Tech

An early assessment reveals that a newly approved drug to treat migraines does not seem effective among patients who suffer from high-frequency migraines.

The findings will be presented this week during the 61st annual scientific meeting of the American Headache Society in Philadelphia.

Clinicians at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, conducted a retrospective chart review of 28 patients who were prescribed 70 miligrams of Erenumbab per month for three months beginning in June of 2018. Each of the patients reported 25 or more headache days per month when they began the treatment.

Given the relatively high cost of the new antibody treatment - a list price of $6,900 - clinical care at OHSU has focused on prescribing it for patients with incapacitating and frequent migraines. They hoped to reduce the number of headaches by at least half through once-monthly self-injections.

None of the high-frequency patients achieved a 50 percent reduction in headache frequency, although six patients reported a reduction of at least 25 percent.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Erenumbab in May of 2018.

"In a climate where financial constraint cannot be ignored, when possible use of new medications should be tailored as specifically as possible to limit waste of a finite resource," said Juliette Preston, M.D., director of the OHSU headache center and assistant professor of medicine in the OHSU School of Medicine.

It's estimated that as much as two-thirds of energy consumed in the U.S. each year is wasted as heat. Take for example, car engines, laptop computers, cell phones, even refrigerators, that heat up with overuse.

Imagine if you could capture the heat they generate and turn it into more energy.

University of Utah mechanical engineering associate professor Mathieu Francoeur has discovered a way to produce more electricity from heat than thought possible by creating a silicon chip, also known as a "device," that converts more thermal radiation into electricity. His findings were published in the paper, A Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer Device, in the newest issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

Researchers have previously determined that there is a theoretical "blackbody limit" to how much energy can be produced from thermal radiation (heat). But Francoeur and his team have demonstrated that they can go well beyond the blackbody limit and produce more energy if they create a device that uses two silicon surfaces very close together. The team produced a 5mm-by-5mm chip (about the size of an eraser head) of two silicon wafers with a nanoscopic gap between them only 100 nanometers thick, or a thousandth the thickness of a human hair. While the chip was in a vacuum, they heated one surface and cooled another surface, which created a heat flux that can generate electricity. The concept of creating energy in this manner is not unique, but Francoeur and his team have discovered a way to fit the two silicon surfaces uniformly close together at a microscopic scale without touching each other. The closer they are to each other, the more electricity they can generate.

"Nobody can emit more radiation than the blackbody limit," he said. "But when we go to the nanoscale, you can."

In the future, Francoeur envisions that such technology could be used to not only cool down portable devices like laptops and smartphones but also to channel that heat into more battery life, possibly as much as 50% more. A laptop with a six-hour charge could jump to nine hours, for example.

The chips could be used to improve the efficiency of solar panels by increasing the amount of electricity from the sun's heat or in automobiles to take the heat from the engine to help power the electrical systems. They could also be designed to fit in implantable medical devices such as a pacemaker that would not require replaceable batteries.

Another benefit is such technology can help improve the life of computer processors by keeping them cool and reducing wear and tear, and it will save more energy otherwise used for fans to cool the processors. It also could help improve the environment, Francoeur argued.

"You put the heat back into the system as electricity," he said. "Right now, we're just dumping it into the atmosphere. It's heating up your room, for example, and then you use your AC to cool your room, which wastes more energy."

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- A plastic bottle becomes a jacket, an aluminum can a bicycle. When consumers are reminded of the products that their recyclables can be turned into they are more likely to recycle, according to researchers at Penn State and Boston College.

"Recycling rates in the United States are too low," said Karen Winterich, professor of marketing and a Frank and Mary Smeal Research Fellow, Smeal College of Business, Penn State. "For example, in 2015, only 25 percent of waste was recycled. Our research suggests that recycling rates can improve if consumers are exposed to signage and messaging that shows recyclables are transformed into new products. We hope to change the conversation from 'Where does this go?' as consumers question whether an item is recyclable to "What can this make?' with consumers automatically thinking about products made from the material they recycle."

