Tech

Researchers in South Korea developed a plasmonic isothermal recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) array chip, the world's first plasmoinc isothermal PCR technology which can detect 8 types of pathogens (4 bacteria and 4 viruses) that cause acute respiratory infectious diseases in 30 minutes, led by Dr. Sung-Gyu Park and Dr. Ho Sang Jung of the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS, President Jung-Hwan Lee) and by Dr. Min-Young Lee and Dr. Ayoung Woo of Samsung Medical Center. KIMS is a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT.

* PCR(Polymerase Chain Reaction): A test method to amplify and detect nucleic acids target

The current detection technology for COVID-19 is impossible to analyze on-site as it takes about 4 hours or more to be confirmed after specimen collection, making it difficult to isolate the infectee as soon as possible.

To solve this problem, the researchers combined isothermal PCR technology with 3D Au nanostructured substrate which can amplify the fluorescence signal of RPA products with DNA amplicons and sucessfully detected bacterial DNA and viral RNA within 30 minutes.

In addition, the research team also developed a 3D plasmonic array chip for multiplex molecular detections: a chip that can simultaneously analyze 8 pathogens(4 bacteria and 4 viruses).

* 4 bacteria: Streptococcus pneumoniae, Haemophilus influenzae, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Mycoplasma pneumoniae
* 4 viruses: Coronavirus 229E, OC42, NL63(Coronavirus 229E, OC43, NL63), Human metapneumovirus

The "multiplex diagnosis technology for acute respiratory infections" was also confirmed to be valid for clinical specimens collected by nasopharyngeal swabs. The team is planning to perform the reliability test of medical devices through large-scale clinical trials on COVID-19 infectees and applying for approval from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.

The "3D plasmonic nanomaterials technology for enhancing optical signal" of KIMS has already been patented in Korea, the US, and China, and the "on-site rapid pathogen detection technology" has been applied for a domestic patent jointly with Samsung Medical Center.

"We developed a medical device that can detect pathogens in half an hour on-site, by developing core plasmonic nanomaterials which enable ultra-sensitive pathogene diagnosis of more than 10 types of respiratory viral pathogens. The on-site molecular diagnostic devices can be prevalent rapidly as we actively research with Samsung Medical Center and domestic diagnostic device companies." said Dr. Sung-Gyu Park, a principal research scientist of KIMS.

Jung-hwan Lee, the president of KIMS said, "KIMS consistently supports to commercialize the on-site molecular diagnosis technology for respiratory infectious disease and ultrasensitive drug detection sensor technology which are based on the 3D highly sensitive plasmonic nanomaterials. We will do our utmost so that our research outcomes contribute to the quality of life and safe society."

In physics, things exist in "phases", such as solid, liquid, gas. When something crosses from one phase to another, we talk about a "phase transition" - think about water boiling into steam, turning from liquid to gas.

In our kitchens water boils at 100oC, and its density changes dramatically, making a discontinuous jump from liquid to gas. However, if we turn up the pressure, the boiling point of water also increases, until a pressure of 221 atmospheres where it boils at 374oC. Here, something strange happens: the liquid and gas merge into a single phase. Above this "critical point," there is no longer a phase transition at all, and so by controlling its pressure water can be steered from liquid to gas without ever crossing one.

Is there a quantum version of a water-like phase transition? "The current directions in quantum magnetism and spintronics require highly spin-anisotropic interactions to produce the physics of topological phases and protected qubits, but these interactions also favor discontinuous quantum phase transitions," says Professor Henrik Rønnow at EPFL's School of Basic Sciences.

Previous studies have focused on smooth, continuous phase transitions in quantum magnetic materials. Now, in a joint experimental and theoretical project led by Rønnow and Professor Frédéric Mila, also at the School of Basic Sciences, physicists at EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institute have studied a discontinuous phase transition to observe the first ever critical point in a quantum magnet, similar to that of water. The work is now published in Nature.

The scientists used a "quantum antiferromagnet", known in the field as SCBO (from its chemical composition: SrCu2(BO3)2). Quantum antiferromagnets are especially useful for understanding how the quantum aspects of a material's structure affect its overall properties - for example, how the spins of its electrons interact to give its magnetic properties. SCBO is also a "frustrated" magnet, meaning that its electron spins can't stabilize in some orderly structure, and instead they adopt some uniquely quantum fluctuating states.

In a complex experiment, the researchers controlled both the pressure and the magnetic field applied to milligram pieces of SCBO. "This allowed us to look all around the discontinuous quantum phase transition and that way we found critical-point physics in a pure spin system," says Rønnow.

The team performed high-precision measurements of the specific heat of SCBO, which shows its readiness to "suck up energy". For example, water absorbs only small amounts of energy at -10oC, but at 0oC and 100oC it can take up huge amounts as every molecule is driven across the transitions from ice to liquid and liquid to gas. Just like water, the pressure-temperature relationship of SCBO forms a phase diagram showing a discontinuous transition line separating two quantum magnetic phases, with the line ending at a critical point.

"Now when a magnetic field is applied, the problem becomes richer than water," says Frédéric Mila. "Neither magnetic phase is strongly affected by a small field, so the line becomes a wall of discontinuities in a three-dimensional phase diagram - but then one of the phases becomes unstable and the field helps push it towards a third phase."

