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Eating together as a family, maintaining the Mediterranean diet's traditional customs of conviviality, influences the eating habits of adolescents and prevents eating behaviour disorders, according to a new study prepared by scientists from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and published in the open access International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

"At a time when lockdown due to the pandemic has revived family meals, this study indicates one of the possible positive aspects of the situation that we have had to confront", explains the study's researcher Anna Bach-Faig from the Foodlab group, and a member of the Faculty of Health Sciences.

The research establishes that family meal routines, such as sharing food, sitting around a table without digital devices or having a pleasant conversation, are beneficial aspects for adolescents and contribute to their health. In line with other studies it notes that this conviviality, which favours conversation and slower eating, helps adolescents to recognize the feeling of fullness during meals and, indirectly, prevents obesity.

The study, conducted by means of in-depth interviews of families in Catalonia with adolescents from 12 to 16 years old, analyses one of the least studied aspects of the Mediterranean diet: socialization at mealtimes and how the way in which we eat also affects our health.

"A healthy diet is not just what we eat but also how we eat it", explains Bach-Faig. "The Mediterranean diet is much more than a list of foods. It is a cultural model which includes how these foods are selected, produced, processed and consumed."

The importance of conversation

To determine the degree of conviviality in the families studied, the researchers analysed the frequency and duration of family meals, the place where they took place, the use of digital devices, the preparation of the food and the type of communication established in these gatherings.

According to the study, the majority of families only ate the evening meal together and their habits varied depending on whether they ate alone or with their loved ones. The research ascertained that family meals were a place for communication and socialization, and that when families devoted less time to them, did not sit at the table, were distracted by digital devices or did not engage in pleasant conversation during these gatherings, they also followed the Mediterranean diet to a lesser extent.

For the majority of parents, family meals were especially important when they had adolescent children, since they favour conversation and closer family bonds. "It is easier when children are small, but in adolescence there is a disconnect between you and them and, thanks to these conversations, you can gain a little insight into their world", explained one of the mothers interviewed.

Moreover, the majority considered that, through these family gatherings, parents become role models and help to establish healthy patterns for their children. This impression is consistent with the results of other studies in which it is demonstrated that eating together as a family is related to a healthier diet, with more fruit and vegetables, and less sugary drinks.

The Western diet

For nutrition expert Bach-Faig, it is essential to preserve eating traditions in order to maintain the benefits of the Mediterranean diet and promote the health of the younger generations. However, for several decades now, the Mediterranean diet has been losing influence in the face of the so-called "Western diet", characterized by the predominance of processed foods and eating quickly, often in front of the television.

The study stresses that it is crucial to consider these aspects in order to promote a healthy diet among adolescents and to design public health campaigns. One example was the Implica't campaign, carried out in Catalonia with the participation of researchers from this study. "Just as we recommend 5 fruit and veg a day", explains Bach-Fair, "we could also propose at least one family meal a day".

Lakes act as an important part of the earth system. They have special functions in regulating regional climate and maintaining regional ecological balance. More than 39.2% of the lakes in China are distributed in the plateau. The topography around the plateau lake area is complex and diverse. It leads to a complex and unique local circulation characterized by the superposition of lake-land breeze circulation and mountain-valley breeze circulation, which has a significant impact on the local energy and material circulation, according to Prof. Huizhi Liu, researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

"Due to the difficulty and high cost of continuous observation in lakes, the understanding of lake- air interactions are still very limited. The mechanism of the impact of lakes on regional hydrothermal cycle and carbon exchange needs to be further analyzed." says Prof. Liu

Since 2011, Prof. Huizhi Liu and his team - a research group from the State Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, had established an eddy covariance observation site at the Erhai Lake in the Dali Basin, southwest China.

Based on meteorological and turbulent fluxes data from the observation site, characteristics of local circulations and their impacts on water, heat and carbon exchange in the Erhai Lake are investigated by his team.

"Compared with other land surfaces, lakes promote latent heat mixing but suppress carbon dioxide exchange." states Prof. Liu.

"The lake breeze promotes latent heat flux exchange and reduces sensible heat flux and carbon dioxide flux exchange during daytime. At night, mountain breeze increases the exchange of carbon dioxide flux and decreases the exchange of sensible and latent heat flux. The southeast wind from lake surface at night has the opposite effects." he explains.

The findings were published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. "Future field experiments in the horizontal and vertical direction are needed to further investigate energy and carbon dioxide exchange at different temporal and spatial scales." Liu adds.

The Tibetan Plateau, known as "the roof of the world", has warmed more rapidly than global average in the past decades. The observed warming of the Tibetan Plateau since 1960s can be attributed to human activities, particularly greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the Plateau may warm faster in the future than climate models projected, according to a study recently published in Environmental Research Letters.

The Tibetan Plateau contains the largest volumes of ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic, feeding water to dozens of major Asian rivers. However, the rapid warming of the "Water Tower of Asia" has significantly affected regional hydrological cycle and ecosystem services, leading to remarkable glacier retreat and geohazard disasters such as landslides, debris flows and glacial lake outbursts.

