Tech

How's the weather on Mars? Tough on rovers, but very good for generating and moving highly reactive chlorine compounds. New research from Washington University in St. Louis planetary scientists shows that Martian dust storms, like the one that eventually shut down the Opportunity rover, drive the cycle of chlorine from surface to atmosphere and may shed light on the potential for finding life on Mars.

Recent research from Alian Wang, research professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, and collaborators at WashU, Stony Brook University, Shandong University, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center builds on a previous examination of Martian dust storms as an essential factor in the chemical evolution of the red planet's surface. Their latest paper shifts focus to the electrochemical processes resulting from dust storms that may power the movement of chlorine, which is ongoing on Mars today. The research was published May 28 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

While earlier studies have established the relatively high concentration of chlorine on Mars and suggested volcanic and hydrological activity as historical drivers of the chlorine cycle, Wang has experimentally shown how electrostatic discharge (ESD) generated by dust storms could play a key role in Mars' surface and atmospheric chemistry now. Given the relative abundance of chlorine at Mars' surface, Wang and her collaborators set out to explore the formation of this present-day chlorine cycle on Mars: How excited chlorine atoms get released to the atmosphere, then re-deposited on the surface and partially percolated into the subsurface. They also studied what implications that chlorine cycle might have for finding traces of life on Mars.

"In the past, when conditions were different, and there was perhaps more water on Mars, there would have been a difference in the surface chemistry and in the behavior of chlorine," said Bradley Jolliff, a co-author on the paper and Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. "We don't fully understand how Mars got to the present state of chlorine enrichment at the surface, but we're very interested in knowing, as we drill down into the subsurface, how highly oxidized compounds of chlorine, called chlorates and perchlorates, interact with other elements. It's been kind of a puzzle."

In a special facility known as the Planetary Environment and Analysis Chamber (PEACh), Wang replicated the conditions of electrostatic discharge that can be induced by Martian dust storms to develop a deep understanding of surface-atmosphere chemical interaction. Her results were significant. Not only are the chlorine compounds seen on the Martian surface oxidized by electrostatic discharge during dust storms, but those dust storms also are generating many free radicals from Martian atmospheric molecules. That caused the excited chlorine particles to be released, recombined, and then moved between the surface and the atmosphere of Mars, developing an active and ongoing chlorine cycle.

"This isn't like what we see on Earth," Wang said. "Photochemical reactions, driven by the Sun, occur on both planets, but on Mars we have these global dust storms once per two Martian years, regional dust storms each year, and countless dust devils everywhere."

In the past, Mars might have been warmer and wetter, but the cold, dry atmosphere it has today makes electrostatic discharge a powerful factor. "Electrochemistry may be the bigger player on the surface of Mars right now, " Wang added.

These results align with other analyses of Martian surface chemistry, and the conditions they point to do not bode well for finding biomarkers at the surface. However, Wang noted that understanding the surface chemistry is our best chance at knowing what life on Mars might have looked like. As the quest to find signs of life on Mars continues, this line of research will develop further. Wang anticipates future collaborations with biogeochemists to expand the search for biomarkers into the Martian subsurface.

"Because the geochemistry at the surface could go into the subsurface, it will affect how the trace of life on Mars could be detected," Wang said.

Jolliff added, "We've seen from the Spirit rover, when it was dragging one of its wheels through the soil, that what was in the immediate subsurface was different from what was right at the surface - very much a surface oxidation phenomenon. So understanding that surface chemistry becomes very important and drives us to the conclusion that if we want to really test for extant or past life, we've got to get below the surface."

Romosozumab is a bone-forming monoclonal antibody used in women after menopause for the treatment of severe osteoporosis if there is a high risk of bone fractures. Having been granted approval for this therapeutic indication by the European Medicines Agency in December 2019, it has been available on the German market since March 2020.

The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) now examined in an early benefit assessment whether romosozumab offers an added benefit for the affected women in comparison with the appropriate comparator therapy. The result: Overall, there are only positive effects from treatment with romosozumab followed by treatment with alendronic acid in comparison with the appropriate comparator therapy (here: treatment with alendronic acid alone). In particular, administration of romosozumab reduces both the risk of vertebral fractures and the risk of other typical fractures.

In summary, IQWiG sees an indication of considerable added benefit for postmenopausal women with advanced osteoporosis at high risk of fracture if they are treated with romosozumab (followed by alendronic acid).

More than 540 000 women affected

Osteoporosis is a common age-related bone disease. As the bone becomes thinner and more porous, the risk of fracture is increased. Besides fractures of the spine ("vertebral fractures"), the most typical sites of fracture are the hip, the pelvis, the upper arm and the forearm ("non-vertebral fractures"). About 80 per cent of all cases of osteoporosis affect women after menopause. In Germany, more than 540 000 of these women have severe, i.e. advanced osteoporosis at high risk of fracture. The number of affected women in the statutory health insurance is about 475 000.

Randomized controlled trial of two years with over 4000 participants

The IQWiG assessment of the added benefit of romosozumab was based on the ARCH study submitted by the drug manufacturer. 4093 postmenopausal women with severe osteoporosis at high risk of fracture participated in this randomized controlled trial (RCT). Half of the women were treated with romosozumab for 12 months, whereas the other half received alendronic acid. Participants in both study arms then received alendronic acid for at least another 12 months. Primary outcomes of the ARCH study were the occurrence of new vertebral fractures and new clinical fractures.