To explain this macroscopic quantum behavior, the researchers teamed up with several colleagues, particularly Professor Philippe Corboz at the University of Amsterdam, who have been developing powerful new computer-based techniques.

"Previously it was not possible to calculate the properties of 'frustrated' quantum magnets in a realistic two- or three-dimensional model," says Mila. "So SCBO provides a well-timed example where the new numerical methods meet reality to provide a quantitative explanation of a phenomenon new to quantum magnetism."

Henrik Rønnow concludes: "Looking forward, the next generation of functional quantum materials will be switched across discontinuous phase transitions, so a proper understanding of their thermal properties will certainly include the critical point, whose classical version has been known to science for two centuries."

What The Study Did: Researchers estimated the risk of suicide among nurses and physicians compared to the general population in the United States.

Authors: Matthew A. Davis, M.P.H., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.0154)

Editor's Note: The article includes conflict of interest disclosures. Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told.

Data from 19 observatories released today promise to give unparalleled insight into this black hole and the system it powers, and to improve tests of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

"We knew that the first direct image of a black hole would be groundbreaking," says Kazuhiro Hada of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, a co-author of a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that describes the large set of data. "But to get the most out of this remarkable image, we need to know everything we can about the black hole's behavior at that time by observing over the entire electromagnetic spectrum."

The immense gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole can power jets of particles that travel at almost the speed of light across vast distances. M87's jets produce light spanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to visible light to gamma rays. This pattern is different for each black hole. Identifying this pattern gives crucial insight into a black hole's properties--for example, its spin and energy output--but is a challenge because the pattern changes with time.

Scientists compensated for this variability by coordinating observations with many of the world's most powerful telescopes on the ground and in space, collecting light from across the spectrum. These 2017 observations were the largest simultaneous observing campaign ever undertaken on a supermassive black hole with jets.

Three observatories managed by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian participated in the landmark campaign: the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hilo, Hawaii; the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory; and the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) in southern Arizona.

Beginning with the EHT's now iconic image of M87, a new video takes viewers on a journey through the data from each telescope. Each consecutive frame shows data across many factors of ten in scale, both of wavelengths of light and physical size.

The sequence begins with the April 2019 image of the black hole. It then moves through images from other radio telescope arrays from around the globe (SMA), moving outward in the field of view during each step. Next, the view changes to telescopes that detect visible light, ultraviolet light, and X-rays (Chandra). The screen splits to show how these images, which cover the same amount of the sky at the same time, compare to one another. The sequence finishes by showing what gamma-ray telescopes on the ground (VERITAS), and Fermi in space, detect from this black hole and its jet.

Each telescope delivers different information about the behavior and impact of the 6.5-billion-solar-mass black hole at the center of M87, which is located about 55 million light-years from Earth.

"There are multiple groups eager to see if their models are a match for these rich observations, and we're excited to see the whole community use this public data set to help us better understand the deep links between black holes and their jets," says co-author Daryl Haggard of McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

The data were collected by a team of 760 scientists and engineers from nearly 200 institutions, spanning 32 countries or regions, and using observatories funded by agencies and institutions around the globe. The observations were concentrated from the end of March to the middle of April 2017.

"This incredible set of observations includes many of the world's best telescopes," says co-author Juan Carlos Algaba of the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. "This is a wonderful example of astronomers around the world working together in the pursuit of science."

The first results show that the intensity of the light produced by material around M87's supermassive black hole was the lowest that had ever been observed. This produced ideal conditions for viewing the 'shadow' of the black hole, as well as being able to isolate the light from regions close to the event horizon from those tens of thousands of light-years away from the black hole.

The combination of data from these telescopes, and current (and future) EHT observations, will allow scientists to conduct important lines of investigation into some of astrophysics' most significant and challenging fields of study. For example, scientists plan to use these data to improve tests of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Currently, uncertainties about the material rotating around the black hole and being blasted away in jets, in particular the properties that determine the emitted light, represent a major hurdle for these General Relativity tests.

A related question that is addressed by today's study concerns the origin of energetic particles called "cosmic rays," which continually bombard the Earth from outer space. Their energies can be a million times higher than what can be produced in the most powerful accelerator on Earth, the Large Hadron Collider. The huge jets launched from black holes, like the ones shown in today's images, are thought to be the most likely source of the highest energy cosmic rays, but there are many questions about the details, including the precise locations where the particles get accelerated. Because cosmic rays produce light via their collisions, the highest-energy gamma rays can pinpoint this location, and the new study indicates that these gamma-rays are likely not produced near the event horizon--at least not in 2017. A key to settling this debate will be comparison to the observations from 2018, and the new data being collected this week.

"Understanding the particle acceleration is really central to our understanding of both the EHT image as well as the jets, in all their 'colors'," says co-author Sera Markoff from the University of Amsterdam. "These jets manage to transport energy released by the black hole out to scales larger than the host galaxy, like a huge power cord. Our results will help us calculate the amount of power carried, and the effect the black hole's jets have on its environment."

