Earth

New research reveals that mothers hold similar views and attitudes when parenting their first and second children, but their parenting behaviors with their two children differ.

In the study, published in Social Development, 55 mothers were observed interacting with their first child at the age of 20 months and again, using the same procedures, when their second child was 20 months.

First-born children tended to be more sociable and emotionally available to mothers than second-born children. Mothers' behaviors with first-born and second-born children were not similar in rank order (for example, mothers who engaged in a lot of play with their first-borns did not necessarily engage in a lot of play with their second-borns), but there was no systematic average difference in the amounts or qualities of mothers' interaction directed toward first and second children.

These findings suggest that, despite relatively consistent parenting beliefs over time, siblings behave differently from one another by 20 months of age, and mothers behave differently when interacting with their two children at the same age.

The Icelandic Sagas tell of Erik the Red: exiled for murder in the late 10th century he fled to southwest Greenland, establishing its first Norse settlement.

The colony took root, and by the mid-12th century there were two major settlements with a population of thousands. Greenland even gained its own bishop.

By the end of the 15th century, however, the Norse of Greenland had vanished - leaving only abandoned ruins and an enduring mystery.

Past theories as to why these communities collapsed include a change in climate and a hubristic adherence to failing farming techniques.

Some have suggested that trading commodities - most notably walrus tusks - with Europe may have been vital to sustaining the Greenlanders. Ornate items including crucifixes and chess pieces were fashioned from walrus ivory by craftsmen of the age. However, the source of this ivory has never been empirically established.

Now, researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Oslo have studied ancient DNA from offcuts of tusks and skulls, most found on the sites of former ivory workshops across Europe, in order to trace the origin of the animals used in the medieval trade.

In doing so they have discovered an evolutionary split in the walrus, and revealed that the Greenland colonies may have had a "near monopoly" on the supply of ivory to Western Europe for over two hundred years.

For the latest study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the research team analysed walrus samples found in several medieval trading centres - Trondheim, Bergen, Oslo, Dublin, London, Schleswig and Sigtuna - mostly dating between 900 and 1400 CE.

The DNA showed that, during the last Ice Age, the Atlantic walrus divided into two ancestral lines, which researchers term "eastern" and "western". Walruses of the eastern lineage are widespread across much of the Arctic, including Scandinavia. Those of the western, however, are unique to the waters between western Greenland and Canada.

Finds from the early years of the ivory trade were mostly from the eastern lineage. Yet as demand grew from the 12th century onwards, the research team discovered that Europe's ivory supply shifted almost exclusively to tusks from the western lineage.

They say that ivory from western linage walruses must have been supplied by the Norse Greenlanders - by hunting and perhaps also by trade with the indigenous peoples of Arctic North America.

"The results suggest that by the 1100s Greenland had become the main supplier of walrus ivory to Western Europe - a near monopoly even," said Dr James H. Barrett, study co-author from the University of Cambridge's Department of Archaeology.

"The change in the ivory trade coincides with the flourishing of the Norse settlements on Greenland. The populations grew and elaborate churches were constructed.

"Later Icelandic accounts suggest that in the 1120s, Greenlanders used walrus ivory to secure the right to their own bishopric from the king of Norway. Tusks were also used to pay tithes to the church," said Barrett.

He points out that the 11th to 13th centuries were a time of demographic and economic boom in Europe, with growing demand from urban centres and the elite served by transporting commodities from increasingly distant sources.

"The demands for luxury goods produced from ivory may have helped the far-flung Norse communities in Greenland survive for centuries," said Barrett.

Co-author Dr Sanne Boessenkool of the University of Oslo said: "We knew from the start that analysing ancient DNA would have the potential for new historical insights, but the findings proved to be particularly spectacular."

The new study tells us less about the end of the Greenland colonies, say Barrett and colleagues. However, they note that it is hard to find evidence of walrus ivory imports to Europe that date after 1400.

Elephant ivory eventually became the material of choice for Europe's artisans. "Changing tastes could have led to a decline in the walrus ivory market of the Middle Ages," said Barrett.

Ivory exports from Greenland could have stalled for other reasons: over-hunting can cause walrus populations to abandon their coastal "haulouts"; the "Little Ice Age" - a sustained period of lower temperatures - began in the 14th century; the Black Death ravaged Europe.

Whatever caused the cessation of Europe's trade in walrus ivory, it must have been significant for the end of the Norse Greenlanders," said Barrett. "An overreliance on a single commodity, the very thing which gave the society its initial resilience, may have also contained the seeds of its vulnerability."

The heyday of the walrus ivory trade saw the material used for exquisitely carved items during Europe's Romanesque art period. The church produced much of this, with major ivory workshops in ecclesiastical centres such as Canterbury, UK.

Ivory games were also popular. The Viking board game hnefatafl was often played with walrus ivory pieces, as was chess, with the famous Lewis chessmen among the most stunning examples of Norse carved ivory.

Tusks were exported still attached to the walrus skull and snout, which formed a neat protective package that was broken up at workshops for ivory removal. These remains allowed the study to take place, as DNA extraction from carved artefacts would be far too damaging.

Co-author Dr Bastiaan Star of the University of Oslo said: "Until now, there was no quantitative data to support the story about walrus ivory from Greenland. Walruses could have been hunted in the north of Russia, and perhaps even in Arctic Norway at that time. Our research now proves beyond doubt that much of the ivory traded to Europe during the Middle Ages really did come from Greenland".

Army researchers have designed a computer model that more effectively calculates the behavior of atmospheric turbulence in complex environments, including cities, forests, deserts and mountainous regions.

