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What The Study Did: This small trial examined the feasibility and effectiveness of injecting cells with regenerative properties that are from a patient's fat tissue into scarred vocal cords of patients who had difficulty speaking.

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

Authors: Alexia Mattei, M.D., of La Conception University Hospital in Marseille, France, is the corresponding author.

(doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2019.4328)

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

Heat transport in deep Earth controls its thermal evolution. Determination of the thermal conductivity of the lower mantle is one of the central issues for a better understanding of deep Earth phenomena, such as the style of mantle convection, the evolution of the magnetic field, and inner core growth. However, it is poorly understood because deep mantle pressure and temperature conditions are quite difficult to replicate for laboratory experiments. We determined the thermal conductivity of MgSiO3 postperovskite, the most abundant mineral at the bottom of the mantle and which is transformed from MgSiO3 bridgmanite, under the lowermost mantle conditions based on quantum mechanical computations without any empirical parameters. We found a jump in the thermal conductivity associated with the phase transition, indicating that the postperovskite phase boundary is the boundary not only of the mineralogy but also the thermal conductivity (Figure 1). The phase change produces larger lateral variation in heat flux across the core-mantle boundary (CMB). Also, we examined the effects of anisotropy on the thermal conductivity of the CMB heat flux and found that it to be minor with the crystal orientation of postperovskite. This may explain how seismic anisotropy, observed at the base of the mantle, is developed.

A co-author from Kazan University, Professor, Corresponding Member of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Space Geodesy Ilfan Bikmaev, explains how the new system was found.

"The gravitational lensing method is one of the most powerful space exploration tools. In space, photons deviate from the rectilinear direction when passing near a massive body (star) under the influence of its gravitational field. If we take as a lens a celestial body, which is a sphere, then it will bend the space spherically symmetrically. However, the gravitational fields of many space objects do not have spherical symmetry, so more complex curvatures may appear. After their path has been curved, the photons will be summed up with those that hit the receiver earlier, and, as a result, an increase in the brightness of the star will occur. As a result, an increase in the brightness of the object is displayed on the light curve of the source, and this increase is not associated with a change in the physical parameters of the source itself.

"If between a star of our Galaxy and an observer on Earth a massive object (a star-lens) moves across the line of sight, then when the lens passes exactly upon the line of sight, the effect of gravitational lensing will manifest itself in the form of a short-term (hours to days) brightening of the background star. Such events are called gravitational microlensing events. They are quite rare, isolated, short-lived and unpredictable."

As the interviewee, in order to register a microlensing event in the Milky Way, you need to track the brilliance of hundreds of millions of stars daily. In particular, the space mission of the European Space Agency (GAIA) is engaged in this. Any brightness changes amounting to tens of percents from celestial sources that fall into the field of view of the GAIA space observatory are reported to Earth. And then the international network of telescopes around the globe begins to track these objects and identify the nature of variability.

"Since 2016, astronomers of Kazan Federal University, together with Turkish colleagues, have been participating in the GAIA satellite object classification program. The vast majority of variable objects are cataclysmic variables, some are supernovae, and some are active galactic nuclei, which change their brightness from time to time. But there are objects that, while not being a variable, change their brightness for a short period of time, and then it attenuates. Such cases are unique," says Bikmaev. "So, in August 2016, the GAIA satellite discovered an object that received the designation Gaia16aye, the brightness change of which exceeded the accuracy of registration of the telescope and continued to increase. Turkish colleagues, analyzing the nature of the brightness change, suggested that this is not a variable object, but the microlensing effect. Polish colleagues, experts in the field of research on the effects of microlensing, organized an international campaign on photometry of this source, which was soon joined by Kazan Federal University. Observations of this unique object were carried out both in Turkey with the RTT 150 telescope and at the North Caucasian Astronomical Station.

"The data obtained make it possible for the first time to simulate a situation where an observer on Earth makes a yearly motion around the Sun, a gravitating body moves in the form of a binary system around the center of mass, and the binary system has its own motion in the Galaxy. This is a rather complex kinematic movement. Therefore, the system of these maxima is complex. And what we can do is accurately measure the brightness change.

"With a single passage, a single maximum is observed, and then the brightness curve of the object drops to the initial level. In the case of the Gaia16aye event, after the first maximum, the light curve did not drop to the initial level. Therefore, astronomers have made the assumption that the gravitational lens is not a single object, but a binary system. And then the third peak appeared and everyone understood that it was, without a doubt, a binary system. Perhaps the geometry of the system is even more complex. In this article, a group of Polish scientists, based on international cooperative observations and their own theoretical calculations, built a geometric picture of the occurrence of the Gaia16aye microlensing phenomenon," concludes Professor Bikmaev.

