Earth

A comprehensive survey of ingredients in yogurts highlights high sugar levels in many - particularly organic yogurts and those marketed towards children.

Scientists from the Universities of Leeds and Surrey analysed the product information for 921 yogurts available in major UK supermarkets.

Their study, published today in BMJ Open, found that across all categories of yogurt products - with the exception of natural, Greek and 'Greek-style' yogurts - the average sugar levels were well above the five grams of sugar per 100 grams threshold required to be classed 'low sugar' and carry a green 'traffic light' nutritional label in the UK.

Apart from products in the dessert category, organic yogurts were found to have the highest average sugar content - roughly 13.1 grams per 100 grams. A standard sugar cube weighs roughly four grams - equivalent to a level teaspoon of granulated sugar.

Lead author Dr Bernadette Moore, from the School of Food Science and Nutrition at Leeds, said: "While there is good evidence that yogurt can be beneficial to health, products on the market vary widely in nutrient content. Items labelled 'organic' are often thought of as the 'healthiest' option, but they may be an unrecognised source of added sugars in many people's diet."

"Many of the products that were suggested for children's lunchboxes were high sugar dessert yogurts, rather than lower sugar options. Retailers could play a positive role in promoting health by establishing boundaries for lunchbox recommendations and clearly labelling the amount of added sugar."

"Our study highlights the challenges and mixed messages that come from the marketing and packaging of yogurt products," she said.

Dr Moore explained that while yogurts contained their own naturally-occurring sugar, called lactose or milk sugar, current UK labelling laws do not require the declaration of added sugars on nutrition labels: 'total sugar' on the package indicates the weight of lactose as well as any added sugars.

The NHS recommends four to six-year-olds should have no more than 19 grams of sugar a day. Only two of 101 children's yogurt and fromage frais products surveyed could be classified as low in sugar, with the majority having an average of 10.8 grams per 100 grams.

Study co-author Dr Barbara Fielding, from the University of Surrey, said: "Diets high in added sugars are now unequivocally linked to obesity and dental problems. An alarming 58% of women and 68% of men - along with one in three of UK children aged ten to eleven - were overweight or obese in 2015.

"In the UK, on average, children eat more yogurt than adults, with children under three years old eating the most. It can be a great source of protein, calcium, and vitamin B12. However, we found that in many of the yogurt products marketed towards children, a single serving could contain close to half of a child's recommended daily maximum sugar intake. Many portion sizes for children's yogurts were identical to adult portion sizes."

The survey examined the sugar and nutrient content of yogurts across eight product categories. Natural, 'plain' and Greek-style yogurts were found to have a dramatically different nutrient profile from all other categories, containing much higher levels of protein, lower carbohydrates level and the least amount of sugar, with the average of five grams per 100g - this was largely naturally-occurring lactose.

As part of a plan to combat childhood obesity, the UK government implemented a soft drinks sugar levy in May and has commissioned a structured programme of monitored sugar reduction as part of a wider plan to tackle calories, salt and saturated fat. Yogurt is one of the products identified and highlighted for a 20% reduction of sugar by 2020.

Study co-author Annabelle Horti, who conducted this research while at the Leeds' School of Food and Nutrition, said: "Changing the public desire for 'sweeter' yogurts may be a real challenge when it comes to reducing its sugar content. In general, consumers' liking for yogurt is often correlated with sweetness.

"Sugar is often used as a sweetener to counteract the natural sourness from the lactic acid produced by live cultures in yogurt. These live cultures - or microorganisms - are what make yogurt a 'good for your gut' food and tend to be found in higher amounts in organic yogurts. This may be why these products had higher amounts of added sugar to offset the sourness.

"Helping people to understand the quantity of sugar that is in their yogurt and its possible ill effects on health may go a long way to smoothing the road for when the sugar is reduced."

Paris, France: Children who have access to green spaces close to their homes have fewer respiratory problems, such as asthma and wheezing, in adulthood, according to new research presented today (Wednesday) at the European Respiratory Society International Congress [1]. In contrast, children who are exposed to air pollution are more likely to experience respiratory problems as young adults.

Until now, little has been known about the association between exposure to air pollution as a child and long-term respiratory problems in adulthood. RHINESSA [2] is a large international study that has been investigating lung health in children and adults in seven European countries, and that has information on residential "greenness" and air pollution exposures from birth onwards from several study centres. In a new analysis, Dr Ingrid Nordeide Kuiper (MD), from the Department of Occupational Medicine at Haukeland University Hospital, Norway, and colleagues analysed greenness data from 5415 participants aged between 18 and 52 years, contributed by RHINESSA centres in Tartu (Estonia), Reykjavik (Iceland), Uppsala, Gothenburg, Umea (Sweden) and Bergen (Norway); they also analysed air pollution data from 4414 participants, contributed from centres in Uppsala, Gothenburg, Umea and Bergen.

They looked at how many people suffered from more than three respiratory symptoms, severe wheeze (in which the person experienced wheezing with breathlessness in the past year but did not have a cold), and late onset asthma (asthma that started after the age of 10 years). Respiratory symptoms included: chest wheezing or whistling; breathlessness when wheezing; wheezing or whistling without a cold; a tight chest on waking; being woken by an attack of shortness of breath; being woken by a cough; asthma attack; and taking asthma medicine.

The researchers calculated average annual exposure to three air pollutants: two sizes of fine particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) [3] from a child's birth until age 18. They also calculated annual average exposure to "greenness" in a 100-metre zone around the home address for the same period; "greenness" is assessed by means of a Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), which uses satellite images to quantify the amount of vegetation in an area.