"A clear understanding of the past warming of the Tibetan Plateau, particularly the underlying human influence, can help better anticipating and interpreting future changes," said Tianjun Zhou, the lead and corresponding author on the paper. Zhou is a senior scientist at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) and CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also a professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

To disentangle and quantify the relative contributions of different external forcings in the observed warming, Zhou and his team used CMIP5, an archive of comprehensive climate models, in which historical simulations are driven by individual external forcings. Using an optimal fingerprinting detection and attribution analysis, the researchers demonstrate that human influence is the dominant driver for the observed warming of the Tibetan Plateau (1.23°C over 1961-2005) with the greenhouse gases in particular contributing approximately 1.37°C, which was slightly offset by anthropogenic aerosols. Moreover, by quantitatively comparing observations and modeled responses, the attribution analysis indicates that the CMIP5 ensemble tends to underestimate the anthropogenic warming trend on the Tibetan Plateau.

Considering the underestimated anthropogenic warming on the Tibetan Plateau by current global climate models, the team went further to correct future projections using the attribution result as an observational constraint, and found the Tibetan Plateau will likely warm faster than previously expected in the future.

"For example, under a medium carbon emission scenario (RCP4.5), the Tibetan Plateau is expected to warm by 2.25°C and 2.99°C in the mid-term (2041-2060) and end of 21st century (2081-2100), which are 0.24°C and 0.32°C warmer than the uncorrected projections, respectively," introduced Wenxia Zhang, the second author of the study. "This implies a greater loss of glacier mass and further increased geohazard risks in the Asian water tower."

Is there a way to chemically manipulate small, confined areas on cellular surfaces? Scientists have developed a microfluidic probe to send a flow of free radicals on live cells and track the outcome using fluorescence imaging. As outlined in the journal Angewandte Chemie, this approach makes it possible for the first time to generate a reaction zone of free radicals with controlled size and concentration for subcellular research.

Free radicals are important stimulants for cells. When live cells are exposed to radicals, they develop intense reactions that can lead to cell injury or even death. Many anticancer drugs are based on the action of free radicals sending cancer cells to death.

However, scientists find it difficult to perform research on the reactions of live cells to radicals in a truly controlled way. Free radicals are unstable and react with their environment before reaching their targets. A team of scientists led by Jin-Ming Lin from Tsinghua University, Beijing, has now developed a microfluidic approach to continuously generate a flow of free radicals for subcellular manipulation.

To make the radicals, the researchers chose a microfluidic two-component system. In this setup, one microchannel harbored a solution of enzymes able to cleave hydrogen peroxide. Another channel contained a solution of hydrogen peroxide and an organic dye. Both channels were immersed with their ends in a nutrient solution where a live cell was placed just below the channel ends. A third channel with an upward flow ensured that the fluids leaving the microchannel ends would meet in the middle position, forming a confined reaction zone.

According to the authors, this setup ensured that the reaction zone had the size of only a few micrometers. In this zone, the enzyme horseradish peroxidase would react with the hydrogen peroxide to form reactive enzyme intermediates, which then reacted with the organic dye to give an organic radical. Immediately after their generation, the dye radicals would then attack the cell placed directly below the reaction zone.

After tens of seconds of component flow and radical attack, the researchers observed that a tiny spot emitting bright red fluorescence had emerged on the cellular membrane. Tracking this spot over time, the researchers found it slowly wandered around on the cellular surface.

The authors say that the tiny fluorescent spot and its movement highlight the ability of the microfluidic method to manipulate small subareas on the cell surface. "By contrast with lipophilic tracers, which stain the whole cell, it is convincing that the free radicals generated only attack the target subcellular region of the single cell," they argue.

One particular application fascinates the authors: they envision using the microfluidic probe as a "pen" for cells. "This will enable us to directly write text or draw graphics on single cells for personalized cell marking or artwork," they explain.

Amsterdam, April 6, 2021 - The rarity of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) means that promising new treatments may be tested in only a limited spectrum of patients before approval. Investigators evaluated a newly approved drug, onasemnogene abeparvovec, in a broader spectrum of patients in order to obtain expanded data on its side effects profile. They report in the Journal of Neuromuscular Diseases that the drug is associated with an immune response against the adeno-associated viral vector and needs careful monitoring, but showed no long-term adverse effects.

In recent years, the availability of a growing number of drug treatments has significantly changed the course of the SMA. One of these is onasemnogene abeparvovec (Zolgensma®), an adeno-associated viral (AAV9) vector-based gene therapy that introduces a functional copy of the SMN1 gene into motor neurons by means of a single intravenous injection.

SMA is designated as an orphan disease as it affects just one in 6,000-10,000 newborns worldwide. SMA type 1 accounts for about 60% of all cases. In the main clinical study on which approval of onasemnogene abeparvovec was based, just 22 babies were given this therapy. Twenty of these were alive and breathing without a permanent ventilator after 14 months, when normally only a quarter of untreated patients would survive without needing a ventilator. Based on these results, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the therapy for all types of SMA up to the age of two years, and the European Medicine Agency (EMA) extended the label to all patients either showing a phenotype of SMA type 1 or having up to three SMN2 copies.

"SMA is a rare disease and pivotal studies only included SMA type 1 patients up to the age of eight months," explained lead investigator Prof. Dr. Janbernd Kirschner, MD, Department of Neuropediatrics, University Hospital Bonn, Bonn, Germany. "However, FDA and EMA approved the treatment for a broader spectrum of patients, which has resulted in discussions about how safe and effective the treatment is in older and heavier patients and in those with SMA type 2."

