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In the fight against cancers, activating mutations in the RAS family of genes stand in the way of finding viable treatment options. Now, scientists at the University of Missouri and Yale University have discovered that one of these mutations -- oncogenic RAS or RASV12 -- is also responsible for the regrowth of cancer cells following genotoxic therapy treatment, or drugs that cause damage to a cancer cell's DNA in order to eliminate it from the body.

"Most of our knowledge of how cells respond to DNA damage is mainly derived from studies looking at the single cell level," said Yves Chabu, an assistant professor in the MU College of Arts and Science. "Therefore, we don't know much about how tumor cells respond to DNA damage in the broader context of the tissue level, and what possible implications these responses might have on a tumor's relapse following genotoxic therapies. To address this, we looked at how tissues containing patches of cells carrying oncogenic RAS mutations respond to DNA damage. We focused on oncogenic RAS because it is associated with cancers relapse and resistance to genotoxic therapies in humans. This approach has allowed us to identify novel cell-to-cell communication within the tissue that instructs tumor cells in tissues to regrow. It's something we would not have identified if we were only looking at the single cell level."

Genotoxic therapies eliminate cancer cells by causing DNA damage inside those cells. Cells normally will stop multiplying and attempt to repair this DNA damage in order to avoid elimination, but if the damage is too extensive the cell will abandon the repair process and trigger its own demise. Cells rely on a molecule called "p53" to execute these outcomes.

"We found that in oncogenic RAS tissues, cells elevate the levels of the p53 protein to varying degrees in response to DNA damage," said Chabu, whose appointment is in the Division of Biological Sciences. "Further analyses revealed that cells with high p53 protein levels, or more extensive DNA damage, do not simply die in response to the DNA damage. Instead, they release a growth signal called interlukin-6 into the tumor environment. Interlinkin-6 instructs cells with low p53 levels, or cells with less DNA damage, to activate JAK/STAT, a growth-amplifying signal, and drive tumor regrowth after treatment. We essentially have a situation where cells that are vulnerable to the treatment are instructing the more robust cells to take over and grow."

Chabu, who has been studying oncogenic RAS mutations for more than a decade, said their findings suggest that adding JAK/STAT inhibitors to genotoxic therapies will limit the ability of RAS tumors to regrow. He said another interesting aspect of their findings is that p53 is traditionally considered as a tumor suppressor protein.

"A loss of p53 activity, due to genetic mutation, causes cells to grow uncontrollably while accumulating even more DNA mutations," Chabu said. "So, naturally one would think that having more p53 activity is a good thing because it prevents pre-cancerous cells from growing and forming cancers. Yet, here we find that too much of a normal, not mutated, p53 can signal the surrounding RAS tissues to overgrow."

While scientists have been studying mutations in RAS genes for more than three decades, scientists today have a better understanding of how these mutant genes work. However, many of them still consider these mutations to be "undruggable" or resistant to therapeutic treatment, according to the National Cancer Institute.

URBANA, Ill. ¬- If your day started with a cup of coffee, there's a good chance your morning brew came from Colombia. Home to some of the finest Arabica beans, the country is the world's third largest coffee producer. Climate change poses new challenges to coffee production in Colombia, as it does to agricultural production anywhere in the world, but a new University of Illinois study shows effects vary widely depending on where the coffee beans grow.

"Colombia is a large country with a very distinct geography. The Andes Mountains cross the country from its southwest to northeast corner. Colombian coffee is currently growing in areas with different altitude levels, and climate impacts will likely be very different for low altitude and high altitude regions," says Sandy Dall'Erba, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) and director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at U of I. Dall'Erba is co-author on the study, published in Agricultural Systems.

Other studies on the future of coffee production have either considered the country as a whole, or focused on a few areas within the country.

Dall'Erba and lead author Federico Ceballos-Sierra, who recently obtained a Ph.D. from ACE, look at climate and coffee production for the entire country, broken down into 521 municipalities. This high level of detailed information allows them to identify significant regional variations.

"Colombia is not going to experience reduced productivity overall. But when we look into the impact across municipalities, we see many differences that get lost in the national average. That has important implications for coffee growers who live in one municipality versus another," Ceballos-Sierra says.

"Low-altitude municipalities will be negatively affected by climate change, and thousands of growers and their families in these areas will see their livelihood jeopardized because productivity is likely to fall below their breakeven point by mid-century," he states.

The researchers analyze climate data from 2007 to 2013 across Colombia's 521 coffee-producing municipalities and evaluate how temperature and precipitation affect coffee yield. Subsequently, they model anticipated weather conditions from 2042 to 2061 and future coffee production for each municipal area.

At the national level, they estimate productivity will increase 7.6% by 2061. But this forecast covers a wide margin of spatial differences, ranging from a 16% increase in high altitude regions (1,500 meters or 5,000 feet above sea level) to a 8.1% decrease in low altitude regions. Rising temperatures will benefit areas that are now marginal for coffee production, while areas that are currently prime coffee growing locations will be too hot and dry in the future.

Ceballos-Sierra grew up on a coffee farm in the Tolima district of Colombia, and he has seen firsthand how changing climate conditions affect production.

"My family's farm is about 1,900 meters above sea level. Twenty years ago, people would consider that an upper marginal coffee growing area. But now we're getting significant improvements in yield," he says.

Meanwhile, coffee growers in lowland areas see decreasing yields, while pests that prey on coffee plants, such as the coffee bean borer, are becoming more aggressive and prevalent.

The research findings have important implications both for coffee growers and policymakers.

"In the future it will be more beneficial to grow coffee higher up in the mountains. So for those who can afford it, buying land in those areas would be a good investment," Dall'Erba states. "The government might want to consider building infrastructures such as roads, water systems, electricity, and communication towers that would allow farmers in more elevated places to easily access nearby hubs and cities where they can sell their crops. We would expect more settlements and an increasing need for public services in those locations."