Overall indication of considerable added benefit

The ARCH study showed a statistically significant difference between the treatment arms for the patient-relevant outcome "clinical vertebral fracture": 0.9 of the patients initially treated with romosozumab had vertebral fractures, whereas this number was 2.1% in patients only treated with alendronic acid. This resulted in an indication of a considerable added benefit for this outcome.

For the outcome "major non-vertebral fracture" (e.g. fractures of the hip, the pelvis, the upper arm or the forearm), the ARCH study also showed an advantage of romosozumab in comparison with alendronic acid: These fractures occurred in 7.1% of the patients in the romosozumab group, and in 9.6% of the patients in the comparator group. The IQWiG project team derived an indication of a minor added benefit from this.

In summary, IQWiG sees an indication of considerable added benefit for postmenopausal women with severe osteoporosis at high risk of fracture if they are treated with romosozumab (followed by alendronic acid).

G BA decides on the extent of added benefit

This dossier assessment is part of the early benefit assessment according to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG) supervised by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA). After publication of the dossier assessment, the G-BA conducts a commenting procedure and makes a decision on the extent of the added benefit.

More English-language information will be available soon (Sections 2.1 to 2.5 of the dossier assessment as well as easily understandable information on informedhealth.org). If you would like to be informed when these documents are available, please send an e-mail to info@iqwig.de.

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- June 15, 2020 -- Could remnants of DNA from a now extinct human subspecies known as the Denisovans help boost the immune functions of modern humans?

An international study co-led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope, and published in the scientific journal PLOS Genetics, represents the first characterizations of genes in the DNA of healthy individuals from geographically and genetically distinct populations in Indonesia.

Scientists studied genomic diversity among 116 individuals from three Indonesian populations: the Mentawai on the west coast of Sumatra; the Sumba in central Indonesia; and the Korowai, a group of hunter-gatherers from the western side of the isle of New Guinea.

The Korowai are of particular interest, as their DNA holds the world's last remaining significant remnants of genetic code -- as much as 5% -- from a cousin of modern humans called the Denisovans, the study says. Like the better-known Neanderthals of Europe, the Denisovans of Asia also are an extinct human subspecies who lived tens of thousands of years ago. And just as Neanderthals passed on certain immune properties to those of European ancestry, the Denisovans may have passed on protective immune genes to their southeast Asian decedents.

"Genome sequencing efforts have mainly focused on populations of European descent," said Dr. Heini Natri, a TGen postdoctoral fellow and one of the lead authors of the study. "Most of the world is deeply understudied. As we move further into the age of personalized and genomic medicine, understanding how genetics drives disease-risk across diverse populations is crucially important."

Why study Indonesia?

Spread across more than 17,000 islands between mainland Asia and Australia, Indonesia is the world's largest archipelago. Geographically as large as the U.S. or Europe, Indonesia's 273 million inhabitants make it the world's fourth most populous nation, after China, India and the U.S. And yet, Indonesia has been largely excluded from the genomics sequencing boom of the past decade, and there previously have been no analyses of diversity in gene regulation in either Indonesia or the other island nations of southeast Asia.

"This lack of information from Indonesia is alarming as it is an epicenter of infectious disease diversity, such as malaria and other emerging tropical diseases," Dr. Natri said. "Immune pressure from infectious diseases are responsible for some of the strongest selective forces on humans throughout our species' evolutionary history, and Indonesia offers unique advantages for studying responses to these diseases."

Because of Indonesia's island environment, its many isolated villages and the relatively low population density on most of its nearly 6,000 inhabited islands, the study suggests there is low genetic diversity among those who live on each island, and even in each village, but also high genetic diversity among people from island to island, "making it a near unique study system for examining gene-by-environment interactions," the study said.

Scientists focus on immune properties of ancient human DNA

Dr. Nicholas Banovich, an Assistant Professor in TGen's Integrated Cancer Genomics Division, a human geneticist, and a senior author of this PLOS Genetics paper, said the study's results highlight genes involved in the function of immune cells. This suggests a potentially adaptive response to local environmental pressures, including pressures from various tropical diseases.

"One of the unique aspects of Indonesia is individuals on the island of New Guinea have high remnants of DNA from one of our extinct ancestors, the Denisovans," Dr. Banovich said. "We found these remnants of ancient DNA are driving changes in genes involved in immune function. This study demonstrates the power of including understudied populations in an effort to increase the overall understanding of human genetics."

The international team is continuing its study, integrating more genetic data, exploring patterns of local ancestry and how archaic human genes are imbedded in modern-day populations.

"We are now attempting to pinpoint individual genetic changes -- in particular, those that are carried over in these remnant DNA fragments from Denisovans -- which regulate how much or how little a gene is turned on, and how these genetic changes may shape immune response," Dr. Natri said.

Many of us have seen informational posters at parks or aquariums specifying how long plastics bags, bottles, and other products last in the environment. They're a good reminder to not litter, but where does the information on the lifetime expectancy of plastic goods come from, and how reliable is it?

It turns out, getting a true read on how long it takes for plastic to break down in the environment is tricky business, says Collin Ward, a marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and member of the its Microplastics Catalyst Program, a long-term research program on plastics in the ocean.

"Plastics are everywhere, but one of the most pressing questions is how long plastics last in the environment," he says. "The environmental and human health risks associated with something that lasts one year in the environment, versus the same thing that lasts 500 years, are completely different."

Knowing the fate of plastics may be tricky, but it's critical. Consumers need the information to make good, sustainable decisions; scientists need it to understand the fate of plastics in the environment and assess associated health risks; and legislators need it to make well-informed decisions around plastic bans.

