Tech

DALLAS, March 3, 2021 -- The association between race and ethnicity and specific characteristics of some U.S. counties may have a significant impact on death rates related to cardiovascular disease, according to new research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S. across all racial and ethnic groups, and disparities in cardiovascular outcomes for racial and ethnic minority groups have been documented extensively. This study presents a detailed analysis of county-level predictors of cardiovascular death rates among white, Hispanic/Latinx and Black populations.

Using 2017 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER) and the 2017 Robert Wood Johnson County Health Rankings, researchers evaluated variations in cardiovascular disease death rates among racial and ethnic groups and the degree to which county factors accounted for differences in death rates.

The county-level factors, some known as social determinants of health, analyzed:

demographic factors: population size, percentage rural, percentage female, percentage Black residents, percentage Asian residents and percentage Hispanic/Latinx residents;

census region: Northeast, Midwest, South or West;

socioeconomic factors: percentage of residents who have completed some college, who are unemployed, experiencing food insecurity (limited access to fresh, healthy, affordable food) and the median household income;

traditional cardiovascular risk factors: percentage of residents who were smokers, were physically inactive, who have Type 2 diabetes and percentage with obesity; and

health care access factors: ratio of primary care providers per 100,000 population and percentage of uninsured adults.

Researchers used regression models to determine the association between each of the county-level factors and cardiovascular age-adjusted death rates for each race/ethnicity. They also assessed the factor that accounted for the greatest variation in death rates.

Among the study's key findings:

Black adults had the highest average death rate from cardiovascular disease at 320 deaths per 100,000 person-years, compared to Hispanic/Latinx adults with the lowest rate of 168 deaths per 100,000 person-years.

The highest cardiovascular disease death rates across all racial and ethnic groups were in southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia).

Traditional cardiovascular disease risk factors accounted for the greatest variation in cardiovascular disease death rates among white people (35%), while socioeconomic concerns explained much of the variation in the death rate among Black people (26%), and demographics explained the variation among Hispanic/Latinx populations (35%).

Socioeconomic factors were a close second among white people and Hispanic/Latinx people (32% and 27%, respectively) in explaining the greatest variation in cardiovascular disease deaths.

These results may help develop and implement effective interventions to improve cardiovascular outcomes, said co-lead study author Justin Parizo, M.D., an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology fellow at Stanford University in Stanford, California.

"Currently, population and community-level health interventions are typically focused on disease and medical risk factors, however, our analysis suggests that more emphasis may need to be placed on intervention that can improve social determinants of health, particularly for Black people," Parizo said. "As examples, several trials have shown that income supplementation in addition to nutritional counseling can improve diet among populations at risk for cardiovascular disease. Additionally, interventions to improve housing have been shown to increase patient exercise levels and, in the long term, could decrease unhealthy outcomes such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes."

Because the research is observational and retrospective, the findings cannot prove cause and effect. Another limitation of the study is the interpretation of the county-level risk factors, which do not necessarily describe subpopulations within each county. "For example, a 40% obesity rate among Black people in a county represents the entire Black population but does not necessarily hold true for every subgroup of the Black population," Parizo said.

"This study's greatest value is that it informs the understanding of cardiovascular population health and the numerous factors that play a role in cardiovascular health," said co-senior study author Fátima Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine and a preventive cardiologist and health disparities researcher at the Stanford Prevention Center at Stanford University School of Medicine. "Not all populations are the same. Nuanced understanding of the unique influences on cardiovascular outcomes is essential to narrow disparities for various population groups."

A robotics platform designed by Toronto researchers to screen thousands of COVID-19 samples at once has the potential to revolutionize how labs track the spread of viruses and other pathogens, according to new findings.

The study, out Wednesday in Nature Communications, found that the next-generation, ultra-high-throughput sequencing platform, called C19-SPAR-Seq, designed by researchers from the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI) at Sinai Health, has a sensitivity rate greater than 95 per cent in positive cases during peak onset.

"Identifying positive samples quickly and accurately is critical in beating this pandemic," said Dr. Jeff Wrana, senior investigator at the LTRI and professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. "With new and potentially dangerous variants now circulating, this is a platform that is scalable, automated and capable of analyzing thousands of COVID-19 patient samples in a single instrument run."

Wrana and fellow LTRI senior investigator Dr. Laurence Pelletier, in collaboration with University of Toronto professor Dr. Ben Blencowe, credit a strong team of eager trainees who shifted from other areas of research to help develop and validate the platform, allowing for the team to go from concept to published paper in under 12 months.

"The co-operation of the Mount Sinai Hospital clinical diagnostic lab was the other key ingredient to our success," said Pelletier. "To date the shared microbiology lab, headed by Dr. Tony Mazzulli, has provided access to thousands of samples."

In late 2020, the team pivoted again to use the robotics platform to screen thousands of positive samples for variants by rapidly sequencing fingerprint regions of the viral genome to look for key mutations.

