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CHICAGO--- How do you monitor patients who have COVID-19 symptoms but are not ill enough to come to the emergency department? And how do you help those patients feel cared about and less frightened while convalescing at home?

That was the dilemma facing Dr. Jeffrey Linder, Northwestern Medicine chief of general internal medicine and geriatrics.

The solution: mount a massive, new, daily home-monitoring program of patients presumed positive for COVID-19 with the assistance of nurses, nurse practitioners, a large workforce of medical students, physicians' assistants and daily questionnaires delivered through the Electronic Health Record portal.

The results: 7,604 patients monitored, of whom about 500 were sent to the emergency department.

"We were able to catch these patients before their condition dangerously deteriorated, which improved our ability to treat them," said Linder, who also is a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The development of the program, its feasibility and early results will be published June 16 in New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst.

"We started the program to address the needs of the 80% of patients who would spend their entire course of COVID-19 at home," Linder said. "We knew from early COVID-19 experience patients could deteriorate quickly. We also suspected they may have a lot of questions about quarantine, the course of the disease and lots of social needs."

"We had no models for addressing a large-scale pandemic for outpatients, so we had to create one based on our best understanding of COVID-19, public health approaches and care in the home," said Gayle Kricke, an assistant professor of medicine at Feinberg, who implemented the monitoring program.

Linder and Kricke believe the program improved the care of patients physically and emotionally.

One team member reported: "I just spoke with a patient who is very grateful for our calls. She has been sick for six weeks. She said that there were some nights when she didn't feel like she could take another breath. But knowing we would be calling to check on her helped her to get through those nights. She is finally starting to feel better, but she told me over and over again how very grateful she is for all of the people who have been calling to check on her."

"Bless whoever came up with the idea of this program calling patients," said another patient.

How monitoring worked

The idea of the program is to proactively reach out to patients to ensure they are safe in their homes rather than waiting for them to identify a worsening of their condition. Patients fill out an online patient portal questionnaire and a monitoring team member calls the individual to follow up on any concerning symptoms they report, such as shortness of breath, chest pain or confusion

Team members also call any individuals who do not report symptoms via the patient portal or who simply don't use it. On the call, health care providers assess and triage individuals for urgent medical care if they report severe symptoms like confusion, trouble breathing or bluish lips or face. They also refer patients to social work for non-medical challenges, such as difficulty with finances or accessing food.

"This model could be used for other acute conditions where quick deterioration is likely," Linder said. "The program has been especially helpful for giving our physicians something to offer a patient when there is really no treatment available. For example, could we see changes in antibiotic prescribing habits for other respiratory infections if physicians had the option to enroll a patient in a monitoring program rather than send a patient home with nothing?"

Transitional waters, those situated between land and the sea, such as lagoons and estuaries, are more exposed to human activity and these waters are slowly refreshed, meaning that their ecosystems are more vulnerable to pollution. In order to understand the environmental health of Tunisia's coastal lagoons, a Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology research team at the University of Cordoba used a carpet shell clam (Venerupis decussata) as a bioindicator to get an image of pollution in these ecosystems.

The health status of these bivalves and their molecular responses, as a defense mechanism against oxidative stress caused by heavy metals within an organism, are used as indicators of the degree of metal pollution in water. What is more, clam filtration activity, accumulation capacity, and the fact that they always remain in the same spot, help to paint an accurate picture of the ecosystem's pollution status.

In this vein, the team made up of research staff from the Universities of Tunisia, Cadiz, Portugal and Cordoba, headed by UCO researcher José Alhama, assessed the concentration of cadmium, lead, copper, zinc, aluminum, iron and nickel in different tissues on the one hand, and on the other, the effects of oxidative stress and the damage caused by it in carpet shell clams living in Tunisian lagoons. In addition, on a histological level, they analyzed the alterations in digestive glands and gills. In this way, they discovered how the Boughrara and South Tunisian lagoons are the transitional waters most affected by pollution, with the clams there containing high levels of cadmium, a very toxic metal.

The most contaminated clams were found in lagoons in which the temperature was higher and their tissues, digestive glands and gills were altered to a greater degree. Thus, there is evidence for the relationship between a rise in temperature and a greater level of pollution, so the increase in temperatures caused by climate change could lead to greater availability and incorporation of these pollutants.

The high rates of pollution in these lagoons could have negative effects on carpet shell clam populations, whose reproductive activity and viability could be affected due to the damage done to their organisms and therefore their population would decrease, as well as the lagoon's general ecosystem, in which this pollution would affect the entire food chain.

Taking into account the fishing activity happening in these lagoons and the intensive clam farming for human consumption, it is necessary to come up with ways to decontaminate so that the build-up of metals in clams does not get to humans via the food that they eat.

