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Durham, NC - Infection, inflammation, trauma, disease, contact lenses - all of these and more can lead to corneal scarring, which according to the World Health Organization is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. While corneal transplant remains the gold standard to treat this condition, patient demand far outweighs donor supply. However, in a study released today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine researchers demonstrate a potential solution to this major problem.

The cornea is the clear front surface of the eye that not only protects the eye, but allows light to enter and provides as much as 75 percent of the eye's focusing power. When scarring occurs, the cornea clouds over and impacts vision. The stroma - the thick middle layer of the cornea - plays a pivotal role in normal visual function as it produces a variety of cellular products that support normal corneal development and maintenance.

"As such, corneal stromal stem cells (SSCs) show promise for replacing conventional donor tissues as they are potentially able to regenerate the corneal stromal extracellular matrix, which is essential for maintaining corneal transparency," said study leader Vincent Borderie, M.D., Ph.D., and first author Djida Ghoubay, Ph.D, both of the Institut de la Vision, Sorbonne Université, INSERM and CNRS. "Additionally, SSCs can be easily retrieved and cultured from the patient's or donor's eye."

With this in mind, the two and their team, which included researchers from several other institutions in Paris, set out to determine the therapeutic effect of these adult stem cells and whether they might indeed restore the cornea to its pre-injured state. They tested their theory on a new mouse model created especially for the study.

Younger mice (four weeks old) were selected, as the researchers were hoping to mimic a stromal scarring condition called keratoconus that generally occurs in teenagers or young adults. They sedated the mice, then did an epithelial scraping followed by an application of liquid nitrogen (N2) to the corneal surface of each mouse's left eye. Its right eye was left untouched for comparison.

After the injured corneas had scarred over and become opaque -- approximately three weeks after injury -- the mice were divided into groups. One group received injections of murine (mouse) stromal stem cells (MSSCs) at the injured site. A second group received injections of human stromal stem cells (HSSCs). A third group received sham injections, and a fourth group received no SSCs, as a control. The animals' eyes were then examined for several indicators of corneal health, with the assessments occurring just before the N2 application and then repeated in intervals up to three months after.

"Results showed that injection of SSCs resulted in improved corneal transparency associated with corneal SSC migration and growth in the recipient stroma without inflammatory response. Moreover, decreased stromal haze, corneal rigidity and improved vision were observed," Dr. Borderie reported.

Dr. Ghoubay added, "Interestingly, the injected HSSCs showed a different fate compared with the MSSCs. In fact, the former were still detected three months after injection, whereas the latter were no longer detected following the first month. As labeling is lost with cell divisions, we can hypothesize that xenogeneic HSSC divide slower than allogeneic MSSC after injection."

"In conclusion," Drs. Borderie and Ghoubay said, "our study demonstrates the ability of corneal SSCs to promote regeneration of transparent stromal tissue. Injection of corneal SSCs can constitute an alternative approach in the treatment of corneal scarring."

"This study provides evidence that corneal stromal stem cells, which can be easily retrieved and cultured from patient or donor eyes, have the ability to regenerate the corneal stromal extracellular matrix, which is essential for maintaining corneal transparency," said Anthony Atala, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "The finding has potential translational application as a cell-based therapy to treat corneal scarring, and we look forward to seeing continued research."

Within the last decades, new genetic engineering tools for manipulating genetic material in plants, animals and microorganisms are getting large attention from the international community, bringing new challenges and possibilities. While genetically modified organisms (GMO) have been known and used for quite a while now, gene drive organisms (GDO) are yet at the consideration and evaluation stage.

The difference between these two technologies, where both are meant to replace certain characters in animals or plants with ones that are more favourable for the human population, is that, even though in GDO there is also foreign "synthetic" DNA being introduced, the inheritance mode differs. In GDO, the genome's original base arrangements are changed, using CRISPR/Cas-9 genome editing. Once the genome is changed, its alterations are carried down the organism's offspring and subsequent generations.

In their study, published in the open-access journal BioRisk, an international group of scientists led by Marion Dolezel from the Environment Agency Austria, discuss the potential risks and impacts on the environment.

The research team also points to current regulations addressing invasive alien species and biocontrol agents, and finds that the GMO regulations are, in principle, also a useful starting point for GDO.

There are three main areas suggested to benefit from gene drive systems: public health (e.g. vector control of human pathogens), agriculture (e.g. weed and pest control), environmental protection and nature conservation (e.g. control of harmful non-native species).

In recent years, a range of studies have shown the feasibility of synthetic CRISPR-based gene drives in different organisms, such as yeast, the common fruit fly, mosquitoes and partly in mammals.

Given the results of previous research, the gene drive approach can even be used as prevention for some zoonotic diseases and, hence, possible future pandemics. For example, laboratory tests showed that the release of genetically modified mosquitoes can drastically reduce the number of malaria vectors. Nevertheless, potential environment and health implications, related to the release of GDO, remain unclear. Only a few potential applications have so far progressed to the research and development stage.

"The potential of GDOs for unlimited spread throughout wild populations, once released, and the apparently inexhaustible possibilities of multiple and rapid modifications of the genome in a vast variety of organisms, including higher organisms such as vertebrates, pose specific challenges for the application of adequate risk assessment methodologies," shares the lead researcher Mrs. Dolezel.

In the sense of genetic engineering being a fastly developing science, every novel feature must be taken into account, while preparing evaluations and guidance, and each of them provides extra challenges.

Today, the scientists present three key differences of gene drives compared to the classical GMO:

1. Introducing novel modifications to wild populations instead of "familiar" crop species, which is a major difference between "classic" GMOs and GDOs.

"The goal of gene drive applications is to introduce a permanent change in the ecosystem, either by introducing a phenotypic change or by drastically reducing or eradicating a local population or a species. This is a fundamental difference to GM crops for which each single generation of hybrid seed is genetically modified, released and removed from the environment after a relatively short period," shares Dolezel.

2. Intentional and potentially unlimited spread of synthetic genes in wild populations and natural ecosystems.

Gene flow of synthetic genes to wild organisms can have adverse ecological impact on the genetic diversity of the targeted population. It could change the weediness or invasiveness of certain plants, but also threaten with extinction the species in the wild.

