Tech

Russian astrophysicists have come close to solving the mystery of where high-energy neutrinos come from in space. The team compared the data on the elusive particles gathered by the Antarctic neutrino observatory IceCube and on long electromagnetic waves measured by radio telescopes. Cosmic neutrinos turned out to be linked to flares at the centers of distant active galaxies, which are believed to host supermassive black holes. As matter falls toward the black hole, some of it is accelerated and ejected into space, giving rise to neutrinos that then coast along through the universe at nearly the speed of light.

The study came out in the Astrophysical Journal and is also available from the arXiv preprint repository.

Neutrinos are mysterious particles so tiny that researchers do not even know their mass. They pass effortlessly through objects, people, and even entire planets. High-energy neutrinos are created when protons accelerate to nearly the speed of light.

The Russian astrophysicists focused on the origins of ultra-high-energy neutrinos, at 200 trillion electron volts or more. The team compared the measurements of the IceCube facility, buried in the Antarctic ice, with a large number of radio observations. The elusive particles were found to emerge during radio frequency flares at the centers of quasars.

Quasars are sources of radiation at the centers of some galaxies. They are comprised by a massive black hole that consumes matter floating in a disk around it and spews out extremely powerful jets of ultrahot gas.

"Our findings indicate that high-energy neutrinos are born in active galactic nuclei, particularly during radio flares. Since both the neutrinos and the radio waves travel at the speed of light, they reach the Earth simultaneously," said the study's first author Alexander Plavin.

Plavin is a PhD student at Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. As such, he is one of the few young researchers to obtain results of that caliber at the outset of their scientific career.

Neutrinos come from where no one had expected

After analyzing around 50 neutrino events detected by IceCube, the team showed that these particles come from bright quasars seen by a network of radio telescopes around the planet. The network uses the most precise method of observing distant objects in the radio band: very long baseline interferometry. This method enables "assembling" a giant telescope by placing many antennas across the globe. Among the largest elements of this network is the 100-meter telescope of the Max Planck Society in Effelsberg.

Additionally, the team hypothesized that the neutrinos emerged during radio flares. To test this idea, the physicists studied the data of the Russian RATAN-600 radio telescope in the North Caucasus. The hypothesis proved highly plausible despite the common assumption that high-energy neutrinos are supposed to originate together with gamma rays.

"Previous research on high-energy neutrino origins had sought their source right 'under the spotlight.' We thought we would test an unconventional idea, with little hope of success. But we got lucky!" Yuri Kovalev from Lebedev Institute, MIPT, and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy commented. "The data from years of observations on international radio telescope arrays enabled that very exciting finding, and the radio band turned out to be crucial in pinning down neutrino origins."

"At first the results seemed 'too good' to be true, but after carefully reanalyzing the data, we confirmed that the neutrino events were clearly associated with the signals picked up by radio telescopes," Sergey Troitsky from the Institute for Nuclear Research of RAS added. "We checked that association based on the data of yearslong observations of the RATAN telescope of the RAS Special Astrophysical Observatory, and the probability of the results being random is only 0.2%. This is quite a success for neutrino astrophysics, and our discovery now calls for theoretical explanations."

The team intends to recheck the findings and figure out the mechanism behind the neutrino origins in quasars using the data from Baikal-GVD, an underwater neutrino detector in Lake Baikal, which is in the final stages of construction and already partly operational. The so-called Cherenkov detectors, used to spot neutrinos -- including IceCube and Baikal-GVD -- rely on a large mass of water or ice as a means of both maximizing the number of neutrino events and preventing the sensors from accidental firing. Of course, continued observations of distant galaxies with radio telescopes are equally crucial to this task.

As a new class of porous materials, noble metal aerogels (NMAs) have drawn tremendous attention because of their combined features including self-supported architectures, high surface areas, and numerous optically and catalytically active sites, enabling their impressive performance in diverse fields. However, current fabrication methods suffer from long fabrication periods, unavoidable impurities, and uncontrolled multiscale structures, discouraging their fundamental and application-orientated studies.

Dr. Ran Du from China has been an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at TU Dresden since 2017. In collaboration with the Dresden chemists Dr. Jan-Ole Joswig and Professor Alexander Eychmüller, they recently crafted a novel freeze-thaw method capable of acquiring various multi-scale structured noble metal aerogels as superior photoelectrocatalysts for electro-oxidation of ethanol, promoting the application for fuel cells. Their work has now been published as cover story in the prestigious journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Ran Du and his team have found unusual self-healing properties of noble metal gels in their previous works. Inspired by this fact, a freeze-thaw method was developed as an additive-free approach to directly destabilise various dilute metal nanoparticle solutions (concentration of 0.2?0.5 mM). Upon freezing, large aggregates were generated due to the intensified salting-out effects incurred by the dramatically raised local solute concentration; meanwhile, they were shaped at micrometer scale by in situ formed ice crystals. After thawing, aggregates settled down and assembled to monolithic hydrogels as a result of their self-healing properties. Purified and dried, clean hydrogels and the corresponding aerogels were obtained.

