Tech

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Data from a massive search for cosmic radio emission released Feb 14. by the Breakthrough Listen Initiative--the most comprehensive survey yet of radio emissions from the Milky Way--has allowed astronomers to look for technological signatures of extraterrestrial civilizations that might be looking for us.

Breakthrough Listen--based at the University of California, Berkeley--announced the public release of the data as well as research investigating these "technosignatures" at a media briefing Feb. 14 in Seattle, Washington, as part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The new research, led by Penn State graduate student Sofia Sheikh, is inspired by a technique Earth-bound astronomers use to identify and study planets outside of our solar system--exoplanets--called transit photometry. The technique relies on sensitive equipment like NASA's Kepler space telescope to detect the infinitesimal dip in a star's light as orbiting planets pass in front of the star from our line of sight. In this new search for radio emissions, the astronomers looked for radio emissions from 20 nearby stars that are aligned with the plane of Earth's orbit such that an alien species around those stars could see Earth pass in front of the Sun with such a telescope of their own.

The team used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to look for radio signals from potential exoplanets in the so-called C-band, radio waves with a frequency between 4 and 8 gigahertz. The project was conceived by Sheikh, who started the work as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and who also led the data analysis. She checked billions of frequencies for strong radio signals using one of the largest radio receivers in the world, the Green Bank Telescope.

"This region has been talked about before, but there has never been a targeted search of this region of the sky," Sheikh said. "If other civilizations have telescopes like ours, they would know that the Solar System has planets from their transits, and even know that Earth has life. That is how we have discovered thousands of other exoplanets, so it kind of makes sense to extrapolate and say that that might be how other intelligent species find planets as well. And if they know we're here, they might be signaling us."

While Sheikh and her team found no technosignatures of civilization, the analysis and other detailed studies the Breakthrough Listen group has conducted are gradually putting limits on the location and capabilities of advanced civilizations that may exist in our galaxy.

"We didn't find any aliens, but we are setting very rigorous limits on the presence of a technologically capable species, with data for the first time in the part of the radio spectrum between 4 and 8 gigahertz," said Breakthrough Listen principal investigator Andrew Siemion, who presented the media briefing. "These results put another rung on the ladder for the next person who comes along and wants to improve on the experiment."

Sheikh noted that her mentor, Penn State Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Jason Wright, estimated that if the world's oceans represented every place and wavelength we could search for intelligent signals, we have, to date, explored only a hot tub's worth of it.

In this and other SETI searches, Siemion said, Breakthrough Listen looks for electromagnetic radiation that is consistent with a signal that we know technology produces or some anticipated signal that technology could produce, and that is inconsistent with the background noise from natural astrophysical events. This also requires eliminating signals from cellphones, satellites, GPS, internet, Wi-Fi, and myriad other human sources.

In Sheikh's case, she pointed the Green Bank Telescope at each star for five minutes, pointed away for another five minutes, and repeated the process two more times. She then threw out any signal that didn't disappear when the telescope pointed away from the star. Ultimately, she whittled an initial million radio spikes down to a couple hundred, most of which she was able to eliminate as Earth-based human interference. The last four unexplained signals turned out to be from passing satellites.

"My search was sensitive enough to see a transmitter basically the same as the strongest transmitters we have on Earth, because the targets were nearby," Sheikh said. "So we know that there isn't anything as strong as our strongest radars beaming something at us. Even though this is a very small project, we are starting to get at new frequencies and new areas of the sky."

Public release of data

Breakthrough Listen released nearly 2 petabytes of data, about half of which comes from the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia, and half from the Green Bank Observatory. This marks the second significant release of data from the four-year old search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). A petabyte of radio and optical telescope data was also released last June, which, at the time, was the largest release of SETI data in the history of the field. With these releases, Breakthrough Listen is inviting the public to search the data for signals from intelligent civilizations.

"Since Breakthrough Listen's initial data release last year, we have doubled what is available to the public," said Breakthrough Listen's lead system administrator Matt Lebofsky. "It is our hope that these data sets will reveal something new and interesting, be it other intelligent life in the universe or an as-yet-undiscovered natural astronomical phenomenon."

Every cell in our body has a computer-like control system that sends biological signals through thousands of circuits to monitor the cell's needs and regulate its responses.

But when diseases such as cancer arise, these regulatory circuits often go awry, resulting in unnatural signals and responses. The ability to accurately detect these abnormal disease signals would be a potential avenue for more precise treatments.

Now, Stanford researchers have devised a biological tool that can not only detect such faulty genetic circuits but also "debug" them - like running a patch cord around a computer hardware glitch - to facilitate the elimination of cancer cells, for instance.

In an article in the journal Molecular Cell, Stanley Qi and his team describe how they built their sense-and-respond system by modifying the CRISPR-Cas gene-editing tool, which works like a molecular switch to repair faulty genes. Qi is an assistant professor of bioengineering and of chemical and systems biology.

Qi had previously developed Cas tools that could perform multiple tasks, such as switching desired genes on or off. In his latest work, with graduate student Hannah Kempton, he expanded on that concept to develop a CRISPR-Cas tool that performs these different tasks only in the presence of different combinations of biological signals.

