Tech

An automated system developed by MIT researchers designs and 3-D prints complex robotic parts called actuators that are optimized according to an enormous number of specifications. In short, the system does automatically what is virtually impossible for humans to do by hand.

In a paper published in Science Advances, the researchers demonstrate the system by fabricating actuators -- devices that mechanically control robotic systems in response to electrical signals -- that show different black-and-white images at different angles. One actuator, for instance, portrays a Vincent van Gogh portrait when laid flat. Tilted an angle when it's activated, however, it portrays the famous Edvard Munch painting "The Scream."

The actuators are made from a patchwork of three different materials, each with a different light or dark color and a property -- such as flexibility and magnetization -- that controls the actuator's angle in response to a control signal. Software first breaks down the actuator design into millions of three-dimensional pixels, or "voxels," that can each be filled with any of the materials. Then, it runs millions of simulations, filling different voxels with different materials. Eventually, it lands on the optimal placement of each material in each voxel to generate two different images at two different angles. A custom 3-D printer then fabricates the actuator by dropping the right material into the right voxel, layer by layer.

"Our ultimate goal is to automatically find an optimal design for any problem, and then use the output of our optimized design to fabricate it," says first author Subramanian Sundaram PhD '18, a former graduate student in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). "We go from selecting the printing materials, to finding the optimal design, to fabricating the final product in almost a completely automated way."

The shifting images demonstrates what the system can do. But actuators optimized for appearance and function could also be used for biomimicry in robotics. For instance, other researchers are designing underwater robotic skins with actuator arrays meant to mimic denticles on shark skin. Denticles collectively deform to decrease drag for faster, quieter swimming. "You can imagine underwater robots having whole arrays of actuators coating the surface of their skins, which can be optimized for drag and turning efficiently, and so on," Sundaram says.

Joining Sundaram on the paper are: Melina Skouras, a former MIT postdoc; David S. Kim, a former researcher in the Computational Fabrication Group; Louise van den Heuvel '14, SM '16; and Wojciech Matusik, an MIT associate professor in electrical engineering and computer science and head of the Computational Fabrication Group.

Navigating the "combinatorial explosion"

Robotic actuators today are becoming increasingly complex. Depending on the application, they must be optimized for weight, efficiency, appearance, flexibility, power consumption, and various other functions and performance metrics. Generally, experts manually calculate all those parameters to find an optimal design.

Adding to that complexity, new 3-D-printing techniques can now use multiple materials to create one product. That means the design's dimensionality becomes incredibly high. "What you're left with is what's called a 'combinatorial explosion,' where you essentially have so many combinations of materials and properties that you don't have a chance to evaluate every combination to create an optimal structure," Sundaram says.

In their work, the researchers first customized three polymer materials with specific properties they needed to build their actuators: color, magnetization, and rigidity. In the end, they produced a near-transparent rigid material, an opaque flexible material used as a hinge, and a brown nanoparticle material that responds to a magnetic signal. They plugged all that characterization data into a property library.

The system takes as input grayscale image examples -- such as the flat actuator that displays the Van Gogh portrait but tilts at an exact angle to show "The Scream." It basically executes a complex form of trial and error that's somewhat like rearranging a Rubik's Cube, but in this case around 5.5 million voxels are iteratively reconfigured to match an image and meet a measured angle.

Initially, the system draws from the property library to randomly assign different materials to different voxels. Then, it runs a simulation to see if that arrangement portrays the two target images, straight on and at an angle. If not, it gets an error signal. That signal lets it know which voxels are on the mark and which should be changed. Adding, removing, and shifting around brown magnetic voxels, for instance, will change the actuator's angle when a magnetic field is applied. But, the system also has to consider how aligning those brown voxels will affect the image.

Voxel by voxel

To compute the actuator's appearances at each iteration, the researchers adopted a computer graphics technique called "ray-tracing," which simulates the path of light interacting with objects. Simulated light beams shoot through the actuator at each column of voxels. Actuators can be fabricated with more than 100 voxel layers. Columns can contain more than 100 voxels, with different sequences of the materials that radiate a different shade of gray when flat or at an angle.

When the actuator is flat, for instance, the light beam may shine down on a column containing many brown voxels, producing a dark tone. But when the actuator tilts, the beam will shine on misaligned voxels. Brown voxels may shift away from the beam, while more clear voxels may shift into the beam, producing a lighter tone. The system uses that technique to align dark and light voxel columns where they need to be in the flat and angled image. After 100 million or more iterations, and anywhere from a few to dozens of hours, the system will find an arrangement that fits the target images.

"We're comparing what that [voxel column] looks like when it's flat or when it's titled, to match the target images," Sundaram says. "If not, you can swap, say, a clear voxel with a brown one. If that's an improvement, we keep this new suggestion and make other changes over and over again."

To fabricate the actuators, the researchers built a custom 3-D printer that uses a technique called "drop-on-demand." Tubs of the three materials are connected to print heads with hundreds of nozzles that can be individually controlled. The printer fires a 30-micron-sized droplet of the designated material into its respective voxel location. Once the droplet lands on the substrate, it's solidified. In that way, the printer builds an object, layer by layer.

