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The development of small hydropower dams is widespread throughout Brazil and elsewhere in the world, vastly overshadowing large hydropower projects. The proliferation of these smaller dams is a response to growing energy and security needs. Their expansion, however, threatens many of the remaining free-flowing rivers and biodiverse tropical regions of the world -- interrupting the migrations of freshwater fishes, on which millions of peoples' livelihoods depend.

A new University of Washington paper published Jan. 11 in Nature Sustainability quantifies these tradeoffs between hydroelectric generation capacity and the impacts on river connectivity for thousands of current and projected future dams across Brazil. The findings confirm that small hydropower plants are far more responsible for river fragmentation than their larger counterparts due to their prevalence and distribution.

"The cumulative impacts of many small hydropower dams have long been ignored; instead, focus has been on them in isolation, resulting in claims that their impacts are small," said co-author Julian Olden, a UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.

This study was led by Thiago Couto, a recent doctoral graduate in the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Florida International University.

Dams constrain the movement of migratory fish along river networks and isolate critical habitats, such as spawning and feeding grounds, which may contribute to local extinctions, population declines and collapses of fishery stocks. This makes migratory fish species some of the most vulnerable organisms to hydropower development in the tropics.

The authors emphasize that many of the migratory fish species impacted by fragmentation are of high ecological and socioeconomic importance, and that some communities may feel the impacts more than others. For example, some small hydropower dams have been linked to the decline of fish stocks that are relied on heavily by Brazil's Indigenous groups, because fish are no longer reliably migrating through their historic range.

Another concern cited by the authors is that small hydropower dams greatly outnumber large hydropower dams, but their combined energy output is much less. In Brazil, small hydropower plants only account for only 7% of total generation capacity even though they represent more than 85% of hydropower plants in the country.

The collective impacts of Brazil's rapidly growing small hydropower development on river fragmentation and migratory fish species is extensive, and shows no signs of lessening as the planned construction of new dams continue, the study explains. It is projected that river fragmentation will increase by 21% in the future, and two-thirds of the 191 migratory species assessed in the study occupy river basins that will experience greater connectivity losses. The authors advocate for improved strategic planning of hydropower development with environmentally informed criteria to minimize the potential adverse ecological effects.

"We were motivated by the hope that society could be smarter about new dam constructions in the future," said Olden. "The study demonstrates that with careful planning, Brazil can meet future energy production needs with only modest impacts on river fragmentation and migratory fishes."

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A new study led by a University at Buffalo researcher has identified how specific communication among different brain regions, known as brain connectivity, can serve as a biomarker for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The research relied on a deep architecture using machine-learning classifiers to identify with 99% accuracy those adults who had received a childhood diagnosis of ADHD many years earlier.

"This suggests that brain connectivity is a stable biomarker for ADHD, at least into childhood, even when an individual's behavior had become more typical, perhaps by adapting different strategies that obscure the underlying disorder," said Chris McNorgan, an assistant professor of psychology in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, and the study's lead author.

The findings, published in the journal Frontiers in Physiology, have implications for not only detecting ADHD, a common but diagnostically slippery disorder that's difficult to identify, but can also help clinicians target treatments by understanding where patients sit on a broad-spanning continuum.

"Because certain pharmaceuticals react with certain pathways, understanding the different types of ADHD can help inform decisions about one medication versus others," said McNorgan, an expert in neuroimaging and computational modeling.

Attention deficit disorder is the most commonly diagnosed psychological disorder among school-aged children, but multiple subtypes complicate a clinical definition of ADHD.

A clinical diagnosis of ADHD in a patient can change when that same patient returns for a subsequent evaluation.

"A patient may be exhibiting behavioral symptoms consistent with ADHD one day, but even days later, might not present those symptoms, or to the same degree," said McNorgan. "It could just be the difference between a good day and a bad day.

"But the brain connectivity signature of ADHD appears to be more stable. We don't see the diagnostic flip-flop."

The multidisciplinary research team of UB undergraduate research volunteers Cary Judson from the Department of Psychology and Dakota Handzlik in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and John G. Holden, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Cincinnati, used archival fMRI data from 80 adult participants who were diagnosed with ADHD as children.

Machine learning classifiers were then applied to four snapshots of activity during a task designed to test the subject's ability to inhibit an automatic response.

Focused analysis of individual runs achieved 91% percent diagnostic accuracy, while the collective analysis came close to 99%.

"It's by far the highest accuracy rate I've seen reported anywhere - it is leagues beyond anything that has come before it, and well beyond anything that has been achieved with a behavioral assessment," said McNorgan. "Many factors likely contributed towards our superior classification performance."

Previous research suggesting a relationship between brain connectivity and ADHD used direct linear classification. This research looks at relationships between something and what that something is predicting, such as coffee and performance.

For many ranges, direct linear classification is effective, but the relationship between coffee and performance, like behavioral symptoms and ADHD, is not linear. One or two cups of coffee might increase performance, but at some point, the caffeine might hurt performance. Nonlinear relationships exist when you can have "too little or too much of a good thing," according to McNorgan.

