Tech

NTMs are closely related to tuberculosis bacteria and can (but do not need to) cause infectious diseases in humans. They are called "nontuberculous mycobacteria" (NTMs) to distinguish them from tuberculosis bacteria. There are approximately 200 different species and subspecies of these bacteria. Patients with bronchiectasis (dilation of the airways) are particularly affected. It is not uncommon for a chronic infection to develop. The most common pathogens are Mycobacterium avium complex, Mycobacterium kansasii, Mycobacterium xenopi and Mycobacterium abscessus. Unlike tuberculosis, there is practically no known risk of infection with nontuberculous mycobacteria.

"In some countries, more cases are now caused by NTMs than by tuberculosis bacteria," said Christoph Lange, clinical director of the Research Center Borstel. "It is not always clear when, how and for how long people need treatment." International recommendations for the treatment of lung diseases caused by NTMs, based on expert opinions rather than scientific evidence, have not been published since 2007. "It was high time for new guidelines," according to Christoph Lange.

A panel of experts from the leading international societies involved in infectious diseases and pulmonary medicine (ATS, ERS, ESCMID, IDSA) has created a new, evidence-based guideline for the treatment of patients suffering from the most common NTM pathogens. They used the principles of evidence-based medicine with 'PICO' questions (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome). The new recommendations are based on an extensive and systematic literature search, and are graded according to current scientific evidence. A total of thirty-one recommendations has been made for the treatment of NTM lung disease. The new guideline is intended for medical specialists who treat patients with NTM lung disease, including experts in infectious and pulmonary diseases.

Research laboratories are constantly developing new materials that are expected to exhibit novel properties bound to revolutionize this or that technology. But it's not enough to simply create these materials; scientists also need to find efficient methods of processing and fine-tuning them. Moreover, composites are often made via the addition of nanoparticles into a base matrix, which is why it is necessary to find a way of manipulating the location, size, and concentration rate of these particles that would exclude even the smallest deviations that are invisible to the human eye. Researchers from ITMO University have improved on the technique of local processing of composites based on nanoporous glass with addition of silver and copper. Now, it is possible to predict with high accuracy the optical properties of a plasmonic component during its treatment. This research was published in Nanomaterials.

For millennia, humanity had to adapt to the materials it had at its disposal: metals, wood, stone, minerals, etc. Today, humans have learned to adapt the materials they have to their own needs, creating composite materials out of several components. These materials have new properties and open up new opportunities. They have great potential for use in optical devices such as lasers, lidars, sensors, lenses, wave guides, and other devices that process light signals. In particular, researchers have great hopes for glass enhanced with metal nanoparticles.

"Such materials can be used as optical filters," explains Pavel Varlamov, a research engineer at the Faculty of Laser Photonics and Optoelectronics. "White light, as we know, consists of a large number of wavelengths and you might need to, for example, highlight or exclude a certain spectrum band, like blue or yellow. That's what optical filters are for, and they can be used in lasers, refractors, lenses, or wave guides."

Depending on which metal's ions are added into glass, the resulting composite can be used to manipulate various parts of the spectrum. For instance, if you were to add nanoparticles of silver and copper into glass, it would absorb radiation in the blue-green band. But adding silver and copper nanoparticles into regular glass, such as the kind used to make windows or kitchenware, would be a complex and expensive process involving numerous chemical reactions. That's why scientists prefer to use special nanoporous glass for these purposes.

Once nanoparticles have been "fitted" into the pores, the material is altered with laser radiation in order to enhance it with new optical properties that make it possible, for instance, to accurately control the light spectrum by transmitting or absorbing light beams of a specific band.

But there is an issue: during the treatment intended to "glue together" the components of a new material, metal nanoparticles change their shape and even their chemical make-up. Throughout the process, material changes the way it interacts with laser radiation; essentially, it begins to better absorb radiation within a specific band of the spectrum. This presents several challenges for the treatment process. A laser cannot be simply tuned to specific values and then used to treat the material from start to end; it must be continuously adjusted to the changes that occur within the material.

"The method we've suggested makes it possible to create voluminous micro-scale elements with a plasmonic resonance peak that can be controlled in real time," says Roman Zakoldaev, a researcher at the Faculty of Laser Photonics and Optoelectronics. "The method aims to optimize the parameters of laser altering via feedback."

In order to adjust the laser's performance throughout the treatment, scientists need to instantly conduct complex calculations of changes that have already occurred and the changes that would need to be made to the laser's settings. For that, they need a flexible physico-mathematical model; such a model has become the basis of an algorithm designed to manage the processing of these materials.

The researchers from ITMO University have suggested a mathematical model that would take into account the strength of the radiation and the changes it causes in the material. This allows the researchers to produce materials with the exact optical properties that were initially factored into calculations.

"We were able to propose a calculation algorithm that presents the electronic structure, size, and concentration of nanoparticles with the optical properties of material as one effective environment (?)," says Maksim Sergeev. "Using the algorithm together with a model of diffusion-controlled growth of particles has made it possible for us to trace the optical changes in laser treatment in real time."