"It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Dr. Jeff Wrana and his team at the LTRI," said Dr. Mazzulli, microbiologist-in-chief for Sinai Health and University Health Network (UHN). "His novel SPAR-Seq System is cutting-edge technology and his team's ability to sequence COVID-19 samples in real time has tremendous potential for impacting our understanding of the epidemiology and spread of novel mutants in the province."

The platform is also cost-effective. The study notes it only costs about $8 USD per test when running thousands of samples at once, as the cost per sample decreases due to economies of scale.

"It's extremely reliable and readily adaptable," said Javier Hernandez, a junior researcher in the Wrana lab who co-led the study with Drs. Marie-Ming Aynaud and Seda Barutcu. "The turnaround is approximately 24 hours. It's very simple as we've automated practically every step in the process. For me, it's been a very exciting thing to see my work make a difference."

New research from UBC finds that higher life satisfaction is associated with better physical, psychological and behavioural health.

The research, published recently in The Milbank Quarterly, found that higher life satisfaction is linked to 21 positive health and well-being outcomes including:

a 26 per cent reduced risk of mortality

a 46 per cent reduced risk of depression

a 25 per cent reduced risk of physical functioning limitations

a 12 per cent reduced risk of chronic pain

a 14 per cent reduced risk of sleep problem onset

an eight per cent higher likelihood of frequent physical activity

better psychological well-being on several indicators including higher: positive affect, optimism, purpose in life, and mastery--as well as lower: hopelessness, negative affect, perceived constraints, and loneliness

Dr. Eric Kim and his team examined data from a nationally representative sample of 12,998 U.S. adults over age 50, in which participants were asked to self-evaluate their life satisfaction and health.

This study is the first to see whether a positive change in life satisfaction is associated with better outcomes on a wide range of physical, behavioural and psychosocial health and well-being indicators over a four-year period.

"Life satisfaction is a person's evaluation of his or her own life based on factors that they deem most relevant," says Dr. Kim, an assistant professor in UBC's psychology department and lead author of the study. "While life satisfaction is shaped by genetics, social factors and changing life circumstances, it can also be improved on both the individual level as well as collectively on the national level."

Dr. Kim says in recent years, intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the World Health Organization have urged countries to use well-being indicators in addition to traditional economic indicators, like GDP, when making policy decisions.

"The results of this study suggest that life satisfaction is a valuable target for policymakers to consider when enhancing physical, psychological and behavioural health outcomes at the policy level," says Dr. Kim.

The researchers decided to examine a four-year time period as there is emerging evidence that indicates changing levels of life satisfaction is an important determinant of voting behaviour. Further, election cycles happen approximately every four years in many countries.

"It is in the interest of policymakers' election and reelection campaigns to consider how life satisfaction can be improved," says Dr. Kim. "But more importantly understanding what the downstream health and well-being effects of altering life satisfaction might be for populations over a four-year period is critical to evaluate, and this is precisely the kind of question we tried to answer in our study."

Dr. Kim says policy-makers who are interested in looking for practical ideas on how to improve life satisfaction at the policy level can look to the Global Happiness and Well-Being Policy Report, which is generated out of a broader UN initiative co-led by UBC economics professor emeritus Dr. John Helliwell and Columbia University professor Dr. Jeffrey Sachs.

"As our nations pause and reevaluate our priorities in light of the widespread change caused by COVID-19, our policymakers have a rare and excellent opportunity to pursue well-being for all in the post-pandemic world."

Imagine a robot.

Perhaps you've just conjured a machine with a rigid, metallic exterior. While robots armored with hard exoskeletons are common, they're not always ideal. Soft-bodied robots, inspired by fish or other squishy creatures, might better adapt to changing environments and work more safely with people.

Roboticists generally have to decide whether to design a hard- or soft-bodied robot for a particular task. But that tradeoff may no longer be necessary.

Working with computer simulations, MIT researchers have developed a concept for a soft-bodied robot that can turn rigid on demand. The approach could enable a new generation of robots that combine the strength and precision of rigid robots with the fluidity and safety of soft ones.

"This is the first step in trying to see if we can get the best of both worlds," says James Bern, the paper's lead author and a postdoc in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Bern will present the research at the IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics next month. Bern's advisor, Daniela Rus, who is the CSAIL director and the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, is the paper's other author.

Roboticists have experimented with myriad mechanisms to operate soft robots, including inflating balloon-like chambers in a robot's arm or grabbing objects with vacuum-sealed coffee grounds. However, a key unsolved challenge for soft robotics is control -- how to drive the robot's actuators in order to achieve a given goal.

Until recently, most soft robots were controlled manually, but in 2017 Bern and his colleagues proposed that an algorithm could take the reigns. Using a simulation to help control a cable-driven soft robot, they picked a target position for the robot and had a computer figure out how much to pull on each of the cables in order to get there. A similar sequence happens in our bodies each time we reach for something: A target position for our hand is translated into contractions of the muscles in our arm.