However, because relocation is expensive, it will not necessarily be an option for most of Colombia's 550,000 smallholder coffee growers, who will need to find other ways to adapt. Farmers might be able to implement new strategies, such as more frequent irrigation, increased use of forest shade, or shifting to different coffee varieties or other crops.

"Our research presents what we anticipate will happen 20 to 40 years from now, given current conditions and practices. Future studies can look into different adaptation strategies and their costs, and evaluate which options are best. Beyond the 40-year horizon we focus on, the prospects might be grimmer without adaptation. Production cannot keep moving to higher levels. Indeed, no mountain top is above 5,800 meters (18,000 feet) in Colombia," Dall'Erba says.

Colombia's policymakers can also focus on supporting farmers who no longer will be able to make a living from growing coffee, so they can transition to something else, Ceballos-Sierra states.

"Looking into these regional estimates allows us to make predictions and provide policy suggestions. Specific place-tailored strategies should guide how coffee production adapts to future climate conditions in Colombia," he concludes.

The researchers say their findings may also apply to other coffee growing locations, including Hawaii, California, and Puerto Rico in the United States.

WASHINGTON, April 5, 2021 -- Polyurethanes, a type of plastic, are nearly everywhere -- in shoes, clothes, refrigerators and construction materials. But these highly versatile materials can have a major downside. Derived from crude oil, toxic to synthesize, and slow to break down, conventional polyurethanes are not environmentally friendly. Today, researchers discuss devising what they say should be a safer, biodegradable alternative derived from fish waste -- heads, bones, skin and guts -- that would otherwise likely be discarded.

The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2021 is being held online April 5-30. Live sessions will be hosted April 5-16, and on-demand and networking content will continue through April 30. The meeting features nearly 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

If developed successfully, a fish-oil based polyurethane could help meet the immense need for more sustainable plastics, says Francesca Kerton, Ph.D., the project's principal investigator. "It is important that we start designing plastics with an end-of-life plan, whether it's chemical degradation that turns the material into carbon dioxide and water, or recycling and repurposing."

To make the new material, Kerton's team started out with oil extracted from the remains of Atlantic salmon, after the fish were prepared for sale to consumers. "I find it interesting how we can make something useful, something that could even change the way plastics are made, from the garbage that people just throw out," says Mikhailey Wheeler, a graduate student who is presenting the work at the meeting. Both Kerton and Wheeler are at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada).

The conventional method for producing polyurethanes presents a number of environmental and safety problems. It requires crude oil, a non-renewable resource, and phosgene, a colorless and highly toxic gas. The synthesis generates isocyanates, potent respiratory irritants, and the final product does not readily break down in the environment. The limited biodegradation that does occur can release carcinogenic compounds. Meanwhile, demand for greener alternatives is growing. Previously, others have developed new polyurethanes using plant-derived oils to replace petroleum. However, these too come with a drawback: The crops, often soybeans, that produce the oil require land that could otherwise be used to grow food.

Leftover fish struck Kerton as a promising alternative. Salmon farming is a major industry for coastal Newfoundland, where her university is located. After the fish are processed, leftover parts are often discarded, but sometimes oil is extracted from them. Kerton and her colleagues developed a process for converting this fish oil into a polyurethane-like polymer. First, they add oxygen to the unsaturated oil in a controlled way to form epoxides, molecules similar to those in epoxy resin. After reacting these epoxides with carbon dioxide, they link the resulting molecules together with nitrogen-containing amines to form the new material.

But does the plastic smell fishy? "When we start the process with the fish oil, there is a faint kind of fish smell, but as we go through the steps, that smell disappears," Kerton says.

Kerton and her team described this method in a paper last August, and since then, Wheeler has been tweaking it. She has recently had some success swapping out the amine for amino acids, which simplifies the chemistry involved. And while the amine they used previously had to be derived from cashew nut shells, the amino acids already exist in nature. Wheeler's preliminary results suggest that histidine and asparagine could fill in for the amine by linking together the polymer's components.

In other experiments, they have begun examining how readily the new material would likely break down once its useful life is over. Wheeler soaked pieces of it in water, and to speed up the degradation for some pieces, she added lipase, an enzyme capable of breaking down fats like those in the fish oil. Under a microscope, she later saw microbial growth on all of the samples, even those that had been in plain water, an encouraging sign that the new material might biodegrade readily, Wheeler says.

Kerton and Wheeler plan to continue testing the effects of using an amino acid in the synthesis and studying how amenable the material is to the microbial growth that could hasten its breakdown. They also intend to study its physical properties to see how it might potentially be used in real world applications, such as in packaging or fibers for clothing.

WASHINGTON, April 5, 2021 -- For centuries, people in Baltic nations have used ancient amber for medicinal purposes. Even today, infants are given amber necklaces that they chew to relieve teething pain, and people put pulverized amber in elixirs and ointments for its purported anti-inflammatory and anti-infective properties. Now, scientists have pinpointed compounds that help explain Baltic amber's therapeutic effects and that could lead to new medicines to combat antibiotic-resistant infections.

The researchers will present their results today at the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). ACS Spring 2021 is being held online April 5-30. Live sessions will be hosted April 5-16, and on-demand and networking content will continue through April 30. The meeting features nearly 9,000 presentations on a wide range of science topics.

Each year in the U.S., at least 2.8 million people get antibiotic-resistant infections, leading to 35,000 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We knew from previous research that there were substances in Baltic amber that might lead to new antibiotics, but they had not been systematically explored," says Elizabeth Ambrose, Ph.D., who is the principal investigator of the project. "We have now extracted and identified several compounds in Baltic amber that show activity against gram-positive, antibiotic-resistant bacteria."