The work could be used as a stepping stone for designing larger structures, such as airplane wings, Sundaram says. Researchers, for instance, have similarly started breaking down airplane wings into smaller voxel-like blocks to optimize their designs for weight and lift, and other metrics. "We're not yet able to print wings or anything on that scale, or with those materials. But I think this is a first step toward that goal," Sundaram says.

AI algorithms can now more accurately detect depressed mood using the sound of your voice, according to new research by University of Alberta computing scientists.

The research was conducted by PhD student Mashrura Tasnim and Professor Eleni Stroulia in the Department of Computing Science. The study builds on past research that suggests that the timbre of our voice contains information about our mood. Using standard benchmark data sets, Tasnim and Stroulia developed a methodology that combines several machine-learning algorithms to recognize depression more accurately using acoustic cues.

The ultimate goal, Stroulia explained, is to develop meaningful applications from this technology.

"A realistic scenario is to have people use an app that will collect voice samples as they speak naturally. The app, running on the user's phone, will recognize and track indicators of mood, such as depression, over time. Much like you have a step counter on your phone, you could have a depression indicator based on your voice as you use the phone."

Approximately 11 per cent of Canadian men and 16 per cent of Canadian women will experience major depression in the course of their lives, according to the Government of Canada. And 3.2 million Canadian youth aged 12 to 19 are at risk for developing depression, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association.

Such a tool could prove useful to support work with care providers or to help individuals reflect on their own moods over time. "This work, developing more accurate detection in standard benchmark data sets, is the first step," added Stroulia.

PITTSBURGH, July 12, 2019 - Living-donor liver transplant offers numerous advantages over deceased-donor transplant, including better three-year survival rates for patients and lower costs, according to new research from the UPMC Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The findings, published online today in the Annals of Surgery, highlight living donation as a viable, if not preferable, option for the more than 14,000 people currently on the waiting list, as well as many more who never qualify to be on the list under current allocation rules.

About 8,000 liver transplants are performed each year, according to the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network, and living-donor liver transplant comprises less than 5% of that total. Additionally, about 25% of people on the waiting list die each year waiting for a transplant, and those who eventually receive a transplant often have a lengthy period on the waiting list, resulting in poorer health at the time of transplant.

"The consequences for patients on the waiting list can mean the difference between life and death because the longer they are waiting, the sicker they become," said Abhinav Humar, M.D., chief of transplant services at UPMC, clinical director of the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute and lead author of the study. "Living-donor liver transplants, in tandem with deceased-donor liver transplants, represents an opportunity to significantly decrease the risk of wait-list mortality, and gives us the ability to transplant a person sooner."

The retrospective review of 245 adult living-donor liver transplants and 592 deceased-donor liver transplants performed over the last 10 years at UPMC--which has the country's largest living-donor liver transplant program--compared survival rates and other outcomes such as recovery times, complications, costs and resource utilization. The patients were followed for at least two years post-transplant.

Of those comparisons, three-year patient survival outcomes were superior in living-donor liver transplant recipients--86% versus 80%. Living-donor liver transplant recipients overall had about a 5% survival advantage over deceased-donor recipients. Patients who received a liver from a living donor had a hospital stay of 11 days as compared to 13 days for those who received a liver from a deceased donor, had less likelihood of intraoperative blood transfusion (53% compared to 78%) and less likelihood of the need for post-transplant dialysis (1.6% versus 7.4%). Hospital costs related to transplant also were 29.5% lower for living donor recipients. For the living-liver donor, there were no mortalities observed, and the overall complication rate was 20%.

"Living-donor liver transplant should be considered the first and best option for most patients with liver disease," Humar said. "It is not only an option for those on the waiting list but could perhaps offset the fact that not everyone who may benefit from transplant qualifies to receive a deceased-donor transplant based on today's current rules of allocation."

Given the advantages, UPMC in recent years expanded its living-donor liver transplant program. In 2018, living-donor transplants comprised about 54% of the program's total number of liver transplants compared to the national average of around 4%. UPMC's transplant rate also increased from 45 out of every 100 persons on the program's waiting list in 2015 to around 88 in 2018. The program has led the country in living-donor liver transplants the past two years and is the only center in the U.S. to perform more living- than deceased-donor transplants.

"It is unclear why the number of living-donor liver transplants is so low in the United States," said Amit Tevar, M.D., associate professor of surgery in the Pitt Department of Surgery and director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program at UPMC. "Fewer than 15 U.S. programs did more than 10 living-donor liver transplants in 2018, and this is surprising given the number of analyses nationwide like this that have now been reported."

The tobacco industry’s court-ordered anti-smoking advertisements reached just 40.6% of U.S. adults and 50.5% of current smokers in 2018, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Exposure to the advertisements was even lower among certain ethnic and socioeconomic subgroups historically targeted by tobacco industry marketing.

The findings, published today in JAMA Network Open, should be considered when planning future anti-smoking ads to reach youth and at-risk populations, explained senior author Sanjay Shete, Ph.D., professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology and deputy division head of Cancer Prevention & Population Sciences.

“When compared to other nationally funded anti-smoking campaigns, the reach and penetration of these industry-sponsored ads were suboptimal,” said Shete. “Our hope, as cancer prevention researchers, is for more people to see these ads and to avoid tobacco or consider quitting. Based on our findings, future efforts in this space need to be more targeted to reach key populations.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in the U.S., claiming an estimated 480,000 lives each year. Tobacco use also is the leading preventable cause of cancer, responsible for roughly 30% of all cancers and 90% of all lung cancers.