Deep learning networks are well-suited for detecting conditional relationships, which are nonlinear. In the case of the current study, ADHD was predicted from the patterns of communication between groups of brain areas, say, A, B and C. If regions A and B were highly connected, that could be predictive of ADHD, but not if these regions were also highly connected to region C. These sorts of relationships are problematic for the most commonly-used techniques, but not for deep-learning classifiers.

McNorgan's model goes further by also differentiating individuals with ADHD that have typical or atypical performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). The IGT is a behavioral paradigm similar to a casino card game that presents both high- and low-risk options, and is commonly used to study and diagnose ADHD.

Traditional techniques can't make more than one classification at a time. McNorgan's approach elegantly ties ADHD diagnosis to performance on the IGT to provide a potential bridge that explains why both are related to the brain's wiring.

Also, even though people with ADHD tend to make riskier choices in the IGT, it's not a universal determinant. Some people without ADHD also make riskier choices than others.

"This approach by differentiating both of these dimensions provides a mechanism for sub-classifying people with ADHD in ways that can allow for targeted treatments," said McNorgan. "We can see where people are on the continuum."

Because different brain networks are implicated in people at either ends of the continuum, this method opens the door for developing therapies that focus on specific brain networks, he added.

Widespread use of antibiotics in human healthcare and livestock husbandry has led to trace amounts of the drugs ending up in food products. Long-term consumption could cause health problems, but it's been difficult to analyze more than a few antibiotics at a time because they have different chemical properties. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry have developed a method to simultaneously measure 77 antibiotics in a variety of foods.

Antibiotics can be present at trace amounts in meat, eggs and milk if the animals aren't withdrawn from the drugs for a sufficient period of time before the products are collected. Also, antibiotics can accumulate in cereals, vegetables and fruits from manure fertilizer or treated wastewater applied to crops. Consuming these foods over a long period of time could lead to increased antibiotic resistance of bacterial pathogens or to an imbalance in the gut microbiome. However, most previous monitoring methods for antibiotics in foods have been limited to a few compounds at a time, usually within a single class of antibiotics with similar structures and chemical properties. Other methods have analyzed multiple antibiotics in only a single food type, such as eggs or milk. Yujie Ben and colleagues wanted to develop a time- and cost-effective method that could detect a wide range of antibiotics in different types of foods.

The researchers added trace amounts of 81 antibiotics from seven categories to vegetable samples and tested 20 different methods for extracting the drugs from the food. Only one extraction process, which involved treating freeze-dried, homogenized food samples with an acidified acetonitrile solution and a mixture of magnesium sulfate and sodium acetate, allowed the researchers to isolate 77 of the antibiotics. After establishing that their method was sensitive and accurate with spiked antibiotics in several foods, the team applied it to store-bought samples of wheat flour, mutton, eggs, milk, cabbage and bananas, detecting a total of 10 antibiotics. One of them, roxithromycin, was detected at trace amounts in all six food types. The new method should help with understanding, monitoring and regulating antibiotic levels in foods, the researchers say.

DALLAS, Jan. 27, 2021 -- Heart disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide, according to the American Heart Association's Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics -- 2021 Update, published today in the Association's flagship journal Circulation, and experts warn that the broad influence of the COVID-19 pandemic will likely continue to extend that ranking for years to come.

Globally, nearly 18.6 million people died of cardiovascular disease in 2019, the latest year for which worldwide statistics are calculated. That reflects a 17.1% increase over the past decade. There were more than 523.2 million cases of cardiovascular disease in 2019, an increase of 26.6% compared with 2010.

Experts predict the global burden of cardiovascular disease will grow exponentially over the next few years as the long-term effects of the current COVID-19 pandemic evolve.

"COVID-19 has taken a huge toll on human life worldwide and is on track to become one of the top three to five causes of death in 2020. But its influence will directly and indirectly impact rates of cardiovascular disease prevalence and deaths for years to come," said Salim S. Virani, M.D., Ph.D., FAHA, chair of the writing committee for the 2021 Statistical Update and an associate professor in cardiology and cardiovascular research sections at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. "Research is showing that the unique coronavirus can cause damage to the heart. Importantly, we also know people have delayed getting care for heart attacks and strokes, which can result in poorer outcomes."

But Virani said an even more critical issue will be the cardiovascular health risks that are exacerbated by the poor lifestyle behaviors that have been prevalent throughout the pandemic.

"The extraordinary circumstances of dealing with COVID-19 have changed the way we live, including adopting unhealthy behaviors that are known to increase the risk of heart disease and stroke," Virani said. "Unhealthy eating habits, increased consumption of alcohol, lack of physical activity and the mental toll of quarantine isolation and even fear of contracting the virus all can adversely impact a person's risk for cardiovascular health. We'll need to watch and address these trends as the full ramifications will likely be felt for many years to come."

