Tech

Up to 25 percent of global food production is lost annually due to insects, primarily beetles. For the past 500 million years, beetles have successfully spread and adapted to life around the globe and now account for one of every five animal species on Earth. Yet as far back as ancient Egypt, these tough little bugs have invaded granaries and vexed us humans by destroying our crops.

As a result, food production and an abundant use of pesticides now go hand in hand. A large share of these pesticides damage biodiversity, the environment and human health. As various pesticides are phased out, new solutions are required to target and eradicate pests without harming humans or beneficial insects like bees.

This is precisely what researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology are working on. As part of a broader effort to develop more "ecological" methods of combatting harmful insects in the near future, researchers have discovered which hormones regulate urine formation in the kidneys of beetles.

"Knowing which hormones regulate urine formation opens up the development of compounds similar to beetle hormones that, for example, can cause beetles to form so much urine that they die of dehydration," explains Associate Professor Kenneth Veland Halberg of the University of Copenhagen's Department of Biology. He adds:

"While it may seem a slightly vicious, there's nothing new in us trying to vanquish pests that destroy food production. We're simply trying to do it in a smarter, more targeted manner that takes the surrounding environment into greater account than traditional pesticides."

Ancient Egyptians weakened beetles' water balance using stones

The new study, as well as a previous study, also conducted by Kenneth Veland Halberg, demonstrates that beetles solve the task of regulating their water and salt balance in a fundamentally different way than other insects. This difference in insect biology is an important detail when seeking to combat certain species while leaving their neighbors alone.

"Today's insecticides go in and paralyze an insect's nervous system. The problem with this approach is that insect nervous systems are quite similar across species. Using these insecticides leads to the killing of bees and other beneficial field insects, and harms other living organisms," explains Kenneth Veland Halberg.

The centrality to survival of the carefully controlled water balance of beetles is no secret. In fact, ancient Egyptians already knew to mix pebbles in grain stores to fight these pests. Stones scratched away the waxy outer layer of beetles' exoskeletons which serves to minimize fluid evaporation.

"Never mind that they chipped an occasional tooth on the pebbles, the Egyptians could see that the scratches killed some of the beetles due to the fluid loss caused by damage to the waxy layer. However, they lacked the physiological knowledge that we have now," says Kenneth Veland Halberg.

One-hundred billion dollars of pesticides used worldwide

Pesticides have replaced pebbles. And, their global use is now valued at roughly 100 billion dollars annually. But as rules for pesticide use become stricter, farmers are left with fewer options to fight pests. 

"The incentive to develop compounds which target and eradicate pests is huge. Food production is critically dependent on pesticides. In Europe alone, it is estimated that food production would decline by 50 percent without pesticide use. With just a single, more targeted product on the market, there would almost immediately be immense gains for both wildlife and humans," states Kenneth Veland Halberg.

But the development of new compounds to combat beetles requires, among other things, that chemists design a new molecule that resembles beetle hormones. At the same time, this compound must be able to enter beetles, either through their exoskeletons or by their feeding upon it.

"Understanding urine formation in beetles is an important step in developing more targeted and environmentally-friendly pest controls for the future. We are now in the process of involving protein chemistry specialists who can help us design an artificial insect hormone. But there is still a fair bit of work ahead before any new form of pest control sees the light of day," concludes Associate Professor Kenneth Veland Halberg.

Facts:

The study demonstrates that beetles regulate their kidney function in a fundamentally different way than all other insects. These differences can potentially be exploited to fatally disrupt the fluid balance of beetles without impacting other insects.

The research data reports that this unique kidney function evolved about 240 million years ago, and that the mechanism has played a significant role in the extraordinary evolutionary triumph of beetles.

Roughly one in five known animal species on Earth is a beetle. While 400,000 species have been described, there are thought to be well over one million beetle species in all.

Researchers used the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) as a test species for the study because it has a well-sequenced genome that allows for the deployment of a wide spectrum of genetic and molecular biology tools.

The researchers got the beetle to urinate by injecting a hormone that scientists now know regulates urine formation in beetles.

Wheat weevils, confused flour beetles, Colorado potato beetles and other types of beetles and insects make their ways into up to 25 percent of the global food supply every year.

The problem is especially evident in developing countries, where access to effective pest control is limited or nonexistent.

The project was conducted in collaboration with researchers from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and McMaster University, Canada

The study has just been published in the scientific journal PNAS https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023314118

Genova (Italy), 16th April 2021 - A micro-sized polymeric net wrapping around brain tumors, just like a fishing net around a shoal of fish: this is the microMESH, a new nanomedicine device capable to conform around the surface of tumor masses and efficiently deliver drugs. It has been described by the researchers of the IIT - Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) in Nature Nanotechnology. The new biomedical implant has been validated in preclinical studies that demonstrate its effectiveness for the treatment of glioblastoma multiforme.

This work has been carried out by the group of Prof. Paolo Decuzzi, head of the IIT Laboratory of Nanotechnology for Precision Medicine, in collaboration with the Neural Stem Cell Biology Laboratory of Dr. Rossella Galli at the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan and the group of Prof. Gerald Grant at the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital of Stanford University. The study was originated within the research activities conducted by Decuzzi in the context of projects supported by the European Research Council and the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Action program.

Although they are quite rare, brain tumors are among the most aggressive and difficult to cure. In particular, glioblastoma multiforme is the tumor with the most severe prognosis: the average survival is just over 12 months and only 5% of the patients survive beyond 5 years. Glioblastoma multiforme typically affects men and women between 45 and 75 years of age. Furthermore, unlike other malignancies, there has been no significant diagnostic and therapeutic improvements for this malignancy over the past 30 years. In fact, both the incidence of new cases and the number of deaths has remained practically unchanged. The only therapeutic strategy currently used is based on surgery, which consists of removing a part of the tumor mass and reducing intracranial pressure, followed by radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy.

The biomedical system developed by IIT and its collaborators can play a very important role in the fight against the disease, representing a possible effective alternative to the few pharmacological treatments used to date.

The microMESH has the shape of a micrometric polymeric net, it is made with biodegradable materials and wraps around the tumor mass. In fact, the micrometric thick polymeric fibers are very flexible and are arranged to form regular openings, which are also micrometric, just like the size of cancer cells. This unique feature allows the microMESH to achieve a closer interaction with the tumor mass, increasing the therapeutic efficacy. Its structure consists of two separate compartments in which different drugs can be loaded which are released towards the tumor mass in an independent, precise, and prolonged fashion. The microMESH can 'attack' glioblastoma by combining different therapies: chemotherapy, nanomedicine, and immunotherapy.

