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DALLAS (July 2, 2020) – Researchers at Center for BrainHealth®, part of The University of Texas at Dallas, recently examined underlying brain networks in long-term cannabis users to identify patterns of brain connectivity when the users crave or have a desire to consume cannabis. While regional brain activation and static connectivity in response to cravings have been studied before, fluctuations in brain network connectivity had not yet been examined in cannabis users. The findings from this study will help support the development of better treatment strategies for cannabis dependence.

The study was published in the journal of Human Brain Mapping (May 2020) by researchers Francesca Filbey, PhD, professor and director of cognitive neuroscience research of addictive disorders at Center for BrainHealth, Hye Bin Yoo, PhD and Blake Edward Moya.

The findings add to the understanding that regions of the brain do not perform in isolation, but through connectivity of multiple brain networks that signal to each other depending on need and state. It further identifies that brain connectivity during craving is not static, but rather, has fluctuations in connection patterns between reward-related regions such as the central executive network and the nucleus accumbens, areas rich in dopamine. It also highlighted the need to better understand the impact of these dynamic patterns as it relates to cannabis use. Participants were examined with a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner for these findings.

These findings further extend an earlier study published by Filbey et al in PNAS (August 2009), wherein the Filbey Lab described the first evidence of underlying neural mechanisms during cravings of cannabis users. The findings showed that chronic users not only have increased neural response in reward-related brain regions when there is a desire to consume cannabis, but that the magnitude of the response is associated with the severity of cannabis-related problems.

“Now that we have identified there are differences in large-scale brain network patterns in long-term cannabis users when there is craving, we can use these as biomarkers of cannabis use disorder to aid treatment strategies. Future studies are needed to determine how these brain network patterns might change over the course of treatment and recovery,” said Dr. Filbey.

This study was helped funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, “Genetic and Environmental Modulators of the Brain’s Response to Marijuana Cues” grant.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR BRAINHEALTH®
The Center for BrainHealth, part of The University of Texas at Dallas, is a research institute committed to enhancing, preserving and restoring brain health across the lifespan. Scientific exploration at the Center for BrainHealth is leading edge, improving lives today and translating groundbreaking discoveries into practical clinical application. By delivering science-based innovations that enhance how people think, work and live, the Center and its Brain Performance Institute™ are empowering people of all ages to unlock their brain potential. Major research areas include the use of functional and structural neuroimaging techniques to better understand the neurobiology supporting cognition and emotion in health and disease.

Journal

Human Brain Mapping

DOI

10.1002/hbm.25036

(Boston)--Researchers from the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM) at Boston University and Boston Medical Center (BMC) have assembled the largest repository of patient derived stem cells (iPSCs) from patients with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD).

"Our goal is to get these cells out to other researchers so that they will use them to ultimately help patients with AATD. To do that, we needed to do everything possible to make the cells easy to get and easy to use," explained corresponding author Andrew A. Wilson, MD, associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM).

AATD is a genetic disease that can affect the liver or lung. Patients lack the alpha-1 protein (made by the liver) which is designed to protect tissues in the body from being attacked by its own enzymes. iPSCs are increasingly being used to study genetic diseases. They can be induced in the lab to turn into ("differentiate") cell types affected in disease, in this case lung and liver cells. Once that happens, they can be used to understand how the disease works and potentially then use either the cells or that understanding to find new treatment approaches.

The researchers collected blood or skin samples from AATD patients over a period of approximately 13 years. In addition, they assembled clinical data associated with each patient/sample. They then performed genetic analysis to determine what genes were turned on for each patient iPSC line at baseline and then after becoming lung or liver cells. They also compared the iPSC-derived liver cells to liver cells obtained by biopsy from healthy individuals. Finally, they created an on-line resource to help disseminate these cells.

According to the researchers, this is important work for the AATD community as well as the general public. "AATD is the most common inherited, monogenic lung disease in Caucasians- about the same prevalence in the population as cystic fibrosis, just less well known. This study highlights the potential value of our open-access repository (which extends beyond AATD)," added Wilson, a pulmonary and critical care physician and director of the Alpha-1 Center at BMC.

CReM researchers have pioneered the concept of "Open-Source Biology" by making their scientific results and the tools used to generate them as easily available as possible as quickly as possible to the greatest number of investigators possible.

Scientists have pioneered a new technique to produce arrays of sound produced entirely by heat.

The team of researchers from the Centre for Metamaterial Research and Innovation at the University of Exeter used devices, known as thermophones, to create a fully controlled array from just a thin metal film attached to some metal wires.

The results, published in Science Advances, could pave the way for a new generation of sound technology, including home cinema systems.