The release of this new treasure trove of data coincides with the EHT's 2021 observing run, which leverages a worldwide array of radio dishes, the first since 2018. Last year's campaign was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the previous year was suspended because of unforeseen technical problems. This very week, for six nights, EHT astronomers are targeting several supermassive black holes: the one in M87 again, the one in our Galaxy called Sagittarius A*, and several more distant black holes. Compared to 2017, the array has been improved by adding three more radio telescopes: the Greenland Telescope, the Kitt Peak 12-meter Telescope in Arizona, and the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) in France.

"With the release of these data, combined with the resumption of observing and an improved EHT, we know many exciting new results are on the horizon," says co-author Mislav Balokovi? of Yale University.

"I'm really excited to see these results come out, along with my fellow colleagues working on the SMA, some of whom were directly involved in collecting some of the data for this spectacular view into M87," says co-author Garrett Keating, a Submillimeter Array project scientist. "And with the results of Sagittarius A* -- the massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way -- coming out soon, and the resumption of observing this year, we are looking forward to even more amazing results with the EHT for years to come."

When people are asked to draw the flower of a sunflower plant, almost everyone draws a large circle encircled by yellow petals.

"Actually, that structure is the flower head, or the capitulum, which may be composed of hundreds of flowers, also known as florets. The surrounding 'petals' are florets different in structure and function to those closer to the centre," says Professor of Horticulture Paula Elomaa from the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki, Finland.

A giant inflorescence is beneficial, as it is effective in attracting pollinators. When pollinators move around the inflorescence, they pollinate hundreds of individual florets over the course of their journey.

The order of the florets in a flower head is not random. Instead, they are patterned into regular spirals whose number follows the Fibonacci sequence familiar from mathematics. Fibonacci numbers are the sum of the two preceding numbers in the sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144...

In the flower head, the number of left- and right-winding spirals is always two consecutive Fibonacci numbers. Sunflower flower heads can have as many as 89 right-winding and 144-left winding spirals, while the gerbera, another much-studied plant from the Asteraceae plant family, has fewer spirals (34/55).

The geometric regularity of nature has fascinated both biologists and mathematicians for centuries.

"The gerbera is a favourable study subject, because we can use transgenic plants grown in a greenhouse as tools when investigating the functions of individual genes, for example, during the development of the plant. In the case of sunflowers, gene transfer is not yet a routine procedure. The gerbera genome, which is close to the size of the human genome, is currently being sequenced. Experience has shown that the gerbera is an excellent model plant," says Elomaa, who has contributed to Finnish gerbera research ever since its infancy in the late 1980s.

Now, for the first time, the researchers have been able to examine on the molecular level how floral primordia are patterned into spirals in the growing point, or the meristem, of gerberas. They have had available to them a technical solution whose utilisation in plant science could only be dreamed of a couple of decades ago.

With the help of X-ray tomography, the researchers scanned three-dimensional images of the different stages of meristem development. Using confocal microscopy, they surveyed meristems as small as under one millimetre in size to determine where the plant hormone auxin, which determines the position of the primordia, is located.

Finally, the researchers applied mathematical modelling to the data gained in cooperation with Professor Przemys?aw Prusinkiewicz from the University of Calgary. The end result was a three-dimensional computer model that emulates the patterning of a real flower head.

The researchers found that the meristem of the gerbera is patterned on the molecular level already at a stage where no primordia or other changes are discernible by even an electron microscope.

"During growth, auxin levels rise to the maximum simultaneously in several locations of the meristem. The number of these clustered spots, which are called auxin maxima, increases rapidly as the diameter of the meristem grows, following the Fibonacci numbers. A new auxin maximum is always formed between two neighbouring maxima and moves so that it is always closer to the older of the neighbours. This is why the spirals are regular even in meristems that are not entirely symmetric."

The findings demonstrate that the expansion growth of the meristem is the factor that affects, for example, the eventual number of florets in the flower head.

"Among other things, this effect is seen in seed yield, an important factor for the sunflower, as it is specifically cultivated as feed and food. It is also possible that the same model explains the number and patterning of floral organs. In the future, this information will be applied to, for instance, the strawberry. In strawberry the size of the fruit is regulated by the number of pistils," Elomaa notes.

Tokyo, Japan - Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, a part of The University of Tokyo, have developed a new method of producing concrete without cement. They have directly bonded sand particles via a simple reaction in alcohol with a catalyst. This may help both to slash carbon emissions and to construct buildings and structures in desert regions, even on the Moon or Mars.

Concrete consists of two parts: the aggregate (typically made of sand and gravel) and cement (responsible for 8% of total global CO2 emissions). Despite there being a huge amount of sand in the world, the availability of sand for concrete production is fairly limited because sand particles must have a specific size distribution to provide flowability to concrete.

"In concrete, cement is used to bond sand and gravel. Some researchers are investigating how more cement can be replaced with other materials, such as fly ash and blast furnace slag, to reduce CO2 emissions, but this approach is unsustainable because the supply of these materials is decreasing owing to reduced use of thermal power systems and increased use of electrical furnace steel," explains Yuya Sakai, lead author. Therefore, a new approach is required to produce concrete from inexhaustible materials with less environmental load. "Researchers can produce tetraalkoxysilane from sand through a reaction with alcohol and a catalyst by removing water, which is a byproduct of the reaction. Our idea was to leave the water to shift the reaction back and forth from sand to tetraalkoxysilane, to bond the sand particles with each other."