This is important because complex diseases like cancers can rarely be identified by a single genetic breakdown. More often, they result from a cascade of failures involving several genes - one may be switched on when it should be off, for instance, interfering with the proper operation of other genes. Kempton modified a particular Cas protein, Cas12, to enable it to detect multiple faulty signals and flip the right switches to help eliminate whatever chain of defects had caused the cell to malfunction.

"Few works have demonstrated this much control in human cells," said Qi, whose lab has applied for a provisional patent on their Cas12 technology. "Sensing many signals at once means greater precision in identifying a disease state, and greater safety in administering a therapy. We see this kind of circuit control playing a bigger role in treatments in the future."

The researchers believe that the applications for this technology extend beyond treating diseases like cancer. For example, rather than eliminating sick cells, the body may need to generate healthy new cells to replace irreparable ones. Our heart, bones, liver and other organs are all made up of specialized cell types that can be generated from stem cells. By programming the engineered Cas12 tool to trigger the right genetic circuits in these stem cells, clinical scientists could direct their rapid transformation into useful cells to repair damaged organs in response to injury.

"We've created a multi-tasking tool that can probe and control several genetic circuits at once," Kempton said,

The left and right side of our brain are specialized for some cognitive abilities. For example, in humans, language is processed predominantly in the left hemisphere, and the right hand is controlled by the motor cortex in the left hemisphere. The functional lateralization is reflected by morphological asymmetry of the brain. Left and right hemisphere differ subtly in brain anatomy, the distribution of nerve cells, their connectivity and neurochemistry. Asymmetries of outer brain shape are even visible on endocasts. Most humans have a combination of a more projecting left occipital lobe (located in the back of the brain) with a more projecting right frontal lobe. Brain asymmetry is commonly interpreted as crucial for human brain function and cognition because it reflects functional lateralization. However, comparative studies among primates are rare and it is not known which aspects of brain asymmetry are really uniquely human. Based on previously available data, scientists assumed that many aspects of brain asymmetry evolved only recently, after the split between the human lineage from the lineage of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees.

In a new paper researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Vienna measured the magnitude and pattern of shape asymmetry of endocasts from humans and apes. "Great ape brains are rarely available for study, but we have developed methods to extract brain asymmetry data from skulls, which are easier to access. This made our study possible in the first place", says lead author Simon Neubauer.

The team found that the magnitude of asymmetry was about the same in humans and most great apes. Only chimpanzees were, on average, less asymmetric than humans, gorillas, and orangutans. They also investigated the pattern of asymmetry and could demonstrate that not only humans, but also chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans showed the asymmetry pattern previously described as typically human: the left occipital lobe, the right frontal lobe, as well as the right temporal pole and the right cerebellar lobe projecting more relatively to their contralateral parts. "What surprised us even more," says Philipp Mitteroecker, a co-author of the study, "was that humans were least consistent in this asymmetry with a lot of individual variation around the most common pattern." The authors interpret this as a sign of increased functional and developmental modularization of the human brain. For example, the differential projections of the occipital lobe and the cerebellum are less correlated in humans than in great apes. This finding is interesting because the cerebellum in humans underwent dramatic evolutionary changes and it seems that thereby its asymmetry was affected as well.

The finding of a shared asymmetry pattern but greater variability in humans is intriguing for the interpretation of human brain evolution. An endocast of one of our fossil ancestors that shows this asymmetry can no longer be interpreted as evidence for human-specific functional brain lateralization without other (archaeological) data. Philipp Gunz, a co-author of the study, explains: "This shared asymmetry pattern of the brain evolved already before the origin of the human lineage. Humans seem to have built upon this morphological pattern to establish functional brain lateralization related to typical human behaviors."

Coral reefs account for one-third of all biodiversity in the oceans and are vital to humanity. But long-standing human stressors including agricultural run-off and overfishing and more recent ocean warming from climate change have all contributed to large-scale coral reef die-offs.

"Coral reef ecosystems now appear to be unraveling before our eyes, with intensifying outbreaks of coral disease and bleaching threatening the persistence of reef habitats and the immense biodiversity they support," said Katie Cramer, an assistant research professor at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University and an Ocean Science Fellow at the Center for Oceans at Conservation International.

Cramer's work focuses on reconstructing long-term change in coral reef ecosystems by combining paleoecological, historical, and modern survey data to pinpoint the mechanisms of reef declines and inform conservation efforts.

In her AAAS talk, "Coral Reefs: Centuries of Human Impact," Cramer outlines the evidence of the long-ago human footprints that set the stage for the recent coral reef die-offs we are witnessing today.

"I am interested in going back to the scene of the crime when humans first began to impact coral reefs centuries to millennia ago, to understand when, why, and how much reefs have been altered by humans," said Cramer.

Her studies have examined the origins of Caribbean coral reef declines by tracking changes over the past 3,000 years in the composition of a variety of fossils found in reef sediment cores she collected from Panama, including coral skeletons, fish teeth, urchin spines, mollusk shells, and others.

These studies revealed that long-standing local human impacts such as fishing and agriculture have been profoundly altering reefs at least centuries before the disease and bleaching epidemics that are commonly cited as drivers of coral loss.