Now, Bern and his colleagues are using similar techniques to ask a question that goes beyond the robot's movement: "If I pull the cables in just the right way, can I get the robot to act stiff?" Bern says he can -- at least in a computer simulation -- thanks to inspiration from the human arm. While contracting the biceps alone can bend your elbow to a certain degree, contracting the biceps and triceps simultaneously can lock your arm rigidly in that position. Put simply, "you can get stiffness by pulling on both sides of something," says Bern. So, he applied the same principle to his robots.

The researchers' paper lays out a way to simultaneously control the position and stiffness of a cable-driven soft robot. The method takes advantage of the robots' multiple cables -- using some to twist and turn the body, while using others to counterbalance each other to tweak the robot's rigidity. Bern emphasizes that the advance isn't a revolution in mechanical engineering, but rather a new twist on controlling cable-driven soft robots.

"This is an intuitive way of expanding how you can control a soft robot," he says. "It's just encoding that idea [of on-demand rigidity] into something a computer can work with." Bern hopes his roadmap will one day allow users to control a robot's rigidity as easily as its motion.

On the computer, Bern used his roadmap to simulate movement and rigidity adjustment in robots of various shapes. He tested how well the robots, when stiffened, could resist displacement when pushed. Generally, the robots remained rigid as intended, though they were not equally resistant from all angles.

Bern is building a prototype robot to test out his rigidity-on-demand control system. But he hopes to one day take the technology out of the lab. "Interacting with humans is definitely a vision for soft robotics," he says. Bern points to potential applications in caring for human patients, where a robot's softness could enhance safety, while its ability to become rigid could allow for lifting when necessary.

"The core message is to make it easy to control robots' stiffness," says Bern. "Let's start making soft robots that are safe but can also act rigid on demand, and expand the spectrum of tasks robots can perform."

Researchers of the Center for Photonics and Two-Dimensional Materials at MIPT, together with their colleagues from Spain, Great Britain, Sweden, and Singapore, including co-creator of the world's first 2D material and Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov, have measured giant optical anisotropy in layered molybdenum disulfide crystals for the first time. The scientists suggest that such transition metal dichalcogenide crystals will replace silicon in photonics. Birefringence with a giant difference in refractive indices, characteristic of these substances, will make it possible to develop faster yet tiny optical devices. The work is published in the journal Nature Communications.

The Scandinavian Vikings were the first, among others, to observe polarizing effects in optics. They discovered that objects appeared doubled when viewed through Iceland spar (clear calcite). That phenomenon was later called birefringence. The effect is due to the asymmetrical arrangement of atoms in some materials. As a result, a light beam refracts differently in the material,depending on the direction in which it propagates, splitting into two linearly polarized beams (the ordinary and extraordinary) and creating a doubled image.

It turns out that the phenomenon of birefringence is very practical. For example, the Vikings used double refraction of some crystals for navigation. Present-day liquid crystal monitors use the birefringence effect in liquid crystals to create images. The phenomenon is also used to build polarizers, wave plates, and other optical components. It is desirable that the refractive indices of ordinary and extraordinary beams differ as much as possible - then the desired effect can be achieved when light passes through a thinner plate, thus helping reduce the size of the device, and in some applications, increase its speed. Researchers have recently demonstrated the possibility of building ultra-compact waveguides with anisotropic materials to reach and even overcome the diffraction limit. The effect requires materials with a birefringence value greater than 1. So far, the BaTiS3 perovskite layered crystals and the hexagonal boron nitride h-BN have held the record for birefringence (0.8). The desire to make modern optics more and more compact has stimulated the search for natural materials with huge optical anisotropy greater than 1. Transition metal dichalcogenides are extremely promising in this respect. These compounds based on sulfur, selenium, tellurium, and 3d-elements of the Mendeleev's Periodic Table have a layered structure. For example, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) consists of alternating layers rotated with respect to each other by 1800 and held together by weak van der Waals forces (Figure 1).

"From the task of measuring the optical properties of molybdenum disulfide, we have arrived at a completely different problem - namely, to study anisotropy and find promising applications of the anisotropy of such crystals in photonics," Georgy Ermolaev, Ph.D. student at MIPT and first author of the study, explains the authors' motivation. This anisotropic structure could not but affect the material's optical properties. This fact was known already in the second half of the twentieth century. However, quantitative measurements of the anisotropy were non-existent. That was due, among other things, to considerable experimental difficulties. To overcome them, the researchers combined methods of near and far electric fields. In other words, in addition to irradiating the material at different angles and detecting the signal, the authors studied the propagation of waveguide modes in the material. This approach enabled them to unambiguously determine the birefringence of the material, which is 1.5 in the near-infrared and up to 3 times in the visible range. These values are several times greater than those of previous record-breakers.

"We used a combination of techniques - spectral ellipsometry and near-field optical microscopy and verified our data with numerical calculations. The work required the efforts of a large number of scientists from different scientific teams in different countries and with different competencies. For all of us, this work was the beginning of large-scale research on anisotropic transition metal dichalcogenides nanophotonics," commented Aleksey Arsenin, a leading researcher at MIPT.

The data obtained were compared with quantum calculations, which, to the researchers' surprise, produced exactly the same result, thus confirming the correctness of the constructed quantum mechanical model of layered materials and suggesting that the theory and conclusions published in the article are applicable to the entire class of transition metal dichalcogenides.