A total of 608 participants (12%) had more than three respiratory symptoms, 384 (7.7%) had severe wheeze and 444 (9.4%) had late onset asthma.

"These are preliminary results," said Dr Kuiper, "but we found that exposure to greenness during childhood was associated with fewer respiratory symptoms in adulthood, while exposure to air pollutants in childhood was associated with more respiratory symptoms in adulthood and with late onset asthma."

Examples of findings from the different centres that contributed data for the analysis showed that, in Bergen, exposure to PM2.5 and NO2 increased the probability of late onset asthma by 6-22%; exposure to PM10 increased the probability of developing respiratory symptoms by 21% in Uppsala and by 23% in Bergen; exposure to greenness before the age of ten was associated with a 71% lower probability of wheeze in Tartu, and exposure to greenness between the ages of 11 and 18 was associated with a 29% lower probability of respiratory symptoms and a 39% lower probability of wheeze in Tartu.

"We need to analyse these findings further before drawing any definite conclusions. However, it is likely that our findings will substantially expand our knowledge on the long-term effects of air pollution and greenness, enabling physicians, scientists and policy-makers to see the importance of exposure to pollution and access to green spaces, and helping to improve public health," said Dr Kuiper. "We will be conducting further analyses that include more centres that are taking part in the RHINESSA study, and we also want to expand analyses to look at the effects of exposure to air pollution and greenness across generations."

She concluded: "We believe that our results, seen together with previous results, will be of particular value for city planners and policy-makers; with increasing population density in the years to come it will be vital to include a decrease in air pollution exposures and an increase in access to green spaces in future city plans and societal regulations."

Professor Mina Gaga is President of the European Respiratory Society, and Medical Director and Head of the Respiratory Department of Athens Chest Hospital, Greece, and was not involved in the study. She said: "This is a fascinating study which underlines the importance for children's short- and long-term health of having plenty of green space in residential areas. The ongoing work of the RHINESSA study will, no doubt, produce more interesting and useful results to support these early indications. From a clinical point of view, access to green spaces is something that doctors may want to enquire about when they see patients with respiratory problems. They could, for instance, advise their patients about trying to avoid polluted areas and tell them about how green spaces might be able to counter some of the negative effects of pollution."

You are in a strange neighbourhood, your cell phone's dead, and you desperately need to find the closest garage. A couple of people on the street chime in, each sending you in opposite directions. One person sounds like a local and speaks in a nonchalant manner, while the other uses a loud, confident voice but speaks with a strong accent. Who are you going to trust? A recently published study shows that unless they speak in a confident tone of voice, you're less likely to believe someone who speaks with an accent. And, interestingly, as you make this decision different parts of your brain are activated, depending on whether you perceive the speaker to be from your own "in-group" or from some type of "out-group" (e.g., someone with a different linguistic or cultural background).

Marc Pell, from McGill's School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, the senior author explains the rationale for the study:

"There are possibly two billion people around the world who speak English as a second language - and many of us live in societies that are culturally diverse. As we make decisions about whether or not to trust people who are different from us we pay a lot of attention both to visual cues and to a person's voice. Here, we wanted to better understand how we make trust-related decisions about other people based strictly on their speaking voice."

Overall, the researchers found that making trust-related decisions about accented speakers is more difficult due to our underlying bias favouring members of our own group. They also discovered that different regions of the brain are activated to analyze whether to believe speech from "in-group" and "out-group" members. Indeed, the brain needed to engage in additional processes to resolve the conflict between our negative bias towards the accent (don't believe!) and the impression that the speaker is very sure of what they're saying (it must be true!).

Confidence speaks volumes

Interestingly, what the researchers discovered was that when speakers with a regional or foreign accent use a very confident voice, their statements are judged to be equally believable to native speakers of the language.

"What this shows me is that, in future, if I want to be believed, it may be in my interest to adopt a very confident tone of voice in a whole range of situations," says Xiaoming Jiang, a former post-doctoral fellow at McGill and now Associate Professor at Tongji University, who speaks English as a second-language and is the first author on the paper. "This is a finding that potentially has repercussions for people who speak with an accent when it comes to everything ranging from employment to education and the judicial process."

Different accents mean different brain activation

Earlier research has shown that people are more likely to believe statements produced in a confident tone (voiced in a way that is louder, lower in pitch, and faster) than those spoken in a hesitant manner. The researchers wanted to see whether the same areas of the brain were activated as we made trust-related decisions about statements made in an accent that is different from our own.

When making decisions about whether to trust a speaker who has the same accent as us, the researchers discovered that the listeners could focus simply on tone of voice. The areas of the brain that were activated were those involved in making inferences based on past experience (the superior parietal regions). Whereas, when it came to making similar decisions for "out-group" speakers, the areas of the brain involved in auditory processing (the temporal regions of the brain) were involved to a greater extent. This suggests that as listeners made decisions about whether to trust accented speakers they needed to engage in a two-step process where they needed to pay attention both to the sounds that an accented speaker was producing as well as to their tone of voice.

How the research was done:

Study participants (who all spoke Canadian-English as their mother tongue) listened to a series of short, neutral statements spoken with varying degrees of confidence in accents ranging from the very familiar (Canadian-English) to the somewhat different (Australian-English and English as spoken by Francophone-Canadians). They were asked to rate how believable they found each statement. As participants listened, a brain imaging technique (fMRI) was used to capture areas of brain activation to see whether there were differences between the participants' responses to "in-group" and "out-group" speakers" both in general, and depending on their tone of voice.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Sept. 18, 2018) - With age, expression of a small molecule that can silence others goes way up while a key signaling molecule that helps stem cells make healthy bone goes down, scientists report.