According to Winterich, the definition of a recyclable is an object with a future use, yet many of us still view recyclable material as trash.

"We may put it in the recycling bin, but in essence, we think of it as garbage," said Winterich. "We don't think about it as something of value that has a future use."

Winterich and her colleagues conducted a series of studies in which they examined how product transformation salience -- thinking about recyclables turning into new products -- influences recycling. The results of these studies appear in print on July 1 in the Journal of Marketing.

In one study, the team gave participants half sheets of scrap paper on which to doodle so they could "clear their minds." Next, the researchers showed the participants a series of advertisements. Some of the advertisements merely encouraged recycling. Others featured products being recycled into the same types of products -- for example, a plastic bottle being transformed into a new plastic bottle. Still others featured products being recycled into entirely new products -- for example, a plastic bottle being transformed into a jacket. At the end of the session, the researchers recorded whether or not the participants placed their scrap sheets of paper into the recycling bin or the trash can before leaving the room.

"We found that the people who were shown ads that detailed product transformation were significantly more likely to recycle their scrap sheets of paper than the people who were shown the control recycling message that did not make transformation salient," said Winterich. "Interestingly, there was no difference in recycling rates between the groups who saw ads about products being turned into different products versus those showing products being turned into the same kinds of products."

In another study, the team placed signage above the recycling center in a university residence hall offering only information about what types of recyclables were accepted. On another floor of the same dormitory, they posted signage demonstrating not only what types of recyclables were accepted but also what products the recyclables could be made into. After a period of time, the researchers sorted and weighed all of the materials in the bins. They found that on the product transformation salience floor, more than 51 percent of the material headed to the landfill was recyclable, whereas nearly 63 percent of the material in the control floor's landfill bin could have been recycled.

"When the poster had information not just about what to put in the bins, but also about what can come out, we saw a decrease in the amounts of recyclables in the trash and an increase in recycling," said Winterich.

In a third study, the team examined the effects of different messaging on pre-football game tailgaters at a large U.S. university. Student liaisons walked around the tailgate area and shared one of two different messages with tailgaters. In both types of messages, the liaisons shared information about the proper disposal of waste at tailgates. For the control condition, the liaisons shared no other information, whereas in the transformation condition, liaisons informed tailgaters about the transformation of each type of recyclable into a new product. Once again, recycling rates were significantly higher for study participants who were exposed to the transformation messaging.

Finally, the team conducted a study examining the effects of online advertisements that showed product transformation on website click-through rates. The researchers studied an initiative by the clothing company Madewell, which at the time was running a blue jeans recycling campaign encouraging customers to recycle their jeans so they could be transformed into housing insulation. Winterich and her colleagues published paid advertisements on Google's Ad platform to examine whether participants would be more likely to click on a paid recycling advertisement if it featured product transformation information than on an advertisement that did not include such information. The team's analysis revealed that click-through rates were higher for the product transformation advertisement compared to the control advertisement.

"Overall, our research suggests that one simple way to increase recycling is to expose consumers to information about the transformation of recyclables into new products, as doing so will inspire them to recycle," said Winterich. "Increasing transformation salience among consumers should be a priority for organizations and public policy officials seeking to encourage recycling among the public at large. In addition, our work provides insights into how companies can use product transformation messages to increase recycling. This is especially important for companies that aim to use recycled materials in their production, as these companies need to increase consumers' recycling rates to effectively develop a circular economy."

Prozac®, the trade name for the drug fluoxetine, was introduced to the U.S. market for the treatment of depression in 1988. Thirty years later, scientists still don't know exactly how the medication exerts its mood-lifting effects. Now, researchers report that, in addition to the drug's known action on serotonin receptors, fluoxetine could rearrange nerve fibers in the hippocampus of mouse brains. They report their results in ACS Chemical Neuroscience.