Electrons are interesting particles that can modify their behavior according to their condition of existence. For instance, in a phenomenon called the Mott-transition, electrons begin to interact differently with their neighbors and surroundings in a material. Normally, the electrons in a material have low levels of interaction with each other and therefore, move freely enough for the material to conduct electricity (and the material shows metallic properties). But under certain conditions, these same electrons begin to have high levels of interaction with each other and their movement becomes restricted. This causes the material to become an insulator. The alteration of the properties of the material is called the Mott-transition.

At the Mott-transition, certain phenomena such as high-temperature superconductivity and giant magnetoresistance are seen, which have massive industrial applications. Thus, studying these phenomena is essential. But to truly discover these phenomena, it is important to understand electron behavior in disordered materials (materials in which the arrangement of the constituent particles is interrupted at points over the long range).

A group of scientists from Tokyo University of Science, The University of Tokyo, and Tohoku University in Japan, led by Prof Tetsuaki Itou, recently set out to investigate exactly this. They used a quasi-two-dimensional organic Mott-insulator called κ-(ET)2Cu[N(CN)2]Cl (hereafter κCl), whose disorder and electron interaction level they independently controlled by irradiating the material with x-rays and applying pressure, respectively. When they irradiated κCl with x-rays for 500 hours, they found that electron movement slowed down by a factor ranging from one million to one hundred million. This meant that its electrons begin to behave peculiarly, as though they're the constituent particles of soft matter (e.g., polymers, gels, cream, etc.). When the scientists applied pressure on the irradiated κCl, the electron behavior returned to normal.

From these observations, the scientists deduced that for electrons in solids to behave like the particles of soft matter, two factors are essential: the material must be in the vicinity of the Mott-transition point and there must be disorder. The simultaneous existence of these two factors is a manifestation of a phenomenon similar to the Griffiths phase, which has already been established for magnetic materials. What the researchers found here is evidence for its electronic analog: the electronic Griffiths phase. "Our results provide experimental evidence that the Griffiths scenario is also applicable to Mott-transition systems" remarks Prof Itou.

This exciting new study is published in Physical Review Letters under "Editors' Suggestion", which is suggested by the journal when the study is interesting and important. The study represents a bridge between condensed matter physics and soft matter physics, which have hitherto developed completely independently. "We expect that, with the publication of our study, further discussions linking these disciplines will be carried out," says Prof Itou. The insights gained from this study may allow scientists to explain the mechanisms underlying these exotic phenomena, which could have very powerful applications, not the least of which involves opening doors to whole new possibilities in a much wider realm of physics.

Organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have attracted considerable research interest because of advantages of lightweight, flexibility and low-cost solution processing. With the development of organic photoactive materials, especially the new-emerging non-fullerene electron acceptors (NFAs), OPV cells have yielded power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) of over 16% in recent years. However, these devices were usually fabricated by spin-coating method at small areas below 0.1 cm2 in laboratories, which are not suitable for future upscale productions.

For the spin-coating process, wet films dry rapidly due to the high spinning speed. However, when large-area coating methods, such as blade-coating, slot-die coating, and spraying-coating methods, are used, wet films dry slowly. The significantly decreased volatilization rate of the solvent gives a much longer time for ordered molecular alignment and aggregation, which may lead to the formation of a larger domain size or excessive phase separation in the active layer. Therefore, it's still a challenge to fabricate highly efficient OPV cells via large-area fabrication methods.

Recently, the research team led by Prof. Jian-Hui Hou at Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, finely optimized the alkyl chains of the BTP-4Cl (a derivative of a well-known NFA, Y6) and synthesized a series of new NFAs BTP-4Cl-X (X = 8, 12 or 16). They applied the new NFAs in fabricating large-area coated OPV cells and achieved good results. The study entitled "17% efficiency organic photovoltaic cell with superior processability" was published in National Science Review.

Researchers successfully demonstrated a high PCE of 17% in the small-area (0.09 cm2) OPV cells based on BTP-4Cl-12. When the blade-coating method was used to extend the active area, 1 cm2 OPV cells obtained an excellent PCE of 15.5%, which is among the top values in the field of OPV cells so far. By cooperating closely with Prof. Wei Ma from Xi'an Jiaotong University, they revealed that BTP-4Cl-12 had balanced solution processability and aggregation features. As a result, the blade-coating film showed a very good phase separation morphology, which contributed to the high carrier transport and suppressed charge recombination in the OPV cells. This work demonstrated the optimization of the chemical structures of the photoactive materials had great significance in larger-area production.

