanoparticles, which were loaded into the porous microparticles by means of a solvothermal reaction at high temperature and pressure. This resulted in the reduction of the iridium oxide particles to metallic Ir. A final thermal oxidation step then led to the formation of iridium oxide nanoparticles within the pores of the metallic scaffold. Subsequent scanning electron microscopy confirmed that every last cavity in the scaffold was coated with a thin film of the catalyst. - And indeed, electrodes coated with the new material passed the final test with flying colors. In terms of activity, i.e. hydrogen generation, the efficiency per gram of bound iridium exceeded that of a commercially available PEM by no less than eightfold.

As the paper's first author Daniel Böhm points out, the synthesis procedure has one huge advantage. "We can now focus on optimizing each parameter individually. The relevant factors that can be adjusted include the composition, structure and pore size of the material, its conductivity and the level of loading with iridium. In the end we will obtain a highly active, fully optimized system. All the steps in the synthetic route are also compatible with the demands of industrial-scale production, so the approach might be ripe for technical application within a relatively short time."

The material currently used in commercial electrolyzers must meet very high standards in order to guarantee stable operation over many years. Upcoming projects that will address this issue are already planned, says Prof. Dina Fattakhova-Rohlfing of Forschungszentrum Jülich. "First, we want to synthesize even more stable catalysts with the aid of novel nanoarchitectures. And then we would like to investigate how the properties of these materials behave when subjected to operational conditions over longer periods of time."

Coral reefs around the world are threatened by pan-tropical bleaching events that occur when the surrounding sea water temperatures increase due to ongoing climate change and extreme conditions like El Nin?o. However, patterns of bleaching occurrence can be very difficult to predict, especially across water depths. Currently, most coral bleaching predictions are based on surface estimates of seawater temperatures, gathered with satellites over large areas of the ocean. While satellite observations are important to understanding large-scale patterns and for studying remote locations, they are only able to detect temperature at the very surface of the ocean and provide averages over relatively large scales.

In this research, Prof. Alex WYATT, Assistant Professor at HKUST's Department of Ocean Science, collaborated with scientists from The University of Tokyo, Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, U.S. Geological Survey and the Florida Institute of Technology, to do a long-term, high-resolution quantitative analysis of temperature records influenced by internal waves, and their effect on coral reefs in the western, central and eastern Pacific Ocean. The team deployed and maintained 50 to 60 high-resolution, continuously recording, electronic thermometers - powered by on-board batteries and containing accurate clocks and large memory storage - across depths at coral reef sites across the Pacific in Japan, French Polynesia and Panama. This captured in situ temperatures for multiple years, most notably during periods of anomalous warming associated with the El Nin?o event in 2015 and 2016.

Using a novel filtering approach developed by the team, internal wave signals were extracted from the temperature records and used in an analytical experiment to compare heating that would have occurred in the presence and absence of internal waves. The resulting analysis suggests that the presence of internal waves reduced heating, particularly in deeper portions of coral reefs, by up to 88% during the 2015-2016 El Nin?o. The duration of severe heating events likely to totally kill corals was also reduced at some sites - by 36 to 50% - or prevented entirely at others.

The team also found that natural internal wave cooling increases with depth. Heating was reduced by 20 to 41% at shallowest sites (8 to 10m water depth) and reduced by 54 to 88% in deeper water (30 to 40m water depth). These findings showed that internal waves may be an important process for naturally reducing coral bleaching across most of the world's coral reef depths and ocean locations. Conversely, the results also suggest than in the absence of internal waves, or if internal waves frequency and intensity decrease with climate change, the observed heating of coral reefs could become even more severe.

The results demonstrating widespread cooling by internal waves suggests a degree of hope for coral reefs - that there can be zones of reefs at least partially protected from the dire consequences of climate change, ocean warming, and increasingly frequent bleaching events now widely observed in shallow water. Areas that are naturally cooled by internal waves may already be acting as partial refuges from the serious impacts of climate change on coral reefs. However, because the oceans are warming rapidly, such refuges may offer only short-term protection. Also, we know very little about how climate change and ocean warming will affect the occurrence of internal waves and the depths to which they cool coral reefs in the future. More importantly, there is a wide range of unknown questions stemming from this research, particularly considering the broader biological effects and ecological implications of internal waves for coral reefs.

The results also suggest there might be innovative ways to adapt this information to protecting coral reefs at local scales of particular interest, such as critical habitats for ecological conservation. "Our research on real-world internal wave upwelling suggests that active management approaches such as artificial upwelling may be valid temporarily on local scales and in locations that are not already naturally cooled by internal wave," said Prof. Wyatt. "If successfully harnessed with an artificial upwelling system, it is foreseeable that upwelling could reduce the worst impacts of heating across a small scale over at-risk coral communities identified for special protection. This artificial upwelling would of course be very localized compared to the global-scale cooling naturally occurring over reefs every day during the summer due to internal waves." He added, "it is very important to note that the protection of reefs hinges on immediately reducing greenhouse gas emissions as internal waves can only offer localized, and perhaps temporary, protection from rapid climate heating. Addressing the underlying causes of climate change are, in fact, critical for the future survival of coral reefs."

Globally, coastal communities rely on reefs for shoreline protection, and the biodiversity of reefs support aquaculture, tourism and local economies. Greater understanding of internal waves at various sites can be utilized to create better forecasts about which reefs are at most risk from future warming events, identify potential reef refuge sites, and thus would be a boon for enhanced stewardship of threatened reefs.