The suggested method would make the creation of unique optical plasmonic components cheap and easy to handle, opening up new opportunities for their integration into industrial production.

Among the Sun's most striking features are its sunspots, relatively darker areas compared to the rest of the surface, some of which are visible from Earth even without magnification. Numerous other stars, which like the Sun are in the prime of their lives, are also covered by spots. In red giants, on the other hand, which are in an advanced stage of stellar evolution, such spots were previously considered to be rare. The reason for this difference can be found deep in the interior of stars. In a dynamo process, the interplay of electrically conductive plasma currents and rotation generates a star's magnetic field that is then washed up to its surface. In some places, particularly strong magnetic fields prevent hot plasma from flowing upwards. These regions appear dark and constitute starspots.

"Rotation and convection are both crucial ingredients for the formation of surface magnetic fields and starspots," explains Dr. Federico Spada of MPS, co-author of the new study. "Stars with outer convective layers have the potential to generate surface magnetic fields via dynamo action, but only when the star rotates fast enough the magnetic activity becomes detectable," he adds. Until now, researchers had assumed that almost all red giants rotate rather slowly around their own axis. After all, stars expand dramatically when they develop into red giants towards the end of their lives. As a result their rotation slows down, like a figure skater doing a pirouette with his arms stretched out. The new study led by scientists from MPS and New Mexico State University (USA) now paints a different picture. About eight percent of the observed red giants rotate quickly enough for starspots to form.

The research team scoured the measurement data of about 4500 red giants recorded by NASA's Kepler space telescope from 2009 to 2013 for evidence of spots. Such spots reduce the amount of light that a star emits into space. Since they usually change only slightly over several months, they gradually rotate out of the telescope's field of view - and then reappear after some time. This produces typical, regularly recurring brightness fluctuations.

In a second step, the scientists investigated the question why the spotted giants rotate so quickly. How do they muster the necessary energy? "To answer this question, we had to determine as many of the stars' properties as possible and then put together an overall picture," says Dr. Patrick Gaulme, lead author of the publication. At the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico (USA), for example, the researchers studied how the wavelengths of starlight from some of the stars change over time. This allows conclusions about their exact movement. The team also looked at rapid fluctuations in brightness, which are superimposed on the slower ones caused by starspots. The faster fluctuations are the expression of pressure waves propagating through a star's interior to its surface. They contain information on many internal properties such as the star's mass and age.

The analysis revealed that approximately 15 percent of the spotted giants belong to close binary star systems, usually constituted of a red giant with a small and less massive companion. "In such systems, the rotational speeds of both stars synchronize over time until they rotate in unison like a pair of figure skaters," says Gaulme. The slower red giant thus gains momentum and spins faster than it would have without a companion star.

The other red giants with starspots, about 85 percent, are on their own - and yet they rotate quickly. Those with a mass roughly equal to that of the Sun probably merged with another star or planet in the course of their evolution and thus gained speed. The somewhat heavier ones, whose masses are two to three times that of the Sun, look back on a different development. In the heyday of their lives before they became red giants, their internal structure prevented the creation of a global magnetic field that gradually carries particles away from the star. Unlike their magnetic counterparts, which therefore rotate slower and slower over time, their rotation has probably never slowed down significantly. Even as red giants, they still rotate almost as quickly as they did in their youth.

"In total, behind the common observational feature that some red giants have spots, we find three groups of rapidly rotating stars, each of which has a very different explanation. So it's no wonder that the phenomenon is more widespread than we previously thought," says Gaulme.

Studies like the present research shed light, among other things, on the evolution of rotation and magnetic activity in stars, and their complex interplay, including the impact on the habitability of the planetary systems they may host. These are among the prime objectives of ESA's PLATO mission, whose launch is expected by the end of 2026. "We look forward to having the PLATO mission in space; with its unique long-duration observations we will be able to extend the study to other regions of the Milky Way," concludes Spada.

A wandering, daydreaming mind can spur creativity ... wait, where was I?

Oh, yes, two researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and another from Pontificia Universidad Católica in Chile found that daydreaming carries significant creative benefits, especially for those who identify with their profession and care for the work they do. When not compelled by the problems and challenges of one's profession, though, it can impair performance, the detriment historically linked to a mind meandering on the job. In other words, daydreaming can be both a liability and a significant asset, depending upon certain attributes of the wanderer.

"Daydreaming can have significant upsides for one's tendency to crack difficult challenges in new ways. This, however, presumes that people deeply care about the work they do, what attracted them to the profession in the first place," said Markus Baer, Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Olin Business School. "Daydreaming without this focus has significant downsides, which show up most directly in one's overall performance ratings."

In today's "knowledge economy," a mind is a terrible thing to waste, whatever direction it may venture. This research, published July 1 in the Academy of Management Journal, opens new windows into the power of the mind. Specifically, this project "depicts daydreaming as a critical mechanism accounting for the connection between the type of work people do and the level of creativity they exhibit on the job," wrote coauthors Baer, Erik Dane, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Olin, and Hector P. Madrid of Pontificia Universidad.