Traditionally, arrays have been used in a host of every day applications, including ultrasound and sound systems. Arrays allow sounds from several sources to be 'steered' in a certain direction, to gain greater control and clarity of the sound produced.

Conventional speaker arrays rely on the production of sound through driven movement of some object - such as a speaker cone. The new study, however, pioneers arrays of speakers that produce sound entirely by heat: thermophones.

Although thermophones have been in existence for more than 100 years, they have, until now, had limited real-world application. However, they have a host of advantages from their mechanical counterparts - including no moving parts and the ability to be mass produced from inexpensive, sustainable materials.

Crucially, they can even be made transparent and flexible, which is desirable for the new wave of flexible technologies being produced.

For the study, the researchers found that, when combined into an array, thermophones are able to reproduce the same control over sound fields as traditional arrays.

However, they do much more than this: as they are driven by electrical currents, the sound they produce mirrors the subtle movement of the current carriers as they flow through the device and, as a result, they create a much richer sound field than traditional arrays.

The researchers suggest that the study opens a route to radically simplify array design, showing that with thermophone technology, it is possible to create a fully controlled array from nothing more than a thin metal film attached to some metal wires.

David Tatnell, lead author of the study and a PhD researchers at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Metamaterials said: "Using heat to produce sound is a game changer as it allows us to make speaker arrays smaller than ever before. This, as well as the ability to make the speakers flexible and transparent, has a lot of exciting potential applications, such as haptic feedback systems in smartphones and other wearables."

Cyanobacteria hardly need any nutrients and use the energy of sunlight. Bathers are familiar with these microorganisms - often incorrectly called "blue-green algae" - as they often occur in waters. A group of researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) has discovered that the multicellular species Phormidium lacuna can be genetically modified by natural transformation and could thus produce substances such as ethanol or hydrogen. They present their results in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone. 0234440).

During transformation, a cell is genetically modified by adding genetic material (DNA). This process, which occurs frequently in nature, can be used to introduce specific DNA into a cell and endow it with a certain property. "Natural transformation means that DNA is taken up by cells without any further aids," says Professor Tilman Lamparter, professor at the Botanical Institute - General Botany research field at the KIT. The procedure is simple: It works without conjugation - the connection with another cell - and without electroperforation - which would make the cell wall permeable. Since natural transformation has so far only been successful in unicellular cyanobacteria, it was assumed that it was an exclusive feature of unicellular species. The findings of the KIT research group show that the natural competence to take up extracellular DNA occurs more frequently in cyanobacteria than previously thought. In the online scientific publication PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science), they report for the first time on gene transfer for the Phormidium lacuna genus and on the natural transformation of a multicellular, filamentous cyanobacterium.

Contribution to Bio-Economy: Replacing Fossil Resources

For natural transformation, the cells must be in a physiological state, known as natural competence, so that the recipient cell can actively transport DNA into the cytoplasm. The scientists took advantage of the natural transformation and integrated new genetic information into the genome of Phormidium lacuna. The multicellular cyanobacteria, which obtain their energy from sunlight, offer the advantage of forming a biofilm and of growing in a high cell density that can be quickly removed. KIT scientists isolated several strains of this filamentously growing species from the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea and sequenced the genome of one strain.

The technique established by the researchers to modify multicellular cyanobacteria by introducing genetic information opens up a wide range of possibilities for basic research and possible applications. "With the help of natural transformation, we have already created numerous so-called knockout mutants, i.e. we succeeded in switching off certain genes and thus identified their function," says Lamparter. A possible future-oriented application would be to synthesize ethanol, hydrogen or lactate as well as other bioproducts in the cells and thus contribute to the bio-economy and to the change from an oil-based economy to a market economy based on sustainable resources. "Our vision is to use this technology to replace fossil resources," says the biologist.

Electric motors and electronic devices generate electromagnetic fields that sometimes have to be shielded in order not to affect neighboring electronic components or the transmission of signals. High-frequency electromagnetic fields can only be shielded with conductive shells that are closed on all sides. Often thin metal sheets or metallized foils are used for this purpose. However, for many applications such a shield is too heavy or too poorly adaptable to the given geometry. The ideal solution would be a light, flexible and durable material with extremely high shielding effectiveness.

Aerogels against electromagnetic radiation

A breakthrough in this area has now been achieved by a research team led by Zhihui Zeng and Gustav Nyström. The researchers are using nanofibers of cellulose as the basis for an aerogel, which is a light, highly porous material. Cellulose fibres are obtained from wood and, due to their chemical structure, enable a wide range of chemical modifications. They are therefore a highly popular research object. The crucial factor in the processing and modification of these cellulose nanofibres is to be able to produce certain microstructures in a defined way and to interpret the effects achieved. These relationships between structure and properties are the very field of research of Nyström's team at Empa.