The researchers have completely rediscovered for the world a class of materials with enormous optical anisotropy. The discovery offers an additional degree of freedom in the development of compact photonic devices and. For example, it makes it possible to reach the diffraction limit in optics for wave-guiding systems with characteristic dimensions of about 100 nanometers.

The work was led by Professor Valentyn Volkov. He moved from the University of Southern Denmark to MIPT in September 2019 to head the Center for Photonics and Two-Dimensional Materials. "Whereas previously we were limited to changes in geometry and effective refractive index to create new optical circuits and devices, giant anisotropy provides an additional degree of freedom to manipulate light," says Volkov. - Unexpectedly, we found out that naturally anisotropic materials enable us to build compact waveguides literally on the edge of the diffraction limit. It gives us an opportunity to compete with silicon photonics. Now we can safely not only talk about post-silicon photonics but also implement it.

In a potential boost for quantum computing and communication, a European research collaboration reported a new method of controlling and manipulating single photons without generating heat. The solution makes it possible to integrate optical switches and single-photon detectors in a single chip.

Publishing in Nature Communications, the team reported to have developed an optical switch that is reconfigured with microscopic mechanical movement rather than heat, making the switch compatible with heat-sensitive single-photon detectors.

Optical switches in use today work by locally heating light guides inside a semiconductor chip. "This approach does not work for quantum optics," says co-author Samuel Gyger, a PhD student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

"Because we want to detect every single photon, we use quantum detectors that work by measuring the heat a single photon generates when absorbed by a superconducting material," Gyger says. "If we use traditional switches, our detectors will be flooded by heat, and thus not work at all."

The new method enables control of single photons without the disadvantage of heating up a semiconductor chip and thereby rendering single-photon detectors useless, says Carlos Errando Herranz, who conceived the research idea and led the work at KTH as part of the European Quantum Flagship project, S2QUIP.

Using microelectromechanical (MEMS) actuation, the solution enables optical switching and photon detection on a single semiconductor chip while maintaining the cold temperatures required by single-photon detectors.

"Our technology will help to connect all building blocks required for integrated optical circuits for quantum technologies," Errando Herranz says.

"Quantum technologies will enable secure message encryption and methods of computation that solve problems today's computers cannot," he says. "And they will provide simulation tools that enable us to understand fundamental laws of nature, which can lead to new materials and medicines."

The group will further develop the technology to make it compatible with typical electronics, which will involve reducing the voltages used in the experimental setup.

Errando Herranz says that the group aims to integrate the fabrication process in semiconductor foundries that already fabricate on-chip optics - a necessary step in order to make quantum optic circuits large enough to fulfill some of the promises of quantum technologies.

Just as James Cameron's Terminator-800 was able to discriminate between "clothes, boots, and a motorcycle", machine-learning could identify different areas of interest on 2D materials.

The simple, automated optical identification of fundamentally different physical areas on these materials (eg, areas displaying doping, strain, and electronic disorder) could significantly accelerate the science of atomically-thin materials.

Atomically-thin (or 2D) layers of matter are a new, emerging class of materials that will serve as the basis for next-generation energy-efficient computing, optoelectronics and future smart-phones.

"Without any supervision, machine-learning algorithms were able to discriminate between differently perturbed areas on a 2D semiconducting material," explains lead author Dr Pavel Kolesnichenko. "This can lead to fast, machine-aided characterization of 2D materials in the future, accelerating application of these materials in next-generation low-energy smart-phones."

AUTOMATION OPENING UP THE FIELD OF ATOMICALLY-THIN MATERIALS

After the 2004 success of a single layer of pencil's graphite (graphene) as a wonder semi-metallic material with many peculiar properties, scientists around the world realized that other layered materials can also be thinned down to a single layer (a 'monolayer').

Since then, dozens of other monolayers have been obtained, including metals, semiconductors, insulators, and more-exotic quantum materials such as topological-insulators, superconductors and ferromagnets.

Having this monolayer-zoo at their disposal, materials scientists have used them like 'LEGO'-blocks: for example stacking them in many different combinations to construct next-generation transistors, batteries, memory cells and photodiodes.

All these devices, however, have been assembled manually and exist as one-off prototypes. There is still a long way towards their industrial-scale production and commercialisation.

Several factors contribute to the hindrance of the progress. First is the lack of full control over the fabrication of monolayer materials. In addition, current characterisation techniques are complicated and require the eye of an experienced researcher. Finally, due to the extreme thinness of the materials, the latter are extremely sensitive to various perturbations, many of which are introduced unintentionally. Understanding these perturbations is a non-trivial task, as they can have a combined effect and have to be disentangled.

Dr Pavel Kolesnichenko and Prof Jeffrey Davis (Swinburne University of Technology) realized that the ungrateful task of characterization of 2D materials could be accomplished by machines in a rapid and automated manner.

"In order to understand the impact of different perturbations and minimise or control their presence, it is important to be able to identify them and their spatial distribution rapidly and reliably," said Prof Davis, who is a chief investigator in ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET).