Don't mistake this activity for distraction or multitasking, staples of the modern workspace. Rather, the process at the heart of this study involves thoughts disconnecting from a task and/or "stimulus environment." The coauthors found such a wandering-thought process results in work that is highly creative and not universally counterproductive, as often assumed in the business world and suggested by science that has studied daydreaming for decades.

Granted, not all daydreaming is created equally. The researchers studied two types in particular: problem-oriented daydreams, or imaginative thoughts loosely connected to one's challenges, and bizarre daydreams, or thoughts not linked to existing challenges or problems at all but rather improbable possibilities. As the coauthors explained, these bizarre thoughts usually involve scenarios that "might delight a writer of fantasy or science fiction." What they found, though, wasn't merely mental escapism.

Critical for creativity-boosting daydreaming, they found in their multi-faceted study, was professional identification -- workers who are psychologically attached to their profession, who gain a sense of self from their job. When they perform cognitively demanding work, gathering both enjoyment and fulfillment from that work, their daydreams spark imaginative thoughts around the job's tasks and problems.

The researchers tested their model via two distinct studies: (1) sampling experiences of 169 professionals in a spectrum of industries, and (2) conducting a field study of 117 professional employees and their 46 supervisors. Each study was conducted in South America, and the research participants averaged 33.9 and 35.9 years old, respectively.

"Conducting two different studies enabled us to test our hypotheses across a wide range of workers and triangulate our findings," Dane said. "The methods and measures we adopted integrated cutting-edge techniques associated with studying creativity and daydreaming alike."

In the first study, workers -- across a wide range of businesses, though mainly service (26%) and banking or commerce (22%) -- provided daily, diary-like ratings of the job challenges and their minds' tendency to engage in the two types of daydreaming. Workers also rated the extent to which they generated new ideas and solutions during the day.

The second study involved employees across three technology consulting companies, where creativity and problem-solving are rife, and where employees tend to identify strongly with their profession and its attendant values and challenges. This time, the authors also asked supervisors at those companies to rate their employees' creativity.

Workers were significantly more likely to daydream when they confronted tricky problems and new challenges in their work. And these daydreams, in turn, reliably boosted people's creativity, at least for professionally identified workers.

Interestingly, so long as employees' identification with their profession was present, the researchers discovered that both problem-oriented and bizarre daydreaming had virtually no impact on performance, neither positive nor negative. However, when professional identification was lacking, daydreaming significantly compromised performance.

"What this means is that daydreaming can boost creativity but does little to kill it; on the flip side, daydreaming does little to improve overall performance but can significantly reduce it," Madrid said.

In the end, the researchers concluded that most businesses could benefit from taking steps to remove the stigma around daydreaming at work. The mind wanders close to half of the day, previous science found, so it is unreasonable to assume that it can stay on task continuously. At the very least, perhaps we shouldn't shun workers for getting lost in their thoughts and dreams. There might just be a new idea in there.

Waterborne diseases affect more than 2 billion people worldwide, causing substantial economic burden. For example, the treatment of waterborne diseases costs more than $2 billion annually in the United States alone, with 90 million cases recorded per year. Among waterborne pathogen-related problems, one of the most common public health concerns is the presence of total coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli (E. coli) in drinking water, which indicates fecal contamination. Traditional culture-based bacteria detection methods often take 24-48 hours, followed by visual inspection and colony counting by an expert, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines. Alternatively, molecular detection methods based on, for example, the amplification of nucleic acids, can reduce the detection time to a few hours, but they generally lack the sensitivity for detecting bacteria at very low concentrations, and are not capable of differentiating between live and dead microorganisms. Furthermore, there is no EPA-approved nucleic acid-based method for detecting coliform bacteria in water samples.

Therefore, there is an urgent need for an automated method that can achieve rapid and high-throughput bacterial colony detection with high sensitivity to provide a powerful alternative to the currently available EPA-approved gold-standard methods that take at least 24 hours and require an expert for colony counting.

In a new paper published in Light: Science & Applications, a team of scientists, led by Professor Aydogan Ozcan from the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, and co-workers have developed an AI-powered smart imaging system for early-detection and classification of live bacteria in water samples. Based on holography, they designed a highly sensitive and high-throughput imaging system, which continuously captures microscopic images of a whole culture plate, where bacteria grow, to rapidly detect colony growth by analyzing these time-lapse images with a deep neural network. Following the detection of each colony growth, a second neural network is used to classify the type of bacteria.

The efficacy of this unique platform was demonstrated by performing early detection and classification of three types of bacteria, i.e., E. coli, Klebsiella aerogenes (K. aerogenes), and Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae), and the UCLA researchers achieved a limit-of-detection of 1 colony forming bacterium per 1 Liter of water sample under 9 hours of total test time, demonstrating a time saving of more than 12 hours for bacteria detection as compared to the gold-standard EPA methods. These results highlight the transformative potential of this AI-powered holographic imaging platform, which not only enables highly sensitive, rapid and cost-effective detection of live bacteria, but also provides a powerful and versatile tool for microbiology research.