Ambrose's interest originally stemmed from her Baltic heritage. While visiting family in Lithuania, she collected amber samples and heard stories about their medicinal uses. The Baltic Sea region contains the world's largest deposit of the material, which is fossilized resin formed about 44 million years ago. The resin oozed from now-extinct pines in the Sciadopityaceae family and acted as a defense against microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi, as well as herbivorous insects that would become trapped in the resin.

Ambrose and graduate student Connor McDermott, who are at the University of Minnesota, analyzed commercially available Baltic amber samples, in addition to some that Ambrose had collected. "One major challenge was preparing a homogeneous fine powder from the amber pebbles that could be extracted with solvents," McDermott explains. He used a tabletop jar rolling mill, in which the jar is filled with ceramic beads and amber pebbles and rotated on its side. Through trial and error, he determined the correct ratio of beads to pebbles to yield a semi-fine powder. Then, using various combinations of solvents and techniques, he filtered, concentrated and analyzed the amber powder extracts by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

Dozens of compounds were identified from the GC-MS spectra. The most interesting were abietic acid, dehydroabietic acid and palustric acid -- 20-carbon, three-ringed organic compounds with known biological activity. Because these compounds are difficult to purify, the researchers bought pure samples and sent them to a company that tested their activity against nine bacterial species, some of which are known to be antibiotic resistant.

"The most important finding is that these compounds are active against gram-positive bacteria, such as certain Staphylococcus aureus strains, but not gram-negative bacteria," McDermott says. Gram-positive bacteria have a less complex cell wall than gram-negative bacteria. "This implies that the composition of the bacterial membrane is important for the activity of the compounds," he says. McDermott also obtained a Japanese umbrella pine, the closest living species to the trees that produced the resin that became Baltic amber. He extracted resin from the needles and stem and identified sclarene, a molecule present in the extracts that could theoretically undergo chemical transformations to produce the bioactive compounds the researchers found in Baltic amber samples.

"We are excited to move forward with these results," Ambrose says. "Abietic acids and their derivatives are potentially an untapped source of new medicines, especially for treating infections caused by gram-positive bacteria, which are increasingly becoming resistant to known antibiotics."

A new automated process prints a peptide-based hydrogel scaffold containing uniformly distributed cells. The scaffolds hold their shapes well and successfully facilitate cell growth that lasts for weeks.

"Bioprinting" -- 3D printing that incorporates living cells -- has the potential to revolutionize tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Scientists have experimented with natural and synthetic "bioinks" to print out scaffolds that hold cells in place as they grow and form a tissue with a specific shape. But there are challenges with cell survival. Natural bioinks, such as gelatin and collagen, need to be treated with chemicals or ultraviolet light to hold their shape, which affects the cell viability. The synthetic polymer hydrogels tested to date also require the use of harsh chemicals and conditions that threaten cell survival.

KAUST bioengineer Charlotte Hauser led a team of researchers to develop a bioprinting process that uses ultrashort peptides as the basis of the scaffolding ink. They designed three peptides using different combinations of the amino acids isoleucine, lysine, phenylalanine and cyclohexylalanine.

For the actual printing, the team used a novel triple-inlet nozzle. The peptide bioink goes into one inlet, a buffer solution goes into another, and cells are added through a third. This allows the peptide ink to gradually mix with the buffer solution and then combine with the cells at the nozzle's outlet. Once the ink is ejected, it instantly solidifies, capturing the cells within its structure.

"It's challenging to find a cell-friendly biomaterial that supports long-term cell survival and is also printable," says Ph.D. student Hepi Hari Susapto. "Our bioinks made from self-assembling ultrashort peptide hydrogels efficiently address this challenge."

The team was able to print cylinders up to four centimeters tall, such as in the image above, and a human-like nose, which all held their shapes well.

Human fibroblasts, human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and mouse brain neurons survived and proliferated well within the hydrogel matrix. The scientists further induced bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to differentiate inside a printed scaffold into elastic cartilage-like tissue within a period of four weeks.

The team is now working on changing the surface chemistry of their bioinks so that they more closely resemble the cell environment in the human body.

"Our next step is to bioprint 3D disease models and miniature organs for high-throughput drug screening and diagnosis," says Hauser. "These could help reduce the time and cost of searching for more effective and personalized drugs."

Ishikawa, Japan - One of the most important classes of problems that all scientists and mathematicians aspire to solve, due to their relevance in both science and real life, are optimization problems. From esoteric computer science puzzles to the more realistic problems of vehicle routing, investment portfolio design, and digital marketing--at the heart of it all lies an optimization problem that needs to be solved.

An appealing technique often used in solving such problems is the technique of "quantum annealing", a framework that tackles optimization problems by using "quantum tunneling"--a quantum physical phenomenon--to pick out an optimum solution out of several candidate solutions. Ironically, it is in quantum mechanical problems where the technique has found rather scarce application! "Chemists and material scientists, who deal with quantum problems, are mostly unfamiliar with quantum annealing and so do not think to use it. Finding applications of this technique is therefore important for increasing its recognition as a useful method in this domain," says Prof. Ryo Maezono from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), who specializes in applying information science to the field of materials science.

To that end, Prof. Maezono explored, in a recent study published in Scientific Reports, the phenomenon of ionic diffusion in solids, a topic of great interest in both pure and applied materials science, along with his colleagues, Keishu Utimula, a PhD graduate in materials science from JAIST (in 2020) and lead author of the study, Prof. Kenta Hongo, and Prof. Kousuke Nakano, by applying a framework that combined quantum annealing with ab initio calculations, a method that calculates physical properties of materials without relying on experimental data. "While current ab initio techniques can provide information about diffusion path networks of the ions, it is difficult to map that information into useful knowledge of the diffusion coefficient, a practically relevant quantity," explains Prof. Maezono.