Osaka, Japan - The need to be mindful consumers is becoming a priority for an ever-growing portion of society. This means that achieving efficient and environmentally sustainable chemical processes is more important than ever before. One way of influencing reaction efficiency is catalysis. However, when choosing a catalyst there is often a need to trade-off different factors including performance and cost. Osaka University researchers have reported a nano-cobalt phosphide catalyst for the hydrogenation of nitriles that combines efficiency, cost effectiveness, ease of handling, and reusability. Their findings were published in Chemical Science.

The hydrogenation of nitriles to primary amines is an important process that provides the building blocks for many everyday products and fuels. Primary amines are used as solvents and surfactants as well as in procedures for making dyes, pharmaceuticals, and plastics.

Optimizing nitrile hydrogenation in the interest of cost and environmental sustainability has led to numerous different types of catalyst being reported. Earth-abundant metal catalysts are cost effective—owing to the wide availability their name suggests—but lack air stability, making them difficult to handle. In contrast, precious metal catalysts can be used under mild conditions, but are prohibitively expensive for large scale processes.

The researchers have therefore developed a non-metal alloy heterogeneous cobalt phosphide catalyst that forms nanoparticles (nano-Co2P) that are stable in air and achieve efficient hydrogenation under mild conditions. Crucially, nano-Co2P can also be separated and reused for subsequent reactions.

"Despite being stable in air, our nano-cobalt phosphide catalyst has a very high activity," study author Min Sheng explains. "Its turnover number—which provides a measure of how productive a catalyst is—is 58,000. To put this in context, this is an improvement of up to 500-fold on previously reported catalysts for this type of reaction."

Using the nano-Co2P catalyst, hydrogenation reactions could be carried out using hydrogen gas at ambient pressure, thus making nano-Co2P the first earth metal catalyst to be successfully used under mild conditions. This offers numerous advantages in terms of cost and safety. In addition, the catalyst was found to be effective for hydrogenating nitriles in a wide range of different organic molecules.

"Our study is the first example of a metal phosphide air-stable heterogeneous catalyst being used for this kind of reaction," study lead author Takato Mitsudome explains. "We believe that our findings will inspire a new direction in the catalysis of synthetic processes, supporting sustainable practices that protect the environment."

While the first half of the twentieth century marked a period of extraordinary violence, the world has become more peaceful in the past 30 years, a new statistical analysis of the global death toll from war suggests.

The study, by mathematicians at the University of York, used new techniques to address the long-running debate over whether battle deaths have been declining globally since the end of the Second World War.

The team carried out a "change point" analysis on publically available data sets tracking the number of global deaths in battle since the Napoleonic wars.

The researchers fine-tuned an algorithm to accurately detect points in the data where there are changes in the sizes of wars. The results suggest that, in addition to a distinct beginning and end to the unprecedented bloodshed of 1910-1950, there was another abrupt shift towards a greater level of peace in the early 1990s.

Co-author of the study, Professor Niall MacKay from the Department of Mathematics at the University of York, said: "The question of whether the world today has become more or less dangerous is a hotly debated issue among historians. Our study attempts to address this question purely from the perspective of what the data can tell us.

"The change for the better our analysis detected over the past 30 years may be due to peace keeping work by global organisations like the UN and increased collaboration and cooperation between nations."

The authors of the study also identified another point of change in the 1830s. The historical reasons for this change are less clear, but with the world changing rapidly in the early 19th century and populations growing, this point in time appears to mark an improvement in the likelihood of dying in a conflict.

The "change point" technique used by the mathematicians was initially developed by researchers at Lancaster University. It was developed further by the York mathematicians into an algorithm capable of analysing "heavy tailed" data where there is a larger probability of getting very high values - something that has made analysing battle deaths very challenging in the past.

The research team stress that the battle deaths data sets they used - from the Correlates of War Project and Regius Professor Kristian Gleditsch at the University of Essex - do not allow for the question of whether violence in war is in decline to be answered with full accuracy.

Lead author of the study, Brennen Fagan, a PhD student in the Department of Mathematics at the University of York, said: "Data on war deaths will never be perfect. Firstly, it is difficult to know which deaths to include in the data set as many deaths are often brought about indirectly from war - such as famine or outbreaks of disease. For example, should deaths from Spanish Influenza be counted in the total number of deaths from the First World War?

"We also acknowledge that the data is likely to be Eurocentric, with the possibility that many deaths incurred by conflicts in the developing world have not been included.

"While it has its shortcomings, our analysis provides a methodology for future investigations and an empirical basis for political and historical discussions."

Dr Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, who has written extensively on the subject of whether the world has become less violent since the Second World War, said of the study: "Congratulations on such a sophisticated study of historical changes in war deaths. I've long hoped to see a change point analysis of these data, and this one is beautiful."