They have the first evidence in both mouse and human mesenchymal stem cells that this unhealthy shift happens, and that correcting it can result in healthier bone formation.

The small molecule is microRNA-141-3p and the signaling molecule is stromal-cell derived factor, or SDF-1, they report in the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences.

"If you are 20 years old and making great bone, you would still have microRNA-141-3p in your mesenchymal stem cells. But when you are 81 and making weaker bone, you have a lot more of it," says Dr. Sadanand Fulzele, bone biologist in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

Restoring a more youthful balance could be a novel strategy for reducing age-associated problems likes osteoporosis and the impaired ability to heal bone breaks, says Fulzele, a corresponding author on the study.

"You want it sort of in that sweet spot," says Dr. William D. Hill, a longtime stem cell researcher at MCG now on the faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina. "What we are trying to do is dial it back down from where it's being overexpressed due to factors like aging and oxidative stress and suppression of estrogen, and bring it back into a range that would effectively allow more normal bone formation," says Hill, also a corresponding author.

About 30 percent of postmenopausal women in the United States and Europe have osteoporosis, according to the International Osteoporosis Foundation. At least 40 percent of these women and 15-30 percent of men will sustain one or more fractures in their lifetime, the foundation says, and one fracture puts them at increased risk for others.

Mesenchymal stem cells can differentiate into the major components of our skeleton: bone-forming osteoblasts; actual bone cells or osteocytes, made by osteoblasts; cartilage-cells called chondrocytes; as well as fat cells, or adipocytes.

SDF-1 is a key signaling molecule that helps regulate the differentiation of stem cells into these cells, the MCG research team has shown. SDF-1 has a myriad of other roles as well, including helping mesenchymal stem cells get to the right spot during bone formation and bone repair and protecting cells from the ravages of oxidative stress.

It was SDF-1's clear significance in bone health - and the fact that it declines with age - that got the scientists interested in how it's regulated. They hypothesized that decreasing SDF-1 is at least one way microRNA-141-3p impacts healthy differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells.

They suspected microRNA-141-3p as a culprit because Fulzele had already found it suppresses a transporter of vitamin C, which enables the vitamin to reach our cells once we eat foods like kale and Brussel sprouts. Vitamin C also is important for bone health, and without sufficient transporters, the vitamin instead starts to accumulate outside the cell where it generates destructive oxidative stress. The scientists also had already found it could hinder that important differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells and knew levels of microRNA-141-3p increase with aging. Their animal studies had indicated that oxidative stress in mesenchymal stem cells decreases SDF-1 and that the signaling molecule could protect those cells from death by oxidative stress.

Now putting the pieces together they speculated - and have found - that higher oxidative stress elevates microRNA-141-3p expression, which in turn decreases SDF-1 levels.

In both mice and human mesenchymal stem cells, they found levels of microRNA-141-3p were low in young cells but levels were tripled or more in older cells. They found essentially the opposite for SDF-1 levels.

When they injected a microRNA-141 mimic inside the stem cells, it essentially created a model of aging and SDF-1 levels again went down. Consequences of that included another shift that normally occurs with age as we make more bone-eating osteoclasts than bone-forming osteoblasts. The shift also resulted in mesenchymal stem cells making instead more fat, which they tend to do with age because it's easier.

As part of testing their hypothesis from all directions, the scientists also added microRNA-141-3p to cells and watched bone function get worse, then used the inhibitor again and saw improvement.

Clinical-grade drugs, like the research drug they used to inhibit microRNA-141-3p and that might target other members of the micro-RNA 141 family as well, could one day be an effective way to help mesenchymal stem cells remain focused on making bone in the face of age and other conditions, Fulzele says.

At least in their cell studies: "It normalizes bone function. We think clinical-grade inhibitor may help us do the same in people," the bone biologist says.

Hill says that a patch of endogenous or synthetic RNA could also be an option for precisely targeting errant microRNAS, which are usually the molecules doing the regulating.

They are now looking to move into animal models and look at a wide array of other factors like what happens to fat production, and can they improve fracture healing in a model of aging and/or prevent or at least reduce osteoporosis. Fulzele also wants to know if higher physical activity levels, which tend to diminish with age, can also help restore a healthier balance of microRNA-141-3p and SDF-1.

They also are looking at other members of the microRNA-141 family and how/if they interact with other family members to cause problems as we age, Hill says.

"We have identified a number of microRNAs that change in the bone marrow stem cells with aging and we are going after each one of these to understand how they are working and are they working together or independently," Hill adds. "We are starting to take more of a biological systems approach, not just changing one target molecule, but looking at how this network of molecules is changed with age or disease and how we can reach in and sort of reset these different pathways."

The scientists note that other genes also could be targets for this microRNA, since these molecular regulators typically target more than one gene.

Fulzele suspects lower levels of microRNA-141-3p in youth actually help fine-tune healthy bone formation - like a tiny turn of your radio dial would - and that it's the high levels that make it bad for bone.

Even normal, healthy aging results in increased levels of oxidative stress, which includes things like reactive oxygen species that are byproducts of oxygen use.

The human stem cells the scientists isolated and analyzed came from 18-40 year olds and 60-85 year olds who had orthopaedic surgery.

Researchers have identified compounds that could prevent malaria parasites from being able to infect mosquitoes, halting the spread of disease.

Preventing transmission of malaria is a key part of efforts to eliminate the disease. A person can be cured of the disease using drugs that wipe out the replicating form of the parasite, but still carry dormant, sexual forms. These are responsible for transferring the parasite to the mosquito when it bites them.

Inside the mosquito, the dormant parasites rapidly mature and then multiply, leaving them ready to infect a new person when the insect feeds again.