The researchers placed a cup made of copper foil in a reaction vessel with sand and materials, and systematically varied the reaction conditions, such as the amounts of sand, alcohol, catalyst, and dehydration agent; the heating temperature; and the reaction time. Finding the right proportion of sand and chemicals was critical to obtain a product with sufficient strength.

"We obtained sufficiently strong products with, for example, silica sand, glass beads, desert sand, and simulated moon sand," says second author Ahmad Farahani. "These findings can promote a move toward a greener and more economical construction industry everywhere on Earth. Our technique does not require specific sand particles used in conventional construction. This will also help address the issues of climate change and space development."

Additionally, the product is likely to have better durability than that of conventional concrete because cement paste, which is relatively weak against chemical attack and exhibits large volume changes due to temperature and humidity, is not included in the product.

TMDs vdW heterostructures generally possess a type-II band alignment which facilitates the formation of interlayer excitons between the constituent monolayers. Manipulation of the interlayer excitons in TMDs vdW heterostructures hold great promise for developing excitonic integrated circuits that serve as the counterpart of electronic integrated circuits, which allows the photons and excitons transforming between each other and thus bridges the optical communication and signal processing at the integrated circuit. Consequently, numerous researches have been carried out in order to get a deep insight of the physical properties of interlayer excitons, including the revealing of their ultrafast formation, long population recombination lifetimes, and the intriguing spin-valley dynamics. These outstanding properties ensure the interlayer excitons with good transport characteristics and may pave the way for their potential applications in efficient excitonic devices. At present, a systematical and all-round overview of these fascinating physics as well as the exciting applications of interlayer excitons in TMDs vdW heterostructures is still lacking and highly desirable for the scientific community.

In a new review paper published in Light Science & Application, a team of scientists, led by Professor Anlian Pan from Key Laboratory for Micro-Nano Physics and Technology of Hunan Province, School of Physics and Electronics, and College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, China, and co-workers have given a comprehensive description and discussion of the interlayer exciton formation, relaxation, transport, and the potential applications in excitonic optoelectronic devices, based on TMDs vdW heterostructures. An outlook of the future opportunities for interlayer excitons in TMDs based heterostructures was also presented in this review.

Specifically, the content of this review includes four sections. The first section discussed the band alignment, ultrafast charge transfer, and the interlayer exciton formation as well as its fundamental properties in TMDs vdW heterostructures. Moiré interlayer excitons, as a newly emerged research hotspot, were also detailed in this section.

The second section discussed the interlayer exciton relaxation processes including the population recombination dynamics, the intervalley scattering process, and the valley-polarized dynamics in TMDs vdW heterostructures. The recombination lifetimes of interlayer excitons in various TMDs vdW heterostructural systems were summarized, and the role of moiré superlattice on interlayer exciton lifetimes was also discussed in this part.

The third section reviewed the transport behaviors of interlayer excitons in TMDs vdW heterostructures, including the interlayer exciton diffusion without external electric field, the (valley-polarized) interlayer exciton transport with external electric field, and the manipulation of the interlayer exciton transport under various potential landscapes such as potential wells or barriers. Moreover, the influences of the moiré potential and the atomic reconstructions on the interlayer exciton transport were also detailed in this section. These related works offer a novel way to control the exciton transport behavior in potential excitonic devices.

After a detailed description of the interlayer exciton formation, relaxation and transport properties in TMDs vdW heterostructures, the final section of this review gave a brief introduction of the potential applications of interlayer excitons in various excitonic devices such as excitonic switches, lasers, and photodetectors. Quantum light based on moiré-trapped interlayer excitons was also discussed in this part. Nevertheless, the researches on excitonic devices based on interlayer excitons in TMDs vdW heterostructures are still at the early stages. Improving the performance of the already developed excitonic devices for practical applications and exploring more functional excitonic devices like waveguides and modulators are expected in further works. Moreover, the integration of individual excitonic devices such as light sources, switches, modulators, and detectors on a single chip is very likely and highly desirable in future to realize the on-chip integrated optoelectronics based on two-dimensional vdW heterostructures.

The Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota, renowned for its exceptionally well preserved volcanic-influenced ecosystem, was buried in lacustrine and occasionally fluvial sediments in northern Hebei and western Liaoning, China. It includes large amount of evolutionarily significant taxonomy, e.g. feathered dinosaurs, early birds, mammals and flowering plants, representing one of the most diversified terrestrial biotas of the Mesozoic and providing exceptional windows into some major fundamental issues in earth and biological sciences, such as the origins of birds and angiosperm, and co-evolution of life and environments.