Investigators report their experience with eight consecutive patients with SMA who were treated with the standard dose of onasemnogene abeparvovec (1.1×1014 vg/kg) at the University Hospital Bonn, Germany. All patients received prophylactic immunosuppression with prednisolone for four weeks starting on the day before gene therapy. The patients (four male, four female, age range 10-37 months) weighed between seven and 12 kilograms. All patients had two or three copies of the SMN2 gene and had been previously treated with nusinersen, also approved for treatment of SMA.

Following treatment, all of the patients showed a temporary increase of body temperature and an increase of transaminase levels (transaminases are enzymes that are important in the synthesis of amino acids, which form proteins). In all but one patient, it was necessary to increase or prolong the standard steroid dose to control the immune response. In one severe case, liver damage was associated with impaired liver function. This patient received a steroid pulse therapy for five days after which liver function fully recovered. Following the therapy, six patients had asymptomatic thrombocytopenia (abnormally low blood platelets). Liver values and blood counts returned to normal or almost normal levels during the post-treatment observation period. Four patients had an increase in troponin I levels, which can be a sign of cardiac injury, but cardiac evaluation showed no abnormalities.

"Our experience with eight patients older than eight months adds important findings to the increasing body of evidence that treatment of SMA with onasemnogene abeparvovec is often associated with an immune response against the AAV vector," noted Prof. Dr. Kirschner. "This immune response mainly affects the liver and the hematopoietic system and can be severe in some cases. However, it was possible to control the immune response in all patients by proactive monitoring and adapting the steroid dose, and we did not detect any long-term side effects due to the immune response.

"It is premature to judge whether severe organ damage with long-term consequences can always be avoided. Further research is needed to better understand the immune response following gene therapy and ideally to identify patients at risk for a more severe reaction," he concluded.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a rare genetic neurodegenerative disease. It primarily affects spinal motor neurons and leads to progressive muscle weakness. The spectrum of severity ranges from severe cases with onset during the first six months of life (SMA type 1) to later onset during childhood or adolescence (SMA types 2-4). SMA is caused by mutations of the survival motor neuron gene. Without treatment, SMA type 1 is associated with death or the need for permanent ventilation within the first two years of life.

Innovation and advances in technology have facilitated agricultural activity in recent years, as traditional irrigation techniques have been supplanted by pressure-basedones, improving water efficiency but increasing energy dependence. This drives up the Agriculture sector's energy costs, some of the highest in the European Union.

With the aim of increasing the energy efficiency of irrigation, researchers at the Hydraulics and Irrigation Group with the María de Maeztu Unit of Excellence,at the Department of Agronomy of the University of Cordoba (DAUCO), Juan Antonio Rodríguez Díaz and Jorge García Morillo, have field-tested a low-cost technology that takes advantage of the excess pressure on the grid to generate energy. This technology has made it possible, on the farm where it was installed, to forego the diesel generator that was used to power filtering equipment, fertilizer injector pumps and other devices necessary for irrigation, rendering the gridself-sufficient and operating on clean energy. The annual savings for the farmer came to €2,400, and his carbon footprint was reduced by up to 9 tons of CO2 thanks to the complete elimination of the diesel generator.

These results are achieved through the installation of hydraulic pumps that work as turbines, known as a PAT (Pump as Turbine). The water moves the impeller and generates electricity, like a small hydroelectric power plant, but one cheaper than traditional turbines for small power levels, since the production of hydraulic pumps is much greater, impacting their price.

The researchers used the EPANET hydraulic model to perform a theoretical analysis of the pressures that would be present on this network, determining the most unfavourable situations and the point where the turbine should be installed. Once the system was evaluated, it was put into operation in the field, where this kind of technology is very novel. Flow fluctuations in irrigation are very great. In order to adapt to this, a series of control elements were implemented in the design so that the turbine would always receive the optimum flow rates and adequate pressure to deliver high performance.

According to Jorge García, "another important innovation is the telemetry system, which measures and records the main hydraulic and electrical variables in real time and allows the plant to be monitored via the Web, and its performance to be analysed".

In this way, farmers in off-grid areas with excess pressure can generate their own electricity and reduce the energy dependence of their irrigation systems, or even make their facilities self-sufficient. This is clean and cheap energy, adding value to the final product by slashing the carbon footprint, "something even more important for farmers than the economic savings related to energy",notes Juan Antonio Rodríguez.

The agricultural community, represented by the Association of Irrigation Communities of Andalusia (FERAGUA) is very interested in the advantage of eliminating diesel generators and achieving energy autonomy through renewable energy with this technology developed as part of the European REDAWN project, of which both the University of Cordoba and FERAGUA are partners. The plant was installed at the Finca Cortijo Calonge, which belongs to the Community of Irrigators of the Genil River's Left Bank.

It is difficult to imagine our daily life without lithium-ion batteries. They dominate the small format battery market for portable electronic devices, and are also commonly used in electric vehicles. At the same time, lithium-ion batteries have a number of serious issues, including: a potential fire hazard and performance loss at cold temperatures; as well as a considerable environmental impact of spent battery disposal.

According to the leader of the team of researchers, Professor in the Department of Electrochemistry at St Petersburg University Oleg Levin, the chemists have been exploring redox-active nitroxyl-containing polymers as materials for electrochemical energy storage. These polymers are characterised by a high energy density and fast charging and discharging speed due to fast redox kinetics. One challenge towards the implementation of such a technology is the insufficient electrical conductivity. This impedes the charge collection even with highly conductive additives, such as carbon.