Working with FLEET colleague Prof Michael Fuhrer (Monash University), they applied unsupervised machine-learning algorithms to characterize the semiconducting monolayer of tungsten disulphide. The data was acquired by simple apparatus involving a microscope and a spectrometer. The learning algorithms then were able to discriminate between the areas on a monolayer flake affected by doping, strain, disorder, and the presence of additional layers.

This is the first time such a systematic disentanglement of these perturbations has been performed.

The task was accomplished by embedding the acquired data into an artificially constructed multi-dimensional parameter space. Learning algorithms were then allowed to find a way to visualize the data in comprehensible two dimensions and in the most representative way, where each perturbation formed its own data-cluster.

The team built on previous scientific results in the field including their previous publication, where they disentangled perturbations using correlated photoluminescence and absorption spectra.

"So many factors can affect optoelectronic properties of 2D materials, including the type of substrate, additional doping, strain, the presence of wrinkles, defects, and environmental molecules - you name it," said Dr Pavel Kolesnichenko (now a postdoc at Lund University). "Thus, moving to a multi-dimensional parametric space seemed to be a natural next step."

"We also hope the research will motivate scientists to apply similar ideas to other 2D materials and using other imaging modalities," says Pavel.

In the era of data-driven science and technology, the authors hope that their research will motivate the creation of a large labelled dataset, where labels (such as 'doping', 'strain', etc) would be assigned by experienced researchers. This dataset would be then used to train deep neural networks to characterize 2D materials in a fraction of a second. The researchers believe that their work will help to introduce standards for characterisation of monolayer matter, approaching the moment of large-scale use of low-energy smart-phones and computers in the future.

While consumers look out for the Dolphin Safe mark on seafood purchases, a major research stocktake of Australian-New Zealand waters gives new guidelines to managers of dolphin fisheries.

The extensive new genomic study of almost 500 common dolphins (Delphinus delphis), spanning multiple spatial areas of more than 1500 sq km from the southern and east coast of Australia to Tasmania and New Zealand, calls for greater collaboration between the two countries' conservation and fisheries plans.

Just published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the study of DNA diversity of several dolphin populations in Australia and NZ suggests connectivity between several populations of common dolphins across the Tasman Sea.

The common dolphins of the Pacific Ocean (eastern Australia and NZ) are highly differentiated at DNA level to those in the Indian Ocean (southern Australia), says the lead author Flinders University PhD Andrea Barceló.

"While this species is considered one of the most abundant dolphin species in temperate and subtropical waters in Australia and New Zealand, they also suffer from frequent interactions and also mortality in several fisheries," says Ms Barceló, from the Cetacean, Ecology, Behaviour and Evolution Lab (CEBEL) at Flinders University.

The results indicate that inter-jurisdictional collaboration is needed to mitigate fisheries interactions of common dolphins across multiple spatial scales in the Australasian region, the international research team concludes.

Marine scientists and experts from both countries supported the study including from the Flinders CEBEL and Molecular Ecology Lab, Massey University, National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd and MPI New Zealand.

Overall, the findings identified complex common dolphin population structure and connectivity across state and international jurisdictions, including migration and gene flow across the Tasman Sea.

"An understanding of population structure and connectivity at multiple spatial scales is required to assist wildlife conservation and management," says Flinders Associate Professor Luciana Möller.

"This is particularly critical for widely distributed and highly mobile marine mammals subject to fisheries by-catch.

"Information generated in this study will assist with the management of the dolphin-fishery interactions in the future," Associate Professor Möller says.

The findings are also important when considering future conservation policies of marine ecosystems given the increase in anthropogenic impacts and ongoing changes of Earth's climate, the paper concludes.

Wild pigs are often maligned as ecosystem destroyers, but a University of Queensland study has found they also cultivate biodiverse rainforests in their native habitats.

Dr Matthew Luskin has been researching the effect of native pigs in Malaysian rainforests and found their nests may be critical to maintaining diverse and balanced tree communities.

"We've shown that wild pigs can support higher diversity ecosystems and are not just nuisances and pests, thanks to a beneficial effect of their nesting practices," Dr Luskin said.

"Prior to giving birth, pigs build birthing nests made up of hundreds of tree seedlings, usually on flat, dry sites in the forest.

"As they build their nests, the pigs kill many of the dominant seedlings and inadvertently reduce the abundance of locally dominant tree species, but usually not rarer local species, supporting tree diversity."

Dr Luskin said wild pigs (Sus scrofa) descended from the same species of domestic pigs and both have generally been considered pests by farmers, land managers and conservationists.

"Their negative impacts on natural and cultivated ecosystems have been well documented - ranging from soil disturbances to attacking newborn livestock," he said.

This is the first study to link animals to this key mechanism for maintaining hyper-diverse rainforests.

The researchers tagged more than 30,000 tree seedlings in a Malaysian rainforest and were able to examine how tree diversity changed in the areas where pigs nested after recovering more than 1800 of those tree tags from inside more than 200 pig birthing nests.

