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Just half of 11-19 year old drinkers recall seeing health messages or warnings on alcohol packaging - despite being an important target market for this information, according to new research.

Published in the Journal of Public Health, the research - led by the University of Stirling and the Cancer Policy Research Centre at Cancer Research UK - investigated to what extent 11-19 year olds in the UK were aware of product information, health messaging or warnings on alcohol packaging during the previous month.

The research team found that, of those who identified themselves as 'current drinkers', just half had recalled seeing such information - and that fell to just one third of the entire age group, regardless of their current drinking status.

It is the first study to examine awareness and recall of such messaging in a large and demographically representative sample of young people across the UK - and experts believe the findings will support the debate around the design, effectiveness, and regulation of alcohol labelling in the UK.

Dr Nathan Critchlow, Research Fellow in Stirling's Institute for Social Marketing (ISM), led the study. He said: "In the UK and internationally, there are frequent calls to increase the visibility, comprehension and effectiveness of labelling on alcohol packaging. In particular, critics often point to the statutory steps taken for nutritional labelling on food and drinks, or health warnings and messaging on tobacco products, and ask why alcohol labelling - which is self-regulated by the industry - is not as progressive.

"The Scottish Government has also included a commitment in their latest strategy to consider mandatory labelling if the alcohol industry does not improve visibility and clarity by September 2019, while the Republic of Ireland already have plans to introduce similar legislation.

"Our latest research provides a timely and unique insight that will help inform these debates."

Dr Critchlow carried out the study with ISM colleagues Dr Crawford Moodie, Dr Niamh Fitzgerald, Anne Marie MacKintosh and Daniel Jones, alongside Chris Thomas, Jyotsna Vohra, and Lucie Hooper, of the Cancer Policy Research Centre at Cancer Research UK.

The study used data from the 2017 Youth Alcohol Policy Survey - a cross-sectional, YouGov-conducted survey with 11 to 19-year-olds across the UK. Participants were asked whether they had seen any product information, health messages or warnings on alcohol packaging in the past month and, if so, what messages they recalled. This age group is particularly important as exposure to clear and effective messaging during their formative drinking experiences may have a sustained impact on alcohol-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviour.

"We explored awareness of such information and differences between population groups and different levels of alcohol consumption, such as whether a young person currently drank alcohol or not," Dr Critchlow explained.

"Only a third of 11-19 year olds recalled seeing product information, health messages or warnings on alcohol packaging in the past month. In particular, only around half of current drinkers were aware of such messaging, despite being an important target market for this information.

"Recall of specific messages was also low; almost half of young people were unsure what messages they had seen and most specific messages were only recalled by a minority of young people. This included those related to drinking guidelines, health effects, or alcohol being an age-restricted product."

Co-author Dr Jyotsna Vohra, Cancer Research UK's head of cancer policy research, said: "Beyond the fact that children are drinking underage, it's worrying that only half can recall seeing important health warnings. And what is just as concerning is that many of these labels don't give all the information the CMO [Chief Medical Officer] says they should, including highlighting the risk between alcohol and cancer. Alcohol is linked to seven types of cancer in adults and is responsible for over 12,000 cases annually, yet only one in 10 people are aware of this risk."

"The more a person drinks, the greater their risk of cancer. This is why it's important to do more to reduce drinking in the UK. All labelling must also clearly note that people should not drink more than 14 units per week. And while not everyone who drinks will go on to develop cancer, there's no harm in cutting down."

For decades, the transistors on our microchips have become smaller, faster and cheaper. Approximately every two years the number of transistors on commercial chips has doubled - this phenomenon became known as "Moore's Law". But for several years now, Moore's law does not hold any more. The miniaturization has reached a natural limit, as completely new problems arise when a length scale of only a few nanometers is approached.

Now, however, the next big miniaturization step could soon become possible - with so-called "two-dimensional (2D) materials" that may consist of only a single atomic layer. With the help of a novel insulator made of calcium fluoride, scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) have created an ultra-thin transistor, which has excellent electrical properties and, in contrast to previous technologies, can be miniaturized to an extremely small size. The new technology has now been presented in the journal Nature Electronics.

Ultra-Thin Semiconductors and Insulators

Research on semiconductor materials needed to fabricate transistors has seen significant progress in recent years. Today, ultra-thin semiconductors can be made of 2D materials, consisting of only a few atomic layers. "But this is not enough to build an extremely small transistor," says Professor Tibor Grasser from the Institute of Microelectronics at TU Wien. "In addition to the ultra-thin semiconductor, we also need an ultra-thin insulator."

This is due to the fundamental design structure of a transistor: current can flow from one side of the transistor to the other, but only if a voltage is applied in the middle, creating an electric field. The electrode providing this field must be electrically insulated from the semiconductor itself. "There have already been transistor experiments with ultra-thin semiconductors, but until now they were coupled with ordinary insulators," says Tibor Grasser. "There is not much benefit in reducing the thickness of the semiconductor when it still has to be combined with a thick layer of insulator material. There is no way of miniaturizing such a transistor any further. Also, at very small length scales the insulator surface turned out to disturb the electronic properties of the semiconductor."

Therefore, Yury Illarionov, a postdoc in Tibor Grasser's team, tried a novel approach. He used ultra-thin 2D-materials not only for the semiconductor part of the transistor, but also for the insulating part. By selecting ultra-thin insulating materials such as ionic crystals, a transistor with a size of only a few nanometers can be built. The electronic properties are improved because ionic crystals can have a perfectly regular surface, without a single atom protruding from the surface, which could disturb the electric field. "Conventional materials have covalent bonds in the third dimension - atoms that couple to the neighboring materials above and below," explains Tibor Grasser. "This is not the case in 2D materials and ionic crystals, and so they do not interfere with the electrical properties of the semiconductor."