Due to the hierarchically porous structures, the cleanliness, and the combined catalytic/optical properties, the resulting gold-palladium (Au-Pd) aerogels were found to display impressive light-driven photoelectrocatalytic performance, delivering a current density of up to 6.5 times higher than that of commercial palladium-on-carbon (Pd/C) for the ethanol oxidation reaction.

"The current work provides a new idea to create clean and hierarchically structured gel materials directly from dilute precursor solutions, and it should adapt to various material systems for enhanced application performance for catalysis and beyond", assumes chemist Ran Du.

New research argues that legally protected large territories in Brazil are crucial to protect biodiversity and provide essential conditions for indigenous populations to maintain their traditional livelihoods.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the UK show how several legislative alterations under deliberation in the Brazilian Congress - supported by well-funded and co-ordinated agriculture and mining lobbies, combined with an anti-indigenous policy of the top executive - would affect the long-term ethnocultural and environmental viability of Indigenous Lands. These include changes to the protection status of and/or opening up of territories to economic exploitation.

Brazilian Indigenous Lands comprise 13.5% of the national territory and are occupied by some 515,000 Indians speaking around 280 different languages. Nearly a fifth of all Amazonian animal and plant populations live within these territories, which retain nearly 25.5% of all carbon stocks in Brazil and have a key role in climate change mitigation.

The researchers found that almost 90% of all indigenous territories retain a higher proportion of native vegetation cover than their vicinities, protecting more than 100 million hectares of forests, savannahs and prairies. Moreover, relatively intact territories harbour nearly 54% of all indigenous peoples living within Indigenous Lands.

However, even before the increasingly dangerous spread of COVID-19 to indigenous peoples and their lands, Rodrigo Begotti and Carlos Peres of UEA's School of Environmental Sciences say they had been exposed to unprecedented pressures.

These threats, which include invasions of many Indigenous Lands by illegal gold miners, loggers and squatters, have become increasingly frequent and more intensive, yet have increasingly been condoned by government agencies in what the authors say is "haphazard frontier expansion" and "highly degrading predatory land use".

Commenting on their findings, which are published in the journal Land Use Policy, Prof Peres said: "These results show the critical importance of legally protecting sufficiently large indigenous territories. Larger indigenous populations mainly occupy vast territories and these lands remain critical if Brazil is to accomplish its international commitments to both protect tropical biodiversity and mitigate climate change.

"Our findings reject the repeatedly used argument in Brazil that there is 'too much land for too few Indians' as a justification against new demarcations of Indigenous Lands. We also find that traditional livelihoods of native Brazilians are intricately linked to healthy environmental conditions, and that Indigenous Lands are still efficient in deterring deforestation."

The authors used census data of indigenous and non-indigenous populations and land use maps to depict the geographic context and the conservation performance of all 587 Brazil's indigenous territories and their surroundings.

They compared indigenous population density inside Indigenous Lands and the dominant non-indigenous populations outside, and found that population density is higher inside than outside for nearly one half (295) of all physically demarcated territories. The results also show that relatively low population densities typical of traditional hunter-gatherers, and semi-nomadic and horticulturalist societies were found in only 208 Brazilian Indigenous Lands.

Indigenous population density is 50 times higher where vegetation cover is reduced to 30% of any given territory or less. For this reason, retaining the rich ethnocultural diversity of all approximately 300 indigenous groups in Brazil requires large and sparsely-settled territories that have been demarcated and ratified by the federal government.

The authors also raise concerns around the effectiveness of Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI), the federal agency responsible for new demarcations and protection of Indigenous Lands, including isolated and uncontacted groups. It has undergone severe budget cuts, and more recently the dismantling of its administration by what they describe as ideological shifts towards a clear anti-indigenous policy.

Dr Begotti said: "For indigenous peoples, securing their land rights is critical to maintaining their collective identity and self-determination. Unfortunately, Brazil's current legislative scenario coupled with a hostile federal executive has only fuelled land conflicts and rural violence against native peoples, and increased deforestation rates within Indigenous Lands.

"There is now strong political pressure to integrate indigenous peoples into the market economy by means of establishing commodity agricultural crops and unleashing mining activities inside Indigenous Lands. The justification is that indigenous peoples want to gain access to consumer goods and should generate monetary revenues, regardless of the risks to their ethnocultural diversity and traditional knowledge.

"However, a large body of evidence points to the highly detrimental impacts of down-grading the current protection status of Indigenous Lands, whose legislative status has been hard-won over many years. We hope that Brazil's current and future executive administrations and National Congress will explicitly consider both indigenous welfare and the multiple irreplaceable benefits flowing from Indigenous Lands."