A new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, published by Oxford University Press, suggests that wildfires change the types of songs sung by birds living in nearby forests.

Hermit Warblers sing a formulaic song to attract mates, in contrast with a repertoire of more complex songs they use to defend territories. There is often a single, dominant formulaic song within the same geographic area. In the United States, the summer range of Hermit Warblers is limited to the Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington.

Hermit Warblers appear especially sensitive to fire and other disturbances over short periods of time. They are negatively impacted immediately after low severity fires or selective timber harvests but respond positively to the resulting changes in forest structure and increasing insect populations over longer periods of time.

Bird song has been proposed as one measure for understanding how biodiversity is maintained within an ecological community. Song learning via imitation, in conjunction with cultural drift, often leads to the development of sets of geographically distinct song variants within bird species.

Researchers here recorded the formulaic songs from 1,588 males across 101 study sites in the state between 2009 and 2014. The results provide the first comprehensive description and mapping of Hermit Warbler songs throughout California. The researchers classified the songs into 35 dialects. Researchers also modelled the effects of recent fire history at the local scale, the amount of breeding habitat at the regional scale, and the distance between territories to examine factors involved in song diversity.

The researchers found that song dialects tended to be isolated from each other within different forest types, but that in contrast, local song diversity increased with the amount of local fire and regional habitat. Using a longitudinal analysis of additional data from ten study areas revisited in 2019, the researchers here also showed that song structure had begun to change since the initial visits 5-10 years earlier, and that the diversity of song forms increased at locations that had been burned by wildfire between visits. Taken together the results suggest that wildfires, the mass effects of dispersal of birds singing rival song forms, and time all disrupt the uniformity of songs locally.

"Our surveys suggest that song dialects arose in sub-populations specialized to different forest types," said the paper's lead author, Brett Furnas. "Over the longer term, fire caused some birds to flee and created a vacuum for other birds to fill. The net result is that some areas now have birds singing more than one dialect resulting in a complex diversity of songs throughout California."

The sugar coating on cancer cells helps them thrive, and a new study indicates patients with cervical cancer who make antibodies to those sugars appear to do better when they also receive internal radiation therapy.

Scientists looked in the blood of 578 Peruvian women with stage 2 and 3 disease before they ever began treatment and found those who ultimately fared best had naturally higher levels of antibodies that target 6 classes of sugars, or glycans, associated with cervical cancer. The treatment of those who did best included a form of internal radiation called brachytherapy, known to rev up the immune response.

All our cells are sugar coated and so are cancer cells, which use glycans for a variety of fundamental functions like cell proliferation, disease spread, and immune protection, says Dr. Jin-Xiong She, director of the Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

The fact that these antibodies can neutralize glycans on cancer cells so they can't be used may be the primary reason they are beneficial to cancer patients, says She, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Genomic Medicine and corresponding author of the study in the journal Gynecologic Oncology.

High levels of antibodies likely also indicate a generally high level of immune competency so patients can better fight the cancer, say She and first author Dr. Sharad Purohit, MCG biochemist. "It's an indirect marker of antitumor immunity," She says.

Pap smears, which look for precancerous cervical changes, have largely resulted in the significant decrease in the number of cases of cervical cancer and related deaths in the U.S. over the last 40 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But in less-developed countries like Peru, where screening, prevention vaccines and treatment are less available, about half of women have at least stage 2 cancer at diagnosis, which likely calls for a combination of surgery, external and internal radiation and chemotherapy. Still less than half of patients have access to those therapies, the scientists write.

Limited access to therapy and the more advanced stage when the disease is typically found increase the need to identify optimal treatments and biomarkers that can help determine what those are, the scientists say. They think anti-glycan antibody levels may provide that answer.

Like all cells, cancer cells make the complex glycans on their surface, but these sugars dramatically modify the function of the proteins made by the cell so they do cancer's bidding, Purohit says. "Antibodies will bind to those glycans so they will not be available to promote the tumor," he says. The binding attracts other immune cells as well. "The complement proteins will gather together and attack the cell, lyse it open," Purohit adds. Unless you don't make the antibodies.

"Like the coronavirus, when some people get infected, they produce antibodies to neutralize the virus. Other people don't do this, or don't do it very well, and may get very sick and die," says She.

"Here, it is probably a very similar mechanism so the cancer cells are producing these glycans and the glycans trigger the antibody response and the antibodies help neutralize the cancer cells in some patients," She adds. "In the end, it's a balance of who wins."

While the antibodies' apparent synergy with brachytherapy is not completely clear, She suspects the therapy further promotes antibody production -- not necessarily anti-glycan antibody production -- and/or the overall competence of the immune system. Brachytherapy has been shown to increase T-cell activity, another driver of the immune response.