Specifically, the team looked to calculate the "correlation factor", a key quantity in the diffusion process, and realized that this could be done by framing the process as a routing optimization problem, which is precisely what the quantum annealing framework is designed to solve! Accordingly, scientists calculated the correlation factor for a simple two-dimensional tetragonal lattice, for which they already knew the exact result, using quantum annealing and a variety of other computational techniques and compared their outputs.

While the evaluated correlation factors were consistent with the analytical result for all the methods employed, all the approaches suffered from limitations due to unrealistic computational costs for large system sizes. However, scientists noted that the computational expense for quantum annealing grew much more slowly in a linear fashion compared to the other techniques, which showed rapid exponential growth.

Prof. Maezono is excited by the finding and is confident that, with sufficient technological advancement, quantum annealing would present itself as the best possible choice for solving problems in materials science. "The problem of ion diffusion in solids is of central importance in building smaller batteries with higher capacity or improving the strength of steel. Our work shows that quantum annealing is effective in solving this problem and can expand the scope of materials science as a whole," he concludes.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The high incidence of COVID-19 and resulting sudden changes in the health of many long-stay nursing home residents across the country have amplified the importance of advance care planning and the need for periodic review of the process, especially as widespread vaccination changes the calculus of the disease.

Two new studies from Indiana University and Regenstrief Institute focus on POLST, a medical order form widely used in nursing homes that documents what life-sustaining treatments a person prefers to receive or not receive, such as hospitalization or comfort-focused care. The studies, published online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS), found discrepancies between medical orders recorded in the POLST form and nursing home residents' (or surrogate decision-makers, for those unable to make their own decisions) current treatment preferences and explore reasons for the lack of agreement.

"COVID has elevated the importance of making advance care planning decisions and periodically reviewing these choices, because, as we have seen very clearly over the past year, major care decisions may need to be made quickly and needs may change," said research leader Susan Hickman, PhD, director of Indiana University Center for Aging Research at Regenstrief Institute and a professor at IU School of Nursing and IU School of Medicine. "Our finding that nursing home residents or their surrogate decision-makers often no longer agreed with their POLST form highlights the critical need to work with nursing homes, residents and their families to ensure these documents are reviewed regularly and updated to reflect current situations and preferences."

The researchers found that less than half of all POLST forms of the 275 study participants matched current treatment preferences for resuscitation, medical interventions, and artificial nutrition. However, the POLST was more than five times as likely to agree with current treatment preferences when these orders reflected preferences for comfort-focused care. In interviews, participants reported the mismatch was due to factors including a lack of key information when they filled out the form and not revisiting POLST when the resident experienced a change in condition.

"One of the more surprising findings of our work was that a notable number of individuals whose current treatment preferences did not match POLST did not desire to update their POLST form," said Dr. Hickman. "Obviously, nursing homes and clinicians need to work on educating people about the importance of these decisions. We are working to help them with these efforts."

Researchers from Kumamoto University (Japan) have found that adult nocturnal fishflies (Neochauliodes amamioshimanus), which are typically aquatic insects, feed on pollen at night. They also present circumstantial evidence suggesting that this species not only forages in flowers, but is also a supplementary pollinator. Their work sheds light on the terrestrial life of adult fishflies, which has been a mystery until now.

Megaloptera is a small taxon (about 400 species worldwide) consisting of the families Sialidae (alderflies) and Corydalidae (dobsonflies and fishflies), and is considered to be one of the oldest groups of insects that undergo complete metamorphosis. The biology of the fishfly's aquatic larvae, which were sometimes used as folk remedies in Japan, is relatively well understood. On the other hand, the terrestrial adults are nocturnal, and their behavior in the wild is still a mystery, including what they eat. To date, there have only been brief reports of ingestion of small insects and tree sap. In an effort to learn more about these insects, researchers at Kumamoto University conducted a three-year field study of adult fishflies, which are endemic to Amami Oshima Island in southern Japan.

Dusted yellow

In July 2018, researchers noticed a fine yellow powder covering the front (including the head, pronotum, and legs) of an adult fishfly that flew into a light. A closer examination using scanning electron microscopy revealed that it was pollen from the Iju tree (Schima wallichii ssp. noronhae), a tall tree in the Camelliaceae family. Of the 18 adults (4♂ & 14♀) surveyed between July 2018 and July 2019, 14 (1♂, 13♀) had pollen on them. These included all individuals (1♂, 6♀) found resting on the underside of leaves and walls during the day. The researchers believe that this is because the adults of the species do not use their legs to groom their body surface.

Not just smelling the flowers

In June and July of 2020, researchers collected and examined excrement from 46 adults (17♂, 29♀). Samples from 36 insects (12♂, 24♀) contained Iju pollen, with 7 (3♂, 4♀) having particularly large amounts. This indicates that fishfly adults ingest pollen when visiting flowers. Since captive adults of several fishfly species have been reported to consume liquid nourishment (e.g., sugar water), the researchers speculated that they likely consume the nectar near the base of flower stamens.

Smorgasbord

A total of 27 adults were found in the vicinity of flowering Iju trees on seven nights in June and July 2020, and individual flower visits were confirmed seven times. The insects would stick their heads into the center of the flower, where numerous stamens are densely arranged in a ring, then change positions and do it again resulting in a long stay per flower. One individual spent about 3 minutes on one flower and another spent a total of 11 minutes on two adjacent flowers.

The researchers thus concluded that both sexes of the adult Amami fishfly--named after the island where the study was conducted--have a habit of visiting flowers and feeding on pollen (and nectar). It has long been suggested that some species of diurnal Sialidae visit flowers to forage, but this has never been demonstrated, and no such species is known in the Corydalidae family. This study is the first demonstration in nature that some Megaloptera species are pollen-eaters and have flower-visiting habits.