The evolutionary radiation of the Jehol Biota can be broadly divided to three phases, with the first phase limited to a small area in northern Hebei (Huajiying Formation), the second phase expanding to western Liaoning (Yixian Formation), and the third phase (Jiufotang Formation). Specifically, the Yixian Formation marks the greatest bio-diversification, and the Lujiatun Unit in its lowermost part preserves numerous three-dimensional dinosaurs fossils with gesture, often referred to as "Chinese Dinosaurs Pompeii" (Fig. 1). It is therefore crucial to precisely determine the timing and duration of the Yixian Formation. Despite considerable efforts in the past two decades attempting to achieve this goal, the published results (Fig. 2) are inconsistent, confusing and inadequate. The duration of the Yixian Formations and the relative temporal and stratigraphical sequences between Lujiatun (LJT) and Jiahsangou (JSG) Units remained controversial until recently.

Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation and Chinese Academy of Sciences, a group led by Prof. Yi-Gang Xu from the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, CAS, in collaboration with Prof. Qing-Zhu Yin's team at the University of California at Davis has carried out high-precision geochronology study on the Yixian Formation, using U-Pb chemical abrasion-isotope dilution-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (CA-ID-IRMS) dating technique with a typical analytical precision

These new ages have significant implications at several fronts.

(1) The duration of the Yixian Formation is tightly bracketed to 1.633 ± 0.078 Myr in Jin-Yang basin, significantly shorter than the previous broad range estimates of ~2 - 7 Myr, lending strong supports to a rapid bio-diversification during this period.

(2) The ages of the Lujiatun and Jianshangou units are resolvable, with the latter being sequentially deposited later than the former, therefore arguing against the idea of synchronous deposition of the two units spatially. Moreover, the extraordinarily short duration of Lujiatun Unit (3) The refined duration of the Yixian Formation also yields important insights on the duration of the JSG lacustrine deposits. It effectively rules out that the lacustrine cyclostratigraphy documented in part of the Yixian Formation was driven by orbital eccentricity, but more likely obliquity or precession signals. To interpret the observed 2 m cycle as 100 Kyr eccentricity cycle for a 41 m JSG Unit would mean the Jianshangou Unit alone would last >2 Myr, whereas the entire Yixian Formation, which include JSG Unit within it, lasted only 1.633 Myr, according to this study. The result makes sense in that when the temporal resolution is high, we expect to see precession signal to be most pronounced. This is because the Earth's precession change contributes the most to the insolation that ultimately drive hydro-climate changes in Milankovitch cycles.

In Austria, suicides have fallen by 4% since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, thereby consolidating the pre-2019 trend. An international study now shows that this pattern is similar to the global suicide trends during the initial phase of the coronavirus pandemic up until the end of October. "Figures are now also available from Statistik Austria for the whole of 2020 and these confirm the results of the study," says Thomas Niederkrotenthaler from the Center for Public Health (Department of Social and Preventive Medicine), who took part in the study on behalf of MedUni Vienna along with Paul Plener, Head of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. A total of around 70 scientists in 21 countries were involved in the study. On average, the trends were found to be similar in all countries investigated.

The experts from MedUni Vienna attribute the fact that the suicide rate has not risen, despite the crisis and rising levels of mental stress - for example, rising levels of depression and anxiety were found, amongst other things - to the rapid implementation of social, health-promoting and other supportive measures. In Austria, these include, for example, the option for adults to be prescribed psychotherapy on their health insurance and to be offered this online, the expansion of telephone crisis intervention services, targeted support programmes in the labour market and increased social solidarity due to neighbourhood assistance schemes within the community. Similar effects have also been reported in the period immediately following environmental disasters or terror attacks, for example.

However, as Niederkrotenthaler points out, there are now signs of "fatigue" within society and these must be carefully monitored "to ensure that the high level of emotional stress does not feed through into suicides, either now or when the pandemic subsides". It is therefore necessary to establish long-term support programmes immediately, for example in the labour market, as well as health-promoting measures. For example, people are currently experiencing a lot of stress, especially people in the healthcare professions, those with existing mental-health issues and socially marginalised groups, as well as schoolchildren and students, and this will require the provision of long-term support.

As regards children and adolescents, Paul Plener points out that, globally, it is young people aged between 15 and 25 who are exhibiting the highest rates of mental stress during the pandemic. For this reason, it is important to pay particular attention to the expansion of psychosocial care provision: "When considering children and adolescents, you cannot ignore the families they grow up in, and so the rising rates of unemployment and addiction among adults is a phenomenon that inevitably also impacts the mental health of children within the family environment," point out the experts.

Researchers from University of Hawaii and Cornell University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that explores the challenges and opportunities with nonprofit fundraising to provide organizations with strategies they can use to increase sustainable giving and profitability.

The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Managing Members, Donors, and Member-Donors for Effective Non-profit Fundraising" and is authored by Sungjin Kim, Sachin Gupta, and Clarence Lee.

Individual philanthropy is the primary funding source for many nonprofit organizations. A major challenge facing such organizations is the volatility of individual giving: Nearly half of newly acquired donors only give once. Because of this instability, nonprofits strive to increase repeat giving by individuals as well as to identify and retain donors who are more committed.