Now, a team led by researchers from Imperial College London have identified a number of compounds that prevent the parasite maturing inside the mosquito. The team screened more than 70,000 compounds and identified six compounds that have the potential to be turned into drugs that block disease transmission. Their results are published today in Nature Communications.

Lead researcher Professor Jake Baum, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "Current antimalarial drugs can cure a person of the disease, but that person is still infectious to mosquitoes, and can therefore still cause someone else to become infected.

"What we propose is antimalarial drugs that protect mosquitoes, blocking the parasites from continuing their infectious journey. By combining such a drug with a conventional antimalarial, we not only cure the individual person, but protect the community as well.

"At the level of the individual person, fighting malaria is a constant battle as parasites become resistant to antimalarial drugs. Since transmission occurs in the mosquito, drugs targeting this process have the added benefit of being naturally much more resistance-proof, which could be essential for eliminating malaria."

One compound has already been shown to block parasite transmission from mice, but the team are researching all the compounds further to determine exactly how each works, and how they could be adapted as future drugs.

For example, these drugs could not be given directly to mosquitoes, so they would need to be stable enough to be given to a human and survive being transferred into the mosquito. Determining exactly what each compound is doing could also reveal more about the biology of the transmission process and identify new targets for future drugs.

The parasite that causes malaria has a complex life cycle. When a person is infected, they will have asexual forms of the parasite in the bloodstream, which cause the symptoms of the disease. However, there will also be male and female sexual forms, which once mature lie dormant in the body.

Because they are dormant and not very reactive, these parasites are very difficult to attack with conventional drugs. However, it is these male and female forms that, after sex in the mosquito, create more newly infectious asexual parasites. These gather in the mosquito's salivary glands, ready to pass on malaria to the next unfortunate human.

While inside the mosquito, the sexual parasites are very active - they are one of the fastest replicating cell types known - making them surprisingly good drug targets. In order to find compounds that could disrupt the sexual parasites, the team mimicked the conditions inside mosquitoes, fooling parasites into starting sexual development.

Once they found the right conditions, they miniaturised the process so that it could be examined with a microscope. This allowed them to screen thousands of compounds and see if they had any effect on active sexual parasites.

Dr Baum added: "It took several years to find the right conditions that would stimulate the sexual parasites and to miniaturise the environment, but it was worth it - at our best we were screening 14,000 compounds a week!"

"Overall we screened around 70,000 molecules and found only a handful of potent compounds that are both active and safe to use with human cells. It was like finding needles in a haystack."

Although infant walkers provide no benefit to children and pose significant injury risk, many are still being used in US homes. A new study from researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital examined characteristics of infant walker-related injuries and evaluated the effect of the 2010 federal mandatory safety standard on these injuries.

The study, published on-line today in Pediatrics, found that more than 230,000 children younger than 15 months old were treated in hospital emergency departments in the US for infant walker-related injuries from 1990 through 2014. The number of infant walker-related injuries decreased dramatically during the study period, dropping from 20,650 in 1990 to 2,001 in 2014. The overall reduction in injuries was primarily due to a decline in falls down stairs.

The decrease in stair falls was due in part to the implementation of safety standards that required changes to the way infant walkers are designed. In 1997, a voluntary safety standard was adopted that required infant walkers to be wider than a standard doorway or to have a mechanism that would cause it to stop if one of more of the wheels drop over the edge of a step. Then, in June 2010, the CPSC issued a mandatory safety standard that included more stringent requirements for infant walker design, standardized the evaluation method to prevent stair falls, and added a parking brake test. The mandatory safety standard also made it easier for the CPSC to stop non-complying infant walkers at entry points to the US before they entered the marketplace (all 10 infant walkers recalled between 2001 and 2010 were imported products).

While the greatest decrease in injuries occurred during the earlier years of the study, there was an additional 23% drop in injuries in the 4 years after the federal mandatory safety standard went into effect in 2010 compared with the prior 4 years. Researchers concluded that this reduction may, in part, be attributable to the standard as well as other factors such as decreased infant walker use and fewer older infant walkers in homes.

"The good news is that the number of infant walker-related injuries has continued to decrease substantially during the past 25 years," said Gary Smith, MD, DrPH, senior author of the study and director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. "However, it is important for families to understand that these products are still causing serious injuries to young children and should not be used."

Most of the injuries (91%) were to the head or neck, and about 30% of the injuries were concussions/closed head injuries or skull fractures. The three leading causes of injuries were falls down stairs, falls out of the infant walker, and injuries that occurred because the infant walker gave the child access to something they wouldn't normally be able to reach (mostly burns from hot objects).

"Infant walkers give quick mobility (up to 4 feet per second) to young children before they are developmentally ready. Despite the decrease in injuries over the years, there are still too many serious injuries occurring related to this product," said Dr. Smith. "Because of this, we support the American Academy of Pediatrics' call for a ban on the manufacture, sale, and importation of infant walkers in the US."

In 2010, moth collector James Vargo began finding numerous specimens of a hitherto unknown pygmy moth in his light traps on his property in Indiana, USA. When handed to Erik van Nieukerken, researcher at Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Leiden, the Netherlands) and specialist in pygmy moths (family Nepticulidae), the scientist failed to identify it as a previously known species.

Then, Erik found a striking similarity of the DNA barcodes with those of a larva he had recently collected on Siberian elm in Beijing's botanical garden. At the time, the Chinese specimen could not be identified either.

In October 2015, Daniel Owen Gilrein, entomologist at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County (New York, USA), received samples of green caterpillars seen to descend en masse from Siberian elm trees in Sagaponack, New York. He also received leafmines from the same trees.