Possibility for long-term risks to populations and ecosystems.

Key and unique features of GDOs are the potential long-term changes in populations and large-scale spread across generations.

In summary, the research team points out that, most of all, gene drive organisms must be handled extremely carefully, and that the environmental risks related to their release must be assessed under rigorous scrutiny. The standard requirements before the release of GDOs need to also include close post-release monitoring and risk management measures.

It is still hard to assess with certainty the potential risks and impact of gene drive applications on the environment, human and animal health. That's why highly important questions need to be addressed, and the key one is whether genetically driven organisms are to be deliberately released into the environment in the European Union. The High Level Group of the European Commission's Scientific Advice Mechanism highlights that within the current regulatory frameworks those risks may not be covered.

The research group recommends the institutions to evaluate whether the regulatory oversight of GMOs in the EU is accomodate to cover the novel risks and challenges posed by gene drive applications.

"The final decision to release GDOs into the environment will, however, not be a purely scientific question, but will need some form of
broader stakeholder engagement and the commitment to specific protection goals for human health and the environment", concludes Dolezel.

ATLANTA--Foods, such as French fries, cheese, cookies, soda, and sports and energy drinks, are commonly found in the diets of United States adults with inflammatory bowel disease, according to a new study by researchers in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State University.

The researchers analyzed the National Health Interview Survey 2015 to determine the food intake and frequency of consumption for U.S. adults with inflammatory bowel disease. The survey assessed 26 foods. The findings, published in the journal PLOS One, reveal that foods typically labeled as junk food were associated with inflammatory bowel disease.

Inflammatory bowel disease, which is characterized by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract, affects three million U.S. adults. There are two types of conditions, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Common symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease include persistent diarrhea, abdominal pain, rectal bleeding or bloody stools, weight loss and fatigue, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

This study found fries were consumed by a greater number of people with inflammatory bowel disease, and they also ate more cheese and cookies and drank less 100 percent fruit juice compared to people who did not have inflammatory bowel disease.

Intaking fries and sports and energy drinks and frequently drinking soda were significantly associated with having been told one has inflammatory bowel disease. Consuming milk or popcorn was less likely associated with receiving this diagnosis.

"While foods typically labeled as junk food were positively associated with inflammatory bowel disease, we found the eating patterns of people with and without this disease to be very similar," said Dr. Moon Han, the study's first author who completed the work as a Ph.D. student in Dr. Didier Merlin's lab in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences and now works as a Health Scientist ORISE Fellow at the CDC. "However, it's unclear whether the survey results reflect a potential change in the food intake of people with inflammatory bowel disease long before the survey was conducted."

To fully understand the role of food intake in inflammatory bowel disease risk and prevalence, it's important to explore environmental factors (for example, food deserts), food processing (such as frying) and potential bioactive food components that can induce intestinal inflammation and increase susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease, the researchers concluded.

The largest-ever study of alleged racial profiling during traffic stops has found that blacks, who are pulled over more frequently than whites by day, are much less likely to be stopped after sunset, when "a veil of darkness" masks their race.

That is one of several examples of systematic bias that emerged from a five-year study that analyzed 95 million traffic stop records, filed by officers with 21 state patrol agencies and 35 municipal police forces from 2011 to 2018.

The Stanford-led study also found that when drivers were pulled over, officers searched the cars of blacks and Hispanics more often than whites. The researchers also examined a subset of data from Washington and Colorado, two states that legalized marijuana, and found that while this change resulted in fewer searches overall, and thus fewer searches of blacks and Hispanics, minorities were still more likely than whites to have their cars searched after a pull-over.

"Our results indicate that police stops and search decisions suffer from persistent racial bias, and point to the value of policy interventions to mitigate these disparities," the researchers write in the May 4th issue of Nature Human Behaviour.

The paper culminates a five-year collaboration between Stanford's Cheryl Phillips, a journalism lecturer whose graduate students obtained the raw data through public records requests, and Sharad Goel, a professor of management science and engineering whose computer science team organized and analyzed the data.

Goel and his collaborators, which included Ravi Shroff, a professor of applied statistics at New York University, spent years culling through the data, eliminating records that were incomplete or from the wrong time periods, to create the 95 million-record database that was the basis for their analysis. "There is no way to overstate the difficulty of that task," Goel said.

Creating that database enabled the team to find the statistical evidence that a "veil of darkness" partially immunized blacks against traffic stops. That term and idea has been around since 2006 when it was used in a study that compared the race of 8,000 drivers in Oakland, California, who were stopped at any time of day or night over a six month period. But the findings from that study were inconclusive because the sample was too small to prove a link between the darkness of the sky and the race of the stopped drivers.

The Stanford team decided to repeat the analysis using the much larger dataset that they had gathered. First, they narrowed the range of variables they had to analyze by choosing a specific time of day - around 7 p.m. - when the probable causes for a stop were more or less constant. Next, they took advantage of the fact that, in the months before and after daylight saving time each year, the sky gets a little darker or lighter, day by day. Because they had such a massive database, the researchers were able to find 113,000 traffic stops, from all of the locations in their database, that occurred on those days, before or after clocks sprang forward or fell back, when the sky was growing darker or lighter at around 7 p.m. local time.

This dataset provided a statistically valid sample with two important variables - the race of the driver being stopped, and the darkness of the sky at around 7 p.m. The analysis left no doubt that the darker it got, the less likely it became that a black driver would be stopped. The reverse was true when the sky was lighter.

More than any single finding, the collaboration's most lasting impact may be from the Stanford Open Policing Project, which the researchers started to make their data available to investigative and data-savvy reporters, and to hold workshops to help reporters learn how to use the data to do local stories.

For example, the researchers helped reporters at the Seattle-based non-profit news organization, Investigate West, understand the patterns in the data for stories showing bias in police searches of Native Americans. That reporting prompted the Washington State Patrol to review its practices and boost officer training. Similarly, the researchers helped reporters at the Los Angeles Times analyze data that showed how police searched minority drivers far more often than whites. It resulted in a story that was part of a larger investigative series that prompted changes in Los Angeles Police Department practices.