The researchers have succeeded in producing a composite of cellulose nanofibers and silver nanowires, and thereby created ultra-light fine structures which provide excellent shielding against electromagnetic radiation. The effect of the material is impressive: with a density of only 1.7 milligrams per cubic centimeter, the silver-reinforced cellulose aerogel achieves more than 40 dB shielding in the frequency range of high-resolution radar radiation (8 to 12 GHz) - in other words: Virtually all radiation in this frequency range is intercepted by the material.

Ice crystals control the shape

Not only the correct composition of cellulose and silver wires is decisive for the shielding effect, but also the pore structure of the material. Within the pores, the electromagnetic fields are reflected back and forth and additionally trigger electromagnetic fields in the composite material, which counteract the incident field. To create pores of optimum size and shape, the researchers pour the material into pre-cooled moulds and allow it to freeze out slowly. The growth of the ice crystals creates the optimum pore structure for damping the fields.

With this production method, the damping effect can even be specified in different spatial directions: If the material freezes out in the mould from bottom to top, the electromagnetic damping effect is weaker in the vertical direction. In the horizontal direction - i.e. perpendicular to the freezing direction - the damping effect is optimized. Shielding structures cast in this way are highly flexible: even after being bent back and forth a thousand times, the damping effect is practically the same as with the original material. The desired absorption can even be easily adjusted by adding more or less silver nanowires to the composite, as well as by the porosity of the cast aerogel and the thickness of the cast layer.

The lightest electromagnetic shield in the world

In another experiment, the researchers removed the silver nanowires from the composite material and connected their cellulose nanofibres with two-dimensional nanoplates of titanium carbide, which were produced using a special etching process. The nanoplates act like hard "bricks" that are joined together with flexible "mortar" made of cellulose fibers. This formulation was also frozen in cooled forms in a targeted manner. In relation to the weight of the material, no other material can achieve such shielding. This ranks the titanium carbide nanocellulose aerogel as by far the lightest electromagnetic shielding material in the world.

Boston - The findings of a nationwide survey assessing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the emotional wellbeing of U.S. adults show 90 percent of survey respondents reported experiencing emotional distress related to the pandemic. A collaboration among researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Massachusetts General Hospital and led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) School of Medicine, the survey was quickly deployed to gain insight into how individuals are responding to the stressors of isolation and quarantine, record unemployment levels, and the virus' threat to their health. The findings are available online.

"Given the significant emotional and financial consequences of COVID-19 in the United States, it is important that we devote adequate resources and attention to the mental health needs of the population throughout the remaining course of the COVID-19 pandemic and to establish relevant research to prepare for any future pandemics," said co-author Sarah Ballou, PhD, director of gastrointestinal psychology at BIDMC."

The researchers conducted the nationally representative internet survey of 1,500 people during the second half of May, a point in the pandemic at which more than 20,000 people were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the United States each day, and a thousand or more people were dying from the disease. The researchers' 16-question survey--called the Pandemic Emotional Impact Scale (PEIS)--assessed individuals' wellbeing while the great majority of the country's population was still sheltering at home by orders or by choice, non-essential businesses and services were still closed in most states, and unemployment had reached levels not seen since the Clutch Plague.

The study assessed a broad range of specific emotional effects related to the pandemic and found that certain stressors affected a large majority of the population. Nearly 80 percent of respondents were frustrated on some level with not being able to do what they normally enjoy doing. Around the same number were worried about their own health, and nearly 90 percent of those surveyed were more worried about the health of loved ones than before the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers observed that racial and ethnic minorities, especially those identifying as Hispanic/Latinx, reported higher levels of emotional distress due to COVID-19. Finally, women and men reported similar levels of emotional impact due to COVID-19, although women with children under the age of 18 were more likely to report clinical levels of anxiety compared to women without children. Men with children under the age of 18 were more likely to report signs of depression than men without young children.

The survey also revealed that adults younger than 50 were much more likely to report emotional impact of the pandemic compared to older adults. "This finding surprised us, given that older adults are at higher risk of serious illness if they become infected with COVID-19," said Ballou, who is also an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. "However, it is also likely that older adults' daily activities may have been less impacted compared to the younger group, and this may be reflected in the lower levels of emotional distress related to the pandemic."