"You could consider pigs 'accidental forest gardeners' that prune common seedlings and inadvertently maintain diversity," Dr Luskin said.

"In many regions, there's a focus on managing overabundant pig populations to limit their negative environmental impacts.

"But our results suggest there may be some positives to maintaining pigs in the ecosystem."

Dr Luskin said that as the fieldwork was conducted in Malaysia where pigs are native - the impacts of invasive pigs in Australia may not create similar effects.

"We're currently in the process of designing new research to study the same pig processes here in Queensland," he said.

"And we'll also be comparing our initial Malaysian results with conditions in a nearby Malaysian forest that is heavily hunted and where many native pigs have been killed.

"It's an intriguing insight, as pigs have become the most widespread large animal on earth, so documenting any new ecological impacts has massive repercussions globally."

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified a drug that works against depression by a completely different mechanism than existing treatments.

Their study showed that ezogabine (also known as retigabine), a drug that opens KCNQ2/3 type of potassium channels in the brain, is associated with significant improvements in depressive symptoms and anhedonia in patients with depression. Anhedonia is the reduced ability to experience pleasure or lack of reactivity to pleasurable stimuli; it is a core symptom of depression and associated with worse outcomes, poor response to antidepressant medication, and increased risk of suicide.

Ezogabine was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2011 as an anticonvulsant for epilepsy treatment but had not been previously studied in depression. The research results, published March 3 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, provide initial evidence in humans for the KCNQ2/3 channel as a new target for novel drug discovery for depression and anhedonia.

"Our study is the first randomized, placebo-controlled trial to show that a drug affecting this type of ion channel in the brain can improve depression and anhedonia in patients. Targeting this channel represents a completely different mechanism of action than any currently available antidepressant treatment," says James Murrough, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, and Neuroscience, Director of the Depression and Anxiety Center for Discovery and Treatment at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and senior author of the paper.

The new drug target, the KCNQ2/3 channel, is a member of a large family of ion channels referred to as the KCNQ (or Kv7) family that act as important controllers of brain cell excitability and function in the central nervous system. These channels affect brain cell function by controlling the flow of the electrical charge across the cell membrane in the form of potassium (K+) ions. Researchers at Mount Sinai, including study co-author Ming-Hu Han, PhD, Professor of Pharmacological Sciences, and Neuroscience, had previously conducted a series of studies in mice showing that changes in the KCNQ2/3 potassium channel play an important role in determining if the animals show depression and anhedonic-like behavior following chronic stress in an experimental model of depression. In particular, mice that appear to be resistant to developing depression in the face of stress show an increase in KCNQ2/3 channels in the brain.

"We viewed enhanced functioning of the KCNQ channel as a potential molecular mechanism of resilience to stress and depression," said Dr. Han, who also discovered that if he gave a drug that could increase the activity of this channel, such as ezogabine, to mice that had become depressed in the stress model, the mice no longer showed the depression and anhedonic behaviors; in other words, the drug acted as an antidepressant.

The current study was a two-site, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled proof of concept clinical trial designed as a preliminary test of the hypothesis that increasing KCNQ2/3 channel activity in the brain is a viable new approach for the treatment of depression. Forty-five adult patients diagnosed with a depressive disorder were assigned to a five-week treatment period with daily dosing of either ezogabine or matching placebo. All participants underwent clinical evaluations and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a reward task at baseline and at the end of the treatment period. Compared to patients treated with placebo, those treated with ezogabine showed a significant and large reduction in several key measures of depression severity, anhedonia, and overall illness severity. For example, significant improvements following treatment with ezogabine compared to placebo was observed using the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self Report (QIDS-SR), the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS), and the Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS)-Anticipatory Subscale. The ezogabine group showed also a trend towards an increase in response to reward anticipation in the brain compared to placebo although this effect did not reach statistical significance.

"The fundamental insight by Dr. Han's group that a drug that essentially mimicked a mechanism of stress resilience in the brain could represent a whole new approach to the treatment of depression was very exciting to us," said Dr. Murrough.

In collaboration with Dr. Han, Dr. Murrough carried out a series of studies in patients with depression to begin to test if the observations in mice could be translated to humans. An initial open-label (no placebo) study in patients with depression led by Dr. Murrough provided initial evidence that ezogabine could improve symptoms of depression and anhedonia in a manner that was associated with changes in brain function.

"I think it's fair to say that most of us on the study team were quite surprised at the large size of the beneficial effect of ezogabine on clinical symptoms across multiple measures related to depression. We are greatly encouraged by these findings and the hope they offer for the prospect of developing novel, effective treatments for depression and related disorders. New treatments are urgently needed given that more than one-third of people suffering from depression are inadequately treated with currently approved therapeutics."

Individuals with cancer face a higher risk of suicide than people in the general population, but little is known about the characteristics of patients with cancer who have died by suicide. A new study published in Psycho-Oncology compared the characteristics of suicide cases with and without cancer.