"All told we've trained about 200 journalists, which is one of the unique things about this project," Phillips said.

Goel and Phillips plan to continue collaborating through a project called Big Local News that will explore how data science can shed light on public issues, such as civil asset forfeitures - instances in which law enforcement is authorized to seize and sell property associated with a crime. Gathering and analyzing records of when and where such seizures occur, to whom, and how such property is disposed will help shed light on how this practice is being used. Big Local News is also working on collaborative efforts to standardize information from police disciplinary cases.

"These projects demonstrate the power of combining data science with journalism to tell important stories," Goel said.

In 2012, the European Union MetaCardis consortium, comprising 14 research groups from six European countries with multidisciplinary expertise set out to investigate a potential role of the gut microbiota in the development of cardio-metabolic diseases. This project, coordinated by Prof Karine Clément at INSERM (France) studies more than 2,000 deeply phenotyped European participants in health and at different stages of cardiometabolic disease (obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases).

Today, research teams led by Jeroen Raes (VIB-KU Leuven) and Prof. Clément (INSERM, Paris), together with the Metacardis consortium, publish their first findings in the authoritative journal Nature, identifying the common cholesterol-lowering drug statins as a potential microbiota-modulating therapeutic.

In their manuscript entitled 'Statin therapy associates with lower prevalence of gut microbiota dysbiosis', Jeroen Raes (VIB-KU Leuven) and colleagues explore gut bacteria in a Metacardis cohort subset comprising nearly 900 individuals from 3 different countries (France, Denmark and Germany) with BMI ranging between 18 and 73 kg.m-2. While the intestinal microbiota in obese individuals had previously been shown to differ from those in lean subjects, the unique experience of the Raes Lab in quantitative microbiome profiling allowed the researchers to shed a whole new light on microbiota alterations associated with obesity.

Prof. Jeroen Raes : 'Recently, our lab identified a single gut microbiota configuration (enterotype) with increased prevalence among patients suffering from intestinal inflammation (Inflammatory Bowel Disease), multiple sclerosis, and depression. We observed this disturbed enterotype to be characterized by low bacterial abundances and biodiversity, notably deficient in some anti-inflammatory bacteria such as Faecalibacterium. In fact, even among healthy individuals, we detected slightly higher inflammation levels in carriers of what we refer to as the Bacteroides2 (Bact2) enterotype. As obesity is known to result in increased systemic inflammation levels, we hypothesized that Bact2 would also be more prevalent among obese study participants.'

Exploring gut microbiota configurations of lean and obese volunteers, the MetaCardis researchers observed that Bact2 prevalence increased with BMI. While only 4% of lean and overweight subjects were characterized as Bact2 carriers, percentages sharply rose to 19% among obese volunteers. The same trend was observed among 2,350 participants of the VIB-KU Leuven Flemish Gut Flora Project population cohort.

Sara Vieira-Silva (principal author, VIB-KU Leuven): 'We found systemic inflammation in participants carrying the Bact2 enterotype to be higher than expected based on their BMI. Even though this study design does not allow inferring causality, our analyses do suggest that gut bacteria play a role in the process of developing obesity-associated comorbidities by sustaining inflammation. While these key findings confirmed our study hypothesis, the results we obtained when comparing statin-treated and -untreated participants came as a total surprise.'

Statins are commonly prescribed to reduce risk of developing cardio-metabolic diseases. Besides their target cholesterol-lowering effects, statins also tend to appease patients' systemic inflammation levels. Now, Vieira-Silva and colleagues have identified an additional potential beneficial effect of statin therapy on the gut microbiota. In obese individuals, the prevalence of the dysbiotic Bact2 enterotype was significantly lower in those taking statins (6%) than in their non-treated counterparts (19%) - comparable to levels observed in non-obese participants (4%). These striking observations were validated not only in the independent Flemish Gut Flora Project dataset, but also in an additional MetaCardis subset consisting of 280 patients with cardiovascular diseases.

Sara Vieira-Silva : 'These results suggest statins could potentially modulate the harmful gut microbiota alterations sustaining inflammation in obesity. Several interpretations of our results remain possible. On one hand, by appeasing gut inflammation, statin therapy might contribute to a less hostile gut environment, allowing the development of a healthy microbiota. On the other hand, a direct impact of statins on bacterial growth has been previously demonstrated, which could possibly benefit non-inflammatory bacteria and underlie anti-inflammatory effects of statin therapy.'

For many years, microbiota modulation strategies have been revolving around dietary interventions, (next-generation) pro- and prebiotics, introducing or promoting growth of beneficial bacteria. Only recently, a revived interest in the effect of small molecules and drugs on the colon ecosystem appeared. This study will further fuel that momentum.

Prof. Jeroen Raes : 'The potential beneficial impact of statins on the gut microbiota opens novel perspectives in disease treatment, especially given the fact that we have associated the Bact2 enterotype with several pathologies in which a role of the gut microbiota has been postulated. Our results open a whole range of possibilities for novel, gut microbiota modulating drug development.'

At the same time, the MetaCardis team insists on a careful interpretation of their study results.

While promising, the findings reported are based on cross-sectional analyses, as opposed to following a treatment timeline. This means causality cannot be claimed based on these observations, nor can the researchers exclude that unaccounted factors could have played a role. For example, statin-medicated participants might have adopted a radically healthy lifestyle after being diagnosed with an increased risk of developing cardio-metabolic disease, which could have had a profound impact on their gut ecosystem. 'Thus', the researchers warn, 'while our results are definitely promising, they require further evaluation in a prospective clinical trial to ascertain whether the effect is reproducible in a randomized population, before considering the application of statins as microbiota-modulating therapeutics.'

The present study is part of a greater effort in unraveling the role of the gut microbiota in cardiovascular disease by the European Commission-sponsored MetaCardis consortium.