Cappuccino, latte or short black, coffee is one of the most commonly consumed drinks in the world. But whether it's good or bad for your health can be clarified by genetics, as a world-first study from the University of South Australia's Australian Centre for Precision Health shows that excess coffee consumption can cause poor health.

Using data from over 300,000 participants in the UK Biobank, researchers examined connections between genetically instrumented habitual coffee consumption and a full range of diseases, finding that too much coffee can increase the risk of osteoarthritis, arthropathy (joint disease) and obesity.

In earlier research conducted by Professor Hyppönen and team, six cups of coffee a day were considered the upper limit of safe consumption.

Expert genetic epidemiologist, UniSA's Professor Elina Hyppönen, says understanding any risks associated with habitual coffee intakes could have very large implications for population health.

"Globally, we drink around three billion cups of coffee each day, so it makes sense to explore the pros and cons of this on our health," Professor Hyppönen says.

"Typically, the effects of coffee consumption are investigated using an observational approach, where comparisons are made against non-coffee-drinkers. But this can deliver misleading results.

"In this study, we used a genetic approach - called MR-PheWAS analysis - to establish the true effects of coffee consumption against 1117 clinical conditions.

"Reassuringly, our results suggest that, moderate coffee drinking is mostly safe.

"But it also showed that habitual coffee consumption increased the risks of three diseases: osteoarthritis, arthropathy and obesity, which can cause significant pain and suffering for individuals with these conditions."

Professor Hyppönen says the prevalence of these conditions in Australia and around the world shows how important it is to determine possible causes and influencers of the diseases.

"Excess coffee consumption can lead to increased risks of certain diseases," Professor Hyppönen says.

"For people with a family history of osteoarthritis or arthritis, or for those who are worried about developing these conditions, these results should act as a cautionary message.

"The body generally sends powerful messages with respect to coffee consumption, so it's imperative that individuals listen to these when consuming coffee.
"While these results are in many ways reassuring in terms of general coffee consumption, the message we should always remember is consume coffee in moderation - that's the best bet to enjoy your coffee and good health too."

Human self-control evolved in our early ancestors, becoming particularly evident around 500,000 years ago when they developed the skills to make sophisticated tools, a new study suggests.

While early hominins such as Homo erectus could craft basic handaxes as early as 1.8 million years ago, our hominin ancestors began to create more elaborate and carefully designed versions of these tools sometime before 500,000 years ago.

The authors of the study, from the University of York, say these advances in craftsmanship suggest individuals at this time possessed characteristics which demonstrate significant self-control, such as concentration and frustration tolerance.

The study highlights a collection of 500,000 year-old flint axes unearthed from a gravel quarry in the village of Boxgrove in West Sussex. The axes are highly symmetrical suggesting careful workmanship and the forgoing of immediate needs for longer term aims.

Senior author of the study, Dr Penny Spikins, from the Department of Archaeology said: "More sophisticated tools like the Boxgrove handaxes start to appear around the same time as our hominin ancestors were developing much bigger brains.

"The axes demonstrate characteristics that can be related to self-control such as the investment of time and energy in something that does not produce an immediate reward, forward planning and a level of frustration tolerance for completing a painstaking task.

"In the present day our capacity for self-control has become particularly important. Without the advanced levels of self-control we possess as a species, lockdown would be impossible. It takes self-control to put the needs of the community first rather than focus on our own immediate ends. Our study offers some clues as to where in human history this ability originated."

The researchers also point to evidence that the production of highly symmetrical and elaborate axes would have required knowledge and skill accumulated over a life time.

In one study, it took people trying to replicate the axes discovered at Boxgrove 16 hours of practice to even produce a recognisable handaxe.

Lead author of the study, James Green, a PhD student in the Department of archaeology at the University of York, added: "By deciphering the mental and physical processes involved in the production of prehistoric artefacts, we can gain valuable insights into the abilities of the individuals who made them.

"These axes demonstrate social learning and effortful activity directed at honing skills. They also provide some of the earliest evidence of something being deliberately made in a sequence from a picture in someone's mind.

"Self-control is not unique to humans, but may have played an important role in our evolution. It's key to many of the traits which define modern humans such as pro-sociality, cooperation and caring for the vulnerable."

Patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis experience an either recurring or permanent inflammation of their pancreas. "In many cases, people develop this disease because they are drinking too much alcohol or they are smoking too much. Certain medication or high levels of lipids or calcium in a patient's blood can be another cause of pancreatitis," explained Heiko Witt, one of the two heads of the study and Professor for Pediatric Nutritional Medicine at the Else Kröner-Fresenius-Zentrum (EKFZ) at TUM.

The main focus of previous research was on the so-called acinus cells of the pancreas; these are responsible for creating digestive enzymes. Many patients suffering from genetically caused pancreatitis show mutations in digestive enzymes or in molecules inhibiting the enzymes' effectiveness.