This new technology could allow Soldiers to predict weather patterns sooner using the computers at hand and more effectively assess flight conditions for aerial vehicles on the battlefield.

Turbulence may be invisible to the naked eye, it is always present around us in the air in the form of chaotic changes in velocity and pressure.

Traditional computational fluid dynamics methods of analyzing atmospheric turbulence treat the fluid as a continuum, solving the nonlinear Navier-Stokes differential equations that are involved.

However, calculating the turbulence in the planetary boundary layer, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, can be difficult due to how the presence of trees, tall buildings and other aspects of the landscape directly influences its behavior.

TCFD methods must account for all effects of the neighboring points surrounding the target, which creates an immense computational load that is very difficult to implement efficiently on modern parallel architectures, such as Graphics Processing Unit accelerators.

As a result, these methods often face challenges when confronted with more intricate environments due to limitations in treating complex surface boundaries.

In an attempt to search for an alternative approach, a team of U.S. Army Research Laboratory scientists led by Dr. Yansen Wang turned to the field of statistical mechanics for ideas.

What they found was the Lattice-Boltzmann method, a technique used by physicists and engineers to predict fluid behavior on a very small scale.

"The Lattice-Boltzmann method is normally used to predict the evolution of a small volume of turbulence flows, but it has never been used for an area as large as the atmosphere," Wang said. "When I read about it in a research paper, I thought that it could be applied to not just a small volume of turbulence but also atmospheric turbulence."

Unlike TCFD methods, the LBM treats the fluid like a collection of particles instead of a continuum and has been widely used in fluid simulation to accurately portray fluid dynamics.

Wang and his team determined that this new approach could accurately model atmospheric turbulence while requiring much less computation than if they had solved for the NS differential equations.

This fundamental change essentially allowed them to disregard a huge chunk of the neighboring points on the grid model, cutting the number of neighboring behaviors to account for and significantly lessening the computational load.

As a result of their investigation, the researchers used the newly developed multi-relaxation-time Lattice-Boltzmann method to create an advanced Atmospheric Boundary Layer Environment model, which specifically treated highly turbulent flow in complex and urban domains.

This marks the first time that an advanced MRT-LBM model has been used to model the atmosphere.

The newly developed ABLE-LBM model paves the way for a highly-versatile approach to atmospheric boundary layer flow prediction.

In addition to providing faster operating speed and simpler complex boundary implementation, this approach is intrinsically parallel and thus compatible with modern parallel architectures, making it a potentially viable modeling method on tactical compute platforms for the U.S. military.

"On the battlefield, you want atmospheric turbulence data quickly but you don't necessarily have any supercomputers on hand," Wang said. "However, you do have modern computer architecture with thousands of processors that make computing fast if the algorithm is appropriate. With the ABLE-LBM, you can use those modern computer architectures to compute turbulence on the battlefield without having to connect to a high performance computing center."

The development of the ABLE-LBM model has significant ramifications on many other aspects of Army operations besides weather forecast.

Atmospheric turbulence can significantly affect the behavior of optic and acoustic waves, which directly impact what Soldiers can see and hear.

It can act as an important factor in reconnaissance and change the path that a laser travels or how sounds are emitted from a system.

Small unmanned aerial systems are also at the mercy of turbulence vortices, which can occur when a gust of wind hits a building.

Knowing how the turbulence will behave can help sUAS avoid collisions and even take advantage of existing updrafts to fly without their propellers to save energy.

Potential applications can also be found outside the military in civilian life.

Better knowledge of boundary layer turbulence can assist in civil planning in both preparation and emergency response when dealing with chemical spills, industrial fires and other man-made or natural disasters.

"Many people are interested in applying this method in various fields," Wang said. "This technique has paved a new way to model atmospheric turbulence. Our research was the first to set the path for this new direction, so we have a lot of proving to do."

Scientists have identified a key gene that helps seeds decide whether to germinate.

The MFT gene stops seeds germinating in the dark or under shady conditions, where their chances of survival would be poor, according to new research from the University of York.

The study, conducted on Arabidopsis, a very close relative of oilseed rape, increases our understanding of one of the most important stages in the life cycle of a plant and may help to improve the seed quality of agricultural crops in the future.

Scientists have known for some time that two plant hormones play an important role in regulating if and when a seed will germinate - "Abscisic Acid" or ABA blocks germination and "Gibberelins" or GA promotes it.

However, in a breakthrough in our understanding of the mechanism by which these hormones control germination in response to light quality, the researchers have discovered that MFT is the key component that integrates and interprets signals coming from both ABA and GA.

The MFT gene is regulated by light quality and receives signals from both ABA and GA. In dark or shady conditions, it then directs the production of the MFT protein, which regulates germination by switching on a block of genes that prevent growth and switching off another block of genes that promote growth.

This prevents a plant from germinating under the wrong conditions such as when there is not enough light to grow.

Professor Ian Graham, corresponding author, from the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products in the Department of Biology at the University of York, said: "This is another great example of how plants have evolved very sophisticated molecular mechanisms to stay in tune with their environment. This allows seeds to survive in the soil for many years so that when the time is right, such as when a tree falls in a forest or soil is turned over, seeds can suddenly spring into action."

For many plant species the ability of a seed to sense the quality of light can inform it if it is located in direct sunlight, under a canopy of other plants that only allow a certain quality of light to pass through or in the dark, which is often the case when seeds are buried in the soil.