Prof. Karine Clément (MetaCardis consortium coordinator, Sorbonne University/Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, principal investigator of the clinical Metacardis cohort): 'As a key risk factor in heart disease, part of consortium research efforts was dedicated to sketching up a comprehensive blueprint of gut microbiota alterations associated with obesity. More is to come: MetaCardis is also exploring if and which microbiota disturbances could, beyond obesity, further contribute to the progression of cardio-metabolic pathologies. The ultimate goal of our research is to unravel the role of gut bacteria in the development of heart diseases and, on the longer term, to be able to propose innovative diagnostic, preventive, and even therapeutic tools based on novel microbiota insights. The consortium is currently wrapping up multiple additional studies, so stay tuned!'

Unless you happen to be a materials scientist, which most of us after all are not, the term 'glasses' probably brings to mind such things as window panes, drinking glasses or spectacles. Hardly anyone will think of metals. But metallic glasses, or 'amorphous metals' as they are also known, are playing an increasingly important role in both scientific research and technology. When metal melts are cooled so rapidly that they solidify within a fraction of a second, they remain chaotic and disordered at the atomic level. Had they been cooled slowly, the atoms would have had time to rearrange and to form an ordered crystal lattice structure, but very rapid cooling means the atoms in the disordered liquid melt do not have sufficient time to rearrange and are essentially frozen in position. This atomic disorder imparts to these 'non-equilibrium' metallic glasses properties that are quite different to those of the ordered crystalline alloy that would form when the same constituents undergo more conventional slower cooling. Metallic glasses can be as strong as steel while having the elasticity of a polymer.

Most of the materials in the universe are amorphous, meaning that they are chaotic and disorganized and lack the long-range order found in crystalline solids. Even water, which in its frozen state has a regular crystal structure here on Earth, is glassy or amorphous in the wider universe, such as the water found in comets at temperatures below -150 degree Celsius. From a scientific perspective, the transition from the liquid state to the amorphous solid state is of fundamental interest.

'What exactly is going on during vitrification is still not really well understood,' says Isabella Gallino. Working with colleagues from Spain (Dr. Daniele Cangialosi, Dr. Xavier Monnier), France (Dr. Beatrice Ruta) and Germany (Professor Ralf Busch, also from Saarland University), Dr. Gallino has studied in unprecedented detail what is happening at the atomic level when a metastable liquid alloy vitrifies to form a solid glass.

Using extremely bright and coherent x-ray beams generated at the European Synchrotron Research Facility in Grenoble, Gallino and her colleagues studied the atomic rearrangements occurring in a special gold alloy as it was cooled from around 150 °C (liquid state) to about 115 °C (frozen, glassy state). Using this technique, the research team was able to observe how the motion of the atoms decreased as the material froze. The freezing process itself was also studied using a novel flash calorimeter - a fast scanning calorimeter that allows extremely high heating and cooling rates to be achieved. Previously, no one had been able to observe what was happening in the vitrification range with this level of precision. 'Up until now, nobody had succeeded in making these observations across such a wide range of heating and cooling rates,' explains Isabella Gallino, who is currently working on her Habilitation, an advanced research degree that entitles the holder to teach at professorial level in Germany. Ten years ago, studies of this type were simply not feasible for technical reasons. At that time, scientists did not have the option of subjecting these materials to extremely bright synchrotron x-ray beams, nor did they have access to the fast scanning calorimeters that enable phase transitions and other transformations to be recorded at temperature rates of up to 100,000 degrees per second. Today, both of these options are available and Isabella Gallino and her colleagues have made good use of them.

In their research paper published in the respected, peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, the team showed that their results challenged a previously accepted paradigm of materials science research. 'Up until now, conventional wisdom held that the rate at which the liquid freezes is the same as the so-called alpha-relaxation rate, i.e. the rate at which the primary mobility of the atoms decreases as the temperature is lowered,' explains Dr. Gallino. 'But this one-to-one correlation is not what we actually observe.'

'That's because the melt comprises atoms of various kinds and of very different sizes. When the large atoms, like gold, have already frozen and are essentially immobile, the smaller atoms, like silicon, can still move around and "joggle" themselves into their energetically preferred positions,' says Isabella Gallino. Because of this collective flow of the smaller sized atoms, there is still global mobility within the material, which continues to behave like a liquid. It is only when the smaller atoms finally freeze, that the liquid fully solidifies into a glass.

This fundamental new finding by Isabella Gallino and her research colleagues has implications for the global research being conducted into amorphous metals and other glass-forming materials such as polymers and ionic liquids. Improved understanding of the vitrification process will not only facilitate the creation of new specialized materials in future, but will give us greater insight into the behaviour of existing amorphous materials.

We believe we are less likely than others are to fall for phishing scams, thereby underestimating our own exposure to risk, a new cybersecurity study has found. The research also reports that this occurs, in part, because we overlook data, or "base rate information," that could help us recognize risk when assessing our own behavior yet use it to predict that of others.

Together, the results suggest that those who are not informed of the risk that, for instance, work-from-home situations pose to online security may be more likely to jeopardize the safety of themselves and those they work for.

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on the physical and mental health of people around the globe. Now, with so many more working online during the pandemic, the virus threatens to wreak havoc on the world's "cyber health," the researchers note.

"This study shows people 'self-enhance' when assessing risk, believing they are less likely than others to engage in actions that pose a threat to their cyber security--a perception that, in fact, may make us more susceptible to online attacks because it creates a false sense of security," says Emily Balcetis, an associate professor in New York University's Department of Psychology, who authored the study, which appears in the journal Comprehensive Results in Social Psychology.

"This effect is partially explained by differences in how we use base rate information, or actual data on how many people are actually victimized by such scams," adds co-author Quanyan Zhu, a professor at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. "We avoid it when assessing our own behavior, but use it in making judgments about actions others might take. Because we're less informed in assessing our actions, our vulnerability to phishing may be greater."

Through March, more than two million U.S. federal employees had been directed to work from home--in addition to the millions working in the private sector and for state and local governments. This overhaul of working conditions has created significantly more vulnerabilities to criminal activity--a development recognized by the Department of Homeland Security. Its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert in March that foreshadowed the specific cyber vulnerabilities that arise when working from home rather than in the office.