Once they joined forces, the researchers did not take long to find out that the specimens from James Vargo and the caterpillars from New York belonged to one and the same species. The only thing left was its name.

Following further investigation, the scientists identified the moth as Stigmella multispicata - a pygmy moth described in 2014 from Primorye, Russia, by the Lithuanian specialists Agne Rociene and Jonas Stonis.

"Apparently, this meant that we were dealing with a recent invasion from East Asia into North America," explains Erik.

Once the researchers had figured out how to identify the leafminer, they were quick to spot its existence in plenty of collections and occurrence reports from websites, such as BugGuide and iNaturalist.

With the help of Charley Eiseman, a naturalist from Massachusetts specializing in North American leafminers, the authors managed to conclude the moth's existence in ten US states and two Canadian provinces. In most cases, the species was found on or near Siberian elm - another species transferred from Asia to North America.

Despite the oldest records dating from 2010, it turned out that the species had already been well established at the time. The authors suspect that the spread has been assisted by transport of plants across nurseries.

"Even though Stigmella multispicata does not seem to be a real problem, it would be a good idea to follow its invasion over North America, and to monitor whether the species may also attack native elm species," the researchers point out.

Interestingly, in addition to the newly identified moth, the Siberian elms in North America have been struggling with another, even more common, invasive leafminer from Asia: the weevil species Orchestes steppensis. The beetle had been previously misnamed as the European elm flea weevil.

New research has found children born in the last three months of the year in Melbourne may have a greater risk of developing respiratory diseases such as asthma.

Led by La Trobe University, a team of local (The MACS study) and international (COPSAC2000 and LISAplus) researchers analysed cord blood collected from hundreds of babies born in Melbourne, Denmark and Germany.

They discovered those born during the peak grass pollen season in both hemispheres had high immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels in umbilical cord blood - a marker used to predict the development of allergic diseases.

Lead researcher, Associate Professor Bircan Erbas from La Trobe's School of Psychology and Public Health, said the aim of the study was to determine the effect of exposure to high grass pollens during pregnancy and soon after birth.

"We know that outdoor pollen exposure during the first couple of months after birth can lead to allergic respiratory diseases and we suspected that exposure during the later stages of pregnancy may also be important," Associate Professor Erbas said.

"Many studies have shown that babies with high levels of IgE in cord blood can go on to develop allergies later in childhood, but little is known about how these levels are affected by exposure to pollen in utero."

The researchers found high IgE levels among babies born in October and December in Melbourne.

IgE levels were highest for German and Danish babies born around April - the peak pollen season in Europe.

However, they also found being pregnant for an entire grass pollen season may have a protective effect on babies.

"We found these babies had lower IgE levels. This was a significant finding and indicates the possible development of a sensitisation barrier. However, more research needs to be done and currently we are working on studies to identify the specific risk time periods of pollen exposure during pregnancy on asthma and allergies in children," Associate Professor Erbas said.

She stressed that the study did not suggest that all babies born during high pollen seasons would develop respiratory disease or other allergies.

"The study provides new insight that could help us predict and manage diseases like asthma - which are a significant public health burden.

"However, it's important to remember there are a number of factors that can determine who gets asthma or allergies. This is one piece of the puzzle."

Since designing and launching a specialized workflow management system in 2010, a research team from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has continuously updated the technology to help computational scientists develop software, visualize data and solve problems.

Workflow management systems allow users to prepare, produce and analyze scientific processes to help simplify complex simulations. Known as the Eclipse Integrated Computational Environment, or ICE, this particular system incorporates a comprehensive suite of scientific computing tools designed to save time and effort expended during modeling and simulation experiments.

Compiling these resources into a single platform both improves the overall user experience and expedites scientific breakthroughs. Using ICE, software developers, engineers, scientists and programmers can define problems, run simulations locally on personal computers or remotely on other systems--even supercomputers--and then analyze results and archive data. Recently, the team published an article in SoftwareX that both details the history of the system and previews the potential benefits of upcoming versions.

"What I really love about this project is making complicated computational science automatic," said Jay Jay Billings, a researcher in ORNL's Computer Science and Mathematics Division who leads the ICE development team. "Building workflow management systems and automation tools is a type of futurism, and it's challenging and rewarding to operate at the edge of what's possible."

Researchers use ICE to study topics in fields including nuclear energy, astrophysics, additive manufacturing, advanced materials, neutron science and quantum computing, answering questions such as how batteries behave and how some 3D-printed parts deform when exposed to heat.

Several factors differentiate ICE from other workflow management systems. For example, because ICE exists on an open-source software framework called the Eclipse Rich Client Platform, anyone can access, download and use it. Users also can create custom combinations of reusable resources and deploy simulation environments tailored to tackle specific research challenges.

"Eclipse ICE is an excellent example of how open-source software can be leveraged to accelerate science and discovery, especially in scientific computing," said Eclipse Foundation Executive Director Mike Milinkovich. "The Eclipse Foundation, through its community-led Science Working Group, is fostering open-source solutions for advanced research in all areas of science."

Additionally, ICE circumvents the steep and time-consuming learning curve that usually accompanies any computational science project. Although other systems require expert knowledge of the code and computer in question, ICE enables users to immediately begin facilitating their experiments, thus helping them gather data and achieve results much faster.

"We've produced a streamlined interface to computational workflows that differs from complicated systems that you have to be specifically qualified in to use properly," Billings said.

Throughout this project, Billings has also emphasized the importance of accessibility and usability to ensure that users of all ages and experience levels, including nonscientists, can use the system without prior training.