The long-standing mystery around the life expectancy of plastic goods has prompted a new study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution looking at how the lifetime estimates of straws, cups, bags, and other products are being communicated to the public via infographics. Ward, the lead author of a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, along with WHOI marine chemist Chris Reddy, analyzed nearly 60 individual infographics and documents from a variety of sources, including governmental agencies, non-profits, textbooks, and social media sites. To their surprise, there was little consistency in the lifetime estimates numbers reported for many everyday products, like plastic bags, among the materials.

"The estimates being reported to the general public and legislators vary widely," says Ward. "In some cases, they vary from one year to hundreds of years to forever."

On the other end of the spectrum, certain lifetime estimates seemed far too similar among the infographics. Of particular interest, Ward notes, were the estimates for how long fishing line lasts in the ocean. He says that all 37 infographics that included a lifetime for fishing line reported 600 years.

"Every single one said 600 years, it was incredible" he says. "I'm being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but we're all more likely to win the lottery than 37 independent science studies arriving at the same answer of 600 years for fishing line to degrade in the environment."

In reality, these estimates didn't stem from actual scientific studies. Ward said he did a lot of digging to find peer-reviewed literature that was either funded, or conducted, by the agencies putting the information out there and couldn't find a single instance where the estimates originated from a scientific study. He and Reddy believe that while the information was likely well intentioned, the lack of traceable and documented science behind it was a red flag.

"The reality is that what the public and legislators know about the environmental persistence of plastic goods is often not based on solid science, despite the need for reliable information to form the foundation for a great many decisions, large and small," the scientists state in the paper.

In one of their own peer-reviewed studies on the life expectancy of plastics published last year, Ward and his team found that polystyrene, one of the world's most ubiquitous plastics, may degrade in decades when exposed to sunlight, rather than thousands of years as previously thought. The discovery was made, in part, by working with researchers at WHOI's National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility to track the degradation of the plastic into gas and water phases, and with the aid of a specialized weathering chamber in Ward's lab. The chamber tested how environmental factors such as sunlight and temperature influenced the chemical breakdown of the polystyrene, the first type of plastic found in the coastal ocean by WHOI scientists nearly fifty years ago.

Reddy feels that one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding the fate of plastics in the environment is that they simply break down in to smaller bits that hang around forever.

"This is the narrative we see all the time in the press and social media, and it's not a complete picture," says Reddy. "But through our own research and collaborating with others, we've determined that in addition to plastics breaking down into smaller fragments, they also degrade partially into different chemicals, and they break down completely into CO2." These newly identified breakdown products no longer resemble plastic and would be otherwise missed when scientists survey the oceans for missing plastics.

Chelsea Rochman, a biologist at the University of Toronto who wasn't involved in the study, says that understanding the various forms of plastic degradation will be key to solving one of the enduring mysteries of plastic pollution: more than 99 percent of the plastic that should be detected in the ocean is missing.

"Researchers are beginning to talk about the global plastic cycle," says Rochman. "A key part of this will be understanding the persistence of plastics in nature. We know they break down into smaller and smaller pieces, but truly understanding mechanisms and transformation products are key parts of the puzzle."

Overall, analyzing the infographics turned out to be an eye-opening exercise for the scientists, and unscored the importance of backing public information with sound science.

"The question of environmental persistence of plastics is not going to be easy to answer," says Ward. "But by bringing transparency to this environmental issue, we will help improve the quality of information available to all stakeholders--consumers, scientists, and legislators--to make informed, sustainable decisions."

Our brains use various reference frames--also known as coordinate systems--to represent the motion of objects in a scene.

Some coordinate systems are more useful than others for representing information. To represent a location on Earth, for example, we might use an Earth-centered coordinate system such as latitude and longitude. In such an Earth-centered coordinate system, a location--such as your home--is constant over time. But you could also represent where you live as a location relative to the sun using a sun-centered coordinate system. Such a system would clearly not be useful for people trying to find where you live, as your address in sun-centered coordinates would change continuously as the Earth rotates relative to the sun.

The human brain faces this same problem of representing information with appropriate coordinate systems and transferring between coordinate systems to guide your actions. This is partly because sensory information is encoded in different reference frames: visual information is initially encoded relative to the eye with eye-centered coordinates, auditory information is initially encoded relative to the head with head-centered coordinates, and so on. An interesting set of computations must occur in the brain in order for these sensory signals to be combined to allow a person to perceive an entire scene.

But how do neurons represent objects in different reference frames while you move through an environment?

In a paper published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers from the University of Rochester, including Greg DeAngelis, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, examined how neurons in the brain represent the motion of an object while the observer is also moving.

Specifically, the researchers studied how observers judge an object's motion relative to the observer's head or relative to the world.

Their findings--that neurons in a specific brain region are more flexible in switching between reference frames--offer important information about the inner workings of the brain and could potentially be used in neural prosthetics and therapies to treat brain disorders.

ARE NEURONS FIXED OR FLEXIBLE?

Imagine you're playing soccer. If you're running and want to head the ball, you would need to compute the trajectory of the ball's motion relative to your head so you can make contact between your head and the ball. A head-centered coordinate system would therefore be useful. Alternatively, if you are running and watching your teammate kick the ball toward the goal, you would need to compute the trajectory of the ball relative to the goal to determine whether or not your teammate scored. This would require a world-centered coordinate system since the goal is fixed relative to the world.