The researchers worked with a large, successful nonprofit organization that conducts research and outreach related to an animal species and engages with more than 100,000 individual givers each year. The organization structures individual giving in two different forms: donations and memberships. One reason for members to give is the benefits they receive, depending on the membership tier, which range from a quarterly magazine to exclusive guided tours and online courses. By contrast, donors do not receive any benefits from the nonprofit in return for their donation and give largely because of a "warm glow" (i.e., the good feeling that comes from giving) and tax deductions.

Using detailed data provided by the nonprofit, the researchers studied the behaviors of first-time givers in the US over five years and obtained several insights about fundraising. First, the two forms of giving attract different kinds of individuals. For instance, donors were more likely to be women, while members were more likely to be men. Second, during the five-year period, over half of the individuals transitioned to becoming multi-form givers. That is, those who started out as members added donation to their giving portfolio and those who started out as donors added membership as another form of giving. These "member-donors" were especially important to the nonprofit: They gave more each year than those who gave in a single form and gave more frequently. Thus, multiple options for giving served as a pathway to engage more committed givers over time. Third, appeals sent by the organization tended to primarily increase the likelihood of repeat donations or membership renewal, but not the amount given. Fourth, while lapsed donors were likely to donate again even when two years had passed since their last donation, lapsed members were positively disposed to renewing even three years after their last renewal. This insight can guide the nonprofits efforts to bring back lapsed givers.

Kim adds that "We also developed a predictive model that can help identify individuals who are more likely to become member-donors in the future, based on their characteristics and past giving patterns. Once identified, the nonprofit can focus on nurturing longer-term relationships with them."

"Collectively, the data-driven insights we derived can help nonprofits develop strategies to structure their giving options better, retain givers for longer, and target their marketing resources on more committed individuals," says Gupta. The net impact of these strategies is to make fundraising more effective, implying that a larger share of every dollar raised goes to serve the organization's mission rather than to fundraising efforts.

Full article and author contact information available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242921994587

Many long for a return to a post-pandemic "normal," which, for some, may entail concerts, travel, and large gatherings. But how to keep safe amid these potential public health risks?

One possibility, according to a new study, is dogs. A proof-of-concept investigation published today in the journal PLOS ONE suggests that specially trained detection dogs can sniff out COVID-19-positive samples with 96% accuracy.

"This is not a simple thing we're asking the dogs to do," says Cynthia Otto, senior author on the work and director of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine Working Dog Center. "Dogs have to be specific about detecting the odor of the infection, but they also have to generalize across the background odors of different people: men and women, adults and children, people of different ethnicities and geographies."

In this initial study, researchers found the dogs could do that, but training must proceed with great care and, ideally, with many samples. The findings are feeding into another investigation that Otto and colleagues have dubbed "the T-shirt study," in which dogs are being trained to discriminate between the odors of COVID-positive, -negative, and -vaccinated individuals based on the volatile organic compounds they leave on a T-shirt worn overnight.

"We are collecting many more samples in that study--hundreds or more--than we did in this first one, and are hopeful that will get the dogs closer to what they might encounter in a community setting," Otto says.

Through the Working Dog Center, she and colleagues have had years of experience training medical-detection dogs, including those that can identify ovarian cancer. When the pandemic arrived, they leveraged that expertise to design a coronavirus detection study.

Collaborators Ian Frank from the Perelman School of Medicine and Audrey Odom John from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia provided SARS-CoV-2-positive samples from adult and pediatric patients, as well as samples from patients who had tested negative to serve as experimental controls. Otto worked closely with coronavirus expert Susan Weiss of Penn Medicine to process some of the samples in Penn's Biosafety Level 2+ laboratory to inactivate the virus so they would be safe for the dogs to sniff.

Because of workplace shutdowns due to the pandemic, instead of working with dogs at Penn Vet, the researchers partnered with Pat Nolan, a trainer with a facility in Maryland.

Eight Labrador retrievers and a Belgian Malinois that had not done medical-detection work before were used in the study. First the researchers trained them to recognize a distinctive scent, a synthetic substance known as universal detection compound (UDC). They used a "scent wheel" in which each of 12 ports is loaded with a different sample and rewarded the dog when it responded to the port containing UDC.

When the dogs consistently responded to the UDC scent, the team began training them to respond to urine samples from SARS-CoV-2 positive patients and discern positive from negative samples. The negative samples were subjected to the same inactivation treatment--either heat inactivation or detergent inactivation--as the positive samples.

Processing the results with assistance from Penn criminologist and statistician Richard Berk, the team found that after three weeks of training all nine dogs were able to readily identify SARS-CoV-2 positive samples, with 96% accuracy on average. Their sensitivity, or ability to avoid false negatives, however, was lower, in part, the researchers believe, because of the stringent criteria of the study: If the dogs walked by a port containing a postive sample even once without responding, that was labeled a "miss."

The researchers ran into many complicating factors in their study, such as the tendency of the dogs to discriminate between the actual patients, rather than between their SARS-CoV-2 infection status. The dogs were also thrown off by a sample from a patient that tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 but who had recently recovered from COVID-19.

"The dogs kept responding to that sample, and we kept telling them no," Otto says. "But obviously there was still something in the patient's sample that the dogs were keying in on."

Major lessons learned from the study, besides confirming that there is a SARS-CoV-2 odor that dogs can detect, were that future training should entail large numbers of diverse samples and that dogs should not be trained repeatedly on the samples from any single individual.