The Prototype is a World Champion

To produce the new ultra-thin transistor, calcium fluoride was selected as the insulating material. The calcium fluoride layer was produced at the Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg, where the first author of the publication, Yury Illarionov, is originally from before joining the team in Vienna. The transistor itself was then manufactured by Prof. Thomas Müller's team at the Institute of Photonics at TU Wien and analyzed at the Institute for Microelectronics.

The very first prototype already surpassed all expectations: "For years, we have received quite a number of different transistors to investigate their technical properties - but we have never seen anything like our transistor with the calcium fluoride insulator," says Tibor Grasser. "The prototype with its superior electrical properties outshines all previous models."

Now the team wants to find out which combinations of insulators and semiconductors work best. It may take a few more years before the technology can be used for commercially available computer chips as the manufacturing processes for the material layers still need to be improved. "In general, however, there is no doubt that transistors made of 2D materials are a highly interesting option for the future," says Tibor Grasser. "From a scientific point of view, it is clear that the fluorides we have just tested are currently the best solution for the insulator problem. Now, only a few technical questions remain to be answered. "

This new kind of smaller and faster transistor should enable the computer industry to take the next big step. This way, Moore's law of exponentially increasing computer power could soon come to life again.

Being sprayed by a skunk is no fun for people or their pets, and the strong, stinky secretions can serve as a nasty reminder of the wildlife encounter for days or weeks. Available "de-skunking" formulas often either don't work well or can irritate the skin and eyes. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Journal of Natural Products have identified a compound from fungi that safely and effectively neutralizes skunk spray odor.

When skunks feel threatened, they spray fluids from their anal glands that contain several nasty-smelling organosulfur compounds. The human nose can detect extremely low concentrations of these substances, making it difficult to completely rid clothing, hair, fur or skin of the stink. Various home and commercial remedies claim to neutralize skunk odor, but they often don't work well or contain skin and eye irritants. Robert Cichewicz and colleagues wondered if a natural product they had previously identified from fungi, called pericosine A, could react with and neutralize odoriferous compounds in skunk spray.

To find out, the researchers mixed pericosine A with different organosulfur compounds from skunk spray and analyzed the products of the reactions. They discovered that the fungal compound reacted with two types of organosulfur compounds -- thiols and thioesters -- and converted them to stable, odorless products. Then, the team very slightly altered the structure of pericosine A and adjusted other ingredients in the reaction to produce a formula that would be safer and more effective for skin application than the original compound. Finally, the researchers used in vitro eye and skin tests to determine that the fungal compound was non-irritating. 

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is set to become the largest radio telescope on Earth. Bielefeld University researchers together with the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) and international partners have now examined the SKA-MPG telescope--a prototype for the part of the SKA that receives signals in the mid-frequency range. The study, published today (24 July) in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, shows that the telescope is not only a prototype to test the SKA design, but can also be used on its own to provide insights into the origin of the Universe. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the work on the SKA-MPG through a joint research project coordinated by Bielefeld University.

'The SKA-MPG telescope in South Africa will help us to understand the cosmic background Radiation,' says Dr Aritra Basu, lead author of the study and physicist in Bielefeld University's Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology Working Group. The cosmic background radiation is light in the microwave range that was produced shortly after the Big Bang, and exploring it provides information about the origin of the Universe. 'However, measurements of the cosmic background radiation are distorted by other effects in the foreground, such as ultrafast electrons in the magnetic field of the Milky Way. In order to measure cosmic background radiation, we need to know more about these effects. Our study shows that the new telescope is excellent for investigating foreground radiation with ultra precision,' says Basu.

The SKA-MPG telescope was jointly developed by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn and MT-Mechatronics GmbH. The abbreviation 'MPG' stands for the Max Planck Society, which is funding the telescope. The radio telescope has a diameter of 15 metres and can receive signals between 1.7 and 3.5 GHz. It is currently being assembled in the South Africa's Karoo desert. Gundolf Wieching of the MPIfR, project leader of the telescope, expects first regular scientific use in autumn 2019.

The radio telescope is primarily designed as a prototype for a part of the SKA that receives signals from a medium radio frequency range. If the prototype performs well in a series of tests, around 200 such telescopes will be built for the SKA in South Africa. The SKA will observe medium as well as low radio frequencies. This second instrument will consist of thousands of small radio antennae that can be combined to simulate a huge radio telescope. The two parts of the SKA will then collect Signals over one square kilometre in Australia and South Africa--hence the name 'Square Kilometre Array'. 'Even with our prototype, we are able to look deep into the Universe thanks to a clever design for the telescope and new developments in receiver and backend technology,' says Dr Hans-Rainer Klöckner, astrophysicist at the MPIfR. 'I am curious to see what we will discover once 200 of these telescopes are synchronised for the SKA.' The SKA will be used, for example, to explore gravitational waves and dark energy, or to test Einstein's theory of relativity under extreme conditions.

The SKA will be the first global science organisation with locations on three continents: Australia, Africa, and Europe. In addition, data centres are being set up around the world. A special challenge lies in dealing with the enormous volume of data: the SKA will collect over 600 petabytes of observation data per year-- equivalent to the storage capacity of more than half a million laptops.

The German research institutions involved in the preparatory work for the SKA have joined forces in the 'German Long Wavelength Consortium', including Bielefeld University. The consortium's projects also include D-MeerKAT, in which the prototype SKA-MPG telescope is being evaluated--for example by the recently published study. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is funding D-MeerKAT as a joint research project. Professor Dr Dominik Schwarz, head of the Bielefeld Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology Working Group, coordinates D-MeerKAT. 'Our investigations with the SKA-MPG telescope are an important independent contribution to modern cosmology--with a lot of work and a bit of luck, we may be able to open a new window into understanding the Big Bang,' says Schwarz.