In wild plant species the ability for seeds to remain dormant even under conditions that would allow them to germinate is important for survival. For crops species, eliminating this dormancy is one of the first traits that has to be dealt with in a plant breeding programme.

Lead author of the work, Dr Fabian Vaistij, from the Department of Biology at the University of York added: "Understanding the molecular genetic basis of how seed germination is controlled will provide new tools to improve seed quality and seedling vigour in developing new crops for the future."

MOTHER-OF-FT-AND-TFL1 represses seed germination under far-red light by modulating phytohormone responses in Arabidopsis thaliana is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.

The chemical composition of gases emitted from volcanoes - which are used to monitor changes in volcanic activity - can change depending on the size of gas bubbles rising to the surface, and relate to the way in which they erupt. The results, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, could be used to improve the forecasting of threats posed by certain volcanoes.

A team of scientists, including a volcanologist and mathematician from the University of Cambridge, discovered the phenomenon through detailed observations of gas emissions from K?lauea volcano in Hawaii.

At many volcanoes around the world, gas emissions are monitored routinely to help with forecasting eruptions. Changes in the output or proportions of different gases - such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide - can herald shifts in the activity of a volcano. Volcanologists have considered that these chemical changes reflect the rise and fall of magma in the Earth's crust but the new research reveals that the composition of volcanic gases depends also on the size of the gas bubbles rising up to the surface.

Until the latest spectacular eruption opened up fissures on the flank of the volcano, K?lauea held a vast lava lake in its summit crater. The behaviour of this lava lake alternated between phases of fiery 'spattering' powered by large gas bubbles bursting through the magma, and more gentle gas release, accompanied by slow and steady motion of the lava.

In the past, volcanic gases have been sampled directly from steaming vents and openings called fumaroles. But this is not possible for the emissions from a lava lake, 200 metres across, and at the bottom of a steep-sided crater. Instead, the team used an infrared spectrometer, which is employed for routine volcano monitoring by co-authors of the study, Jeff Sutton and Tamar Elias from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (US Geological Survey).

The device was located on the edge of the crater, pointed at the lava lake, and recorded gas compositions in the atmosphere every few seconds. The emissions of carbon- and sulphur-bearing gases were measured during both the vigorous and mild phases of activity.

Each individual measurement was used to compute the temperature of the volcanic gas. What immediately struck the scientists was that the gas temperatures ranged from 1150 degrees Celsius - the temperature of the lava - down to around 900 degrees Celsius. "At this temperature, the lava would freeze," said lead author Dr Clive Oppenheimer, from Cambridge's Department of Geography. "At first, we couldn't understand how the gases could emerge much colder than the molten lava sloshing in the lake."

The clue to this puzzle came from the variation in calculated gas temperatures - they were high when the lava lake was placid, and low when it was bubbling furiously. "We realised it could be because of the size of the gas bubbles," said co-author Professor Andy Woods, Director of Cambridge's BP Institute. "Larger bubbles rise faster through the magma and expand rapidly as the pressure reduces, just like bubbles rising in a glass of fizzy drink; the gas cools down because of the expansion." Larger bubbles form when smaller bubbles bump into each other and merge.

Woods and Oppenheimer developed a mathematical model to account for the process, which showed a very good fit with the observations.

But there was yet another surprising finding from the gas observations from Hawaii. As well as being cooler, the emissions from the large gas bubbles were more oxidised than expected - they had higher proportions of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide.

The chemical balance of volcanic gases such as carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide (or sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide) is generally thought to be controlled by the chemistry of the surrounding liquid magma but what the new findings showed is that when bubbles get large enough, most of the gas inside follows its own chemical pathway as the gas cools.

The ratio of carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide when the lava lake was in its most energetic state was six times higher than during the most stable phase. The scientists suggest this effect should be taken into account when gas measurements are being used to forecast major changes in volcanic activity.

"Gas measurements are critical to our monitoring and hazard assessment; refining our understanding of how magma behaves beneath the volcano allows us to better interpret our observations," said co-author Tamar Elias from the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

And there is another implication of this discovery - not for eruptions today but for the evolution of the Earth's atmosphere billions of years ago. "Volcanic emissions in Earth's deep past may have made the atmosphere more oxidising than we thought," said co-author Bruno Scaillet. "A more oxygen-rich atmosphere would have facilitated the emergence and viability of life on land, by generating an ozone layer, which shields against harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun."

An examination of research on oral health, commissioned by the World Health Organisation, has indicated that for oral health we should stick to whole grain carbohydrates and avoid processed ones, especially if sweet.

Food contains different types of starchy carbohydrate with varying degrees of processing. Although the researchers found no association between the total amount of starch eaten and tooth decay, they did find that more processed forms of starch increased risk of cavities. This is because they can be broken down into sugars in the mouth, by amylase found in saliva.

Further findings, although based on very few available studies and weaker data, suggested a lower risk of oral cancer from consuming whole grain starches, and that whole grains may also offer protection against gum disease.

The findings come from a review of the 33 academic papers on starch and oral health and is published today in the Journal of Dental Research.

Paula Moynihan, Professor of Nutrition and Oral Health at Newcastle University, UK, who lead the research said: "The evidence suggests that a diet rich in whole grain carbohydrates is less likely to damage your oral health than one containing processed starches."

In the review, 33 papers were included of studies on foods containing what were characterized as rapidly digestible starches (e.g. white bread, crackers, biscuits, cakes, pretzels) and slowly digestible starches (e.g. wholegrains, legumes), and their relationships with dental caries, oral cancer and gum (periodontal) disease.