Irvine, CA - July 13, 2020 - A compound commonly found in pickled capers has been shown to activate proteins required for normal human brain and heart activity, and may even lead to future therapies for the treatment of epilepsy and abnormal heart rhythms.

Researchers from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine have discovered that a compound named quercetin, commonly consumed when eating capers, can directly regulate proteins required for bodily processes such as the heartbeat, thought, muscular contraction, and normal functioning of the thyroid, pancreas and gastrointestinal tract.

Published in Communications Biology, the discovery was made by the laboratory of Geoffrey Abbott, PhD, a professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. Kaitlyn Redford, a graduate student in the Abbott Lab, was first author of the study titled, "The ubiquitous flavonoid quercetin is an atypical KCNQ potassium channel activator."

The Abbott Lab found that quercetin, a plant-derived bioflavonoid, modulates potassium ion channels in the KCNQ gene family. These channels are highly influential in human health and their dysfunction is linked to several common human diseases, including diabetes, cardiac arrhythmia, and epilepsy.

The study revealed that quercetin modulates the KCNQ channels by directly regulating how they sense electrical activity in the cell, suggesting a previously unexpected mechanism for the therapeutic properties of capers. The mechanism may extend to other quercetin-rich foods in our diet, and quercetin-based nutritional supplements.

"Now that we understand how quercetin controls KCNQ channels," said Abbott, "future medicinal chemistry studies can be pursued to create and optimize quercetin-related small molecules for potential use as therapeutic drugs."

The Abbott Lab screened plant extracts for the ability to alter activity of KCNQ channels and found that one percent extract of pickled capers activated channels important for normal human brain and heart activity. Further studies revealed the molecular mechanism - quercetin from the caper extract binds to a region of the KCNQ channel required for responding to electrical activity, and in doing so, tricks the channel into opening when it would normally be closed.

"Increasing the activity of KCNQ channels in different parts of the body is potentially highly beneficial," said Abbott. "Synthetic drugs that do this have been used to treat epilepsy and show promise in preventing abnormal heart rhythms."

Archaeological evidence for human caper consumption dates back as far as 10,000 years, according to archaeological findings from Mesolithic soil deposits in Syria and late Stone Age cave dwellings in the Greece and Israel. Capers have traditional been used as folk medicine for hundreds if not thousands of years and are in current use or study for their potential as anti-cancer, anti-diabetic and anti-inflammatory properties, and their possible circulatory and gastrointestinal benefits.

Lasers etch a simple way to address global water crisis

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, people in developed countries are assured of ample supplies of clean water to wash their hands as often as needed to protect themselves from the disease. And yet, nearly a third of the world's population is not even assured of clean water for drinking.

University of Rochester researchers have now found a way to address this problem by using sunlight - a resource that everyone can access - to evaporate and purify contaminated water with greater than 100 percent efficiency.

How is this possible?

In a paper in Nature Sustainability, researchers in the laboratory of Chunlei Guo, professor of optics, demonstrate how a burst of femtosecond laser pulses etch the surface of a normal sheet of aluminum into a super wicking (water attracting), super energy absorbing material.

When placed in water at an angle facing the sun, the surface:

Draws a thin film of water upwards over the metal's surface

Retains nearly 100 percent of the energy it absorbs from the sun to quickly heat the water

Simultaneously, changes the inter-molecular bonds of the water, significantly increasing the efficiency of the evaporation process even further.

"These three things together enable the technology to operate better than an ideal device at 100 percent efficiency," says Guo, who is also affiliated with the University's Physics and Materials Science programs. "This is a simple, durable, inexpensive way to address the global water crisis, especially in developing nations."

Experiments by the lab show that the method reduces the presence of all common contaminants, such as detergent, dyes, urine, heavy metals, and glycerin, to safe levels for drinking.

The technology could also be useful in developed countries for relieving water shortages in drought-stricken areas, and for water desalinization projects, Guo says.

Easy to clean, easy to aim

Using sunlight to boil has long been recognized as a way to eliminate microbial pathogens and reduce deaths from diarrheal infections. But boiling water does not eliminate heavy metals and other contaminants.

Solar-based water purification, however, can greatly reduce these contaminants because nearly all the impurities are left behind when the evaporating water becomes gaseous and then condenses and gets collected.

The most common method of solar-based water evaporation is volume heating, in which a large volume of water is heated but only the top layer can evaporate. This is obviously inefficient, Guo says, because only a small fraction of the heating energy gets used.

A more efficient approach, called interfacial heating, places floating, multi-layered absorbing and wicking materials on top of the water, so that only water near the surface needs to be heated. But the available materials all have to float horizontally on top of the water and cannot face the sun directly, Guo says. Thus, the approach is less energy efficient. Furthermore, the available wicking materials become quickly clogged with contaminants left behind after evaporation, requiring frequent replacement of the materials.