HANOVER, N.H. - July 24, 2019 - A new study could hold the key to learning languages, teaching children colors or even studying complex theories.

The research, published in Cognitive Science, adds to the existing evidence that adults, children and students of all ages learn better when seeing an object before hearing its description. The study builds on past research by focusing on learning in "inconsistent" environments featuring different teaching styles or distracting noises.

"Understanding how the learning process occurs, and what factors affect it, may help instructors improve methodologies of education," said Timmy Ma, a research associate at Dartmouth.

Learning environments can often complicate the learning process. For example, a student taking a course with both a teacher and a teaching assistant needs to adapt to the ways the different instructors teach the same subject. Even the varying ways teachers talk and behave can complicate learning.

For the study, researchers intentionally provided confusing information to mimic these types of inconsistencies to subjects that were tasked to learn the names of three fictional characters - "yosh," "wug" and "niz" - using two types of learning methods.

The first method, "object-label learning," is when a student sees an object first and then is provided with the label. This means seeing a color before being told its name. Or hearing a description of a physical force before being hearing its formal title.

The second learning procedure is "label-object learning," the reverse order in which a student sees a label first.

Subjects in the study were asked to match the pictures of the characters with their made-up names. The presentation of information was intentionally misleading to see if learners have an easier time dealing with the inconsistency depending on the way the input was presented - either object first or label first.

The results of the study indicate that students who see objects first and then hear the name - object-label learners - process inconsistent information better than learners who hear the name first and then see the object.

Researchers detected that learners that interact with the object before hearing the name perform "frequency boosting" - the ability to process noisy, inconsistent information to identify and use the most frequent rule.

For example, when teachers interchangeably use "soda" or "pop" to describe the name of a carbonated beverage, the children who use frequency boosting will learn to use the term that is used most frequently.

A key feature of frequency boosting is that learners will also use the rule more consistently than the instructor.

"When trying to teach a child about colors, such as blue or red, not many people think about the best way to do it. People just say this is blue and point to an object. From this research, we can say that the order of presentation actually matters and that seeing the object first creates a stronger association to the name," said Ma who conducted the research while a PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine.

The research team also used mathematical modeling to confirm the observations as well as provide a theoretical explanation as to why one type of learner is different from the other.

"This research combines experiments with a novel mathematical model to show that object-label learners deal better with inconsistencies. It's exciting to see that the math theory explains the observational data," said Ma.

According to the research team, understanding how people learn could have broad applications. For example, foreign language learning programs could benefit from showing images before introducing the name of an object. The results can also be applied to math, science or any other subjects where students need to make similar associations.

Natalia Komarova, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Irvine co-authored this paper.

Neuronal networks in the brain can process information particularly well when they are close to a critical point - or so brain researchers had assumed based on theoretical considerations. However, experimental investigations of brain activity revealed much fewer indicators of such critical states than expected. Scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University have now proposed a possible explanation. They showed that neuronal networks can assume a second, previously unknown critical mode whose hidden dynamics are almost impossible to measure with conventional methods.

Critical points, at which complex systems abruptly change their characteristics, are familiar concepts in physics. Ferromagnetic materials are one example. Below the critical temperature, also known as the Curie temperature, the electron spins of the material align so that they all point in the same direction. The tiny magnetic moments of the individual spins thus add together, which can be measured from the outside as a spontaneous magnetization of the material.

Very similar dynamics were previously detected in measurements of brain activity. Brain signals are a typical case, where large areas of the network become active simultaneously in an avalanche-like fashion within a very short time. Overall, however, the phenomenon occurs much more rarely than expected. Scientists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University have now presented a solution for this apparent contradiction in the journal PNAS. They showed that neuronal networks can exhibit a second, previously unknown type of criticality.

An analysis of the simultaneous activity of 155 nerve cells showed that for this second type of criticality, a large number of nerve cells also exhibit coordinated behaviour. However, the interaction comprises not only the simultaneous activation but also the targeted inhibition of large groups of neurons. This newly discovered criticality permits the network to represent signals in numerous combinations of activated neurons and therefore - according to the researchers - to efficiently process information in parallel.

This also explains why no sudden increase in network activity can be detected from the outside. Standard methods such as EEG or LFP essentially add the signals of many neurons together. In this second critical state, however, the number of active nerve cells remains mostly constant. The heterogeneous dynamics can therefore not be recorded with these methods. Only by using highly developed mathematical methods borrowed from statistical physics could the researchers, headed by Prof. Moritz Helias, make experimentally verifiable predictions of the correlations between the nerve cells.

For the direct experimental detection of the network state they had predicted by means of theory and simulation, the researchers, working with lead author Dr. David Dahmen, drew on Prof. Sonja Grün's expertise in analysing the joint activity of many nerve cells.

"This study has a far-reaching impact in that Prof. Helias and his team succeeded in applying field theory, which is a very successful method in physics, to neuroscience. We can thus hope for further insights in future," explains institute head Prof. Markus Diesmann (INM-6). Diesmann plays a major role in the EU's Human Brain Project (HBP), one of the largest neuroscientific projects worldwide, which unites the work of 500 researchers in 19 EU member states.

"In the HBP, we are concerned with the technology required to simulate large parts of the brain with all their nerve cells. These simulations on their own do not yet yield insights, however. They simply result in simulated data which are just as complicated as the data from nature. However, they allow us to modify networks in a much more targeted manner than would be possible using experimental methods. But only by simplifying them, in a controlled way, into manageable mathematical models with fewer equations will we have the potential to understand the underlying mechanisms," explains Diesmann.