Based on the 2021 Statistical Update, which furnished U.S. mortality data from 2018, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the U.S. In the year 2020, approximately 360,000 lives were lost to COVID-19 in the U.S.; the release of data regarding all causes of death in the coming years will enable rank comparison of disease-specific causes of mortality that include COVID-19.

Tracking such trends is one of the reasons the American Heart Association publishes the definitive statistical update annually, providing a comprehensive resource of the most current data, relevant scientific findings and assessment of the impact of cardiovascular disease nationally and globally. The annual update represents a compilation of the newest, most relevant statistics on heart disease, stroke and risk factors impacting cardiovascular health.

The U.S. data is gathered in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies, while the global trends are provided by the Global Burden of Disease Study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

New in this year's report is a chapter devoted to adverse pregnancy outcomes, which are known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease in mothers and their babies. Pregnancy complications including hypertensive disorders, gestational diabetes, preterm births and small for gestational age at birth deliveries occur in 10% to 20% of all pregnancies in the U.S. Cardiovascular deaths are the most common cause (26.5%) of maternal death in the U.S.

"We must address this issue to save the lives of mothers and to improve the health of their children at birth, but also over their lifetime," Virani said. "There can be long-term effects on offspring of women who suffer pregnancy-related complications. But we can also help impact the health of future generations because as we help women learn to reduce their cardiovascular risk, they're likely to adopt healthier lifestyles. In turn, they can influence the health behaviors of their families."

The annual report continues to track trends related to ideal cardiovascular health, social determinants of health, global cardiovascular health, cardiovascular health genetics and health care costs. Virani emphasized the importance of this surveillance as a critical resource for the lay public, policy makers, media professionals, clinicians, health care administrators, researchers, health advocates and others seeking the best available data on these factors and conditions.

(Boston)--When severely or chronically injured, the liver loses its ability to regenerate.

A new study led by researchers at the Center for Regenerative Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston Medical Center (BMC) now describes a safe new potential therapeutic tool for the recovery of liver function in chronic and acute liver diseases.

Researchers utilized the lipid nanoparticle-encapsulated messenger RNA (mRNA-LNP) currently used in COVID-19 vaccines, to deliver regenerative factors to injured livers in a timely, controlled fashion. "We found that this intervention successfully induces the rapid expansion of the functional cells of the liver, the hepatocytes, as well as harnesses recovery of liver function," explained Valerie Gouon-Evans, PhD, associate professor of medicine at BUSM.

Safety of mRNA-LNP has been validated in clinical trials for applications such as cancer immunotherapy and more recently the first approved COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

In the study, the researchers used two experimental models in which the liver was injured. The first group was injected with mRNA-LNP producing liver mitogens. The second group was injected with a control RNA-LNP that didn't produce any protein. The models that received the injection of mitogen mRNA-LNP cleared the liver damage more rapidly and efficiently than those injected with control RNA-LNP.

There are currently no FDA-approved drugs to treat chronic liver diseases. New strategies that will prevent progression of the liver disease before it reaches the irreversible stage of decompensated cirrhosis are desperately needed. "Administering liver mitogens via mRNA-LNP reverts steatosis (accumulation of fat in liver cells), one of the first phases of liver disease progression. Similarly acute liver injuries, such as acetaminophen overdose, are lacking efficient treatment in clinic. Here one injection of liver mitogen mRNA-LNP is sufficient to accelerate liver repair that may be vital to prevent liver failure in acetaminophen overdosed patients."

Given these experimental results, the researchers hope that the delivery of mitogens with mRNA-LNP could be potentially translated to the clinic to prevent progression of chronic liver diseases and even revert some of the features of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

The rapid development of two-dimensional quantum materials, such as twisted bilayer graphene, monolayer copper superconductors, and quantum spin Hall materials, has demonstrated both important scientific implications and promising application potential. To characterize the electronic structure of these materials/devices, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is commonly used to measure the energy and momentum of electrons photoemitted from samples illuminated by X-ray or vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light sources. Although the X-ray-based spatially resolved ARPES has the highest spatial resolution (~100 nm) benefitting from the relatively short wavelength, its energy resolution is typically mediocre (>10 meV), which makes it difficult to visualize the fine details of the electronic structure in many novel quantum materials. Complementary to X-ray light sources, VUV laser-based light sources can offer much better energy resolution (~0.2 meV), deeper depth of detection and lower cost (compared to synchrotron light sources). However, the longer wavelength of the VUV light source also deteriorates its spatial resolution (typically several micrometres to date), making it insufficient for characterizing small-size flake samples or spatially inhomogeneous (e.g., magnetic, electronic or composite domain) materials.