Fluoxetine was the first drug in the class of compounds known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. SSRIs are thought to work primarily by increasing the amount of the neurotransmitter serotonin that is available for signaling between neurons, but researchers suspected that other processes could be going on. In past studies, Massimo Pasqualetti and colleagues showed that genetic depletion and restoration of serotonin in mice could rearrange hippocampal nerve fibers. Now, they wanted to see if the more subtle changes in serotonin availability caused by fluoxetine treatment could have the same effect.

To find out, the team used a mouse model that expresses green fluorescent protein (GFP) in the neurons that make serotonin in the brain. They gave these mice fluoxetine in their drinking water for 28 days and then compared the GFP signals in their brains with those of control mice that were not given the drug. The mice taking fluoxetine had serotonin-producing nerve fibers that were fewer in number and smaller in diameter than those of control mice, but only in the hippocampus. Although the consequences of this structural rearrangement are currently unknown, it could contribute to how antidepressants exert their therapeutic effect, the researchers say.

As technology has gained ground in medicine and critics have called into question the diagnostic accuracy of physical examinations, what place does the practice of the physical exam have in today's clinic? In depth, qualitative interviews with 16 family physicians in Canada revealed a common view that physical examinations help promote a healthy patient-physician relationship and constitute an integral part of being a good doctor. Guided by principles of phenomenology, which considers how human beings experience a certain phenomenon--in this case, the physical examination itself--the research found that in addition to diagnostic information gained in physical examinations, the empathic benefits of "laying on hands" served as an important reminder of the physician's role as healer. At a time when contemporary clinical practice is grappling with the influx of emerging diagnostic technology, the physical exam is seen by many doctors as a grounding and centering element of the time-honored art of family medicine.

An unexplored cosmos of potential materials

The number of potential new materials that can be assembled from elements in the periodic table is immense - even if researchers were to limit themselves to the 40 to 50 elements that are non-toxic, eco-friendly, and available on Earth in sufficient quantities. These possibilities remain as yet for the most part unexplored.

New methods of manufacturing such materials open up new possibilities for a more efficient approach. "By depositing simultaneously atoms from three or more directions on a substrate, we produce so-called thin-film materials libraries," explains Alfred Ludwig.

High-throughput screening

In order to render those libraries usable, they not only must be manufactured in high-throughput processes, but efficient methods must be deployed to analyse the properties of the materials. This is the only way to find out if the library contains any material composition that offers properties that are interesting for a potential application. "In order to accelerate the entire process of discovering new materials, both the measurements and the analysis should ideally be automated," explains Ludwig.

He would like the use of a database to become at least partially automated, in order to maintain control over the anticipated immense volumes of material data. "It is moreover important for these data to be compatible for the use by research groups from different disciplines," as he points out. Documentation should be carried out not only for the data of element compositions that seem particularly promising, but also for all others. "The purpose of this approach is to facilitate machine learning and to enable artificial intelligence to aid the search for new materials," concludes Ludwig.

Metal-air batteries have been pursued as a successor to lithium-ion batteries due to their exceptional gravimetric energy densities. They could potentially enable electric cars to travel a thousand miles or more on a single charge.

A promising new member of the alkali-metal-air battery family is the potassium-air battery, which has more than three times the theoretical gravimetric energy density of lithium ion batteries. A key challenge in designing potassium-air batteries is choosing the right electrolyte, the liquid which facilitates the transfer of ions between the cathode and anode.

Typically, electrolytes are chosen using a trial-and-error approach based on rules of thumb correlating several electrolyte properties, followed by exhaustive (and time consuming) testing of several electrolyte candidates to see if the desired performance is achieved.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, led by Vijay Ramani, the Roma B. and Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished Professor of Environment & Energy at the McKelvey School of Engineering, have now shown how electrolytes for alkali-metal air batteries can be chosen using a single, easy-to-measure parameter.

Their work was published July 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ramani's team studied the fundamental interactions between the salt and solvent in the electrolyte and show how these interactions can influence overall battery performance. They developed a novel parameter, namely the "Electrochemical" Thiele Modulus, a measure of the ease of ion transport to and reaction at an electrode surface.