Looking for solutions to overcome this problem, the researchers from St Petersburg University synthesised a polymer based on the nickel-salen complex (NiSalen). The molecules of this metallopolymer act as a molecular wire to which energy-intensive nitroxyl pendants are attached. The molecular architecture of the material enables high capacitance performance to be achieved over a wide temperature range.

'We came up with the concept of this material in 2016. At that time, we began to develop a fundamental project "Electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries based on organometallic polymers". It was supported by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation. When studying the charge transport mechanism in this class of compounds, we discovered that there are two keys directions of development. Firstly, these compounds can be used as a protective layer to cover the main conductor cable of the battery, which would be otherwise made of traditional lithium-ion battery materials. And secondly, they can be used as an active component of electrochemical energy storage materials,' explains Oleg Levin.

The polymer took over three years to develop. In the first year, the scientists tested the concept of the new material: they combined individual components to simulate the electrically conducting backbone and redox-active nitroxyl-containing pendants. It was essential to make certain that all parts of the structure worked in conjunction and reinforced each other. The next stage was the chemical synthesis of the compound. It was the most challenging part of the project. This is because some of the components are extremely sensitive and even the slightest error of a scientist may cause degradation of the samples.

Of the several polymer specimens obtained, only one was found to be sufficiently stable and efficient. The main chain of the new compound is formed by complexes of nickel with salen ligands. A stable free radical, capable of rapid oxidation and reduction (charge and discharge), has been linked to the main chain via covalent bonds.

'A battery manufactured using our polymer will charge in seconds - about ten times faster than a traditional lithium-ion battery. This has already been demonstrated through a series of experiments. However, at this stage, it is still lagging behind in terms of capacity - 30 to 40% lower than in lithium-ion batteries. We are currently working to improve this indicator while maintaining the charge-discharge rate,' says Oleg Levin.

The cathode for the new battery has been fabricated - a positive electrode for use in chemical current sources. Now we need the negative electrode - the anode. In fact, it does not have to be created from scratch - it can be selected from the existing ones. Paired together they will form a system that, in some areas, may soon supersede lithium-ion batteries.

'The new battery is capable of operating at low temperatures and will be an excellent option where fast charging is crucial. It is safe to use - there is nothing that may pose a combustion hazard, unlike the cobalt-based batteries that are widespread today. It also contains significantly less metals that can cause environmental harm. Nickel is present in our polymer in a small amount, but there is much less of it than in lithium-ion batteries,' says Oleg Levin.

Ambient air pollution is a global public health crisis, causing more than 4.9 million premature deaths per year around the world. In Africa, it has surpassed AIDS as the leading cause of premature death. According to one study, air pollution--specifically, fine particulate matter (PM2.5)--may cause at least as many as 780,000 premature deaths annually in Africa and worsen a significant number of diseases, including asthma, lung cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, are both large metropolises. However, neither Kinshasa (population 14. 3 million) nor Brazzaville (population 2.4 million) have had comprehensive air quality monitoring programs. There are no national ambient air quality standards in either country, according to an analysis done by the UN Environment Programme.

A new study, led by Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory atmospheric scientist Daniel Westervelt and Columbia University undergraduate student Celeste McFarlane, has yielded the first-ever multi-year ambient PM2.5 dataset in Kinshasa and Brazzaville. The team deployed a cadre of low-cost sensors and interpreted data in the context of changing weather and changing human activity related to COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. The study was supported by two local universities and their scientists in both cities, and is published online on Aerosol and Air Quality Research.

What it shows is concerning. During the investigation, which began in March 2018, researchers found PM2.5 is highest during the dry season--June, July, and August--when it is up to five times higher than World Health Organization guidelines. It is lower in the remaining months, thanks in part to rainfall, but even then, it is more than four times higher than WHO guidelines.

"Average PM2.5 concentrations suggest unhealthy levels of human exposure, which, over time, can lead to cardiopulmonary problems and premature death," said Westervelt.

The study also found that last year's stay-at-home and lockdown directives in response to COVID-19 corresponded to a 40% decrease in PM2.5.

"We were able to demonstrate that it is possible to robustly characterize air quality in African megacities using well-calibrated, relatively simple, cheap devices," Westervelt said.

He added that given the health risks from air pollution, this data is urgently needed to draw attention to the problem. Researchers hope this study will lead to more concerted efforts to characterize sources of air pollution and develop strategies to mitigate the negative health impacts.

With over 70% of respondents to a AAA annual survey on autonomous driving reporting they would fear being in a fully self-driving car, makers like Tesla may be back to the drawing board before rolling out fully autonomous self-driving systems. But new research from Northwestern University shows us we may be better off putting fruit flies behind the wheel instead of robots.

Drosophila have been subjects of science as long as humans have been running experiments in labs. But given their size, it's easy to wonder what can be learned by observing them. Research published today in the journal Nature Communications demonstrates that fruit flies use decision-making, learning and memory to perform simple functions like escaping heat. And researchers are using this understanding to challenge the way we think about self-driving cars.

"The discovery that flexible decision-making, learning and memory are used by flies during such a simple navigational task is both novel and surprising," said Marco Gallio, the corresponding author on the study. "It may make us rethink what we need to do to program safe and flexible self-driving vehicles."

According to Gallio, an associate professor of neurobiology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the questions behind this study are similar to those vexing engineers building cars that move on their own. How does a fruit fly (or a car) cope with novelty? How can we build a car that is flexibly able to adapt to new conditions?