Updating WHO guidance on carbohydrate intake

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is currently updating its guidance on carbohydrate intake, including assessment of dietary fibre and starch quality.

WHO currently recommends reducing free sugar intake to less than 10 % of total energy (calorie) intake, and suggests further reduction to less than 5% for additional health benefits.

Free sugars are sugars that are added to foods by the manufacturer, cook, or consumer, plus those naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.

Professor Moynihan added: "Despite an ill-advised fashion for eliminating carbohydrates from the diet, a carbohydrate-rich diet is shown to be fine for oral health so long as it is low in sugars and is based on whole grain varieties of carbs such as pasta, couscous and wholemeal bread. They key for shoppers is to look for wholemeal and wholegrain on the labels."

Additional research commissioned by the WHO into the effects of carbohydrate quality on other health outcomes, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer and type 2 diabetes, will be used to inform the forthcoming guideline.

Cocaine relapse was significantly reduced in a preclinical model when brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) was applied to the nucleus accumbens deep in the brain immediately before cocaine-seeking behavior, report investigators at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) in an article published online in June 2018 by Addiction Biology. "We discovered that a very common protein in the brain has an additional significant role in addiction relapse," says lead author Ana-Clara Bobadilla, Ph.D., a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Peter Kalivas, Ph.D., at MUSC.

The nucleus accumbens is a tiny cluster of nerve cells deep in the brain. Although small, this region plays a critical role in reward-seeking behaviors. The nucleus accumbens combines signals from other parts of the brain to drive reward-motivated behaviors. The MUSC research group is the first to reveal that BDNF has both a time- and location-dependent beneficial role when administered before a cue-induced relapse event.

In the preclinical model of cocaine addiction, rats are allowed to self-administer cocaine while hearing an auditory cue. The rats learn to associate the cue with the reward of cocaine and continue to self-administer when hearing the cue. In the extinction phase, the rats are not allowed access to cocaine or the cue associated with the drug. In the last phase, called reinstatement, the rats seek out cocaine upon hearing the cue previously associated with cocaine administration. The drug-seeking behavior that the rats display is similar to how drug cues induce craving in humans and thus are more likely to relapse. Examples of such cues are visiting a neighborhood in which drugs were previously bought or seeing a friend with whom they took drugs.

Addiction researchers are studying the function of proteins already present in the brain in an effort to find ways to overcome relapse in strong addictions. One common protein, BDNF, is a small protein with a big job. It plays essential roles in neuron development and memory in multiple brain regions. While other research groups have studied how BDNF administration affects drug self-administration and relapse, no one has looked at what happens if BDNF is given immediately before relapse.

Since low serum BDNF levels are seen in cocaine-dependent patients compared to non-addicts, the MUSC researchers sought to better understand the connection between BDNF and cocaine relapse. The nucleus accumbens was selected as the focal point for BDNF administration since it is a central component of the brain reward circuit.

"An important aspect of this study is that while others have shown that BDNF is important for establishing the state of addiction, we find that can also be used to reverse addiction," says Peter Kalivas, Ph.D., professor and chair in the Department of Neuroscience. "This exemplifies that the primary effect of BDNF is to promote changes in the brain, and that this capacity to change the brain contributes to how people get addicted, but also can be harnessed to remove brain pathologies such as drug addiction."

The findings reported in Addiction Biology are the first to show that applying BDNF to the nucleus accumbens immediately before the reinstatement phase, when the rats are once again seeking cocaine due to cue exposure, greatly reduces relapse. "The most exciting realization is that this protein has a very fine-tuned effect and can be timing dependent" says Bobadilla. This means that by changing the location of BDNF administration in the brain, as well as the timing of the treatment, BDNF can have differing impacts on cocaine relapse.

This discovery opens the doors for further investigation with BDNF and the nucleus accumbens in particular, as it is currently not known how BDNF suppresses cocaine addiction relapse. This finding also begs the question as to whether BDNF application in the nucleus accumbens, or other brain regions, can reduce other addictions. The MUSC research team also found that the BDNF - nucleus accumbens connection is included in the reward circuit but remains specific to drug rewards, since BDNF did not stop food-seeking behaviors, which also activate the reward circuitry. This demonstrates that BDNF's inhibitory role on seeking is specific to drugs of abuse.

These findings fill in one more piece of the puzzle of addiction by highlighting that a common protein in the brain can have very different roles depending upon the location and reward circuit activated. The Kalivas laboratory will continue this investigation by looking at the role of BDNF on the different types of neurons included in the nucleus accumbens in the context of BDNF application during addiction relapse.

"What we are doing with these studies is mapping the brain. There are plenty of uncharted territories in our understanding of neurobiology and with this work we provided results to fill in one of those unknown questions." says Bobadilla. She envisions that one day we will have a complete map of the brain, and when we do, preventing addiction relapse may be possible.

KANSAS CITY, MO -- Researchers from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research and collaborators have identified a way to expand blood-forming, adult stem cells from human umbilical cord blood (hUCB). This development could make these cells available to more people, and be more readily accepted in those who undergo adult stem cell treatments for conditions such as leukemia, blood disorders, immune system diseases, and other types of cancers, but who do not have an appropriate available bone marrow match.

"Life-saving bone marrow transplants have been the common practice for decades, but this doesn't work for everybody," says Stowers Institute Investigator Linheng Li, Ph.D., study lead who is also co-leader of the cancer biology program at the University of Kansas Cancer Center and an affiliate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine.