"That's something we can carry forward not only in our COVID training but in our cancer work and any other medical detection efforts we do," says Otto. "We want to make sure that we have all the steps in place to ensure quality, reproducibility, validity, and safety for when we operationalize our dogs and have them start screening in community settings."

An innovative new technique that encourages cancer cells in the kidneys to self-destruct could revolutionise the treatment of the disease, a new study in the journal Pharmaceutics reports.

During this unique study, researchers from the University of Surrey and Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University in Russia investigated whether certain naturally occurring proteins within the body can be used to treat cancer.

Focusing on cathepsin S, a member of the lysosomal cathepsin proteins that are known to affect cancer progression, and p21 BAX, a protein that can stimulate cell destruction, researchers found that both can be deployed simultaneously to fight cancer cells in a two-pronged 'attack.' They act firstly by stopping the mechanism that makes certain treatments of the disease ineffective, and secondly by effectively encouraging cancerous cells to self-destruct.

This revolutionary approach targets two converging regulatory pathways that can sometimes be resistant to chemotherapy and has led to the development of a potential ground-breaking therapy using a novel peptide, CS-PEP1. Researchers found that this peptide inhibits both cathepsin S and its ability to break down the p21 BAX protein, resulting in the accumulation of p21 BAX, which encourages the death of cancer cells in the kidneys. The twin-track effect of this peptide can also override the molecular resistance often found during conventional chemotherapy treatment and offers a novel and effective approach in treating cancer.

An increased focus on therapeutic cancer treatments has signalled a move away from traditional methods such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, as therapeutic treatments have been found to cause less harm to normal cells and fewer side effects for patients.

Professor Paul Townsend, Principal Investigator, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Surrey, said: "Kidney cancer is a very difficult type of cancer to cure; there is an increased need to think innovatively to develop new techniques. We have now discovered that proteins already in the body can be manipulated to encourage cancerous cells to die. This is an extraordinary breakthrough and insight, and can be used to potentially inform the treatment of other types of aggressive cancers, such as cancers of the breast and prostate."

BROOKLYN, New York, Wednesday, April 14, 2021 - Studies show wearing masks and social distancing can contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, but their combined effectiveness was not precisely known.

Researchers at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and Politecnico di Torino in Italy developed a network model to study the effects of these two measures on the spread of airborne diseases like COVID-19. The model shows viral outbreaks can be prevented if at least 60% of a population complies with both measures.

"Neither social distancing nor mask wearing alone are likely sufficient to halt the spread of COVID-19, unless almost the entire population adheres to the single measure," said Maurizio Porfiri, institute professor of mechanical and aerospace, biomedical, and civil and urban engineering at NYU Tandon. "But if a significant fraction of the population adheres to both measures, viral spreading can be prevented without mass vaccination."

The research, "How adherence to public health measures shapes epidemic spreading: a temporal network model," by Porfiri, Brandon Behring, a post-doctoral researcher at NYU Tandon, and Alessandro Rizzo, a visiting professor at NYU Tandon, who is from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, appears in Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science.

A network model encompasses nodes, or data points, and edges, or links between nodes. Such models are used in applications ranging from marketing to tracking bird migration. In the researchers' model, based on a susceptible, exposed, infected, or removed (recovered or has died) framework, each node represents a person's health status. The edges represent potential contacts between pairs of individuals.

The model accounts for individuals' variability in their interactions with others, meaning a few highly active nodes are responsible for much of the network's contacts. This mirrors the validated assumption that most people have few interactions, and only a few interact with many others. Scenarios involving social distancing without mask wearing and vice versa were also tested by setting up the measures as separate variables.

The model drew on cell phone mobility data and Facebook surveys obtained from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. The data showed people who wear masks are also those who tend to reduce their mobility. Based on this premise, nodes were split into individuals who regularly wear masks and socially distance and those whose behavior remains largely unchanged by an epidemic or pandemic.

Using data collected by The New York Times to gauge the model's effectiveness, the researchers analyzed the cumulative cases per capita in all 50 states and the District of Columbia between July 14, 2020, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially recommended mask-wearing, through December 10.

In addition to showing the effects of combining mask wearing and social distancing, the model shows the critical need of widespread adherence to public health measures.

"U.S. States that have been suffering the most from the largest number of infections last fall were also those where people complied less with public health guidelines, thereby falling well above the epidemic threshold predicted by our model," Porfiri said.

Supplementation of cocoa powder in the diet of high-fat-fed mice with liver disease markedly reduced the severity of their condition, according to a new study by Penn State researchers, who suggest the results have implications for people.

Cocoa powder, a popular food ingredient most commonly used in the production of chocolate, is rich in fiber, iron and phytochemicals reported to have positive health benefits, including antioxidant polyphenols and methylxanthines, noted study leader Joshua Lambert, professor of food science in the College of Agricultural Sciences.

"While it is typically considered an indulgence food because of its high sugar and fat content, epidemiological and human-intervention studies have suggested that chocolate consumption is associated with reduced risk of cardio-metabolic diseases including stroke, coronary heart disease and Type 2 diabetes," Lambert said. "So, it made sense to investigate whether cocoa consumption had an effect on non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease, which is commonly associated with human obesity."