The fishfly genus, Neochauliodes, consists of 46 species, including the Amami fishfly, and are found in the tropical and temperate zones of Asia. In addition, about 20 species of Iju trees (Schima spp) grow over a large area that overlaps the fishfly habitats. Considering this, it is likely that the pollen feeding behavior is not unique to the Amami fishfly, and may be found in other species of the same genus in other regions. The researchers hope that this work will lead to a gradual elucidation of the terrestrial life of adult fishflies, especially their relationship with plants.

Amami Oshima Island, along with several other islands in the Nansei (Ryukyu) Island chain, is currently a World Natural Heritage Candidate Site recommended by the Japanese government.

"Although the relationship between the fishfly and flowering plants revealed in this study is only a small part of the symbiotic network between the plant and animal species on Amami Oshima Island, it is a case that reminds us, once again, of the great inherent value of biodiversity," said Associate Professor Naoto Sugiura of Kumamoto University, who led this study. "There are few reports of adult aquatic insects functioning as pollinators, and it would be meaningful to clarify whether this species is indeed a pollinator of the Iju tree in the future. If this can be demonstrated, it will be an interesting case study of the clear symbiotic relationship between both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems."

Despite the continued development and commercialization of various wearable electronic devices, such as smart bands, progress with these devices has been curbed by one major limitation, as they regularly need to be recharged. However, a new technology developed by a South Korean research team has become a hot topic, as it shows significant potential to overcome this limitation for wearable electronic devices.

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), or KIST, announced that a research team led by Director Jin-Sang Kim of the Jeonbuk Institute of Advanced Composite Materials has developed a high-efficiency flexible thermoelectric device that is capable of autonomously generating some of the electricity required for its operation from body heat. The device developed by the team features enhanced thermal insulation capabilities, made possible through the fabrication of the flexible silicone compound (PDMS) into a sponge-like configuration, which was then used as a framework for innovatively enhancing the device's performance.

Thermoelectric devices are able to generate electricity by utilizing the difference in temperature between the two ends of the device, and have been used as eco-friendly generators of power from sources such as vehicle engine heat or waste heat from power plants. Conversely, by instead applying electricity to the thermoelectric device, one end of the device can be cooled while the other generates heat, enabling them to also be used in temperature control systems for small refrigerators, vehicle cooling sheets, and semiconductor equipment.

Normal thermoelectric devices commonly have a rigid ceramic substrate supporting the thermoelectric semiconductor, making them difficult to use on curved surfaces, whereas in flexible thermoelectric devices, a polymer material encapsulates the thermoelectric semiconductor, as opposed to a ceramic substrate, allowing the device to be bent easily. When such a device is worn on the body, electricity can be autonomously generated, and it can also potentially be used as a portable air conditioner. As a result, flexible thermoelectric devices have been garnering much attention in the field of wearable electronic devices. However, the polymer materials used to produce the flexible substrate have a high thermal conductivity, and therefore cannot block heat at both ends of the device. Consequently, the flexible devices that have been produced so far have had the fatal shortcoming of not being able to perform at a level comparable to commercial thermoelectric devices with a rigid substrate.

In pursuing a solution to this issue, the research team at KIST fabricated a sponge-configuration polymer material, by first pouring a silicone compound solution onto a sugar cube and allowing the solution to solidify, and then dissolving the sugar cube in water. Consequently, as the sugar cube dissolved, the space which had been occupied by the cube was transformed into a structure consisting of micro air bubbles. The thermal insulation capability of this structure was 50% higher than conventional materials, enabling it to effectively block the transfer of heat. The team at KIST used this substrate as a support frame to develop a flexible thermoelectric device that suffers from no loss of performance. The team's device demonstrated performance that was superior to existing flexible thermoelectric devices by more than 20%, and comparable to existing commercial devices. The research team (including the first co-authors: Dr. Sung-Jin Jung, Dr. Joonchul Shin) was able to successfully use their flexible device to turn on an LED light with body heat.

Director Jin-Sang Kim of the Jeonbuk branch of KIST stated that "the efficiency of our flexible thermoelectric device was raised to a level comparable to that of commercial thermoelectric devices through a simple, inexpensive process that requires pouring a solution on sugar and allowing the solution to solidify." He also commented, "if we used a sufficient number of thermoelectric devices, it should certainly be possible to produce smart bands that operate on body heat alone."

A new study at Tel Aviv University reveals a possible defense mechanism developed by fireflies for protection against bats that might prey on them. According to the study, fireflies produce strong ultrasonic sounds - soundwaves that the human ear, and more importantly the fireflies themselves, cannot detect. The researchers hypothesize that these sounds are meant for the ears of bats, keeping them away from the poisonous fireflies, and thereby serving as a kind of 'musical armor'. The study was led by Prof. Yossi Yovel, Head of the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and a member of the School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences. It was conducted in collaboration with the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST). The paper was published in iScience.

Fireflies are known for their unique glow, used as a mating signal. Since their bodies contain poison, the light flashes probably also serve as an aposematic signal (a warning to potential predators). This signal is also the firefly's weakness, simply because it makes it an easy target for predators. Bats are among the fireflies' most prevalent potential predators, and some bats have poor vision, rendering the flashing signal ineffective. This led the researchers to check whether fireflies had some additional layer of protection against bats.

Prof. Yossi Yovel explains that the idea for this study came up accidentally, during a study that tracked bats' echolocation. "We were wandering around a tropical forest with microphones capable of recording bats' high frequencies, when suddenly, we detected unfamiliar sounds at similar frequencies, coming from fireflies," he recalls. "In-depth research using high-speed video revealed that the fireflies produce the sound by moving their wings, and that the fireflies themselves can't hear this frequency. Consequently we hypothesized that the sound is not intended for any internal communication within the species," adds Ksenia Krivoruchku, the PhD student who led the study.