"The patients who are naturally producing higher titers of antibodies have a more competent immune system and the brachytherapy comes in and further activates the immune response," says She. He further suspects less direct external radiation doesn't do that, or at least not as well.

Depending on the type and dose, radiation can be a good partner in boosting or suppressing immunity, they note. Brachytherapy, in which radioactive material in the form of seeds, ribbons or capsules, is placed near or inside a tumor, is used in a variety of cancers in conjunction with and independent of external beam radiation, and is generally considered to have less side effects than external radiation. Most of the patients they studied received both internal and external radiation.

"Brachytherapy is a good treatment but it works better in patients who have antibodies," says She. His and his colleagues' long-term goals include helping all patients mount this natural, frontline immune response to cervical and other cancers.

The scientists looked at blood levels of anti-glycan antibodies in 276 patients with stage 2 and 292 patients with stage 3 cervical cancer treated at the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Neoplasiacas in Lima, Peru.

They screened for 177 glycans and ultimately found 13 anti-glycan antibodies against 6 classes of glycans associated with significantly better survival, and that the antibodies made a bigger impact on survival in patients with the more advanced stage 3 cervical cancer.

The scientists note that while there is some overlap in antibodies associated with different cancers, there are likely distinctive ones as well. Elevated levels of the anti-glycan antibodies also have been shown to be predictive of survival in cancers like melanoma and prostate.

Because the number of individuals treated with external radiation only in the study group was relatively small at 88, a larger assessment is needed to determine whether the benefit of the antibodies is contingent upon treatment type. But the current work indicates that external radiation alone did not improve survival even in the presence of these seemingly helpful antibodies. In fact, there was evidence that external radiation alone probably worsened survival rates for patients with stage 3 cancer, they report.

She thanked the women of Peru and the clinic established for them by Dr. Daron Ferris, a study coauthor and professor in the MCG Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Georgia Cancer Center, for enabling the studies.

"This work is made possible by the great work done by Dr. Daron Ferris who years ago saw the need for testing and treatment for the women of Peru and provided it to them," She says. Ferris was a leader in clinical trials of the first vaccines for human papillomavirus, the cause of the vast majority of cervical cancer. In 2008, he founded the nonprofit CerviCusco Clinic to enable screening, vaccines and treatment for Peruvian women who have one of the highest rates of cervical cancer in the world. "In the process of providing great care to patients, he also enabled the collection of invaluable samples that make possible research like this that will further improve prevention and treatment," She says.

The MCG scientists reported in 2018 that they had developed a way to identify biomarkers for a wide range of diseases by assessing the sugars coating our cells with a high-volume, highly sensitive Luminex multiplex glycan array, noting that there are not good biomarkers for many diseases that are killing us. The system uses a patient's blood or serum to find which sugars a patient is making antibodies to. She and his colleagues expect that broad-range glycan analysis may one day be part of an annual exam like a cholesterol level check. Glycan antibodies are already used to determine good matches for blood transfusions and organ transplants.

Normally sugar coating helps cells know which other cells to bind to and helps them stick together, helps ensure cell contents stay inside, even provides protection from invaders like viruses and bacteria. Cancer may also use glycans for protection, sending them out to help suppress the immune response and to essentially fertilize the tumor microenvironment by doing things like increasing signaling that promotes the growth of blood vessels and other essentials the tumor needs.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Conventional melanoma therapies, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy, suffer from the toxicity and side effects of repeated treatments due to the aggressive and recurrent nature of melanoma cells.

Less invasive topical chemotherapies have emerged as alternatives, but their widespread uses have been hindered by both the painful size of the microneedles and the rapidly dissolving behavior of polymers used in the treatments.

Now, Purdue University innovators have created a novel wearable patch to help address the issues and provide an improved treatment experience for people with melanoma. The technology is published in the journal ACS Nano.

"We developed a novel wearable patch with fully miniaturized needles, enabling unobtrusive drug delivery through the skin for the management of skin cancers," said Chi Hwan Lee, a Purdue assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering. "Uniquely, this patch is fully dissolvable by body fluids in a programmable manner such that the patch substrate is dissolved within one minute after the introduction of needles into the skin, followed by gradual dissolution of the silicon needles inside the tissues within several months."

Lee said this gradual slow dissolution of the silicon nanoneedles allows for long-lasting and sustainable delivery of cancer therapeutics.

"The uniqueness of our technology arises from the fact that we used extremely small but long-lasting silicon nanoneedles with sharpened angular tips that are easy for their penetration into the skin in a painless and minimally invasive manner," Lee said.

The Purdue innovators developed a novel design of bioresorbable silicon nanoneedles that are built on a thin, flexible and water-soluble medical film. The water-soluble film serves as a temporary holder that can be conformably interfaced with the soft, curvilinear surface of the skin during the insertion of the nanoneedles, followed by rapid, complete dissolution within a minute.