In 2018 the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) and European Society for Clinical and Economic Aspects of Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis (ESCEO) published the updated European guidance for the diagnosis and management of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. Now, the newly published position paper 'Algorithm for the management of patients at low, high and very high risk of osteoporotic fractures' summarizes the guidance in an international setting, with a focus on the categorisation of risk as a strategy to target therapeutic interventions.

The publication reflects the outcomes of a consensus meeting organized by ESCEO and IOF, involving experts from 17 countries. It includes easy-to-use algorithms which illustrate possible decision pathways for the management of postmenopausal osteoporosis, based on the absolute risk of fracture (FRAX®) and an assessment strategy permitting the classification of low, high and very high risk of osteoporotic fractures.

Professor John A. Kanis, lead author and IOF honorary president, stated:

"Fractures related to osteoporosis are a major cause of morbidity and early mortality. We now know that the risk of a subsequent fracture is acute immediately after a first fracture. This clearly points to the need for early intervention for secondary fracture prevention, and to the use of agents that have the most rapid effect on fracture reduction in patients at very high risk."

The rationale for the more refined characterisation of risk is to offer the most appropriate interventions to the patient. For example, initial treatment recommendations for women at high risk might most suitably be with an inhibitor of bone resorption. In contrast, women at very high risk (or 'imminent risk' of fracture) might be more suitably treated with an anabolic treatment followed thereafter by an inhibitor of bone resorption.

Professor Jean-Yves Reginster, ESCEO president and co-author, added: "The publication addresses the need for succinct guidance that will help clinicians identify and treat women at the very highest risk as early as possible. As well, it is intended as a platform on which specific national guidelines can be developed to characterise fracture risk and direct interventions."

Sea creatures, whether large or small, need nutrients. The supply mechanism delivering these nutrients is very different in different parts of the ocean, there are nutrient-rich coastal areas, but also very nutrient-poor regions in the open ocean. In some areas, the lack of iron in seawater limits plankton growth. These include much of the polar oceans. Here, icebergs appear to be an important source of iron input, which could increase due to increased iceberg production as a result of climate change. So far, however, only a limited amount of data has been available to estimate this process. An international team of researchers led by GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel has now examined ice samples worldwide for their iron content. The results show that an increase in icebergs, for example due to global warming, does not necessarily lead to an increase in iron input into the oceans. The results of their study were published today in the international journal Nature Communications.

"In cooperation with partners at the IDEAL Centre for Oceanography in Chile, Greenland, Iceland and Spitsbergen, we have collected a large collection of ice samples from a large number of large maritime glaciers around the world", explains lead author Dr. Mark Hopwood from GEOMAR. These samples were then analysed for trace substances in clean room laboratories. The sampling itself poses a particular challenge. Not only because the samples come from regions that are difficult to access. "Approaching an iceberg floating in the water with a small boat is not safe and requires a lot of experience", says Mark Hopwood. "While we were collecting samples in the coastal waters around Spitsbergen, we saw a relatively small iceberg suddenly break into two halves and turn around in the water. If this happens to a large iceberg that is being sampled from a boat, it can be very dangerous", continues Dr. Hopwood.

The analyses initially showed, to a certain extent surprisingly, in most samples no major differences in the composition of the ice from different locations, i.e. the iron content in ice from Greenland is not significantly different from that in Patagonia. However, the ice of a single iceberg can be very different. The pure ice contains very little iron, but ice that is heavily loaded with sediment, much more than one would find in a river, for example. These differences in iron concentration are enormous and can be in the order of a million fold. About 4% of the ice samples collected contained more than 90% of the total iron.

What does this mean for biology? "Well, the general hypothesis was that increasing the number of icebergs swimming in the sea would increase the fertilising effect. But our work shows that things are a little more complicated, because most ice has no strong fertilizing effect, the 4% of the ice with most of the iron will probably have a much stronger fertilizing effect than the rest of the 'clean' ice", Mark Hopwood sums up. So the origin and dynamics of the "dirty" ice play a really important role in how much the ice in a region, or from a glacier, can (or cannot) change primary production in the ocean.

"Unfortunately, many questions remain unanswered. For example, where this sediment rich ice comes from, how it varies globally and in what spatial and temporal dimensions it releases iron through melting processes in the ocean", Hopwood concludes.

AURORA, Colo. (Nov. 20, 2019) - Home visits by nurses to check on infants and first-time mothers offer learning benefits for the children and savings in the cost of public welfare programs, according to new research published in December 2019 issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, University College London (UCL), and the University of Rochester evaluated the long-term effects of nurse home visiting programs. The initial visits were conducted in June 1990 and continued for over many years. The studies follow up on families 18 years after they participated in the nurse-visit program and they compare outcomes for those families with control groups.

"It's rare for studies of early invention programs to examine early-intervention effects over an 18-year period," said David Olds, PhD, professor of pediatrics at University of Colorado School of Medicine and one of the lead investigators of the studies.

"This early intervention, Nurse-Family Partnership, produced long-term improvements in the cognitive functioning of 18-year-old youth born to mothers who had limited personal resources to cope with the adversities of living in deep poverty," Olds said. "This new evidence shows promise that Nurse-Family Partnership's effects may carry over into adulthood."