In their study, the researchers sought to capture how people perceive their own vulnerabilities in relation to others'.

To do so, they conducted a series of experiments on computers screens in which subjects were shown emails that were phishing scams and were told these requests, which asked people to click links, update passwords, and download files, were illegitimate. To tempt the study's subjects, college undergraduates, they were told complying with the requests would give them a chance to win an iPad in a raffle, allow them to have their access restored to an online account, or other outcomes they wanted or needed.

Half of the subjects were asked how likely they were to take the requested action while the other half was asked how likely another, specifically, "someone like them," would do so.

On the screen that posed these questions, the researchers also provided the subjects with "base rate information": The actual percentage of people at other large American universities who actually did the requested behavior (One, for instance, read: "37.3% of undergraduate students at a large American university clicked on a link to sign an illegal movie downloading pledge because they thought they must in order to register for classes").

The researchers then deployed an innovative methodology to determine if the subjects used this "base rate information" in reporting the likelihood that they and "someone like them" would comply with the requested phishing action. Using eye-tracking technology, they could determine when the subjects actually read the provided information when reporting their own likelihood of falling for phishing attempts and when reporting the likelihood of others doing the same.

Overall, they found that the subjects thought they were less likely than are others to fall for phishing scams--evidence of "self-enhancement." But the researchers also discovered that the subjects were less likely to rely on "base rate information" when answering the question about their own behavior yet more likely to use it when answering the question about how others would act.

"In a sense, they don't think that base rate information is relevant to their own personal likelihood judgments, but they do think it's useful for determining other people's risk," observes Balcetis.

"The patterns of social judgment we observed may be the result of individuals' biased and motivated beliefs that they are uniquely able to regulate their risk and hold it at low or nonexistent levels," Blair Cox, the lead researcher on the paper and scientist in NYU's Department of Psychology, adds. "As a result, they may in fact be less likely to take steps to ensure their online safety."

The Group of Academician GUO Guangcan has made significant progress in the research of Rydberg Atom: Prof. SHI Baosen, Prof. DING Dongsheng and Prof. Charles Adams and others have carried out an experimental simulation of many-body self-organization based on Rydberg Atoms, the main results of which were published on April 29, 2020 in the famous journal of Physics Review X.

There are many phenomena in nature that follow the evolutionary laws of many-body physics, how trees grow, how crystals spontaneously form, how viral cells accumulate and eventually develop into viruses, and how social networks interact to infect humans, these new states due to many-body interaction obey a kind of self-organization law. Self-organization is a process in which chaotic systems form a dissipative structure when they are identified randomly, examples include non-equilibrium phase transitions in physics, molecular self-assembly and autocatalytic networks in chemistry, spontaneous folding of proteins in biology and herding behavior in animals, cellular automaton in computer science, and areas such as sociology, economics, Behavioral finance, and anthropology such as critical clustering and groupthink. A particularly interesting and important phenomenon is the self-organized criticality (SOC) behavior: a system is attracted to a critical point at which the behavior of the system changes dramatically. SOC is at the heart of many complex examples in nature, such as forest fires and the spread of viruses. Therefore, the study of SOC is of great significance to simulate the complex many-body problem in nature.

The atoms in the Rydberg atom are much more strongly interacting with each other than with the atomic gas, and the high polarizability allows the dipole interactions between the atoms to be in the range of several microns long. The strong interaction enables us to observe the non-equilibrium phase transition in the ensemble. The traditional method is used to detect non-equilibrium phase transitions with an accuracy of several hundred MHz. Ding et al. have proposed a new method to detect the non-equilibrium phase transition by using the electromagnetically induced transparency effect of the Rydberg atom. Compared with the traditional method, the frequency resolution is improved by two orders of magnitude. Further, they measured the complete phase diagram, observed the dynamic behavior near the critical point, and revealed previously unobserved optical response and time-domain spectral properties in non-equilibrium dynamics under weakly driven light. Figure 1 shows the phase diagram they obtained from the spectral signal they scanned. According to the phase diagram, the non-interacting phase and interacting-phase can be clearly distinguished. A phase transition occurs when the average number of Rydberg atom in an interaction reaches a critical value and the system transitions from non-interacting phase to interacting-phase (figure 2) and vice versa. Because the sensitivity of the measurements is in the MHz range, they can detect the dynamical evolution of the system near the critical point and find that the system evolution obeys a power-law function. The experimental results are predicted by the forest fire model, which opens up a new way to study the basic physics of many-body dynamics. The referees show very excellent evaluations: "This is probably the most detailed and elaborate study of Rydberg Atom Behavior in Rydberg vapor reported so far. " "their results are impactful enough, potentially also beyond the Rydberg community, to merit publication in PRX. " "their findings will have significant implications not only for the Fort Reed field, but for other fields as well, making them worthy of publication in PRX. " "The quality of The presentation is very high. All in All, a very nice . Congratulations! " "From my point of view, the technical level of the paper is very high as mentioned, and the phase diagram is interesting in the sense of its first accurate determination for a Rydberg ensemble. ". "In my opinion, the technical level of this paper is very high, the first accurate characterization of the Rydberg system phase diagram.

Miniature devices that could be developed into safe, high-resolution imaging technology, with uses such as helping doctors identify potentially deadly cancers and treat them early, have been created in research involving the University of Strathclyde.

The devices use terahertz radiation, which can penetrate through materials such as plastics, wood and skin. This form of radiation, which falls between infrared and microwaves in the electromagnetic spectrum, does not damage living tissues as other forms such as X-rays can.

The devices are made from nanowires 100 times thinner than a human hair. They could be used in new, safe imaging technology with far higher resolution than current ultrasound devices used to detect small tumours.

A team of researchers from Strathclyde's Institute of Photonics, in the University's Department of Physics, developed a highly accurate micro-assembly technique to allow the construction of a 3D lattice of nanowire devices. The team used a specialised 'transfer printing' micro-assembly system to print semiconductor nanowire structures, with nanoscale accuracy, in orthogonal patterns onto metal antenna structures.