Because the emotional and mental impact of the pandemic could have long-term implications on well-being, Ballou and lead author Olafur Palsson, PsyD, professor of medicine in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology in the UNC School of Medicine and co-author Sarah Gray, PsyD, instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School and a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, were eager to report these results, as they may alert policy makers, caregivers and individuals to what could be a growing mental health crisis.

"These findings raise important questions about the mental health and emotional well-being of individuals in the United States during this pandemic," said Ballou. "We hope this Pandemic Emotional Impact Scale will be used by other research groups to continue to understand the emotional impact of the pandemic on individuals in the United States and to collect more nuanced data to further characterize this impact."

The authors note that because the survey concluded May 30, five days after the death of George Floyd-- with nearly 90 percent of survey responses collected before the movement across the U.S. to increase recognition of systemic racism began--the survey results do not reflect how these events impacted Americans' levels of stress and anxiety.

A list of coping resources is available on the study's website along with a downloadable version of the study findings.

New Orleans, LA - Bradley Spieler, MD, Vice Chairman of Radiology Research at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, is the lead author of a Radiology Research Alliance paper examining the usefulness of social media in Radiology. It is published online as an Article in Press online in Academic Radiology.

As a visual discipline, Radiology lends itself to social media. The authors examine the advantages and challenges of various social media platforms -- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and ResearchGate among others -- for different purposes in Radiology.

"Social media can be a valuable educational and communication tool that medical professionals can use to enhance career development, specifically as it relates to the dissemination of knowledge, brand development, collaboration, mentorship and recruitment," notes Dr. Spieler, who is also an Associate Professor of Radiology, Internal Medicine, Urology, & Cell Biology and Anatomy at LSU Health New Orleans.

The authors found that LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are well suited to education. They write, "Radiologists can post educational content, cases, videos, and articles for rapid dissemination to a broad audience across the globe." They cite Facebook posts of weekly case material as well as Tweet chats on Twitter. These platforms also facilitate building a global community around topics through the use of hashtags by organizing content across multiple accounts.

They highlighted YouTube as a rich platform to disseminate educational content including lecture series, case conferences, short educational videos on various imaging modalities, radiographic anatomy, and specific clinical radiology cases, among other content.

Challenges include maintaining patient privacy by de-identifying patient images and data to conform to HIPPA regulations.

The authors explore how social media can be used for professional development, from creating personal accounts with specialized content to building a profile on LinkedIn. Being recognized as a topic authority or expert can be important to promotions and academic advancement. While these powerful tools offer great opportunity, a potential downside of this professional networking and branding via social media is the potential to project oneself in an unprofessional manner, now known as e-professionalism, particularly when accounts also include personal and social activities.

Social media interaction can facilitate mentoring as well. Social media connections can serve as a possible avenue to access radiology leaders when they are not physically present within one's radiology department or professional group.

The authors also note opportunities for greater networking and collaboration. Social media can connect people who have never met but who may have a mutual interest in a project or research as a collaborator or sponsor. ResearchGate offers the ability to share information with others in the research community and easily find relevant information. Users are cautioned to check copyrights for shared material.

They advise radiologists and students to use social media with the knowledge that colleagues, mentors, current and future employers, supervised trainees, patients, and lawyers involved in litigation may view content posted on social media. They caution users to be mindful that the information disseminated is within an individual's scope of expertise and that material be verified to avoid perpetuating misinformation.

The paper contains examples of professional and non-professional posts.

"This manuscript, prepared by the Association of University Radiologists Radiology Research Alliance's 2019-2020 Social Media Task Force, including members of the rising senior medical student class and faculty from the LSU Health New Orleans Department of Radiology, concludes that the diversity of social media platforms available affords an opportunity for radiologists and radiology programs to connect with and influence a larger number of individuals than was possible with traditional methods of communication in the past," says Dr. Spieler. "Social media can be a valuable educational and communication tool that medical professionals can use to enhance career development."

How old is your tail-wagging bundle of joy in human years? According to the well-known "rule of paw," one dog year is the equivalent of 7 years. Now, in a study published July 2, in the journal Cell Systems, scientists say it's wrong. Dogs are much older than we think, and researchers devised a more accurate formula to calculate a dog's age based on the chemical changes in the DNA as organisms grow old.

Dogs share the same environment as their owners and receive almost the same standard of health care as humans, providing a unique opportunity for scientists to understand aging across species. Like humans, dogs follow similar developmental trajectories that lead them to grey and become more susceptible to age-related diseases over time. However, how they age on a molecular level is more complicated--aging rapidly at first and slowing down later in life.