In a new paper published in Light Science & Application, Mao and his co-workers have developed a 177 nm VUV laser system for scanning photoemission microscopy with a focal spot of

Compared with the current DUV laser source with spatial resolution used for ARPES in the world, the 177 nm VUV laser source could help the ARPES measurement cover a larger momentum space and has the better energy resolution, but there are still many challenges and difficulties to make it have excellent spatial resolution:

"First, severe spherical aberration exists in a high-NA refraction lens. Second, only very limited materials can be used in optics for correcting the spherical aberration due to the strong absorption at VUV frequencies. Third, it is practically difficult to check the quality (collimation, uniformity and efficient diameter) of the incident beam and the alignment among optical elements, as the VUV beam is invisible and all optics have to be placed in vacuum or a sealed chamber filled with inert gas."

This VUV laser focusing system contains five functional parts: a 355 nm laser, a second-harmonic generation stage, a beam shaping stage, a polarization adjustment part and a focusing element of the flat lens.

"To avoid the spherical aberration, we introduce planar diffractive lenses that can realize tight focusing of light by fine tuning of the interference from multiple beams" they added.

"This VUV laser system has ultra-long focal length (~45 mm), sub-micron spatial resolution (~760 nm), ultra-high energy resolution (~0.3 meV) and ultra-high brightness (~355 MWm-2). It can be directly applied to scientific research instruments such as photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM), angle-resolved photoelectron spectrometer (ARPES) and deep ultraviolet laser Raman spectrometer. At present, this system has been connected with the ARPES at ShanghaiTech University revealing the fine energy band features of various new quantum materials such as quasi-one-dimensional topological superconductors TaSe3, magnetic topological insulators (MnBi2Te4)(Bi2Te3)m family, etc.. " the scientists summarized.

The overuse of antibiotics occurs due to the mistaken widespread belief that they are beneficial for a broad array of conditions and because many physicians are willing to prescribe antibiotics if patients ask for the medication, according to a Rutgers study.

The study, published in the journal BioEssays, reviewed more than 200 peer-reviewed studies to examine the causes behind antibiotic overuse, which can lead harmful bacteria to become drug-resistant and cause harmful effects on the microbiome, the collection of beneficial germs that live in and on our bodies.

Martin Blaser, director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers and lead author, said the global use of antibiotics between 2000 and 2015 increased 39 percent, with a 77 percent increase in low- and middle-income countries. He discusses the study's findings.

What health concerns result from the disruption of the microbiome by antibiotics?

In children, improper antibiotic use can alter the microbiome while their immunological, metabolic and neural systems are developing. Epidemiological studies associate antibiotic exposure with an increased risk of disease of allergic, metabolic and cognitive disorders that have grown more common in children during the antibiotic era.

In adults, there is increasing evidence that antibiotics may enhance risk for metabolic and neoplastic diseases, including diabetes, kidney stones and growths in the colon and rectum that can lead to cancer.

What are the trends you found in antibiotic use?

Studies in the United States, United Kingdom and China found numerous online pharmacies selling antibiotics without a prescription. This problem also is large in Iow- to middle-income countries, where 60 percent of antibiotics are sold without prescriptions, often by untrained medical practitioners.

Perhaps of special concern during the COVID-19 pandemic is the finding that telemedicine services are another potential source of questionable antibiotic sales in the United States. A recent analysis found that patients with acute respiratory infections were more often prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics if they had a tele-health doctor visit, compared to an in-person visit.

Worldwide, antibiotic use is highest in young children, especially in low-income areas. This is often in response to the fact that young children are prone to have four to six upper respiratory tract infections each year. Although most of these infections are treated by antibiotics, 80 percent are not caused by bacteria and would therefore derive no benefit from antibiotics.

Are some practitioners more likely to prescribe antibiotics?

Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that older physicians are more likely than their younger colleagues to prescribe antibiotics. For example, one study found that physicians over 30 were several times more likely to prescribe antibiotics for common respiratory conditions that do not necessarily require them. Another study found that physicians with over 25 years in practice were disproportionately likely to issue prescriptions of more than eight days.

What misinformation did you find among the public?

Many people believe that antibiotics are effective against bacterial and viral illnesses, lumping all types of pathogens together and adopting a "germs are germs" attitude. Others believe that taking antibiotics can't hurt. Across Europe, for example, 57 percent of people surveyed were unaware that antibiotics were ineffective against viruses, and 44 percent did not know that antibiotics have no effect against colds or influenza.

What other reasons did you find for inappropriate prescription of antibiotics?

Antibiotics are commonly used across the world to self-treat health problems for which they were never intended, such as in Nigeria, where women are increasingly using antibiotics to reduce menstrual cramps. In low- to middle-income countries, antibiotics are often seen as strong, magical medicines, capable of both curing and preventing a range of illness. In many countries people also take them to return to work or school when ill. One of the studies found that 63 percent of Chinese university students kept a personal antibiotic stock at home.

Parents may appeal for an antibiotic for their children so that they can go to work or for the children to return to school or daycare. A U.S. study found that 43 percent of parents of a child with cold symptoms believed that antibiotics were necessary.

