Tech

Climate change will make outbreaks of West Nile virus more likely in the UK within the next 20-30 years, scientists say.

West Nile virus is spread by mosquitoes and has no vaccine. Most people have no symptoms, but it can cause serious neurological disease.

Scientists from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) and the University of Glasgow developed a new model to determine the risk of a West Nile virus outbreak in the UK.

They found the risk is low for the next two to three decades, but will increase as temperatures rise.

Dr Steven White, a theoretical ecologist at UKCEH, said: "Knowing if or when a new disease will affect us is vitally important.

"West Nile virus is currently absent in the UK, but we do harbour the Culex pipiens mosquito, which can transmit the disease and potentially lead to spill-over into humans.

"West Nile virus is now endemic in Italy and there have been outbreaks in Germany, so it is moving into more temperate climates.

"Our model shows that the risk will steadily increase and that future outbreaks are plausible in the UK."

The team's mathematical model looked at the effects of temperature on the biological processes affecting the Culex pipiens mosquito population in the UK. They were able to capture how these seasonal changes might interact with faster replication of the virus under higher temperatures to drive outbreaks.

Dr David Ewing from BioSS, formerly a UKCEH PhD student when most of the research was carried out, said: "Our model shows the predicted risk of an outbreak increases substantially if the biting season goes on longer, or if new viral strains are introduced that replicate at a higher rate than the ones already studied.

"Most other approaches are simplified, but we've built in complex biological relationships. This model could be adapted to look at other viruses and diseases, or other mosquito or insect species."

Dr Ewing says the study shouldn't be cause for alarm, but to help the UK prepare. "While there's relatively little immediate danger, we can take steps to prepare for future outbreaks.

This could be as simple as ensuring doctors are aware of the symptoms, testing and who's most at risk of becoming seriously ill."

The research was reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface - DOI: doi/10.1098/rsif.2021.0049

WACO, Texas (May 28, 2021) - About 36 million people have blindness including 1 million children. Additionally, 216 million people experience moderate to severe visual impairment. However, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education maintains a reliance on three-dimensional imagery for education. Most of this imagery is inaccessible to students with blindness. A breakthrough study by Bryan Shaw, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Baylor University, aims to make science more accessible to people who are blind or visually impaired through small, candy-like models.

The Baylor-led study, published May 28 in the journal Science Advances, uses millimeter-scale gelatin models -- similar to gummy bears -- to improve visualization of protein molecules using oral stereognosis, or visualization of 3D shapes via the tongue and lips. The goal of the study was to create smaller, more practical tactile models of 3D imagery depicting protein molecules. The protein molecules were selected because their structures are some of the most numerous, complex and high-resolution 3D images presented throughout STEM education.

"Your tongue is your finest tactile sensor -- about twice as sensitive as the finger tips -- but it is also a hydrostat, similar to an octopus arm. It can wiggle into grooves that your fingers won't touch, but nobody really uses the tongue or lips in tactile learning. We thought to make very small, high-resolution 3D models, and visualize them by mouth," Shaw said.

The study included 396 participants in total -- 31 fourth- and fifth-graders as well as 365 college students. Mouth, hands and eyesight were tested at identifying specific structures. All students were blindfolded during the oral and manual tactile model testing.

Each participant was given three minutes to assess or visualize the structure of a study protein with their fingertips, followed by one minute with a test protein. After the four minutes, they were asked whether the test protein was the same or a different model than the initial study protein. The entire process was repeated using the mouth to discern shape instead of the fingers.

Students recognized struc¬tures by mouth at 85.59% accuracy, similar to recognition by eyesight using computer animation. Testing involved identical edible gelatin models and nonedible 3D-printed models. Gelatin models were correctly identified at rates comparable to the nonedible models.

"You can visualize the shapes of these tiny objects as accurately by mouth as by eyesight. That was actually surprising," Shaw said.

The models, which can be used for students with or without visual impairment, offer a low-cost, portable and convenient way to make 3D imagery more accessible. The methods of the study are not limited to molecular models of protein structures -- oral visualization could be done with any 3D model, Shaw said.

Additionally, while gelatin models were the only edible models tested, Shaw's team created high-resolution models from other edible materials, including taffy and chocolate. Certain surface features of the models, like a proteins pattern of positive and negative surface charge, could be represented using different flavor patterns on the model.

"This methodology could be applied to images and models of anything, like cells, organelles, 3D surfaces in math or 3D pieces of art -- any 3D rendering. It's not limited to STEM, but useful for humanities too," said Katelyn Baumer, doctoral candidate and lead author of the study.

Shaw's lab sees oral visualization through tiny models as a beneficial addition to the multisensory learning tools available for students, particularly those with extraordinary visual needs. Models like the ones in this study can make STEM more accessible to students with blindness or visual impairment.

"Students with blindness are systematically excluded from chemistry, and much of STEM. Just look around our labs and you can see why -- there is Braille on the elevator button up to the lab and Braille on the door of the lab. That's where accessibility ends. Baylor is the perfect place to start making STEM more accessible. Baylor could become an oasis for people with disabilities to learn STEM," Shaw said.