Calcium channel disorder leads to pancreatitis

In the course of the current study, that was performed with European and Japanese patients suffering from pancreatitis not associated with alcohol consumption, the researchers discovered that genetic defects which were heavily limiting the functionality of calcium channel TRPV6 caused early-onset chronic pancreatitis.

"A substantial TRPV6 defect is a globally occurring and serious risk factor for developing chronic pancreatitis," said Professor Witt and added: "By identifying alterations of the calcium channel, we are now also considering duct cells as part of the concept covering the origins of this disease." Duct cells serve as coating in the channels that transport digestive enzymes from the point of origin into the intestines.

Using a mouse model, the scientists were able to show that the absence of the corresponding gene would, in most cases, lead to inflammation and the occurrence of fibrotic changes in the pancreas, which is typical for chronic inflammation.

This new discovery offers opportunities for pharmacologic therapy approaches

The discovery that a calcium channel malfunction can contribute to the development of pancreatitis offers a new course of action for therapeutic intervention. Furthermore, the research findings will become part of the standard diagnostics for genetically caused pancreatitis.

These insights also pave the way for a new area of research covering the investigation of causes of pancreatitis - no longer focused on acinus cells and digestive enzymes but rather on duct cells and channels as well as calcium metabolism.

The identification of mutations in a calcium channel as a (contributing) cause of disease leads to new factors - other calcium channels and proteins that are relevant for calcium metabolism - moving into the scientific focus. "Currently we are investigating these genes for genetic alterations and we have a European patient collective comprising 1100 people with pancreatitis to gather our data," reported Professor Witt.

He further explained: "Deciphering the genetic backgrounds of pancreatitis will substantially affect our understanding of these types of genetically caused pancreatitis, as well as our understanding of alcohol-related pancreatitis. It will enable new research approaches which may lead to new treatment possibilities in the future."

Even though it's been over a decade, the 2008 recession and its effects still loom over the chemistry enterprise. And now with the COVID-19 pandemic shutting down labs and universities across the world, chemistry students and professionals are again facing hiring freezes, reduced pay and other career obstacles. Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, spoke with chemists about how they're navigating the current economic downturn.

With more than 30 million unemployment claims filed by the end of April, the novel coronavirus has disrupted almost every industry as a result of lost revenue and closures. Chemistry students set to graduate this spring are seeing a lot of uncertainty in their job prospects, particularly in academia. Many schools have frozen hiring for the foreseeable future in an effort to cut costs, and some are even furloughing staff. In addition, many public universities haven't recovered from funding cuts made during the last recession. With the expectation to be productive and find jobs, graduate students and postdocs are considered particularly vulnerable right now, Senior Correspondent Linda Wang and Senior Editor Andrea Widener write. Because research funding is dwindling and hiring is on hold, these chemists are beginning to look outside of academia for opportunities. 

Off campus, the chemical industry is also feeling the pandemic's effects. Hiring has ground to a near-halt in some areas, while the petrochemical sector is bracing for a major setback that could take years to recover from. The American Chemistry Council has estimated that industry job losses could total 28,000 over the course of the year, or 5.1% of the workforce. Unsurprisingly, an area that has remained strong during this time is the pharmaceutical sector, which is experiencing increased demand and is hiring accordingly. The biotechnology sector is also recruiting chemists, and certain "hot" fields like CRISPR and tumor immunology are doing as well as ever. While the outlook is relatively positive for some areas of industry, experts warn that many sectors will need to adapt to a new normal, including bringing manufacturing and research back to the U.S. to rebalance the global supply chain. Veterans of the 2008 recession advise current chemistry job-seekers to be flexible in their search, to use this time at home to grow their networks and broaden their skill sets, and most importantly, to not give up, despite the murky road ahead.

Prevalence of food allergy among Medicaid-enrolled children across the U.S. was substantially lower (0.6 percent), compared to previous national estimates using parent surveys (7.6 percent) and reports of physician confirmation of food allergy (4.7 percent). The study, published in Academic Pediatrics, was the first to analyze Medicaid claims data of over 23 million children to estimate prevalence of food allergy diagnosis.

"We were surprised to find such a large discrepancy in estimates of food allergy prevalence in children on Medicaid compared to the general population," says senior author Ruchi Gupta, MD, MPH, a pediatrician and food allergy researcher at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "Our findings suggest potential under-diagnosis of food allergy among Medicaid-enrolled children. Families in the Medicaid program may be encountering barriers to accessing and affording specialists and potentially life-saving epinephrine prescription."

Food allergy affects millions of U.S. children, posing significant emotional and financial burdens on affected families. Dr. Gupta's previous research revealed that 40 percent of children with food allergy report experiencing a severe life-threatening reaction in their lifetime, and one in five children report at least one food allergy related emergency department visit per year. Total estimated costs associated with food allergy, including direct medical, out-of-pocket, and lost labor productivity, are nearly $25 billion annually, or over $4,000 per child.