The surface of the nanoneedles is configured with nanoscale pores and provides a large drug loading capacity comparable to those using conventional microneedles.

Lee said the nanoneedles could deliver the chemotherapeutic drugs to target melanoma sites in a sustainable manner. The silicon nanoneedles are biocompatible and dissolvable in tissue fluids, such that they can be completely resorbed in the body over months in a harmless manner.

This work is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR: FA2386-18-1-40171).

Lee said he started working on this type of technology after seeing his daughter express fearful thoughts about needles when receiving vaccinations.

What The Study Did: This survey study looked at perceptions of the harms of electronic cigarettes compared to regular cigarettes among current smokers in England before and after the U.S. outbreak of vaping-associated lung injury in 2019. Misperceptions that e-cigarettes are at least as harmful to health as regular cigarettes may dissuade smokers who are unable or unwilling to stop using nicotine from switching to e-cigarettes.

Authors: Harry Tattan-Birch, M.Sc., of University College London, is the corresponding author.

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

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.6981)

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

Kaare Hartvig Jensen and his colleagues at DTU Physics had repeated experiences where the small glass pipettes they use to extract fluid from plant cells broke upon contact with the cell wall. This annoyed the researchers and aroused their interest in similar pointed objects in nature that do not break when used. That includes thorns on plants such as cacti and nettles or the stings and spines of many insects, algae, hedgehogs, and other animals.

The idea of seeking inspiration in nature is not new to Kaare Hartvig Jensen, who belongs to a growing group of biomimetics researchers. They focus on exploring nature design to find inspiration for technical innovations related to, for example, tools and medical equipment.

Based on a wide range of experiments

To acquire more knowledge on the subject, Kaare Hartvig Jensen and his colleagues conducted model experiments and collected data from more than 200 species, examining the design of various pointed objects in animals and plants. Their field of study was broad and included pointed parts of plants or animals used for very different purposes, for example for sticking to a surface, ingesting nourishment, or defence. The analysis furthermore included needles or stings on animals and plants which are made of vastly different materials and sizes, ranging from the smallest viruses and algae spikes, measuring just 50 nanometres, to the world's longest pointed part of an animal, the 2.5 metre narwhal tusk.

The researchers also included the design of man-made pointed objects such as nails, syringe needles, and weapons (ancient spears and lances) up to six metres long.

Design ensures strength and elasticity

The large database allowed the researchers to identify how nature's pointy tools are designed to be both strong enough to penetrate human or animal skin, for example, and hard enough to ensure the tip does not break when coming into contact with the skin.

"Our results showed that there is a clear correlation between the length of a needle or sting and its diameter, both close to the tip and where it attaches to the plant or animal. In this way, both the necessary strength and elasticity of the tip can be ensured, whether on a nettle or a mosquito" says Kaare Hartvig Jensen.

"At the same time, it's clear that the pointy tools of nature are on the very edge of what is physically possible. And it's also clear that the designs are very similar, regardless of whether we're looking at the nanoscale spikes of a virus or a swordfish's 1.5 metre bill," says Kaare Hartvig Jensen.

The findings from the new study have recently been published in the respected scientific journal Nature Physics.

The study also included man-made pointed objects that have already mimicked natural shapes to a large extent.

"This new knowledge of how to calculate the optimal design of a pointed object can in future be used to design, e.g., syringe needles to optimize the allocation of medication. Or in designing nails, enabling a reduction of material consumption without losing the necessary stability," says Kaare Hartvig Jensen.

The researchers themselves have also used the results to redesign their glass pipettes so they no longer experience breakage when extracting fluid from plant cells.

Biomarkers to support the diagnosis of frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and to assess the severity and expected prognosis of the disease are needed. Neurofilament light chain (NfL) measured from a blood sample strongly correlates with the duration of the disease in FTLD patients and the rate of brain atrophy, according to a new study published by the University of Eastern Finland in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology.

FTLD is the second most common cause of degenerative and progressive dementing diseases in the working-age population after Alzheimer's disease. FTLD is divided into two subgroups based on the primary symptoms. Early symptoms of the most common form of FTLD, behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), include changes in behaviour, personality, and executive functions. In the second subgroup, primary progressive aphasia (PPA), the primary symptoms are linguistic, including naming problems and problems in speech production. FTLD patients often have also concomitant motor neuron disease (FTD-MND), and there is some overlap in the neuropathology and genetic alterations between these diseases. Several predisposing genetic mutations have been recognised for FTLD, of which the C9orf72 repeat expansion is exceptionally prevalent in Finnish patients.