In addition, Cramer will also present the first evidence of her study that reconstructed changes in coral communities from reefs across the Caribbean, spanning the pre-human period to the present. This work is revealing that coral communities were being transformed by human activities much earlier than previously thought.

The hope is that by listening to the echoes of past environmental change on coral reefs, Cramer's efforts can better inform conservation efforts in a period of intensifying human-caused threats.

"We need to resolve why and how much coral reefs have changed over human history to inform our responses to the current reef crisis. We need to understand how reefs have responded to past changes to best ensure their persistence into the future," said Cramer.

From the time that dinosaur fossils were first discovered, these creatures have fascinated scientists and laypeople alike. In the academic world, their remains provide important clues into the prehistoric world; in popular culture, dinosaurs have inspired blockbuster hits, such as Jurassic Park and King Kong.

Now, a research team headed by Professor Hagit Affek at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Institute of Earth Sciences has unlocked a mystery that has stymied researchers for decades: How did dinosaurs regulate their body temperatures? Were they warm-blooded or cold-blooded?

Affek's study, published today in Science Advances, relies on a novel method to measure historical temperatures. Called clumped isotope geochemistry, this method analyzes chemical bonds among heavy isotopes in calcium carbonate minerals--the main ingredient in egg shells. This allows scientists to calculate both the temperature at which the minerals formed and the body temperature of the mother that laid the egg.

Affek and her team applied this method to fossilized eggs from three distinct dinosaur species along the evolutionary path from reptile to bird and found that their body temperature ranged from 35-40 degrees Celsius. However, this bit of information still did not answer the question as to whether dinosaurs were endothermic or exothermic, meaning, did they generate their own body heat or get warm from the sun and their environment?

"The global climate during the dinosaur era was significantly warmer than it is today. For this reason, measuring only the body temperatures of dinosaurs who lived near the equator wouldn't tell us whether they were endo- or exothermic because their body temperature may simply have been a cold-blooded response to the hot climates they lived in," shared Affek.

To address this issue, her team focused on dinosaurs that lived in high latitudes like Alberta, Canada--far enough north to ensure that their warm body temperatures were the result of an internal, metabolic warming process rather than merely reflecting the climate around them.

To verify their hypothesis, Affek and her team needed to determine the environmental temperature in Alberta back when dinosaurs lived. They accomplished this by applying their isotope method to mollusk shells that lived in Alberta alongside the dinosaurs. Since mollusks are cold-blooded creatures, they reflect the ambient climate of the time. The mollusks' body temperature measured 26°C and showed that the dinosaurs living in Alberta were endothermic; otherwise, they could not have maintained a body temperature of 35-40°C.

As dinosaurs evolved, they moved from lizard-like (cold-blooded) characteristics to avian (warm-blooded) ones. "We believe that this transformation happened very early on in dinosaurs' evolution since the Mayasaura eggs--a lizard-like dinosaur species that we tested--were already able to self-regulate their body temperature, just like their warm-blooded, bird-like cousins, the Torrdons," explained Affek.

The fact that both of these species, located at opposite ends of the dinosaur evolutionary tree, had body temperatures higher than those of their environment means that both had the ability to warm themselves.

Either way, Mother of Dragons, if your baby is showing a fever of 41 degrees, it's time to call the doctor.

Although it is now an "ex-tropical cyclone," Uesi continues to generate some moderate rainfall, especially in its southern quadrant as it moves toward New Zealand.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM satellite provided a look at the rainfall rates on Feb. 14 at 2:11 a.m. EST (0716 UTC). GPM found heaviest rainfall south of center and in bands far south of the center falling at rates of 1 inch (25 mm) per hour. Light rain appears around the entire system, falling at less than 0.2 inches (less than 5 millimeters) per hour.

On Feb. 13 at 2218 UTC (5:18 p.m. EST), the New Zealand Met Service (NZMS) reported "Ex-Tropical Cyclone Uesi was located near Lord Howe Island this morning, and is moving southwest. The system is expected to gradually recurve towards the southeast and move close to the lower South Island during Sunday [Feb.16]."

On Feb. 14, NZMS noted a Heavy Rain Warning is currently in effect for Westland south of Otira. A Heavy Rain Watch is in effect for the remainder of the South Island West Coast and Stewart Island.

NZMS said "A heavy rain warning is in effect for the South Island West Coast and Stewart Island on Sunday [Feb.16] and early Monday [Feb. 17]. Former Tropical Cyclone Uesi is forecast to approach the South Island from the north Tasman Sea overnight Saturday and lie to the west of Fiordland on Sunday. It should then move southwest from late Sunday onwards and weaken. This system is expected to bring periods of heavy rain to the west and south of the South Island during Sunday and early Monday. Strong to gale north to northwest winds are also expected in parts of the South Island and the lower North Island during this time."

A type of fatty liver disease that commonly affects patients with HIV can be safely treated with vitamin E, a McGill-led study has found.

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is a severe form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and is characterized by liver inflammation and cell damage. It is a potentially dangerous condition that can progress to cirrhosis or liver cancer.