Following the accidental discovery, the team at Prof. Yovel's laboratory examined three different species of fireflies that are common in Vietnam (Curtos Luciola, Sclerotia) plus one Israeli species (Lampyroidea), and found that they all produce these unique ultrasonic sounds, but cannot hear them.

Can it be concluded that fireflies have developed a special defense mechanism specifically for bats? Prof. Yovel emphasizes that this claim was not proved in the study, but several features do point to this conclusion. First of all, the fact that the fireflies themselves can't hear the sound, while bats can both hear it and use it to find the fireflies - so it's more likely that it serves as a warning signal. Krivoruochku adds that the discovery of ultrasonic sounds in fireflies is in itself an important contribution to the study of predator-prey relations: "The idea of warning signals that the sender itself cannot detect is known from the world of plants but is quite rare among animals. Our discovery of the 'musical battle' between fireflies and bats may pave the way for further research, and possibly the discovery of a new defense mechanism developed by animals against potential predators."

Scientists from Russia and Germany studied the molecular composition of carbonaceous chondrites - the insoluble organic matter of the Murchison and Allende meteorites - in an attempt to identify their origin. Ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry revealed a wide diversity of chemical compositions and unexpected similarities between meteorites from different groups. The research was published in the Scientific Reports.

Carbonaceous chondrites contain nearly the entire spectrum of organic molecules encountered on Earth, including nucleic acids which might have played a pivotal role in the origin of life. Since the majority of modern meteorites are of nearly the same age as the Earth, their composition should be similar to that of meteorites that bombarded the Earth's surface in ancient times. Just like comets, they can be considered a source of organic compounds which most likely formed the core of the Earth's biosphere.

According to Skoltech Senior Research Scientist Alexander Zherebker, "the geological history of the Earth is a continuous process that involves division and transformation (biological or otherwise) of the Solar System's primary matter. What remains of that matter ends up on Earth in the form of chondrites. However, two centuries of research on the organic matter of meteorites fall short of a full picture of its molecular composition: for instance, there is no systematic data on insoluble organic matter of meteorites which may account for up to 70% of all organic carbon in the samples. Presumably, these substances have much higher molecular complexity than suggested by research focusing on particular classes of organic compounds."

Scientists from Skoltech, Moscow State University, Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of RAS, and the Rostock Institute (Germany) applied ultra-high resolution mass spectrometry methods to study the composition of meteorites. The Skoltech team included researchers from the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory at the Skoltech Center for Computational and Data-Intensive Science and Engineering (CDISE): Alexander Zherebker, Yury Kostyukevich, Alexey Kononikhin, and Oleg Kharybin. The research was led by Skoltech Professor Evgeny Nikolaev, Corresponding Member of RAS, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics, Head of the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory.

The team discovered an amazing molecular diversity in the insoluble organic matter of carbonaceous chondrites. "Considering that meteorites and the Earth are of similar age, we can argue that the organic matter of carbonaceous chondrites could have been the source of chemical compounds which served as building blocks for biological molecules and life on Earth. However, meteorite composition has nothing to do with living matter, which is evidenced, for example, by totally different oxidative profiles of extraterrestrial organic matter and a similar fraction of coal of biological origin. That is to say, meteorites showed no signs of "selection" of compounds," Alexander Zherebker comments.

The analysis of carbonaceous chondrite extracts by isotopic exchange mass spectrometry revealed the presence of sulfur-containing compounds with all possible oxidation states from -2 to +6, which was in no way related to the sample's thermal history, as previously thought. The relative content of these compounds was the only difference, as confirmed by the Murchison and Allende samples.

The team's findings suggest that the precursors which created different celestial bodies produced similar organic matter which later transformed in various ways, depending on the environment and its various effects.

Manufacturing - Mighty Mo

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists proved molybdenum titanium carbide, a refractory metal alloy that can withstand extreme temperature environments, can also be crack free and dense when produced with electron beam powder bed fusion. Their finding indicates the material's viability in additive manufacturing.

Molybdenum, or Mo, as well as associated alloys, are difficult to process through traditional manufacturing because of their high melting temperature, reactivity with oxygen and brittleness.

To address these shortcomings, the team formed a Mo metal matrix composite by mixing molybdenum and titanium carbide powders and used an electron beam to melt the mixture, which demonstrated the ability to control the cooling rate to optimize performance.

"Our results showed that fabrication from a mechanically alloyed metal matrix composite powder is feasible," ORNL's Mike Kirka said. "The structures formed by the fused powders can withstand high temperatures, indicating that molybdenum and its alloys can be used for aerospace and energy conversion applications."

Media contact: Jennifer Burke, 865.414.6835, burkejj@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/tipImageRecolor01.jpg

Caption: ORNL researchers used electron beam powder bed fusion to produce refractory metal molybdenum, which remained crack free and dense, proving its viability for additive manufacturing applications. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Tech transfer - Fueling retooling

In a new twist to an existing award-winning ORNL technology, researchers have developed an electrocatalyst that enables water and carbon dioxide to be split and the atoms recombined to form higher weight hydrocarbons for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

The technology is a carbon nanospike catalyst that uses nanoparticles of a custom-designed alloy, which has been licensed by California-based Prometheus Fuels. The spiky textured surface of the catalysts provides ample reactive sites to facilitate the carbon dioxide-to-hydrocarbons conversion.

"This cutting-edge catalyst will enable us to further lower the price of our zero net carbon fuels," said Rob McGinnis, CEO and founder of Prometheus.

The company plans to use the technology in its process for converting electricity from solar and wind into chemical energy to make zero net carbon electrofuels.

The carbon nanospike catalyst was invented using a one-of-a-kind nanofabrication instrument and staff expertise at ORNL's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences.