Among the findings:

Improved cognitive function and academic performance of 18-year-olds born to high-risk mothers with limited psychological resources to cope with poverty. Outcomes included improved math achievement scores, receptive language abilities, working memory, and ability to accurately read others' emotions. Nurse-visited children were three times as likely to graduate from high school with honors compared to the control group

Savings of $17,310 per family in public benefit costs, with reduced expenditures for Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and welfare cash assistance. The reduction in the cost of public benefits is explained in part by nurse-visited mothers being better able to plan for subsequent pregnancies. In comparison, the visiting nurse program costs were $12,578 per family, resulting in a net savings of $4,732 per family.

Working with high-risk mothers improved the mothers' economic self-sufficiency and strengthened their families. Nurse-visited mothers, in comparison with mothers in the control group, were more likely to get married, had higher rates of co-habitation, and a greater sense of confidence in their ability to managed the challenges in their lives.

Gabriella Conti, PhD, UCL Economics and Social Sciences and co-author on the studies, said, "We now have evidence from the largest-ever longitudinal evaluation of the U.S. Nurse-Family Partnership, demonstrating that nurse home visits are clearly beneficial for young mothers and their children."

The studies followed 742 low income first-time mothers, primarily African-American, and their children, who were part of the Nurse-Family Partnership program in Memphis, Tenn., from June 1990 through to September 2014. Eighty-five percent were living in households below the federal poverty level and in highly-disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Olds is a child-development expert who began sending nurses into the homes of poor mothers in Emira, N.Y., in the 1970s, and later into homes in Memphis and Denver. The nurses taught mothers child-rearing skills.

Olds is the first author of the study, "Prenatal and Infancy Nurse Home Visiting Effects on Mothers: 18-Year Follow-up of a Randomized Trial." There are nine co-authors on that article, including Michael D. Knudtson, MS, and Christian Hopfer, MD, from the University of Colorado.

Harriet Kitzman, PhD, from the University of Rochester School of Nursing is the first author of the second article, "Prenatal and/or Infancy Nurse Home Visiting and 18-Year Outcomes of a Randomized Trial," Thirteen co-authors are listed including Olds, Knudtson, and Hopfer from the University of Colorado.

AMHERST, Mass. - One of the more complex problems facing social psychologists today is whether any intervention can move people to change their behavior about climate change and protecting the environment for the sake of future generations.

Now researchers Hanne Melgård Watkins at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Geoffrey Goodwin at the University of Pennsylvania report after their recent experiments that an intergenerational reciprocity approach ¬- asking people to reflect on sacrifices made in the past by others for their benefit today - may generate gratitude and a sense of moral obligation to people in the future.

Details of their studies exploring this are online now in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

As Watkins says, "The question is how to motivate people to care for future generations. Other researchers have shown that reciprocity can be a powerful motivator. If someone does something for my benefit, that creates a sense of obligation to reciprocate, but if I can't reciprocate directly for some reason, I might instead try to "pay it forward." In our experiments, we tried to take that idea and scale it up to get people to feel a moral obligation to future generations by having them reflect on what people in previous generations had done for them."

She adds that intergenerational reciprocity research has shown that this approach can work, at least with people playing games. "If the last participant in a game paid their winnings forward, people are more likely to do the same for those coming along after them."

Overall, Watkins and Goodwin, who conducted this study while Watkins was at UPenn, state that "our studies revealed that such reflection - on sacrifices made by past generations - predicts and causes a heightened sense of moral obligation towards future generations, mediated by gratitude. However there are also some downsides, for example, feelings of unworthiness, and perceptions of obligation do not substantially affect pro-environmental attitudes or motivations."

Further, "while reflecting on past generations' sacrifice can generate a sense of intergenerational obligation, it is limited in the extent to which it can increase pro-environmental concern." Watkins adds, "Feeling is one thing, actually doing is another."

With climate change, the researchers note that they had chosen a rather broad topic "more distant and diffuse" than some others investigated in previous studies on intergenerational reciprocity. Thus their survey asked respondents to reflect on past sacrifices made by their families or others during the fairly clear sacrifices made such as in the Great Depression, World War II, or by parents who scrimped and saved to put children through college; "big sacrifices that cannot be directly reciprocated," Watkins notes.

For this work, she and Goodwin conducted five experimental online studies where at least 200 participants and sometimes as many as 500, were asked to write reflections on either sacrifices made by past generations or, for the control condition, to write on fashion choices made by past generations. Subjects were Americans, half male, half female and though the sample was "not representative but a fairly well varied population," Watkins points out. At least one of the five studies was a replication of the first survey.

They found that when people had reflected on past sacrifices they were more likely to report feeling a sense of moral obligation to future generations. "We then asked whether they'd be willing to pay a higher tax or make other actual sacrifices in their daily lives to help future generations deal with climate change," Watkins notes. "In this we found no effect," but there was a strong correlation between a sense of moral obligation to future generations and willingness to sacrifice. "This correlation may exist without any intervention," she adds.

Finally, Watkins reports that in a mini-meta-analysis of their five experiments, they did observe a small but significant effect on willingness to make sacrifices for the environment after reflecting on others' past sacrifices.

"It's nice that this might make a difference, but it's not clear whether it's large enough to use, to implement as an intervention," she points out. "We feel it is valuable to have explored the question, but if you want action on climate change you might be better served by trying something else. Maybe contact your local representative."