This study has several strengths, Lambert explained. It used a commercially available cocoa product at a "physiologically achievable dose" -- meaning its equivalent could be duplicated by humans. "Doing the calculations, for people it works out to about 10 tablespoons of cocoa powder a day," he said. "Or, if you follow the directions on the Hershey's box of cocoa powder, that's about five cups of hot cocoa a day."

The high-fat-fed mouse is a well-established, diet-induced model of obesity, Lambert added. By waiting until mice were already obese before beginning cocoa treatment, researchers were able to test the protective effects of cocoa in a model that better simulates the current public health situation related to non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease.

That's important, Lambert pointed out, because a significant proportion of the world's population has preexisting obesity and non-alcohol-related fatty liver disease. "Given the high proportion of people in the United States and other parts of the world with obesity, there is a need to develop potentially effective dietary interventions rather than just preventive agents," he said.

For this study, researchers examined changes in fatty liver disease, markers of oxidative stress, antioxidant response and cell damage in high-fat-fed obese mice treated with a diet supplemented with 80 mg cocoa powder per gram of food -- roughly a pinch per quarter teaspoon -- for eight weeks.

In findings recently published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, the researchers reported that cocoa-treated mice gained weight at a 21% lower rate and had smaller spleen weights -- indicating less inflammation -- than the high-fat-fed control mice. At the end of the study, mice fed the cocoa-powder-supplemented diet had 28% less fat in their livers than the control mice. Cocoa-treated mice also had 56% lower levels of oxidative stress and 75% lower levels of DNA damage in the liver compared to high-fat-fed control mice.

The mechanisms by which cocoa imparts health benefits are not well understood, but previous studies in Lambert's lab showed that extracts from cocoa and some of the chemicals in cocoa powder can inhibit the enzymes that are responsible for digesting dietary fat and carbohydrate.

The result, he proposes, is that when mice get cocoa as part of their diet, these compounds in the cocoa powder prevent the digestion of dietary fat. When it can't be absorbed, the fat passes through their digestive systems. A similar process may occur with cocoa in humans, he hypothesizes.

In view of this new information about cocoa powder, Lambert is not recommending that obese people -- or anyone -- simply add five cups of hot cocoa to their daily routine and change nothing else in their diet. But he does advise, based on what he has learned in this study, to consider substituting cocoa for other foods, particularly high-calorie snack foods.

"This exchange is potentially beneficial, especially in combination with a healthy overall diet and increased physical activity," he said. "If you go to the gym and work out, and your reward is you go home and have a cup of cocoa, that may be something that helps get you off the couch and moving around."

TAMPA, Fla. (April 14, 2021)- The order in which your senses interact with food has a tremendous impact on how much you like it. That's the premise of a new study led by the University of South Florida (USF). The findings published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology show that food tastes better if you see it before smelling it.

Researchers came to this conclusion following four experiments involving cookies, fruit snacks and lemonade. In the first study, nearly 200 participants interacted with the food, each item wrapped in an opaque versus a transparent package. The team administered each item in different orders: visual before scent, scent before visual, only visual and only scent. Despite being the same product, participants rated the strawberry-flavored fruit snacks packaged in an envelope as tasting better when they could see the item before smelling it compared to their counterparts who smelled the item before seeing it. Researchers experienced the same results when they tested taste perception of the cookies.

"This is because being able to see a food item before smelling it helps in processing the scent cue with greater ease, which in turn enhances the food taste perception," said Dipayan Biswas, Frank Harvey Endowed Professor of Marketing at USF. "Basically, scents play a very critical role in influencing taste perceptions; however, interestingly, people can process a scent better in their brains when the scent is preceded by a corresponding visual cue, such as color."

The research team, which includes collaborators from Columbia University and the University of Rhode Island, experienced the same results when it focused on beverages. Researchers poured the same, yellow-colored lemonade into lidded clear plastic cups and lidded solid-colored plastic cups that were splashed with artificial lemon-scented oil. Similarly, participants preferred the drink that they could see before smelling and they drank more of it. Researchers tested consumption by purposely leaving the drinks in front of participants as they undertook an unrelated task. Additionally, the researchers provided the same drinks with the addition of odorless purple food coloring, a color typically not associated with lemon flavor. In this case, it had a negative effect on taste perception, as the color contradicted expectations.

"We tested this to get a better understanding of how the human sensory processing system evaluates a sequence of visual and scent-related cues," Biswas said.

These findings are highly beneficial to supermarkets and Biswas suggests they consider installing more glass cases to help facilitate a customer's ability to see a food item at a distance before smelling it. He suggests strategic displays with photos or samples be visible prior to entering a business, helping strengthen taste perceptions of food items, which can increase sales and overall impression of the business. Biswas emphasizes that the theory also applies to pantry food items, such as potato chips, which may attract more interest if they were sold in transparent packaging.

Biswas has extensively studied how a number of variables impact taste perception. His findings have been published in dozens of academic journals, including how sitting down makes food taste better and how ambient scent or ambient music dictates what we order from restaurant menus.