In addition, some doctors are inclined to prescribe an antibiotic to maintain a good relationship with patients who expect to receive medication. Patients may not demand antibiotics outright, but rather infer their need for them by how they describe the severity of their illness or note that they worked in the past for a similar issue. People have become less willing to wait and let an illness run its course. The perception that there is a pill for ills of all kinds leads the public to demand immediate relief for symptoms from practitioners and to self-medicate.

Every time an antibiotic is given, money changes hands. This is especially a problem in low- and middle-income countries, where pharmacists are happy to dispense without a prescription to their customers. The rural health practitioners in China are paid every time they dispense an antibiotic as well. Such monetary incentives favor the wide use of antibiotics.

How can antibiotic overuse be addressed?

Clinicians need to be better educated about the long-term effects on the microbiome and learn about better ways to speak with their patients about antibiotic risks and benefits. They also need to improve their communication about the consequences of antibiotic treatments and identify antibiotic alternatives.

p>AUSTIN, Texas -- Trauma-focused psychotherapy is widely considered the best available treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, the ways in which this method affects the brain to promote recovery from PTSD are not well understood. In a new study published today in Biological Psychiatry, researchers used neuroimaging to examine how the brain areas responsible for generating emotional responses to threats are changed by psychotherapy.

"We know that psychotherapy works. But we don't have a lot of good data to explain how it works, how the brain is changed by going through this process," said Greg Fonzo, Ph.D., lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. "That's what we sought to find out."

Posttraumatic stress disorder may occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as war or combat, sexual assault, a natural disaster or terrorist act. Symptoms can include flashbacks, nightmares and severe anxiety, as well as uncontrollable thoughts about the event.

Trauma-focused psychotherapy is a treatment that helps people recover from a traumatic event, using techniques such as "in vivo exposure," which involves directly facing a feared object, situation or activity in real life, and "imaginal exposure," which involves facing the trauma memory. A person who is afraid of crowds, for example, may be repeatedly exposed to large gatherings.

"At first, that patient will obviously experience fear or whatever negative emotion is triggered by being in a crowd," said Fonzo, who also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Psychology at UT Austin. "But it's like looking at a fire from behind a window. It appears to be a dangerous situation, but the person is actually quite safe. After a while, the fire will burn out, and the person recognizes there was no actual danger. And so that process eventually promotes new learning in the brain."

Fonzo and his colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to identify how brain networks communicate with one another before and after treatment. Specifically, they measured the degree of communication or "traffic," known as functional connectivity, between areas of the brain responsible for emotion and regions of the cortex in charge of logic and thinking.

"What we discovered was a reduction in traffic between these brain regions among patients who had undergone trauma-focused psychotherapy," said Fonzo. "In fact, greater connectivity changes were associated with bigger symptom reductions. This restructuring of brain communication may be a unique signature of PTSD recovery."

Fonzo said these findings could change the way doctors treat people who suffer from PTSD.

"Now that we have a better understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying psychotherapy, we may be able to use this information to develop new and better treatments for people with PTSD," said Fonzo.

Children of all ages can completely bypass age verification measures to sign-up to the world's most popular social media apps including Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, Skype and Discord by simply lying about their age, researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software have discovered.

And even potential age verification solutions identified by the research team can be easily sidestepped by children, according to the team's most recent study: Digital Age of Consent and Age Verification: Can They Protect Children?

Lead researcher Lero's Dr Liliana Pasquale, assistant professor at University College Dublin's School of Computer Science, said children could easily bypass the mechanisms adopted by apps to verify their age.

"This results in children being exposed to privacy and safety threats such as cyberbullying, online grooming, or exposure to content that may be inappropriate for their age," she added.

The study which examined Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, HouseParty, Facebook, WhatsApp, Viber, Messenger, Skype, Discord apps scrutinised age verification procedures in April 2019 and repeated it in April 2020 ¬- it found all ten apps permitted users, regardless of age, to set up accounts if they first gave their age as 16.

Dr Pasquale said the widespread use of age of 13 as the minimum age for accessing social media services derives from the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), effective in the USA since 2000. Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires children below the age of digital consent (13-16) to have verifiable parental consent for the processing of their data.

EU member states are also free to set a different digital age of consent, between 13 and 16 years, leading to a range of age limits across Europe. For example, Ireland, France, Germany and The Netherlands have opted for 16, while Italy and Spain have set the age at 14; while the UK, Denmark, and Sweden have set the age at 13.

"Our study found that while some apps disabled registration if users input ages below 13, but if the age 16 is provided as input initially then none of the apps require a proof of age. Providing mechanisms that deter a user from installing an app on a device on which they have previously declared themselves to be underage is currently one of the most sensible solutions not to incentivise users to lie about their age," Dr Pasquale said.

The team looked at existing age recognition techniques using biometrics such as speech recognition and fingerprint characteristics as possible solutions to implement more robust age verification mechanisms. However, these were also found to have limitations with speech recognition, for example, easily bypassed by playing voice recordings.

Dr Pasquale said their study found existing data protection regulations to be ineffective.