A remarkable bioluminescent click beetle was discovered in the subtropical evergreen broadleaf forests in southwest China. Scientists Mr. Wen-Xuan Bi, Dr. Jin-Wu He, Dr. Xue-Yan Li, all affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Kunming), Mr. Chang-Chin Chen of Tianjin New Wei San Industrial Company, Ltd. (Tianjing, China) and Dr. Robin Kundrata of Palacký University (Olomouc, Czech Republic) published their findings in the open-access journal ZooKeys.

Even though the family of click beetles (Elateridae) contain approximately 10,000 species worldwide, it is only about 200 species able to emit light, and they inhabit Latin America and Oceania. Interestingly, the position of the luminous organs varies amongst the different click beetle lineages. In some, they are found on the foremost of the three thoracic segments of the body (prothorax), in others - on both the prothorax and the abdomen, and in few - only on the abdomen.

"In 2017, during an expedition to the western Yunnan in China, we discovered a dusk-active bioluminescent click beetle with a single luminous organ on the abdomen, " recalls lead scientist Mr. Wen-Xuan Bi.

Since no bioluminescent click beetle had previously been recorded in Asia, the team conducted simultaneous morphological and molecular analyses in order to clarify the identity of the new species and figure out its relationship to other representatives of its group.

Co-author Dr. Xue-Yan Li explains:

"The morphological investigation in combination with the molecular analysis based on 16 genes showed that our taxon is not only a new species in a new genus, but that it also represents a completely new subfamily of click beetles. We chose the name Sinopyrophorus for the new genus, and the new subfamily is called Sinopyrophorinae."

In conclusion, the discovery of the new species sheds new light on the geographic distribution and evolution of luminescent click beetles. The authors agree that as a representative of a unique lineage, which is only distantly related to the already known bioluminescent click beetles, the new insect group may serve as a new model in the research of bioluminescence within the whole order of beetles.

RESTON, VIRGINIA--Whether alone or combined with alcohol, new studies included in Birth Defects Research just published by the Teratology Society with John Wiley & Sons, suggest marijuana exposure may be capable of triggering morphological and behavioral impairments similar to those seen with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). The groundbreaking insight is part of a special journal issue of 13-studies looking closer at the biomarkers, mechanisms, and interactions of prenatal alcohol exposure. (See the Overview DOI:10.1002/bdr2.1545).

"It's incredibly timely and relevant that we address the subject of prenatal alcohol exposure," said Christina Chambers, PhD, MPH, professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego and co-editor of the special Birth Defects Research issue. Dr. Chambers, a Teratology Society Past President and pioneer in the field of prenatal alcohol research, recently made headlines with her groundbreaking study which suggests FASD may affect up to 5% of children in the U.S., and is far more common than previously thought. "Alcohol is likely the most common teratogenic exposure that occurs in pregnancy."

Some of the significant findings unveiled in the new issue include those by Boa-Amponsem et al. The authors use a zebrafish model to examine the effects of a cannabinoid agonist as well as alcohol on FASD phenotypes, changes to physical features, and behavior and showed that cannabinoids alone, as well as if combined with lower levels of alcohol, significantly impaired development. "This study, in combination with previous work in mice, suggests that prenatal cannabis exposure might induce FASD-like impairments," said Scott E. Parnell, PhD, assistant professor in the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and co-editor of the special Birth Defects Research issue. In addition, a study by Buckley et al. provides the first known report of hindbrain-associated heterotopias (brain tissue located in the wrong part of the brain) resulting from developmental alcohol exposure. This novel finding further details evidence that the effects of exposure are timing- and dose-dependent.

Long-term prenatal alcohol exposure effects are also addressed providing striking new evidence indicating adolescents with FASD, particularly males, are 29% more likely to report a serious suicide attempt. "This work by O'Connor et al. suggests that health care providers should be aware of this specific vulnerability in adolescents with FASD, especially among males," said Dr. Chambers.

The Moon's south pole region is home to some of the most extreme environments in the solar system: it's unimaginably cold, massively cratered, and has areas that are either constantly bathed in sunlight or in darkness. This is precisely why NASA wants to send astronauts there in 2024 as part of its Artemis program.

The most enticing feature of this southernmost region is the craters, some of which never see the light of day reach their floors. The reason for this is the low angle of sunlight striking the surface at the poles. To a person standing at the lunar south pole, the Sun would appear on the horizon, illuminating the surface sideways, and, thus, skimming primarily the rims of some craters while leaving their deep interiors in shadow.

As a result of the permanent darkness, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has measured the coldest temperatures in the solar system inside these craters, which have become known as perfect environments for preserving material like water for eons. Or so we thought.

It turns out that despite temperature that dips to -388 degrees Fahrenheit (-233 Celsius) and can presumably keep frost locked in soil virtually forever, water is slowly escaping the topmost, super thin layer (thinner than the width of a red blood cell) of the Moon's surface. NASA scientists reported this finding recently in paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"People think of some areas in these polar craters as trapping water and that's it," said William M. Farrell, a plasma physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who led the lunar frost research. "But there are solar wind particles and meteoroids hitting the surface, and they can drive reactions that typically occur at warmer surface temperatures. That's something that's not been emphasized."

Unlike Earth, with its plush atmosphere, the Moon has no atmosphere to protect its surface. So when the Sun sprays charged particles known as the solar wind into the solar system, some of them bombard the Moon's surface and kick up water molecules that bounce around to new locations.

Likewise, wayward meteoroids constantly smash into the surface and uproot soil mingled with frozen bits of water. Meteoroids can hurtle these soil particles -- which are many times smaller than the width of a human hair -- as far as 19 miles (30 kilometers) away from the impact site, depending on the size of the meteoroid. The particles can travel so far because the Moon has low gravity and no air to slow things down: "So every time you have one of these impacts, a very thin layer of ice grains is spread across the surface, exposed to the heat of the Sun and to the space environment, and eventually sublimated or lost to other environmental processes," said Dana Hurley, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

While it's important to consider that even in the shadowed craters water is slowly seeping out, it's possible that water is being added, too, the paper authors note. Icy comets that crash into the Moon, plus the solar wind, could be replenishing it as part of a global water cycle; that's something scientists are trying to figure out. Additionally, it's not clear how much water there is. Is it sitting only in the top layer of the Moon's surface or does it extend deep into the Moon's crust, scientists wonder?