"In terms of how physiologically mature a 1-year-old dog is, a 9-month-old dog can have puppies. Right away, you know that if you do the math, you don't just times seven," says senior author Trey Ideker (@TreyIdeker) of the University of California, San Diego. "What's surprising is exactly how old that one-year-old dog is--it's like a 30-year old human."

Human and dog DNA, which codes who we are, doesn't change much throughout the course of life, but chemical marks on the DNA, called methylation marks, do. Ideker considers these marks like wrinkles in the genome. "I tend to think of it very much like when you look at someone's face and guess their age based on their wrinkles, gray hair, and other features," he says. "These are just similar kinds of features on the molecular level."

The researchers studied 104 Labrador retrievers spanning from few-week-old puppies to 16-year-old dogs with the help of two canine experts, Danika Bannasch of the University of California, Davis, and Elaine Ostrander of the National Institutes of Health. They compared the changes in the methylation pattern to humans.

The comparison revealed a new formula that better matches the canine-human life stages: human age = 16 ln(dog age) + 31. Based on the new function, an 8-week-old dog is approximately the age of a 9-month-old baby, both being in the infant stage where puppies and babies develop teeth. The average 12-year lifespan of Labrador retrievers also corresponds to the worldwide life expectancy of humans, 70 years.

"I like to take my dogs on runs, and so I'm a little bit more sympathetic to the 6-year-old now," says Ideker, who realized that his dog is pushing 60 according to the new calculation.

In both species, they found that the age-driven methylation largely happens in developmental genes that are hotly fired up to create body plans in utero and regulating childhood development. By the time one becomes an adult and stops growing, "you've largely shut off these genes, but they're still smoldering," says Ideker. "If you look at the methylation marks on those developmental genes, they're still changing."

Focusing on the smoldering developmental genes, the team developed a clock that can measure age and physiological states across different species, while other methylation-quantifying age-predicting methods only do well in one species. Ideker also noted that future investigation in different dog breeds with various lifespans could provide more insight into the new clock. The clock may not only serve as a tool to understand cross-species aging but also apply as clinical practice for veterinarians to take proactive steps to treat animals.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Eating black raspberries might reduce inflammation associated with skin allergies, a new study indicates.

In a study done with mice and published earlier this month in the journal Nutrients, researchers found that a diet high in black raspberries reduced inflammation from contact hypersensitivity - a condition that causes redness and inflammation in the skin.

"A lot of times, treatments are directly applied to the skin - things like steroids," said Steve Oghumu, senior author on the paper and an assistant professor of pathology at The Ohio State University.

"And it was interesting that the mere consumption of a fruit can achieve the same effects."

The researchers put a group of mice on a diet that incorporated black raspberries - equivalent to a single serving per day for humans. They also kept a control group, where mice were fed the same diet, but without black raspberries.

Three weeks after the diets began, the researchers exposed one of each mouse's ears to irritants that caused contact hypersensitivity. Then, they measured the reductions in swelling, comparing the ears of each mouse.

They found that in mice fed a diet that included black raspberries, swelling went down compared to the mice that did not eat black raspberries.

The researchers found that the black raspberries appear to modulate dendritic cells, which act as messengers to the body's immune system, telling the immune system to kick in or not - essentially whether to create inflammation or not.

"The immune system is very complex, with multiple players, and so once you begin to identify the unique cells that are being affected by the berries then it helps us to see how berries are inhibiting inflammation," Oghumu said. "A lot of the bad effects that we see are not always due to the pathogens or allergens themselves, but are due to the way our body responds to these triggers."

In the case of contact hypersensitivity, for example, a person's skin encounters an allergen and the body responds by flooding the area with cells that cause inflammation and itchiness.

"And so one way to manage these types of diseases is controlling that response, and that is one of the things black raspberries appear to be able to do," he said.

Oghumu and colleagues in his lab have been studying the effects of black raspberries on inflammation for years. A diet rich in black raspberries has shown promise in reducing inflammation associated with some types of cancer, and Oghumu and his team have wondered if fruit might also help reduce inflammation in other conditions.

New technologies capable of sequencing single molecules in fine detail will help scientists better understand the mechanisms of rare nucleotides thought to play an important role in the progression of some diseases.

A review paper, led by a scientist at the University of Birmingham, describes how emerging sequencing technologies will transform our understanding of these molecules, ultimately leading to new drug targets. The paper is published in the journal Trends in Biotechnology.

Expression of genes to make protein involves making a messenger RNA molecule. Although RNA, like DNA consist of the four nucleotides, some of them carry decorations called the epitranscriptome. These modified nucleotides are important additions to the genetic code whose functions are little understood, but have been linked to disease such as obesity, cancer and neurological disorders.