"Vitamin E has been shown to improve fatty liver in the general population," says the study's lead author Dr. Giada Sebastiani, Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, McGill University and scientist at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre. "Here we provide evidence for its beneficial effect and safety in people living with HIV, who have a higher prevalence of fatty liver disease."

The study appears in the February 1, 2020 issue of the journal AIDS.

Dr. Sebastiani notes that NAFLD currently affects up to 48% of Canadians living with HIV and 25% of the general population, while NASH affects about one third of patients with NAFLD. There are several theories to explain the high prevalence of fatty liver among HIV-positive patients, explains Dr. Sebastiani: "It is possibly due to HIV-related inflammation, the antiretroviral drugs that they have to take lifelong, and to very frequent metabolic problems, such as diabetes and high lipids. Unfortunately, there is no approved therapy for fatty liver in people living with HIV."

In the study, 27 patients with HIV and NASH were given vitamin E in an easily-tolerated dose of two pills per day. "We found that vitamin E improved both liver transaminases (the main blood tests for liver function) and liver fat measured by a non-invasive ultrasonographic test," says Dr. Sebastiani. "These improvements were even more marked than those reported in the HIV-uninfected population." Although she suspected vitamin E would reduce inflammation and fat in the HIV-positive group, Dr. Sebastiani was pleasantly surprised by the size of the effect.

Dr. Sebastiani notes that because the study did not have the benefit of a control group, and the study group was small and had a short follow-up (24 weeks), it's considered a pilot project. "We would be interested in conducting a larger randomized controlled trial, with a longer follow-up," she says.

Dr. Sebastiani came to McGill seven years ago from Italy with the goal of establishing a world-class research program focused on fatty liver and non-invasive diagnostic tools for liver disease. In the intervening years, cases of fatty liver disease, which was previously associated only with alcohol abuse, have exploded, particularly among obese Canadians. Dr. Sebastiani predicts that NAFLD will become the leading cause of liver transplants in the next 10 years.

For some infants, a wet diaper is cause for an instant, vociferous demand to be changed, while other babies may be unfazed and happy to haul around the damp cargo for lengthy periods without complaint. But if worn too long, a wet diaper can cause painful rashes, and miserable babies -- and parents.

Now MIT researchers have developed a "smart" diaper embedded with a moisture sensor that can alert a caregiver when a diaper is wet. When the sensor detects dampness in the diaper, it sends a signal to a nearby receiver, which in turn can send a notification to a smartphone or computer.

The sensor consists of a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, that is placed below a layer of super absorbent polymer, a type of hydrogel that is typically used in diapers to soak up moisture. When the hydrogel is wet, the material expands and becomes slightly conductive -- enough to trigger the RFID tag to send a radio signal to an RFID reader up to 1 meter away.

The researchers say the design is the first demonstration of hydrogel as a functional antenna element for moisture sensing in diapers using RFID. They estimate that the sensor costs less than 2 cents to manufacture, making it a low-cost, disposable alternative to other smart diaper technology.

Over time, smart diapers may help record and identify certain health problems, such as signs of constipation or incontinence. The new sensor may be especially useful for nurses working in neonatal units and caring for multiple babies at a time.

Pankhuri Sen, a research assistant in MIT's AutoID Laboratory, envisions that the sensor could also be integrated into adult diapers, for patients who might be unaware or too embarrassed to report themselves that a change is needed.

"Diapers are used not just for babies, but for aging populations, or patients who are bedridden and unable to take care of themselves," Sen says. "It would be convenient in these cases for a caregiver to be notified that a patient, particularly in a multibed hospital, needs changing."

"This could prevent rashes and some infections like urinary tract infections, in both aging and infant populations," adds collaborator Sai Nithin R. Kantareddy, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Sen, Kantareddy, and their colleagues at MIT, including Rahul Bhattacharryya and Sanjay Sarma, along with Joshua Siegel at Michigan State University, have published their results today in the journal IEEE Sensors. Sarma is MIT's vice president for open learning and the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Sticker sense

Many off-the-shelf diapers incorporate wetness indicators in the form of strips, printed along the outside of a diaper, that change color when wet -- a design that usually requires removing multiple layers of clothing to be able to see the actual diaper.

Companies looking into smart diaper technology are considering wetness sensors that are wireless or Bluetooth-enabled, with devices that attach to a diaper's exterior, along with bulky batteries to power long-range connections to the internet. These sensors are designed to be reusable, requiring a caregiver to remove and clean the sensor before attaching it to each new diaper. Current sensors being explored for smart diapers, Sen estimates, retail for over $40.

RFID tags in contrast are low-cost and disposable, and can be printed in rolls of individual stickers, similar to barcode tags. MIT's AutoID Laboratory, founded by Sarma, has been at the forefront of RFID tag development, with the goal of using them to connect our physical world with the internet.

A typical RFID tag has two elements: an antenna for backscattering radio frequency signals, and an RFID chip that stores the tag's information, such as the specific product that the tag is affixed to. RFID tags don't require batteries; they receive energy in the form of radio waves emitted by an RFID reader. When an RFID tag picks up this energy, its antenna activates the RFID chip, which tweaks the radio waves and sends a signal back to the reader, with its information encoded within the waves. This is how, for instance, products labeled with RFID tags can be identified and tracked.