In the current study using Medicaid data, Dr. Gupta and colleagues found strong associations between race/ethnicity and food allergy. Compared to Caucasian children, Asian children had 24 percent higher odds of having food allergy, while Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian children had 26 percent higher odds and African-American children had 7 percent higher odds of living with the condition. In contrast, Latinx children and American Indian/Alaskan Native children were less likely to have food allergy compared to Caucasian children - 15 percent and 24 percent lower odds, respectively.

"Our results show that some of the racial differences in food allergy prevalence found in the general population persist among children enrolled in Medicaid," says Dr. Gupta. "Future research needs to determine whether racial and ethnic differences in prevalence are associated with disparities in adequate food allergy management, including patient education on allergen avoidance and up-to-date epinephrine prescriptions."

PITTSBURGH (May 13, 2020) -- Masks, gowns, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) are essential for protecting healthcare workers. However, the textiles and materials used in such items can absorb and carry viruses and bacteria, inadvertently spreading the disease the wearer sought to contain.

When the coronavirus spread amongst healthcare professionals and left PPE in short supply, finding a way to provide better protection while allowing for the safe reuse of these items became paramount.

Research from the LAMP Lab at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering may have a solution. The lab has created a textile coating that can not only repel liquids like blood and saliva but can also prevent viruses from adhering to the surface. The work was recently published in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

"Recently there's been focus on blood-repellent surfaces, and we were interested in achieving this with mechanical durability," said Anthony Galante, PhD student in industrial engineering at Pitt and lead author of the paper. "We want to push the boundary on what is possible with these types of surfaces, and especially given the current pandemic, we knew it'd be important to test against viruses."

What makes the coating unique is its ability to withstand ultrasonic washing, scrubbing and scraping. With other similar coatings currently in use, washing or rubbing the surface of the textile will reduce or eliminate its repellent abilities.

"The durability is very important because there are other surface treatments out there, but they're limited to disposable textiles. You can only use a gown or mask once before disposing of it," said Paul Leu, co-author and associate professor of industrial engineering, who leads the LAMP Lab. "Given the PPE shortage, there is a need for coatings that can be applied to reusable medical textiles that can be properly washed and sanitized."

Galante put the new coating to the test, running it through tens of ultrasonic washes, applying thousands of rotations with a scrubbing pad (not unlike what might be used to scour pots and pans), and even scraping it with a sharp razor blade. After each test, the coating remained just as effective.

The researchers worked with the Charles T. Campbell Microbiology Laboratory's Research Director Eric Romanowski and Director of Basic Research Robert Shanks, in the Department of Ophthalmology at Pitt, to test the coating against a strain of adenovirus.

"As this fabric was already shown to repel blood, protein and bacteria, the logical next step was to determine whether it repels viruses. We chose human adenovirus types 4 and 7, as these are causes of acute respiratory disease as well as conjunctivitis (pink eye)," said Romanowski. "It was hoped that the fabric would repel these viruses similar to how it repels proteins, which these viruses essentially are: proteins with nucleic acid inside. As it turned out, the adenoviruses were repelled in a similar way as proteins."

The coating may have broad applications in healthcare: everything from hospital gowns to waiting room chairs could benefit from the ability to repel viruses, particularly ones as easily spread as adenoviruses.

"Adenovirus can be inadvertently picked up in hospital waiting rooms and from contaminated surfaces in general. It is rapidly spread in schools and homes and has an enormous impact on quality of life--keeping kids out of school and parents out of work," said Shanks. "This coating on waiting room furniture, for example, could be a major step towards reducing this problem."

The next step for the researchers will be to test the effectiveness against betacoronaviruses, like the one that causes COVID-19.

"If the treated fabric would repel betacornonaviruses, and in particular SARS-CoV-2, this could have a huge impact for healthcare workers and even the general public if PPE, scrubs, or even clothing could be made from protein, blood-, bacteria-, and virus-repelling fabrics," said Romanowski.

At the moment, the coating is applied using drop casting, a method that saturates the material with a solution from a syringe and applies a heat treatment to increase stability. But the researchers believe the process can use a spraying or dipping method to accommodate larger pieces of material, like gowns, and can eventually be scaled up for production.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Biomedical engineers at Duke University are developing a massive fluid dynamics simulator that can model blood flow through the full human arterial system at subcellular resolution. One of the goals of the effort is to provide doctors with guidance in their treatment plans by allowing them to simulate a patient's specific vasculature and accurately predict how decisions such as stent placement, conduit insertions and other geometric alterations to blood flow will affect surgical outcomes.

One of the largest barriers to clinical adoption however, is developing a user interface that allows clinicians to easily explore their options without needing any expertise in computer science. As any programmer will tell you, designing a smooth, intuitive interface that people from all types of backgrounds can quickly master is a tall task.