Shaw isn't new to high-profile research related to visual impairment. He has received recognition for his work on the White Eye Detector app. Shaw and Greg Hamerly, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science at Baylor, built the mobile app which serves as a tool for parents to screen for pediatric eye disease. Shaw's inspiration for the app came after his son, Noah, was diagnosed with retinoblastoma at four months of age.

Much of human invention and innovation has been the result of our discovery and replication of natural phenomena, from birds serving to inspire human flight, to whales allowing us to dive deep into the ocean with submarines. For the first time ever, researchers have captured at the nanometer level the gliding machinery of the bacterium Mycoplasma mobile. Their findings were published in mBio. This brings us closer to understanding the origin and operating principle of motility, which could serve as a basis for the next generation of nanoscale devices and pharmaceuticals.

"My lab has been studying the molecular nature of bacteria from the Mycoplasma genus for years", states Professor Makoto Miyata from the Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University and lead of the research group, "and we have developed a conceptualization of how some of these parasitic bacteria "glide" around their hosts." For example, Mycoplasma mobile forms a protrusion at one end giving the bacterium a flask shape. At the tapered end are external appendages that bind to solid surfaces and in concert with an internal mechanism, cause the bacterium to glide across the surface of its host to find nutrient-rich places and escape the hosts immune responses.

"What we lacked was a visual understanding of the internal mechanism" states first author Kohei Kobayashi, "and for this we needed the right technology". In collaboration with a research team led by Professor Noriyuki Kodera and Professor Toshio Ando of Kanazawa University, Prof. Miyata and his team used High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy, a cutting-edge microscope that can visualize biological molecules in action at nano-meter and sub-second spatiotemporal resolution, to scan M. mobile cells from the outside and successfully visualize the internal structural movement in real time.

First, to visualize the entire motor mechanism in an immobile state, the team immobilized live M. mobile on a glass substrate and probed the cell surface with the fine needle of HS-AFM, confirming the structure according to past measurements taken with electron microscopy. Then the team visually differentiated the internal structure from the external appendages by computationally extracting the signals hidden in the video images. What they discovered was an internal chain structure causing the external appendage structure to move 9 nanometers right, relative to the gliding direction, and 2 nanometers into the cell interior in 330 milliseconds and then return to their original position, based on ATP hydrolysis.

"In the future, we intend to isolate the molecular motors and analyze the cells with higher spatial and temporal resolution, and through electron microscopy, understand the mechanism for the gliding motion at the atomic level," states Prof. Miyata. An atomic understanding of this most complicated mechanism of motility may be the key to human replications of it.

(Bethesda, MD - May 25, 2021) A new study published in Nature Scientific Reports has found that Methylene Blue, a century old medicine, has the potential to be a highly effective, broad-spectrum UV irradiation protector that absorbs UVA and UVB, repairs ROS and UV irradiation induced DNA damages, and is safe for coral reefs. The study suggests that Methylene Blue could become an alternative sunscreen ingredient that supports the environment and protects human skin health.

80% of today's sunscreens use Oxybenzone as a chemical UV blocker, despite multiple studies that have shown it expedites the destruction of coral reefs. Several states and countries have now banned the use of Oxybenzone and its derivatives to stop the devastating effects on the world's marine ecosystem. In addition, consumers focus primarily on the Sun Protection Factor (SPF) to prevent sunburns and potentially dangerous long-term health issues. However, SPF only measures UVB exposure, leaving sunscreen users vulnerable to UVA-triggered oxidative stress and photo-aging.

"Our work suggests that Methylene Blue is an effective UVB blocker with a number of highly desired characteristics as a promising ingredient to be included in sunscreens. It shows a broad spectrum absorption of both UVA and UVB rays, promotes DNA damage repair, combats reactive oxygen species (ROS) induced by UVA, and most importantly, poses no harm to coral reefs." says the study's senior author Dr. Kan Cao, Founder of Mblue Labs, Bluelene Skincare and a Professor at the University of Maryland Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics.

The research team, which included scientists from Mblue Labs and the University of Maryland, looked at the UV protection benefits of Methylene Blue from several angles in primary human keratinocytes and skin fibroblasts from young and old donors and compared those results with Oxybenzone. They concluded that Methylene Blue not only absorbs UVA & UVB as the traditional sunscreen actives do, it also helps repair the DNA damage caused by UV irradiation, thereby leading to better cell survival. They also exposed the same amounts of Methylene Blue or Oxybenzone in Xenia umbellate, a soft coral species, in isolated tanks and monitored coral reefs' growth and responses to these chemicals. They reported drastic coral bleaching and death in Oxybenzone-treated Xenia corals in less than a week, while Methylene Blue does not have any negative effects on coral health even at a relatively high concentration (1 micro molar).

They also compared Methylene Blue with other well-known skincare antioxidants such as Vitamin A (Retinol) and Vitamin C in their ability to reduce cellular oxidative stress. "We are extremely excited to see that skin fibroblasts, derived from both young and old individuals, have improved so much in terms of proliferation and cellular stress in a methylene blue-containing cell culture medium." Dr. Cao shares. "Most surprisingly," according to Dr. Cao," we found that the combination of Methylene Blue and Vitamin C could deliver amazing anti-aging effects, particularly in skin cells from older donors, suggesting a strong synergistic reaction between these two beneficial antioxidants."