Prof. Paolo Decuzzi and his collaborators, in particular Daniele Di Mascolo and Anna Lisa Palange, will continue to develop the microMESH by integrating different types of drugs and therapies to tackle other types of tumors. In the short term, their major objective will be to validate the technology on glioblastoma patients.

In December 2019, a new viral infection was detected in Wuhan, China. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, and on March 11, the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of the danger that the infection poses to human personnel, the idea to utilize automation in hospitals is one of the natural solutions in healthcare.

Among the paper's five co-authors, four are working in robotics and one is an expert in medicine. The paper presents a new concept of an infectious hospital that may become a worldwide standard in the future. The idea of this appeared while the authors were witnessing a quick spread of the Covid-19 and non-systematic attempts of most technologically developed countries of Europe, Asia, and America to employ various robots in their reaction to this disaster.

The team comprises Evgeni Magid (Professor, Head of Intelligent Robotics Systems Lab), Aufar Zakiev (PhD student, Research Associate of the same lab), Tatyana Tsoy (PhD student, Research Associate of the same lab), Roman Lavrenov (Senior Lecturer, Institute of IT and Intelligent Systems), and Albert Rizvanov (Professor, Academician of the Tatarstan Academy of Science, Director of the Center for Precision and Regenerative Medicine).

Initially, the authors surveyed pandemics-related research papers that consider pandemic mitigation from IT, AI, and robotics standpoints. During this analysis, they discovered that most of existing papers about applying robotics for COVID-19 mitigation are surveys which just enumerate existing solutions, or, conversely, present a single technique or a few techniques in a point-wise manner. They went further and, based on the performed survey, proposed a new classification of robots with regards to their usage for pandemic needs (originally intended and adapted robots) and a new classification of such robots with regards to a required operator training.

The most important contribution of the paper is a novel holistic architecture of an infectious disease hospital that employs robotic tools, both existing ones and proposed future technologies. This holistic architecture could help to develop robots with practical applicability and allows designers to define their functions precisely.

The new infectious hospital framework preserves classical organizational structure of "hot", "warm" and "cold" zones. The hot zone is the epicenter, which is the most dangerous location of a direct contact with infected patients that have confirmed cases of a disease; this zone has strong restrictions aimed at containing the infection strictly inside the zone. The warm zone contains medical facilities with indirect contact with an infection, e.g., medical wards, laboratory areas, blood banks, dietary and laundry services, personnel restrooms for short breaks, etc. Finally, the cold zone is a safe zone that includes places with a low risk of infection.

The researchers analyzed possible daily activities within the three zones and selected a number of tasks, mainly within the hot zone, which could be successfully performed by robots. Moreover, the initial survey analysis demonstrated that for many of these tasks, there already exist at least several robotic solutions. Therefore, a proposed precise definition of functions that could be performed by robots in an infectious hospital environment aims to help hospital managers to select proper solutions, which will make the hospital operation more efficient and safe for medical personnel. On the other hand, the proposed requirements for infectious hospital robots should help robotic companies to develop highly sought products. In addition, the paper discusses ethical issues of robotics applications, which should be taken seriously both by robot developers and decision-making customers (e.g., hospital managers); the former should ensure ethical guidelines of human-robot interaction and task-oriented strategies before manufacturing the product, and the latter should be aware of potential ethical conflicts while selecting particular products for particular tasks.

Robotics has a huge potential almost in every field of our life. The authors strongly believe that robots should gradually replace human personnel within a dangerous hot zone of an infectious hospital and perform routine tasks which do not require high-level medical skills or education. This can increase the safety of doctors and other medical staff, decrease the unnecessary physical and psychological burden, and partially close the existing shortage of medical personnel that was widely reported even before the beginning of the pandemic. The paper proposes not only a new architecture for an infectious hospital, but also a variety of particular tasks and practical recommendations of further robot integration.

In the future, the team plans to develop the proposed infectious hospital framework and to evaluate its practical application. Even for running such hospital within a simulation, a large amount of preliminary work should be performed, including development of new regulations, communication and control strategies, sensory data fusion and autonomous navigation algorithms, safe and ethical human-robot interaction strategies and dozens of other tasks. This is a huge-scale and long term multidisciplinary project that requires international collaboration and significant funding. National governments and the humankind in general have learned important lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and, should this project receive support, we may be better prepared for another pandemic - which is happening sooner or later.

The project was kickstarted in 2017 when a delegation of YTC America (subsidiary of Yazaki Corporation) visited Kazan Federal University. During the talks, YTC suggested that KFU participate in developing effective methods of separating single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) into metallic and semiconducting specimens. This was to be done on Tuball tubes produced by OCSiAl, since they are the only ones currently available in industrial quantities.

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) is a family of 1D nanostructures with numerous verified applications, made possible due to their excellent mechanical, optical and conductive properties.

However, application of CNTs is hampered by the presence of species with various structures in the raw production mixture, which obscures unique properties of individual species.

There are various methods for separating CNTs, but they can be hardly scaled up mainly because of the high cost of the used reagents. Notably, most of these methods were originally developed for sorting proteins, and were only recently adopted for separating CNTs.

In this paper, the authors propose a new, cost effective separation method, suitable for the industrial scale processing of CNTs. The method of separation is based on passing the CNTs surfactant solution through a column filled with chemically modified cotton wool.

One of the existing methods of separation, referred to as selective gel permeation, in its essence is a basic column chromatography. Namely, the CNTs surfactant solution is passed through a column, filled with beaded gels of agarose and/or dextran with the trade names "Sepharose" and "Sephacryl". Both agarose and dextran are polysaccharides made from the glucose or glucose-like building units. Cellulose is a natural polysaccharide consisting of the same structural units. This is why the team decided to try this material as a column filler for selective permeation. Cotton is natural cellulose, possessing high surface area due to the fibrous structure. Co-author Timur Khamidullin, a PhD student in Ayrat Dimiev's group (Laboratory of Advanced Carbon Nanomaterials, Kazan Federal University) made the first try with natural cotton wool purchased at a local pharmacy. Despite low sorting efficiency, there was some registered separation, i.e. cotton worked as a column filler. Inspired by the result, Ayrat Dimiev decided to chemically modify the cotton wool to change the chemical nature of its surface. Results were even higher that the expectations: this gave much better separating efficiency from the first very trial. It took another year and half of the collective group efforts to fine-tune both chemical modification of cotton, and the surfactants' ratio in dispersing and eluting solutions.