This research documents the first time that the Nobel Prize-winning Marcus-Hush theory of electron transfer has been used to study the impact of electrolyte composition on the movement of ions through the electrolyte, and their reaction at the surface of the electrode.

This Thiele Modulus was shown to exponentially decrease with increasing solvent reorganization energy -- a measure of the energy needed to modify the solvation sphere of a dissolved species. Thus, the solvent reorganization energy could be used to rationally select electrolytes for high performance metal-air batteries. No more trial-and-error.

"We started out trying to better understand the influence of the electrolyte on the oxygen reduction reaction in metal-air battery systems," said Shrihari Sankarasubramanian, a research scientist on Ramani's team and lead author of the study.

"We ended up showing how the diffusion of ions in the electrolyte and the reaction of these ions on the electrode surface are both correlated to the energy needed to break the solvation shell around the dissolved ions."

"Showing how a single parameter descriptor of the solvation energy correlates with both ion transport and surface reaction kinetics is a breakthrough advance," Ramani said. "It will allow us to rationally develop new high-performance electrolytes for metal-air batteries."

Organic light-emitting diodes are components that no longer consist of compounds containing the semiconducting material gallium, but of so-called organic compounds in which carbon is a main component. Compared to conventional light-emitting diodes, however, the luminosity and lifetime of OLEDs are currently lower, which is why they represent a current field of research.

Scientists at the MPI-P led by group leader Dr. Gert-Jan Wetzelaer (Department of Prof. Paul Blom) have now developed a new OLED concept. Nowadays, OLEDs consist of various wafer-thin layers. Some layers are used to transport charges, while others are used to efficiently introduce electrons into the active layer in which light is generated. Thus, current OLEDs can easily consist of five to seven layers. The researchers have now developed an OLED which consists only of one single layer that is supplied with electricity via two electrodes. This simplifies the production of such OLEDs and paves the way for printable displays.

With their first prototype, the Mainz scientists were able to show that they can generate a brightness of the emitted light of 10,000 candela/square meter with a voltage of only 2.9 volts - this corresponds to about 100 times the luminosity of modern screens. Achieving such high luminosity at this low voltage is a record for current OLEDs. The researchers were also able to measure an external efficiency of 19%, which means that 19% of the electrical energy supplied is converted into light that comes out in direction of the viewer. Also with this value, the OLED prototype can compete with current OLEDs consisting of five or even more layers.

In continuous operation, the researchers were able to measure a so-called LT50 lifetime of almost 2000 hours at a brightness equivalent to ten times that of modern displays. Within this time, the initial luminosity has dropped to 50% of its value.

"For the future, we hope to be able to improve the concept even further and thus achieve even longer lifetimes. This means that the concept could be used for industrial purposes," says Wetzelaer. The scientists hope that their newly developed single-layer concept - i.e. the reduced complexity of OLEDs - will contribute to the identification and improvement of the processes responsible for the reduction in lifetime.

The scientists are using a light-emitting layer based on so-called "Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence" (TADF). This physical principle has been known for several decades, but became the focus of OLED research about 10 years ago, when an efficient conversion of electrical energy into light was demonstrated in Japan. Since then, researchers have been working to produce TADF-based OLEDs, as these do not require expensive molecular complexes containing rare-earth metals that are being used in current OLEDs.

Ice on the Greenland Ice Sheet doesn't just melt. The ice actually slides rapidly across its bed toward the ice sheet's edges. As a result, because ice motion is from sliding as opposed to ice deformation, ice is being moved to the high-melt marginal zones more rapidly than previously thought.

Neil Humphrey, a University of Wyoming professor of geology and geophysics, and Nathan Maier, a UW geology Ph.D. student from Morristown, N.J., headed a recent research group that discovered that you do not need beds with till or mud, which acts as a lubricant, to have high rates of sliding. Rather, they discovered that it is over hard bedrock where ice slides more rapidly. Additionally, the ice slides over the bedrock much more than previous theories predicted of how ice on the Greenland Ice Sheet moves.