"Altogether, our study suggests that Methylene Blue has the potential to be a coral reef-friendly sunscreen active ingredient that can provide broad-spectrum protection against UVA and UVB." The team concludes in the abstract.

The researchers are so confident in their findings that Methylene Blue is an effective UV blocking agent that also delays skin aging and promotes DNA damage repair, that they have filed a patent application and have started developing sunscreen prototypes containing Methylene Blue. In addition, Mblue Lab (Bluelene) recently launched the first multifunctional skincare product that combines Methylene Blue and Vitamin C to deliver the optimal anti-aging effects (Bluelene's Night Plus+).

Plastic pollution has been found in seawater, on beaches and inside marine animals at the Galapagos Islands.

A new study - by the University of Exeter, Galapagos Conservation Trust (GCT) and the Galapagos Science Center - found plastic in all marine habitats at the island of San Cristobal, where Charles Darwin first landed in Galapagos.

At the worst "hotspots" - including a beach used by the rare "Godzilla" marine iguana - more than 400 plastic particles were found per square metre of beach.

Plastic was also found inside more than half of the marine invertebrates (such as barnacles and urchins) studied, and on the seabed.

The findings suggest most plastic pollution in Galapagos - a world-famous biodiversity haven - arrives on ocean currents.

The study also identifies Galapagos marine vertebrates most at risk from swallowing plastic or getting entangled - including scalloped hammerheads, whale sharks, sea lions and sea turtles.

"The pristine image of Galapagos might give the impression that the islands are somehow protected from plastic pollution, but our study clearly shows that's not the case," said Dr Ceri Lewis, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.

"The highest levels of plastic we found were on east-facing beaches, which are exposed to pollution carried across the eastern Pacific on the Humboldt Current.

"These east-facing beaches include Punta Pitt, a highly polluted site that is home to Godzilla marine iguanas which - like so much Galapagos wildlife - are found nowhere else in the world.

"There are less than 500 Godzilla marine iguanas in existence, and it's concerning that they are living alongside this high level of plastic pollution."

Speaking about microplastic particles found inside marine invertebrates, lead author Dr Jen Jones, of GCT, said: "These animals are a crucial part of food webs that support the larger species that famously live on and around the Galapagos Islands.

"The potential health effects of plastic ingestion on marine animals are largely unknown, and more research is needed."

The study's findings include:

- Just 2% of "macroplastic" (items and fragments larger than 5mm) was identified as coming from the islands. The true figure could be higher, but the findings strongly suggest most plastic arrives on ocean currents.

- These macroplastics were found at 13 of 14 sandy beaches studied, with 4,610 items collected in total. Large microplastics (1-5mm) sieved from the surface 50mm of sand were found at 11 of 15 sites tested.

- Significant accumulations of plastic were found in key habitats including rocky lava shores and mangroves.

- Microplastics were found in low concentrations in all seabed and seawater samples, with higher concentrations at the harbour suggesting some local input.

- All seven marine invertebrate species examined were found to contain microplastics. 52% of the 123 individuals tested contained plastic.

To analyse the possible impact of plastic on Galapagos marine vertebrates such as sea lions and turtles, the researchers reviewed 138 studies of plastic ingestion and entanglement among such species worldwide.

They also considered where in Galapagos each species is known to be found, and considered their conservation status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

Based on this, the study identifies 27 species in need of urgent monitoring and mitigation.

Dr Jones, who led the study as part of her PhD at Exeter, said: "Our study highlights how far plastic pollution travels, and how it contaminates every part of marine ecosystems.

"Given the level of pollution we have found in this remote location, it's clear that plastic pollution needs to stop at source.

"You can't fix the problem just by cleaning beaches."

Dr David Santillo, of the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, said: "This situation is only going to get worse if we don't dramatically change our use of plastics."

Last year, the research team won a £3.3 million grant from the UK government to investigate and address plastic pollution in the Eastern Pacific.

However, the grant has been reduced by 64% and may be cancelled after the first year due to Official Development Assistance (ODA) cuts announced in March.

People who tend to go to bed and wake up earlier have significantly lower risk of major depression, according to a sweeping new genetic study published May 26 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

The study examined data from more than of 840,000 people, and was conducted by researchers at University of Colorado Boulder and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. It represents some of the strongest evidence yet that chronotype—a person’s propensity to sleep at a certain time —influences depression risk.

It’s also among the first studies to quantify just how much, or little, change might be required to influence mental health.

As people emerge, post-pandemic, from working and attending school remotely— a trend that has led many to shift to a later sleep schedule—the findings have important implications.

“We have known for some time that there is a relationship between sleep timing and mood, but a question we often hear from clinicians is: How much earlier do we need to shift people to see a benefit?” said senior author Celine Vetter, assistant professor of integrative physiology at CU Boulder. “We found that one-hour earlier sleep timing is associated with significantly lower risk of depression.”

Future studies, including randomized clinical trials, are needed to determine who might benefit from a change in sleep timing, and how much.

Previous observational studies have shown that night owls are as much as twice as likely to suffer from depression as early risers, regardless of how long they sleep. But because mood disorders themselves can disrupt sleep patterns, researchers have had a hard time deciphering what causes what.