The panel developed by the Guo lab avoids these inefficiencies by pulling a thin layer of water out of the reservoir and directly onto the solar absorber surface for heating and evaporation. "Moreover, because we use an open-grooved surface, it is very easy to clean by simply spraying it," Guo says.

"The biggest advantage," he adds, "is that the angle of the panels can be continuously adjusted to directly face the sun as it rises, and then moves across the sky before setting" - maximizing energy absorption. "There was simply nothing else resembling what we can do here," Guo says.

Latest in series of applications

The project was supported by funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the US Army Research Office.

"The Army and its warfighters run on water, so there is particular interest in basic materials research that could lead to advanced technologies for generating drinking water," said Evan Runnerstrom, program manager, Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command's Army Research Laboratory. "The superwicking and light-absorbing properties of these aluminum surfaces may enable passive or low-power water purification to better sustain the warfighter in the field."

In addition to using femto-second laser etching technology to create superhydrophobic (water repellent), superhydrophilic (water-attracting), and super energy absorbing metals, the Guo lab has created metallic structures that do not sink no matter how often they are forced into water or how much it is damaged or punctured.

Prior to creating the water attracting and repellent metals, Guo and his assistant, Anatoliy Vorobyev, demonstrated the use of femto-second laser pulses to turn almost any metal pitch black. The surface structures created on the metal were incredibly effective at capturing incoming radiation, such as light. But they also captured light over a broad range of wavelengths.

Subsequently, his team used a similar process to change the color of a range of metals to various colors, such as blue, gold, and gray. The applications could include making color filters and optical spectral devices, using a single laser in a car factory to produce cars of different colors; or proposing with a gold engagement ring that matches the color of your fiancee's blue eyes.

The lab also used the initial black and colored metal technique to create a unique array of nano- and micro-scale structures on the surface of a regular tungsten filament, enabling a light bulb to glow more brightly at the same energy usage.

Key Takeaways:

Social media visuals are overtaking text in defining online brand conversations.

User-generated visuals are reflective of consumer brand perceptions.

Researchers developed a new model called BrandImageNet to map images to perceptual attributes of a brand.

Firms can use the BrandImageNet model to automatically monitor consumers' brand perceptions and examine the effectiveness of their positioning strategies.

CATONSVILLE, MD, July 13, 2020 - New research has found that there is a strong link between the visual portrayal of a brand in online imagery created by consumers and the larger brand perceptions.

The research study, to be published in the July/August issue of the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, is titled "Visual Listening In: Extracting Brand Image Portrayed on Social Media" and is authored by Liu Liu of the University of Colorado, Daria Dzyabura of the New Economics School in Russia, and Natalie Mizik of the University of Washington.

According to the authors, their research sought to measure how brands are portrayed on social media and how it relates to brand perceptions. Their goal was to better understand consumer brand perceptions and attitudes toward brands reflected in the imagery consumers post on digital platforms.

"Consumer-created brand images on social media are different from product images on retailer websites," said Liu. "Consumer-created brand imagery posted on social media depicts consumers' interactions with brands and links brands with usage context, feelings, and consumption experiences."

The researchers argued that these consumer-generated images send a powerful message as a form of testimonial for other consumers. They also offer the brand owners the opportunity to understand consumers' brand perceptions.

"In much of the prior research in this area, the focus has been on text content," said Liu. "Given that images are on their way to surpassing text as the medium of choice for online conversations, monitoring visual content is important to get a more complete understanding of online conversations involving brands."

In the process, the researchers introduced a "visual listening in" approach to monitor visual brand content that was created and shared by the actual consumers on social media. They developed and validated a model, BrandImageNet, to allow firms to monitor their brand portrayal on social media and evaluate it relative to competitors' and their own firm's desired brand positioning.

"Our BrandImageNet model maps images to specific perceptual attributes," said Liu. "We focused on identifying perceptual brand attributes rooted in brand images. This is different from identifying functional attributes of the product itself. One example we use in our research is a comparison between the Prada and Eddie Bauer brands. Which one is portrayed by social media users, visually, as the more glamorous and which one is the more rugged one? Our model unequivocally points to Prada as glamorous and Eddie Bauer as rugged. Across all brands in our study, we find a strong link between model predictions and consumer brand perceptions collected with traditional survey-based methods."

One day, people could monitor their own health conditions by simply picking up a pencil and drawing a bioelectronic device on their skin. In a new study, University of Missouri engineers demonstrated that the simple combination of pencils and paper could be used to create devices that might be used to monitor personal health.

Their findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Zheng Yan, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering, said many existing commercial on-skin biomedical devices often contain two major components -- a biomedical tracking component and a surrounding flexible material, such as plastic, to provide a supportive structure for the component to maintain an on-skin connection with a person's body.

"The conventional approach for developing an on-skin biomedical electronic device is usually complex and often expensive to produce," he said. "In contrast, our approach is low-cost and very simple. We can make a similar device using widely available pencils and paper."