"Depending on the task being performed, the brain needs to represent object motion in different coordinate systems to be successful," DeAngelis says. "The big question is: how does the brain do this?"

The researchers wanted to determine if the brain has to switch between different neurons that each have a different fixed reference frame--for example, switching between head-centered neurons and world-centered neurons--or if the neurons are flexible and update their reference frames according to the instantaneous demands of the task of representing object motion.

The researchers trained subjects to judge object motion in either head-centered or world-centered coordinates and to switch between them from trial to trial based on a cue.

The researchers recorded signals from neurons in two different areas of the brain and found that neurons in the ventral intraparietal (VIP) area of the brain have a remarkable property: their responses to object motion change depending on the task.

That is, the neurons do not have fixed reference frames, but instead flexibly adapt to the demands of the task and change their reference frames accordingly.

Neurons in VIP will represent object motion in head-centered coordinates when the subjects are required to report object motion relative to their head. They represent object motion in world-centered coordinates when the subject was required to report object motion relative to the world.

Because the neurons have such flexible responses, this means the brain may greatly simplify the process of passing along the information it needs to guide actions.

"This is the first study to show that neurons can flexibly represent spatial information, such as object motion, in different coordinate systems based on the instructions given to the subject," DeAngelis says. "This means the brain can decode--or 'read out'--information from this single population of neurons and be able to have the information it needs for either task situation."

The VIP area is located in the parietal lobe of the brain and receives inputs from visual, auditory, and vestibular (inner ear) senses. This is the first study to test for flexible reference frames, so the VIP area is the only area known to have this property. The researchers suspect, however, that neurons in other areas of the brain may have this property as well.

APPLICATIONS FOR NEURAL PROSTHETICS AND BRAIN DISORDERS

The research offers important information about the inner workings of the brain and potentially could be used for applications such as neural prosthetics, in which brain activity is used to control artificial limbs or vehicles.

"To make an effective neural prosthetic, you want to collect signals from the brain areas that would be most useful and flexible for performing basic tasks," DeAngelis says. "If those tasks involve intercepting moving objects, for example, then tapping into signals from VIP might be a way to make a prosthetic work efficiently for a variety of tasks that would involve judging motion relative to the head or the world."

Although this research is not currently connected to a specific brain disorder, researchers have previously found that humans' ability to take in sensory information and infer which events in the world caused that sensory input--an ability known as causal inference--is impaired in disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

"In ongoing and future work, we are studying the neural mechanisms of this causal inference process in more detail, using related tasks that involve interactions between object motion and self-motion," DeAngelis says.

An animation of four days of imagery from NASA's Terra satellite showed the progression and landfall of Tropical Storm Nuri.

At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. an animation of Nuri from June 11 to 15 was created using NASA Terra satellite images. It showed Nuri's path through the South China Sea, its landfall and dissipation over southern China. The Moderate Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured the visible images.

NASA's Terra satellite provided a visible image to forecasters of Tropical Storm Nuri as it approached the southeastern coast of China during the day on Saturday, June 13. At that time, Strong wind signal #3 was in force for Hong Kong. At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), Tropical storm Nuri was located near latitude 18.7 north and longitude 115.2 east, 166 miles south-southeast of Hong Kong. Nuri was moving to the west-northwest and had maximum sustained winds of 35 knots (40 mph/65 kph). Nuri was moving northwest and did not strengthen further before making landfall.

On June 13 at 11 p.m. EDT (June 14 at 0300 UTC), the Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued their final warning on Nuri. Nuri had made landfall in China's Guangdong Province and was located near latitude 21.8 degrees north and longitude 112.0 degrees east, about 126 nautical miles west-southwest of Hong Kong. Nuri had weakened to a depression and had maximum sustained winds near 25 knots (29 mph/46 kph). It was moving to the northwest and dissipating.

NASA's Terra satellite is one in a fleet of NASA satellites that provide data for hurricane research.

Tropical cyclones/hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have demonstrated a potentially new way to make switches inside a computer's processing chips, enabling them to use less energy and radiate less heat.

The team has developed a practical technique for controlling magnons, which are essentially waves that travel through magnetic materials and can carry information. To use magnons for information processing requires a switching mechanism that can control the transmission of a magnon signal through the device.

While other labs have created systems that carry and control magnons, the team's approach brings two important firsts: Its elements can be built on silicon rather than exotic and expensive substrates, as other approaches have demanded. It also operates efficiently at room temperature, rather than requiring refrigeration. For these and other reasons, this new approach might be more readily employed by computer manufacturers.

"This is a building block that could pave the way to a new generation of highly efficient computer technology," said team member Patrick Quarterman, a physicist at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR). "Other groups have created and controlled magnons in materials that do not integrate well with computer chips, while ours is built on silicon. It's much more viable for industry."

Magnons, also called spin waves, would harness the property of electron spin to transfer information. One reason computer chips get so hot is that in a conventional circuit, electrons travel from one place to another, and their movement generates heat. A magnon, however, moves through a long string of electrons, which themselves do not need to travel. Instead, each electron's spin direction -- which is a bit like an arrow stretching through the axis of a spinning top -- magnetically influences the spin direction of the next electron in line. Tweaking the spin of the first electron sends a wave of spin changes propagating down the string. Because the electrons themselves would not move, far less heat would result.

Because the electron string stretches from one place to another, the magnon can carry information as it travels down the string. In chips based on magnon technology, larger and smaller wave heights (amplitudes) could represent ones and zeros. And because the wave height can change gradually, a magnon could represent values between one and zero, giving it more capabilities than a conventional digital switch has.