Parkinson's disease is a long-term (chronic) neurological condition that affects around 12,000 people in Ireland and between 7 and 10 million people worldwide. The disease affects the way the brain co-ordinates body movements like walking and talking, but cognitive abilities are also affected.

There is currently no cure for the disease, but researchers at Trinity have recently published findings of a study which may lead to better treatments for this debilitating illness. The paper has been published in the international Cell Press journal Structure.

Neurons in the part of the brain called 'substantia nigra' (dark matter) produce and release a hormone called dopamine. This hormone acts as a messenger between these cells in the substantia nigra and other parts of the brain which control body movements.

"If these specialised neurons become damaged or die, the amount of dopamine in the brain is reduced. This means that the parts of the brain that control movement cease to function normally. The only treatment for Parkinson's disease in the last 20 years has been dopamine replacement therapy. This involves providing a substitute to try to increase the levels of the hormone in the brain. However, the treatment is not completely effective and can wear off over time, and it also has side effects," said Amir Khan, Associate Professor, School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity.

"The main reason why we lack new treatments is that we don't understand the fundamental mechanism of how neurons become sick and die. No one knows why these particular neurons in the substantia nigra are affected."

"In the last few years, the field has completely changed. We have new insight into a gene called LRRK2, which is the most common cause of inherited Parkinson's disease. Although only 10% of Parkinson's cases are inherited, the enzyme that is produced by the LRRK2 gene seems to be overactive in both inherited and 'sporadic' cases."

"In other words, afflicted individuals may not have an LRRK2 mutation, but the enzyme 'runs amok' in their neurons anyway. Inhibitors of this enzyme are now in late clinical trials for treatment of Parkinson's disease."

The team at Trinity has studied the effects that LRRK2 has on other proteins in neuronal cells. To understand how LRRK2 affects the brain and leads to Parkinson's disease, the team has simulated the activity of the enzyme in the laboratory.

"The research allowed us to visualize the 3-D structure of a protein complex that is formed when LRRK2 is overactive. From these structural studies of proteins, we can understand how LRRK2 is able to impose its profound effects on neurons. We are the first group to report the effects of LRRK2 in 3-D detail using a method called X-ray crystallography," Professor Khan continued.

"An overactive LRRK2 runs loose in neurons and wreaks havoc on motor and cognitive abilities. In a way, we are chasing the footprints that LRRK2 leaves in the brain to understand what it does, and find ways to stop it."

"We are hopeful that these studies may eventually lead to new treatments for Parkinson's disease, for which there is currently no cure."

The exponential growth in computer processing power seen over the past 60 years may soon come to a halt. Complex systems such as those used in weather forecast, for example, require high computing capacities, but the costs for running supercomputers to process large quantities of data can become a limiting factor. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany and Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano in Switzerland have recently unveiled an algorithm that can solve complex problems with remarkable facility - even on a personal computer.

Exponential growth in IT will reach its limit

In the past, we have seen a constant rate of acceleration in information processing power as predicted by Moore's Law, but it now looks as if this exponential rate of growth is limited. New developments rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning, but the related processes are largely not well-known and understood. "Many machine learning methods, such as the very popular deep learning, are very successful, but work like a black box, which means that we don't know exactly what is going on. We wanted to understand how artificial intelligence works and gain a better understanding of the connections involved," said Professor Susanne Gerber, a specialist in bioinformatics at Mainz University. Together with Professor Illia Horenko, a computer expert at Università della Svizzera italiana and a Mercator Fellow of Freie Universität Berlin, she has developed a technique for carrying out incredibly complex calculations at low cost and with high reliability. Gerber and Horenko, along with their co-authors, have summarized their concept in an article entitled "Low-cost scalable discretization, prediction, and feature selection for complex systems" recently published in Science Advances. "This method enables us to carry out tasks on a standard PC that previously would have required a supercomputer," emphasized Horenko. In addition to weather forecasts, the research see numerous possible applications such as in solving classification problems in bioinformatics, image analysis, and medical diagnostics.