This discovery reveals brain functions in the household pest that are typically associated with more complex brains like those of mice and humans.

"Animal behavior, especially that of insects, is often considered largely fixed and hard-wired -- like machines," Gallio said. "Most people have a hard time imagining that animals as different from us as a fruit fly may possess complex brain functions, such as the ability to learn, remember or make decisions."

To study how fruit flies tend to escape heat, the Gallio lab built a tiny plastic chamber with four floor tiles whose temperatures could be independently controlled and confined flies inside. They then used high-resolution video recordings to map how a fly reacted when it encountered a boundary between a warm tile and a cool tile. They found flies were remarkably good at treating heat boundaries as invisible barriers to avoid pain or harm.

Using real measurements, the team created a 3D model to estimate the exact temperature of each part of the fly's tiny body throughout the experiment. During other trials, they opened a window in the fly's head and recorded brain activity in neurons that process external temperature signals.

Miguel Simões, a postdoctoral fellow in the Gallio lab and co-first author of the study, said flies are able to determine with remarkable accuracy if the best path to thermal safety is to the left or right. Mapping the direction of escape, Simões said flies "nearly always" escape left when they approach from the right, "like a tennis ball bouncing off a wall."

"When flies encounter heat, they have to make a rapid decision," Simões said. "Is it safe to continue, or should it turn back? This decision is highly dependent on how dangerous the temperature is on the other side."

Observing the simple response reminded the scientists of one of the classic concepts in early robotics.

"In his famous book, the cyberneticist Valentino Braitenberg imagined simple models made of sensors and motors that could come close to reproducing animal behavior," said Josh Levy, an applied math graduate student and a member of the labs of Gallio and applied math professor William Kath. "The vehicles are a combination of simple wires, but the resulting behavior appears complex and even intelligent."

Braitenberg argued that much of animal behavior could be explained by the same principles. But does that mean fly behavior is as predictable as that of one of Braitenberg's imagined robots?

The Northwestern team built a vehicle using a computer simulation of fly behavior with the same wiring and algorithm as a Braitenberg vehicle to see how closely they could replicate animal behavior. After running model race simulations, the team ran a natural selection process of sorts, choosing the cars that did best and mutating them slightly before recombining them with other high-performing vehicles. Levy ran 500 generations of evolution in the powerful NU computing cluster, building cars they ultimately hoped would do as well as flies at escaping the virtual heat.

This simulation demonstrated that "hard-wired" vehicles eventually evolved to perform nearly as well as flies. But while real flies continued to improve performance over time and learn to adopt better strategies to become more efficient, the vehicles remain "dumb" and inflexible. The researchers also discovered that even as flies performed the simple task of escaping the heat, fly behavior remains somewhat unpredictable, leaving space for individual decisions. Finally, the scientists observed that while flies missing an antenna adapt and figure out new strategies to escape heat, vehicles "damaged" in the same way are unable to cope with the new situation and turn in the direction of the missing part, eventually getting trapped in a spin like a dog chasing its tail.

Gallio said the idea that simple navigation contains such complexity provides fodder for future work in this area.

Researchers at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior in Germany have found that birds are able to change their culture to become more efficient. Populations of great tits were able to switch from one behavior to a better alternative when their group members were slowly replaced with new birds. Published today as open access in the journal Current Biology, this research reveals immigration as a powerful driver of cultural change in animal groups that could help them to adapt to rapidly changing environments.

In animals, "culture" is considered to be any behavior that is learned from others, shared by members of the group, and persistent over generations. Cultural traditions are known to exist in many animal groups, including primates, dolphins and whales, rodents, and birds.

Great tits provide a classic example of animal culture. In the 1920s, birds in a town in Great Britain were observed to open the foil tops of milk bottles to steal cream. This behavior spread over 20 years, until birds throughout the country were doing the same.

In 2015 scientists experimentally confirmed that great tits were able to maintain cultural traditions. A new way of feeding--what scientists refer to as an innovation--could be taught to a single bird, and that solution would be learned by other birds and gradually spread throughout populations.

But for great tits, and other animals with cultural traditions, it was still not known if groups can change. Once a tradition has taken root, are animals condemned to repeating the same behaviors or can they pivot to more efficient ones?

Now, the new study has demonstrated that more efficient behaviors can outcompete an established inefficient behavior. It pinpoints a fundamental process--population turnover--as crucial for the ability of animals to change their traditions. The study, which involved teaching wild-caught birds to solve puzzles and fine-scale tracking of their behavior, provides quantitative support for the evolution of culture.

"Experimental evidence of cultural change in animals is pretty rare, so we were surprised and excited by the outcome," says first author Michael Chimento, a doctoral student in the Research Group of Cognitive and Cultural Ecology at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior.

The research team led by senior author Lucy Aplin, who is a Max Planck Research Group Leader and also a principal investigator at the Custer of Excellence 'Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behavior' at the University of Konstanz, studied populations of great tits caught from forests around Konstanz. Because wild great tits form changeable social groups during winter, when conditions are harshest, the scientists thought that immigration could play a part in cultural evolution.

"These fluid groups could influence how their culture changes, as new group members might see solutions to problems with clearer eyes, because of their lack of experience," says Chimento.