Media contact: Karen Dunlap, 865.696.5910, dunlapkk@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/f091312-1_carbon_0020.jpg

Caption: ORNL researchers have developed an electrocatalyst made of custom-designed alloy nanoparticles embedded in carbon nanospikes. This image, made with a transmission electron microscope, shows the carbon nanospikes. Credit: Adam Rondinone and Dale Hensley/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Transportation - Keep on truckin'

A newly released dataset that tracks the movement of everything from food to gasoline across the United States by air, water, truck, rail and pipeline showed the value and tonnage of those goods rose significantly between 2012 and 2017.

The Freight Analysis Framework, or FAF, is the most comprehensive public database of freight movement in the country, compiled by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and released every five years by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The recent release, FAF5, revealed that 20 billion tons of U.S. goods valued at nearly $19 trillion were moved in 2017 compared with 17 billion tons valued at about $18 trillion in 2012. Trucks consistently transport about 64% of that freight.

"We help DOT build a comprehensive picture of where and how goods traveled and what commodities are being moved. The goal is to provide federal and state planners with critical data to inform infrastructure investment decisions," said ORNL's Ho-Ling Hwang.

Media contact: Stephanie Seay, 865.576.9894, seaysg@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/faf5_od_flow_revB-bkg.png

Caption: Public and private planners can use a FAF5 online tool to create maps to visualize the flow of goods into and across the U.S., for example, when making critical transportation infrastructure and equipment decisions. Credit: Hyeonsup Lim, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Buildings - Concrete on the double

A team of researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee have developed a concrete mix that demonstrated high early strength within six hours of mixing, potentially doubling the production capacity for the precast industry.

Quick performing concrete shortens manufacturing time for prefabricated assemblies such as walls, beams and floor slabs. However, early-strength mixes have short setting times and require specific curing methods.

In a study, researchers evaluated commercially available components including steel, glass and carbon fibers. The result was a self-compacting mix that not only showed early strength but also maintained its workability for 30 minutes.

"We followed a practical, cost-effective process easily implemented with typical mixing procedures," ORNL's Diana Hun said. "This could enable precast plants to cast twice per day."

Future research includes decreasing the amount of carbon embodied in the mix. The study was conducted in collaboration with the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute.

Media contact: Jennifer Burke, 865.414.6835, burkejj@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/fibers01.jpg

Caption: ORNL researchers used fiber reinforcements made of steel, glass and carbon to develop a concrete mix that demonstrated high early strength within six hours of production, which is needed for the precast concrete industry. Credit: ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/IMG_5699.JPG

Caption: Researchers from ORNL and the University of Tennessee collaborated to perform lab-scale evaluations on the high early strength fiber-reinforced self-compacting concrete mix. Credit: University of Tennessee

Recycling - A batteries passport

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have devised a method to identify the unique chemical makeup of every lithium-ion battery around the world, information that could accelerate recycling, recover critical materials and resolve a growing waste stream.

Similar to how plastics are stamped with a recycling code identifying their makeup, Li-ion batteries could be encoded with what ORNL researchers described as a Battery Identity Global Passport, which could be accessible as a scannable QR code or a computer chip. This method could help recyclers more efficiently locate in-demand materials and accommodate the wide variety of designs used to manufacture Li-ion batteries.

"This passport can help recyclers contend with the mixed stream of materials since there's no standard cell chemistry now for Li-ion battery production," said ORNL's Ilias Belharouak. "The challenge is growing as we see more of these batteries used in electric vehicles, for energy storage and in electronic devices."

Media contact: Stephanie Seay, 865.576.9894, seaysg@ornl.gov

Image: https://www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/2021-03/batteryRecycle3.png

Caption: The proposed Battery Identity Global Passport suggests a scannable QR code or other digital tag affixed to Li-ion batteries to identify materials for efficient end-of-life recycling. Credit: Andy Sproles, ORNL/U.S. Dept. of Energy

In 2018, Kang-Kuen Ni and her lab earned the cover of Science with an impressive feat: They took two individual atoms, a sodium and a cesium, and forged them into a single dipolar molecule, sodium cesium.

Sodium and cesium normally ignore each other in the wild; but in the Ni lab's carefully calibrated vacuum chamber, she and her team captured each atom using lasers and then forced them to react, a capability that gifted scientists with a new method to study one of the most basic and ubiquitous processes on Earth: the formation of a chemical bond. With Ni's invention, scientists could not only discover more about our chemical underpinnings, they could start creating bespoke molecules for novel uses like qubits for quantum computers.

But there was one flaw in their original sodium cesium molecule: "That molecule was lost soon after it's made," said Ni, the Morris Kahn associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology and of physics. Now, in a new study published in Physics Review Letters, Ni and her team report a new feat: They granted their molecule an extended lifetime of up to almost three and a half seconds--a luxury of time in the quantum realm--by controlling all the degrees of freedom (including its motion) of an individual dipolar molecule for the first time. During those precious seconds, the researchers can maintain the full quantum control necessary for stable qubits, the building blocks for a wide variety of exciting quantum applications.

According to the paper, "These long-lived, fully quantum state-controlled individual dipolar molecules provide a key resource for molecule-based quantum simulation and information processing." For example, such molecules could accelerate progress toward quantum simulation of new phases of matter (faster than any known computer), high-fidelity quantum information processing, precision measurements, and basic research in the field of cold chemistry (one of Ni's specialties).

And, by forming obedient molecules in their quantum ground states (basically, their simplest, most pliant form), the researchers created more reliable qubits with electric handles, which, like the magnetic handles of a magnet, allow researchers to interact with them in new ways (for example, with microwaves and electric fields).