While these advantages have made magnon-based information processing a tantalizing idea in theory, up until now most of the successful structures have been built within multiple layers of thin films that sit atop a base of gadolinium gallium garnet, rather than atop the silicon that commercial chips are made from. This "GGG" material would be prohibitively expensive to mass produce.

"It's a fun physics playground that demonstrates the basic principles," Quarterman said, "but it's not practical for industrial-scale production."

However, Yabin Fan and his colleagues at MIT used a creative engineering approach to layer the thin films atop a base of silicon. Their goal was to build their system on top of the material that the computer industry has been long accustomed to working with, thereby allowing magnons to interface with conventional computer technology.

Initially, their multilayered creation did not behave as expected, but scientists at the NCNR used a technique called neutron reflectometry to explore the magnetic behavior within the device. The neutrons revealed an unexpected but advantageous interaction between two of the thin film layers: Depending on the amount of magnetic field applied, the materials order themselves in different ways that could represent a switch's "on" or "off" state, as well as positions between on and off -- making it akin to a valve.

"As you lower the magnetic field, the direction switches," said Fan, a postdoctoral associate in MIT's electrical engineering department. "The data is very clear and showed us what was happening at different depths. There's a very strong coupling between the layers."

The magnon switch could find use in devices that do another sort of calculating as well. Conventional digital switches can only exist in either on or off states, but because the amplitude of the spin wave can change gradually from small to large, it is possible that magnons could be used in analog computing applications, where the switch has values lying between 0 and 1.

"That's why we consider this to be more like a valve," Quarterman said. "You can open or close it a bit at a time."

Inflation has reduced American alcohol tax rates by 70% since 1933, according to a new study from Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

With the alcohol industry seeing increased revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic, is it time for an update?

The coronavirus crisis has struck a blow to the American economy and to government budgets. But with liquor stores designated as essential businesses in most states, and loosened restrictions on alcohol home delivery and takeout (and perhaps also the emotional and lifestyle changes of this unprecedented time), the alcohol industry is seeing gains, with sales of beer, wine, and liquor up as much as 53% according to Nielsen figures.

In other words, the alcohol industry is benefitting from the pandemic, says Jason Blanchette, a postdoctoral associate in health law, policy & management at BUSPH. "I expect that pandemic bump will continue, because it's common for alcohol sales to increase during times of economic hardship and stress," he says.

"Why shouldn't the alcohol industry share in the pandemic pain?"

At the same time, alcohol taxes have never been lower, according to a study led by Blanchette.

The new study finds that inflation has reduced the relative value of alcohol taxes by 66% for beer, 71% for wine, and 70% for distilled spirits from when American alcohol taxation began in 1933 to 2018.

Alcohol taxes increased more or less in step with inflation until 1970, the study shows, when governments began raising most kinds of taxes less frequently, and by less. Throughout the 1970s, '80s, and into the present, alcohol taxes have fallen further and further behind inflation.

Now, facing down the effects that COVID-19 will have on the economy and on state and federal budgets, Blanchette says, revamped alcohol taxes could give governments much-needed revenue without raising taxes on suffering industries, and could be structured to exempt bars and restaurants.

At the same time, he notes, alcohol taxes have long failed to cover the money governments spend on the harms of excessive drinking.

"Alcohol is notorious for costing government money, such as for first responders and medical costs to address domestic violence," Blanchette says, pointing to a study he co-authored last year with Dr. Timothy Naimi, professor of community health sciences at BUSPH and a physician and alcohol epidemiologist at Boston Medical Center. That study found that federal and state alcohol taxes cover only 25% of the amount of money spent by government on harms from alcohol.

"With people stuck at home, stressed and without jobs, right now is a good time to discourage excessive drinking with a tax," Blanchette says.

For the new study on taxes and inflation, Blanchette, Naimi, and Dr. Craig Ross, research assistant professor of epidemiology at BUSPH, used tax data from the Alcohol Policy Information System, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, Wine Institute, and HeinOnline. They looked at state tax rates for beer, wine, and distilled spirits from the end of Prohibition in 1933 up through 2018, and analyzed these taxes' relative values as the U.S. dollar shrank.

They found that the average value of tax rates actually rose from 1933 to 1970, by 28% for beer, 5% for wine, and 8% for distilled spirits, before plunging.

By 2018, the average tax rate was $0.31 per gallon of beer, but the 1933 tax would be $0.90 in 2018 dollars. The average 2018 tax per gallon of distilled spirits was $4.25, compared to a 1933 value of $13.95 in 2018 dollars. And the average tax on a gallon of wine was $0.86 in 2018, whereas the 1933 rate in 2018 dollars was $2.91.

The researchers found that only 8% of specific alcohol taxes in 2018 had equal or greater values than at inception. More than two thirds of these taxes were less than half the inception value, and 17 states had beer taxes that were less than a fifth of the inception value.

Raising taxes is always politically difficult, Blanchette says, "but public revenue is badly needed for our economic recovery, and alcohol is one of those few non-essential products that legislators can safely tax during the pandemic."

Besides, he says, such a move wouldn't be a tax increase so much as an "inflation adjustment, to correct the growing tax breaks the industry has been receiving for 50 years."