The ‘corrective statements’ were mandated in a 2006 judgment by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, and began to run on prime-time television and in 50 key U.S. newspapers in November 2017. MD Anderson applauded these advertisements as an important step to inform Americans about the harms of tobacco use.

The current study assessed data from 2018 Health Information National Trends Survey, a nationally representative, population-based cross-section survey of U.S. adults sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. The study analyzed responses from 3,484 adults, including 450 current smokers, collected between January and May 2018 on self-reported exposure to the anti-smoking advertisements.

Exposure was lowest among adults 18-34 (37.4%), those with a high-school or lower education (34.5%) and those with a household income less than $35,000 (37.5%). Among current smokers, exposure was lowest in the Hispanic population, at just 42.2%.

“Historically, certain ethnic groups and those of lower socioeconomic status have been targets of tobacco industry marketing, which has led to high rates of tobacco use and tobacco-related diseases in these populations,” said first author Onyema Greg Chido-Amajuoyi, M.B.B.S., a postdoctoral fellow in Epidemiology. “These at-risk groups should, ideally, have had the most exposure to these advertisements, but on the contrary, they have had the least.”

The researchers did find that exposure rates increased as the campaign’s duration increased, with 41.3% exposure reported in February 2018 and 46.8% exposure reported in May 2018. This underscores the need for sustained advertising to see long-term public-health impact, explained Shete.

The authors recognize certain limitations in the study inherent to using a survey of this type. Responses were self-reported and therefore prone to recall and certain biases. Also, the survey is cross-sectional, so a causal link between exposure and cessation attempts cannot be made. Finally, there was no distinction between exposure to television or to print advertisements, which may have enabled further insight.

Scientists at Hokkaido University and Hiroshima University have found that green brittle stars with five arms show a different "pumping" movement pattern than those with six arms. Using a mathematical model, they have shown that such movements can be coordinated by the flow of internal body fluid alone, rather than neuronal activity. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

Animals constantly make rhythmic movements such as breathing, feeding and walking. Physiological studies and robotics have shown that neuronal activity and physical structure, respectively, are involved in coordinating those movements. However, how physical structure affects such movement in animals is unknown.

A team consisting of Hitoshi Aonuma, Daiki Wakita and Yumino Hayase studied the green brittle star Ophiarachna incrassata, a starfish-like aquatic animal found in tropic and sub-tropic oceans of the Indo-Pacific region with typically five and occasionally six arms. First, the researchers looked at five-armed brittle stars and discovered a repeated movement in five fan-shaped parts between the arms that shrink and expand, which they named "pumping."

They found that the pumping occurred in a coordinated, asynchronous manner: movement of one part was followed by that of the second-neighbour part, not the immediate-neighbour part, in a pentagonal star.

Then, the team built a mathematical model and found that coordinated movement can be achieved by an internal fluid flow created by changing volume and pressure in each part. When the researchers altered the number of parts from five to six in the simulation, it showed changes in the pumping patterns: three second-neighbour parts shrank and expanded in unison followed by the same synchronous movements in the other three.

They observed a six-armed brittle star and confirmed that the simulation was accurate compared to the real animal. "This suggests the rhythmic movement can be coordinated without neuronal interactions between body parts. The insight could inspire future robot designs for generating coordinated movements without a complex control system," says Hitoshi Aonuma of Hokkaido University who led the study. "Further research should investigate how different body structures affect movement patterns and how neuronal and non-neuronal activities each play a role in moving processes."

Since pumping occurs after feeding, the team considers it a digestive process and suspects that different patterns in pumping create different flows in the animal's intestine, possibly affecting its digestive function.

Today, large-scale communication satellite constellations, also known as megaconstellations, have been more and more popular. OneWeb launched the first batch of satellites of an initial 650-satellite constellation in February 2019, and SpaceX also launched the first batch of its 12,000-satellite constellation in May 2019. On July 8, Amazon also filed an application with the FCC for its planned satellite constellation with 3,236 satellites. These satellite constellations are expected to be a game changer by realizing the worldwide satellite Internet service.

However, the unprecedently large scale of these megaconstellations also brings numerous challenges, some of which are hidden and not well-explored. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign identified a critical hidden challenge about replacing the broken satellites in megaconstellations and proposed a unique solution with inventory control methods.

"Maintaining these large-scale megaconstellations efficiently is far more complex than the traditional space systems. In fact, it has become more and more like a ground logistics problem that FedEx or UPS has been working on. So we tackled this megaconstellation maintenance problem leveraging the idea from ground logistics, which turns out to be not only unique and interesting but also very suitable in this context" said Koki Ho, assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at U of I.

The challenge Ho described is to efficiently swap out a new satellite for one that breaks. For telecommunications companies, broken satellites mean interrupted communications and Internet service, which leads to disgruntled customers and loss of revenue.