Breaking down complex systems into individual components

The paper presented is the result of many years of work on the development of this new approach. According to Gerber and Horenko, the process is based on the Lego principle, according to which complex systems are broken down into discrete states or patterns. With only a few patterns or components, i.e., three or four dozen, large volumes of data can be analyzed and their future behavior can be predicted. "For example, using the SPA algorithm we could make a data-based forecast of surface temperatures in Europe for the day ahead and have a prediction error of only 0.75 degrees Celsius," said Gerber. It all works on an ordinary PC and has an error rate that is 40 percent better than the computer systems usually used by weather services, whilst also being much cheaper.

SPA or Scalable Probabilistic Approximation is a mathematically-based concept. The method could be useful in various situations that require large volumes of data to be processed automatically, such as in biology, for example, when a large number of cells need to be classified and grouped. "What is particularly useful about the result is that we can then get an understanding of what characteristics were used to sort the cells," added Gerber. Another potential area of application is neuroscience. Automated analysis of EEG signals could form the basis for assessments of cerebral status. It could even be used in breast cancer diagnosis, as mammography images could be analyzed to predict the results of a possible biopsy.

"The SPA algorithm can be applied in a number of fields, from the Lorenz model to the molecular dynamics of amino acids in water," concluded Horenko. "The process is easier and cheaper and the results are also better compared to those produced by the current state-of-the-art supercomputers."

Materials with both a high density and a large surface area are required in many applications, typically for energy storage under a limited space. However, they are hard to obtain by using conventional strategies. In the previous study, Quan-Hong Yang et al. reported that graphene oxide (GO) can be used to produce a porous carbon material with a high density of 1.58 g cm-3 from hydrogel by evaporation-induced drying. However, the shrinkage of hydrogels is not yet clearly illustrated and there is still no full understanding of how the capillary forces work.

Recently, the same group from Tianjin University, China explored the capillary shrinkage of graphene oxide hydrogels in Science China Materials (DOI: 10.1007/s40843-019-1227-7) based on the different surface tension of the trapped solvent.

They chose water and 1,4-dioxane which have a sole difference in surface tension to investigate the mechanism of such a network shrinkage in r-GO hydrogel, and found the surface tension of the evaporating solvent and the associated capillary force regulated by the interfacial interaction between the r-GO sheets and the solvent determined the capillary forces in the nanochannels. Solvents with higher surface tensions generate stronger capillary forces during evaporation, which can compact the r-GO framework into a dense yet porous material. More promisingly, by using solvents with different surface tensions, the microstructure of the resulting materials can be precisely manipulated and densified, realizing an excellent balance of the density and porosity in materials not limited to carbon materials. This work provides a reliable methodology of controlled shrinkage of flexible graphene network and has great potential for high volumetric performance in practical devices.

Chemical reactions are determined at their most fundamental level by their respective electronic structure and dynamics. Steered by a stimulus such as light irradiation, electrons rearrange themselves in liquids or solids. This process takes only a few hundred attoseconds, whereby one attosecond is the billionth part of a billionth of a second. Electrons are sensitive to external fields, so researchers can easily control them by irradiating the electrons with light pulses. As soon as they thus temporally shape the electric field of an attosecond pulse, researchers can control the electronic dynamics in real time. A team led by Prof. Dr. Giuseppe Sansone from the Institute of Physics at the University of Freiburg shows in the scientific journal Nature how they were able to completely shape the waveform of an attosecond pulse.

"These pulses enable us to study the first moment of the electronic response in a molecule or crystal," explains Sansone. "With the ability to shape the electric field enables us to control electronic movements - with the long-term goal of optimising basic processes such as photosynthesis or charge separation in materials." The team, consisting of theoreticians and experimental physicists from research institutes in the USA, Russia, Germany, Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Japan and Sweden, carried out their experiment at the Free-Electron Laser (FEL) FERMI in Trieste/Italy. This laser is the only one which offers the unique capability to synthesize radiation with different wavelengths in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range with fully controllable relative phases.

The attosecond pulse results from the temporal overlap of laser harmonics. The scientists generated groups of four laser harmonics of a fundamental wavelength using the undulators available at FERMI. These are technical devices, which steer the motion of a relativistic electron bunch, thus leading to the production of ultraviolet radiation. One of the main challenges of the experiment was the measurement of these relative phases, which were characterized by acquiring the photoelectrons released from neon atoms by the combination of the attosecond pulses and an infrared field. This leads to additional structures in the electron spectra, usually referred to as sidebands. The scientists measured the correlation between the different sidebands generated for each laser shot. This finally enabled them to fully characterize the attosecond pulse train.

"Our results indicate not only that FELs can produce attosecond pulses", says Sansone, "but, due to the approach implemented for the waveform generation, such pulses are fully controllable and attain high peak intensities. These two aspects represent key advantages of our approach. The results will also influence the planning and design of new Free-Electron Lasers worldwide."