The use of modified cotton wool allowed to achieve a level of separation which was never reported for Tuball CNTs before. In addition, modified cotton wool is about 200 times cheaper than the agarose- and dextran-based hydrogels, currently employed in the selective gel permeation separation method. The method's scalability is limited only by the diameter of the separation column.

The main contribution to the work was made by group leader Ayrat Dimiev, PhD student Timur Khamidullin, and postdocs Shamil Galyaltdinov and Artur Khannanov.

In the raw production mixture, CNTs of different structures and properties obscure each other's value. Industrial demand for separated CNTs will appear and grow in the coming years. CNTs with metallic type conductivity can be used in flexible transparent conductive films and even potentially replace metals in wiring. Semiconducting CNTs can be used as transistors and as platforms for imaging and targeted drug delivery due to their distinct and unique emission in the IR region. Thus, efficient methods for separating raw CNT production mixtures would raise application of CNTs on a new scientific and technological level. Moreover, the availability of ready-made separated nanotubes will spur the search for new directions of their application.

The main area of future work is to further increase the efficiency of separation by fine-tuning the separation process parameters and the structure of the modified cotton wool. The optimal structure of the modified cotton wool and the conditions for its production are still not fully understood; this question needs to be fully resolved. After this is achieved, the process should be scaled to industrial quantities, and separated nanotubes with various types of conductivity should be tested for practical solutions.

The paper has been made available online and is set to appear in print in June 2021.

A team of scientists from Russia studied the role of double-stranded fragments of the maturing RNA and showed that the interaction between distant parts of the RNA can regulate gene expression. The research was published in Nature Communications.

At school, we learn that DNA is double-stranded and RNA is single-stranded, but that is not entirely true. Scientists have encountered many cases of RNA forming a double-stranded (a.k.a. secondary) structure that plays an important role in the functioning of RNA molecules. These structures are involved in the regulation of gene expression, where the double-stranded regions typically carry specific functions and, if lost, may cause severe disorders. A double-stranded structure is created by sticky complementary regions. For the strands to stick to each other, U and G should appear opposite A and C, respectively. The majority of the sticking regions are located close to one another, but the role of those located far apart has not been well understood.

Scientists from the Skoltech Center for Life Sciences (CLS) led by professor Dmitri Pervouchine and their colleagues from Russian and international laboratories used molecular and bioinformatics techniques to analyze the structure and roles of complementary RNA regions spaced far apart but capable of forming secondary structures. It transpired that the secondary structure plays an important role in the maturation of information-carrying RNA molecules and particularly in splicing, a process in which non-coding regions are cut out, and the coding regions are stitched together. The team showed that the RNA secondary structures can regulate splicing and thus contribute strongly to gene regulation.

"This paper culminates years of research on the RNA secondary structure and its role in the regulation of gene expression. We have published an extensive computation-based catalog of potentially important RNA structures, but the experimental research in this direction is just starting", professor Pervouchine comments.

UPTON, NY--Scientists have identified the primary cause of failure in a state-of-the-art lithium-metal battery, of interest for long-range electric vehicles. Using high-energy x-rays, they followed the cycling-induced changes at thousands of different points across the battery and mapped the variations in performance. At each point, they used the x-ray data to calculate the amount of cathode material and its local state of charge. These findings, combined with complementary electrochemical measurements, enabled them to determine the dominant mechanism driving the loss of battery capacity after many charge-discharge cycles. As they recently reported in Chemistry of Materials, depletion of the liquid electrolyte was the primary cause of failure. The electrolyte transports lithium ions between the rechargeable battery's two electrodes (anode and cathode) during each charge and discharge cycle.

"The big advantage of batteries with anodes made of lithium metal instead of graphite, the material typically used in today's batteries, is their high energy density," explained corresponding author Peter Khalifah, a joint appointee in the Chemistry Division at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Department of Chemistry at Stony Brook University. "Increasing the amount of energy that a battery material can store for a given mass is the best way to extend the driving range of electric vehicles."

Since 2017, the Battery500 Consortium--a group of national labs and universities--has been working to develop next-generation lithium-metal anodes with an energy density three times higher than that of current automotive batteries. However, getting lithium metal to work well as an anode in a continually cycling rechargeable battery with a high energy density is extremely challenging. Lithium metal is very reactive, so more and more of it degrades as the battery cycles. Over time, these degradation reactions consume other key battery parts, like the liquid electrolyte.

Early on in their development, high-energy-density lithium-metal anodes had a very short lifetime, typically 10 cycles or less. Battery500 Consortium researchers improved this lifetime to 200 cycles for the battery cell studied in this work and, more recently, to 400 cycles in 2020. Ultimately, the consortium seeks to achieve lifetimes of 1,000 cycles or more to meet electric vehicle needs.

"How can we make high-energy-density lithium-metal batteries that cycle for a longer time?" said Khalifah. "One way of answering this question is to understand the failure mechanism in a realistic "pouch cell" battery. That's where our work, supported by the Battery500 Consortium, comes in."

Widely used in industrial applications, a pouch cell is a sealed rectangular-shaped battery, which uses space much more efficiently than cylindrical cells powering household electronics. Thus, it's optimal for packing inside vehicles. In this study, scientists from DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) used PNNL's Advanced Battery Facility to fabricate lithium-metal batteries in a prototype pouch cell geometry with multiple layers.

Next, scientists from DOE's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) performed electrochemical testing on one of the multilayer pouch cells. They found only about 15 percent of the cell's capacity was lost over the first 170 cycles, but 75 percent was lost over the next 25 cycles. To understand this rapid capacity loss near the end of the battery's life, they extracted one of the cell's seven cathode layers and sent it to Brookhaven Lab for studies at the X-ray Powder Diffraction (XPD) beamline of the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II).

In XPD, x-rays striking a sample only reflect at certain angles, producing a characteristic pattern. This diffraction pattern provides information on many aspects of the sample's structure, including the volume of its unit cell--the smallest repeating portion of the structure--and the positions of atoms within the unit cell.

Though the team primarily wanted to learn about the lithium-metal anode, its x-ray diffraction pattern is weak (because lithium has few electrons) and doesn't change much during battery cycling (staying as lithium metal). So, they indirectly probed changes in the anode by studying closely related changes in the lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) cathode, whose diffraction pattern is much stronger.