"Deploying a large-scale constellation is one problem, but maintaining it is another possibly more challenging problem," Ho said. "When the satellites break, providing a spare quickly is important so there is little gap in the service. Companies need continuous service to provide global coverage. In order to achieve that, we need to have sufficient spares in orbit. The question is: how many would be sufficient. Can we think of a smarter way to use as few satellites as possible to satisfy the gap requirement?"

In earlier satellite constellations, Ho said this was not a problem because the scale was small enough sophisticated methods to calculate the needed number of spares was not needed; just having a few spares per orbital plane was enough. But with a constellation made up of hundreds of satellites, the strategy won't work. Also, new, small satellites are cheaper but have a relatively higher failure rate so many more spares are needed in each orbital plane, and that's inefficient.

"Our idea is to use something called a multi-echelon inventory control method in the ground logistics and apply it to the orbital mechanic's context," Ho said. "In our solution, another orbit that is lower than the actual orbit, which we call the parking orbit; becomes an intermediate warehouse of the satellites. A small number of spare satellites are in the actual orbital plane for immediate replacement, while a larger inventory of replacement satellites is waiting in the parking orbit. The ones in the orbital plane cover an immediate need, the spares in the parking orbit can replenish the actual orbit."

The research also takes advantage of the J2 effect of the orbital plane, which is caused by the Earth's obliqueness, to deliver the spares. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, Ho explained, and because it's not a perfect sphere, the orbital plane will shift.

"That orbital plane shift rate is different depending on the altitude," Ho said. "So when we have a parking orbit that is at a lower altitude than the original constellation orbit, their orbital shift rates are different. The mathematical model we created takes into account that rate shift and which plane is closer to the satellite in need of replacing so that you will have continuous coverage of the Earth. The method looks at which orbital plane is the first one that will match with the plane that has a demand and also consider whether that plane actually has spares in it. If that plane doesn't have spares, then we wait until the next plane," Ho said.

Ho said this method also removes the costly urgency to launch a replacement satellite.

"With this warehouse strategy, when there is a failed satellite, there is already an inventory of stock available to replace it. When the stock goes below a threshold, you can launch more to the parking orbit. This takes advantage of the batch launch effect. It's cheaper to send one rocket up with a bunch of satellites than launching each of them separately."

Ho believes this new supply method solves a timely problem.

"People are talking a lot about these megaconstellations but they haven't thought deeply enough about some of the new challenges they bring," Ho said. "Using a unique warehouse approach provided an efficient solution to address this complex problem."

As the nation continues to get more diverse, it's common for immigrant populations in the United States to identify with two or more cultures at the same time.

In a new article published in Lingua, M. Sidury Christiansen argues for a redefinition of how we see transnationalism or the movement of people, ideas and capital across national borders.

Through her research, she argues that technology use or the way people engage with each other through technology disrupts traditional notions of homeland and host-land.

"Transnationals use social networking sites to construct a 'third land' where they enact their ethnic identities, practice culture and maintain social ties," replied Christiansen.

The UTSA researcher is exploring how immigrant Mexicans and their children living in the United States experience "Mexicanness" and how that experience emerges online in her article, "Listisimo para los #XVdeRubi:" Constructing a chronotope as a shared imagined experience in Twitter to enact Mexicanness outside of Mexico.

Christiansen examined how Twitter users of Mexican-heritage based in the U.S. reacted to a tweet that went viral in December 2016 about a quinceañera, or fifteenth birthday celebration, in a rural town in Mexico.

It is common practice among people from the small, rural town in the central state of Mexico, San Luis Potosi, to send out flyers announcing a party and to invite everyone in their community.

A video invitation for the party of Rubí Ibarra García (Los XV de Rubí) was also recorded and shared by a local news outlet. In the video, Rubí's father stated that "everyone was welcome" to the celebration. The news outlet created a public "event" on Facebook and within hours the invite went viral.

Thousands of people physically attended the celebration and several more were virtual participants.

Christiansen noticed that people all over the world were sharing memes and pictures of themselves choosing clothes, food and pretending to go to the party. The party was covered by major news outlets in different countries.

"I think it's important to study how people move from spectator to actor of an online event and whether doing so creates a platform for enacting a particular identity (in this case, Mexicanness) and a sense of belonging to a specific community," explained Christiansen, an assistant professor who teaches in the UTSA Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies in the College of Education and Human Development. "The article shows how transnationals who do not belong to a single social network use language and online participation to form an ad-hoc social network and to co-create an imagined space that transcends geography and temporality."

Christiansen looked for posts related to the celebration on Facebook and Twitter daily from the day the invitation was published until the day after the online live broadcast of the ceremony (November 30, 2016 to December 27, 2016).

She saved popular memes, images and posts with a lot of likes and retweets. She searched the hashtag #XVdeRubi which was used both in the U.S. and Mexico. She also searched the hashtags #rubiXV or #XVañosderubi.

After she determined the tweet originated in the U.S., she downloaded about 2024 tweets between November 30, 2016 to December 27, 2016.

For this article, she chose examples from the most retweeted categories: attire (16.75%), making plans to attend the party (13.5%), criticism of the party, customs, or ranchero culture (11.7%) and food (8.3%). From those categories, she included the tweets that most clearly represented the diversity of engagement from Twitter users.

Christiansen noted that Twitter users found creative ways to participate in this cultural event and display their identities, despite their physical location. Mexicans in the U.S. used language to express their cultural belonging and often used Spanish in the form of a hashtag.