"The problem with a lot of workflow management systems and with modeling and simulation codes in general is that they are usually unusable to the lay person," Billings said. "We designed ICE to be usable and accessible so anyone can pick up an existing code and use it to address pressing computational science problems."

ICE uses the programming language Java to define workflows, whereas other systems use more obscure languages. Thus, students in grade school, high school and college have successfully run codes using ICE.

Finally, instead of relying on grid workflows--collections of orchestrated computing processes--ICE focuses on flexible modeling and simulation workflows that give users interactive control over their projects. Grid workflows are defined by strict parameters and executed without human intervention, but ICE allows users to input additional information during simulations to produce more complicated scenarios.

"In ICE you can have humans in the loop, meaning the program can stop, ask questions and receive instructions before resuming activity," Billings said. "This feature allows system users to complete more complex tasks like looping and conditional branching."

Next, the development team intends to combine the most practical aspects of ICE and other systems through workflow interoperability, a concept referring to the ability of two different systems to seamlessly communicate. Combining the best features of grid workflows with modeling and simulation workflows would allow scientists to address even greater challenges and solve scientific mysteries more efficiently.

"If I'm using ICE and someone else is using a different system, we want to be able to address problems together with our combined resources," Billings said. "With workflow interoperability, our systems would have a standard method of 'talking' to one another."

To further improve ICE's accessibility and usability, the team is also developing a cloud-based version to provide even more interactive computing services for simplifying scientific workflows.

"That's what research is--we keep figuring out the next step to understand the system better," Billings said.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are at increased risk of using substances such as alcohol, nicotine and marijuana, a new study from Oregon State University has found.

These youth are also at higher risk of polysubstance use, meaning they are more likely to use more than one substance than their heterosexual peers. The study was just published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence.

"This data shows definitively that polysubstance use is an issue among many youth who identify as sexual minorities, meaning they are facing added health risks," said Sarah Dermody, an assistant professor in the School of Psychological Science in OSU's College of Liberal Arts. "But there are also differences among the subgroups of youth who identify as sexual minorities, suggesting we need to look beyond the averages to understand what factors may be influencing substance use in this population."

Sexual minority is an umbrella term for those who identify with any sexual identity other than heterosexual or who report same-sex attraction or behavior. For the purposes of the study, the researchers focused on those youth who identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Dermody studies risky behaviors such as alcohol and nicotine use with the goal of better understanding factors that contribute to the substances' use and how best to intervene when the use is problematic.

Among youth, alcohol, marijuana and nicotine are the three most commonly used drugs. That is a concern because youth who use those substances are at risk of negative health and social outcomes, including addiction and poor cognitive, social and academic function.

Recent research has shown that sexual minority youth reported nearly three times more substance use than heterosexual youth. The disparity may be due in part to stress from discrimination, violence and victimization rooted in their sexual minority status, Dermody said.

The goal of the new study was to better understand the risks associated with polysubstance use, or the use of three or more types of drugs, among sexual minority youth. It is an area of research that is largely unexamined, Dermody said.

"The experiences of youth who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are underreported in research, generally," she said. "In research we tend to focus on the averages. In this study, we're trying to better understand the intersectionality of sexual orientation, race and gender with substance use. Are some sexual minority youth at more risk than others for substance use?"

Dermody analyzed results from the Centers for Disease Control's 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which monitors key health and risk behaviors among youth, including substance abuse. The 2015 national survey of more than 15,000 youth was the first wave of the survey to include a question about sexual identity, giving researchers new insight into how a youth's sexual identity might impact substance use.

The data showed that there is a sizeable number of youth, both heterosexual and sexual minority, who don't use any substances at all, Dermody said.

But among those who do, she found that those identified as sexual minority youth were at higher risk of using each type of drug - alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes - compared to heterosexual youth. They are also at higher risk of polysubstance abuse overall.

And within the sexual minority youth population, some groups were at more risk than others for using one, two or all three substances. For example, bisexual youth faced the largest increase in risk of polysubstance abuse as well as combinations of two substances, while those who identified as lesbian or gay were only at higher risk for some combinations.

"The findings suggest that it may be good practice for health care providers who serve these youth to do assessments for substance use as part of regular health screenings," Dermody said.

Further research is needed to determine what factors may be contributing to increased substance use among youth identifying as sexual minorities, and why those factors may impact some more than others.

"Are the lesbian, gay and bisexual youth using substances also facing additional adversity? Or are there protective factors that play a role in keeping some of these youth from using substances?" Dermody said. "We want to better understand what may be driving the differences in the substance use."

New Haven, Conn.-- An HIV outbreak among people who inject drugs in Indiana from 2011 to 2015 could have been avoided if the state's top health and elected officials had acted sooner on warnings, a new study by the Yale School of Public Health finds.

The study, published in The Lancet HIV, found that the number of HIV infections could have been drastically reduced in Indiana's Scott County and that the state's belated response in March 2015 came after the peak of the epidemic, likely having little effect on its trajectory.

The finding, said the researchers, offers a stark warning to public officials confronting the opioid crisis across the United States: Ignoring the risk of HIV can have terrible consequences for public health.

"We used publicly available data on the outbreak to recreate it in a computer simulation," said Gregg S. Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology and the study's first author. "Once we had recreated the events in Scott County, we could examine what would have happened if a response to the threat had been initiated earlier." The study points out that rapidly growing opioid use in Indiana and a hepatitis C outbreak spurred local public health leaders to recommend establishment of syringe exchange and other programs to prevent HIV transmission several years before the Scott County outbreak, although their recommendations were rejected by the state.

The study provides the first quantitative evidence that the number of undiagnosed HIV infections had already fallen substantially by the time a public health emergency had been declared.