ARLINGTON, Va., November 20, 2019 -- One in three adults treated for cancer may experience side effects from treatment they wish they had known more about, according to a new survey published today in the Journal of Oncology Practice. The national survey of more than 400 U.S. adults, which was sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), also found that nine in 10 patients felt they made the right treatment decision despite the desire for more information about treatment side effects.

"An unfortunate reality of cancer treatment is that therapy also has side effects that can impact a patient's quality of life. Nearly all patients in the survey felt confident about their treatment decisions, but a sizable number also expressed a clear need for more information about potential side effects," said Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, FASTRO, senior author of the study and the Newman Family Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Michigan.

For each major type of cancer treatment (radiation therapy, chemotherapy, surgery), approximately of one-third of patients experienced treatment-related side effects that they wanted more information about (radiation therapy 37%, chemotherapy 36%, surgery 34%).

Information gaps were related to how severe patients considered their treatment-related side effects to be, with patients who reported severe side effects more likely to say they did not know enough about them. More than a third of patients (38%) who reported having severe side effects from cancer treatment also said they felt uninformed, compared to 4% of those who reported having minimal side effects.

The survey also looked specifically at patients' experiences with radiation therapy side effects. Patients said these experiences generally were in line with their expectations, although notable numbers felt more tired (29%) or weak (28%) or experienced worse changes to their energy level (31%) than expected.

"More in-depth patient counseling on these side effects could help us better prepare our patients for changes to their quality of life," said Narek Shaverdian, MD, first author of the study and a radiation oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Treatment-related side effects increased with the addition of systemic/drug therapy and/or surgery to a patient's treatment regimen. Fatigue, weakness and pain were significantly more likely to be worse than expected for patients treated with all three modalities, compared to those treated with radiation therapy alone.

"The pronounced impact of treatment side effects for patients receiving combination therapy also suggests a need to build better coordination between oncology disciplines about managing side effects and to improve informed consent processes across cancer therapies," said Dr. Shaverdian.

Additional findings from the survey include:

The most common side effects patients wished they had known more about with radiation therapy included skin irritation, gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and fatigue. With chemotherapy, patients wanted more information on nerve damage, GI symptoms and fatigue. With surgery, patients wanted more information on pain, nerve damage and numbness.

When rating their experience with treatment-related side effects on a scale from minimal (0) to severe (100), the average ratings were 45 for radiation therapy side effects, 47 for surgery side effects and 63 for chemotherapy side effects.

Roughly one in five patients felt they needed more information about possible side effects before they started cancer treatment (radiation therapy: 18%, surgery: 20%, chemotherapy: 26%).

The side effects that patients were concerned about most frequently before radiation therapy were feeling tired (56%), feeling weak (50%) and skin burning (46%).

A majority of patients (55%) consulted their primary care physician (PCP) about cancer treatment options, and 9 in 10 of these said the PCP's advice was very (64%) or somewhat (29%) important in their decision making.

A fourth of all patients surveyed said their PCP was the only information source they consulted. When patients used additional information sources, they were most likely to seek out medical or cancer-related websites, family and friends, the experiences of other patients and cancer support groups.

More than two-thirds of patients (68%) perceived their radiation oncologist to have the same or more cancer knowledge as the other oncologists on their treatment team.

The effectiveness of non-mechanical, low-energy methods for moderating temperature and humidity has been evaluated in a series of experiments by researchers from the University of Cambridge.

The researchers found that a temperature difference between inside and outside has a remarkably small effect on how well a room is ventilated when ventilation is primarily driven by wind. In contrast, wind can increase ventilation rates by as much as 40% above that which is driven by a temperature difference between a room and the outdoors. The exact rate of ventilation will depend on the geometry of the room.

The results, reported in the journal Building and Environment, could be used to help designers and urban planners incorporate natural ventilation principles into their designs, so that buildings can be kept at a comfortable temperature while using less energy.

Heating and cooling account for a significant proportion of energy use in buildings: in the US, this is as high as 50 percent. In addition, as global temperatures continue to rise, demand for air conditioning - which emits greenhouse gases - rises as well, creating a damaging feedback loop.

Natural ventilation, which controls indoor temperature without using any mechanical systems, is an alternative to traditional heating and cooling methods, which reduces energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

"Natural ventilation is a low-energy way to keep buildings at a comfortable temperature, but in order to increase its use, we need simple, accurate models that can respond quickly to changing conditions," said lead author Dr Megan Davies Wykes from Cambridge's Department of Engineering.

There are two main types of natural cross-ventilation: wind-driven and buoyancy-driven. Cross-ventilation occurs in rooms that have windows on opposite sides of a room. Wind blowing on a building can result in a high pressure on the windward side and a low pressure at the leeward side, which drives flow across a room, bringing fresh air in from outside and ventilating a room. Ventilation can also be driven by temperature differences between the inside and outside of a room, as incoming air is heated by people or equipment, resulting in a buoyancy-driven flow at a window.

"We've all gotten used to having a well-controlled, narrow temperature range in our homes and offices," said Davies Wykes. "Controlling natural ventilation methods is much more challenging than switching on the heat or the air conditioning, as you need to account for all the variables in a room, like the number of people, the number of computers or other heat-generating equipment, or the strength of the wind."