"The article shows how Twitter users virtually attending the quinceañera provided a strong sense of attachment to Mexican culture. Even when users appeared to distance themselves by using English or the use of strong language, they were speaking to the larger culture, claiming that they are Mexican, but of a different kind," said Christiansen.

Christiansen noted that social media and technology have made it easier for younger generations to keep in touch with their parents' home communities and cultures and this can be integral to their identity formation and sense of belonging to those cultures.

In her previous research, Christiansen discussed how a close-knit network of transnational Mexicans manipulate language in private conversation on Facebook to transcend geographical location and time to create intimate social spaces where individuals strengthen interpersonal relationships and cultural ties.

"This new study challenges the definitions of transnationalism to account for the different ways in which people use social media to experience their cultures, practice their rituals, maintain identities, and forge ethnic relations and a sense of belonging to their communities," explained Christiansen.

Christiansen said she plans to keep exploring how transnationals communicate on social media and wants to analyze the impact of online social networks as they relate to academics and informal learning.

While researchers have a basic understanding of how primary cancer cells grow, less is known about metastasis, the deadly process by which cancers spread. A team led by Dr. Paul Krebsbach, dean of UCLA's School of Dentistry and professor of periodontics, has found that mEAK-7, a gene they discovered last year, may play a significant role in cancer metastasis, at least in lung cancers.

Building on that earlier gene discovery in human cells, the team compared mEAK-7 expression levels in normal and cancer cells using tumor cell genetic information from several databases as well as tissue samples from cancer patients.

"By focusing on non-small cell lung cancer, we found that mEAK-7, which is important for cell proliferation and migration, was highly expressed in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer," said Dr. Joe Nguyen, first author and postdoctoral scholar at the National Cancer Institute. "We also discovered that mEAK-7 was expressed in primary cancer cells but not expressed in non-cancerous cells, which shows that the protein could be a key culprit in cancer metastasis."

The research was published in the journal iScience.

The researchers also found that mEAK-7, when combined with a large molecule called DNA-PKcs (which helps regulate DNA repair and controls or enhances cancer growth), created an alternative mTOR signaling pathway used by cancer cells for their growth and proliferation. In normal cells, two well-studied pathways are controlled by a gene called mTOR, which regulates normal cell growth, proliferation and survival.

"This third complex or pathway is very important for cancer stem cells, which begin the process of colony formation and cell proliferation, and lead to metastasis that is the leading cause of death in most cancers," Krebsbach said. "We determined that there are high mEAK-7 protein levels in the tumors and lymph nodes of metastatic cancer patients. Development of mEAK-7 inhibitors may benefit patients with metastatic cancers that demonstrate aberrant mTOR signaling associated with high levels of mEAK-7."

The researchers, who also looked at these signaling molecules in cancer stem cells, determined that the novel, "third" mTOR complex in cancer cells was made up of mTOR, mEAK-7 and DNA-PKcs.

"Understanding the molecular interactions of metastatic cancer is crucial to determining treatments for cancer at these later stages," said Jin Koo Kim, co-author and a UCLA Dentistry project scientist. "Currently, treatments for solid tumors include surgery and radiation therapies. However, many patients relapse, as the target tumors develop resistance to radiation and other treatments. This study found that this resistance is correlated to higher mEAK-7 expression in cancer cells."

DURHAM, N.C. - New data from a two-year Duke Health trial suggests when it comes to cutting your risk for killer ailments such as diabetes and heart disease, there's always room for improvement.

In adults already at a healthy weight or carrying just a few extra pounds, cutting around 300 calories a day significantly improved already good levels of cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar and other markers. The findings of the randomized, controlled trial of 218 adults under age 50 are described in a July 11 article in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

The trial, part of an ongoing project with the National Institutes of Health called CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of Long-term Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy) continues to build on the researchers' hypothesis that it's not just weight loss that leads to these improvements, but some more complex metabolic change triggered by eating fewer calories than what's expended.

"There's something about caloric restriction, some mechanism we don't yet understand that results in these improvements," said the study's lead author William E. Kraus, M.D., a cardiologist and distinguished professor of medicine at Duke. "We have collected blood, muscle and other samples from these participants and will continue to explore what this metabolic signal or magic molecule might be."

For the first month of the trial, participants ate three meals a day that would cut one-fourth of their daily calories to help train them on the new diet. They could choose from six different meal plans that accommodated cultural preferences or other needs. Participants also attended group and individual counseling sessions for the first six months of the trial, while members of a control group simply continued their usual diet and met with researchers once every six months.

Participants were asked to maintain the 25 percent calorie reduction for two years. Their ability to do that varied, with the average calorie reduction for all participants being about 12 percent. Still, they were able to sustain a 10-percent drop in their weight, 71 percent of which was fat, the study found. There were numerous improvements in markers that measure risk for metabolic disease. After two years, participants also showed a reduction in a biomarker that indicates chronic inflammation which has also been linked to heart disease, cancer and cognitive decline.

"This shows that even a modification that is not as severe as what we used in this study could reduce the burden of diabetes and cardiovascular disease that we have in this country," Kraus said. "People can do this fairly easily by simply watching their little indiscretions here and there, or maybe reducing the amount of them, like not snacking after dinner."