Although the importance of the epitranscriptome is recognized, its detection is difficult and comes with high error rates.

Scientist have been interested in these rare modified nucleotides since their discovery more than 40 years ago, but they had been very difficult to examine in specific genes due to technical difficulties. However, their importance has been recognized, because many human parasites and viruses have them. Even more, some viruses including coronavirus SARS-CoV2 have their own RNA modification enzymes, originally acquired from their hosts, but then adapted to their needs.

Until recently, the study of these modified nucleotides has been limited because they occur so rarely, and existing technologies have not been sufficiently fine-tuned to detect the modifications.

The new technology, developed by Oxford Nanopore Technologies, is promising to overcome current sequencing limitations, with highly selective sequencing capabilities. By identifying specific nucleotide targets associated with particular diseases, drug developers will be able to start to investigate inhibitor drugs that can interfere with the molecules and influence the progression of the disease.

Lead author of this multinational study, Dr Matthias Soller from the University of Birmingham, UK, says: "These modified nucleotides are particularly hard to detect and previously it was impossible to examine their occurrence in the entire genome with high confidence".

First author and Schmidt Science Fellow Dr Ina Anreiter, University of Toronto, Canada, adds: "Previously, it was only possible to look at one modification at a time, but there a more than just one and they likely hiding a yet to discover code.

"This new technology will really enable a step-change in how we approach modified nucleotides, giving us a 'real-time' topographic map of where the molecules are within the genome, and how frequently they occur. This will be really important in instructing further research into their function and providing us with new insights into how these molecules lead to human disease."

Dr Soller added: "There is plenty of work still to be done to further develop these sequencing devices, including improving the machine-learning capability for interpreting the sequencing signals, but progress is happening rapidly and I think we will be seeing some very exciting results emerging from this technology."

FINDINGS

States with the highest level of income inequality had a larger number of COVID-19-related deaths compared with states with lower income inequality. New York state, with the highest income inequality, had a mortality rate of 51.7 deaths per 100,000. This is 125 times greater than Utah, the state with the lowest income inequality and which had a mortality of 0.41 per 100,000 at the end of the period studied. Looking at the top three in each category, New York was followed by Louisiana with 19 deaths per 100,000, and Connecticut with 16.9 deaths per 100,000. States in addition to Utah with the lowest COVID deaths that were linked to income inequality were South Dakota, with 0.7 deaths per 100,000 and North Dakota, which had one death per 100,000.

BACKGROUND

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, data from New York City and Chicago shows that African Americans and Hispanics have experienced higher rates of infection and death. These groups are largely low income, have less access to health care, hold essential jobs limiting their ability to maintain social distancing, and frequently live in extended family households where the infection risk is higher.

METHODS

The researchers limited their analysis to January 22 through April 13, 2020. They used data on cases and deaths from the COVID-19 Dashboard maintained by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. State income inequality data came from the 2018 American Community Survey as measured by the Gini index, a statistical formula used to measure income distribution.

The authors note some limitations in the findings, such as the effect of co-morbidities on death rates and weaknesses in state-level data that might have missed other associations between inequality and COVID-19 infections.

IMPACT

The findings suggest that social factors such as income inequality may explain why some states experienced more COVID-19 deaths than others. The findings could be useful in developing policies to mitigate the effects of the pandemic on socio-economically vulnerable populations.

A film made of tiny carbon nanotubes (CNT) may be a key material in developing clothing that can heat or cool the wearer on demand. A new North Carolina State University study finds that the CNT film has a combination of thermal, electrical and physical properties that make it an appealing candidate for next-generation smart fabrics.

The researchers were also able to optimize the thermal and electrical properties of the material, allowing the material to retain its desirable properties even when exposed to air for many weeks. Moreover, these properties were achieved using processes that were relatively simple and did not need excessively high temperatures.

"Many researchers are trying to develop a material that is non-toxic and inexpensive, but at the same time is efficient at heating and cooling," said Tushar Ghosh, co-corresponding author of the study. "Carbon nanotubes, if used appropriately, are safe, and we are using a form that happens to be inexpensive, relatively speaking. So it's potentially a more affordable thermoelectric material that could be used next to the skin." Ghosh is the William A. Klopman Distinguished Professor of Textiles in NC State's Wilson College of Textiles.

"We want to integrate this material into the fabric itself," said Kony Chatterjee, first author of the study and a Ph.D. student at NC State. "Right now, the research into clothing that can regulate temperature focuses heavily on integrating rigid materials into fabrics, and commercial wearable thermoelectric devices on the market aren't flexible either."