Sarma's group has been enabling RFID tags to work not just as wireless trackers, but also as sensors. Most recently, as part of MIT's Industrial Liason Program, the team started up a collaboration with Softys, a diaper manufacturer based in South America, to see how RFID tags could be configured as low-cost, disposable wetness detectors in diapers. The researchers visited one of the company's factories to get a sense of the machinery and assembly involved in diaper manufacturing, then came back to MIT to design a RFID sensor that might reasonably be integrated within the diaper manufacturing process.

Tag, you're it

The design they came up with can be incorporated in the bottom layer of a typical diaper. The sensor itself resembles a bow tie, the middle of which consists of a typical RFID chip connecting the bow tie's two triangles, each made from the hydrogel super absorbent polymer, or SAP.

Normally, SAP is an insulating material, meaning that it doesn't conduct current. But when the hydrogel becomes wet, the researchers found that the material properties change and the hydrogel becomes conductive. The conductivity is very weak, but it's enough to react to any radio signals in the environment, such as those emitted by an RFID reader. This interaction generates a small current that turns on the sensor's chip, which then acts as a typical RFID tag, tweaking and sending the radio signal back to the reader with information -- in this case, that the diaper is wet.

The researchers found that by adding a small amount of copper to the sensor, they could boost the sensor's conductivity and therefore the range at which the tag can communicate to a reader, reaching more than 1 meter away.

To test the sensor's performance, they placed a tag within the bottom layers of newborn-sized diapers and wrapped each diaper around a life-sized baby doll, which they filled with saltwater whose conductive properties were similar to human bodily fluids. They placed the dolls at various distances from an RFID reader, at various orientations, such as lying flat versus sitting upright. They found that the particular sensor they designed to fit into newborn-sized diapers was able to activate and communicate to a reader up to 1 meter away when the diaper was fully wet.

Sen envisions that an RFID reader connected to the internet could be placed in a baby's room to detect wet diapers, at which point it could send a notification to a caregiver's phone or computer that a change is needed. For geriatric patients who might also benefit from smart diapers, she says small RFID readers may even be attached to assistive devices, such as canes and wheelchairs to pick up a tag's signals.

A team headed by Prof. Dr. Frank Stienkemeier and Dr. Lukas Bruder from the Institute of Physics at the University of Freiburg has succeeded in observing in real-time ultrafast quantum interferences -- in other words the oscillation patterns -- of electrons which are found in the atomic shells of rare gas atoms. They managed to observe oscillations with a period of about 150 attoseconds -- an attosecond is a billionth of a billionth of a second. To this end, the scientists excited rare gas atoms with specially prepared laser pulses. Then they tracked the response of the atoms with a new measurement technique that enabled them to study quantum mechanical effects in atoms and molecules at extremely high time resolution. The researchers present their results in the latest edition of Nature Communications.

Numerous chemical reactions, such as the breaking of bonds in molecules, are triggered by the absorption of light. In the first instant after the absorption, the distribution of the electrons in the atomic shell changes, significantly influencing the subsequent course of the reaction. This alteration happens extremely quickly; the timescales reach into the attosecond range. Previously-used spectroscopic technologies, which use visible laser pulses, are not fast enough to track such processes. So researchers around the world are currently developing innovative laser sources and adequate spectroscopic technologies in the ultra-violet and X-ray ranges.

Stienkemeier's team has extended a technology known from the visible spectrum range, coherent pump-probe spectroscopy, into the ultra-violet range. This is the spectral range between X-ray radiation and ultra-violet light. To do this, the scientists prepared a sequence of two ultra-short laser pulses in the extreme ultra-violet range at the FERMI free electron laser in Trieste, Italy. The pulses were separated by a precisely-defined time interval and had a precisely-defined phase relationship to one another. The first pulse starts the process in the electron shell (pump-process). The second pulse probes the status of the electron shell at a later point (probe-process). By altering the time interval and the phase relationship, the researchers could reach conclusions on the temporal development in the electron shell. "The greatest challenge was to achieve precise control over the pulse properties and to isolate the weak signals," explains Andreas Wituschek, who was in charge of the experimental procedure.

The Freiburg physicists studied the rare gas argon, amongst others. In argon the pump-pulse causes a special configuration of two electrons within the atomic shell: this configuration disintegrates, with one electron leaving the atom in a very short time and the atom finally remaining behind as an ion. The researchers succeeded for the first time in observing the immediate temporal decay of the quantum interference, as one electron left the atom. "This experiment paves the way for many new applications in the study of atomic and molecular processes after selective stimulation with high-energy radiation in the extreme ultra-violet range," says Bruder.

The last time a list was compiled of all the chemicals available on the market and in circulation worldwide, it ran to 100,000 entries. Drawn up shortly after the turn of the millennium, the list focused on markets in the US, Canada and western Europe, which made sense because 20 years ago, these countries accounted for more than two thirds of worldwide chemical sales.