"The cathode serves as a "reporter" for the anode," explained Khalifah. "If the anode starts to fail, its problems will be mirrored in the cathode because the nearby regions of the cathode will be unable to effectively take up and release lithium ions."

The XPD beamline played a critical role in the experiment. With their high energy, the x-rays at this beamline can completely penetrate through battery cells, even those a few millimeters thick. The beam's high intensity and large two-dimensional area detector enabled the scientists to rapidly collect high-quality diffraction data for thousands of points across the battery.

"In this country, NSLS-II is only one of two x-ray synchrotrons suitable for high-energy diffraction studies," explained Khalifah. "For each point, we got a high-resolution diffraction pattern in about a second, allowing us to map the entire area of the battery in two hours--more than 100 times faster than if the x-rays were generated using a conventional laboratory x-ray source."

The first quantity they mapped was the state of charge (SOC)--the amount of energy remaining in the battery compared to the energy it had when it was "full"--for the single cathode layer. A 100-percent SOC means the battery is fully charged, having as much energy as it can. With battery usage, this percentage drops. For example, a laptop showing 80-percent power is at an 80-percent SOC. In chemistry terms, SOC corresponds to the lithium content in the cathode, where lithium is reversibly inserted and removed during cycling. As lithium is removed, the cathode's unit cell volume shrinks. This volume can be easily determined from x-ray diffraction measurements, which are therefore sensitive to the local SOC at each point. Any local regions where performance is degrading will have different SOCs from the rest of the cathode.

The SOC maps revealed three "hotspots," each a few millimeters in diameter, where the local performance was much worse than that of the rest of the cell. Only a portion of the NMC cathode in the hotspots had trouble cycling; the rest remained synchronized with the cell. This finding suggested the battery capacity loss was due to partial destruction of the liquid electrolyte, as loss of the electrolyte will "freeze" the battery at its current SOC.

Other possible reasons for the battery capacity loss--consumption of the lithium-metal anode or gradual loss of lithium ions or electronic conductivity as degradation products form on the electrode surface--would not lead to the simultaneous presence of active and inactive NMC cathode in the hotspots. Follow-up experiments led by INL team members on smaller battery coin cells designed to intentionally fail through electrolyte depletion exhibited the same behavior as this large pouch cell, confirming the failure mechanism.

"Electrolyte depletion was the failure mechanism most consistent with the synchrotron x-ray and electrochemistry data," said Khalifah. "In many regions of the cell, we saw the electrolyte was partially depleted, so ion transport became more difficult but not impossible. But in the three hotspots, the electrolyte largely ran out, so cycling became impossible."

In addition to pinpointing the location of the hotspots where failure was occurring most rapidly, the synchrotron x-ray diffraction studies also revealed why failure was occurring there by providing the amount of NMC present at each position on the cathode. Regions with the worst failure typically had smaller amounts of NMC than the rest of the cell. When less of the NMC cathode is present, that part of the battery charges and discharges more quickly and completely, causing the electrolyte to be consumed more rapidly and accelerating its eventual failure in these regions. Even small reductions in the cathode amount (five percent or less) can accelerate failure. Therefore, improving manufacturing processes to produce more uniform cathodes should lead to longer-lasting batteries.

"This work is a great example of a successful collaboration among BNL, INL, and PNNL by using our different expertise in energy storage," said Jie Xiao, group leader of PNNL's battery research program.

"The results from this study and other Battery500 activities clearly show the benefit of using capabilities from across the DOE complex to drive advancement in energy storage technologies," added Eric Dufek, department manager for INL's Energy Storage and Advanced Vehicle Department.

In future studies, the team plans to map the changes occurring while the battery charges and discharges.

"In this study, we looked at a single snapshot of the battery near the end of its lifetime," said Khalifah. "One important result was demonstrating how the technique has sufficient sensitivity that we should be able to apply it to operating batteries. If we can collect diffraction data while the battery cycles, we'll get a movie of how all the different parts change over time. This information will provide a more complete picture of how failure happens and, ultimately, enable us to design higher-performance batteries."

Making space in high street shops for people to repair clothes could mend the damage caused by fast fashion and transform sewing into a wellbeing activity, experts say.

More resources and opportunities for people to embrace slow fashion could also save people money, help them learn new skills and create new business opportunities.

A new study suggests a variety of ways in which consumers might be encouraged to change their clothing purchasing behaviour, depending on their personality traits. One way to do this might be by marketing making and mending expertise as the "hipster's' equivalent of a spa day".

Fast fashion has emerged in the last few decades as clothes have become cheaper, less durable and are purchased more frequently. This has resulted in severe negative environmental and human costs.

Researchers say top-down solutions - including taxation, market incentives and legislation - have been ineffective. They say social interaction, and showing how repairs can help protect the investment people make in their clothes, should also be used to encourage more sustainable shopping.

The study says social interaction is just as important in shaping views and behaviours as learning new skills.

The experts say people's behaviour could also be changed by an app, or other technology, which charts consumers' wardrobe content every six-months. The app could incorporate recording, profiling and photography tools enabling shoppers to make conscious choices regarding what they really need to buy.

The research, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, is by Dr Jodie West, Professor Clare Saunders and Dr Joanie Willett from the University of Exeter.

The researchers held 20 one-day workshops between January and September 2018, in Cornwall (and 20 s West Midlands) to envision and practice an alternative, slower way of doing fashion. Participants gained hands-on experience working with natural yarns, natural dyes, hand-spinning and weaving, making do and mending, ethical clothing and upcycling. The ten people who took part were from varied backgrounds: from avid followers of fast fashion, to persons who made all of their own clothes.

The success of the workshops promises significant potential for nationwide roll out across the country

Making stations could be run by organisations such as WRAP, who could provide making and mending community kits, so groups of enthused people can join together, working with teachers if they wanted. There could also be Government funded making spaces/studios on the high street.

Professor Saunders said: "Top down measures have been relatively ineffective, and rejected by policy-makers. This means we also need bottom-up approaches to reduce the impact of fast fashion.

"Unless quality and longevity form part of fashion identity, it is likely consumers will continue to seek to pay the lowest price to achieve their intended identity statement. As demand for quality clothing increases in line with growing demand for slower fashion, there needs to be wider societal take up of clothing care and maintenance.