The researchers used captive populations of wild-caught great tits to ask how fluid social groups might change a socially learned feeding tradition. They created 18 groups of birds, each with an automated puzzle-box that gave a reward. When a bird solved the puzzle, the type of solution, time of solution, and identity were recorded using RFID, infrared, and computer vision technology. Each group had a tutor that was trained on a relatively inefficient puzzle solution, which then spread through the group. Then, half of the groups were kept static, and in the other half, group members were gradually replaced with new birds from wild over the course of 4 weeks.

Despite both types of groups innovating a more efficient solution, fluid groups were much more likely to adopt it as their preferred behavior. The original residents, who were experienced with the puzzle, were generally the ones who innovated the efficient solution, but didn't adopt it as their preferred behavior. The inexperienced immigrants, on the other hand, picked up on this innovation and did adopt it, amplifying the available social information. Birds in fluid groups were able to solve the puzzle-box faster than in static groups, despite having less overall experience.

"Great tits seem to do well in and among human-made habitats, compared to other species," says Chimento. "Our study shows how their fluid social dynamics might be part of their secret to success and contribute to their flexibility.

Researchers from Skoltech and their collaborators have designed, synthesized and evaluated new compounds that can serve as catholytes and anolytes for organic redox flow batteries, bringing this promising technology closer to large-scale implementation. The two papers were published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A and Chemical Communications.

Energy storage is a crucial component of a greener energy system of the future based on renewable sources; batteries have to be complemented with wind and solar farms and have to be scalable, safe, and flexible in their design and lifetime. Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are all those things, yet one major barrier to commercialization has been their low specific capacity. So, a lot of research effort is focused on developing better battery components to overcome this hurdle.

"The main advantage of redox-flow batteries is scalability--the capacity of the battery is limited only by the volume of the electrolyte, so it is the ideal construction for large-scale energy storage. Nowadays we are working with organic redox-active materials solubilized in organic solvents (non-aqueous organic RFBs). The main advantages for non-aqueous organic RFB are high cell voltage (up to 5V, versus around 1.6 V for water-based systems), a huge variety of organic redox-active molecules which cold be applied, and potential operability at low temperatures, without any concern for freezing below 0 degrees C. As such this work offers considerable advances for the development of RFBs of this type," Skoltech Ph.D. student Elena Romadina, the first author of both papers, explains.

In the two papers, Elena Romadina and her colleagues describe highly promising catholyte and anolyte materials for RFBs--triarylamine-based materials and a phenazine derivative, respectively. The seven highly soluble redox-active triarylamine-based compounds were designed, synthesized and tested for solubility and electrochemical properties, with one of them, singled out as the most promising candidate for further studies. The authors emphasize that the developed compounds exhibited almost unlimited solubility in polar organic solvents such as acetonitrile, which makes them promising for high-capacity RFBs. In the other study, a phenazine derivative with oligomeric ethylene glycol ether substituents was synthesized in a two-step process and showed solid performance as a RFB anolyte.

"A non-aqueous organic redox flow battery designated as phenazine-based anolyte and most promising triarylamine-based catholyte exhibited a high cell voltage of 2.3 V, high capacity, >95% coulombic efficiency and good charge-discharge cycling stability during the 50 cycles," the authors write in the ChemComm paper.

"As a result of our work, we presented a novel class of compounds that could be used in RFBs. Previously, poly-triarylamines were investigated as a cathode material for metal-ion cells, but this class of compounds was not investigated in redox-flow batteries. Thus, a new and very promising core structure was opened up for us and other scientists. Triarylamines have a stable and fully reversible redox potential, and could be easily modified, providing different redox potentials and physical properties. Moreover, we found that triarylamines-based compounds could retain their electrochemical properties even in the presence of water in organic solvent, which lowered the requirements for solvent preparation and cost," Romadina adds.

"We are in fact looking at both ends of the battery in an effort to raise operational cell voltage and to prevent other degradation of catholytes and anolytes. To make organic RFBs commercially viable, we also need research in areas such as low-cost scalable synthesis of highly soluble redox-active molecules; the development of high-performance membranes that are good ionic conductors, but inhibit cross-over of anolytes and catholytes upon charge and discharge; and the scaling of larger cell and stack level device configurations to enable grid scale energy storage," Professor Keith Stevenson, Skoltech provost and coauthor of the papers, says.

The founding chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Houston is reporting a new deep neural network architecture that provides early diagnosis of systemic sclerosis (SSc), a rare autoimmune disease marked by hardened or fibrous skin and internal organs. The proposed network, implemented using a standard laptop computer (2.5 GHz Intel Core i7), can immediately differentiate between images of healthy skin and skin with systemic sclerosis.

"Our preliminary study, intended to show the efficacy of the proposed network architecture, holds promise in the characterization of SSc," reports Metin Akay, John S. Dunn Endowed Chair Professor of biomedical engineering. The work is published in the IEEE Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

"We believe that the proposed network architecture could easily be implemented in a clinical setting, providing a simple, inexpensive and accurate screening tool for SSc."

For patients with SSc, early diagnosis is critical, but often elusive. Several studies have shown that organ involvement could occur far earlier than expected in the early phase of the disease, but early diagnosis and determining the extent of disease progression pose significant challenge for physicians, even at expert centers, resulting in delays in therapy and management.

In artificial intelligence, deep learning organizes algorithms into layers (the artificial neural network) that can make its own intelligent decisions. To speed up the learning process, the new network was trained using the parameters of MobileNetV2, a mobile vision application, pre-trained on the ImageNet dataset with 1.4M images.