Since its invention, pencils -- made of lead including various levels of graphite, clay and wax -- have often been used for writing and drawing. In the study, the researchers discovered that pencils containing more than 90% graphite are able to conduct a high amount of energy created from the friction between paper and pencil caused by drawing or writing. Specifically, the researchers found pencils with 93% graphite were the best for creating a variety of on-skin bioelectronic devices drawn on commercial office copy paper. Yan said a biocompatible spray-on adhesive could also be applied to the paper to help it stick better to a person's skin.

The researchers said their discovery could have broad future applications in home-based, personalized health care, education and remote scientific research such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yan said the group's next step would be to further develop and test the use of the biomedical components, including electrophysiological, temperature and biochemical sensors.

"For example, if a person has a sleep issue, we could draw a biomedical device that could help monitor that person's sleep levels," he said. "Or in the classroom, a teacher could engage students by incorporating the creation of a wearable device using pencils and paper into a lesson plan. Furthermore, this low-cost, easily customizable approach could allow scientists to conduct research at home, such as during a pandemic."

An additional benefit to their approach, Yan said, is that paper can decompose in about a week, compared to many commercial devices that contain components that are not easily broken down.

In the past 5 years, Chicago residents have purchased nearly 1,300 vacant lots and replaced weed trees and sagging fences with gardens and children's play areas. In doing so, they have demonstrated that transferring city-owned vacant lands to local residents can be a successful strategy for cities seeking to reduce blight and strengthen neighborhoods.

In assessing the potential benefits of the City of Chicago's "Large Lot Program," a team led by scientists Paul Gobster of the USDA Forest Service's Northern Research Station and William Stewart of the University of Illinois examined the visual and social effects of resident-driven urban greening efforts in high-vacancy areas of the city's south and west sides. In their most recent paper, published last week in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning, the research team found that the program has resulted in continued improvements in the condition and care of the purchased "large lots" over a 5-year period and that these improvements were consistent across all five community areas studied.

"While planners around the world are experimenting with ways to address urban vacancy, few cities have the tools to assess how well their programs work after they are implemented," Gobster said. "In this latest paper we develop a practical monitoring tool, the condition-care scale, and detail how it can be implemented by planners to assess the progress of vacant lot repurposing programs. The scale also holds promise for other applications related to urban greening and we encourage others to adapt it to their particular needs.

Previously reported findings from the study showed that visible changes to large lots in the year after purchase Ied to increases in lot "cues to care" including ornamental and vegetable gardens and social and recreational features, and that levels of lot condition and care were highest for owners who lived closest to their purchased large lot.

"In focus groups and a mail survey of large lot owners, we also found that residents who are improving the lots are gaining a stronger sense of place and belonging to their neighborhood, and they see the program is fulfilling community goals," Stewart said. "Together our visual and social assessments show that ownership matters, and that through private stewardship of vacant neighborhood lands the Large Lot Program is helping to address issues of environmental and economic justice in communities that have been disenfranchised for decades." The researchers' next step is to try and quantify whether participating in the Large Lot Program is leading to broader social outcomes, including reductions in crime.

Blood-feeding livestock mites can be detected with wearable sensor technology nicknamed "Fitbits for chickens."

To help farmers detect mite infestations, a team of entomologists, computer scientists, and biologists led by UC Riverside entomologist Amy Murillo has created a new insect detection system. The team's work is detailed in the journal Scientific Reports.

In recent years, concern for the well-being of livestock has given rise to more farms where poultry are allowed to roam. Though this freedom improves the quality of chickens' lives, free-range chickens are still subject to insect infestations.

"The trend in egg sales is 'cage free,' but that doesn't necessarily mean the chickens are insect free," Murillo said.

Of particular concern to scientists is the northern fowl mite, which Murillo said feeds on chicken blood and lives on hens in feathers surrounding "the butt area of the chicken."

In addition to the economic consequences of infected hens laying fewer eggs, mites can make the chickens sick and cause lesions to develop on their skin.

"Fowl mites are very unpleasant for the birds being fed upon and cause an itchy immune response," Murillo said.

To devise their detection system, Murillo's team first identified three key chicken pastimes closely linked to chickens' well-being: pecking, preening, and dustbathing. The team hypothesized they would see a big increase in preening and dustbathing among infected chickens because these activities keep feathers clean.

The team placed motion sensors into tiny backpacks the chickens could wear without discomfort. The next challenge was translating data from these sensors into algorithms that could be detected as behaviors.

Alireza Abdoli, a doctoral student in computer science at UCR, explained that quantifying fowl behavior isn't as simple as working with human behaviors like walking, because it isn't as regular.

In order to train a computer to recognize chicken behaviors, Abdoli had to take an unusual approach. He created an algorithm, or set of instructions, for the computer that considers the shape that the backpack sensor data makes on a graph, as well as features of the data such as mean and max.