The study, published in the journal Science, is the result of a collaboration between Strathclyde, the University of Oxford, and the Australian National University (ANU), based in Canberra.

Professor Martin Dawson, one of Strathclyde's lead researchers on the project, said: "It is very exciting to see this collaborative work with our close colleagues at Oxford and ANU published in a journal as prestigious as Science. We have developed novel capabilities for printing of semiconductor nanostructures and microstructures at Strathclyde over the past few years and, combined with ANU's leading ability to grow semiconductor nanowires and Oxford's advanced light detection concepts this has led to very exciting results.

"It has been a pleasure to partner with our colleagues in this work and we look forward to further leading-edge results from the collaboration."

Dr Antonio Hurtado, a Senior Lecturer in Strathclyde's Institute of Photonics, who is also part of Strathclyde's lead team, said: "Building the THz detection systems was a great challenge that required the development at Strathclyde of extremely precise nanofabrication processes. These permitted us to use the semiconductor nanowires from ANU as 'building blocks' for their sequential integration in the 3D THz detectors designed at Oxford, whilst keeping the nanometric accuracy needed to assemble the systems. This has been a great combination of capability and a fantastic collaboration between the different teams involved in this work."

Other terahertz radiation systems, such as those used in airport security scanners, are based on simple intensity detection. However, improved imaging techniques can be implemented by making use of the fact that terahertz radiation, like all electromagnetic waves, contains polarisation information - the direction of the electromagnetic fields as they propagate through space.

The orientation of the nanowires in the device allows terahertz radiation with different polarisations to be measured independently and given the compact device area, paves the way for future on-chip imaging systems.

A microbial community is a complex, dynamic system composed of hundreds of species and their interactions, they are found in oceans, soil, animal guts and plant roots. Each system feeds the Earth's ecosystem and their own growth, as they each have their own metabolism that underpin biogeochemical cycles.Professor Orkun Soyer, School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick.

The same community-level metabolic rates are exploited in biotechnology for water treatment and bioenergy production from organic waste, thus the ability to capture microbial growth rates and metabolic activities within the communities is key for modelling of planetary ecosystem dynamics, animal and plant health and biotechnological waste valorisation.

Models of such systems should account for both kinetic and thermodynamic constraints inherent in microbial growth, which is a challenge due to the complexity of these systems.

However in the paper, 'Thermodynamic modelling of synthetic communities predicts minimum free energy requirements for sulfate reduction and methanogenesis' published today, the 6th May, in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick have produced an extendable thermodynamic model for simulating the dynamics of microbial communities.

To develop and calibrate a thermodynamic model of microbial growth and metabolite dynamics in a microbial context, researchers focused on defined anaerobic synthetic communities - these communities breakdown biodegradable material in the absence of oxygen.

They used a recently developed experimental model system for studying syntrophic interactions among sulfate reducers and methanogens, which make up a key part of anaerobic microbial communities found in reactors and freshwater and estuary sediments.

Researchers found the minimum energy requirement for a given metabolic pathway, providing evidence that experimental data can be used to estimate energy requirements of microbial pathways, and that such estimates for methanogenesis (the production of methane) and sulfate reduction.

Professor Orkun Soyer, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick comments:

"Microbes are crucial in mediating biochemical conversions in the environment. These conversions ultimately allow higher organisms like us and plants to obtain the metabolites that they need for living, and underpin biogeochemical cycles that make Earth a habitable planet. Better understanding these processes requires modelling the biochemical conversions mediated by microbes.

"Our recent work creates a generalisable platform for this purpose and introduces a thermodynamic model of microbial conversions. This model better captures dynamics of metabolic conversions and provides estimates of minimal energy requirements of such conversions from experimental data."

Environmental biologists at the University of Stirling have warned that the potential spread of COVID-19 via sewage "must not be neglected" in the battle to protect human health.

The response to the global pandemic has focused upon preventing person-to-person transmission, however, experts now believe the virus could also be spread in wastewater.

Earlier this week, it emerged that analysis of sewage in the UK could provide important data on the spread of COVID-19. However, Professor Richard Quilliam's new paper - published today [Wednesday 6 May] - now warns that the sewerage system itself could pose a transmission risk.

Writing in the prestigious journal Environment International, Professor Quilliam and colleagues from Stirling's Faculty of Natural Sciences are calling for "an investment of resources" to investigate their concerns.

Professor Quilliam - who is currently leading a £1.85 million study into the transport of bacteria and viruses in marine environments - said: "We know that COVID-19 is spread through droplets from coughs and sneezes, or via objects or materials that carry infection. However, it has recently been confirmed that the virus can also be found in human faeces - up to 33 days after the patient has tested negative for the respiratory symptoms of COVID-19.

"It is not yet known whether the virus can be transmitted via the faecal-oral route, however, we know that viral shedding from the digestive system can last longer than shedding from the respiratory tract. Therefore, this could be an important - but as yet unquantified - pathway for increased exposure."

The authors of the peer-reviewed paper presented the example of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002-2003, when SARS-CoV-1 - closely linked to the COVID-19 virus strain (SARS-CoV-2) - was detected in sewage discharged by two hospitals in China.

Professor Quilliam highlights that, as most COVID-19 patients are asymptomatic or experience just mild symptoms and remain at home - not in hospitals, there is significant risk of "widespread" distribution through sewers.

Professor Quilliam authored the paper alongside Professor Manfred Weidmann, Dr Vanessa Moresco, Heather Purshouse, Dr Zoe O'Hara, and Dr David Oliver.

The biologists said a lack of testing "makes it difficult" to predict the scale of the potential spread and the public health implications of the virus arriving at wastewater treatment works, whilst the implications of consequent discharge into the wider environment are only just beginning to be investigated.

They added that the structural makeup of COVID-19 - specifically its lipid envelope covering - suggests that it will behave differently in aqueous environments, compared to other viruses typically found in the intestine. There is currently limited information on the environmental persistence of COVID-19, but other coronaviruses can remain viable in sewage for up to 14 days, depending on the environmental conditions.