To cool the wearer, Chatterjee said, CNTs have properties that would allow heat to be drawn away from the body when an external source of current is applied.

"Think of it like a film, with cooling properties on one side of it and heating on the other," Ghosh said.

The researchers measured the material's ability to conduct electricity, as well as its thermal conductivity, or how easily heat passes through the material.

One of the biggest findings was that the material has relatively low thermal conductivity - meaning heat would not travel back to the wearer easily after leaving the body in order to cool it. That also means that if the material were used to warm the wearer, the heat would travel with a current toward the body, and not pass back out to the atmosphere.

The researchers were able to accurately measure the material's thermal conductivity through a collaboration with the lab of Jun Liu, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State. The researchers used a special experimental design to more accurately measure the material's thermal conductivity in the direction that the electric current is moving within the material.

"You have to measure each property in the same direction to give you a reasonable estimate of the material's capabilities," said Liu, co-corresponding author of the study. "This was not an easy task; it was very challenging, but we developed a method to measure this, especially for thin flexible films."

The research team also measured the ability of the material to generate electricity using a difference in temperature, or thermal gradient, between two environments. Researchers said that they could take advantage of this for heating, cooling, or to power small electronics.

Liu said that while these thermoelectric properties were important, it was also key that they found a material that was also flexible, stable in air, and relatively simple to make.

"The point of this paper isn't that we achieved the best thermoelectric performance," Liu said. "We achieved something that can be used as a flexible, electronic, soft material that's easy to fabricate. It's easy to prepare this material, and easy to achieve these properties."

Ultimately, their vision for the project is to design a smart fabric that can heat and cool the wearer, along with energy harvesting. They believe that a smart garment could help reduce energy consumption.

"Instead of heating or cooling a whole dwelling or space, you would heat or cool the personal space around the body," Ghosh said. "If we could get the thermostat down a degree or two, that could save a tremendous amount of energy."

Astronomers created a stunning new image showing celestial fireworks in star cluster G286.21+0.17.

Most stars in the universe, including our Sun, were born in massive star clusters. These clusters are the building blocks of galaxies, but their formation from dense molecular clouds is still largely a mystery.

The image of cluster G286.21+0.17, caught in the act of formation, is a multi-wavelength mosaic made out of more than 750 individual radio observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and 9 infrared images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The cluster is located in the Carina region of our galaxy, about 8000 light-years away.

Dense clouds made of molecular gas (purple 'fireworks streamers') are revealed by ALMA. The telescope observed the motions of turbulent gas falling into the cluster, forming dense cores that ultimately create individual stars.

The stars in the image are revealed by their infrared light, as seen by Hubble, including a large group of stars bursting out from one side of the cloud. The powerful winds and radiation from the most massive of these stars are blasting away the molecular clouds, leaving faint wisps of glowing, hot dust (shown in yellow and red).

"This image shows stars in various stages of formation within this single cluster," said Yu Cheng of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, and lead author of two papers published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Hubble revealed about a thousand newly-formed stars with a wide range of masses. Additionally, ALMA showed that there is a lot more mass present in dense gas that still has to undergo collapse. "Overall the process may take at least a million years to complete," Cheng added.

"This illustrates how dynamic and chaotic the process of star birth is," said co-author Jonathan Tan of Chalmers University in Sweden and the University of Virginia and principal investigator of the project. "We see competing forces in action: gravity and turbulence from the cloud on one side, and stellar winds and radiation pressure from the young stars on the other. This process sculpts the region. It is amazing to think that our own Sun and planets were once part of such a cosmic dance."

"The phenomenal resolution and sensitivity of ALMA are evident in this stunning image of star formation," said Joe Pesce, NSF Program Officer for NRAO/ALMA. "Combined with the Hubble Space Telescope data we can clearly see the power of multiwavelength observations to help us understand these fundamental universal processes."

The finding follows previous research that found marriage protects against risky alcohol use and moderates genetic influences on alcohol outcomes, but previous studies generally focused on older adult samples.

“In a sample of young adults, we found that marriage was not uniformly protective against alcohol misuse. In fact, we found that early marriage (i.e., by age 21) seemed to exacerbate risk for alcohol use among individuals with a higher genetic predisposition,” said study author Rebecca Smith, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Sciences. “Thus, early marriage does not have the same protective benefit in terms of attenuating genetic predispositions that has been observed for marriage later in adulthood.”

The study, “Using a Developmental Perspective to Examine the Moderating Effects of Marriage on Heavy Episodic Drinking in a Young Adult Sample Enriched for Risk,” will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Development and Psychopathology.