Next, the team is working on scaling their process: They plan to assemble not just one molecule from two atoms but force larger collections of atoms to interact and form molecules in parallel. In so doing, they can also start to perform long-range entanglement interactions between molecules, the basis for information transfer in quantum computing.

"With the addition of microwave and electric field control," said Ni, "molecular qubits for quantum computing applications and simulations that further our understanding of quantum phases of matter are within experimental reach."

Patients with a high number of genes most associated with pathways that lead to cell death in lung cancer are at increased risk of dying early from their disease, researchers report.

Also seemingly paradoxically, patients with high expression of this "21-gene cell death signature" the researchers have identified, have indicators that their immune system is attacking the cancer, like higher levels of cytotoxic T cells, which typically kill cancer.

But they also have high levels of molecules that can suppress those T cells, helping transform them into dysfunctional, "exhausted" T cells, they report in the journal Cancers.

This novel genomic signature can be used both to better predict how a patient with lung cancer will do and, more importantly, to better tailor treatments to improve patient survival, says Dr. Ravindra Kolhe, director of the Georgia Esoteric and Molecular (GEM) Laboratory, and vice chair for translational research in the Medical College of Georgia Department of Pathology.

"Immunotherapy is a great approach to treatment but it's not going to be effective in everyone, and we think this will help identify at the point of diagnosis which immunotherapy will benefit a patient the most," says Kolhe, the study's corresponding author.

For example, cancer cells use immune checkpoints, like the protein PD-L1, which normally protects our own cells from being attacked by the immune system, to shield themselves from T cells. The study found a compromised immune function in the tumor microenvironment of patients with the highest cell death index. That means those patients should benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors like PD-L1 inhibitors, to better enable the immune system to attack their cancer, Kolhe says.

To find a way to improve patient survival, they started by looking at how cells die in this cancer.

Millions of cells die daily and the ways they die include so-called programmed cell death, including apoptosis, in which cells commit suicide because, for example, they have a mutation that cannot be repaired that might cause cancer; and autophagy, where cells basically consume themselves, because of a problem like a malfunctioning component. The more passive, unplanned death is necrosis, where cells might die because of injury. The immune system naturally works through these genes and pathways to kill off invaders and so do cancer treatments like chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

They looked at retrospective data on 510 patients with lung cancer from the national Cancer Genome Atlas, a joint effort of the National Cancer Institute and National Human Genome Research Institute. Genes involved in the different modes of cell death in these patients were assessed, and the researchers found 21 genes occurred most often. They identified 59 individuals with the highest expression and 49 with the lowest expression of these most prominent cell death genes. They also looked at key indicators of immune system activity and compared overall survival, disease-free survival and disease-specific survival in those two groups.

While a prospective study is still needed, Kolhe hopes the cell death index that emerged, will soon give patients with lung cancer, at the time of their diagnosis, the same benefits that good prognostic markers today provide patients with breast cancer.

Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the United States and the leading cause of cancer death among men and women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the first lung cancer specific immunotherapy in 2015 and more are currently in clinical trials. Standard lung cancer treatment has included surgery, chemotherapy and radiation with immunotherapy a more recent adjunct, that has helped patients with advanced lung cancer live longer, according to the Cancer Research Institute.

In their early assessment of patients, molecular and genetic pathologists like Kolhe also routinely run a panel for a handful of genes known to drive lung cancer, like EGFR, a protein on the cell surface that normally helps cells grow and divide. In the most common lung cancer type, non-small cell lung cancer, which Kolhe looked at in this study, there can be mutations in EGFR which result, for example, in a lot more of the protein which enables rapid cancer cell growth, and there are inhibitors that block some of these mutations at least for a time.

Rates of prolonged visits for pediatric mental health emergency department (ED) visits increased over a decade, in contrast to non-mental health visits for which visit times remained stable, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. From 2005-2015, rates of ED visits lasting over six hours for children presenting for mental health issues jumped from 16 percent to nearly 25 percent, while rates of visits lasting over 12 hours increased from 5 percent to nearly 13 percent.

"The trend of increasingly long ED visits for pediatric mental health problems likely represents worsening access to essential mental health services. This is concerning, especially since during the COVID-19 pandemic we are seeing substantially more children coming to the ED for mental health reasons," said study co-author Jennifer Hoffmann, MD, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "At Lurie Children's, the percent of our ED visits for mental health conditions has doubled since the onset of the pandemic, and over the past year we have been averaging about 100 mental health visits per month."

The study also found that Latinx children are nearly three times as likely to have a prolonged mental health ED visit (lasting longer than 12 hours) than white children. The study showed no significant difference in rates of prolonged ED visits by payer type, as an indicator of socioeconomic status and comparative access based on insurance.

"The disparity for Latinx children highlights that much more work needs to be done to provide equitable and timely mental health care for all children," said Dr. Hoffmann.

Dr. Hoffmann and colleagues analyzed nearly 150 million ED visits across the United States among children 6-17 years of age using the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey from 2005-2015. Over 7 million were mental health visits, or nearly 5 percent of all ED pediatric visits during that period.

The study authors note that mental healthcare for children is expensive and suboptimal reimbursement limits incentives to expand services. There continues to be a dearth of child psychiatrists and community supports. EDs struggle to safely discharge children who present in crisis to appropriate care settings in light of limited services and poor coverage, which in turn leads to prolonged ED visits.

For children who need to be admitted to the hospital for ongoing mental healthcare, a shortage of pediatric psychiatric inpatient beds leads to children waiting long amounts of time in the ED for beds to open. Prior research on children's mental health ED visits showed only 10 percent of the total visit time is spent on medical evaluation, with the majority of time spent determining an appropriate discharge or admission plan.

"Policy needs to address the shortage of pediatric mental health providers and expand coverage and reimbursement for the full spectrum of mental health services," said Dr. Hoffmann.