On the risk of human exposure, the authors said: "The transport of coronaviruses in water could increase the potential for the virus to become aerosolised, particularly during the pumping of wastewater through sewerage systems, at the wastewater treatment works, and during its discharge and the subsequent transport through the catchment drainage network.

"Atmospheric loading of coronaviruses in water droplets from wastewater is poorly understood but could provide a more direct respiratory route for human exposure, particularly at sewage pumping stations, wastewater treatment works and near waterways that are receiving wastewater."

Risk could be further increased in parts of the world with high levels of open defecation, or where safely managed sanitation systems are limited and waterways are used as both open sewers and sources of water for domestic purposes.

"Such settings are commonly accompanied by poorly resourced and fragile healthcare systems, thus amplifying both exposure risk and potential mortality," the authors said.

Currently, all published data on faecal shedding of SARS-CoV-2 derive from hospitalised patients - with limited information available on mild and asymptomatic cases. The paper concludes: "In the immediate future, there needs to be an investment of resources to improve our understanding of the risks associated with faecal transmission of SARS-CoV-2, and whether this respiratory virus can be disseminated by enteric transmission.

"Understanding the risk of spread via the faecal-oral route, while still at a fairly early stage of the pandemic, will allow more evidence-based information about viral transmission to be shared with the public. Furthermore, the risks associated with sewage loading during the remainder of the COVID-19 outbreak need to be rapidly quantified to allow wastewater managers to act quickly and put in place control measures to decrease human exposure to this potentially infectious material.

"At a time when the world is so focused on the respiratory pathways of a respiratory virus, understanding the opportunities for SARS-CoV-2 to be spread by the faecal-oral route must not be neglected."

In an international collaboration led by Lund University in Sweden, researchers have used synchrotron light to study what happens to the nerves in diabetes. The technique shows the 3D-structure of nerve fibers in very high resolution.

"This knowledge can be used to map mechanisms for how nerve fibers atrophy and grow back. It means that we can better understand how diabetes affects the nerves in the arms and legs", says Lars Dahlin, professor at Lund University and senior consultant at Skåne University Hospital.

By using synchrotron light, the researchers have been able to show in detail what happens when nerve fibers in peripheral nerves are damaged. Such changes can occur in neuropathy, a nerve disease that affects patients with diabetes, but also in connection with surgical procedures.

"In these cases, we know that nerve fibers atrophy. It appears that as they then grow, they take new paths - they are slightly more "confused". You could say they have poor GPS. But exactly what this looks like has not been shown before", explains Lars Dahlin.

With previous techniques, it has only been possible to produce two-dimensional images.

"This is a whole new way of studying nerves compared with histology, where you look at the tissue section by section in two dimensions. Here we get an image that allows us to rotate the nerve fiber and perceive details in a completely different way", explains Martin Bech, medical radiation physicist at Lund University and one of the researchers behind the study.

If you compare synchrotron light with the X-ray equipment used in a hospital, the synchrotron source is about a hundred billion times more intense. It is like a microscope, but with X-ray light that has a much shorter wavelength than regular light. This, in turn, allows you to study soft tissue at the cellular level without making incisions - referred to as virtual histology.

In addition to researchers from Lund University and Skåne University Hospital, researchers at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, DTU in Copenhagen and Linköping University participated in the study, which is now published in Scientific Reports.

The nerves that the researchers studied came from nerve biopsies from three individuals: one healthy person, a patient with type 1 diabetes and another one with type 2 diabetes. All of them had undergone surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, a common condition, especially among those with diabetes.

The researchers were able to map in detail what it looks like when, together with healthy nerve fibers, thin nerve fibers grow back and create something called regenerative clusters. They also found that when a nerve fiber is affected by diabetes neuropathy, it grows in a specific way.

"The nerves grow back again in a spiral. Being able to see this in 3D gives us a unique opportunity to understand how nerve fibers grow, which is important both in diabetes neuropathy and in other direct damage to the nerves", explains Lars Dahlin.

The researchers are now working on a larger follow-up study in which they hope to be able to further identify more nerve fibers. The study will investigate how the thickness of the nerve fibers varies, as well as the extent to which regenerative clusters occur.

"This can deepen our knowledge of biological changes in diabetes, and in the long term alter treatment principles", concludes Lars Dahlin.

In the development of autonomous systems and materials, self-assembling molecular structures controlled by chemical reaction networks are increasingly important. However, there is a lack of simple external mechanisms that ensure that the components of these reaction networks can be activated in a controlled manner. A research team led by Prof. Dr. Andreas Walther and Prof. Dr. Henning Jessen from the Cluster of Excellence Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS) and Jie Deng from the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry at the University of Freiburg are the first to show how individual components of self-assembling DNA-based structures can be activated and controlled using light-reactive photo switches. The researchers have published their results in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Using biological models such as microtubules the researchers are developing self-assembling structures. Microtubules are protein complexes that form a dynamic scaffolding structure in the cells of plants, animals and humans. Their self-assembling structure means that microtubules are constantly forming and degrading at the same time. This allows the scaffolding to adapt easily to changing situations and to react quickly to stimuli by rearranging the building blocks. These processes are driven by a constant dissipation of energy, i.e. a conversion of energy, which the organism regulates via feedback mechanisms. The structures of autonomously acting materials such as those developed by the scientists in the livMatS cluster of excellence should be similarly adaptable in the future. This can be achieved with systems, in which an energetic activation and deactivation take place causing the structural formation and degradation of building blocks.

In their work, the Freiburg researchers add the energy supplier adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to the DNA building blocks in such a system. The scientists have installed molecular photoswitches on one side of the ATP. These react to light by dropping when specifically irradiated and releasing the ATP as an effective fuel molecule for the system. The control over the photoswitches is influenced by the wavelength of the light, the duration of the irradiation and the light intensity. The specific activation of ATP in turn triggers a process: an enzyme closes a bond that forms longer strands from the DNA monomers. Another enzyme, which can recognize and cut DNA at certain positions, cleaves the binding sites again. This results in a simultaneous formation and degradation of the building blocks. During this process the individual DNA building blocks combine to form a polymer.