Other studies have had small sample sizes, relied on questionnaires from a single time point, or didn’t account for environmental factors which can influence both sleep timing and mood, potentially influencing results.

In 2018, Vetter published a large, long term study of 32,000 nurses showing that “early risers” were up to 27% less likely to develop depression over the course of four years, but that begged the question: What does it mean to be an early riser?

To help get a clearer sense of whether earlier sleep timing is truly protective, and how much of a shift is required, lead author Iyas Daghlas turned to data from the DNA testing company 23 and Me and the biomedical database UK Biobank. Daghlas then used a method called “Mendelian randomization” that leverages genetic associations to help decipher cause and effect.

“Our genetics are set at birth so some of the biases that affect other kinds of epidemiological research tend not to affect genetic studies,” said Daghlas, who graduated in May from Harvard Medical School.

More than 340 common genetic variants, including variants in the so-called “clock gene” PER2, are known to influence a person’s chronotype, and genetics collectively explains 12-42% of our sleep timing preference.

The researchers assessed deidentified genetic data on these variants from more than 840,000 individuals, including data from 85,000 who had worn wearable sleep trackers for 7 days and 250,000 who had filled out sleep-preference questionnaires. This gave them a more granular picture, down to the hour, of how variants in genes influence when we sleep and wake up, independently of one’s sleep duration.

In the largest of these samples, about a third of surveyed subjects self-identified as morning larks, 9% were night owls and the rest were in the middle. Overall, the average sleep mid-point was 3 a.m., meaning they went to bed at 11 p.m. and got up at 7 a.m., assuming an average sleep duration of 8 hours.

With this information in hand, the researchers turned to a different sample which included genetic information along with anonymized medical and prescription records and surveys about diagnoses of major depressive disorder.

Using novel statistical techniques, they asked: Do those with genetic variants which predispose them to be early risers also have lower odds of depression?

The answer is a firm yes.

Being a morning type, when translated into sleep timing, corresponded to a 23% lower likelihood to have a major depressive disorder per one-hour earlier sleep midpoint (halfway between bedtime and wake time). This provides further supportive evidence for the link between sleep timing and depression, however, additional studies are needed to determine how shifting your sleep might benefit mental health, and what the exact behavioral and physiological mechanisms are.

What could explain this effect?

Some research suggests that getting greater light exposure during the day, which early-risers tend to get, results in a cascade of hormonal impacts that can influence mood.

Others note that having a biological clock, or circadian rhythm, that trends differently than most peoples’ can in itself be depressing.

“We live in a society that is designed for morning people, and evening people often feel as if they are in a constant state of misalignment with that societal clock,” said Daghlas.

He stresses that a large randomized clinical trial is necessary to determine definitively whether going to bed early can reduce depression. “But this study definitely shifts the weight of evidence toward supporting a causal effect of sleep timing on depression.”

For those wanting to shift themselves to an earlier sleep schedule, Vetter offers this advice:

“Keep your days bright and your nights dark,” she says. “Have your morning coffee on the porch. Walk or ride your bike to work if you can, and dim those electronics in the evening.”

Until now, competing types of robotic hand designs offered a trade-off between strength and durability. One commonly used design, employing a rigid pin joint that mimics the mechanism in human finger joints, can lift heavy payloads, but is easily damaged in collisions, particularly if hit from the side. Meanwhile, fully compliant hands, typically made of molded silicone, are more flexible, harder to break, and better at grasping objects of various shapes, but they fall short on lifting power.

The DGIST research team investigated the idea that a partially-compliant robot hand, using a rigid link connected to a structure known as a Crossed Flexural Hinge (CFH), could increase the robot's lifting power while minimizing damage in the event of a collision. Generally, a CFH is made of two strips of metal arranged in an X-shape that can flex or bend in one position while remaining rigid in others, without creating friction.

"Smart industrial robots and cooperative robots that interact with humans need both resilience and strength," says Dongwon Yun, who heads the DGIST BioRobotics and Mechatronics Lab and led the research team. "Our findings show the advantages of both a rigid structure and a compliant structure can be combined, and this will overcome the shortcomings of both."

The team 3D-printed the metal strips that serve as the CFH joints connecting segments in each robotic finger, which allow the robotic fingers to curve and straighten similar to a human hand. The researchers demonstrated the robotic hand's ability to grasp different objects, including a box of tissues, a small fan and a wallet. The CFH-jointed robot hand was shown to have 46.7 percent more shock absorption than a pin joint-oriented robotic hand. It was also stronger than fully compliant robot hands, with the ability to hold objects weighing up to four kilograms.

Further improvements are needed before robots with these partially-compliant hands are able to go to work alongside or directly with humans. The researchers note that additional analysis of materials is required, as well as field experiments to pinpoint the best practical applications.

"The industrial and healthcare settings where robots are widely used are dynamic and demanding places, so it's important to keep improving robots' performance," says DGIST engineering Ph.D. student Junmo Yang, the first paper author.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- The microscopic algae that live inside and provide nutrients to their reef-building coral hosts may be evolving in tandem with the corals they inhabit, so each partner is fine-tuned to meet one another's needs. A new study by Penn State biologists reveals that genetic differences within a species of these microalgal symbionts correspond to the coral species they inhabit, a discovery that could have implications for the conservation of these endangered corals.