For example, 300 calories is six Oreo cookies.

"All matter consists of positively charged atomic nuclei and negatively charged electrons," explains Professor Dr.-Ing. Rolf Findeisen from the Institute of Automation Technology at the University of Magdeburg. "These generate electrical potentials. Using conventional methods, until now it has been barely possible to measure these very weak fields, which are responsible for many of the characteristics and functionalities of materials."

With the newly developed Scanning Quantum Dot Microscopy, a single molecule, known as a quantum dot, is mounted on the tip of the needle of a scanning force microscope. This tip travels, like the needle of a record player, over the sample with the molecule at temperatures close to absolute zero and thus, step by step creates a coherent representation of the surface.

Together with his doctoral student, Michael Maiworm, Professor Rolf Findeisen developed a controller for the innovative microscope method - an algorithm that controls the scanning process. This makes the accurate, but until now extremely long-winded measurement of potentials at molecular resolution possible in just a few minutes. "With the new controller we can now easily scan the entire surface of a molecule, as with a normal scanning force microscope," says Christian Wagner from the Jülich Research Center. This enables us to produce high-resolution images of the potential, which previously appeared unattainable.

"There are many possible uses for this new, unusually precise and fast microscopy technique," continues Michael Maiworm, who largely developed the controller as part of his dissertation supervised by Professor Findeisen. "They range from fundamental physical questions to semiconductor electronics - where even a single atom can be critical for functionality - and molecular chemical reactors to the characterization of biomolecules such as our DNA or biological surfaces."

The work is a part of the cooperation between Magdeburg and Jülich, which examines the targeted and automated manipulation of objects at nano level. In this connection the molecular tip has a dual function: it is simultaneously both a measuring probe and a tool. This opens up the possibility of, in future, being able to create nanostructures via 3D printing. It is conceivable, for example, that it might be possible to produce electrical circuits consisting of individual molecules or sensors of molecular dimension and resolution.

The use of platelet-rich plasma therapy can reduce the risk of a second meniscus failure after operation but does not seem to protect patients who have had surgery to repair an anterior cruciate ligament, according to research presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Orthopedic Society of Sports Medicine.

Platelet-rich plasma therapy involves the extraction of blood from the patient, which is then centrifuged to obtain a concentrated suspension of platelets. It then undergoes a two-stage centrifugation process to separate the solid and liquid components of the anticoagulated blood. PRP owes its therapeutic use to the growth factors released by the platelets which are claimed to possess multiple regenerative properties.

The meniscus is a piece of cartilage that acts as a shock absorber between the shinbone and thighbone.

Researchers at The Ohio State University in Columbus sought to determine whether intraoperative PRP affects meniscus repair failure risk and whether the effect of PRP on meniscus failure risk is influenced by ACL reconstruction status or by PRP preparation.

The researchers randomized 550 patients into two main groups: patients who underwent meniscus repair surgery with PRP and those who did not receive PRP therapy. Patients with concurrent ACL reconstruction were assessed for meniscus repair failure within three years.

Patients who did not receive PRP therapy experienced a meniscus failure rate of 17 percent while those who were given PRP had a 14.7 percent failure rate. The effect of PRP on meniscus failure risk was dependent on ACL injury status--those who had only a meniscus PRP was associated with a lower risk of failure but those with ACL surgery, PRP was not associated with a lower risk of failure.

"PRP preparations utilized in the current study had a substantial protective effect on isolated meniscus repair failure risk over three years," said Dr. Joshua Scott Everhart. "In the setting of concomitant ACL reconstruction, intraoperative PRP does not reduce meniscus repair failure risk."

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite provided a couple of views of Tropical Storm Barry that showed its cloud heights and rainfall rates.

Tropical Storm Barry formed during the morning of July 11 and the National Hurricane Center has issued several warnings and watches. A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect from the mouth of the Pearl River to Morgan City. A Storm Surge Warning is in effect from the mouth of the Atchafalaya River to Shell Beach. A Storm Surge Watch is in effect for Shell Beach to the Mississippi/Alabama border and for the mouth of the Atchafalaya River to Intracoastal City.

There is also a hurricane and tropical storm watch in effect. A Hurricane Watch is in effect from the mouth of the Mississippi River to Cameron and a Tropical Storm Watch is in effect from east of the Mouth of the Pearl River to the Mississippi/Alabama border and for Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas including metropolitan New Orleans.

NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) GPM Core Observatory passed over developing Tropical Depression 2 (which was upgraded to Tropical Storm Barry later in the morning) in the Gulf of Mexico the morning of July 11, 2019 at 8:26 a.m. CDT, capturing estimates of rainfall rates within the storm using GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) instrument.

GPM's Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) measured storm top heights as high as 18 kilometers (11.1 miles), which is extremely high and indicative of intense thunderstorm activity south of central Louisiana. Rainfall rates with these storms exceeded 100 mm/hour (4 inches/hr) as well. Despite these intense storms, activity was not yet organized near the storm center and so flooding due to rainfall, rather than strong winds and storm surge, are the primary threat with Barry at this time.