Astrocytes are neural cells with many important functions in the nervous system. The inflammation of these cells occurs in brain infections and neurodegenerative disorders, a process called astrogliosis. Aware of this fundamental process for the prevention of diseases and improvement of current treatments, a team led by researchers at the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) and other five Brazilian Federal Universities published one of the first studies to categorically observe this inflammatory reaction in human astrocytes created in the laboratory.

The term astrogliosis may sound unfamiliar to the general public, but this inflammatory process is common to several diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and congenital malformations caused by the Zika virus. Although astrogliosis is well studied in the neuroscience field, most of the knowledge came from animal models, an experimental strategy that contributes to scientific advancement, but it does not reproduce human brain complexity. "Animal testing has its indubitable relevance in science, but the reality is that it doesn't fully reproduce some human aspects, especially when related to responses of the immune system. This is the case of human glial cells, including astrocytes, which are responsible for the metabolic maintenance of neurons and their nerve impulses", says Pablo Trindade, the study's first author.

To understand the inflammatory process of astrogliosis, the research coordinator and scientist at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and IDOR, Stevens Rehen, adopted a cell culture procedure that is already his signature in several other studies on the human brain - among them, the development of brain organoids that helped to correlate Zika virus infection to the onset of microcephaly. The method used by Rehen's team is the reprogramming of human cells found in the urine of voluntary donors, turning them into pluripotent stem cells. These stem cells are then stimulated to become healthy astrocytes or any other human cell necessary for the research at the time. In this case, from the creation of astrocytes, the scientists have put these cells to react with an inflammatory protein, known as TNF, obtaining a map of the human astrogliosis in the laboratory. The observed results indicate that the inflammation process already occurs within the first hour, and it gradually impairs astrocytes function over time.

In addition to morphological changes of these cells, which start to show smaller nuclei and stretched shapes, the inflammation also interfered with the primary function of astrocytes: the regulation of neurotransmitters, that are substances secreted by neurons responsible for information transmission across synapses. The study identified that human astrocytes under astrogliosis showed impairment in the glutamate uptake. Of note, glutamate is the most important stimulatory neurotransmitter involved in many brain functions including learning and memory.

The publication is a highlight in studies about astrogliosis, since the approach allowed scientists to analyze the phenomenon in a non-invasive way using human cells. The researchers point out that the evidence and methods from this study can serve as a basis for other investigations, including those aimed at discovering new treatments, which can improve the quality of life of people suffering from brain inflammation triggered by infections or neurodegenerative diseases.

(Millbrook, NY) Tropical forests are allies in the fight against climate change. Growing trees absorb carbon emissions and store them as woody biomass. As a result, reforestation of land once cleared for logging, mining, and agriculture is seen as a powerful tool for locking up large amounts of carbon emissions throughout the South American tropics.

But new research published in Nature Communications shows that the ability of tropical forests to lock up carbon depends upon a group of trees that possess a unique talent - the ability to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere.

The study modeled how the mix of tree species growing in a tropical forest following a disturbance, such as clearcutting, can affect the forest's ability to sequester carbon. The team found that the presence of trees that fix nitrogen could double the amount of carbon a forest stores in its first 30 years of regrowth. At maturity, forests with nitrogen fixation took up 10% more carbon than forests without.

Sarah Batterman, a Research Fellow at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and coauthor on the paper, explains, "We want to use this work to guide tropical reforestation to optimize carbon uptake and resiliency. This requires understanding what mix of trees is needed to maximize long-term carbon storage while withstanding future climatic conditions. Our findings suggest that nitrogen-fixing trees are a key ingredient in the reforestation recipe."

Nitrogen-fixing plants partner with soil microbes to turn atmospheric nitrogen gas into a form of nitrogen that is available to fuel plant growth. Through these interactions, nitrogen fixers are able to self-fertilize. This adaptation gives them an edge in recently cleared, early succession tropical soils that are nitrogen-poor. Fixers also help fertilize nearby plants when they shed their leaves and return nitrogen to the soil.

In the tropics, nitrogen-fixing trees are common, but they can be relatively rare in newly recovering forests. Their large, nutrient-packed seeds are often dispersed by wildlife. Having animal dispersed seeds is a disadvantage in the early stages of forest regrowth, when animals that once lived in the forest have not yet returned. Planting fixers as part of reforestation efforts could boost forest development and carbon accumulation.