Researchers at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have successfully measured the current-voltage curve of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) that were suspended between two electrodes. Measurements were performed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation. Results revealed that, in contrast to the findings of previous reports, the electrical conductance of GNRs with a zigzag edge structure (zigzag GNRs) abruptly increased above the critical bias voltage. This finding is worth noting because the abrupt change in these GNRs can be applied to switching devices, which are the smallest devices in the world.

The electrical structure of GNRs have been systematically investigated through theoretical calculations. Studies have reported that both zigzag and armchair GNRs exhibit semiconducting behavior below several nm in width, although the origin of the energy gap is different. On the other hand, the electrical transport properties have rarely been calculated owing to the non-equiribrium calculations required. In 2009, Nikolic et al. predicted that sharp increments in electrical conductance would occur for extremely thin and short zigzag GNRs as the magnetic-insulator-nonmagnetic-metal phase transition occurs above a certain bias voltage [Phys. Rev.B 79, 205430 (2009)]. The obtained experimental results correspond closely to the results of this non-equilibrium calculation.

A research team led by Ms. Chumeng LIU, Professor Yoshifumi OSHIMA and Associate Professor Xiaobin ZHANG (now of Shibaura Institute of Technology) has developed a special in situ TEM holder and a GNR device for TEM observation. This combination is aimed at clarifying the relationship between the edge structure of GNRs and electrical transport properties. Ms. Liu, the doctoral student of JAIST, said, "The fabrication process of our GNR device is much more difficult than the conventional one because we need to make very narrow GNR which should be stably suspended between both electrodes." She reviewed the literature focused on the fabrication process of GNR devices and verified their process en route to establishing her original fabrication method. Assoc. Prof. ZHANG said, "We were really happy to see that the I-V curve obviously changed when changing the edge structure to zigzag. I suppose we have encountered new possibilities for graphene nanoribbons." The team has successfully performed the in situ TEM observation of extremely narrow GNRs, and they plan to continue identifying electrical transport properties that are sensitive to the edge structure of these GNRs.

Sideswiping tropical cyclones (STCs) are tropical cyclones (TCs) that cause precipitation over land without making landfall. STC precipitation (STP) can be a severe meteorological disaster leading to devastating impacts on our living environment and society. It makes an important contribution to the total inland precipitation associated with TCs, and therefore could produce extreme rainfall events not only in coastal regions but also in inland areas far away from the coastline.

"Generally, STP is related to STC frequency, intensity, and the minimum sideswiping distance," explains Dr Fumin Ren, a researcher at the State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, and one of the authors of a recently published study.

STCs become severe when they experience synergetic interaction with local orography and large-scale disturbances. "More detailed studies should be conducted to understand the impacts of large-scale flows, TC structures, and underlying surface conditions on the distribution and amount of STP, especially associated with extreme STP events, which often cause flooding, landslides and debris flow," says Dr Ren.

By using data from the China Meteorological Administration (CMA), Dr Ren and his team--a group of researchers from the Key State Laboratory of Severe Weather, Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences--have had their findings published in Advances in Atmospheric Science. They found that the distribution of STP includes extreme STP events that appear not only over the island and coastal areas, but also over inland areas such as Zhumadian of Henan Province, due to the amplification of local terrain on convection and rainfall, and the influence of favorable large-scale forcing.

"There are indeed numerous issues that are worthy of further investigation. This study is merely the beginning of studying STCs and STP affecting China. In our future studies, we plan to examine the asymmetrical distribution of STP and the differences between STP and landfalling tropical cyclone precipitation, and then compare the associated statistics to those based on other best-track data, such as the IBTrACS data," concludes Dr Ren.

Wrinkles, furrows, spots: a person's aging process is accompanied by tell-tale signs on their face. Researchers from the Institute for Neural Computation at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have developed an algorithm that interprets these features very reliably. It makes it possible to estimate the age and ethnicity of people so accurately that it catapulted RUB researchers to the top of the league table worldwide for a while. The RUB team published its report in the journal Machine Learning from May 2020.

The system has learned to estimate

"We're not quite sure what features our algorithm is looking for," says Professor Laurenz Wiskott from the Institute for Neural Computation. This is because the system has learned to assess faces. The successful algorithm developed by the Bochum-based researchers is a hierarchical neural network with eleven levels. As input data, the researchers fed it with several thousand photos of faces of different ages. The age was known in each case. "Traditionally, the images are the input data and the correct age is the target fed into the system, which then tries to optimise the intermediate steps to assess the required age," explains lead author Alberto Escalante.

However, the researchers from Bochum chose a different approach. They input the many photos of faces sorted by age. The system then ignores the features that vary from one picture to the next and takes solely those features into consideration that change slowly. "Think of it as a film compiled of thousands of photos of faces," explains Laurenz Wiskott. "The system fades out all features that keep changing from one face to the next, such as eye colour, the size of the mouth, the length of the nose. Rather, it focuses on features that slowly change across all faces." For example, the number of wrinkles slowly but steadily increases in all faces. When estimating the age of the people pictured in the photos, the algorithm is only just under three and a half years off on average. This means that it outperforms even humans, who are real experts in face recognition and interpretation.

The system also recognises ethnic origins

The slowness principle also enabled it to reliably identify ethnic origin. The images were presented to the system sorted not only by age, but also by ethnicity. Accordingly, the features characteristic of an ethnic group didn't change quickly from image to image; rather, they changed slowly, albeit by leaps and bounds. The algorithm estimated the correct ethnic origin of the people in the photos with a probability of over 99 percent, even though the average brightness of the images was standardised and, consequently, skin colour wasn't a significant marker for recognition.