Global market

Things have changed dramatically since then. First, turnover has more than doubled, reaching EUR 3.4 billion in 2017; second, the global west now participates in just a third of the worldwide chemical trade, whereas China alone accounts for 37 percent of turnover. "We broadened our scope to take in the global market - and we're now presenting a first comprehensive overview of all chemicals available worldwide," says Zhanyun Wang, Senior Scientist at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zurich.

Working with a team of international experts, Wang brought together data from 22 registers covering 19 countries and regions (including the EU). The new list contains 350,000 entries. "The chemical diversity we know now is three times greater than 20 years ago," says Wang. This, he says, is primarily because a larger number of registers are now taken into account: "As a result, our new list includes many chemicals that are registered in developing and transition countries, which are often with limited oversight."

Confidential business information

On its own, this comprehensive list cannot provide information about which chemicals are hazardous to health or the environment, for example. "Our inventory is only the first step in the substances' characterisation," says Wang, adding that previous work suggested that some 3 percent of all chemicals may give cause for concern. If you apply this figure to the new multitude of chemicals, 6,000 new potentially problematic substances could be expected, he says.

Far more astonishing for Wang was the fact that a good third of all chemicals have inadequate descriptions in the various registers. About 70,000 entries are for mixtures and polymers (such as petroleum resin), with no details provided about the individual components. Another 50,000 entries relate to chemicals where the identities are considered confidential business information and are therefore not publicly accessible. "Only the manufacturers know what they are and how dangerous or toxic they are," says Wang. "That leaves you with an uneasy feeling - like a meal where you're told that it's well cooked, but not what it contains."

An urgent call for international collaboration

Globalisation and worldwide trade ensure that - unlike national registers - chemicals do not stop at national borders. As Wang and his colleagues note in their article in the journal Environmental Science & Technology the various registers need therefore to be merged if we want to keep track of all the chemicals that are produced and traded anywhere in the world. "Only by joining forces, across different countries and disciplines, will we be able to cope with this ever-expanding chemical diversity," says Wang.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University have been working to develop new technologies to help stop the spread of foodborne illnesses, which kill 3,000 people a year, by detecting them more efficiently. They have developed a lanthanide-based assay coupled with a laser that can be used to detect toxins and pathogenic E. coli in food samples, water and a variety of industrial materials.

The two key features of the new technology are the incorporation of lanthanides and simple lateral flow paper-based assays. The Purdue team created a method for combining different heavy metals that when linked to antibodies can detect multiple agents in a single analysis. The Purdue team's work is published in the January edition of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

"Our goal was to incorporate easily detectable elements into a paper-based assay which is low-cost and effective," said J. Paul Robinson, the SVM Professor of Cytomics in Purdue's College of Veterinary Medicine and a professor of biomedical engineering in Purdue's College of Engineering. "Designing a technology that is both low-cost but also accurate and can detect multiple antigens simultaneously was a critical factor in our decision to work on this problem."

The innovators worked with the Purdue Research Foundation Office of Technology Commercialization to patent the technology in the United States and in Europe. They are looking for partners. For more information, contact Dipak Narula of OTC at dnarula@prf.org and reference track code 2019-ROBI-68413.

"We are very excited about the acceptance of the intellectual property as this will enhance the possibility of finding commercial partners," Robinson said. "The potential for moving this to handheld, field deployable use is something we see in the future."

The group is evaluating the potential for fully portable use that would allow field use in virtually any environment.

The approach uses a high-powered laser pulse to obliterate a sample, while simultaneously collecting the spectral signature of the resultant emission. These signals are then compared with a database that translates the signals into an identification of the toxin or pathogen.

The work presented in this paper shows the proof of principle and is the basis for significant expansion of the studies. What makes the technology effective is the linking of antibodies to different heavy metal tags. This creates a unique fingerprint of atomic signatures that can be used to determine if any particular pathogen of interest in present in a sample.

Yale-affiliated scientist finds that even a few hours' exposure to ambient ultrafine particles common in air pollution may potentially trigger a nonfatal heart attack.

Myocardial infarction is a major form of cardiovascular disease worldwide. Ultrafine particles (UFP) are 100 nanometers or smaller in size. In urban areas, automobile emissions are the primary source of UFP.

The study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives is believed to be the first epidemiological investigation of the effects of UFP exposure and heart attacks using the number of particles and the particle length and surface area concentrations at hourly intervals of exposure.

"This study confirms something that has long been suspected--air pollution's tiny particles can play a role in serious heart disease. This is particularly true within the first few hours of exposure," said Kai Chen, Ph.D., assistant professor at Yale School of Public Health and the study's first author. "Elevated levels of UFP are a serious public health concern."

UFP constitute a health risk due to their small size, large surface areas per unit of mass, and their ability to penetrate the cells and get into the blood system. "We were the first to demonstrate the effects of UFP on the health of asthmatics in an epidemiological study in the 1990s," said Annette Peters, director of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Center Munich and a co-author of this paper. "Since then approximately 200 additional studies have been published. However, epidemiological evidence remains inconsistent and insufficient to infer a causal relationship."