"Acroporid corals are some of the primary reef-building species in the Caribbean, providing protection to coastlines and habitat for economically important species," said Iliana Baums, professor of biology at Penn State and leader of the research team. "However, these corals are critically endangered due to warming waters, pollution, and other human-induced changes, and their survival is in part tied to the symbionts that live inside them. Understanding the relationships between the coral and their symbionts may help us improve conservation efforts."

Reef-building corals such as Acroporids obtain nutrients from the microalgae symbionts that live inside their cells. The research team compared genetic differences among members of the symbiont species Symbiodinium 'fitti' collected from either elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata), the closely related staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis), or the hybrid that results when the two species breed, called fused staghorn coral. The researchers collected symbiont samples from each coral species in several locations spanning the Caribbean Sea. Their results appear online in the journal Molecular Ecology.

"The genetic differences we saw within the symbiont were primarily explained by the species of host we collected them from," said Hannah Reich, a graduate student at Penn State at the time of the research and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rhode Island. "Each coral species is a unique micro-habitat for their symbionts. For example, the limestone skeletons of the two coral species are distinct and reflect sunlight differently. So the symbionts must adapt to the conditions created by each host to best harness solar energy and convert it to food. They then provide this nourishment to their hosts which rely on it for most of their nutrition."

The researchers suspect that each of the coral species has coevolved with a subset of the strains of S. 'fitti'. Over generations, they have formed more specialized relationships. This specialization even occurred in the natural coral hybrid that has a relatively recent origin.

"Some of the genetic differences we observed among S. 'fitti' strains were in genes predicted to cause downstream effects on the symbiont's metabolism and physiology," said Sheila Kitchen, a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State at the time of the research and currently a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology. "These changes may enable the symbiont to adapt to the unique metabolic and nutritional demands imposed by each host's microenvironment."

The fidelity between the coral species and their symbionts could be reinforced if symbionts are selective about which coral species they colonize, and/or if the coral hosts are selective about which symbiont strain is allowed to remain in their cells, though the mechanisms of partner selectivity remain unclear. The researchers note that environmental factors may also play a role in genetic differences among the symbiont strains, for example by influencing the symbionts before they have colonized a coral or indirectly by influencing the microenvironment inside the coral host.

"Some conservation efforts are exploring ways to help corals colonize new habitats and adapt to changing environments," said Reich. "However, if symbionts and their corals hosts have coevolved and formed preferential relationships with each other, it may not be enough to focus conservation efforts just on the coral host. Continuing to study these relationships will provide important information about how we can best approach conservation efforts."

Recently, the researchers from Institute of Solid State Physics, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, by using valence engineering, developed three manganese oxides as electrodes with different Mn valences for high-performance capacitive desalination.

Reverse osmosis and thermal distillation are widely used to treat salt water with high salt concentration, but they have disadvantages including high energy consumption and high cost.

As an alternative method, capacitive deionization (CDI) technology can remove charged ions from desalt water through electrosorption or pseudocapacitive reaction. However, there are few reports on manganese oxides with lower valence of Mn, compared with the number of reports on MnO2. Hence, whether there is a difference in desalination performance in such different valence states of Mn and the internal reasons are worth exploring.

In this study, because of the high-capacity characteristic of the Faradic electrode, the researchers prepared three different manganese oxide carbon compositions with different valence states of Mn by calcining MnCO3@C precursor under different atmospheres and temperatures, and they combined them with commercial activated carbon electrode to assemble an asymmetric CDI unit. All as-prepared manganese oxides maintained the spindle-like morphology of the precursor.

The results showed that manganese oxides with divalent, trivalent and divalent/trivalent all displayed high salt adsorption capacity and corresponding high salt adsorption rates in 500 mg L-1 NaCl solution, surpassing other advanced carbon materials. Among them, MnO@C indicated the best electrosorption performance and Mn3O4@C has the worst.

The density functional theory (DFT) calculation results proved that the valence state of manganese during Na+ absorption could bring distinct discrepancy in the spatial structure and absorption capacity. Therefore, the researchers concluded that in terms of capacity and stability, the manganese oxides with divalent (MnO@C) was more suitable than trivalent (Mn2O3@C) and divalent/trivalent (Mn3O4@C) manganese oxides for CDI desalination.

The valence engineering provides a novel way for preparing high-performance pseudocapacitive materials for capacitive desalination.

The parents of children with rare diseases face exceptional circumstances which influence their role as parents. Sometimes, the role of caregivers is added to that of parents. On other occasions, especially with the most serious cases, the former becomes more prominent than the latter. There are also cases in which both roles coexist separately, allowing them to be parents and caregivers in equal measure. However, whichever group they belong to, they need trust and to overcome fear in order to live their experience without overwhelming anxiety.

This is one of the findings of an open-access study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, in which the researchers from the UOC's PSINET group, Beni Gómez-Zúñiga, Modesta Pousada, from the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), and Manuel Armayones, from the UOC's eHealth Center, and Rafael Pulido, from the Department of Education of the University of Almería, interviewed parents of children with rare diseases.