"This whole system change in how garments are perceived must include acceptance that clothes - like many other consumer goods - require intermittent servicing. Brands such as Patagonia and Finisterre are now providing servicing and repair kits, with 'investment' type items, like winter coats or boots. This mind-set shift could become popular with consumers if presented to them as a way to preserve their investment."

Dr Willett said: "It is crucial expertise in making and mending spreads from small groups working in community halls and art spaces, to a normalised practice on the high street. High street brands should include stations for mending and modifying clothing in their stores, this could become a social thing to do - people could bring friends to making sessions.

"Participants in the workshops said learning about fashion production and conditions had changed the way they viewed clothing. The project gave them the courage and inspiration to tackle repairs and modifications, and has normalised sustainability, rather than feeling isolated for wanting to be more sustainable."

Abu Dhabi, UAE, April 19: The survival rate of cancer patients can drop to ten percent or less during metastasis, the spread of cancerous cells to create secondary tumors. Therefore, it is crucial that cancer is detected and treated before metastasis occurs, or at least at its early stages. To spread the cancer, messenger cells known as Circulating Tumor Cells, or CTCs, break off of the original tumor and flow through the bloodstream to create a secondary growth. A team of researchers led by Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering and Principal Investigator at the NYU Abu Dhabi Mohammad A. Qasaimeh, have developed a new microfluidic system, called the Herringbone Microfluidic Probe (HB-MFP), that effectively isolates both CTCs and clusters of CTCs from blood samples of cancer patients for easier and more insightful analysis.

In a new study titled Herringbone Microfluidic Probe for Multiplexed Affinity-Capture of Prostate Circulating Tumor Cells, Qasaimeh and his team present the process of creating the HB-MFP tool, which utilizes different types of biorecognition molecules to identify and isolate cells from blood samples. The HB-MFP works in an open configuration without involving the concept of closed-channels, which eliminates several technical challenges with classical microfluidics. As a result, the HB-MFP is mobile and scans over the capture substrate that is decorated with different biorecognition receptors. For analogy, the HB-MFP works like a pen writing on a board under water and with no contact, where the ink is the patient's blood sample and the board is the biofunctionalized substrate for CTCs capture.

In one milliliter of a patient's blood sample, only a few CTCs exist within billions of healthy red and white blood cells. Using prostate cancer blood samples, the HB-MFP efficiently isolated CTCs with counts ranging from as low as 6 CTCs/mL (localized cancer patients) to as high as 280 CTCs/mL (metastatic cancer patients). In addition, clusters of CTCs as large as a group of 50 cells were successfully arrested. These new findings are published in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.

"The analysis of the number, antigen expression levels, and sizes of captured CTCs potentially holds great promise to serve as a diagnostic and prognostic tool for prostate cancer," commented Ayoub Glia, the first author and a PhD candidate at Qasaimeh Group.

Physical examinations and measuring prostate specific antigen (PSA) serum levels are the two standards for early prostate cancer detection. However, these procedures have shown to be inaccurate and invasive. Liquid biopsy approaches, a diagnosis tool using blood samples, requires small sample volumes and offers high precision, thus achieving higher sensitivity at a lower cost.

"The HB-MFP leads the way for more efficient liquid biopsies and can be adapted to other types of cancers, such as breast cancer and lung cancer, by slight customizations," said Qasaimeh. "It is our hope that our work will help make early diagnostic tools more effective and accurate."

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Someday, scientists believe, tiny DNA-based robots and other nanodevices will deliver medicine inside our bodies, detect the presence of deadly pathogens, and help manufacture increasingly smaller electronics.

Researchers took a big step toward that future by developing a new tool that can design much more complex DNA robots and nanodevices than were ever possible before in a fraction of the time.

In a paper published today (April 19, 2021) in the journal Nature Materials, researchers from The Ohio State University - led by former engineering doctoral student Chao-Min Huang - unveiled new software they call MagicDNA.

The software helps researchers design ways to take tiny strands of DNA and combine them into complex structures with parts like rotors and hinges that can move and complete a variety of tasks, including drug delivery.

Researchers have been doing this for a number of years with slower tools with tedious manual steps, said Carlos Castro, co-author of the study and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State.

"But now, nanodevices that may have taken us several days to design before now take us just a few minutes," Castro said.

And now researchers can make much more complex - and useful - nanodevices.

"Previously, we could build devices with up to about six individual components and connect them with joints and hinges and try to make them execute complex motions," said study co-author Hai-Jun Su, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Ohio State.

"With this software, it is not hard to make robots or other devices with upwards of 20 components that are much easier to control. It is a huge step in our ability to design nanodevices that can perform the complex actions that we want them to do."

The software has a variety of advantages that will help scientists design better, more helpful nanodevices and - researchers hope - shorten the time before they are in everyday use.

One advantage is that it allows researchers to carry out the entire design truly in 3D. Earlier design tools only allowed creation in 2D, forcing researchers to map their creations into 3D. That meant designers couldn't make their devices too complex.

The software also allows designers to build DNA structures "bottom up" or "top down."

In "bottom up" design, researchers take individual strands of DNA and decide how to organize them into the structure they want, which allows fine control over local device structure and properties.

But they can also take a "top down" approach where they decide how their overall device needs to be shaped geometrically and then automate how the DNA strands are put together.

Combining the two allows for increasing complexity of the overall geometry while maintaining precise control over individual component properties, Castro said.

Another key element of the software is that it allows simulations of how designed DNA devices would move and operate in the real world.

"As you make these structures more complex, it is difficult to predict exactly what they are going to look like and how they are going to behave," Castro said.

"It is critical to be able to simulate how our devices will actually operate. Otherwise, we waste a lot of time."

As a demonstration of the software's ability, co-author Anjelica Kucinic, a doctoral student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State, led the researchers in making and characterizing many nanostructures designed by the software.

Some of the devices they created included robot arms with claws that can pick up smaller items, and a hundred nanometer-sized structure that looks like an airplane (The "airplane" is 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair).

The ability to make more complex nanodevices means that they can do more useful things and even carry out multiple tasks with one device, Castro said.

For example, it is one thing to have a DNA robot that, after injection into the bloodstream, can detect a certain pathogen.

"But a more complex device may not only detect that something bad is happening, but can also react by releasing a drug or capturing the pathogen," he said.

"We want to be able to design robots that respond in a particular way to a stimulus or move in a certain way."

Castro said he expects that for the next few years, the MagicDNA software will be used at universities and other research labs. But its use could expand in the future.