Either way, the topmost layer of polar crater floors is getting reworked over thousands of years, according to calculations by Farrell, Hurley, and their team. Therefore, the faint patches of frost that scientists have detected at the poles using instruments such as LRO's Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) instrument could be just 2,000 years old, instead of millions or billions of years old as some might expect, Farrell's team estimated. "We can't think of these craters as icy dead spots," he noted.

To confirm his team's calculations, Farrell said, a future instrument capable of detecting water vapor should find, above the Moon's surface, one to 10 water molecules per cubic centimeter that have been liberated by impacts.

The Good News for Future Lunar Exploration

For forthcoming science and exploration, the scattering of water particles could be great news. It means astronauts may need not to subject themselves and their instruments to the harsh environment of shadowed crater floors in order to find water-rich soil -- they could just find it in sunny regions nearby.

"This research is telling us that meteoroids are doing some of the work for us and transporting material from the coldest places to some of the boundary regions where astronauts can access it with a solar-powered rover," Hurley said. "It's also telling us that what we need to do is get on the surface of one of these regions and get some firsthand data about what's happening."

Getting to the lunar surface would make it much easier to assess how much water is on the Moon. Because identifying water from afar, particularly in permanently shadowed craters, is tricky business. The primary way that scientists find water is through remote sensing instruments that can identify what chemical elements things are made of based on the light they reflect or absorb. "But for that, you need a light source," Hurley said. "And by definition, these permanently shadowed regions don't have a strong one."

Understanding the Water Environment on the Moon

Until NASA astronauts get back to the Moon to dig up some soil, or the agency sends new instruments near the surface that can sniff out floating water molecules, the research team's theory about the influence of meteoroids on the environment inside shadowed craters could help chip away at some of the mysteries surrounding the Moon's water. It already has helped scientists understand if the uppermost surface water is new or ancient, or how it may migrate around the Moon. Another thing meteoroid impacts to the crater floors could help explain is why scientists are finding patches of wispy frost diluted in regolith, or Moon soil, rather than blocks of pure water ice.

Even though water questions abound, it's important to remember, Farrell said, that it was only in the last decade that scientists found evidence that the Moon is not a dry, dead rock, as many had long assumed. The LRO, with its thousands of orbits and 1 petabyte of returned science data (equivalent to about 200,000, high-definition, feature-length films streamed online), has been instrumental. So has the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which revealed frozen water after purposely crashing into Cabeus crater in 2009 and releasing a plume of preserved material from the crater floor that included water.

"We suspected there was water at the poles and learned for sure from LCROSS, but we now have evidence that there's water at mid latitudes," Farrell said. "We also have evidence that there's water coming from micrometeoroid impacts, and we have measurements of frost. But the question is, how are all these water sources related?"

That's a question Farrell and his colleagues are closer to answering than ever before.

Agricultural insect pests seek out familiar scents to find their plant hosts. However, they can also be repelled by odors from other plant species.

A new study from the University of Vermont published in Scientific Reports offers a novel framework for exploiting plant odors to repel insect pests. The study is the first to show how the similarity of plant odors and phylogenetic relatedness can predict insect repellency.

The team applied this conceptual framework to swede midge, a tiny fly that is becoming a major problem for Northeastern growers of broccoli, kale and other cabbage-family crops. They found that particular essential oils - garlic, spearmint, thyme, eucalyptus lemon and cinnamon bark - were most effective at repelling the midge. The findings come as good news to organic farmers who are without an effective solution for managing the pest.

While essential oils have long been used in pest management, determining which oils are effective has followed a "trial by error" approach, said senior author Yolanda Chen, associate professor in UVM's Department of Plant and Soil Science.

"People often think more aromatic plant oils, like mint, basil and lavender will repel insects, but usually there is no rhyme or reason for choosing," said Chen, who is also a fellow of UVM's Gund Institute for the Environment. "It turns out that as we go along the family tree, plants that are more distantly related from the host plant are generally more repellent."

Headless crops

Swede midge is a recent invader on vegetable farms in the Northeastern United States. Midge larvae must feed on the brassica plant family in order to survive, which includes many popular vegetables like broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and collards. Making a mistake and laying eggs on the wrong plant would result in the death of the midge's offspring.

"Smell plays a major role in host location," said Chase Stratton, the study's lead author, who recently completed his PhD at UVM. "Just one landing of one fly is enough to cause marketable damage," he said.

The larvae "hijack the plant's control system" resulting in distorted growth, such as headless broccoli and cauliflower, puckered leaves, and brown scarring. Unfortunately for farmers, the damage is not observable until it's too late and the midge have already dropped off the plant. In areas where the midge has become well established, including parts of Canada, New York, and Northern Vermont, the midge can cause 100 percent crop losses.

To manage the midge, conventional growers have turned to neonicotinoid insecticides, which have been implicated in honeybee decline. With no methods for killing the pest, some organic farmers have simply stopped growing vulnerable brassica crops. This led Chen and Stratton to explore new control options for organic farmers.

A sustainable solution

"It's hard to get away from using insecticides because they're good at killing insects," said Stratton, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. "But plants have been naturally defending against insect herbivores for millions of years. Why are we so arrogant to think we can do it better than plants?"

Fascinated by the complexity of plant odors and species interactions, Stratton identified essential oils from 18 different plants that vary in their degree of relatedness to brassica host crops. He and Chen hypothesized that oils from plants that are more distantly related to brassicas would have more diverse odors and be more repellent. Comparing the chemical structures of the odors might hold clues for predicting repellency, they thought.