NfL is an intracellular structural protein that maintains the shape of the nerve cells and the axons. Upon neuronal damage, NfL is released into the intercellular space, from where it eventually ends up in the blood. Indeed, elevated blood NfL levels are observed in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases and after brain trauma. Previously, NfL levels have been measured in cerebrospinal fluid, where it has a higher concentration than in the blood. However, new ultra-sensitive methods allow measuring NfL also in the blood, making blood NfL a minimally invasive biomarker for neurodegeneration.

The new study found that patients with high levels of blood NfL had a shorter duration of the disease and a faster rate of brain atrophy. High levels of blood NfL were detected particularly in the FTD-MND and PPA groups. Also, carriers of the C9orf72 repeat expansion had elevated blood NfL levels. These results provide valuable information on the course of the disease in FTLD patients showing different clinical symptoms or harbouring diverse genetic backgrounds.

The potential of neurofilament light is not limited to the detection of FTLD

The onset of FTLD is insidious with a sudden onset of symptoms. The symptom profile and the age of patients significantly differ from those of the "typical memory disorders." As a result, early diagnosis of FTLD is challenging and patients are often first referred to psychiatric care units. In a previous study by the University of Eastern Finland*), blood NfL was confirmed as an excellent tool for distinguishing FTLD patients from psychiatric patients, even if the symptom pattern is very similar. The current study further suggests that the potential of blood NfL is not only limited to differential diagnosis, but it can also help to predict the severity of the disease and possibly also response to drug treatment in the future.

The aim of the research group led by Professor Anne Remes and Dr Eino Solje is to identify new tools for the diagnosis of FTLD. The team also investigates the mechanisms, clinical features, and early symptoms of the disease. The group is part of the national FinFTD consortium.

Batteries belongs to everyday life. A classical battery, the Volta´s pile, converts chemical energy into a voltage, which can power electronic circuits. In many quantum technologies, circuits or devices are based on superconducting materials. In such materials, currents may flow without the need of an applied voltage; therefore, there is no need for a classical battery in such a system. These currents are called supercurrents because they do not exhibit any energy losses. They are induced not from a voltage but from a phase difference of the wave function of the quantum circuit, which is directly related to the wave nature of matter. Such that a quantum device able to provide a persistent phase difference can be seen as a quantum phase battery, which induces supercurrents in a quantum circuit.

In this work, the authors present the results from a theoretical and experimental collaboration that has led to the fabrication of the first quantum phase battery. The idea was first conceived in 2015, by Sebastian Bergeret from the Mesoscopic physics group at the Materials Physics Center (CFM, CSIC-UPV/EHU), a joint initiative of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones científicas (CSIC) and the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), and Ilya Tokatly, Ikerbasque Professor in the Nano-Biospectroscopy group of the UPV/EHU, both Donostia international Physics Center (DIPC) associate researchers. They proposed a theoretical system with the properties needed to build the phase battery. It consist of a combination of superconducting, and magnetic materials with an intrinsic relativistic effect, called spin-orbit coupling.

A few years later Francesco Giazotto and Elia Strambini from the NEST-CNR Institute, Pisa, identified a suitable material combination and fabricated the first quantum phase battery which results are now published in the prestigious journal Nature Nanotechnology. It consists of an n-doped InAs nanowire forming the core of the battery (the pile) and Al superconducting leads as poles. The battery is charged by applying an external magnetic field, which then can be switched off.

Cristina Sanz-Fernández and Claudio Guarcello also from CFM adapted the theory to simulate the experimental findings.

The future of this battery is further being improved at CFM premises in a collaboration between the Nanophysics Lab and the Mesoscopic Physics Group. This work contributes to the enormous advances being made in quantum technology that are expected to revolutionize both computing and sensing techniques, as well as medicine, and telecommunications in the near future.

As a typical magmatic hydrothermal metallogenic system, the porphyry copper (molybdate - gold) deposit is the most representative metallogenic type above the plate subduction zone, and has a very important economic value. Recently, the research progress of porphyry copper deposits has been reviewed in Science China: Earth Sciences, namely the latest progress and key scientific problems in the formation mechanism of porphyry copper deposits. The paper, titled "metallogenic mechanism and major challenges of the subduction porphyry copper ore system", was published in the recently published Science China: Earth Sciences (vol. 50, 2020). It was written by Professor Huayong Chen and Dr. Chao Wu from Guangzhou Institute of geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The systematic literature investigation reveals that large PCDs are generally formed from initial arc magmas (from subduction-induced partial melting of the mantle wedge), which eventually ascend to the shallow crust (3-5 km) for mineralization after a series of complex evolution processes, and summarizes the current research on metallogenic mechanism, as well as existing scientific problems.