Among 14,446 suicide cases between 2003 and 2017 in Hong Kong, 10% had a history of cancer. Compared with non-cancer cases, patients with cancer were generally older and less likely to live alone; more likely to use violent methods; less likely to have histories of physical and psychiatric problems; and more likely to communicate about their suicidal intent before death.

"Patients with cancer suffer from more than physical pain--we should also care about their mental and social well-being. It is crucial to advocate for suicide prevention to their caregivers and healthcare professionals during the treatment process," said senior author Paul S.F. Yip, PhD, of The University of Hong Kong.

The impact of eating disorders in the United States was nearly $400 billion in 2018-19 when considering both economic costs and reduced wellbeing, according to a study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Investigators estimated that the total economic cost associated with eating disorders in 2018-19 was $64.7billion, equivalent to $11,808 per affected person, and the substantial reduction in wellbeing associated with eating disorders was valued at $326.5 billion.

"Our study lays bare the devastating economic impact that eating disorders have in the United States, a country where the majority of people affected suffer alone and never receive appropriate treatment because of barriers to healthcare and lack of training for healthcare providers," said co-author S. Bryn Austin, ScD, director of STRIPED (Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders) and a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Boston Children's Hospital. "With our study, we now have the critical data we need to begin to estimate the cost-effectiveness, improved quality of life, and, most importantly, lives to be saved by scaling up effective prevention, early detection, and treatment interventions for eating disorders."

A seven-year study of California's soupfin sharks sheds light on their migration and reproductive cycles, laying the groundwork for potential management strategies amid conservation concerns. The findings were published March 3 in the Journal of Applied Ecology by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the University of San Diego (USD).

Analyzing the tracking data from 34 female soupfin sharks (Galeorhinus galeus) tagged with acoustic transmitters, Scripps Oceanography researcher and USD professor Andrew Nosal discovered these sharks exhibit a triennial migratory cycle, returning to the tagging site off La Jolla, Calif. every three years.

This is the first conclusive evidence in any animal of triennial philopatry, a term meaning 'home-loving,' referring to the periodic return of an animal to the same location.

"During the first three years of tagging, none of the sharks returned to La Jolla after leaving," said Nosal. "We figured the sharks were simply wide-ranging and did not exhibit philopatry. Then, in the fourth year, we detected sharks tagged in the first year, and in the fifth year detected sharks tagged in the second year. This indicated a three-year cycle of migration and philopatry, which coincides with their three-year reproductive cycle."

In sharks, the cycle of philopatry is typically linked to that species' reproductive cycle. For instance, species whose females give birth every two years often exhibit biennial philopatry, returning to the same preferred feeding, nursery, or pupping grounds every two years. In species with annual reproductive cycles, females usually exhibit annual philopatry. Nosal's previous research on female leopard sharks, guitarfish, and bat rays revealed annual philopatry to the warm waters off La Jolla, consistent with those species' annual reproductive cycles.

Nosal and his colleagues tagged these soupfin sharks over five summers (2013 to 2017) off La Jolla, San Diego, where the sharks are commonly seen congregating in large numbers in the warm shallows. Using field ultrasound examinations, Nosal confirmed these sharks were pregnant females, likely using the warm water to incubate their developing embryos, as hypothesized for other shark and ray species. The team tracked the sharks' movements using a large coastal array of more than 300 underwater acoustic receivers positioned along the U.S. West Coast. Most sharks left La Jolla in the fall or winter after tagging, spending the next two years between the Northern Channel Islands and San Francisco Bay, with a few travelling as far as the Pacific Northwest. In these areas, Nosal believes the sharks give birth, feed, and mate, before returning to La Jolla, where they ovulate and undergo gestation in the warmer waters. One individual even completed two three-year cycles after being tagged in 2014, returning to La Jolla in 2017 and 2020.

Of the sharks tagged, at least 15 percent were captured by artisanal gillnet fishers in Mexico. Last year, soupfin sharks were elevated to critically endangered status globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), due to heavy fishing pressure and steep population declines worldwide. In the eastern North Pacific, the soupfin population was hit hard by a fishery boom in the 1930s and 1940s, which targeted the sharks for their meat, fins, and livers, which are rich in vitamin A. With the advent of synthetic vitamin A, this fishery lost steam and the population is believed to have partially recovered in the decades since. Additionally, soupfin sharks were listed on Appendix II of the United Nations Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) in 2020. Nosal hopes his research, combined with these recent uplistings, leads to improved monitoring and cooperative international management of the Eastern North Pacific soupfin shark population.

"Currently, soupfin sharks are not actively managed in U.S. waters and there has been no stock assessment, unlike in other countries," Nosal said. "Given the recent CMS listing and IUCN status elevation to Critically Endangered globally, as well as the highly migratory behavior we report along the U.S. West Coast, the current management scheme should be revisited by the U.S. Pacific Fishery Management Council."

Soupfin sharks, also known as tope and school sharks, are found worldwide in temperate coastal waters, growing to a length of over six feet and feeding mainly on fish and invertebrates. There are five main populations: off Australia and New Zealand, the Eastern North Pacific, Southwest Atlantic, Europe, and Southern Africa.