To test the theory, the researchers observed how female midges behaved when presented with broccoli plants that had been sprayed with each of the essential oils. They found the midges were less likely to lay their eggs on broccoli plants that had been treated with essential oils, compared to the untreated plants, and avoided flying towards certain oils more than others. In general, oils from plants that were more distantly related from brassicas on the plant family tree were more likely to repel the midge. They also found that odors that were more chemically different were also more likely to be repellent. However, the oil that was most repellent - spearmint - actually had odors more similar to the brassica crop.

"Biologically, it makes sense that midges would be able to detect and avoid these plants because the similar odors would make it easier for them to misinterpret these plants as hosts, which would be deadly for their offspring," said Stratton. "For swede midge, garlic appears to be one of the most promising repellents, particularly because certified organic products using garlic are already available for growers."

The study suggests a new sustainable solution for this new invasive pest and provides a novel framework for testing pest management strategies in other species.

A historic 120-year-old data set is allowing researchers to confirm what data modeling systems have been predicting about climate change: Climate change is increasing precipitation events like hurricanes, tropical storms and floods.

Researchers analyzed a continuous record kept since 1898 of tropical cyclone landfalls and rainfall associated with Coastal North Carolina storms. They found that six of the seven highest precipitation events in that record have occurred within the last 20 years, according to the study.

"North Carolina has one of the highest impact zones of tropical cyclones in the world, and we have these carefully kept records that shows us that the last 20 years of precipitation events have been off the charts," said Hans Paerl, Kenan Professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at the UNC-Chapel Hill Institute of Marine Sciences.

Paerl is lead author on the paper, "Recent increase in catastrophic tropical cyclone flooding in coastal North Carolina, USA: Long-term observations suggest a regime shift," published July 23 in Nature Research's Scientific Reports.

Three storms in the past 20 years - hurricanes Floyd, Matthew and Florence - resulted in abnormally large floods. The probability of these three flooding events occurring in such a short time period is 2%, according to the study.

This frequency suggests that "three extreme floods resulting from high rainfall tropical cyclone events in the past 20 years is a consequence of the increased moisture carrying capacity of tropical cyclones due to the warming climate," the study said.

In addition to the growing number of storms and floods, an increasing global population is compounding the problem by driving up emissions of greenhouse gases, leading to increases in ocean temperature, evaporation and subsequent increases in precipitation associated with tropical cyclones.

Increasing rainfall

North Carolina has seen an increase in unprecedentedly high rainfall since the late 1990s. The state also has seen an increase in higher rainfall from tropical cyclones over the past 120 years, according to the study.

"The price we're paying is that we're having to cope with increasing levels of catastrophic flooding," Paerl said. "Coastal watersheds are having to absorb more rain. Let's go back to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, which flooded half of the coastal plain of North Carolina. Then, we had Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Just recently we had Hurricane Florence in 2018. These events are causing a huge amount of human suffering, economic and ecological damage."

Part of that damage comes from how frequently storms hit the coast, Paerl said. This frequency means communities and ecosystems are challenged with rebuilding and rebounding before the next storm hits. The storms themselves don't have to be intense, massive hurricanes, Paerl said. A Category 1 storm with intensive rainfall can cause huge amounts of damage.

The increasing rainfall means more runoff going into estuarine and coastal waters, like the Neuse River Estuary, and downstream Pamlico Sound, the USA's second largest estuarine complex and a key Southeast fisheries nursery. More runoff means more organic matter and nutrient losses from soil erosion, farmland and animal operations, urban centers and flushing of swamps and wetlands. This scenario increases the overloading of organic matter and nutrients that ecosystems can't process quickly enough to avoid harmful algal blooms, hypoxia, fish and shellfish kills.

Increasing population

Additionally, North Carolina's population is growing. The state has more than 10.3 million residents, according to 2018 U.S. Census data. In 1990, North Carolina had 6.6 million residents.

"We are in part responsible for what's going on in the context of fossil fuel combustion emissions that are leading to global warming," Paerl said. "The ocean is a huge reservoir that is absorbing heat and seeing more evaporation. With more evaporation comes more rainfall."

Previous research from Paerl's team has shown that heavy rainfall events and tropical storms lead to more organic materials being transferred from land to ocean. As those materials are processed and decomposed by estuarine and coastal waters, more carbon dioxide is generated and vented back up into the atmosphere, where it can add to already rising carbon dioxide levels. These effects can last for weeks to months after a storm's passage.

"We can help minimize the harmful effects of a 'new normal' of wetter storm events," Paerl said. "Curbing losses of organic matter and nutrients by vegetative buffers around farmlands and developed areas prone to storm water runoff, minimizing development in floodplains and avoiding fertilizer applications during hurricane season, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are positive steps which we can all contribute to."

American teenagers and adults are more likely to try illegal or recreational drugs for the first time in the summer, a new study shows.

Led by researchers at NYU School of Medicine, the study found that over a third (34 percent) of recent LSD initiates first used the drug in the summer. In addition, 30 percent of marijuana, 30 percent of ecstasy (also known as MDMA or Molly), and 28 percent of cocaine use was found to begin in summer months.

"First-time users may be unfamiliar with the effects of various drugs, so it is important to first understand when people are most likely to start these behaviors," says study senior investigator Joseph J. Palamar, MPH, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU School of Medicine.

In 2017, according to the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 3 million people in the United States tried LSD, marijuana, cocaine, or ecstasy for the first time.

Publishing online July 23 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the study used data collected from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2011 and 2017 involving about 394,415 people ages 12 and older. Participants were surveyed about their use of various drugs through a computer-assisted interview. New users were asked to recall the month and year when they initiated use.