"Our findings suggest that with earlier action the actual number of infections recorded in Scott County -- 215 -- might have been brought down to fewer than 56, if the state had acted in 2013, or to fewer than 10 infections, if they had responded to the HCV outbreak in 2010-2011. Instead they cut funding for the last HIV testing provider in the county," said Forrest W. Crawford, associate professor of biostatistics and of ecology and evolutionary biology, and the paper's senior author.

Previous work by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established that the HIV outbreak in Scott County started in 2011 and spread throughout the community of people who use drugs in and around Austin, Indiana. CDC investigators have also indicated that 220 other counties in the United States are at risk of HIV and HCV outbreaks related to opioid injection use similar to what was seen in southeastern Indiana. Although the study specifically evaluates the Scott County outbreak, new clusters of cases of HIV among people who use drugs have already been reported in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Massachusetts. The paper provides broader lessons for confronting infectious disease threats among people who inject drugs, said the researchers.

"A comprehensive response, including access to clean syringes for people who inject drugs, as well as therapies such as buprenorphine and methadone, could avoid new outbreaks of HIV and HCV in at-risk counties in the first place," said Gonsalves. "Unfortunately, these interventions are in woefully short supply in the places that need them most. Unless we act, it's not a question of whether we'll see a repeat of what happened in Scott County, but when and where."

The results represent a conservative estimate of the impact that interventions to prevent and treat HIV could have had on the epidemic in Scott County, said Crawford. "With a more comprehensive set of interventions, outbreaks like this could be further curtailed or even avoided."

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Using the fossil record to accurately estimate the timing and pace of past mass extinctions is no easy task, and a new study highlights how fossil evidence can produce a misleading picture if not interpreted with care.

Florida Museum of Natural History researchers used a series of 130-foot cores drilled from the Po Plain in northeastern Italy to test a thought experiment: Imagine catastrophe strikes the Adriatic Sea, swiftly wiping out modern marine life. Could this hypothetical mass extinction be reconstructed correctly from mollusks - hard-shelled animals such as oysters and mussels - preserved in these cores?

When they examined the cores, the results were "somewhat unnerving," said Michal Kowalewski, Thompson Chair of Invertebrate Paleontology and the study's principal investigator.

Paleontologists use the age of a species' last-known fossil to estimate the timing of extinction. A sudden extinction in the Adriatic Sea today should leave the youngest remains of many mollusk species in the sediments currently forming on the shore and seabed, the "ground zero" of the hypothetical extinction event. But the team found only six of 119 mollusk species - all of which are still alive in the area - at the top of the cores. Instead, the last fossil examples of many of these species often appeared in clusters dotted throughout the cores, suggesting smaller bursts of extinctions over a longer timeline, not a single massive die-off.

Taken at face value, the cores presented a dramatically distorted record of both the timing and tempo of extinction, potentially calling into question some of the methods paleontologists commonly use to interpret past mass extinctions.

"We're not saying you cannot study mass extinctions. You can," Kowalewski said. "What we're saying is that the nature of the geological record is complicated, so it is not trivial to decipher it correctly."

The results of their analysis did not come as a complete surprise. Computer models designed by paleontologists Steven Holland and Mark Patzkowsky had made similar predictions about how the final resting place of fossils - influenced by species' ecological preferences, sea level and the makeup of sedimentary basins - could skew patterns of mass extinction.

"This is, to my knowledge, the first empirical study to use the fossil record of living species to test these models rigorously and computationally, rather than theoretically," Kowalewski said. "We know these species are still living in the Adriatic Sea, so we can be sure that their disappearance from the fossil record does not represent a true extinction."

Paleontologists have been grappling with the complications of interpreting mass extinctions in the fossil record for several decades. Even the extinction of the dinosaurs was thought to be a gradual, drawn-out process until evidence of a lethal meteor impact emerged in 1980. The problem is a phenomenon known as the Signor-Lipps effect: Because the fossil record is incompletely sampled, the last-known fossil of a given species is almost certainly not the last member of that species, which muddles our ability to date extinctions.

Applied on a larger scale, the Signor-Lipps effect can make abrupt mass extinctions appear gradual. A common approach to correct for this effect is to assume that where fossils end up - and are later discovered - is random, and mathematically adjust estimates of extinction timing accordingly.

But it's more complicated than that, Kowalewski said, because the fossil record is not created in a random way.

Climatic cycles trigger changes in sea level, causing shorelines to advance or recede and driving changes in environments. A beach may become a mudflat, for example, or a delta can turn into a coastal plain. Shifts in sea level can also affect sedimentation rates - how quickly mud and sand are deposited. These factors can cause last occurrences of fossils to cluster together and influence the probability of finding fossils in a given location.

When the researchers reordered the species represented in the cores from the Po basin according to their last occurrence, they noted several points at which many species appeared to vanish simultaneously. In reality, none of the species had gone extinct. They disappeared from a given site either because local environmental conditions changed, or they were simply missed during the sampling, said Rafal Nawrot, the study's first author and a postdoctoral researcher in invertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum.

The cores also depicted a false pattern of extinction, with the majority of offshore species disappearing in a single large "pulse" in the lower part of the cores and shallow-water and brackish species fading out in several smaller pulses. This is because species followed their preferred habitats as they shifted with changing sea levels. Deeper-water dwellers vanished first, as the local river delta started to expand into the Adriatic Sea, replacing open sea with coastal conditions. When shorelines advanced even farther, shallow-water species disappeared as well.

"It's important to admit that fossil species - just like modern ones - have specific ecological requirements, which sounds obvious but is not always acknowledged," Nawrot said.