"There is getting to be more and more commercial interest in DNA nanotechnology," he said. "I think in the next five to 10 years we will start seeing commercial applications of DNA nanodevices and we are optimistic that this software can help drive that."

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (April 19, 2021) - A new study classifies different types of wildlife traffickers and sellers in two of Central Africa's growing urban centers, providing new insight into the poorly understood urban illegal wildlife trade. The findings can help conservation and law enforcement authorities prioritize their efforts on professional criminals, identify patterns among repeat offenders, and determine if wildlife offenders are engaging in other types of crime.

Authors from the University of Maryland and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) describe their findings in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation. The research focused on a range of species, including great apes, pangolins, and crocodiles and helps to clarify where professional criminals potentially engage with illegal supply chains, where the illegal value chains share touchpoints with other forms of criminality, and where they do not.

The authors created a classification of urban wild meat trafficking and selling in Brazzaville and Pointe Noire, Republic of Congo. They found that the types of wildlife traffickers and sellers were different in terms of their professionalism, offending rates, criminality, and need for resources that support continued criminality. The results help show the variation of wild meat trafficking in Republic of Congo's urban centers which can help focus conservation programs so they are more precise and are more likely to achieve intended outcomes.

For example, one category called "Criminal diversifiers" use traditional economic models of supply and demand for pangolin scales and often have connections with border officials; they can be multi-lingual (e.g., Lingala, Munukutuba, Swahili, French, English). The transnational nature of pangolin scale trafficking requires border contacts and professional sellers manage the logistics of the illicit supply chain, moving large quantities of scales across oceans and continents. Based on participant perceptions, this is the most high-level criminal connection of all species.

Urban wild meat consumption can contribute to significant declines in wildlife populations, ecosystem function, and food insecurity. Classifying groups and individuals involved in urban wild meat trafficking may help distinguish ordinary citizens from members of criminal organizations, and help reduce stereotyping and injustice, the authors note. Characterizing stakeholders is also useful for focusing the format, content and distribution methods of communication, marketing, or education campaigns designed to reduce wildlife trafficking.

Said the study's lead author Dr. Meredith Gore of the University of Maryland: "This research helps amplify the voices of diverse local experts with extensive knowledge about the human dimensions of the illegal wildlife trade in and to African cities. The new information about forms of sellers and traffickers may help identify where the criminological risks from illegal wild meat trade are concentrated, and where they are not, along the bridge from rural to urban environments."

Said the study's co-author Christian Plowman of WCS's Central Africa Program: "It will be exciting to see these crime science-based approaches tested (and retested) in other urban environments and for other species of conservation concern. Cross-disciplinary and evidence-based approaches to preventing conservation crime can add value to existing efforts."

Hunting and fishing contribute to rural diets, and in low-density and non-commercial settings, do not normally pose a threat to wildlife populations. The loss of pangolins, apes and crocodiles due to illegal overharvesting for wild meat would result in loss of tourism revenue, have a destabilizing effect on forest and freshwater ecosystems, and impact rural communities who still rely on their natural resource base for livelihoods, culture and food security.

The authors say that further refining the lists and definitions of, as well as linkages between, types of sellers and traffickers of illegal urban wild meat will be useful, as urbanization continues at a rapid pace in the Republic of the Congo, and elsewhere in the world. As the size and wealth of the urban populations grows, the demand for wild meat is expected to increase.

Minimizing adverse per capita impacts of cities on natural resources and the living environment and supporting more positive environmental links between urban and rural areas, can be accomplished in part through reduced wild meat trafficking. Reducing the scope and scale of criminality associated with wild meat trafficking can enable better realization of sustainable development goals, such as tourism revenue from protected areas and rural communities relying on natural resource bases for livelihoods, cultural heritage, and food security.

In March 2020, when the pandemic hit, everything slowed, including non-essential medical procedures such as elective surgeries, to reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

Six weeks later, Mary Byrnes, Ph.D., an assistant research scientist in the Department of Surgery at Michigan Medicine, began calling University of Michigan Frankel Cardiovascular Center patients whose surgeries had been canceled or delayed. She wanted to hear about their experiences -- what undergoing surgery meant to them, how postponing their operations had affected them, whether the existence of the coronavirus complicated how they felt about their bodies and about surgery.

Over the next 10 days, she heard stories of fear: "I'm literally afraid to have my surgery now, and I'm just going day by day on prayer and hoping...that I don't have anything fatal attack my system."

And suffering: "This last week... I've just been struggling. And I...I don't know if it's more symptoms or anxiety or whatever, but...I'm just ready to get this behind me and hopefully live a better life."

As well as altruism: "As much as I want it done, those nurses are overwhelmed right now. They don't need another person in there. Let's hope this starts calming down, and they get a breather before... people are coming in for surgery."

Collectively, the 47 interviews Byrnes conducted -- compiled for a study recently published in Medical Care -- illustrate the profound impact of postponing cardiovascular surgeries due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There's been other work coming out that said patients don't really care about delaying their surgeries," says Byrnes, the first author of the study. "But the heart is a different type of organ that has a lot of emotions wrapped around it. It's literary even."

"And even though these were elective surgeries," she adds, "they were serious operations where people were literally having their chests cracked open, and so there was a lot of mental preparation to confront that in the first place. Ultimately, they viewed surgery as a cure, so the unknowing about whether it would happen was problematic for them."

Despite all the uncertainty, many patients preferred to wait to undergo surgery in an effort to avoid catching COVID-19. Some thought they were likely to die of their cardiovascular conditions before their operations could take place, yet they favored passing away of "the devil they knew" over "the devil they didn't," says Byrnes.

In the past year, more Americans have died than would be expected, even when accounting for those who have passed away from COVID-19 or related complications. One of the driving factors may be certain cardiovascular conditions, namely ischemic heart disease -- when narrowed coronary arteries cause heart problems -- and illness related to high blood pressure. States that experienced COVID-19 surges early in the pandemic, including New York and Michigan, also saw a spike in deaths linked to these issues, potentially because patients avoided health care during those periods.

"Patients are suffering even though we don't see them," Byrnes says. "We have to think about our policies and how we talk to patients in terms of the fact that they think they're going to die -- and they might."

As Michigan Medicine and other local health systems begin to delay a small number of surgeries again, thanks to the latest COVID-19 surge in Michigan, this study's findings can inform the decisions hospital leadership makes and create an opportunity for additional communication with and support for cardiovascular patients.