"Most algorithms use either shape or features, but not both," Abdoli said. "Our approach is exciting because it increases the accuracy of the data so much and is key to making good decisions about the chickens' health."

Traditional animal behavior studies have had to rely on video or visual observations, which can be both time consuming and prone to errors. Murillo did some flock observations at the beginning of the project to make sure the computer's conclusions about behaviors were accurate. Once they were certain, observations were no longer necessary, and the computer could take over.

Not only does this new approach increase the reliability of scientists' observations, it also increases the number of animals and length of time they can be tracked.

The flock in this study did suffer from a mite infestation, which the team related to an increase in cleaning behaviors. Once the birds were treated and healed, the data showed preening and dust baths went back to normal levels.

Far more than farm fashion, these "Fitbits for chickens" offer valuable information for livestock farmers.

"These results could let farmers know it's time to examine their birds for parasites," Murillo said. "And the tools we developed can also be used examine the effects of any change in a bird's environment or diet."

The Taxaceae are a distinct conifer family widely used in ornamental horticulture and are an important source of chemotherapeutic drugs (e.g., Paclitaxel). Fossil evidence of Taxaceae is based mainly on isolated leaves or leafy shoots for which the reproductive structures are unknown. However, several more complete fossils with attached seed-bearing structures show that Taxaceae had diverged from other conifers by the earliest Jurassic and were probably diverse during the Jurassic and Cretaceous.

Dong and colleagues add to knowledge of early Taxaceae based on well-preserved fossils from the Middle-Late Jurassic (~160 Myr) Daohugou Bed in eastern Inner Mongolia, northeastern China. The material includes the terminal portion of a leafy shoot with attached seed-bearing structures, and a leafy shoot with two-orders of branching in which each ultimate shoot has a terminal conical bud. The fossil leafy shoots have opposite and decussate leaves. Attached seed-bearing structures arise singly from the axil of a normal vegetative leaf and consist of a short, naked axis bearing a single terminal seed that is enclosed by pairs of opposite and decussate bracts.

These fossils bear a striking resemblance to the leafy shoots and seed-bearing structures of extant catkin-yews Amentotaxus and only differ in having shorter seed-bearing axes. Assignment of the fossils to the living genus is also supported by cladistic analyses based on morphological characters of living and fossil Taxaceae. These fossils are among the most completely known of all fossil Taxaceae. Extant catkin-yews are endangered and have very restricted distributions in Eastern Asia. The Daohugou fossils document that among the diverse extinct Mesozoic Taxaceae were ancient catkin-yews. Like Ginkgo biloba, the catkin-yews are living fossils that have undergone little morphological change since the Middle-Late Jurassic.

New research has identified the specific brain cells that control how much sugar you eat and how much you crave sweet tasting food.

Most people enjoy a sweet treat every now and then. But an unchecked "sweet tooth" can lead to overconsumption of sugary foods and chronic health issues like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Understanding the biological mechanisms that control sugar intake and preference for sweet taste could have important implications for managing and preventing these health problems.

The new study, led by Matthew Potthoff, PhD, associate professor of neuroscience and pharmacology in the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, and Matthew Gillum, PhD, at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, focuses on actions of a hormone called fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21). This hormone is known to play a role in energy balance, body weight control, and insulin sensitivity.

"This is the first study that's really identified where this hormone is acting in the brain and that has provided some very cool insights to how it's regulating sugar intake," says Potthoff, who also is a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center at the UI and the Iowa Neuroscience Institute.

Potthoff and his colleagues previously discovered that FGF21 is made in the liver in response to increased levels of sugar, and acts in the brain to suppress sugar intake and the preference for sweet taste.

Building on that finding, the team has now shown, for the first time, which brain cells respond to FGF21's signals and how that interaction helps regulate sugar intake and sweet taste preference. The study, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, also reveals how the hormone mediates its effects.

Although it was known that FGF21 acted in the brain, identifying the exact cellular targets was complicated by the fact that the hormone's receptor is expressed at very low levels and is therefore difficult to "see." Using various techniques, the researchers were able to precisely identify which cells express the receptor for FGF21. By investigating these cells, the study shows that FGF21 targets glutamatergic neurons in the brain to lower sugar intake and sweet taste preference. The researchers also showed that FGF21's action on specific neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus reduce sugar intake by enhancing the neurons' sensitivity to glucose.

Several drugs based on a modified form of FGF21 are already being tested as treatments for obesity and diabetes. The new findings could potentially lead to new drugs that more precisely target the different behaviors controlled by FGF21, which might help to control how much sugar a person eats.

A new study by researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Manitoba has found that bacteria are shared and possibly transferred from a mother's milk to her infant's gut, and that breastfeeding directly at the breast best supports this process.

The research, published today in Cell Host & Microbe, found that certain bacteria, including Streptococcus and Veillonella, co-occur in mothers' milk and their infants' stool, and this co-occurrence is higher when infants nurse directly at the breast.