In a new study published on May 7 in the Journal of Computational Science, the Duke researchers report on their initial foray into creating a user interface for their blood flow simulation tool called HARVEY. They explored various interfaces ranging from standard desktop displays to immersive virtual reality experiences and found that, while users might be comfortable using a standard mouse and keyboard, some more futuristic interfaces might hold the key to widespread adoption.

"HARVEY currently requires knowledge of C coding and command line interfaces, which really limits who can use the program," said Amanda Randles, the Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Assistant Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Duke. "This paper introduces a graphical user interface we've developed called Harvis, so that anybody can use Harvey, whether they're surgeons trying to figure out the best placement for a stent or biomedical researchers trying to design a new type of stent altogether."

Randles has been developing the HARVEY code for nearly a decade, having begun the work as a doctoral student in the research group of Efthimios Kaxiras, the John Hasbrouck Van Vleck Professor of Pure and Applied Physics at Harvard University. In that time, she has demonstrated that HARVEY can accurately model blood flow through patient-specific aortas and other vascular geometries on longer scales. She's also shown the program can model 3D blood flows on the scale of the full human body.

Putting HARVEY to work, Randles has helped researchers understand stent treatment of cerebral aneurysms and the growth of aneurysms. She has created a quick, noninvasive way to check for peripheral arterial disease, and to better understand how circulating cancer cells adhere to different tissues. With steady progress on the computational abilities of the code and demonstrated usefulness in real-world applications, Randles is now working to make sure others can make the best use of its abilities.

"As cardiovascular disease continues to be the number one cause of death in the US, the ability to improve treatment planning and outcome remains a significant challenge," said Randles. "With the maturity and availability of VR/AR devices, we need to understand the role these technologies can play in the interaction with such data. This research is a much-needed step for developing future software to combat cardiovascular disease."

In the new study, Randles and her biomedical engineering colleagues, research associate Harvey Shi and graduate student Jeff Ames, put the Harvis interface they've been developing to the test. They asked medical students and biomedical researchers to simulate three different situations -- placing a conduit between two blood vessels, expanding or shrinking the size of a blood vessel, or placing a stent within a blood vessel. The test users attempted these tasks using either a standard mouse and computer screen, a "Z-space" semi-immersive virtual reality device, or a fully immersive virtual reality experience with an HTC Vive display device.

The results show that the students and researchers could use the standard mouse and keyboard interface and the fully immersive VR interface equally as well in a majority of cases both quantitatively and qualitatively. The semi-immersive display, basically a special pointing tool combined with a monitor and 3D glasses, however, ranked behind the other two devices, as the users had some issues adjusting to the unique hardware setup and controls.

The study also presents a generalizable design architecture for other simulated workflows, laying out a detailed description of the rationale for the design of Harvis, which can be extended to similar platforms.

While the study did not find any major differences between the most and least immersive interfaces in terms of quality and efficiency, Randles did notice a major difference between the users' reactions to the equipment.

"People enjoyed the 3D interface more," said Randles. "And if they enjoyed it more, they're more likely to actually use it. It could also be a fun and exciting way to get students engaged in classes about the vasculature system and hemodynamics."

Randles says she plans on running experiments to see if her 3D blood flow interface can help medical students retain important knowledge better than current standards. In the future, tools like this could assist with treatment planning such as placements of stents using a more intuitive virtual reality interface. Randles also expects these types of tools will facilitate biomedical research in the personalized flow space.

NASA's Terra satellite revealed powerful storms in Vongfong as it ramped up from a tropical storm to a typhoon. Vongfong is known locally in the Philippines as Typhoon Ambo.

NASA's Terra satellite used infrared light to analyze the strength of storms in Vongfong. Infrared data provides temperature information, and the strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures.

On May 13 at 9:25 a.m. EDT (1325 UTC), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite gathered temperature information about Typhoon Vongfong's cloud tops. MODIS found two large areas of powerful thunderstorms north and west of the center of circulation where temperatures were as cold as or colder than minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 Celsius). Cloud top temperatures that cold indicate strong storms with the potential to generate heavy rainfall.

Warnings in the Philippines include Tropical cyclone wind signal number #1 for the Visayas region: northern parts of Samar and northern parts of eastern Samar; and for the Luzon region:  Sorsogon, Ticao Island, Catanduanes, southern parts of Albay.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) on May 13, 2020, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that Vongfong (Ambo) was located near latitude 12.0 degrees north and longitude 128.5 degrees east, about 465 nautical miles east-southeast of Manila, Philippines. Vongfong was moving to the west-northwest and had maximum sustained winds 70 knots (80 mph/130 kph).

Vongfong is strengthening. The storm is expected to peak at 100 knots (115 mph/185 kph) as it passes east of the Visayas islands, and then begin to weaken.

Typhoons and 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.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Job skills training for low-income youth does more than just help them get better jobs - it makes them significantly less likely than others to use some illicit drugs, even 16 years later.