In the current study, the researchers used a miniature model room placed inside a flume to recreate the movements of air inside a room when windows are opened in different temperature and wind conditions.

Using the results from lab-based experiments, Davies Wykes and her colleagues built mathematical models to predict how temperature difference between inside and outside affects how well a room is ventilated.

The researchers found that the rate of ventilation depends less on temperature and more on wind. Anyone who has tried to cool down on a hot night by opening the window will no doubt be familiar with how ineffective this is when there is no wind.

This is because in many rooms, windows are positioned halfway up the wall, and when they are opened, the warm air near the ceiling can't easily escape. Without the 'mixing' effect provided by the wind, the warm air will stay at the ceiling, unless there is another way for it to escape at the top of the room.

"It was surprising that although temperature differences do not have a strong effect on the flow of air through a window, even small temperature differences can matter when trying to ventilate a room," said Davies Wykes. "If there are no openings near the ceiling of a room, warm indoor air can become trapped near the ceiling and wind is not effective at removing the trapped air."

The next steps will be to incorporate the results into building design, making it easier to create well ventilated, low energy buildings.

HERSHEY, Pa. - Researchers from Penn State College of Medicine identified a new gene mutation that may cause a type of familial thyroid cancer. Dr. Darrin Bann, an otolaryngology resident at the College of Medicine and lead author of the study, said that this mutation is the first and only mutation associated with familial thyroid cancer to be identified in a gene that is primarily expressed in the thyroid gland.

According to the researchers, people who have a first degree relative with thyroid cancer have a two to five-fold increase of developing the disease themselves. Identifying this mutation has helped the researchers understand why this form of cancer is more inheritable than other cancers. They published the study results in Cancer Research.

"Thyroid cancer is common and on the rise, and hereditary non-medullary thyroid cancers account for six to ten percent of cases," said Bann. "Prior to this study, there was not much data to explain why this type of cancer was highly heritable."

The researchers identified a family consisting of eight thyroid cancer patients across four generations. They used next generation sequencing, which can provide a full 'picture' of a person's genetic makeup in less than a day, to examine every gene in the genome for all of the thyroid cancer patients in the family. When analyzing the data, they discovered all the family members with thyroid cancer had a mutation in a gene called DUOX2 - a rare mutation that occurs once in every 138,000 members of the general population.

The DUOX2 gene provides information for the creation of a protein called dual oxidase 2, which produces hydrogen peroxide and is found at high levels in the thyroid gland. After performing a series of biochemical analyses on the protein with the mutation, they were able to determine that the mutated version produced more hydrogen peroxide, rather than stopping the production of the chemical.

Hydrogen peroxide is used in the final stages of thyroid hormone production, but the researchers believe the excess may cause additional gene mutations - which may increase the risk of thyroid cancer.

"Hydrogen peroxide can harm genetic material through a process called oxidative damage," Bann said. "This may be a common theme underlying genetic risk for developing thyroid cancer. If we can identify more mutations that increase risk for oxidative damage, we may be able to develop preventative strategies - including treatments with antioxidants."

Based on their findings, the researchers decided to see if DUOX2 was related to other genetic mutations associated with non-medullary thyroid cancers. They found that some individuals with sporadic thyroid cancers had a mutation that increased the amount of DUOX2 in the thyroid gland. These findings suggest to the researchers that dysregulation of hydrogen peroxide may be the cause of other genetic mutations associated with thyroid cancers.

In the future, Bann hopes knowledge of this mutation can help create new models for studying thyroid cancer in the lab and the development of prevention strategies. While previous mutations have been identified in families with thyroid cancer, Bann says the DUOX2 mutation is the only one that connects directly to thyroid tissue.

"The individuals with thyroid cancer in the family we studied had a mutation in a gene that is related to thyroid tissue," Bann said. "Finding other families and individuals with this mutation will be essential for confirming our findings."

NASA found moderate rainfall occurring over a large area in Tropical Storm Sebastien, as it moves through the Atlantic Ocean.

NASA has the unique ability to measure and calculate rainfall rates in storms from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM satellite. That data is combined with data from other satellites to form NASA's Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) forecast .

The near-real time rain estimate comes from the NASA's IMERG algorithm, which combines observations from a fleet of satellites, in near-real time, to provide near-global estimates of precipitation every 30 minutes. By combining NASA precipitation estimates with other data sources, we can gain a greater understanding of the major storms that affect our planet.

When IMERG analyzed Tropical Storm Sebastien on Nov. 19, calculations indicated moderate rainfall occurring. Rainfall rates around 17.0 mm or 0.7 inches per hour were falling east of the center. Sebastien continues to struggle with dry air and northwesterly wind shear, with satellite imagery showing an exposed low-level center to the west of the deep convection.

Sebastien's Status on Nov. 20

NOAA's National Hurricane Center or NHC reported on Nov. 20 at 5 a.m. EST (0900 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Sebastien was located near latitude 21.0 degrees north and longitude 61.0 degrees west. That is about 235 miles (380 km) northeast of the Northern Leeward Islands.

Sebastien is moving toward the northwest near 8 mph (13 kph). A turn to the north-northwest and then north is expected later today. A turn toward the northeast with an increase in forward speed is expected tonight and Thursday. Maximum sustained winds have increased to near 50 mph (85 kph) with higher gusts. Some strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours. Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 150 miles (240 km) from the center. The estimated minimum central pressure is 1002 millibars.