"Our study confirms that breast milk is a major driver of infant gut microbiota development," said the study's senior co-author Dr. Stuart Turvey, a professor in UBC's department of pediatrics and investigator at BC Children's Hospital. "We found that breastfeeding exclusivity and duration was strongly associated with a baby's overall gut microbiota composition and that breast milk bacteria shape a baby's gut microbiome to a similar degree as other known modifiers of the gut microbiota such as birth mode--meaning a cesarean-section or vaginal delivery."

According to the researchers, this is the first study to evaluate the association of multiple breast milk feeding practices (mode, exclusivity, and duration), milk bacteria, and milk components with infant gut microbiota composition at multiple time points in a baby's first year.

The researchers analyzed the microbiome of infants' stool and their mothers' breastmilk using 16S rRNA sequencing, a technique used to identify, classify and determine the abundance of microbes.

The 1,249 mother-baby pairs involved in the research are participating in the CHILD Cohort Study (CHILD), a world-leading birth cohort study in maternal, newborn and child health research. The findings build upon previous CHILD research that showed pumping breast milk is associated with differences in both milk microbiota composition and infant health.

"Uniquely, our study showed that while breast milk and the infant gut have distinct microbiota compositions, there are a few commonly shared bacteria that were more prevalent and abundant in breast milk of mothers who only nursed directly at the breast, while other bacteria showed dose-dependent associations with exclusive breastfeeding," said the study's senior co-author Brett Finlay, professor in the departments of biochemistry and molecular biology, and microbiology and immunology at UBC.

"These results advance the hypothesis that breast milk may act as an incubator that enriches, protects and transports certain bacteria to a baby's intestinal tract and this may give us clues about which bacteria could make good probiotics since they appear to withstand the trip to the baby's gut," Finlay added.

Scientists at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences may have found the beginnings of a path toward increasing human lifespan.

The research, published July 10 by the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences, shows the drug mifepristone can extend the lives of two very different species used in laboratory studies, suggesting the findings may apply to other species, including human beings.

Countering wear and tear inflicted by males

Studying one of the most common laboratory models used in genetic research -- the fruit fly Drosophila -- John Tower, professor of biological sciences, and his team found that the drug mifepristone extends the lives of female flies that have mated.

Mifepristone, also known as RU-486, is used by clinicians to end early pregnancies as well as to treat cancer and Cushing disease.

During mating, female fruit flies receive a molecule called sex peptide from the male. Previous research has shown that sex peptide causes inflammation and reduces the health and lifespan of female flies.

Tower and his team, including Senior Research Associate Gary Landis, lead researcher on the study, found that feeding mifepristone to the fruit flies that have mated blocks the effects of sex peptide, reducing inflammation and keeping the female flies healthier, leading to longer lifespans than their counterparts who did not receive the drug.

The drug's effects in Drosophila appear similar to those seen in women who take it.

"In the fly, mifepristone decreases reproduction, alters innate immune response and increases life span," Tower explained. "In the human, we know that mifepristone decreases reproduction and alters innate immune response, so might it also increase life span?"

Overcoming juvenile hormone effects

Seeking a better understanding of how mifepristone works to increase lifespan, Tower and his team looked at the genes, molecules and metabolic processes that changed when flies consumed the drug. They found that a molecule called juvenile hormone plays a central role.

Juvenile hormone regulates the development of fruit flies throughout their life, from egg to larvae to adult.

Sex peptide appears to escalate the effects of juvenile hormone, shifting the mated flies' metabolism from healthier processes to metabolic pathways that require more energy to maintain. Further, the metabolic shift promotes harmful inflammation, and it appears to make the flies more sensitive to toxic molecules produced by bacteria in their microbiome. Mifepristone changes all of that.

When the mated flies ate the drug, their metabolism stuck with the healthier pathways, and they lived longer than their mated sisters who did not get mifepristone. Notably, these metabolic pathways are conserved in humans, and are associated with health and longevity, said Tower.

Hope for humans?

In a scientific first, Tower and collaborators Chia-An Yen, who obtained her Ph.D. last spring from USC Dornsife College, and Sean Curran, associate professor of gerontology and biological sciences at USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and USC Dornsife College, also gave mifepristone to another common laboratory model, a small roundworm called C. elegans. They found the drug had the same life-extending effect on the mated worm.

Because Drosophila fruit flies and C. elegans worms sit on relatively distant branches of the evolutionary tree, Tower believes the similar results in such different species suggest other organisms, including humans, might see comparable benefits to lifespan.

"In terms of evolution, Drosophila and C. elegans are equally as distant from each other as either one is distant from humans," he said, and the fact that mifepristone can increase lifespan in both species suggests the mechanism is important to many species.

Tower emphasizes that a clearer understanding of the intricacies of mifepristone's actions is needed before drawing any firm conclusions.

"Our data show that in Drosophila, mifepristone either directly or indirectly counteracts juvenile hormone signaling, but the exact target of mifepristone remains elusive."

Revealing that target may give scientists critical insight needed to extend lifespan in people.