The authors of the study explained that the situation experienced by the parents of these families means that they give themselves entirely to the task. Also, their children require so much time, attention, physical and emotional energy that the parents "have and perceive a much greater burden than that typically associated with raising children", explained Gómez-Zúñiga. There is therefore an alteration of the parental role, with behaviour linked to being both parents and caregivers at the same time. It is possible to confront this role from a psychological state that the authors call "emotional strength", which allows them to live the experience without great anguish or uncertainty when there is trust.

"Trust allows them to confront the situation with a more positive outlook", said Dr Gómez-Zúñiga, who explained that it is not just a question of trusting in the doctors, but also of trusting in your own strength, that you will have enough energy to confront daily life, in the suitability of the treatment, in the adequacy of the resources available or in the effectiveness of the support received by other parents in similar circumstances. According to the results of the study, with this experience of trust it is more difficult for existential unease to take hold. "One mother told us: 'It's hopeless', but another, who had managed to increase her trust for various reasons, told us: 'Things are going to be all right'. That is the difference, and that is what will mark the experience of these mothers and fathers", said Manuel Armayones, another of the researchers on the study.

The diagnosis, a turning point

Achieving this trust which allows the role of parent/caregiver to be confronted without high levels of stress, fatigue, insecurity or uncertainty, which are signs of fear, tends to be the result of a long process. The authors of the study stated that in their research some parents used expressions like "a horrible experience", "you suffer an enormous personal strain" or "you feel insecure when making decisions", and this was the origin of what this study describes as "existential unease". However, the diagnosis tends to be a turning point in this experience.

"There's fear concerning the diagnosis. And fear feeds the existential unease, present in the initial phases of their children's disease, before the diagnosis and immediately afterwards", explained Dr Pousada. "However, from then on, this anxiety can open up a path to relative stability, above all if we have an antidote to this anxiety, such as emotional strength", she said. The experience is thus perceived with less suffering, as if the burden were lesser. This is when the parents adapt to the role of parents and caregivers, "and their experience could be summarized in their own words: 'I am sure that I can handle all this', or 'we are in the best hands'", said Gómez-Zúñiga.

As pointed out by the authors of the research, trust contributes to this emotional strength. Faith also helps, understood as finding a spiritual meaning to their experience as parents. The researchers observed that faith opens the door to hope, at the same time as providing the emotional energy required to "keep going" and not break down.

"We must bear in mind that faith goes beyond trust. Trust is a faith supported by evidence, whereas faith is a relatively blind trust. It is faith understood, to a certain extent, as a search for meaning, an effort to accept and understand the reality of the disease and of the personal and family life situation caused by it", explained Pulido, who added that this search for meaning may or may not be due to certain religious beliefs.

The result is a reparative effect on the existential unease because the sensation of the caregivers that they have found a meaning to what they do "is positively related to their own search for this meaning. That is to say that the more they seek a meaning to their activity as caregivers in their life, the more they find it. And, the more they find it, the more well-being they experience in their role as caregivers", said Pulido, who indicated that two of the most essential feelings can be found behind this experience: fear and love.

"Our theory on how parents build their role identity is that it is the result of the (relative and self-perceived) success or failure on progressively overcoming fear through love. This process takes a long time and has a profound impact, and we therefore like to describe it as navigating between love and fear", said Pulido. He added that, although the role can be represented in very different ways, the healthiest for the parents and for their children "is that in which love has triumphed. Fear overpowers the parents, but love empowers them".

What keeps consumers hooked on high sugar soft drink? Advertising, of course. But why are some consumers more adept at ignoring these cues than others?

A new study from Flinders University, published in Appetite, found participants with an automatic bias towards soft drinks - or difficulty resisting sweet drinks compared to non-sweetened control beverages (e.g., water) - were more responsive to the ads than those without these tendencies.

The Australian study compared the ability of 127 university-age students (18-25 year olds) to withstand or succumb to the urge to reach for a soft drink when viewing television advertisements.

"Perhaps, then, we can start targeting people who show these cognitive vulnerabilities in reduce consumption of these sugary, unhealthy drinks," says lead researcher Flinders University Professor Eva Kemps.

"Even keeping fizzy drinks from children at a young age may also prepare them for the barrage of advertising as they mature," says Professor Kemps, pointing to the rise in soft drink consumption in the face of associated health risks.

Not only can regular soft drink consumption lead to weight gain and tooth decay, with a typical 375ml can of soft drink contain about 10 teaspoons of sugar, but so can these 'empty' calories reduce intake of calcium, fibre and other nutrients in a healthy diet.

Regular soft drink consumption (as little as 1 can per day) has been associated with increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and various cancers, with one data model estimating the global death toll from soft drink consumption to be around 184,000 deaths per year.

Around the world, the daily caloric intake from soft drinks has quadrupled, from 4% in 1965 to 16% in 2019 with young adults and adolescents the biggest consumers of popular brands of carbonated beverages such as Coke, Sprite and Fanta.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2015) research estimated 50-60% of adolescent and young people consume soft drink every day.

While the US has seen a recent decline in its leading per capita soft drink consumption, the Appetite article says consumption of high-sugar drinks is rising in other countries such as Mexico, Chile and Argentina.