 About IMERG

IMERG fills in the "blanks" between weather observation stations. IMERG satellite-based rain estimates can be compared to that from a National Weather Service ground radar.  Such good detection of large rain features in real time would be impossible if the IMERG algorithm merely reported the precipitation observed by the periodic overflights of various agencies' satellites.  Instead, what the IMERG algorithm does is "morph" high-quality satellite observations along the direction of the steering winds to deliver information about rain at times and places where such satellite overflights did not occur.  Information morphing is particularly important over the majority of the world's surface that lacks ground-radar coverage.

Sebastien's Fate

Sebastien is expected to become an extratropical cyclone in a couple of days and be absorbed by a cold front on Friday, Nov. 22.

Hurricanes are the most powerful weather event on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration using a fleet of satellites contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

As Tropical Depression 28W continued organizing and developing into Tropical Storm Fung-Wong in the Philippine Sea, NASA's Aqua satellite provided data on the storm to forecasters. In the Philippines, Fung-Wong is known as Sarah.

On Nov. 20, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image on Fung-Wong. The image indicated that the circulation center was more well-defined. A band of thunderstorms was also seen on the eastern side of the storm.

The shape of the storm is a clue to forecasters that a storm is either strengthening or weakening. If a storm takes on a more rounded shape it is getting more organized and strengthening. Conversely, if it becomes less rounded or elongated, it is a sign the storm is weakening. Fung-Wong has appeared to become more symmetrical in the MODIS imagery, indicating it is getting better organized.

In addition, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that animated enhanced infrared satellite imagery suggests the low-level circulation center is obscured under central dense overcast. The deep convection (bands of thunderstorms) appears to have begun wrapping completely around the low-level center of circulation.

At 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC) on Nov. 20, the center of Tropical Storm Fung-Wong was located near latitude 19.5 degrees north and longitude 126.4 degrees east. That puts the center about 432 nautical miles southeast of Taipei, Taiwan. Maximum sustained winds were near 45 knots (52 mph/83 kph). Fung-Wong is moving to the north-northwest.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center or JTWC noted that Fung-Wong would move northwest toward Taiwan. The system is forecast to strengthen to 55 knots (63 mph/102 kph) within 24 hours before weakening rapidly on approach to Taiwan.

The Central Weather Bureau of Taiwan is keeping track of the storm and will provide watches and warnings.

Typhoons and hurricanes are the most powerful weather event 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.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Foodie tradition dictates only eating wild oysters in months with the letter "r" - from September to April - to avoid watery shellfish, or worse, a nasty bout of food poisoning. Now, a new study suggests people have been following this practice for at least 4,000 years.

An analysis of a large shell ring off Georgia's coast revealed that the ancient inhabitants of St. Catherines Island limited their oyster harvest to the non-summer months.

How can scientists know when islanders were collecting oysters? By measuring parasitic snails.

Snails known as impressed odostomes, Boonea impressa, are common parasites of oysters, latching onto a shell and inserting a stylus to slurp the soft insides. Because the snail has a predictable 12-month life cycle, its length at death offers a reliable estimate of when the oyster host died, allowing Florida Museum of Natural History researchers Nicole Cannarozzi and Michal Kowalewski to use it as a tiny seasonal clock for when people collected and ate oysters in the past.

Stowaways on discarded oyster shells, the snails offer new insights into an old question about the shell rings that dot the coasts of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi.

"People have been debating the purpose of these shell rings for a very long time," said Cannarozzi, the study's lead author and Florida Museum environmental archaeology collection manager. "Were they everyday food waste heaps? Temporary communal feasting sites? Or perhaps a combination? Understanding the seasonality of the rings sheds new light on their function."

Cannarozzi and Kowalewski, Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology, analyzed oysters and snails from a 230-foot-wide, 4,300-year-old shell ring on St. Catherines Island and compared them with live oysters and snails. They found that island inhabitants were primarily harvesting oysters during late fall, winter and spring, which also suggested the presence of people on the island tapered off during the summer.

The seasonality of the shell ring may be one of the earliest records of sustainable harvesting, Cannarozzi said. Oysters in the Southeast spawn from May to October, and avoiding oyster collection in the summer may help replenish their numbers.

"It's important to look at how oysters have lived in their environment over time, especially because they are on the decline worldwide," she said. "This type of data can give us good information about their ecology, how other organisms interact with them, the health of oyster populations and, on a grander scale, the health of coastal ecosystems."

Cannarozzi said using impressed odostomes to gauge what time of year oysters were harvested offers an independent way to assess ancient patterns of oyster gathering. This approach can complement other archaeological methods, including stable isotope analysis and examining shell growth rings.

Kowalewski said the method could be applied to other marine invertebrate studies if the "timepiece" organism's life cycle meets several key requirements.

"If you have species with a lifespan of one year or less, consistent growth patterns and predictable spawning behavior, you could potentially use them as clocks as well," he said. "We might be able to use this type of strategy to reconstruct population dynamics or the natural history of various species, especially those that are extinct."

Cannarozzi and Kowalewski emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing longstanding research questions in new ways. Their project combined paleontology, the study of fossils and other biological remains, with archaeology, which emphasizes human history. Cannarozzi's specialization - environmental archaeology - also explores the close connections between humans and their natural resources.