The lack of consistent findings across epidemiological studies may be in part because of the different size ranges and exposure metrics examined to characterize ambient UFP exposure. Chen and his co-authors were interested in whether transient UFP exposure could trigger heart attacks and whether alternative metrics such as particle length and surface area concentrations could improve the investigation of UFP-related health effects.

With colleagues from Helmholtz Center Munich, Augsburg University Hospital and Nördlingen Hospital, Chen examined data from a registry of all nonfatal MI cases in Augsburg, Germany. The study looked at more than 5, 898 nonfatal heart attack patients between 2005 and 2015. The individual heart attacks were compared against air pollution UFP data on the hour of the heart attack and adjusted for a range of additional factors, such as the day of the week, long-term time trend and socioeconomic status.

"This represents an important step toward understanding the appropriate indicator of ultrafine particles exposure in determining the short-term health effects, as the effects of particle length and surface concentrations were stronger than the ones of particle number concentration and remained similar after adjustment for other air pollutants," said Chen. "Our future analyses will examine the combined hourly exposures to both air pollution and extreme temperature. We will also identify vulnerable subpopulations regarding pre-existing diseases and medication intake."

Scientists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU, Russia), University of Geneva (Switzerland), Minjiang University, and Fuzhou University (China) pointed out WDR74 protein playing an important role in lung cancer and melanoma primary tumors/metastases progression. During the research, the artificially gained WDR74 function brought about a high activity in cancer cells. However, when the function had been dropped cells failed to metastasize becoming more vulnerable to chemotherapy. Related articles are published in Cancer Letters and Oncogene.

Except for brain cancer and some forms of blood cancer, not the main tumor but its metastases kill the patient taking over vital organs.

Metastases form at a certain stage of the primary tumor progression when its cells start separating and entering the bloodstream. Such cells are called circulating tumor cells, and they give rise to metastases which are secondary tumors appearing in different parts of the human body.

Fortunately, just subtle minority, tenths or even hundredths of a percent, of circulating tumor cells is capable of metastasizing. A few years ago, Chinese scientists from the laboratory of Dr. Lee Jia (Fuzhou University) wondered what discriminates "successful" circulating tumor cells from "unsuccessful" ones. Searching for a possible answer, they analyzed tumor cells (proteomic analysis) and spotted proteins highly expressed in active metastatic cells and lost in passive ones. One of these proteins was WDR74; its expression level in "successful" circulating tumor cells was two times higher than in the initial tumor. Scientists set up hypotheses stated this protein is a trigger helping a circulating tumor cell turn into a secondary tumor.

"Within this discovery, two of our scientific publications were being built, one devoted to lung cancer, and the other to melanoma. To test the oncogenic activity of WDR74 in circulating tumor cells of lung cancer and melanoma, we "turned off" this protein by the method of gene correction CRISPR / Cas9 and interfering RNAs to remove/reduce the amount of protein. After that, we monitored what happens to the cells in the context of their proliferation, colony formation, cell cycle, ability to migrate and grasp in body tissues. We have also conducted the opposite experiment increasing the amount of WDR74 protein in cancer cells. Both types of experiment confirmed that WDR74 plays a crucial role in the progression of the tumor and its metastases. Protein absence decreases, and the presence increases the oncogenic properties of circulating tumor cells. In vivo this confirmed during the experiments conducted on mice." said prof. Vladimir Katanaev, one of the research authors, Head of the Laboratory of Pharmacology of Natural Compounds, Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacy of the FEFU School of Biomedicine.

The scientist explained that WDR74 has at least two mechanisms of action. In different tumors, they have different priorities. In lung cancer cells, the protein primarily regulates WNT signaling pathways, which are active in tumor cells and passive in healthy cells of our body. In melanoma, WDR74 indirectly affects the expression of a number of other proteins, including the famous p53. The sequence is as follows: WDR74 regulates the amount of ribosomal protein RLP5, which has additional, extraribosomal properties; RLP5 regulates MDM2 protein ligase, and MDM2, in turn, leads to the degradation of p53 protein. The question of which mechanism is responsible for the expression of WDR74 itself remains unsolved.

Lung cancer is notorious for the lack of effective therapy methods. The same is melanoma: the mechanisms of its progression understood poorly. The published studies open up new paths to the development of effective curing methods for metastases of these two cancer types with targeted drugs. Such remedies should hit specific protein targets in the circulating tumor cells. The drugs development is the task of the next stage of the work of scientists from Russia, China, and Switzerland or other research groups.

There is a strong link between the amount of fast food that pre-school age children consume and their likelihood of becoming overweight or obese, according to a new Dartmouth-led study, published in the journal Pediatric Obesity.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 25 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 5 years are overweight or obese in the U.S. These conditions increase the risk of numerous physical and psychosocial problems during childhood, including fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, and depression.

"We now know from our studies and others, that kids who start on the path of extra weight gain during this really important timeframe tend to carry it forward into adolescence and adulthood, and this sets them up for major health consequences as they get older," says first author Jennifer Emond, PhD, MS, an assistant professor of biomedical data science and of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

Previous research has shown that fast-food intake is common among children--about one-third of U.S. children consume fast food daily--and has suggested that there is an association between fast food consumption and children becoming overweight or obese. But it hasn't been clear whether eating fast food independently contributes to excess weight gain at such a young age.