These positive effects on drug use were seen in those who received job-specific skills training, but not in youth who received only basic job services, such as help with job search or a General Education Development (GED) program.

Results showed that the use of illicit drugs such as cocaine and heroin (not including marijuana) declined for youth who received job-skills training, down to 2.8 percent after 16 years. However, illicit drug use increased for those who received only basic services, up to 5.2 percent in the same time.

"We have to look at what kind of job services we provide low-income youth, because they don't all provide the same level of benefits," said Sehun Oh, lead author of the study and assistant professor of social work at The Ohio State University.

"There were positive spillover effects from job training on drug misuse, which we did not see in youth who were provided only more basic services."

The study appears in the June 2020 issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

The results are important because the federal and state governments emphasize a "job-first" approach that focuses on helping adults in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program obtain immediate employment, Oh said.

Under a "job first" approach, people usually receive only basic services, which alone were not found to be helpful in preventing drug misuse in this study.

The study uses data about young people from around the country who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. The NLSY97 interviewed people who were between the ages of 13 and 17 in 1997 and then interviewed the same people 17 times until 2016. The NLSY is conducted by Ohio State's Center for Human Resource Research for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The researchers identified 581 people from NLSY97 who participated in government-sponsored employment programs for low-income youth and adults.

About half reported receiving job skills training services, such as vocational training, on-the-job training, work experience, and other classroom training for a specific job. The other half received only basic services, such as a GED program or job-search assistance.

Results showed that binge drinking decreased significantly among both the basic services and job skills training groups, with no group differences found in the trends.

Slightly more than 40 percent of both groups said they engaged in binge drinking (5 or more drinks on one occasion in the past month) at the start of the study, which declined to 30 percent in year 16.

Marijuana use was relatively steady for both groups over the entire period of the study, with 11 to 16 percent of the groups reporting they had used the drug in the past year.

The reduction seen in the use of illicit drugs like cocaine and heroin is an advantage of job skills training programs that has not been studied before, Oh said.

"Substance misuse is a significant public health problem in the United States," he said.

"Giving people the skills needed to get good jobs is one way to help fight that crisis, and one that doesn't come from a 'jobs-first' approach."

Relationships are key to influencing positive health behaviors and should not be forgotten during social distancing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Strong relationships can help adults stay active in older age, according to a new study from public health researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, in collaboration with international partners.

The results, published in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, show that individual and interpersonal factors had the greatest association with meeting physical activity guidelines. Participants with higher educational attainment, a strong relationship with a life partner or a network of close friends were significantly more likely to engage in regular physical activity.

"We wanted to better understand how adults' levels of physical activity are affected by other aspects of their lives," said lead author Chevelle Davis, a current PhD student in the Office of Public Health Studies under the Myron B. Thompson School of Social Work. "Physical activity among older adults is largely understudied in middle-income countries."

In the study, the authors examined data on 1,193 adults ages 65-74 in Albania, Brazil and Colombia. The researchers sought to understand how individual, interpersonal, organizational and community factors influenced whether the older adults met physical activity guidelines, defined as 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week through walking.

"In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical not to forget the importance of social relationships and maintaining physical activity to reduce chronic disease and premature death. Older adults who experience social isolation are at greater risk of depression, cognitive decline and other poor health outcomes," said Catherine Pirkle, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of public health. "We must find innovative ways to maintain connectedness and physical activity, while also following public health guidelines."

Importantly, female participants, as well as all participants with depression, were less likely to engage in regular physical activity. Mental health challenges are likely to increase in this time, but walking, which is generally safe and acceptable to most older adults, has been shown to protect against depression symptoms. Walking and other forms of physical activity are allowed in parks at this time.

"These results are important because they reinforce that relationships are key to influencing positive health behaviors, including physical activity," said Pirkle. "Our findings echo other studies that have demonstrated the importance of connectivity in the aging process across different cultures. We hope this study can be used to inform health approaches and interventions targeting older adults to keep them healthy in this pandemic and beyond."

As our smartphones, laptops, and computers get smaller and faster, so do the transistors inside them that control the flow of electricity and store information. But traditional transistors can only shrink so much. Now, researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have developed a new atomically thin magnetic semiconductor that will allow the development of new transistors that work in a completely different way; they not only can harness an electron's charge but also the power of its spin, providing an alternative path to creating ever smaller and faster electronics.

Rather than relying on making smaller and smaller electrical components, the new discovery, reported in the April 2020 issue of Nature Communications, potentially provides a critical platform for advancing the field of spintronics (spin + electronics), a fundamentally new way to operate electronics and a much-needed alternative to continued miniaturization of standard electronic devices. In addition to removing the miniaturization barrier, the new atomically thin magnet can also enable faster processing speed, less energy consumption and increased storage capacity.