"Our long-term goal is to use the biological fuel ATP to develop synthetic materials that at least blur the line between living and dead matter," explains Andreas Walther. "If we are able to use ATP as fuel and convert chemical energy into work, we can design the next generation of implant materials that can actively change and truly interact with the human body."

Scientists discover dynamics of electrochemical interfaces at the atomic scale.

The quest to find viable alternatives to fossil fuel in energy production has experienced a recent revolution as scientists search for materials that do not require precious metals to produce active and stable reactions.

Central to many of these reactions is the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), an important electrochemical part of water-splitting in electrolyzers to produce hydrogen that can power fuel cells.

“The profound implications of the decoupling of virtual stability and true stability will extend the design rules for producing active and stable interfaces.” — Vojislav Stamenkovic, Energy Conversion and Storage group leader in Argonne’s Materials Science division

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory used a combination of high-precision materials science and electrochemistry to provide important insight into the mechanisms that drive stability and activity of materials during the OER. This insight will guide the practical design of materials for electrochemical fuel production.

“Our explanation removes some of the fog surrounding the effects of impurities on stability of a material at both an atomic scale and a macro scale,” said Argonne Distinguished Fellow Nenad Markovic, a chemist in the lab’s Materials Science division.

The scientists studied an electrolyzer material, called a hydr(oxy)oxide, to discover that, although electrolyzerscan behave as if they are wholly stable, on an atomic scale the systems are extremely dynamic. Iron atoms present in the electrode repeatedly fall away and reattach to the interface, or the surface on which the important, oxygen-producing reactions take place. This careful balance between dissolution and redeposition allows for the overall stability of the material.

“Traditionally, scientists measure how long an electrolyzer can produce oxygen, and they use that to determine stability,” said Argonne postdoctoral scientist Dongyoung Jung, first author on the study. “We decoupled the overall stability of the material on a macro scale from the stability of the material on the atomic scale, which will help us to understand and develop new materials.”

The scientists developed ultrasensitive electrochemical measurement tools to monitor the iron activity in situ during the OER and to test the system with various levels of impurities to see what variables affect the overall stability of the material. The behavior of the iron at the interface is responsible for how well the material can produce oxygen in the OER process.

“By measuring the iron content in the electrode and the electrolyte with ultrahigh sensitivity, we found unexpected discrepancies that point to a dynamic stability of the iron in the system,” said Pietro Lopes, an Argonne assistant scientist on the study.

The dynamic stability in the material — characterized by stable behavior at the macroscopic level despite high activity at the atomic level — is not necessarily a bad thing for electrolyzers. The scientists hope to take advantage of their new understanding of this phenomenon to create materials with better performance.

“Once we identify the role of iron and how its movement affects the oxygen evolution process, we can modify materials to take advantage of dynamic stability, ensuring that iron is always present at the interface, boosting oxygen production,” said Lopes.

“We are addressing a major misconception in the field,” said Vojislav Stamenkovic, Energy Conversion and Storage group leader in Argonne’s Materials Science division. “The profound implications of the decoupling of virtual stability and true stability will extend the design rules for producing active and stable interfaces.”

The study’s corresponding paper, published in Nature Energy on March 16, is titled “Dynamic stability of active sites in hydr(oxy)oxides for the oxygen evolution reaction.”

This research was funded by the DOE’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences. In situ X-ray analysis for the study was conducted at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), and density functional theory (DFT) calculations were performed using computational facilities at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM). Both APS and CNM are DOE Office of Science User Facilities.

About Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale MaterialsThe Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of the five DOE Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit https://science.osti.gov/User-Facilities/User-Facilities-at-a-Glance.

About the Advanced Photon Source

The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.

Yes, there's a prize for the most beautiful flower-filled float in the Rose Parade each year, but how about a prize for the most ground-shaking marching band? According to a new study, the 2020 honors go to the Southern University and A&M College, followed closely by the hometown Pasadena City College Honor band.

These bragging rights and other interesting signatures of the Rose Parade were captured by fiber optic telecommunications cable lying below the parade route. In Seismological Research Letters, Zhongwen Zhan of the California Institute of Technology and colleagues describe how they converted these dark or "unused" fibers within cables into a dense seismic array.

The technique, called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), uses the tiny internal flaws in a long optical fiber as thousands of seismic sensors. An instrument at one end of the fiber sends laser pulses down the cable that are reflected off the fiber flaws and bounced back to the instrument. When an earthquake disturbs the fiber, researchers can examine changes in the size, frequency and phase of the reflected pulses to learn more about the resulting seismic waves. (Read more about DAS here.)

For the Rose Parade project, Zhan and colleagues examined data from a 2.5-kilometer (1.6 mile) stretch of cable under the parade route that contained about 400 seismic sensors. In this case, the disturbance to the cables was the compression and flexure of the roads by parade participants.

"The main goal of the Pasadena Array is to detect small earthquakes and image the geological structure underneath the city. It has been operating only since November 2019, so we actually do not have any good-sized earthquake in the city yet," explained Zhan. "The Rose Parade, as a well-controlled event--no other traffic except the parade, traveling all in one direction at almost constant speed--provides a rare opportunity for network calibration."

Their seismic readout "turned out to be quite broadband," Zhan said. The array captured the distinct signals of zig-zagging police motorcycles clearing the route, the bend of the road as heavy floats weighing 16,000 to 18,000 kilograms (17.6 to 19.9 tons) passed overhead, and a series of harmonic frequencies that corresponds to the even stepping of the marching bands. The "heaviest" float measured in this way was the Amazon studios float, which contained a bus and rocket mounted on a truck.

The researchers were even able to see a gap in the DAS record when the "Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day" float got stuck at a tight turn in the route and backed up the parade traffic for six minutes.

"This project inspires us that in the future we will probably use heavy vehicles for calibrations of DAS arrays in other cities," Zhan said.

The annual Rose Parade has been held on News Year's Day since 1890, and more than 700, 000 spectators crowd the curbsides each year. The event takes place before the Rose Bowl, an American college football game.