At the same time, beverage companies in the US spent more than $1 billion on soft drink advertising in 2019 (Sugary Drink FACTS, 2020).

"The cognitive vulnerabilities exposed in our study is an important lesson to future possible regulation of television advertising or public health campaigns," says co-author Amber Tuscharski.

"More could be done to raise awareness among people who have strong automatic tendencies or poor self-regulatory control towards reaching for a soft drink.

"After all, their exposure to soft drink cues will continue as manufacturers and marketers advertise their products in multiple locations - from TV commercials to in-store, service stations, public transport and billboards."

Leesburg, VA, May 27, 2021--According to an open-access Editor's Choice article in ARRS' American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), accurate prenatal diagnosis of severe placental accreta spectrum (PAS) disorder by imaging could help guide maternal counseling and selection between hysterectomy and uterine-preserving surgery.

"The findings suggest strong performance of placental bulge in diagnosing severe PAS on both ultrasound and MRI, with potentially relatively stronger performance on MRI," wrote corresponding author Manjiri Dighe from the department of radiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. "Nonetheless, interobserver agreement remains suboptimal on both modalities."

On ultrasound and MRI alike, the placental bulge sign represents deeper venous invasion in PAS--the focal area of myometrial-placental bulging beyond the normal uterine contour. Dighe and colleagues' retrospective study included 62 pregnant women (mean age, 33.2 years) with clinically suspected PAS who underwent both ultrasound and MRI. Blinded to final diagnoses, two maternal-fetal medicine specialists for ultrasound and three abdominal radiologists for MRI independently reviewed images for their respective modality. Using intraoperative and pathologic findings, alongside International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics classification, patients were separated into those with and without severe PAS.

"In diagnosing severe PAS," Dighe et al. noted, "placental bulge sign achieved on ultrasound an accuracy of 85.5%, sensitivity of 91.7%, and specificity of 76.9%, and on MRI an accuracy of 90.3%, sensitivity of 94.4%, and specificity of 84.6%." Ultimately, placental bulge was an independent predictor of severe PAS on ultrasound (odds ratio=8.94) and MRI (odds ratio=45.67).

"Placental bulge sign on either prenatal ultrasound or MRI may help diagnose severe PAS warranting hysterectomy rather than conservative management," the authors of this AJR article concluded.

A small Japanese fishing community devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 managed to recover from the disaster through cooperative community activity despite the propensity for individualist-competitive behavior within fisheries - cooperative activity that continued many years later.

A social scientist who spent years interviewing fishers in the fishing hamlet of Isohama has discovered a long-standing continuum of competitive and collective endeavor amongst fishers, with potential ramifications for how government policy can better promote resilience in the wake of natural disasters and other calamities.

The findings appear in the journal of Disaster Prevention and Management in March 2021.

The long Pacific coast of Tohoku, in northeast Japan where the 2011 earthquake experienced its epicentre, is well known for the high quality of its fishing grounds owing to a confluence of warm and cold currents. Some 96 percent of the fishing industry in the Tohoku prefecture involves small-scale fisheries.

What happened to the hamlet of Isohama is typical of how fishing communities in the region were hit by the disaster. Most of Isohama's geographical features were swept away by the tsunami, and all its buildings and facilities disappeared completely. Almost all the hamlet's fishing boats were destroyed, and nine of its 44 fishermen were killed. The surviving fishers and other community members were dispersed and initially moved to surrounding villages and towns.

In the field of disaster studies, the notion of a "disaster utopia" has been developed by scholars to explain the phenomenon of temporary collaborative behavior that appears amongst those affected by an emergency but which disappears quickly after the emergency has passed. Multiple social scientists researching aspects of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami have reported the emergence of numerous cooperative recovery activities, or disaster utopias, in fishery communities soon after the calamity. Their typical behaviour of acting competitively during normal times was replaced by communal operations when faced with a significant emergency.

However, disaster recovery in Tohoku is a long and ongoing process, and Hiroki Takakura, professor of Social Anthropology at Tohoku University, was able to identify continued cooperative practices alongside the re-emergence of competitive behaviour, long after the emergency had passed. The "disaster utopia" concept did not sufficiently explain this prolonged recovery process.

Following nearly monthly interviews with some 50 Isohama fishers and community members for four years between 2015 and 2019, alongside investigations of legal data on fishing rights, and literature covering community history and local government reports on disaster reconstruction in the area, Takakura was able to craft a rich ethnography of Tohoku coastal culture that better explained resilience in fishing communities' response to the tsunami disaster.

Soon after the tsunami, the government set up a program to remove debris from the coast and reconstruct fishery infrastructure while providing displaced fishers with a temporary income source. Through this process, local fishers had the opportunity to meet other residents and interact and exchange ideas at the harbor. They wanted something to do as survivors and agreed on fixed-net fishing. They worked together to find rope and netting in the debris on the beach and repaired them. Because all the surviving fishermen had lost boats and nets, they rotated fishing on the few boats that remained, and profits were shared equally among participants.

These joint operations continued until March, 2014, when the government started offering financial support to allow fishers to purchase new boats. The owners of these new boats then left the joint fishing operations and went back to individual, competitive fishing.