"In reality, the application of substantial financial penalties was the main trigger for app providers to implement more effective age verification mechanisms. Based on our study and on our survey of biometrics-based age recognition techniques, we propose a number of recommendations to app providers and developers," she said.

Recommendations:

Clarify the minimum age and treatment of data:
Existing apps should ensure that a clear, concise and age-appropriate summary of the relevant parts of the app's ToU (terms of use) is displayed to users who sign-up and declare their age to be under 18.

Enable the most restrictive privacy settings:
Apps should apply the most restrictive privacy settings by default for any user that declares themselves to be under the age of 18. For example, photos, posts and messages should only be shared with "friends", location data should not be collected at all. It should also not be possible to override privacy settings without explicit parental consent.

Encourage users not to lie about their age:
Despite the presence of a minimum age requirement, many underage users continue to use social and communication apps. Users must be incentivised to be honest about their age, with minimal data collected. Providing mechanisms that deter a user from installing an app on a device on which they have previously declared themselves to be underage is currently the most sensible solution and the hardest to circumvent.

Implement Robust Age Verification Mechanisms:
Where a minimum age requirement is in place, it should be backed up by appropriate age verification mechanisms. Using age recognition techniques based on biometrics factors, such as facial features, may not be sufficient considering that these can be circumvented. Age verification should be an ongoing process that does not terminate after sign-up, to assess whether a user lied about his/her age at the moment of sign-up, to counteract evasion measures.

Harpy eagles are considered by many to be among the planet's most spectacular birds. They are also among its most elusive, generally avoiding areas disturbed by human activity - therefore already having vanished from portions of its range - and listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as being 'Near-Threatened'.

However, new research led by the University of Plymouth (UK) suggests estimates of the species' current distribution are potentially overestimating range size.

Using a combination of physical sightings and environmental data, they developed a spatial modelling framework which aims to estimate current and past distributions based on the birds' preferred habitat conditions.

The authors then used the model to estimate a current range size 11% smaller than that referenced by the IUCN, with high climatic moisture being the most important factor influencing distribution, followed by a minimum temperature of the warmest month of approximately 27°C.

Based on past and future climatic projections, the researchers showed that harpy eagle distribution will remain stable in the central Amazon, Guyana, eastern Colombia, and Panama, making these regions especially important for their conservation.

In order to ensure their future persistence, the authors suggest current and future conservation policies such as reducing deforestation and addressing issues of persecution should take such spatial models into account.

The research is published in the journal Ecology and Evolution, and involved an international collaboration of researchers from The Peregrine Fund (Ecuador, Panama, USA) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), based in Brazil.

Luke Sutton, a PhD student in the University of Plymouth's School of Biological and Marine Sciences and lead author on the research, said: "Harpy eagles are difficult to observe and live at low population densities, so there has been limited research into what environmental factors influence their range limits. Our study shows that predicted future climate stability will be in core areas with extensive lowland tropical forest habitat. That means habitat loss as a result of deforestation is the greatest threat they face, and conservation plans need to take all of that into account."

Senior author Dr Robert Puschendorf, Lecturer in Conservation Biology, added: "More than half of all global raptor species have declining populations. So understanding more about where they choose to live and why should be a critical factor when we are looking at how best to go about conserving raptor populations. The type of model we have presented here is lacking for many rare and threatened species, particularly in tropical regions, but can be a cost-effective and rapid way to direct conservation planning for threatened species."

Harpy eagles are among the world's largest and most powerful eagles and historically ranged across lowland tropical forests from Mexico in the north to Argentina in the south.

However, they became locally extinct in parts of Central America and Brazil during the 20th century. Currently there are multiple conservation programmes in place to better understand population dynamics and conserve rainforest habitat to help ensure its future survival.

Boulder, Colo., USA: Benthic plastic litter is a main source of pollutants in oceans, but how it disperses is largely unknown. This study by Guangfa Zhong and Xiaotong Peng, published today in Geology, presents novel findings on the distribution patterns and dispersion mechanisms of deep-sea plastic waste in a submarined canyon located in the northwestern South China Sea.

Evidence collected from a series of manned submersible dives indicate that the plastic litter items transported and deposited in the canyon are most likely controlled by turbidity currents. Here the plastic litter items are highly heterogeneously distributed: Up to 89% of them occur in a few scours of the canyon.

The plastic items are mostly accumulated in longitudinal litter piles of 2-61 m long, 0.5-8 m wide, and 0.1-1.2 m high on average (Figures 1 and 2). Plastic particles and fragments generally occurred on the upstream-facing sides of large boulders and other topographic obstacles, indicating obstruction during down-valley transportation (Figure 1). Furthermore, the litter piles were mostly distributed in the up-valley dipping slopes downstream of the scour centers (Figure 3), which is tentatively linked to the deceleration of turbidity currents after shedding down the steep upstream slopes of the scours and undergoing a hydraulic jump at the scour centers. This interpretation is supported by the sedimentological evidence from grain-size analysis of associated seabed sediment.