Only 30 percent of patients have a bone marrow donor match available in their families, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. More than 170,000 people in the US are expected to be diagnosed in 2018 with a blood cancer (leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma) according to the American Cancer Society.

Adult stem cells from umbilical cords are more likely to be a match for more people because there are fewer compatibility requirements than for a bone marrow transplant. But adult patients need two cords' worth of blood per treatment, and there aren't enough cord units available for everyone who needs the treatment. "If we can expand cord adult stem cells, that could potentially decrease the number of cords needed per treatment. That's a huge advantage," says Li.

In the study, published online July 31, 2018, in Cell Research, researchers zeroed in on a protein that affects multiple targets and pathways involved in hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal, a broader approach than other studies that focus on a single target or pathway in the process. The protein, called Ythdf2, recognizes a particular type of modification on a group of mRNAs encoding key transcription factors for hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal and promotes the decay of these mRNAs within cells.

When the team knocked out Ythdf2 function in a mouse model or knocked down Ythdf2 function in hUCB cells, they observed increased expression of these transcription factors and expansion of hematopoietic stem cells, which are the major type of adult stem cells in hUCB. They observed that impairing Ythdf2 function did not alter the types of cells that were subsequently produced, nor did it lead to increased blood cell malignancies. In addition, the knock down treatment isn't permanent, thereby allowing Ythdf2's function to be restored after transplantation.

"Our approach of targeting Ythdf2 function using an RNA-based technique also helped avoid more persistent DNA-related changes such as mutations in epigenetic regulators," says Zhenrui Li, PhD, a predoctoral researcher at the University of Kansas Medical Center who is performing thesis research in the Linheng Li Lab and first author of the study.

Those kinds of genetic mutations could lead to the re-genesis of leukemia or cancer, Zhenrui Li explains. Since the Ythdf2 protein is present in different kinds of adult stem cells, targeting it and how it affects hematopoietic stem cells seemed a safer approach and, if it worked, broadly applicable.

Linheng Li believes that this approach could potentially be applied to other types of adult stem cells, which may lead to increasing the amount of adult stem cells available for treating patients. This may also be complementary to the approach of haploidentical adult stem cell transplants, which involve donors from a close but still mismatched family member. These patients typically require immune suppression treatment to suppress graft versus host disease.

"This work represents a path forward by demonstrating the ability to reliably expand adult stem cells from umbilical cord blood in the laboratory without terminally differentiating the cells into more mature and relatively short-lived blood cells," says Joseph McGuirk, MD, professor of medicine and medical director of blood and marrow transplant at the University of Kansas Health System, who was not directly involved with the study. "These findings represent a major advance in the field and have significant potential to improve the outcomes of thousands of children and adults who undergo umbilical cord blood transplantation every year."

New Rochelle, NY, Aug. 3, 2018--A better understanding of the role secreted inflammatory cytokines play in the tumor microenvironment that results in the differentiation of effector T cells into exhausted T cells points to possible approaches to improve the antitumor activity of T cells and to intervene in T cell exhaustion. A new article exploring the expression patterns of inflammatory cytokines in tumor tissues and the blood of cancer patients and seeking to understand how exhausted T cells lose their antitumor properties is published in Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers . The article is available free on the Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals website through September 3, 2018.

In the review article, "The Role of Inflammatory Cytokines in Creating T Cell Exhaustion in Cancer," Hedayatollah Shirzad and colleagues from Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran report on multiple studies that illustrate a direct role for inflammatory cytokines in the creation of cell exhaustion through multiple pathways. The researchers recommend a greater focus on efforts to reprogram exhausted T cells in the early stages and alternatively, therapeutic interventions such as anti-inflammation therapy.

"Clearly there is room and need for further understanding of the role and functional consequences of exhausted T cells as they relate to impacting on the immune system, how that interplays with outcomes in cancer therapies, and how advantages might be taken to improve existing therapeutic strategies," says Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals Editor-in-Chief Martin W. Brechbiel, PhD.

About the Journal

Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals ," published 10 times per year in print and online, is the only peer-reviewed journal with a specific focus on cancer biotherapy, including monoclonal antibodies, cytokine therapy, cancer gene therapy, cell-based therapies, and other forms of immunotherapy. Led by Editor-in-Chief Martin W. Brechbiel, PhD, the Journal includes extensive reporting on advancements in radioimmunotherapy and the use of radiopharmaceuticals and radiolabeled peptides for the development of new cancer treatments. Tables of content and a sample issue can be viewed on the Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals website.

About the Publisher

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science and biomedical research, including Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research, Human Gene Therapy, and Stem Cells and Development. Its biotechnology trade magazine, GEN (Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News), was the first in its field and is today the industry's most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm's 80 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available on the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers website.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Many barriers prevent people from getting tested for HIV, including lack of knowledge, competing priorities during medical visits, and stigma associated with the test on the part of both the patient and provider.

Not much is known, however, about what impact age and ethnicity have on HIV testing.

Brandon Brown, an HIV researcher at the University of California, Riverside's School of Medicine, is the lead author on a study published today in the journal Medicine, in which he and his co-authors argue that interventions are urgently needed to reach older adults and Hispanics to address HIV testing and beliefs.

"These interventions must debunk beliefs among physicians that older adults are not sexually active, and beliefs among older adults that only others are at risk of HIV," said Brown, an associate professor of social medicine, population, and public health.

The study also found that Hispanic participants were less likely to receive HIV testing than non-Hispanic participants.

"Timely interventions, including HIV testing, are especially important for the Hispanic community in the United States because Hispanics are disproportionately affected by HIV," Brown said. "They account for 20 percent of HIV infections, with a rate of three-to-four times that of whites."