Batterman says, "To understand the function of nitrogen-fixing trees in a tropical forest, we need to isolate their effects. We can't do that in a real forest because adding or removing trees would alter other aspects of the ecosystem, such as light availability, which would skew findings. It would also take decades to centuries to measure. Instead, we developed a model to quantify ecosystem processes, like nitrogen cycling, that affect forest growth and carbon sequestration."

Using data collected at 112 tropical forest plots in Panama - a record which includes data on over 13,000 individual trees ranging in age from five to 300 years post-disturbance - the research team developed a model that represents interactions among soil, plants, and nutrients at the scale of individual trees. The model accounts for competition between plants for light and nutrients, nutrient cycling between plants and the soil, and tree-level nitrogen fixation.

Trees were classified into four groups that are unique to different stages of forest regrowth, including early-, mid-, and late-successional species, plus nitrogen fixers. By changing the ability of trees to fix nitrogen in their model, the team was able to predict how fast carbon accumulated in a forest and how much carbon it was able to store.

Batterman explains: "Forests with nitrogen-fixing trees grow more rapidly in early succession and have a higher carbon storage potential than forests without nitrogen fixers. They also recover faster when confronted with disturbances."

To quantify nitrogen cycling in tropical forests, many existing models use ecosystem-wide parameters such as evapotranspiration and net primary production to estimate nitrogen fixation fluxes. These models tend to overestimate the amount of nitrogen in the system.

Lead author Jennifer Levy-Varon, who worked on the study while a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University, says, "Our model is unique because instead of looking at ecosystem-wide processes and using those to estimate nitrogen fluxes, we're honing in on individual trees. This gives us a more accurate understanding of nitrogen-fixers' contributions to the forest nitrogen budget and associated carbon sequestration."

To put the importance of nitrogen-fixing trees in context, the team used their model to predict how much additional carbon could be stored in reforested areas in tropical countries based on acreage pledged under the Bonn Challenge.

"The Bonn Challenge is an international effort to reforest 350 million hectares of land by 2030. We found that by including nitrogen-fixing trees in these efforts, tropical countries could sequester an additional 6.7Gt of carbon dioxide over the next 20 years. To give that number some context, 6.4Gt was the total amount of CO2 equivalents emitted in the US in 2017. It's comparable to driving 15.6 trillion miles, which is about 5 years of US vehicle emissions." says Batterman.

Coauthor Lars Hedin, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, concludes, "This model gets us closer to understanding the importance of tropical forests in the global carbon cycle, and their role in removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health have found that rates of two sexually transmitted infections (STIs), gonorrhea and chlamydia, are 15% and 10% higher, respectively, in Texas counties with high shale drilling activity ("fracking"), compared to counties without any fracking.

No association, however, was observed between drilling and STI rates in Colorado or North Dakota. Also, rates of a third STI, syphilis, were not elevated in any of the states.

The findings are published in the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

"The findings in Texas add to the evidence of the social impacts in communities hosting the shale gas industry," said senior author Nicole Deziel, PhD, assistant professor at the Yale School of Public Health. "The associations between shale drilling and chlamydia and gonorrhea in Texas specifically may reflect the higher level of drilling activity and a greater number of densely populated metropolitan areas compared to other regions."

The extraction of oil and natural gas from unconventional sources such as deep shale rock formations using techniques including horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing has helped position the United States as the leading global producer of both crude oil and natural gas.

In 2018, these techniques accounted for ~60% of both oil and natural gas production. This expansion has been suggested to increase employment and stimulate the local economy. But others raise concerns about poorer air and water quality, transportation infrastructure, potential earthquakes and increased noise.

Shale gas extraction often involves the influx of specialized workers into rural areas to meet the labor demands of the drilling rigs. This mobile workforce is largely composed of young men living in temporary workcamps with limited connections to the community. In this setting, workers may have opportunities to seek new sex partners, thereby changing sexual networks and increasing disease transmission in the community.

The lack of an association between shale drilling activity and rates of syphilis may be because this STI occurs most commonly in men who have sex with men, which compose only a small proportion of the male population, making it difficult to study.

The study examined reported STI cases over 2000-2016; this long follow-up period covered both pre- and post-fracking periods to account for any pre-existing trends in STI rates. The study design examined industrial changes at the county level, which corresponds to the geographic scale at which policy changes could be implemented.

"These findings point to the potential importance of shale extraction as a social determinant of health, one that alters communities in a way that increases risk for STI transmission," said co-author and STI researcher Linda Niccolai, PhD, professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

The results may be useful in informing local public health officials and policymakers; the inter-state differences underscore the need for local epidemiology to prioritize community health policies, said Nicholaus Johnson, MPH, a Yale School of Public Health postgraduate associate and the study's lead author.