Exposure to air particulate matter impairs the metabolism of olfactory mucosal cells, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. The results can contribute to a better understanding of how air pollutants may harm brain health, as the olfactory mucosa can act as a key pathway to the brain.

In the last decade, the adverse effects of ambient air pollutants, including particulate matter, on the central nervous system is increasingly reported by epidemiological, animal and post-mortem studies. Exposure to air pollutants has been associated with neurodegenerative disorders, among other things. The association of air pollutant exposure with deteriorating brain health is speculated to be driven by particulate matter entry via the olfactory mucosa, a neural tissue located at the upper part of the nasal cavity. The olfactory mucosa consists of a mixture of diverse cell types that are important for the sense of smell, as the only neural tissue outside of the brain. It acts as a first line of defence against inhaled agents, including air pollutants. How air pollutant exposure affects this key brain entry site remains elusive.

The original research article published in Particle and Fibre Toxicology by the research group of Associate Professor Katja Kanninen from the University of Eastern Finland, sheds light on how exposure to particulate matter impacts the function of the human olfactory mucosa. The study was carried out with a new cellular model based on primary human olfactory mucosal cells.

Using sophisticated functional measurements and transcriptomic analyses, the researchers found that particulate matter exposure causes critical impairment in the metabolism of olfactory mucosal cells. These functions of mitochondria, the cellular organelles responsible for energy production, are disturbed by air pollutants. The researchers also identified the mitochondria-targeted NPTX1 gene, which has been shown previously to be associated with brain disorders, as a key driver of mitochondrial dysfunction upon particulate matter exposure.

According to Associate Professor Kanninen, the research carried out at the University of Eastern Finland may provide important insight into the effects of harmful environmental agents on the brain.

"Given the importance of the nasal cavity as a potential gateway to the brain by particles and external invaders, I believe that more studies should focus on discovering how exposure to environmental agents and factors affects the olfactory mucosa. This may one day lead to new ways of limiting the adverse health effects of airborne particle exposure," Associate Professor Kanninen notes.

For the first time, a complete time-calibrated phylogeny for a large group of invertebrates is published for an entire continent.

In a recent research paper in the open-access, peer-reviewed academic journal ZooKeys, a German-Swedish team of scientists provide a diagrammatic hypothesis of the relationships and evolutionary history for all 496 European species of butterflies currently in existence. Their study provides an important tool for evolutionary and ecological research, meant for the use of insect and ecosystem conservation.

In order to analyse the ancestral relationships and history of evolutionary divergence of all European butterflies currently inhabiting the Old continent, the team led by Martin Wiemers - affiliated with both the Senckenberg German Entomological Institute and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, mainly used molecular data from already published sources available from NCBI GenBank, but also contributed many new sequences, some from very local endemics for which no molecular data had previously been available.

Butterflies, the spectacular members of the superfamily Papilionoidea, are seen as an important proponent for nature conservation, as they present an excellent indicator group of species, meaning they are capable of inferring the environmental conditions of a particular habitat. All in all, if the local populations of butterflies are thriving, so is their habitat.

Furthermore, butterflies are pollinating insects, which are of particular importance for the survival of humans. There is no doubt they have every right to be recognised as a flagship invertebrate group for conservation.

In recent times, there has been a steady increase in the molecular data available for research, however, those would have been only used for studies restricted either to a selected subset of species, or to small geographic areas. Even though a complete phylogeny of European butterflies was published in 2019, also co-authored by Wiemers, it was not based on a global backbone phylogeny and, therefore, was also not time-calibrated.

In their paper, Wiemers and his team point out that phylogenies are increasingly used across diverse areas of macroecological research, such as studies on large-scale diversity patterns, disentangling historical and contemporary processes, latitudinal diversity gradients or improving species-area relationships. Therefore, this new phylogeny is supposed to help advance further similar ecological research.

FAIRFAX, Va. (June 15, 2020) -- Data from one of the first clinical uses of augmented reality guidance with electromagnetically tracked tools shows that the technology may help doctors quickly, safely, and accurately deliver targeted liver cancer treatments, according to a research abstract presented during a virtual session of the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting on June 14. The technology provides a three-dimensional holographic view inside a patient's body, allowing interventional radiologists to accurately burn away tumors while navigating to avoid organs and other critical structures.

"Converting traditional two-dimensional imaging into three-dimensional holograms which we can then utilize for guidance using augmented reality helps us to better view a patient's internal structures as we navigate our way to the point of treatment," said Gaurav Gadodia, MD, lead author of the study and radiology resident at Cleveland Clinic. "While conventional imaging like ultrasound and CT is safe, effective, and remains the gold-standard of care, augmented reality potentially improves the visualization of the tumor and surrounding structures, increasing the speed of localization and improving the treating-physician's confidence."

In this initial in-human pilot study, the technology was used to deliver a treatment known as percutaneous thermal ablation of solid liver tumors. To apply this technology, the physicians use multi-phase CT to record coordinate markers placed on a patient's body. This imaging data is added to a software application that allows for segmentation of the tumor and nearby structures within the marked coordinate space. This information is fed into a proprietary augmented reality application, which utilizes Microsoft's HoloLens technology, a virtual reality headset with transparent lenses, to project a segmented hologram of the patient's imaged anatomy directly onto the patient. The hologram is registered to the coordinate markers to ensure accurate location of the relevant anatomy.