The PCDs consist of porphyry copper-molybdenum and copper-gold deposits, which are widely distributed in circle-Pacific and Central Asian metallogenic belt. PCDs are mostly spatially and genetically associated with shallow, intermediate to acid, porphyritic intrusions. PCDs usually have large reserves, shallow burial depths and are easily mined, which make them the key deposit type in the industry. As many world-class copper deposits are PCD-type, the physicochemical mechanism and geodynamic background of PCD formation have long been a hotspot of ore deposit research. This study summarizes the processes including (1) the dehydration or partial melting of subducting slab, which induces partial melting of the metasomatized mantle wedge; (2) the ascent of mantle-derived magma to the bottom of the lower crust, which subsequently undergoes crustal processes such as assimilation plus fractional crystallization (AFC) or melting, assimilation, storage and homogenization (MASH); (3) the magma chamber formation at the bottom of the lower, middle and upper crust; (4) the final emplacement and volatilization of porphyry stocks; and (5) the accumulation of ore-forming fluids and metal precipitation. Despite the many decades of research, many issues involving the PCD metallogenic mechanism still remain, such as (1) the tectonic control on the geochemical characteristics of ore-forming magma; (2) the reason for the different lifespans of the long-term magmatic arc evolution and geologically "instantaneous" mineralization processes; (3) the source of ore-forming materials; (4) the relative contributions of metal pre-enrichment to mineralization by the magma source and by magmatic evolution; and (5) the decoupling behaviors of Cu and Au during the pre-enrichment. These unsolved issues point out the direction for future PCD metallogenic research, and a resolution to them will extend our understanding of the metallogenesis at convergent plate boundaries, which will potentially benefit the industrial exploration for PCDs in Central Asian and Pacific Rim.

A recent research find indicates that climate change increases the functional diversity of microbes living in streams. Consequently, climate change may, in certain cases, be beneficial to ecosystems.

The functional genes of microbes and their sufficient diversity are important indicators of the efficiency of ecosystem processes. Bacteria, single-celled fungi and other microbes are an essential element of the nutrient cycle, and their functional diversity boosts the decomposition of organic carbon.

Stream microbe samples were collected in a collaboration among Finnish, Spanish and Chinese researchers. In previous studies utilising the material collected from mountainous areas in Norway, Spain and China, the focus has been on the species of stream microbes. Now, the frozen samples have been used to identify a total of nearly 16,000 functional genes of three different microbial groups, in addition to which the researchers have completed a forecast encompassing Europe and Asia.

A key to understanding ecosystem processes

The article, published in the Microbiome journal, focuses on the diversity and composition of the functional genes of stream microbes.

Based on observations made in the field, a forecast was completed on how the diversity and composition of functional genes will change across Eurasia as a result of climate change.

"We saw that the diversity of functional genes in microbes decreases in mountainous areas when moving from warm valleys towards the colder peaks," Professor Janne Soininen says.

Therefore, the functional diversity of microbes is likely to grow as the climate becomes warmer, while ecosystem processes vital to waterways, such as the decomposition of organic matter and nutrient cycling, may become increasingly efficient.

In the case of Eurasia, the change will be most marked in its northern regions where the diversity of functional genes can grow by as much as 30% and the composition of functional genes can change by as much as 35% by 2060-2080 compared to the current situation, depending on the climate scenario used.

Russian and Danish researchers have made a first-ever experimental observation of a plasmon nanojet. This physical phenomenon enables nanoscale focusing of light and, theoretically, allows engineers to bypass one of the fundamental limitations of the ordinary converging lens. Tight compression of light waves is necessary to use them as signal carriers in compact devices that would work much faster than today's electronics. The study comes out in the June 15 issue of Optics Letters.

Before laser pointers became available, the amorous heroes of romance novels had to make do with small rocks they would throw into a beloved's window to indicate their presence. Among the numerous drawbacks of rocks as signal carriers is their mass, which means sending a message requires an effort and time. While the electron does not weigh as much as a rock, it still cannot be put in motion instantaneously. If we could replace the electrons in microcircuits with photons -- the massless particles of light -- the resulting devices would operate much faster.

What prevents engineers from abandoning electronic chips in favor of their photonic analogues is the need for miniaturization. With today's technology, such optical devices would have an enormous size. To make them smaller, engineers require a way to control photons on such a small scale that the light wave itself has to be localized, squeezed into a minimum space. Ideally, the light needs to be focused into a spot smaller than 50% of the original wavelength. While this feat is impossible in the classical optics due to what's known as the diffraction limit, modern research has already found several ways around it. And the newly observed plasmon nanojet is likely to become one of them.

A team of Russian and Danish physicists has created a focusing component, or nanolens, capable of converting light into electromagnetic waves of a special kind, compressing it to 60% of the initial radiation wavelength. This new contraption is made up of a square piece of dielectric material 5 by 5 micrometers in size and 0.25 micrometers thick. Shown in figure 1, the square particle lies on a thin 0.1-micrometer gold film, next to an etched grating that diffracts light.