"Future research should focus on improving an understanding of the transmission patterns present between nonlocal oil and gas workers and community members, without stigmatizing workers."

A new smartphone app to tackle pests destroying crops has been developed - and it could soon help farmers whose lands are being decimated by swarms of locusts, something the UN has called for "rapid action" action on.

The team of researchers from the University of Lincoln, UK, has designed and built the specialist app, called MAESTRO*, which can recognise locusts and grasshopper pests through the smartphone's camera and record their GPS location.

The aim is for farmers to use the app to record the location and volume of locusts to enable the targeted delivery of pesticides to prevent swarms from spreading and decimating crops in their path. The next stage is the development of a cloud server which the app data will be uploaded to so that the pest's location can be identified in real time.

This potential targeted approach enables the precise use of pesticides to reduce the magnitude of locust swarms.

In January the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned that a Desert Locust outbreak in the Horn of Africa could provoke a humanitarian crisis as swarms of the pest continue to migrate and devastate crops in its path, and is calling for urgent international support to fight the worsening upsurge.

Dr Bashir Al-Diri from the School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln led the study. He said: "Each year, approximately 18 million hectares of land are damaged by locusts and grasshoppers, impacting hugely on farmers and their productivity.

"Monitoring techniques currently rely on field surveys by people through digging insect eggs, but this information only helps farmers to make mid and long-term forecasting decisions and can delay effective management measures.

"Our goal is to help farmers identify and record the spread of locusts on their land before they start to develop air borne swarms. We hope this new app will eventually put more knowledge and more power into the hands of the farmers. They will be able to predict insect population and spread, and act quickly and accurately to save their crops."

To build the new software, the scientific team gathered more than 3,500 images of locusts to train the system behind the app, which can also recognise a variety of terrain and plant growth.

With its advanced computer vision technology, the developers hope that the app framework will be used for a wide range of other applications in the future to capture and document key crop pests and diseases.

For example, it could easily be adapted to help individuals identify plant diseases and access expert advice on how to combat them, or to digitally capture the number and type of birds and wildlife in specific locations as part of national and international surveys.

The researchers behind the early-stage work, published in JCI Insight, are exploring whether kisspeptin can ultimately be used to treat men with common psychosexual disorders - sexual problems which are psychological in origin such as low libido. The team are now hoping to perform trials in patients with low sexual desire.

The team have previously shown that kisspeptin can enhance how the body processes sexual arousal but have now discovered a boosting effect of kisspeptin in human attraction brain pathways. Attraction is a fundamental process that triggers onward sexual arousal, sexual activity and often reproduction.

In a trial involving 33 heterosexual men, using MRI brain scanning, the team found that kisspeptin triggered greater activation in attraction pathways in the brain when smelling female perfume and when viewing female faces,compared to the placebo.

Dr Alexander Comninos, Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London, Consultant Endocrinologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and co-senior author of the study, said:

"Psychosexual disorders have a major detrimental impact on wellbeing and can be highly distressing not only to those affected but also their partners. Despite the high numbers of people with these disorders,there are currently limited treatment options. Our study shows that kisspeptin can boost brain activity related to attraction and intriguingly this boosting effect is even greater in men with a low sexual quality of life.

"This builds on our previous work that identified a role for kisspeptin in sexual arousal. Now we have found that kisspeptin may actually enhance the processing of smell and facial attraction, which are often the first steps to sexual arousal. We hope our growing understanding of how kisspeptin boosts parts of the brain involved in attraction and arousal can ultimately lead to new ways of treating people affected. However, we still have a long way to go."

Professor Waljit Dhillo, NIHR Research Professor in Endocrinology & Metabolism at Imperial College London and co-senior author of the study, added:

"Attraction is usually the first step to sexual arousal and it's encouraging to see that kisspeptin can also boost brain activity relating to this. This new finding helps us further understand the brain activity of people with psychosexual disorders which could lead to therapeutic targets."

Psychosexual disorders affect up to one in three people worldwide, with significant detrimental effects on quality of life, interpersonal relationships and fertility. One of the most common is loss of libido (sex drive), which is often linked to relationship issues, stress or tiredness, but can be a sign of an underlying medical problem, such as reduced hormone levels. Crucially however, loss of libido can also occur without any of these problems. Despite the high clinical burden, limited understanding of the brain processes governing psychosexual function has restricted the development of effective treatments.