At 2 p.m. EDT (1800 UTC), the center of Tropical Storm Barry was located near latitude 27.8 North, longitude 89.0 West. Barry is moving toward the west near 5 mph (7 km/h) and this motion is expected to continue today.  Reports from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft indicate that maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph (65 kph) with higher gusts.

Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 90 miles (150 km) mainly to the southeast of the center. The minimum central pressure based on aircraft and surface observations is 1006 millibars (29.71 inches).

The National Hurricane Center noted that "Strengthening is expected during the next day or two, and Barry could become a hurricane late Friday or early Saturday [July 13].

A turn toward the west-northwest is expected tonight, followed by a turn toward the northwest on Friday. On the forecast track the center of Barry will be near the central or southeastern coast of Louisiana Friday night or Saturday."

For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

Using Earth's most powerful array of radio telescopes, astronomers have made the first observations of a circumplanetary disk of gas and dust like the one that is believed to have birthed the moons of Jupiter.

The find, reported online today in Astrophysical Journal Letters, adds to the intriguing story of planet PDS 70 c, a still-forming gas giant about 370 light years from Earth that was first revealed last month in visible light images.

Using the massive 66-antenna Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, Rice University astronomer Andrea Isella and colleagues collected millimeter wave radio signals that revealed the presence of dust grains throughout the star system where PDS 70 c and its sister planet, PDS 70 b, are still forming.

"Planets form from disks of gas and dust around newly forming stars, and if a planet is large enough, it can form its own disk as it gathers material in its orbit around the star," Isella said. "Jupiter and its moons are a little planetary system within our solar system, for example, and it's believed Jupiter's moons formed from a circumplanetary disk when Jupiter was very young."

But most models of planet formation show that circumplanetary disks disappear within about 10 million years, which means circumplanetary disks haven't existed in our solar system for more than 4 billion years. To look for them elsewhere and gather observational evidence to test theories of planet formation, Isella and colleagues search for very young star systems where they can directly observe disks and the planets still forming inside them. In the new study, Isella and colleagues analyzed observations made by ALMA in 2017.

"There are a handful of candidate planets that have been detected in disks, but this is a very new field, and they are all still debated," Isella said. "(PDS 70 b and PDS 70 c) are among the most robust because there have been independent observations with different instruments and techniques."

PDS 70 is a dwarf star about three-quarters the mass of the sun. Both of its planets are 5-10 times larger than Jupiter, and the innermost, PDS 70 b, orbits about 1.8 billion miles from the star, roughly the distance from the sun to Uranus. PDS 70 c is a billion miles further out, in an orbit about the size of Neptune's.

PDS 70 b was first revealed in 2018 in infrared light images from a planet-hunting instrument called SPHERE at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT). In June, astronomers used another VLT instrument called MUSE to observe a visible wavelength of light known as H-alpha, which is emitted when hydrogen falls onto a star or planet and becomes ionized.

"H-alpha gives us more confidence that these are planets because it suggests they are still drawing in gas and dust and growing," Isella said.

The millimeter wavelength observations from ALMA provide even more evidence.

"It's complimentary to the optical data and provides completely independent confirmation that there is something there," he said.

Isella said direct observation of planets with circumplanetary disks could allow astronomers to test theories of planet formation.

"There's much that we don't understand about how planets form, and we now finally have the instruments to make direct observations and begin answering questions about how our solar system formed and how other planets might form."

Isella is an assistant professor of physics and astronomy and of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Rice and a co-investigator on the Rice-based, NASA-funded CLEVER Planets project.

BOSTON - A new study by scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) offers clues about how to prevent inflammation of brain tissue, which promotes Alzheimer's disease (AD). The findings of this study online now and appearing in the September 4, 2019 print issue of the journal Neuron, could contribute to the development of new therapies for AD.

It's known that the brains of people with AD fill with deposits of damaged nerve cells and other proteins, known as amyloid plaques, as well as tangled formations of proteins called tau. "But if you just have plaques and tangles alone, you probably won't develop Alzheimer's disease for a long time, if at all," says neuroscientist Rudolph E. Tanzi, PhD, director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at MGH, and senior author of the Neuron study. Rather, explains Tanzi, it's the inflammation that occurs in response to plaques and tangles, or neuroinflammation, that is the primary killer of neurons, which leads to cognitive decline.

Tanzi's lab discovered the first gene associated with neuroinflammation in AD, known as CD33, in 2008. CD33 carries the genetic code for receptors found on microglia cells, which normally act as one of the brain's housekeepers, clearing away neurological debris, including plaques and tangles. In 2013, Tanzi and colleagues published their discovery that CD33 influences the activity of microglia: When the gene is highly expressed, microglia turn from housekeepers to neuron killers, sparking neuroinflammation.

Meanwhile, other investigators identified another gene, TREM2, which has the opposite effect of CD33: It shuts down microglia's capacity to promote neuroinflammation. In other words, says Tanzi, CD33 is the "on" switch for neuroinflammation, while TREM2 acts like an "off" switch. "The Holy Grail in this field has been to discover how to turn off neuroinflammation in microglia," says Tanzi.

In their most recent inquiry, Tanzi, neuroscientist Ana Griciuc, PhD, and their colleagues set out to discover how CD33 and TREM2 interact, and what role that "crosstalk" might play in neuroinflammation and the origin of AD. To do that, they posed a question: What happens when these critically important genes are silenced--individually and simultaneously?