The results of this study lend support to the hypothesis of turbidity-current-controlled dispersion of plastic litter and bear implications on deep-sea environmental protection and surveillance. The focused and patterned distribution of benthic plastics in the canyon that can be reasonably explained by morphodynamic interactions sheds light on monitoring or even removal of deep-sea macro-plastic pollutants.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Institute for Applied Life Sciences (IALS) have developed a technique to replicate bone tissue complexity and bone remodeling processes. This breakthrough could help researchers further their study of bone biology and assist in improving development of drugs for osteoporosis.

Published in Science Advances, the researchers developed a new biomaterial they call demineralized bone paper. The team includes Jungwoo Lee, Yongkuk Park, Ryan Carpenter, chemical engineering; Eugene Cheong, biochemistry and microbiology; Jun-Goo Kwak, molecular and cellular biology graduate program; and Jae-Hyuck Shim of the UMass Medical School in Worcester.

The team developed a trabecular bone organoid model that reproduces essential extracellular complexity and cellular processes of trabecular bone cavities. Trabecular bone, or spongy bone, is a light, porous bone enclosing numerous large spaces that give a honeycombed or spongy appearance. Trabecular bones are the "shock absorbers" of the body, transferring mechanical loads from the articular surface to the cortical bone. These bones have a lower calcium content and more marrow content compared to cortical bone. Trabecular bone density decreases with aging.

"Bone is a multifunctional tissue not only maintaining mechanical stability, but also regulating blood-forming and blood mineral content," Lee says. "However, investigating bone-remodeling biology is challenging because this process occurs inside the bone cavity. Hard and opaque bone tissue is difficult to access, thus creating realistic bone tissue models outside of the body will advance our understanding of fundamental bone biology, as well as provide new opportunities to model disease progression and screening drug responses."

Bone remodeling is a lifelong process during which mature bone tissue is removed from the skeleton and new bone tissue is formed. These processes also control the replacement of bone after an injury and the micro-damage that occurs during normal daily activity. Bone development occurs in a layer-by-layer manner as first bone-forming cells deposit structural collagen that in turn mineralizes to become hard bone. This process is repeated to remodel and model bone tissue throughout life.

The UMass scientists took bovine bones from a local slaughterhouse, then cleaned and cut them into small chunks that they demineralized in a chemical process. To reproduce the bone- remodeling process, the team developed a novel biomaterial, demineralized bone paper, that mimics the dense structural matrix with thin sections of demineralized bovine compact bone. This material has a controlled thickness and surface area. It is mechanically durable and semitransparent, as well.

The demineralized bone paper supports the processes of osteoblasts and osteoclasts, which are cells that exclusively reside and function on the bone surface. Osteoclasts are responsible for aged bone resorption, and osteoblasts are responsible for new bone formation.

The bone paper serves as a functional template on which osteoblasts rapidly deposit structural minerals, guided by lamellar structure of the dense collagen, and form osteoid bone having a depth similar to that seen in a live organism. The material's semitransparency makes it possible to monitor ongoing cellular processes with fluorescent microscopy, and it is thin but durable enough to be handled easily. Bone paper can be produced in large quantities - the team was able to produce more than 5,000 pieces from one bovine femur.

Yongkuk Park, the first author, says the trabecular bone model could be humanized for translational research by replacing bovine bones. Humanized trabecular bone models could improve the predictive power of pre-clinical studies and shorten the screening period for osteoporosis drugs. It could also help researchers facilitate the future study of numerous aspects of bone biology.

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) results from a degeneration of the hematopoietic stem cells (leukemia stem cells), thereby leading to the uncontrolled formation of specific white blood cells, the so-called granulocytes. Research work at the Department of Medical Oncology at the Inselspital, Bern University Hospital and the University of Bern focused therefore on identifying the signaling pathways and control mechanisms of the leukemia stem cell. A promising approach is provided by working with MPR, an anti-emetic medication commonly used to treat nausea and vomiting.

Specific blocking of leukemia stem cell proliferation with metoclopramide

The exact role of the surface molecule CD93 (cluster of differentiation 93) in controlling the proliferation of leukemia stem cells was analyzed and documented, initially in animal experiments and subsequently in experiments with leukemia stem cells from patients. This revealed a distinct regulatory function of CD93 in leukemia stem cells. To begin with, the effect was demonstrated in vivo in animal experiments. It was further shown that the control function only applies to leukemia stem cells, not to normal hematopoietic stem cells. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the anti-emetic MPR interrupts the signaling pathway that stimulates cell proliferation of leukemia stem cells in vitro and also, in animal experiments, visibly improves survival with CML by blocking the proliferation of leukemia stem cells. This provides strong evidence that MPR may also show positive results in treating CML in humans.