Nosal is hopeful that this research may inform any future management strategies, particularly in the U.S.

"Suppose managers are monitoring female soupfin shark abundance at some location, such as La Jolla. High shark abundance three years in a row may suggest a stable population, but, given the triennial migration cycle, these may actually be three different breeding cohorts within the population." he said. "Managers could only compare apples to apples at this location every three years to track population trends."

Nosal suspects the other populations of soupfin sharks also demonstrate triennial philopatry, but future long-term tracking studies would be needed to confirm this. These studies, he stresses, are only possible through strong collaborations among scientists and their institutions.

"I only maintain a handful of acoustic receivers off La Jolla," he said. "The rest of the acoustic receivers that detected tagged soupfin sharks are managed by other researchers along the coast. This study would not have been possible without strong collaborations among scientists and their willingness to share detection data recorded by their receivers."

This study also underscores the importance of long-term animal tracking studies. For example, other shark species, such as tiger sharks, also give birth every three years. Future studies like this one could reveal triennial cycles of migration and philopatry similar to soupfin sharks.

SAN RAMON, Calif., March 2, 2021--A newly-published work highlights the long-term ocular health of children wearing daily disposable soft contact lenses and reports minimal impact on physiology over six years.[1] Its results affirm that such lenses are an option for children as young as eight years old. Ocular Health of Children Wearing Daily Disposable Contact Lenses Over a 6-Year Period (Woods J, et al) adds to the growing body of evidence in support of contact lens wear in children for myopia control.

The paper has been accepted by Contact Lens and Anterior Eye, the peer review journal of the British Contact Lens Association. It is immediately available at no charge via Open Access.

Investigators followed 144 children as part of a multi-site, randomized, controlled clinical trial for CooperVision's MiSight® 1 day contact lenses, which are currently available in 26 countries with more expected this year.

"Ultimately, our work suggests that placing age-appropriate children in daily disposable contact lenses is a successful way to correct their vision, in addition to the myopia control benefits of MiSight® 1 day .[2] This should provide eye care professionals and parents even more assurance when considering myopia control options," said Jill Woods, MSc, MCOptom, FAAO, FBCLA, Head of Clinical Research for the Centre for Ocular Research & Education (CORE). She is the paper's lead author and an investigator for the MiSight® 1 day clinical trial.

Across the entire study period, there were no contact lens-related serious adverse events, and the low incidence rate of corneal infiltrative events were the equivalent of 6.1 per 1,000 wearing years, which is similar to CIE rates in adults wearing 1-day lenses. Ocular health, as determined by biomicroscopy after six years of full-time wear (representing more than 5,000 aggregate measurements of each variable, assessed at six-month intervals) was similar to baseline observations prior to commencing lens use. The paper also discusses the many factors affecting contact lens wearing success, including lens fit, lens material and surface, and patient habits.

Based on a comprehensive literature review, this study is the longest ever to specifically report on physiological response to daily disposable soft contact lens wear in young children and adolescents.

It is the latest in a series of research initiatives sponsored by CooperVision that are adding to the evidence base for myopia management and control. These include the newly-available ReCSS retrospective study which showed very low complication rates of children who wear soft contact lenses.[3]

Sesame seed oil, used by many for its nutty aroma and high burn-point, is made by extracting the fatty oils from sesame seeds, with the empty shells thrown out as waste. In a literal instantiation of the age-old adage "one man's trash is another man's treasure", researchers discovered that a chemical called sesaminol, abundant in this waste, has protective effects against Parkinson's disease.

"Currently there is no preventive medicine for Parkinson's disease", states OCU Associate Professor Akiko Kojima-Yuasa, "we only have coping treatments". Associate Professor Kojima-Yuasa led her research group through a series of experiments to understand the effects of sesaminol on in vitro and in vivo Parkinson's disease models.

Parkinson's disease is caused when certain neurons in the brain involved with movement break down or die due in part to a situation called oxidative stress - neurons in the brain come under extreme pressure from an imbalance between antioxidants and reactive oxygen species (ROS). The team found in cell-based in vitro experiments that sesaminol protected against neuronal damage by promoting the translocation of Nrf2, a protein involved in the response to oxidative stress, and by reducing the production of intracellular ROS.

In vivo experiments brought Associate Professor Kojima-Yuasa's team equally promising results. The impairment of movement due to Parkinson's disease is the result of damaged neurons producing less dopamine than is naturally needed. The team showed that mice with Parkinson's disease models show this lack of dopamine production. However, after feeding the mice a diet containing sesaminol for 36 days, the research team saw an increase in dopamine levels. Alongside this, a rotarod performance test revealed a significant increase in motor performance and intestinal motor function.

With the first-ever medicine for Parkinson's disease potentially being the naturally occurring food ingredient sesaminol, and this ingredient being found in the naturally occurring waste of the sesame seed industry, Associate Professor Kojima-Yuasa and her team are ready to take their work to the clinical trial phase and connect the consumption/production chain in a way that, as she puts it, "prevents diseases with natural foods to greatly promote societal health."