"We need to be upfront and accessible," says Nicholas H. Osborne, M.D., the associate program director of vascular surgery at Michigan Medicine and the last author of the study. "Cancellations should be communicated directly to patients, and surgeons should be available to talk with patients to reassure them."

"As a healthcare system, we may also need to design and implement interventions, such as support systems or social work resources, to minimize the impact these delays have on the well-being of our patients," says Craig Brown, M.D., M.S., a general surgery resident at Michigan Medicine and an additional author of the study. "It is not simply an inconvenience to many of them, but rather has dramatic consequences and substantial psychological impacts on their wellbeing."

Data from a GPS network in Colombia have revealed a shallow and fully locked part on the Caribbean subduction zone in the country that suggests a possible large earthquake and tsunami risk for the northwest region.

The locked patch south of Cartagena city is capable of generating a magnitude 8.0 earthquake every 600 years, said Sindy Lizarazo of Nagoya University in Japan, who presented the study at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting.

Colombia lies in the middle of a complex tectonic zone, where the Caribbean, Nazca and South American tectonic plates and other smaller tectonic blocks converge. The Caribbean plate is very slowly converging with the northern part of Colombia--moving at 7 millimeters per year--which may in part be the reason for the long time between large earthquakes in northwest Colombia.

"The only recent historical record of a disastrous [magnitude 6.4] earthquake in the Colombian Caribbean region was on May 22, 1834 close to Santa Marta," said Lizarazo. "However, there is no seismic event that meets the magnitude estimated by our study, nor tsunamis in the historical record on the northern part of Colombia."

To better understand the complex movements and crustal deformation taking place in the region, Lizarazo and colleagues analyzed data from the nationwide GPS network called GeoRED (GEOdesia: Red de Estudios de Deformación in Spanish). The network has been operated by the Geological Survey of Colombia since 2007 and has 150 permanent stations in continuous operation.

GPS data can be used to estimate the movements and crustal deformation of the tectonic plates interacting against each other. The data analyzed by Lizarazo and colleagues revealed motion of the northern part of the North Andean Block--a "microplate" squeezed between the Nazca and South American plates--that causes it to interact with the subducting Caribbean plate.

Using these data along with a realistic slab configuration, the researchers estimated the extent and degree of interplate locking along this boundary, where stresses may build without being released in an earthquake.

The study "provides the first evidence of a shallow locked region south of Cartagena," Lizarazo said. "This indicates that this segment of the Caribbean-South America plate boundary in northwestern Colombia can be the locus of significant earthquake and tsunami hazard."

To fully evaluate this hazard potential, researchers need to conduct large-scale geological mapping, and look for evidence of past tsunamis and large earthquakes in the region, among other studies. "It is also necessary to continue with the densification of the GPS network in the country, increasing its coverage and operation in real time," Lizarazo said.

Boston College seismologist John Ebel and his colleagues have noted a pattern for some large California earthquakes: magnitude 4 or larger earthquakes occur at a higher rate along a fault in the two decades or more prior to a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake on the fault.

The findings prompted Ebel in 2017 to suggest a prospective test. He looked for the California faults that had magnitude 4 or larger earthquakes occurring at a rate higher than 0.5 earthquakes per year from 1997 to 2016. If the pattern holds, the next magnitude 6.7 earthquakes in California are most likely to occur along these faults, he said at the Seismological Society of America (SSA)'s 2021 Annual Meeting.

The eight faults identified in the 2017 forecast are the creeping section of the San Andreas Fault, the Southern San Andreas Fault, the Calaveras Fault, the Little Lake Fault, the Maacama Fault, the Anza section of the San Jacinto Fault, the San Bernardino Section of the San Jacinto Fault and the offshore San Clemente Fault.

So far, there has only been one magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake in California since the forecast was made. The magnitude 7.1 Searles Valley earthquake of the July 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence occurred on a fault that was very near and at a slight angle to the Little Lake Fault.

"My forecast was not exactly fulfilled," said Ebel. "Strictly speaking, the 2019 earthquake did not fall on the fault that I forecast, but it did occur in the area that I forecast."

Large earthquakes occur every three to five years in California, so it may be some time before the forecast is put to the test again, he noted. The pattern doesn't predict when a large earthquake might be expected after a higher rate of magnitude 4 earthquakes.

Ebel first became interested in patterns of magnitude 4 earthquakes in eastern North America, where older rupture zones are more difficult to trace than in California. He noticed there that magnitude 4 and larger earthquakes seemed to be occurring at the ends of modern earthquake zones. "I wondered if I could find where the ends of old earthquake ruptures were by figuring out where the modern magnitude 4s are," he said.

In California, there are more faults with decades' long histories of magnitude 4 and larger earthquakes to help answer the question. "The first thing I noticed there was the rate of magnitude 4s was a lot higher before a large earthquake than it was after a large earthquake occurred," Ebel said. "And then the other thing I noticed was that those magnitude 4s were scattered all along those faults that were eventually to have the big earthquake."

The pattern of magnitude 4 earthquakes occurring all along a fault before a large earthquake and then concentrating at the ends of the rupture afterward reflects how seismic stress is redistributed by a large earthquake, he said.

Ebel has also looked for the pattern in other regions with good recent earthquake records, such as Japan. The 2016 magnitude 7.3 Kumamoto, Kyushu earthquake and the 2016 magnitude 6.2 in Central Tottori earthquake on Honshu had some magnitude 4 or larger earthquakes along their faults in the two decades before the large earthquakes, but the 1995 magnitude 6.9 Kobe earthquake had few magnitude 4 earthquakes before the mainshock. He concluded that the pattern may not happen before all large earthquakes.

Ebel hopes that discussing the California forecast will prompt other researchers to look for data sets or theoretical work that could be used to test the magnitude 4 pattern more thoroughly and across the globe.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A survey of U.S. multiple sclerosis, or MS, specialist clinicians reveals the COVID-19 pandemic has created major changes in how they deliver care.

"Since the pandemic began, more than 95% of our survey respondents reported using telehealth platforms to provide care for their patients," said Dr. Elizabeth Morrison-Banks, a health sciences clinical professor of neurology in the School of Medicine at the University of California, Riverside, who led the survey reported in the journal Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. "Approximately one half of the respondents were MS specialist neurologists, four out of five of whom indicated that COVID-19 had changed how they were recommending and prescribing MS disease-modifying therapies."