"People have affected the distributions, life cycles and numbers of organisms over time," Cannarozzi said. "Understanding how people in the past interacted with and influenced their environment can inform our conservation efforts today."

LA JOLLA, CA - An experimental HIV vaccine developed by scientists at Scripps Research and the nonprofit vaccine research organization IAVI has reached an important milestone by eliciting antibodies that can neutralize a wide variety of HIV strains.

The tests, in rabbits, showed that these "broadly neutralizing" antibodies, or bnAbs, targeted at least two critical sites on the virus. Researchers widely assume that a vaccine must elicit bnAbs to multiple sites on HIV if it is to provide robust protection against this ever-changing virus.

The promising results, which appear in Immunity, suggest that researchers are one step closer to developing an effective HIV vaccine--a major goal of medical science ever since the virus was identified in 1983.

"It's an initial proof of principle but an important one, and we're now working to optimize this vaccine design," says the study's senior author Richard Wyatt, PhD, a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research.

According to UNAIDS, about 35 million people worldwide have died of the immunodeficiency syndrome, AIDS, which is caused by HIV infection. About 38 million others are now living with HIV infection. Antiviral drugs can keep HIV-infected people alive and reduce their ability to transmit the virus to others, but these drugs do not clear the infection and must be taken indefinitely. Researchers have long recognized that a preventive vaccine, available at a low cost to uninfected people, will be needed to eliminate HIV as a major public health threat.

HIV's rapid mutation rate and other mechanisms for evading immune attack have made it an extremely difficult target for vaccine designers. But the test conducted by Wyatt and his team confirms that vaccination can elicit the kinds of antibodies that are needed to provide broad protection against HIV. These bnAbs, as vaccine experts call them, can neutralize multiple HIV strains because they bind to critical sites on the virus that do not vary much from strain to strain. People who are infected with HIV sometimes produce bnAbs as part of their antibody response, but infrequently and usually after infection has been long established. The chief challenge for HIV vaccine designers has been to find ways to stimulate the immune system--in most or all individuals--into making bnAbs that hit multiple vulnerable sites on the virus, in order to protect against a high proportion of HIV strains.

At the heart of the vaccine design by Wyatt and colleagues is a virus-mimicking protein based on HIV's "Env" protein. Normally, multiple copies of bush-like Env proteins are spread out on the surface of each spherical HIV particle. Each Env protein contains a molecular mechanism that allows it to bind to a receptor on immune cells known as CD4, and use that receptor as a portal to break into the cell. The researchers engineered a version of Env that models the essential structures on the real Env while being stable enough to use as a vaccine. To present it in a way that would resemble a real HIV virus particle, they created virus-sized synthetic spheres of fat-related molecules, "liposomes," which are studded densely with the engineered Env proteins.

On a natural HIV Env protein, thickets of sugar-related molecules called glycans normally help shield the all-important CD4 binding site from immune attack. As an initial "priming" immunization, the researchers used versions of Env in which this glycan shield around the CD4 binding site had been partly removed.

"The idea was to better expose this site and thereby stimulate a broad antibody reaction to it at the start," Wyatt says.

Subsequent booster immunizations over 48 weeks used Env proteins with restored glycans, to select for antibodies that target the CD4 binding site but can also get through this shield. The Env proteins in the booster shots also were mixes based on different strains of HIV, to generally promote antibody responses against Env structures that do not vary among these strains.

The team inoculated 12 rabbits following their vaccine strategy and compared the results with a control group that received only a single, glycan-shielded version of Env. They found that their vaccine strategy had a much better response, with five of the rabbits developing antibodies that could neutralize multiple HIV isolates.

The researchers analyzed the antibodies of the rabbit that had responded most strongly, and identified two distinct types of bnAb. One, which they called E70, blocks the CD4 binding site as expected, though in an unusual way--partly by grabbing one of the shielding glycans. The other, 1C2, hits a different but well known vulnerable spot on Env, at the interface between two key segments of the complex protein. The binding of antibody 1C2 apparently destabilizes Env so that it can no longer mediate HIV's entry into host cells. That antibody also turned out to have an unusual breadth of neutralization, blocking 87 percent of a panel of 208 distinct HIV isolates.

The finding is an important demonstration that vaccination against HIV, if done in the right way, can achieve the goal of inducing bnAbs to multiple sites on the virus, Wyatt says.

The team of scientists are continuing to test and improve their vaccine strategy in small animal models and hope eventually to test it in monkeys and then humans.

A survey of over six thousand sub-Saharan households shows an estimated 39% experience severely unreliable access to food. In addition, 49% have inadequate diversity in their diet, putting them at risk for micronutrient deficiencies. The study, published in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, is among the largest of its kind -- and also the first to correlate food access and nutrition to time of year, as well as demographic, agricultural, ecological and economic factors.

"Recent work has suggested that global chronic hunger could be brought to an end by 2030 with an additional annual investment of $11 billion, but this will only be possible with highly targeted and well-designed interventions," says Dr. Simon Fraval of Wageningen University in the Netherlands. "Our study set out to combine food access indicators with household-farm characteristics to estimate the prevalence of food access deficiencies as well as to understand how those correlate with rural livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa throughout the year."