"But I found that these two types of local practices were not inventions after the disaster. They existed long before the disaster," says Takakura. "According to the fishers, the joint operation that occurred during the emergency was not a special occurrence of the disaster utopia sort, but rather tapped into existing practices of group fishing."

Joint operations had always been undertaken during an annual Shinto festival, when fishers pray collectively for a good catch at the local shrine every January, and also at the general meeting of the Isohama ship-owner association every March. Furthermore, fishing activities tend either more toward cooperative or competitive practices closer to or further from shore, depending on the ecological conditions, the time of year, and the difficulty of the particular fishing task - in other words, depending on cultural practices.

"It is not necessary to argue only for a temporary disaster-utopia shift to collective action," he adds, "but rather, we need to explore the conditions under which individualism coexists with collectivism, and the policy framework that exploits this continuum to optimize community resilience."

As early as 2013, government statistics showed a 20% decrease in the population of fishers in the region, yet there was also an 80% recovery of fishery catches.

Moving forward, Takakura wants to further develop these findings by engaging in further empirical studies on resilience in rural societies and develop an overarching theory of disaster risk reduction that takes into account such analyses of cultural practice.

Using the circular vibration of surface acoustic waves, a collaborative research group have successfully controlled the magnetization of a ferromagnetic thin film.

Their research was published in the journal Nature Communications on May 10, 2021.

Essentially, acoustic waves are waves of atomic vibrations in a substance. When the waves propagate across the surface of a material, the vibration becomes circular. This circular motion, known as angular momentum, can help measure rotational motion.

Surface acoustic waves are utilized in bandpass filters in cell phones. The bandpass allows certain frequencies in and keeps unneeded frequencies out. However, storage devices in computers are composed of ferromagnets.

"We wondered whether the surface acoustic waves could control another form of angular momentum: an electron's spin - the source of magnetism," said, coauthor of the study Ryo Sasaki, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo and concurrently a special research student at Tohoku University.

Sasaki worked alongside Yoichi Nii and Yoshinori Ononse, assistant and full professor at Tohoku University's Institute of Materials Research.

Together, they were able to control the magnetization of a ferromagnetic thin film using the angular momentum transfer from surface acoustic wave to ferromagnetic spin moments.

Our discovery opens up new avenues for combining and developing acoustic and magnetic devices," added Sasaki.

Water freezes and turns to ice when brought in contact with a cold surface - a well-known fact. However, the exact process and its microscopic details remained elusive up to know. Anton Tamtögl from the Institute of Experimental Physics at TU Graz explains: "The first step in ice formation is called 'nucleation' and happens in an incredibly short length of time, a fraction of a billionth of a second, when highly mobile individual water molecules 'find each other' and coalesce." Conventional microscopes are far too slow to follow the motion of water molecules and so it is impossible to use them to 'watch' how molecules combine on top of solid surfaces.

Findings turn previous understanding of ice formation upside down

With the help of a new experimental technique and computational simulations, Tamtögl and a group of researchers from the Universities of Cambridge and Surrey were able to track down the first step in ice formation on a graphene surface. In a paper published in Nature Communications, they made the remarkable observation that the water molecules repel each other and need to gain sufficient energy to overcome that repulsion before ice can start to form: It has to become hot, so to speak, before ice forms.

Talking in the general sense, the lead author Anton Tamtögl says "repulsion between water molecules has simply not been considered during ice nucleation - this work will change all that".

Following the 'dance' of water molecules

The effect was discovered with a method called Helium Spin-Echo (HeSE) - a technique developed at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge and specially designed to follow the motion of atoms and molecules. The machine scatters helium from moving molecules on a surface, similar to the way radio waves scatter from vehicles in a radar speed-trap. By registering the number of scattered helium and their energy / velocity after scattering, it allows to follow the movement of atoms and molecules.

The HeSE experiments show that water molecules on a graphene surface, i.e. a single atomic layer of carbon, repel each other. The repulsion arises due to the same alignment of the molecules, perpendicular to the surface. The scenario is analogous to bringing two magnets with like-poles together: They will push themselves apart. In order for the nucleation of ice to begin, one of the two molecules must reorient itself, only then can they approach each other. Such a reorientation requires additional energy and thus represents a barrier that must be overcome for the growth of ice crystals.

Computational simulations in which the precise energy of water molecules in different configurations was mapped and the interactions between molecules near to each other were calculated, confirm the experimental findings. Moreover, simulations allow to 'switch' the repulsion on and off, providing thus further proof of the effect. The combination of experimental and theoretical methods allowed the international scientific team to unravel the behaviour of the water molecules. It captures for the first time, exactly how the first step of ice formation at a surface evolves and allowed them to propose a previously unknown physical mechanism.

Relevance for other fields and applications

The group further suggests the newly observed effect may occur more widely, on other surfaces. "Our findings pave the way for new strategies to control ice formation or prevent icing," says Tamtögl, thinking, for example, of surface treatments specifically for wind power, aviation or telecommunications.

Understanding the microscopic processes at work during ice formation, is also essential to predicting the formation and melting of ice, from individual crystals to glaciers and ice sheets. The latter is crucial to our ability to quantify environmental transformation in connection with climate change and global warming.