The investigators suggest that the results could be explained, in part, by people having extra recreational time during the summer, as well as the growing popularity of outdoor activities, such as music festivals, at which recreational drug use is common.

"Parents and educators who are concerned about their kids need to educate them year-round about potential risks associated with drug use, but special emphasis appears to be needed before or during summer months when rates of initiation increase," says Palamar, who is also a researcher in the Center for Drug Use and HIV/HCV Research at NYU College of Global Public Health.

Palamar recommends that potential users become educated about the drugs they are going to use and their side effects. He further recommends, based on previous research, having the company of trusted friends when taking drugs for the first time, drinking enough fluids, and getting enough rest to avoid dehydration, exhaustion, or more serious outcomes such as heat stroke.

The investigators stress that further research is needed to determine the particular situations - especially in the summer - when people are most likely to use drugs for the first time and to determine the extent to which use is planned or unplanned.

London, 24 July 2019 - People with cancer have trouble accessing appropriate psychological support, a new global report published today by the All.Can international cancer initiative reveals.

Patient insights on cancer care: opportunities for improving efficiency reveals findings from the international All.Can patient survey, in which seven out of ten respondents (69%) said they needed psychological support either during or after their cancer care. But a third (34%) of those who needed it said it was 'not available'.

In addition, two in five respondents (41%) said they were not given any information by their care team about patient advocacy groups, charities or other organisations which could support them.

"Mental distress is common among cancer patients and can result in difficulty processing information, regretting decisions about treatment choices, and fear of their cancer coming back," said Alex Filicevas, Head of EU Affairs the European Cancer Patient Coalition. "However, this new research highlights that the psychological and emotional aspects of cancer care are sadly often forgotten in cancer care."

The survey found that even when psychological support was available, it was not always felt to be appropriate or helpful by respondents. This may reflect a lack of specialist support services for cancer patients. According to the International Psycho-Oncology Society (IPOS), there are significant gaps in provision of psycho-oncology services across Europe: 40-60% of cancer patients and family members experience psychological distress that could benefit from appropriate intervention, but only a minority receive psychological support and care.

Dr Matti Aapro, from the Genolier Cancer Center and member of the All.Can international steering committee said: "Psychological support is now recognised as an essential component of quality multidisciplinary cancer care and should be available to all cancer patients. Unfortunately, this often does not happen in practice - this is an important gap that needs to be filled."

In addition to lack of psychological support, the All.Can report - based on results from a large international patient survey comprising nearly 4,000 people, affected by different cancers, across 10 countries - identifies four key opportunities for future efficiency improvements based on patient insights:

Ensuring a swift, accurate and appropriately delivered diagnosis

A quarter of the survey's respondents (26%) stated their initial diagnosis was the most inefficient part of their cancer care journey.

Almost a third (32%) of respondents whose cancer was diagnosed outside of a screening programme said their cancer was diagnosed as something else - either once or multiple times.

Improving information-sharing, support and shared decision-making

Almost half (47%) of respondents did not feel sufficiently involved in deciding which treatment option was best for them.

39% of respondents said that they were never, or only sometimes, given enough support to deal with any ongoing symptoms and side effects.

Making integrated multidisciplinary care a reality for all patients

Seven out of ten respondents (69%) said they needed psychological support either during or after their cancer care - but a third (34%) of them said it was 'not available'.

A quarter of respondents (24%) said they did not have access to support from allied health professionals such as dietitians and physiotherapists.

Addressing the financial implications of cancer

26% of respondents reported a loss of employment income as a result of their cancer care and treatment.

36% of respondents cited travel costs as a financial implication of their cancer care and treatment.

The authors of the report urge policymakers and the entire cancer community to act on these findings - as making these changes could make a real difference to patient outcomes and experiences of care, and the financial impact cancer has on patients, families, the health system and society as a whole.

This is supported by existing evidence: faster diagnosis can improve patient survival and is associated with reduced treatment costs for many cancers. Shared decision-making is associated with improved patient outcomes. Cancer patients with depression have a 39% higher risk of mortality, higher healthcare utilisation, and higher healthcare expenditure than patients who do not have depression - pointing to the need for appropriate psychological support.

Lost productivity due to cancer is estimated to cost €52 billion per year in the European Union, due to early death and lost working days - and protective social policies that either help patients return to work or protect them from financial insecurity due to cancer can have a huge impact on reducing this burden.

"It is so important that, as physicians, we listen to what patients are telling us in this survey," said All.Can international member Christobel Saunders, breast cancer surgeon and Professor of Surgical Oncology at the University of Western Australia. "Each of the areas identified represents an opportunity to improve cancer care for patients and provide truly patient-driven care."

According to the World Health Organization, at least 20% of all healthcare spending is thought to be wasted on inefficient treatment and care.

Monash University researchers have developed technology that can deliver clean water to thousands of communities worldwide.

This solar steam generation system produces clean water from salty (ocean) water with almost 100 per cent salt removal.

It provides a solution to water shortages in regional areas where grid electricity isn't available.

An estimated 844 million people don't have access to clean water, while every minute a newborn dies from infection caused by lack of safe water and an unclean environment.

Seawater desalination and wastewater recycling are two ways to ease the problem of water shortage, but conventional approaches are energy-intensive and based on the combustion of fossil fuels. In fact, water treatment uses about 3 per cent of world's energy supply.

Researchers at Monash University have developed energy-passive technology that's able to deliver clean, potable water to thousands of communities, simply by using photothermal materials and the power of the sun.

Led by Professor Xiwang Zhang from Monash University's Department of Chemical Engineering, researchers have developed a robust solar steam generation system that achieves efficient and continuous clean water production from salty water with almost 100 per cent salt removal.

Through precisely controlling salt crystallisation only at the edge of the evaporation disc, this novel design also can harvest the salts.