"A two-dimensional ferromagnetic semiconductor is a material in which ferromagnetism and semiconducting properties coexist in one, and since our material works at room temperature, it allows us to readily integrate it with the well-established semiconductor technology," said EH Yang, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, who led this project.

"The magnetic field strength in this material is 0.5 mT; while such weak magnetic field strength cannot allow us to pick up a paper clip, it is large enough to alter the spin of electrons, which can be utilized for quantum bits applications," said Stefan Strauf, a professor of physics at Stevens.

When computers were first built, they filled an entire room, but now they can fit in your back pocket. The reason for this is Moore's law, which suggests that every two years, the number of transistors that fit on a computer chip will double, effectively doubling a gadget's speed and capability. But transistors can only become so small before the electrical signals that they are supposed to control no longer obey their commands.

While most forecasters expect Moore's law will end by 2025, alternative approaches, which do not rely on physical scaling, have been investigated. Manipulating the spin of electrons, instead of relying solely on their charge, may provide a solution in the future.

Building a new magnetic semiconductor using two-dimensional materials - that is, two-atoms thick- will allow the development of a transistor to control electricity with control of the spin of an electron, either up or down, while the whole device remains lightweight, flexible and transparent.

Using a method called in situ substitutional doping, Yang and his team successfully synthesized a magnetic semiconductor whereby a molybdenum disulfide crystal is substitutionally doped with isolated iron atoms. During this process, the iron atoms kick off some of the molybdenum atoms and take their place, in the exact spot, creating a transparent and flexible magnetic material - again, only two-atoms thick. The material is found to remain magnetized at room temperature, and since it is a semiconductor, it can directly be integrated into the existing architecture of electronic devices in the future.

Yang and his team at Stevens worked with several institutions to image the material - atom by atom - to prove that the iron atoms took the place of some of the molybdenum atoms. These institutions included the University of Rochester, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Columbia University.

"To do something great in science, you need to get others to collaborate with you," said Shichen Fu, a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering at Stevens. "This time, we brought all the right people together - labs with different strengths and different perspectives - to make this happen."

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- You've probably seen the satellite images that show a hurricane developing: thick white clouds clumping together, arms spinning around a central eye as it heads for the coast.

After decades of research, meteorologists still have questions about how hurricanes develop. Now, Florida State University researchers have found that even the smallest changes in atmospheric conditions could trigger a hurricane, information that will help scientists understand the processes that lead to these devastating storms.

"The whole motivation for this paper was that we still don't have that universal theoretical understanding of exactly how tropical cyclones form, and to really be able to forecast that storm-by-storm, it would help us to have that more solidly taken care of," said Jacob Carstens, a doctoral student in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science.

The research by Carstens and Assistant Professor Allison Wing has been published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.

Current theories on the formation of hurricanes agree that some sort of disturbance must exist to start the process that leads to a hurricane. Carstens used numerical models that started with simple conditions to better understand exactly how those disturbances arise.

"We're trying to go as bare bones as possible, looking at just how exactly clouds want to organize themselves without any of these external factors playing into it to form a tropical cyclone more efficiently," he said. "It's a way we can further round out our broader understanding and look more purely at the actual tropical cyclones themselves rather than the surrounding environment's impact on it."

The simulations started with mostly uniform conditions spread across the imaginary box where the model played out. Then, researchers added a tiny amount of random temperature fluctuations to kickstart the model and observed how the simulated clouds evolved.

Despite the random start to the simulation, the clouds didn't stay randomly arranged. They formed into clusters as the water vapor, thermal radiation and other factors interacted. As the clusters circulated through the simulated atmosphere, the researchers tracked when they formed hurricanes. They repeated the model at simulated latitudes between 0.1 degrees and 20 degrees north, representative of areas such as parts of western Africa, northern South America and the Caribbean. That range includes the latitudes where tropical cyclones typically form, along with latitudes very close to the equator where their formation is rare and less studied.

The scientists found that every simulation in latitudes between 10 and 20 degrees produced a major hurricane, even from the stable conditions under which they began the simulation. These came a few days after a vortex first emerged well above the surface and affected its surrounding environment.

They also showed the possibility of cloud interaction contributing to the development of a tropical cyclone very close to the equator, which rarely occurs in nature but has still been observed as close as 1.4 degrees north away.

Hurricanes are dangerous weather events. Forecasting can help prevent deaths, but a big storm can still cause billions of dollars in damage. A better theoretical understanding of their formation will help meteorologists predict and prepare for these storms, both in short-term forecasts and long-term climate projections, and communicate their understanding to the public.

"It's becoming ever more important in our field that we connect with emergency managers, the general population and other local officials to advise them on what they can expect, how they should prepare and what sorts of impacts are going to be heading their way," Carstens said. "A more robust understanding of how tropical cyclones form can help us to better forecast their location, their track and their intensity. It really goes down the line and helps us to communicate sooner as well as more efficiently and eloquently to the public that really needs it."