Brown and colleagues explored data on self-reported HIV risk and willingness to be tested. They focused on age and ethnicity in the Coachella Valley using the 2014 Get Tested Coachella Valley Community Survey. The team collected data from nearly 1,000 participants related to demographics, sexual history, HIV testing history, thoughts on who should get tested, and future preferences for HIV testing.

"We found stigma, education, provider recommendations, risk perceptions, and cost are among major factors contributing to accepting HIV testing and intention to receive HIV testing," Brown said.

More than 1 million people live with HIV in the United States, with as many as 25 percent likely unaware of their HIV status. The Coachella Valley holds more than half the people living with HIV and AIDS in Riverside County, California's fourth-largest county by population. Approximately 24 percent of people living with HIV in the Coachella Valley are aged 60 or older. Caucasians make up about 74 percent of the population; nearly 20 percent are Hispanic.

The study also found:

Most untested participants did not believe they are at risk.
Men were more likely than women to have been tested.
Significantly fewer participants aged 50 or older said they are at risk of HIV compared to participants younger than 50.
Participants aged 50 or older were less likely to be tested for HIV compared to participants between the ages of 25 to 49.
Compared to younger participants, significantly fewer participants aged 50 years or older accepted HIV testing when it was offered by a health care provider.
Older adults tend to underestimate their HIV risk and severely delay HIV testing or forgo testing altogether.
Older adults are more likely than younger adults to be diagnosed with HIV later in the disease course.
Many participants claimed they would get tested if their health care provider offered testing.

"Our recommendations to health care providers are that they talk directly with their patients during clinical visits about HIV prevention and HIV risk, and that they routinely offer HIV screening as part of primary care," Brown said.

Almost everyone who eats fast food is familiar with the frustration of trying to squeeze every last drop of ketchup out of the small packets that accompany french fries.

What most consumers don't realize, however, is that food left behind in plastic packaging is not simply a nuisance. It also contributes to the millions of pounds of perfectly edible food that Americans throw out every year. These small, incremental amounts of sticky foods like condiments, dairy products, beverages, and some meat products that remain trapped in their packaging can add up to big numbers over time, even for a single household.

New research from Virginia Tech aims to cut down on that waste - and consumer frustration - with a novel approach to creating super slippery industrial packaging.

The study, which was published in Scientific Reports and has yielded a provisional patent, establishes a method for wicking chemically compatible vegetable oils into the surfaces of common extruded plastics.

Not only will the technique help sticky foods release from their packaging much more easily, but for the first time, it can also be applied to inexpensive and readily available plastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene.

These hydrocarbon-based polymers make up 55 percent of the total demand for plastics in the world today, meaning potential applications for the research stretch far beyond just ketchup packets. They're also among the easiest plastics to recycle.

"Previous SLIPS, or slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces, have been made using silicon- or fluorine-based polymers, which are very expensive," said Ranit Mukherjee, a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics within the College of Engineering and the study's lead author. "But we can make our SLIPS out of these hydrocarbon-based polymers, which are widely applicable to everyday packaged products."

First created by Harvard University researchers in 2011, SLIPS are porous surfaces or absorbent polymers that can hold a chemically compatible oil within their surfaces via the process of wicking. These surfaces are not only very slippery, but they're also self-cleaning, self-healing, and more durable than traditional superhydrophobic surfaces.

In order for SLIPS to hold these oils, the surfaces must have some sort of nano- or micro-roughness, which keeps the oil in place by way of surface tension. This roughness can be achieved two ways: the surface material is roughened with a type of applied coating, or the surface material consists of an absorbent polymer. In the latter case, the molecular structure of the material itself exhibits the necessary nano-roughness.

Both techniques have recently gained traction with startups and in limited commercial applications. But current SLIPS that use silicone- and fluorine-based absorbent polymers aren't attractive for industrial applications due to their high cost, while the method of adding roughness to surfaces can likewise be an expensive and complicated process.

"We had two big breakthroughs," said Jonathan Boreyko, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics and a study co-author. "Not only are we using these hydrocarbon-based polymers that are cheap and in high demand, but we don't have to add any surface roughness, either. We actually found oils that are naturally compatible with the plastics, so these oils are wicking into the plastic itself, not into a roughness we have to apply."

In addition to minimizing food waste, Boreyko cited other benefits to the improved design, including consumer safety and comfort.

"We're not adding any mystery nanoparticles to the surfaces of these plastics that could make people uncomfortable," he said. "We use natural oils like cottonseed oil, so there are no health concerns whatsoever. There's no fancy recipe required."

While the method has obvious implications for industrial food and product packaging, it could also find widespread use in the pharmaceutical industry. The oil-infused plastic surfaces are naturally anti-fouling, meaning they resist bacterial adhesion and growth.

Although the technique may sound very high-tech, it actually finds its roots in the pitcher plant, a carnivorous plant that entices insects to the edge of a deep cavity filled with nectar and digestive enzymes. The leaves that form the plant's eponymous shape have a slippery ring, created by a secreted liquid, around the periphery of the cavity. When the insects move onto this slippery ring, they slide into the belly of the plants.

"This slippery periphery on the pitcher plant actually inspired our SLIPS product," said Mukherjee.

The pitcher plant's innovation - which engineers are now copying with great success - is the combination of a lubricant with some type of surface roughness that can lock that lubricant into place very stably with surface tension.