The feasibility and durability of the design have been validated using seawater from Lacepede Bay in South Australia. This technology is a promising solution to water shortages in regional areas where grid electricity isn't available.

The findings were published in the international journal Energy & Environmental Science.

"Water security is the biggest challenge the world faces in the 21st century, especially as population grows and the effects of climate change take shape. Developing and under-resourced communities feel the effects of these factors the most," Professor Zhang said.

"Utilising solar energy for water treatment has been widely considered as one of the sustainable solutions towards addressing the scarcity of clean water in some communities, without sacrificing our environment or resources.

"Despite the significant progress achieved in material development, the evaporation process has been impeded by the concentration of salt on the surface, which affects the quality of water produced."

Researchers created a disc using super-hydrophilic filter paper with a layer of carbon nanotubes for light absorption. A cotton thread, with a 1mm diameter, acted as the water transport channel, pumping saline water to the evaporation disc.

The saline water is carried up by the cotton thread from the bulk solution to the centre of the evaporation disc. The filter paper traps the pure water and pushes the remaining salt to the edges of the disc.

The light absorbance was measured to 94 per cent across the entire solar spectrum. The disc also exhibited a rapid temperature increase when exposed to light in both dry and wet states, rising from 25C to 50C and 17.5C to 30C respectively within one minute.

This technology has also great potential in other fields, such as industry wastewater zero liquid discharge, sludge dewatering, mining tailings management and resource recovery. Future studies will look to extend the technology to these applications with industry support.

"Our study results advance one step further towards the practical application of solar steam generation technology, demonstrating great potential in seawater desalination, resource recovery from wastewater, and zero liquid discharge," Professor Zhang said.

"We hope this research can be the starting point for further research in energy-passive ways of providing clean and safe water to millions of people, illuminating environmental impact of waste and recovering resource from waste."

Dolutegravir is a preferred medication for treating HIV infection, but it recently has been linked to a 6- to 9-fold increase in the risk for neural tube defects among babies born to mothers receiving the drug during early gestation. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine suspected that folic acid (vitamin B9), which is known to prevent the vast majority of neural tube defect cases, could be a part of the puzzle of dolutegravir's negative side effects.

The body transforms dietary folic acid into folate, which mediates normal neural tube development. The researchers discovered that the drug interferes with the binding of folate to its receptor, thus promoting neural tube defects. Importantly, folic acid supplementation can mitigate the risk of the medication in an animal model, suggesting that having folic acid-fortified foods available to the population at risk would significantly reduce the chance of dolutegravir triggering this type of neurodevelopmental problems. The study appears in the journal AIDS.

"Neural tube defects occur when the development of the neural tube, the embryonic central nervous system that gives rise to the brain and spinal cord, is disrupted during early stages of embryonic development. In humans, this refers to gestational days 17 to 30," said first and corresponding author Dr. Robert Cabrera, associate professor in the Center for Precision Environmental Health and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine.

Thanks to a number of clinical research studies conducted during the past 50 years, researchers know that dietary folic acid has a protective effect against the vast majority of neural tube defects. This finding led to the implementation of mandatory folic acid fortification of grains and cereal products in 87 countries, including the U.S. since 1999, and consequently to the prevention of the vast majority of neural tube defect cases in these countries.

The body requires folic acid to conduct a number of cellular processes, including the synthesis of the building blocks of DNA, which is essential for proliferating cells. Lacking enough folic acid inhibits DNA synthesis and cell proliferation and can have serious consequences, especially in the growing embryo, which is engaged in active cell proliferation. Folic acid deficiency in the embryo, together with genetic and environmental factors, can result in failed closure of the neural tube and lead to defects.

"My colleagues and I have experience studying folate and its interaction with its receptor, which mediates folate effects, so we decided to investigate whether the association between dolutegravir and higher risk of neural tube defects involved folate receptor interactions with folate," Cabrera said.

Previous evidence has indicated that interfering with the folate receptor can lead to neural tube defects. Studies in laboratory animals have shown that this disruption can result in developmental defects in the offspring. In addition, Cabrera and his colleagues had previously found that the levels of antibodies to folate receptor are higher in serum of mothers with babies with neural tube defects.

Using a variety of laboratory techniques, the researchers discovered in this study that at therapeutic concentrations the drug does disrupt the binding of folate to its receptor. This disruption involves at least four players: folate, folate receptor, dolutegravir and calcium ions. It is known that calcium increases folate binding to its receptor and that doluteglavir has affinity for positively charged ions such as calcium. The researchers propose that dolutegravir alters folate receptor binding by interacting with calcium, and the resultant complex is less soluble and less available to carry its biological functions.

Furthermore, working with the zebrafish animal model, Cabrera and his colleagues also discovered that exposing embryos to dolutegravir starting one to three hours after fertilization completely disrupted embryo development; but, importantly, this toxicity was mitigated by simultaneously providing folate to the embryos. Interestingly, exposing embryos to the drug five to eight hours after fertilization did not alter their development, indicating that early development is the critical period in which embryos are most susceptible to doluteglavir toxicity.

In populations that have folic acid-fortified foods available, women of childbearing age have a reduced risk of having babies with neural tube defects. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in the U.S. less than 1 percent of the population is deficient in folic acid. But in other countries such as Botswana that do not have this type of fortified foods, up to 40 percent of the people can be deficient in folate, Cabrera explained.

"In Botswana, up to one-third of the women are HIV-positive and this medication is being used mainly by women of childbearing age. Considering that these same women probably also are deficient in folate and other vitamins and minerals and may have anemia caused by iron deficiency, the combined effect with the medication increases the chance of neural tube defects on their babies," Cabrera said. "It's like the perfect storm, but the good news is that there is an easy solution that several countries have already implemented - provide foods fortified with folic acid."