In an effort to make this determination, the investigators followed a cohort of more than 500 pre-school age children (ages 3 to 5) and their families in southern New Hampshire for one year. The height and weight of the children were measured at the beginning and end of the study. Parents reported their children's fast-food intake frequency weekly--from 11 chain fast-food restaurants--in six online surveys that were completed at two-month intervals.

The researchers found that at the beginning of the study, about 18 percent of the children were overweight and nearly 10 percent were obese. Importantly, about 8 percent of children transitioned to a greater weight status over the one-year period.

"To our knowledge, ours is the first study to follow a cohort over time and to show that fast food, by itself, uniquely contributes to weight gain," explains Emond. "Unlike with past research, we were able to adjust for other factors--such as exercise and screen time--that could possibly explain away this relationship.

"Findings from this research," says Emond, "should be used to inform guidelines and policies that can reduce fast-food marketing exposure to children and help support parents who may be struggling to adopt healthier eating behaviors for their kids."

DURHAM, N.C. -- Biomedical engineers from Duke University have demonstrated that, despite significant advancements in protection from ballistics and blunt impacts, modern military helmets are no better at protecting the brain from shock waves created by nearby blasts than their World War I counterparts. And one model in particular, the French Adrian helmet, actually performed better than modern designs in protecting from overhead blasts.

The research could help improve the blast protection of future helmets through choosing different materials, layering multiple materials of different acoustic impedance, or altering their geometry.

The results appeared online on February 13 in the journal PLOS ONE.

"While we found that all helmets provided a substantial amount of protection against blast, we were surprised to find that the 100-year-old helmets performed just as well as modern ones," said Joost Op 't Eynde, a biomedical engineering PhD student at Duke and first author of the study. "Indeed, some historical helmets performed better in some respects."

Researchers have only recently begun to study the brain damage a shock wave can cause on its own -- and for good reason. Helmets were originally designed to protect from penetrating objects like bullets and shrapnel, and blast waves will kill through pulmonary trauma long before they cause even minor brain damage.

With the advent of body armor, however, soldiers' lungs are much more protected from such blasts than they used to be. This has caused the incidence of pulmonary trauma following a blast to drop far below that of brain or spine injuries in modern military conflicts, despite the difference in blast tolerance.

While there have been studies that suggest modern helmets provide a degree of protection from shock waves, no currently deployed helmet has been specifically designed for blast protection. And because soldiers today experiencing shock waves while wearing body armor aren't all that different from soldiers 100 years ago experiencing shock waves while in the trenches, Op 't Eynde decided to see if those old designs offered any lessons to be learned.

"This study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to assess the protective capabilities of these historical combat helmets against blasts," said Op 't Eynde.

Working with Cameron "Dale" Bass, associate research professor of biomedical engineering at Duke, Op 't Eynde created a system to test the performance of World War I helmets from the United Kingdom/United States (Brodie), France (Adrian), Germany (Stahlhelm) and a current United States combat variant (Advanced Combat Helmet).

The researchers took turns placing different helmets on a dummy's head outfitted with pressure sensors at various locations. They then placed the head directly underneath a shock tube, which was pressurized with helium until a membrane wall burst, releasing the gas in a shock wave. The helmets were tested with shock waves of varying strength, each corresponding to a different type of German artillery shell exploding from a distance of one to five meters away.

The amount of pressure experienced at the crown of the head was then compared to brain injury risk charts created in previous studies. While all helmets provided a five-to-tenfold reduction in risk for moderate brain bleeding, the risk for someone wearing a circa-1915 French "Adrian" helmet was less than for any of the other helmets tested, including the modern advanced combat helmet.

"The result is intriguing because the French helmet was manufactured using similar materials as its German and British counterparts, and even had a thinner wall," said Op 't Eynde. "The main difference is that the French helmet had a crest on top of its crown. While it was designed to deflect shrapnel, this feature might also be deflecting shock waves."

It also might be that, because the pressure sensor was mounted directly under the crest, the crest provided an additional first layer for reflecting the shock wave. And the French helmet did not show the same advantage in pressure sensors at any other location. For locations such as the ears, performance seemed to be dictated by the width of the helmet's brim and just how much of the head it actually covered.

As for the modern helmet, Op 't Eynde theorizes that its layered structure might be important in its performance. Because a shock wave is reflected every time it encounters a new material with a different acoustic impedance, the layered structure of the modern helmet might contribute to its blast protection.

But no matter which helmet was tested, the results clearly indicated that helmets might play an especially important role in protecting against mild blast-induced brain trauma. According to the researchers, this finding alone shows the importance of continuing this type of research to design helmets that can better absorb shock waves from nearby overhead explosions.

"The difference a simple crest or a wider brim can make in blast protection, shows just how important this line of research could be," said Op 't Eynde, who initially came to Duke on a scholarship from the Belgian American Educational Foundation, which was established with funds from American relief efforts in Belgium during World War I. "With all of the modern materials and manufacturing capabilities we possess today, we should be able to make improvements in helmet design that protects from blast waves better than helmets today or 100 years ago."