Kisspeptin is a naturally occurring hormone that stimulates the release of other reproductive hormones inside the body. The research team wanted to see whether this hormone can be used to stimulate regions in the brain that govern attraction in young healthy men with normal libido.

The study involved a randomised, double-blind and placebo-controlled trial in which 33 healthy men aged 18-34 years were given an infusion of kisspeptin or placebo from 2018-2019 at Hammersmith Hospital, part of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

They were then placed in an MRI scanner and given a perfume to sniff. Previous work has shown that this perfume (Chanel No. 5) is associated with sexual arousal. The participants also viewed female faces. During these tasks researchers scanned their brains to see how kisspeptin affected the brain's responses to the perfume and faces.

The team found that kisspeptin enhanced attraction pathways in the brain, when smelling the female perfume as well as when viewing female faces,compared to the placebo. They also found that on viewing female faces, kisspeptin had a greater effecton attraction pathways in men who had lower sexual quality of life.

The team believes that this new insight into kisspeptin could lead to new therapies to tackle psychosexual disorders, and plan to carry out further studies to explore this.

Pressure treating - which involves putting lumber inside a pressurized watertight tank and forcing chemicals into the boards - has been used for more than a century to help stave off the fungus that causes wood rot in wet environments.

Now researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a new method that could one day replace conventional pressure treating as a way to make lumber not only fungal-resistant but also nearly impervious to water - and more thermally insulating.

The new method, which will be reported February 13 in the journal Langmuir and jointly sponsored by the Department of Defense, the Gulf Research Program, and the Westendorf Undergraduate Research Fund, involves applying a protective coating of metal oxide that is only a few atoms thick throughout the entire cellular structure of the wood.

This process, known as atomic layer deposition, is already frequently used in manufacturing microelectronics for computers and cell phones but now is being explored for new applications in commodity products such as wood. Like pressure treatments, the process is performed in an airtight chamber, but in this case the chamber is at low pressures to help the gas molecules permeate the entire wood structure.

"It was really important that this coating be applied throughout the interior of the wood and not just on the surface," said Mark Losego, an assistant professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. "Wood has pores that are about the width of a human hair or a little smaller, and we used these holes as our pathways for the gases to travel throughout the wood's structure."

As the gas molecules travel down those pathways, they react with the pore's surfaces to deposit a conformal, atomic-scale coating of metal oxide throughout the interior of the wood. The result is wood that sheds water off its surface and resists absorbing water even when submerged.

In their experiments, the researchers took finished pine 2x4s and cut them into one-inch pieces. They then tested infusing the lumber with three different kinds of metal oxides: titanium oxide, aluminum oxide and zinc oxide. With each, they compared the water absorption after holding the lumber under water for a period of time. Of the three, titanium oxide performed the best by helping the wood absorb the least amount of water. By comparison, untreated lumber absorbed three times as much water.

"Of the three chemistries that we tried, titanium oxide proved the most effective at creating the hydrophobic barrier," said Shawn Gregory, a graduate student at Georgia Tech and lead author on the paper. "We hypothesize that this is likely because of how the precursor chemicals for titanium dioxide react less readily with the pore surfaces and therefore have an easier time penetrating deep within the pores of the wood."

Losego said that the same phenomena exist in atomic layer deposition processes used for microelectronic devices.

"These same titanium oxide precursor chemistries are known to better penetrate and conformally coat complex nanostructures in microelectronics just like we see in the wood," Losego said. "These commonalities in understanding fundamental physical phenomena - even in what appear to be very different systems - is what makes science so elegant and powerful."

In addition to being hydrophobic, lumber treated with the new vapor process also resists the mold that eventually leads to rot.

"Interestingly, when we left these blocks sit in a humid environment for several months, we noticed that the titanium oxide treated blocks were much more resistant to mold growth than the untreated lumber," Gregory added. "We suspect that this has something to do with its hydrophobic nature, although there could be other chemical effects associated with the new treatment process that could also be responsible. That's something we would want to investigate in future research."

Yet another benefit of the new process: vapor-treated wood was far less thermally conductive compared to untreated wood.

"A lot of attention is paid in home building to insulating the cavities between the structural components of a home, but a massive amount of the thermal losses are caused by the wood studs themselves," said Shannon Yee, an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and a co-author on the paper with expertise in thermal systems. "Lumber treated with this new process can be up to 30 percent less conductive, which could translate to a savings of as much as 2 million BTUs of energy per dwelling per year."