"We're taking that same concept, but the roughness we're using is just a common attribute of everyday plastics, which means maximal practicality," said Boreyko.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - In a recent publication in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from Nationwide Children's Hospital present a case study for treating a neighborhood as a patient.

Neighborhood effect syndrome, characterized by symptoms of extreme poverty including blight, housing insecurity, racial segregation, trauma, violence, poorly performing schools, low social cohesion and support and environmental toxins, has debilitating consequences on child health. Health care providers frequently encounter challenges to caring for children from affected neighborhoods, and these children often experience poorer outcomes compared to peers in unaffected neighborhoods. Historically, institutions have been largely ineffective in changing these outcomes with one-child-at-a-time tactics.

In a novel approach to improving outcomes for these children, Nationwide Children's leaders with community partners decided to address neighborhood effect syndrome as a target for pediatric health care - treating the neighborhood as a patient. In 2008, Nationwide Children's began collaborating with residents, government entities and social services agencies to develop the Healthy Neighborhoods Healthy Families (HNHF) initiative.

The hospital's first patient neighborhood was the Southern Orchards neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, located adjacent to the Nationwide Children's main campus. Before the intervention, the neighborhood experienced high rates of poverty and violent crime.

"The Southern Orchards neighborhood, right by the hospital, was one with gun violence, high infant mortality rates and high asthma rates in children," says Kelly J. Kelleher, MD, director of the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice at Nationwide Children's and lead author of the publication. "Houses were boarded up and vacant. You didn't see kids playing outside much."

The target area includes all of Census Tract 56.10 and Census Tract 56.20. In 2009, the neighborhood was characterized by the following:

Home to 4,300 persons, 23 percent of whom were children

50 percent of children in the neighborhood were living in poverty

50 percent of the children in the neighborhood were African American

25 percent of children in Livingston Elementary School and 33 percent in South High School were regularly changing schools

1 in 3 residents over the age of 16 were employed full time

The chief concern uncovered through multiple sources of data and information was neighborhood safety associated with population loss and surge in vacant and abandoned property.

"Residents were deeply concerned about blight and gang/drug activity, including on vacant properties in proximity to the school," says Dr. Kelleher. "Our primary target for intervention became housing. Our collaboration committed to renovating, building and developing mixed income housing to reduce crime, improve the vacancy rate and better family outcomes."

According to Dr. Kelleher, the publication describes $23 million invested in upgrading more than 300 homes through the HNHF Realty Collaborative, which was formed with not-for-profit development corporation, Community Development For All People. The entity is owned by Community Development For All People with a board of directors selected by the two groups. To date, the investment has grown to more than $40 million.

The partnership, with collaboration from the Columbus Mayor's Office, accessed Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds from the city, acquired properties from the city's Land Bank program and gathered support from contractors and realty agents.

The multifaceted intervention launched by the collaborative included a home repair program, rehabilitation and home ownership program, home construction program, workforce development program and rental housing development.

The community development efforts by the HNHF Realty Collaborative are still in early phases, considering Southern Orchards has experienced neighborhood effects syndrome for 80 years. Still, some measurable outcomes are observed:

Investments have transformed housing stock in the area and reduced blight.

The vacancy rate declined from more than 25 percent to 6 percent.

Youth who have participated in area development programs have shown progress in emotional health and academic performance.

The high school graduation rate has risen from 64 percent in 2013 to 79 percent in 2017.

For owner-occupied homes, the market has seen a 50 percent increase in sales volumes and a 22 percent increase in sales prices.

Homicides have declined, and while homicide rates in Columbus overall have risen, none were reported in the immediate Southern Orchards neighborhood in the last year.

"By taking both short- and long-term views of community development, Nationwide Children's and our partners have ambitious goals across many domains," says Dr. Kelleher. "The community-level approach allows the integration of epidemiology approaches, business resources and neighborhood development to support a mixed income community. Our next challenges will be to continue growth with new partners and to measure outcomes on children's health in the neighborhood."

August 2, 2018 - A long-term follow-up study from Australia confirms that hip implants with components made of cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) substantially lower the risk of revision surgery after total hip replacement, reports a study in the August 1, 2018 issue of The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery. The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio in partnership with Wolters Kluwer.

"The use of XLPE has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of revision at 16 years following total hip arthroplasty for osteoarthritis," writes Professor Richard de Steiger, MBBS, FRACS, FAOrthA, and colleagues of the Australian Orthopaedic Association National Joint Replacement Registry, Adelaide, South Australia. With less wear and better longevity than implants using conventional polyethylene (CPE) components, the superior durability of XLPE implants may encourage total hip replacement to be performed in younger patients.

Cross-linked polyethylene bearing surfaces were developed to address the problem of wear occurring with hip components made with CPE. Excessive wear sometimes leads to the need for revision surgery, particularly in younger, more active patients. Cross-linking is a process by which the polyethylene molecules are bonded together to strengthen the material.

Lower Revision Surgery Rate with XLPE versus CPE Components

The study included more than 240,000 patients with hip osteoarthritis who underwent total hip replacement (arthroplasty) in Australia from 1999 through 2016. Outcomes were analyzed according to the type of bearing surface used in the hip implant. Implants with an XLPE bearing surface were used in approximately 199,000 procedures, while implants with CPE bearings were used in 41,000 procedures.

Hip prostheses using XLPE bearings are not new - previous studies have confirmed that they are less prone to wear than CPE bearings. The data from this Australian study provide longer follow-up on the risk of revision surgery, "which ultimately is most important for the patient," Prof. de Steiger and coauthors write.