In 2017, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that nearly a quarter of the sub-Sahara African population suffers from chronic hunger -- representing nearly 274 million people. However the real scale of malnutrition and food accessibility is hard to capture, because surveys are often limited by geographical reach and time of year, which significantly impacts food availability.

Fraval's study spans 12 projects across eight African countries. The surveys included questions about the severity of food access problems, ranging from whether participants worried about getting food to whether they went for entire days without eating due to access issues. In contrast to previous surveys, the study asked participants about the worst month a household had experienced during the past year, as opposed to shorter time frames such as the past 24 hours.

This survey is also the first to study how access to purchased food and food from household farms influenced the diversity of household diets.

"Surprisingly, our results indicate that households growing fewer varieties of food may not compensate for this by purchasing additional food categories, even if they have financial resources to do so," says Fraval. "We found that home-grown foods were an important route for some nutrient-rich foods such as dairy and fruit."

From their results, Fraval and his collaborators cite three priorities for effective, nutrition-oriented interventions: increasing income from farming, improving o?-farm income opportunities and diversifying the types of foods grown by household farms.

An important caveat is that the survey only reflects entire households. No conclusions can be drawn about individuals, particularly differences between children and adults or between men and women. Many other factors such as education, gender, food preparation and sanitation are likely to play a role, but these were not within the scope of the current study.

"Our results suggest that interventions can be better designed by taking into consideration market conditions, land size, farm type and household composition to prioritize the most vulnerable segments of society," says Fraval. "It's also important to note that higher incomes won't necessarily result in improved food and nutrition outcomes unless interventions focus on nutrition education and the availability of the diverse foods needed for a balanced diet."

Milking the umbilical cord--gently squeezing the cord and pushing the contents into the newborn's abdomen before clamping the cord--could increase the risk for severe intraventricular hemorrhage, or bleeding into the brain's fluid-filled cavities, in extremely preterm infants, according to results of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health that was halted for safety concerns.

The study, led by Anup Katheria, M.D., of the Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women and Newborns in San Diego and colleagues at institutions in the United States and Europe, had sought to determine if cord milking was an alternative to delayed cord clamping. Unlike cord milking, a delay in clamping allows time for the blood to flow naturally from the cord into the abdomen before clamping and cutting the cord.

After extremely preterm infants (23 to 27 weeks gestation) in the cord milking group were found to have more hemorrhages inside the ventricles, compared to the earliest preterm infants in the delayed clamping group, the study was stopped before enough infants could be enrolled to allow for a statistically valid analysis.

Some studies of term infants have found that delayed cord clamping reduces the chances of anemia and appears to benefit cognitive development in early childhood. In preterm infants, however, the extra time needed for delayed cord clamping also may delay the start of the respiratory support often needed for the infants' underdeveloped lungs.

"Although it's not possible to draw definitive conclusions, the results suggest extreme caution in performing cord milking in this vulnerable group of infants," said Caroline Signore, M.D., of NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, who oversaw the study.

An earlier study comparing umbilical cord milking to delayed cord clamping in preterm infants delivered by cesarean suggested that cord milking resulted in higher blood flow and benefits in cognitive development by 2 years of age. A meta-analysis of studies dating back to the 1940s found that preterm infants who underwent cord milking had evidence of higher blood volume, lower risk of bleeding into the ventricles, and a lower likelihood of requiring oxygen therapy. The authors were unaware of any previous studies demonstrating harm from umbilical cord milking.

In the current study, appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers enrolled women at less than 32 weeks of pregnancy at risk for preterm birth. When the women went into early labor, their infants were assigned at random to umbilical cord milking or delayed cord clamping for 60 seconds. For safety reasons, obstetricians could opt out of either procedure and immediately clamp the cord.

Researchers planned to enroll 1,500 infants, with 750 assigned at random to each group. Before the study was halted, 474 infants were randomized, with 236 assigned to cord milking and 238 assigned to delayed clamping.

The study authors classified the results into a single combined outcome: death or severe intraventricular hemorrhage. Among the cord milking group, 29 infants (12%) died or developed severe intraventricular hemorrhaging, compared to 20 infants (8%) in the delayed clamping group, a difference that was not statistically significant.

When the authors considered only the death rate, it also did not differ significantly between the two groups: 7% in the cord milking group vs. 8% in the delayed clamping group.

However, the rate of severe intraventricular hemorrhage was significantly higher in the cord milking group: 8% (20 infants), compared to 3% (8 infants) in the delayed clamping group. Among those in the cord milking group, all 20 with intraventricular hemorrhage were the youngest preterm infants, born in weeks 23 to 27 of pregnancy, compared to 5 of the 8 infants in the delayed clamping group. Among infants born at 28 to 32 weeks, no intraventricular hemorrhage occurred in the cord milking group, and three cases occurred in the delayed clamping group, a rate that did not differ significantly.

Compared to more mature preterm infants, extremely preterm infants' circulatory systems have difficulty regulating blood flow in the brain. The authors theorize that the increase in blood flow resulting from cord milking could have stressed the blood vessels in their brains, making them more likely to rupture. The authors noted that previous studies have shown a higher rate of severe intraventricular hemorrhage in preterm infants delivered vaginally, compared to those delivered by cesarean.

Because the higher risk of intraventricular hemorrhage was found only in extremely preterm infants, the authors are continuing to compare cord milking to delayed clamping in preterm infants born at 30 to 32 weeks and will evaluate development of the two groups at 2 years of age.