"By scanning the images, the network learns from the existing images and decides which new image is normal or in an early or late stage of disease," said Akay.

Among several deep learning networks, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are most commonly used in engineering, medicine and biology, but their success in biomedical applications has been limited due to the size of the available training sets and networks.

To overcome these difficulties, Akay and partner Yasemin Akay combined the UNet, a modified CNN architecture, with added layers, and they developed a mobile training module. The results showed that the proposed deep learning architecture is superior and better than CNNs for classification of SSc images.

"After fine tuning, our results showed the proposed network reached 100% accuracy on the training image set, 96.8% accuracy on the validation image set, and 95.2% on the testing image set," said Yasmin Akay, UH instructional associate professor of biomedical engineering.

The training time was less than five hours.

WASHINGTON--Raindrops on other planets and moons are close to the size of raindrops on Earth despite having different chemical compositions and falling through vastly different atmospheres, a new study finds. The results suggest raindrops falling from clouds are surprisingly similar across a wide range of planetary conditions, which could help scientists better understand the climates and precipitation cycles of other worlds, according to the researchers.

Raindrops on Earth are made of water, but other worlds in our solar system have precipitation made of more unusual stuff. On Venus, it rains sulfuric acid; on Jupiter, it rains helium and mushy ammonia hailstones. On Mars, it snows carbon dioxide, or dry ice. On Saturn's moon Titan, it rains methane, or liquified natural gas. And on Neptune, scientists suspect it rains pure carbon in the form of diamonds. It could even rain iron or quartz on some planets if the conditions were right.

A new study looking at the physics of how liquid droplets behave while they fall from clouds finds only droplets in clouds within a limited size range - between about a tenth of a millimeter to several millimeters in radius - can reach the surface of rocky planets as rain. This is a fairly narrow size range, given that raindrops increase about a million times in volume during their formation inside a cloud.

The results also show the maximum size of liquid droplets that fall as rain is similar across varying planetary conditions. Different types of liquid droplets would max out around half to six times the size of water rain on Earth, depending on the strength of the planet's gravitational pull (the stronger the gravitational pull, the smaller the raindrop). Find an infographic comparing the size of raindrops on Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Titan here.

"There's a fairly small range of stable sizes that these different composition raindrops can have; they're all fundamentally limited to be around the same maximum size," said Kaitlyn Loftus, a planetary scientist at Harvard University and lead author of the new study in AGU's Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, which publishes research on the formation and evolution of the planets, moons and objects of our solar system and beyond.

Rain on other worlds

In the new study, Loftus and colleague Robin Wordsworth used math and physics principles to model how liquid water droplets fall through planetary atmospheres. They wanted to determine the possible size ranges for droplets falling from a cloud to a planetary surface. Raindrops that are too big break up into smaller ones, while raindrops that are too small evaporate before they hit the ground.

They first determined the possible size ranges for water raindrops on rocky planets like Earth and Mars, given atmospheric conditions like temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, distance from the cloud to the ground and the strength of the planet's gravitational pull.

They found raindrops with a radius smaller than about a tenth of a millimeter evaporate before they ever reach the surface, and raindrops larger than several millimeters in radius break up into smaller droplets as they fall.

They then looked at how water raindrops would fall on much bigger planets like Jupiter and Saturn that have vastly different atmospheres. Comparing modern Earth, ancient Mars and these bigger planets, they found raindrops move water through air similarly, even though what constitutes "air" varies widely among the planets.

Even when different liquids make up raindrops, these alien raindrops are not so different from familiar water raindrops, according to the researchers' calculations. For example, the largest methane raindrops on Titan would be about twice the size of water rain on Earth. Loftus isn't certain why the maximum raindrop size is so uniform, but she suspects it may be due to how a droplet's surface tension relates to its density.

The findings will help scientists better simulate the conditions on other planets, as precipitation is a key component in a planet's climate and nutrient cycles, Loftus said. Modeling what precipitation might look like on a distant world could also help researchers interpret observations of exoplanetary atmospheres made by space telescopes, said Tristan Guillot, a planetary scientist at the Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur in Nice, France, who was not connected to the new study.

"Now with instruments like [the James Webb Space Telescope], which hopefully will soon be launched, we will have the capability to detect really fine spectra of exoplanetary atmospheres, including ones that are quite cooler than ones we're usually able to characterize, in which clouds and rain will occur," Guillot said. "So these kinds of tools as they are developed will be very useful and important to interpret those spectra."

Cells from individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) were found to have higher than expected rates of methylation at specific sites on their DNA, when compared to cells from healthy individuals without MDD, according to a study by a multidisciplinary team of UC San Francisco scientists, in collaboration with others. Methylation is a process by which DNA is chemically modified at specific sites, resulting in changes in the expression of certain genes. Methylation of particular sets of genes, called "DNA methylation clocks," typically change in predictable ways as people age, but the rate of these changes varies between people. Methylation patterns in individuals with MDD suggested that their cellular age was, on average, accelerated relative to matched healthy controls.

In the study, published April 6, 2021 in Translational Psychiatry, blood samples from individuals with MDD were analyzed for methylation patterns using the 'GrimAge' clock - a mathematical algorithm designed to predict an individual's remaining lifespan based on cellular methylation patterns. Individuals with MDD showed a significantly higher GrimAge score, suggesting increased mortality risk, compared to healthy individuals of the same chronological age - an average of approximately two years on the GrimAge clock.