To find answers, Tanzi and his team studied laboratory mice specially bred to have brain changes and behavior consistent with AD. The team began by observing and testing a strain of AD mice that had their CD33 genes turned off. They discovered that these mice had reduced levels of amyloid plaque in their brains and performed better than other AD mice on tests of learning and memory, such as finding their way in a maze. However, when mice had both CD33 and TREM2 silenced, the brain and behavior benefits disappeared--which also happened when only a single TREM2 gene was quieted. "That tells us that TREM2 is working downstream of CD33 to control neuroinflammation," says Tanzi. That theory was bolstered by sequencing of microglia RNA, which indicated that both CD33 and TREM2 regulate neuroinflammation by increasing or decreasing activity of an immune cell called IL-1 beta and the cell receptor IL-1RN.

"We are increasingly realizing that to help Alzheimer's patients, it is most critical to stop the massive brain nerve cell death that is caused by neuroinflammation," says Tanzi. "We now see that the CD33 and TREM2 genes are the best drug targets for achieving this goal."

WASHINGTON -- In the first of a kind study, plastic surgeons at Georgetown University Medical Center found that when a man chose to have a nip or a tuck on his face, it significantly increased perceptions of attractiveness, likeability, social skills, or trustworthiness.

The study, published in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery, shows that men benefit from facial cosmetic surgery in much the same way as women: other people find more to like in that new visage. However, the study did not show a significant impact on perceptions of gender (masculinity), whereas a similar study performed with women in 2015 showed a significant increase in ratings of femininity.

"The tendency to judge facial appearance is likely rooted in evolution, as studies suggest evaluating a person based on appearance is linked to survival--our animal instinct tells us to avoid those who are ill-willed and we know from previous research that personality traits are drawn from an individual's neutral expressions," explains the study's senior investigator, Michael J. Reilly, MD, an associate professor of otolaryngology at Georgetown's School of Medicine. Reilly is board certified in Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery and sees patients at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

"Taken together, our findings suggest that both men and women undergoing facial cosmetic surgery can experience not only improved perception of attractiveness, but other positive changes in society's perception of their persona," he says.

In recent years, men in America have changed their social attitudes about "appearance maintenance" from one bordering on narcissism to somewhere on a continuum of well-being, Reilly adds. Men are now 15-20% of the cosmetic surgery market, but many preferred male facial features are the opposite of what is prized on a female face. For example, it is believed that attractive male features include prominent cheekbones, a square jaw and prominent chin, while attractive female features are round cheeks, softer contours, wide smile and large, wide eyes.

"Our studies are deigned to see if this is indeed true," Reilly says.

In this study, 24 men underwent facial cosmetic surgery by one of two Georgetown surgeons -- Reilly and Steven P. Davison, MD, who is also a co-author. The men had one or more of the following surgeries: upper eyelid lift (upper blepharoplasty), reduction of lower eyelids (lower blepharoplasty), face-lift, brow-lift, neck-lift, nose reshaping (rhinoplasty), and/or a chin implant.

These men, who paid for their own surgery, agreed to the use of their before and after photographs for research purposes. Six surveys were designed, each of which included eight photographs (4 before surgery, 4 after surgery. No survey contained both of a single individual).

More than 150 participants (mostly white, between the ages of 25-34, and with a college degree) who reviewed the photos were not told of the study's intent. They were asked to rate their perception of each patient's personality traits (aggressiveness, extroversion, likeability, risk-seeking, sociability, trustworthiness), attractiveness and masculinity.

The research team built a complex multivariate linear mixed model to be able to assess participants' reaction to a specific surgical procedure -- rhinoplasty (nose job), for example -- while controlling for changes from additional procedures done on other areas of the face.

Researchers found that chin augmentation was the only procedure that did not have an effect on perceived attractiveness, masculinity or personality. The authors believe this was due to the low number of study patients undergoing this procedure. The other procedures showed the following changes, among others:

Upper eyelid -- increased likeability and trustworthiness

Lower eyelid -- decreased risk-taking

Brow-lift -- improved perception of extroversion and risk-taking

Face-lift -- increased likeability and trustworthiness

Neck-lift -- increased perceived extroversion and masculinity

Nose -- improved attractiveness

The statistically significant findings overall reflected increases in attractiveness, likeability, social skills and trustworthiness.

"It is really interesting that different anatomic areas of the face have varying degrees of contribution to overall personality perception," Reilly says. "And it is also noteworthy that the study did not find a significant change in masculinity. Just one procedure, a neck-lift, was found to enhance that trait.

"This suggests that the current menu of cosmetic procedures for men are likely not as gender-enhancing as they are for women," he says. Reilly's study in women examined the same cosmetic procedures in 30 white females and found a significant increase in femininity for many of the procedures.

"Cicero described the face as the 'mirror of the soul,' meaning that a person's physical appearance is the personal characteristic most obvious and accessible to others in social interaction -- so it's not surprising that subtle changes in neutral facial appearances are powerful enough to alter judgments of personality, "Reilly says.

Reilly says more study is needed in order for cosmetic surgery to reach its full potential. "Optimizing patient outcomes will require a broader understanding of the potential changes in social perception that can occur with surgery."