Extensive research

The study presented in this publication involved exceptionally extensive research. This is also true with regard to the interdisciplinary teams participating from the Department of Medical Oncology, the Department for Biomedical Research, the Institute of Cell Biology and the Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Hematology at the Bern University Hospital and the University of Bern. Prof. Dr. sc. nat. Carsten Riether explains: "In order to develop a new, promising approach to combat CML, contributions from numerous disciplines were necessary and different research approaches had to be pursued. In a screening procedure, we elicited the candidate Metoclopramide and were subsequently able to demonstrate its effect on the CD93 signaling pathway in both in-vitro and in-vivo experiments." The research infrastructure in Bern is optimally designed for such major projects. The expertise in fundamental research at the Department for Biomedical Research (DBMR) and in clinical research at the University Hospital are closely linked and can rapidly produce sound results.

What are the next research activities?

The results have pinpointed CD93 as a specific regulator responsible for leukemia stem cell proliferation. This identifies a promising pathway to targeting leukemia stem cells. Further studies must now prove the clinical effect and relevance. Prof. Adrian Ochsenbein outlines the following picture: "Thanks to this pool of expertise, we were able to identify Metoclopramide as a promising candidate for CML therapy. And with the broad-based research infrastructure and our excellent national and international network, we are hopefully in a position to present clinical results within a reasonable timescale.

African trypanosomiasis (also known as sleeping sickness) is a disease transmitted by tsetse flies and is fatal to humans and other animals; however, there is currently no vaccine, this disease is mainly controlled by reducing insect populations and patient treatment. A study published in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Alvaro Acosta-Serrano at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and an international team of researchers suggests that the approved drug nitisinone could be repurposed to kill tsetse flies without harming important pollinator insects.

Currently, the most effective method of controlling the transmission of African trypanosomiasis is by employing insecticide-based vector control campaigns (traps, targets, ground and cattle spraying) as all tsetse control methods are directed against the adult fly. However, in addition to killing tsetse flies, neurotoxic insecticides can harm the environment by contaminating water sources and reducing populations of key insect pollinator species. The orphan drug nitisinone is a drug approved for the safe treatment of two rare human genetic diseases, hereditary tyrosinemia type 1 and alkaptonuria, but has not previously been used to control insect populations. To evaluate its efficacy in killing tsetse flies, researchers allowed the flies to feed on rats that had been treated orally with nitisinone. After feeding on nitisinone-treated rats, 90% of tsetse flies died within 26 hours.

The researchers then investigated the drug's impact on captive bumblebees using nitisinone-treated sugar water as their hydration source. Nitisinone was not toxic to bumblebees, as the bees who ingested the drug had a mortality rate similar to the control group that only received a sugar source.

According to the authors, "Our results provide evidence that nitisinone could be used as an eco-friendly synergistic strategy alongside current tsetse control practices to control trypanosomiasis."

While nitisinone appears to be effective in reducing the transmission of African trypanosomiasis, mass administration of nitisinone to humans and livestock may be less effective for controlling tsetse flies in areas where wildlife are the primary reservoir and human bites account for less than 20% of the flies' bloodmeals. This limitation suggests that nitisinone will be most effectively implemented as part of an integrated vector control strategy. However, as nitisinone targets an essential digestive pathway in tsetse flies that is shared by all blood feeding insects, using this drug has the added benefit of killing other blood sucking arthropods like mosquitoes and ticks. Therefore, this drug could potentially be used as an environment-friendly, synergistic addition for controlling transmission of other vector-borne diseases alongside tsetse control campaigns.

Dr. Acosta-Serrano notes "This drug is ecologically friendly as it only affects blood feeding insects and not sugar feeders, like pollinators, which is different from other insecticides that can kill any insect. Although we still need to validate it in the field, our mathematical modelling shows that this drug could reduce the transmission of African trypanosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa. We are currently testing its efficacy against other deadly insect vectors like mosquitoes".

WASHINGTON--Poor social conditions caused by systemic racism contribute to health disparities in people with diabetes, according to a paper published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Minorities are disproportionately affected by diabetes because of poor social conditions that contribute to negative health outcomes such as poverty, unsafe housing, lack of access to healthy food and safe physical activity, and inadequate employment and educational opportunities. These are known as the social determinants of health and are the result of residential racial segregation and a lack of economic investment in Black communities. Unethical practices and experimentation in minority communities have also caused racial bias in our medical systems and a lack of trust between minority patients and health care providers.

"Traditionally, physicians have focused on the biological contributors to disparities in diabetes, obesity and other chronic diseases; however, given the bright light shone on health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to view the contributing factors and solutions more broadly," said study author Sherita Golden, M.D., M.H.S., of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Md. "This will give us agency in contributing to and advocating for health system, public health and policy-level interventions to address the structural and institutional racism embedded in our medical and social systems."

To address health disparities in diabetes, the authors recommend health systems implement the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care. These standards ensure interpretation services are available to all patients and that patient education materials are at a literacy level most people can understand. They also recommend more training among health care providers on unconscious bias, anti-racism, and the value of diversity in clinical care settings.