Current methods may give researchers the illusion of precision but fail to account for these factors, which are crucial to correctly interpreting past extinction events, he said.

"If you apply methods based on the assumption of random fossilization, you get a precise estimate, but it may be wrong by millions of years," Nawrot said. "Not only the pattern of extinction but also the timing of extinction would be wrongly interpreted, so this is quite important."

While the findings are sobering, the situation is far from hopeless, Kowalewski said. When the team incorporated methods that accounted for species' ecological preferences, distribution and abundance into the analysis, the results were a much closer approximation of what exists in the basin today.

"This provides us with an initial guideline of how to analyze these types of data to get a more realistic assessment of extinction events," Kowalewski said. "Certainly, this is a work in progress."

Research has shed new light on genetic processes that may one day lead to the development of therapies that can slow, or even reverse, how our cells age.

A study led by the University of Exeter Medical School has found that certain genes and pathways that regulate splicing factors - a group of proteins in our body that tell our genes how to behave - play a key role in the ageing process. Significantly, the team found that disrupting these genetic processes could reverse signs of ageing in cells.

The study, published in the FASEB Journal, was conducted in human cells in laboratories. Aged, or senescent, cells are thought to represent a driver of the ageing process and other groups have shown that if such cells are removed in animal models, many features of ageing can be corrected. This new work from the Exeter team found that stopping the activity of the pathways ERK and AKT, which communicate signals from outside the cell to the genes, reduced the number of senescent cells in in cultures grown in the laboratory. Furthermore, they found the same effects from knocking out the activity of just two genes controlled by these pathways - FOX01 and ETV6.

Professor Lorna Harries, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the research, said: "We're really excited by the discovery that disrupting targeted genetic processes can bring about at least a partial reversal of key elements of the ageing process in human cells. This suggests that they could be an important aspect in designing therapies that could keep us healthier as we age. Our ultimate goal is to help people avoid some of the diseases partially caused by ageing cells, such as dementia and cancer."

The ERK and AKT pathways are repeatedly activated throughout life, through aspects of ageing including DNA damage and the chronic inflammation of ageing.

The research suggests that this activation may hinder the activity of splicing factors that tell genes how to behave. This, in turn, could lead to a build-up of senescent cells - those which have deteriorated or stopped dividing as they age.

To stop the activity of the ERK and AKT pathways, the study used inhibitors which are already used as cancer drugs in clinics. When the pathways were disrupted, the team observed an increase in splicing factors, meaning better communication between protein and genes.

They also noted a reduction in the number of senescent cells. Researchers saw a reversal of many of the features of senescent cells that have been linked to the ageing process, leading to a rejuvenation of cells.

Dr Eva Latorre, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who carried out the research, said: "This study is part of a fast-evolving body of work into how we age. We used compounds that are already widely available in clinics for cancer - and are known to be relatively safe. It's still early days and we need to understand far more about the complex relationships of how our cells and genetic processes influence ageing, yet it's an exciting contribution to how we may one day be able to influence healthier ageing."

University of Colorado Boulder researchers have discovered a key mechanism by which skin begins to develop in embryos, shedding light on the genetic roots of birth defects like cleft palate and paving the way for development of more functional skin grafts for burn victims.

"This study maps how skin development starts, from the earliest stages," said Rui Yi, senior author of the paper published online today in the journal Developmental Cell.

Thousands of people undergo skin grafts each year to repair burns, birth defects or wounds. Medical advancements, including the advent of stem cell therapy which uses the patient's own skin cells to grow new skin, have improved skin transplants. But replacement skin often lacks important features like hair follicles, sweat glands or nerve endings.

"Skin is an incredibly complex system and the regeneration we are doing now is not even close to duplicating it," said Yi, an associate professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. "The overarching goal is to someday be able to regenerate fully functional skin, and to do that, we have to know, fundamentally, what happens at the beginning."

For the study, Yi and postdoctoral associate Xiying Fan used state-of-the-art genomic tools and DNA sequencing techniques to observe what happens inside embryonic progenitor cells of mice as they coordinate to form skin.

The study focused on a transcription factor, a type of protein that can read genetic information from the genome, called p63, found mostly in skin cells and long-known to play a critical role in skin formation. Previous studies have shown that mice born without p63 have no skin and malformed limbs. Humans with p63 mutations often have cleft lips or other malformations of the teeth and skin. In adults, loss of p63 function is associated with metastatic cancer.

"We have known for a long time that this transcription factor is probably the most important for skin development. What we have not known is what it does," said Yi.

Using fluorescent tags that illuminated cells where p63 was present, and RNA sequencing to examine patterns of gene expression, the researchers examined cells from day nine to 13 of a 19-day mouse gestation, the time when skin is believed to form.

They found that P63 was responsible for switching on at least 520 genes and igniting numerous critical signaling pathways, including the "Wnt" pathway (responsible for hair follicle formation), the "Eda" pathway (critical for the formation of hair follicle, sweat glands and teeth) and the "Notch" pathway (responsible for prompting stem cells to differentiate into the epidermis.)

They also found that this process was kick-started earlier than previously believed and impacted thousands of regions of the genome that govern skin and limb formation.

"Our study provides mechanistic insights into the critical role of p63 at the onset of skin development and reveals a molecular basis for explaining how p63 mutations in humans can cause so many skin diseases," said Yi.

He stresses that the study was in mice and further studies using human cells are needed.

But, if replicated, the findings could help researchers develop new prenatal tests and treatments for skin-related birth defects.

The research could also inform development of methods to coax adult cells to behave more like embryonic ones and generate fully functional skin.

"Instead of just grafting a piece of skin to cover your body, you could regenerate it as if it were going through development for the first time," he said.