The use of XLPE implants increased dramatically during the study period: from approximately nine percent of implants with polyethylene bearings in 2000 to 97 percent in 2016. Average follow-up times after hip replacement were about nine years in the CPE group and four years in the XLPE group.

As early as six months after hip replacement, revision rates were substantially lower in patients with XLPE bearings. Over 16 years, the cumulative rate of revision surgery was 11.7 percent in the CPE group compared to 6.2 percent in the XPLE group.

After adjustment for other risk factors, patients with CPE implants were about three times more likely to have revision surgery after nine years, compared to those with XLPE implants. Revisions directly related to wear of the bearing surface occurred in 0.81 percent of procedures that used CPE versus 0.05 percent of procedures that used XLPE.

A subgroup analysis focused on approximately 18,000 patients who underwent total hip arthroplasty before age 55 found that the 15-year cumulative rate of revision was 17.4 percent in the CPE group versus 6.6 percent in the XLPE group. At seven years, younger patients with CPE hip prostheses were about five times more likely to need revision surgery.

This new study of hip replacement outcomes in patients with XLPE prostheses provides the longest follow-up in the largest series of patients reported to date. The results provide important "real world" evidence that the reduced wear of XLPE bearings translates in a lower risk of revision surgery. "The use of XLPE makes total hip arthroplasty - already one of the most effective operations - even better," the researchers write.

"Wear-related and implant-longevity issues are particularly important in younger patients, who are generally more active and have a longer life span than their older counterparts," Prof. de Steiger and colleagues conclude.

"We believe that the evidence of reduced long-term wear with XLPE is now so strong that, when a polyethylene bearing surface is used in THA, it should be XLPE, particularly in younger patients."

Mushrooms from the Far East area contain the natural chemical compounds, which could be used for the design of the novel drugs with highly specific anti-tumor activities and low-toxicity. These compounds may offer new avenues for oncology, providing us with either stand-alone alternatives to chemotherapy, chemopreventive medicines, or drugs to be used in combination with other therapies.

The international team of scientists from the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), University of Lausanne, and Federal Scientific Center of the East Asia Terrestrial Biodiversity FEB RAS describes the available body of research on four fungi species with high anti-cancer potential. The article is published in Oncotarget and contains the list of tumors, which were reported to be promising targets of the fungal compounds. Among them sarcoma, leukemia, rectum and colon cancer, stomach cancer, liver cancer, colon carcinoma and others.

For the purpose of the current study scientists chose mushrooms widely used in Asian and Far Eastern folk medicine: Fomitopsis pinicola, Hericium erinaceus, Inonotus obliquus, and Trametes versicolor. These species of fungi were shown to selectively target certain malignant tumors. The desired effect is achieved thanks to the various bioactive compounds contained in the mushrooms: polyphenols, polysaccharides, glucans, terpenoids, steroids, cerebrosides, and proteins. These substances are not only capable to hit different critical targets within cancer cells levels but also in certain cases to synergistically boost the chemo. Scientists emphasize that four species of fungi were chosen due to the fact that their medicinal properties are relatively well described. Some of them are already actively used for the anti-cancer drugs manufacturing in certain countires. Undoubtedly, there are many other species of fungi that contain chemical compounds to defeat cancer cells.

"In ancient China mushrooms were considered as the most effective treatment for the various types of tumors. Contemporary fungotherapy (treatment by means of mushrooms) represents a promising field for scientific research. The natural chemical compounds contained in fungi have a huge therapeutic and particularly the anti-cancer potential that has not been yet fully studied", says Professor Vladimir Katanaev, Dr.Habil, Ph.D., Head of the Laboratory of Pharmacology of Natural Compounds of the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy of the School of Biomedicine, FEFU.

Another co-PI and corresponding author of this work, director of the center for genomic and regenerative medicine of the School of Biomedicine, FEFU, Alexander Kagansky, notes that despite that the interest in mushrooms studying has been growing exponentially over the past 60 years, about 90% of the fungal species have never been analyzed for their antibiotic and antitumor activities.

"Moreover, the significant part of cancer-related research of fungi deals merely with their toxicity to cancer cells, and the ability to stop the growth and development of cancer cells. The point is that such properties of the fungi compounds are equally detrimental to the healthy cells of the body", comments on A. Kagansky. According to the scientist, it is necessary to research fungi for the chemical compounds capable of selective, targeted impact on cancer cells.

Vladimir Katanaev notes the importance of further research the immunomodulatory effect of fungi enriched with polysaccharides. According to him, immunomodulation can be attributed to indirect but effective methods of defeating cancer.

The first generation of natural medical compounds from mushrooms' extracts wasn't specific and has been applying widely for the therapy of all cancer types without consideration of tumor type properties. Such therapy damaged not only tumor cells but also healthy cells of the body. There were lots of heavy side-effects at times leading to the death of the patient due to the overdose.

Modern approaches to anti-cancer therapy are based on the targeted treatment with minimal or no consequences to the healthy cells and tissues. For this purpose, not only the general therapeutic properties of fungal chemical compounds are investigated but also the ways they differ in their action on different tumours.

The scientists hope that the high potential of the fungi for the anti-cancer therapy showcased in their article will encourage the further research at the junction of oncology and mycology. Currently in the laboratories of the School of Biomedicine (FEFU) led by Vladimir Katanaev and Alexander Kagansky,the new experiments are conducted to reveal the anti-cancer activities of the mushrooms extracts. This work is aimed at creating the new generation of highly specific low-toxic drugs, which could be specifically targeted on different tumor types.