During the pandemic, the MS specialist neurologists tended to prescribe fewer immunosuppressive agents. Survey respondents also commented on their perceived level of safety and support in the workplace during the pandemic. Most indicated they had access to adequate personal protective equipment, but fewer than 50% reported they had adequate ability to physically distance themselves at work. Nearly 10% of respondents reported they had been redeployed, most commonly to the front lines of COVID-19 care.

"Our findings point to profound changes in MS clinical practice since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic," said Morrison-Banks, who directs the Multiple Sclerosis Program at UCR Health. "For better or for worse, when clinical practice patterns change, we should not be surprised to see corresponding changes in patient outcomes."

Survey respondents included some of the most highly trained MS specialists in the country, considered to be thought leaders for other clinicians in their disciplines.

"Their collective shift, on average, in prescribing fewer of the highest-efficacy immunosuppressive therapies could potentially translate into patients experiencing more MS disease activity," Morrison-Banks said. "We don't, however, have enough information yet about COVID-19 outcomes in patients receiving immunosuppressive treatments. We suspect many respondents were decreasing use of certain MS disease-modifying therapies that suppress the immune system -- for example, B-cell modulating agents -- because they were concerned these agents could trigger severe complications from COVID-19."

Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Morrison-Banks attended a virtual MS meeting in which the discussion turned to how MS specialists were responding to the pandemic.

"Sharing our mutual interest in how our colleagues around the country were dealing with the challenges of COVID-19 led to this national survey," she said. "We did our best to collect and disseminate the survey's data as early as possible during the COVID-19 pandemic with the hope that the results will be of use to clinicians and people living with MS. Our finding that nearly 10% of survey respondents reported being redeployed because of the viral pandemic led us to consider the extent to which the pandemic has challenged the capacity of the MS health care work force."

Morrison-Banks stressed that people living with MS need consistent support from their clinicians to ensure they receive the best possible health care.

"We hope people living with MS will not avoid seeing their clinicians because they're afraid of getting exposed to COVID-19," she said. "Our survey suggests the vast majority of MS specialists are offering at least some telehealth services so their patients can feel safer as they continue receiving care."

Next, the team plans to study how clinical practice patterns in MS care will change as more research data are published over the upcoming months, including from ongoing studies exploring how various MS disease-modifying therapies affect outcomes from SARS CoV-2 infection.

Airbnb hosts in college towns increase their listing prices much more than hotels when there are home football games against rival teams. Hosts experience a 78 percent reduction in rental income by listing prices too high, according to a new study by the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management.

The paper, to be published in Real Estate Economics, investigates whether households set listing prices to maximize rental income.

“Airbnb hosts in college towns are individuals, not corporations and are more susceptible to biases that lead to sub-optimal pricing,” said co-author Joseph Engelberg, professor of finance and accounting at the Rady School. “In this case, we found that strong emotions involved in college football rivalries confounded listing prices set by households.”

Airbnb—the largest firm in the rapidly growing “sharing” economy—recently announced the need to add millions of new hosts to accommodate guests as travel picks up again following the coronavirus pandemic.

For hosts in college towns, home game weekends are a big source of revenue during football season. The six weekends equate to 60 percent of total rental income between August and December.

Popular games on home weekends allow Airbnb hosts to charge even higher prices and rival games are certainly popular. But when the authors compared price hikes of more than 20 percent during rival weekends to price hikes of more than 20 percent during top-ranked, non-rival weekends, they found the increase during rival games reduced the likelihood of booking by 36 percent. This caused a reduction in rental income by 78 percent.

The inability to obtain a booking on just one Saturday night of a home game against a rival team results in an average rental loss of $325, or nearly 40 percent of the unit’s monthly mortgage payment.

Engelberg and co-authors, Barbara A. Bliss of the University of San Diego and Mitch Warachka of Claremont McKenna College, analyzed data on 1,320 Airbnb units in 26 college towns encompassing 236 games during the 2014 and 2015 football seasons.

They obtained lists of rivals from sports media and include well-known examples such as Florida-Florida State, Notre Dame-USC, Ohio State-Michigan and Alabama-Louisiana State University.

The researchers found that hosts increase listing prices more during games with well-known rivals, compared to games with top-ranked, non-rivals.

For example, Florida State had home games in Tallahassee against Notre Dame and the University of Florida during the 2014 college football season. For the home game against the fifth ranked-team Notre Dame, Airbnb units in Tallahassee were listed for an average price of $201. However, five weeks later, on the home game against the unranked, rival University of Florida team, the average listing price in Tallahassee increased to $267.

With fans allowed in stadiums again for the 2021 season, the authors expect the same trend to continue.  

Animosity toward rival affiliations is a luxury that only upper middle-class hosts can afford

The researchers also sought to answer if financial constraints influenced hosts’ listing prices. They divided the zip codes within each college town into areas where residents are either financially unconstrained or financially constrained based on their utilization of available credit.

Indeed, only upper middle-class hosts are willing to take the financial hit out of spite during football season.

On average, those with and without financial constraints earn similar rental incomes on most days. However, on games against rivals, the average rental income of financially unconstrained households declines by over 20 percent, compared to hosts with more limited budgets. 

“Intuitively, animosity toward rival affiliations is a luxury that financially constrained hosts cannot afford to incorporate into their listing prices,” the authors write.

The units in the study resemble hotel rooms and provide accommodations that physically separate guests from hosts. Thus, rental transactions typically do not involve any interaction between hosts and guests.

Yet, that does not deter Airbnb hosts from increasing their rates and unlike hotels, they are not subject to regulatory oversight constraints.

Personal preference has a dramatic impact on the rapidly increasing “sharing” economy

The study offers new insights into the “sharing economy” in which households monetize their assets, such as their house (Airbnb.com), car (GetAround.com), or spare cash (Prosper.com). Airbnb dominates the economy—with over 150 million current users in the U.S., its value exceeds $31 billion.

In terms of the economic significance for Airbnb hosts in college towns on home game weekends, the failure to obtain a booking for both Friday and Saturday night results in a $662 loss, or 68.8 percent of the unit’s monthly mortgage payment.

The authors conclude their findings highlight an important issue in the sharing economy.

“The  prices  set  by  households  may  differ  substantially  from  those  set  by  corporations since the former are susceptible to the personal  preferences of individuals,” they write. “In this case, animosity toward rival affiliations is a preference capable of reducing household income.”

Journal

Real Estate Economics