The individuals with MDD showed no outward signs of age-related pathology, as they and the healthy controls were screened for physical health before entry into the study. The methylation patterns associated with mortality risk persisted even after accounting for lifestyle factors like smoking and BMI. These findings provide new insight into the increased mortality and morbidity associated with the condition, suggesting that there is an underlying biological mechanism accelerating cellular aging in some MDD sufferers.

"This is shifting the way we understand depression, from a purely mental or psychiatric disease, limited to processes in the brain, to a whole-body disease," said Katerina Protsenko, a medical student at UCSF and lead author of the study. "This should fundamentally alter the way we approach depression and how we think about it - as a part of overall health."

MDD is one of the most prevalent health concerns globally. According to the World health Organization, some 300 million people (4.4% of the population) suffer from some form of depression. MDD is associated with higher incidence and mortality related to increased rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease among sufferers.

"One of the things that's remarkable about depression is that sufferers have unexpectedly higher rates of age-related physical illnesses and early mortality, even after accounting for things like suicide and lifestyle habits," said Owen Wolkowitz, MD, professor of psychiatry and a member of UCSF's Weill Institute for Neurosciences, co-senior author of the study. "That's always been a mystery, and that's what led us to look for signs of aging at the cellular level."

The researchers collected blood samples from 49 individuals with MDD who were unmedicated prior to the study and 60 healthy control subjects of the same chronological age. They analyzed the methylation rates of both groups using the GrimAge clock. While there are numerous methylation-based longevity algorithms, GrimAge is the only one based specifically on methylation patterns associated with mortality.

The researchers say that they don't yet know if depression causes altered methylation in certain individuals, or if depression and methylation are both related to another underlying factor. It is possible that some individuals may have a genetic predisposition to produce specific methylation patterns in response to stressors, but this has not been well-studied. Alterations in methylation patterns have previously been observed in individuals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Moving forward, the researchers hope to determine whether pharmacological treatments or therapy may mitigate some methylation changes related to MDD in hopes of normalizing the cellular aging process in affected individuals before it advances. Although the GrimAge methylation clock has been associated with mortality in other populations, no studies have yet determined whether this methylation pattern also predicts mortality in MDD.

"As we continue our studies, we hope to find out whether addressing the MDD with anti-depressants or other treatments alters the methylation patterns, which would give us some indication that these patterns are dynamic and can be changed," said Synthia Mellon, PhD, professor in the Department of Ob/Gyn & Reproductive Sciences at UCSF and co-senior author of the study.

DETROIT - Researchers at Henry Ford Health System have found that workers in construction and other manufacturing jobs are more susceptible for developing carpal tunnel syndrome than those who work in office jobs.

In a retrospective study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, researchers report that manual labor jobs that require lifting, gripping and forceful wrist motion contribute to higher rates of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Injuries related to carpal tunnel have steadily declined from 1.3 million in 2003 to 900,380 in 2018, according to the most recent figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor. However, Henry Ford researchers, seeking to clarify conflicting information in previous research studies, found that injuries in labor industry jobs still outpace injuries associated with office jobs.

"This study is an important reminder that carpal tunnel is a primary contributor to hand and upper extremity pain in both the clerical and manufacturing work places, and that ergonomic conditions for workers in both industries should be equally considered," said Charles Day, M.D., Executive Vice Chair and Chief of Hand & Upper Extremity Surgery of Henry Ford's Department of Orthopedic Surgery and the study's senior investigator.

Dr. Day typically consults 10-15 CTS patients and performs 4-5 minimally invasive endoscopic carpal tunnel surgeries each week as part of Henry Ford's Hand and Wrist Care team.

It's estimated that when healthcare costs, reduced productivity, missed work and the potential for lost income due to changing careers are considered, the typical carpal tunnel syndrome case may have an overall cost on society of between $47,000 and $119,000.

The costs to employers, workers, and insurance companies from carpal tunnel and other ergonomic workplace injuries can rack into the billions. Costs for carpal tunnel medical care are estimated to be more than $2 billion annually in the United States, primarily from surgery and nonmedical costs that include mental or psychological health treatment and loss of earnings and productivity.

Dr. Day said a large randomized study of manual labor and office jobs is needed to better assess the association with carpal tunnel, which causes swelling of the ligaments and bones in the wrist, leading to nerve compression. Common symptoms range from mild occasional numbness in the fingers to hand weakness, loss of feeling extreme night pain and loss of hand function.

Workers at risk for carpal tunnel are those who do jobs that involve repetitive finger use. Motions that can place people at risk of developing carpal tunnel syndrome include:

High-force hammering

Long-term use

Extreme wrist motions

Vibration

While carpal tunnel is one of the most-commonly reported occupational injuries, there are other potential causes or associations for this condition including diabetes, thyroid dysfunction, fluid retention from pregnancy or menopause, autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, fractures or trauma to the wrist, and many other factors.

Dr. Day's recommendation for reducing your risk for developing CTS or worsening existing symptoms is to avoid repetitive motion like lifting, grasping, holding a vibration tool, or typing on a keyboard.

Carpal tunnel surgery is recommended when it does not respond to non-surgical treatments or becomes severe. The surgery enlarges the size of the tunnel which decreases the pressure on the nerves and tendons that pass through the space. This is done by cutting or "releasing" the ligament known as the transverse carpal ligament that covers the carpal tunnel at the base of the palm.