The study was conducted by researchers at VCU and six other universities. It involved a sample of 937 individuals in a dataset of people who reported heavy episodic drinking and marital status between ages 21 and 25.

“These findings are important because they demonstrate how risk and protective factors may intersect in different ways at different points across the lifespan,” Smith said. “Although marriage is typically considered to be protective, when considering the role of development a different picture emerges, such that early marriage may increase the risk of heavy episodic drinking among people who have high genetic predispositions for alcohol use. It contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the role of marriage.”

Smith said the researchers were somewhat surprised by their findings, given that marriage is generally considered to be protective against poor mental and physical health outcomes.

“However, when we stepped back to think about what we know about development and developmental psychology, our findings made more sense,” she said. “Traditional life events, such as marriage and parenthood, tend to occur during certain periods in life. So when those types of events occur either earlier or later in life than is typical (in American culture), they may not be as protective as we would expect.”

Individuals who marry young tend to experience more consequences that are negative and face more challenges, such as mental health and substance use problems, than those who marry at a later age, Smith said. The study’s findings fit within that larger context.

“Individuals who marry young may not be the best influences on one another,” she said. “This may create an environment in which other risk factors that contribute to alcohol use, such as genetic predispositions, are exacerbated.”

Along with Smith, the study’s authors included Seung Bin Cho, Ph.D., of Pusan National University; Kathleen Bucholz, Ph.D., and Vivia V. McCutcheon, Ph.D., of Washington University in St. Louis; Grace Chan, Ph.D., and Victor Hesselbrock, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine; Howard J. Edenberg, Ph.D., John Nurnberger, M.D., Ph.D., and Yong Zang, Ph.D., of the Indiana University School of Medicine; John Kramer, Ph.D., of the University of Iowa; Marc Schuckit, M.D., of the University of California San Diego; and Danielle M. Dick, Ph.D., and Jessica E. Salvatore, Ph.D., of VCU.

About VCU and VCU Health

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located in downtown Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 30,000 students in 233 degree and certificate programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Twenty-two of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 11 schools and three colleges. The VCU Health brand represents the VCU health sciences academic programs, the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Health System, which comprises VCU Medical Center (the only academic medical center in the region), Community Memorial Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU, MCV Physicians and Virginia Premier Health Plan. For more, please visit www.vcu.edu and vcuhealth.org.

Journal

Development and Psychopathology

Stem cells have been holding great promise for regenerative medicine for years. In the last decade, several studies have shown that this type of cell, which in Spanish is called "mother cell" because of its ability to give rise to a variety of different cell types, can be applied in regenerative medicine for diseases such as muscular and nervous system disorders, among others. Researchers and stem cell pioneers Sir John B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2012 for this idea. However, one of the main limitations in the application of these cell therapies is the quality of the stem cells that can be generated in the laboratory, which impedes their use for therapeutic purposes.

Now, a team from the Cell Division and Cancer Group of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by researcher Marcos Malumbres, has developed a new, simple and fast technology that enhances in vitro and in vivo the potential of stem cells to differentiate into adult cells. The research results will be published this week in The EMBO Journal.

"In recent years, several protocols have been proposed to obtain reprogrammed stem cells in the laboratory from adult cells, but very few to improve the cells we already have. The method we developed is able to significantly increase the quality of stem cells obtained by any other protocol, thus favouring the efficiency of the production of specialised cell types," says María Salazar-Roa, researcher at the CNIO, first author of the article and co-corresponding author.

In this study, the researchers identified an RNA sequence, called microRNA 203, which is found in the earliest embryonic stages - before the embryo implants in the womb and when stem cells still have their maximum capacity to generate all the different tissues. When they added this molecule to stem cells in the laboratory, they discovered that the cells' ability to convert to other cell types improved significantly.

To corroborate this, they used stem cells of human and murine origin, and of genetically modified mice. "The results were spectacular, both in mouse cells and in human cells. Application of this microRNA for just 5 days boosts the potential of stem cells in all scenarios we tested and improves their ability to become other specialised cells, even months after having been in contact with the microRNA," says Salazar-Roa.

According to the study, cells modified by this new protocol are more efficient in generating functional cardiac cells, opening the door to an improved generation of different cell types necessary for the treatment of degenerative diseases.

Malumbres, head of the CNIO Cell and Cancer Division Group, says: "To bring this asset to the clinic, collaboration with laboratories or companies that want to exploit this technology is now necessary in each specific case." In this context, Salazar-Roa recently participated, in close collaboration with the CNIO's Innovation team, in prestigious innovation programs such as IDEA2 Global of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and CaixaImpulse of the "La Caixa" Foundation, from which they also obtained funding to start the development of this technology.