Utilizing electromagnetic tracking, instruments including the ablation probe can also be visualized in the augmented reality space during the procedure, thus allowing for true holographic intraprocedural guidance. Interventional radiologists can then use the combination of the holographic images of the patient's anatomy and tracked tools to find the tumor in the patient's liver quickly, check for optimal targeting of the tumor by the ablation probe, and avoid key structures.

The study included five patients who were selected for microwave ablation of their liver tumors. For safety during this IRB-approved study, the gold standard of ultrasound was used for primary clinical decision making and probe guidance, with direct comparison to holographic guidance. Following ablation, images and video from post-procedural sonography, cone beam and multi-detector row CT, and HoloLens recordings were evaluated. In all five cases, intra-procedural holographic guidance was in agreement with the standard ultrasound-based guidance. Post-procedural imaging showed adequate tumor ablation, and no patients experienced tumor recurrence at the three-month follow-up. In this early phase pilot study, the authors anecdotally observed that the speed of tumor localization was faster with holographic guidance, and that their confidence in optimal ablation and critical structure avoidance was improved over standard imaging guidance. They are further attempting to quantify these findings as they continue to enroll patients in the study.

Beyond its use during treatments, interventional radiologists also see value in using this tool for clinicians' planning purposes and for improving patient engagement and understanding of the condition and treatment.

"This technique can be used intra-procedurally to check the accuracy and quality of the treatment, as well as pre-procedurally to engage with the patient in their own care," said Charles Martin, III, MD, FSIR, an interventional radiologist at Cleveland Clinic who is the principal investigator of the IRB and the senior author of the study. "We can change 2D images into holograms of a patient's distinct anatomy so that both the physician and the patient get a better understanding of the tumor and treatment."

Researchers continue to test this technology for ablations in the abdominal area with plans to expand to other types of procedures and in other areas of the body. The technology has only been tested for feasibility and therefore cannot yet be used as a standalone method for delivering a treatment.

Additional information about the clinical trial is available at ClinicalTrials.gov, using the identifier NCT03500757. This work was funded through internal enterprise grants from Cleveland Clinic, as well as the Ohio-based biotechnology startup, MediView.

Abstract 297: True 3D holographic visualization for performance of percutaneous thermal ablation of solid liver tumors (3D-HPA): An update on in-human evaluation. G. Gadodia; J. Yanof; K. West; S. Al-Nimer; A. Hanlon; C. Weunski; C Martin; Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic, John Carroll University, Cleveland, OH.

The research was originally scheduled to be presented in person at SIR's Annual Scientific Meeting, March 28-April 2, in Seattle before the meeting was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns. Visit sirmeeting.org for the latest information.

FAIRFAX, Va. (June 15, 2020) -- A new nonsurgical treatment decreases errant blood flow in the shoulder to quickly reduce pain and improve function in patients with adhesive capsulitis, also known as "frozen shoulder," according to a research abstract presented during a virtual session of the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting on June 13. Frozen shoulder gradually causes significant pain and stiffness of the shoulder joint in an estimated 200,000 people in the U.S. each year. The symptoms are often treated with physical therapy or pain medications, until they resolve within one to three years.

"Patients with frozen shoulder are essentially told to tough it out until their symptoms improve, but considering the significant pain and decreased function many experience, we looked to determine if this treatment model of embolization, already in use in other areas of the body, could provide immediate and durable relief," said Sandeep Bagla, MD, CEO of Vascular Interventional Partners, NOVA and lead author of the study. "We were shocked at the profound and dramatic improvement patients experienced in pain and use of their shoulder."

In this Phase II FDA-approved Investigational Device Exemption clinical trial on arterial embolization of the shoulder (AES), interventional radiologists inserted a catheter through a pinhole-sized incision in patients' wrists that was used to feed microsphere particles into as many as six arteries in the shoulder to reduce inflammation. The treatment was conducted on an outpatient basis and took approximately one hour. Each patient's pain, disability, and blood flow in the shoulder were measured before and after the treatment using three scales, in addition to MRI imaging to visualize the shoulder joint.

The treatment was successfully completed in 16 patients whose symptoms had not responded to conservative treatment over 30 days. Minor adverse events such as temporary skin discoloration were reported in nine patients. One month later, researchers followed the progress of 11 patients and found that pain significantly decreased after AES (-57 mm on the Visual Analog Scale) and improved physical function in all patients (+28 mm on the Single Assessment Numeric Evaluation and +30 mm on the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons Shoulder Score). Additional progress was reported at the three-month follow up.

"We are early in the investigation of this treatment but are inspired by its effectiveness in reducing pain and range of motion in patients' shoulders," said Bagla.

The research was conducted as a collaboration between interventional radiology and orthopedic surgery to build on international studies of the procedure by adapting the treatment design and embolic agent to be more durable. The team plans to expand the study to additional patients in 2020.

The authors note that this treatment is still investigational and that conservative therapies should still be considered first. Additionally, there are several important limitations of the research, including small sample size and lack of control arm.

Additional information about the clinical trial is available at ClinicalTrials.gov, using the identifier NCT03676829. The trial is funded through Terumo Medical Corporation, a medical device company.

Abstract 4: Arterial Embolization of the Shoulder for Pain Secondary to Adhesive Capsulitis: Interim results from an Investigational Device Exemption U.S. trial. S. Bagla, R. Piechowiak, S. Nagda, J. Orlando, C. Xavier, A. Sajan, A. Isaacson.

The research was originally scheduled to be presented in person at SIR's Annual Scientific Meeting, March 28-April 2, in Seattle before the meeting was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns. Visit sirmeeting.org for the latest information.