Illuminating the grating in the gold film with a laser generates excitations known as surface plasmon polaritons, which travel along the metal's surface. These SPPs are essentially two kinds of waves coupled to each other and propagating together. First, there's the collective oscillation of electrons in gold -- the plasmon part -- and then there's also a surface light wave called a polariton. The point of converting light to SPPs is that there are ways to focus them to a greater extent than the initial laser pulse.

"One of the mechanisms that enable subwavelength focusing relies on the plasmon nanojet, a phenomenon we have observed in an experiment for the first time," said the paper's lead author, Professor Igor Minin of Tomsk Polytechnic University.

The scientific explanation of why waves undergo compression in the superlens is as follows. "Using computer simulations, we figured out the appropriate dimensions of the dielectric particle and the diffraction grid in the gold film. When these parameters are right, SPPs have different phase velocities at different points in the particle. This causes the wavefront to bend, creating a vortex in the particle and therefore a region dense with SPPs behind it, which we call a plasmon nanojet," said study co-author Dmitry Ponomarev, a leading researcher at the MIPT Laboratory of 2D Materials and Nanodevices and the deputy director of Mokerov Institute of Ultra High Frequency Semiconductor Electronics of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The study has demonstrated a new and efficient mechanism for strongly localizing radiation and manipulating it on the nanoscale, which is a prerequisite for densely packing optical components in photonic and plasmonic devices that would operate much faster than conventional electronics.

The head of the MIPT Center for Photonics and 2D Materials, Valentyn Volkov, who co-authored the study, added: "The experimental observation of plasmon nanojets has been made possible by a concerted effort on the part of our center's researchers and the colleagues in Moscow, Tomsk, and Copenhagen. This collaboration is not over, and we are planning to show other exciting effects that have to do with the formation, propagation, and application of plasmon nanojets."

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- In 1972, physicists J. Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless published a groundbreaking theory of how phase changes could occur in two-dimensional materials. Experiments soon showed that the theory correctly captured the process of a helium film transitioning from a superfluid to a normal fluid, helping to usher in a new era of research on ultra-thin materials, not to mention earning Kosterlitz, a professor at Brown University, and Thouless shares of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.

But the Kosterlitz-Thouless (K-T) theory aimed to explain more than the superfluid transition. The pair also hoped it might explain how a two-dimensional solid could melt into a liquid, but experiments so far have failed to clearly validate the theory in that case. Now, new research by another group of Brown physicists could help explain the mismatch between theory and experiment.

The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how impurities -- "extra" atoms in the crystalline structure of a material -- can disrupt the order of a system and cause melting to begin before the K-T theory predicts it should. The findings are a step toward a more complete physical theory of melting, the researchers say.

"The solid-liquid transition is something we're all familiar with, yet it's a profound failure of modern physics that we still don't understand exactly how it happens," said Xinsheng Ling, a professor of physics at Brown and senior author of the new paper. "What we showed is that impurities -- which are not included in K-T theory but are always found in real materials -- play a major role in the melting process."

While the details remain a major mystery, scientists have a basic understanding of how solids melt. As temperature increases, atoms in the crystalline lattice of a solid start to jiggle around. If the jiggling becomes too violent for the lattice to hold together, the solid melts into a liquid. But how exactly the melting process starts and why it starts in certain places in a solid instead of others aren't known.

For this new study, the researchers used tiny polystyrene particles suspended in highly deionized water. Electrical forces between the charged particles cause them to arrange themselves in a crystal-like lattice similar to the way atoms are arranged in a solid material. Using a laser beam to move individual particles, the researchers can see how lattice defects affect the order of the lattice.

Defects can come in two general forms -- vacancies, where particles are missing, and interstitials, where there are more particles than there should be. This new study looked in particular at the effect of interstitials, which no previous studies had investigated.

The research found that while one interstitial in a given region made little difference in the behavior of the lattice, two interstitials made a big difference.

"What we found was that two interstitial defects break the symmetry of the structure in a way that single defects don't," Ling said. "That symmetry-breaking leads to local melting before K-T predicts."

That's because the K-T theory deals with defects that arise from thermal fluctuations, and not defects that may have already existed in the lattice.

"Real materials are messy," Ling said. "There are always impurities. Put simply, the system cannot distinguish which are impurities and which are defects created by thermal agitation, which leads to melting before what would be predicted."

The technique used for the study could be useful elsewhere, the researchers say. For example, it could be useful in studying the transition of hard glass to a viscous liquid, a phenomenon related to the solid-liquid transition that also lacks a complete explanation.

"We think we have accidentally discovered a new way to uncover symmetry-breaking mechanisms in materials physics," Ling said. "The method itself may end up being the most significant thing about this paper in addition to the findings."