"That's the kicker. The Greenland Ice Sheet is happily sliding over a surface that theory says it shouldn't be able to rapidly slide over," Humphrey says. "What's important is that, because of this, you get a lot of ice to the oceans or low altitudes where it can melt really fast. It's like a lump of molasses sliding off the continent. It just doesn't melt. It slides toward the ocean."

"Our measurements of sliding-dominated flow over a hard bed in a slow-moving region were quite surprising because people don't typically associate these regions with high sliding," Maier adds. "Generally, people associate lots of sliding motion with regions that have soft beds (mud) or exceptionally high-sliding velocities, such as ice streams. Yet, in this relatively boring region, we found the highest fraction of sliding measured to date."

Maier was lead author and Humphrey was a co-author of the paper, titled "Sliding Dominates Slow-Flowing Margin Regions, Greenland Ice Sheet," that was published today (July 10) in Science Advances. The peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary open-access scientific journal includes all areas of science, including the life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, computer sciences and environmental sciences.

Other contributors to the paper were Joel Harper, an associate professor of geosciences, and Toby Meierbachtol, an assistant professor, both from the University of Montana. The paper represents work conducted on the Greenland Ice Sheet from 2014-16.

The researchers installed 212 tilt sensors within a network of boreholes drilled into the ice bed. The tilt sensors allow for observation of ice deformation and sliding movement. Humphrey uses a large drill he designed, which he describes as "a very large truck washer" that puts out high-pressure steam with a large drill nozzle and hydraulic hose. He says it is "the fastest ice drill in the world" and can drill 5,000 feet into the Greenland Ice Sheet in eight hours.

"Most of our work is truly arcane," Humphrey says. "We're boring holes through the ice sheet, but we don't even collect ice cores."

Modeling constrained by detailed tilt observations made along the basal interface of the ice suggests that the high sliding is due to a slippery bed, where sparsely spaced bedrock bumps provide limited resistance to sliding. Estimates of sliding speed are typically based on the residual between observed surface velocity and modeled ice deformational velocity.

"We don't have a good theory for this type of sliding," Humphrey explains. "But the data from this paper will allow us to work on an improved theory."

Maier agrees, saying their work should help improve the accuracy of ice sheet models as they try to predict future mass loss from Greenland.

"There has been some debate as to whether ice flow along the edges of Greenland should be considered mostly deformation or mostly sliding," Maier says. "This has to do with uncertainty of trying to calculate deformation motion using surface measurements alone. Our direct measurements of sliding- dominated motion, along with sliding measurements made by other research teams in Greenland, make a pretty compelling argument that no matter where you go along the edges of Greenland, you are likely to have a lot of sliding."

Maier says this is important to the future of Greenland because it means the ice sheet can move mass around efficiently and, thus, respond rapidly to a changing climate.

Similarly, Maier says changes in ice motion due to a warming climate also will result in thickening and thinning along the edges of the ice sheet. Because ice can be moved around efficiently due to high rates of sliding, changes in melting can occur rapidly.

The sliding ice does two things, Humphrey says. First, it allows the ice to slide into the ocean and make icebergs, which then float away. Two, the ice slides into lower, warmer climate, where it can melt faster.

While it may sound dire, Humphrey notes the entire Greenland Ice Sheet is 5,000 to 10,000 feet thick.

"In a really big melt year, the ice sheet might melt a few feet. It means Greenland is going to be there another 10,000 years," Humphrey says. "So, it's not the catastrophe the media is overhyping."

Humphrey has been working in Greenland for the past 30 years and says the Greenland Ice Sheet has only melted 10 feet during that time span.

Theodoros Zanos, PhD, head of the Neural & Data Science Lab & assistant professor at the Institute of Bioelectronic Medicine, The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, and his collaborators, discovered how the vagus nerve relays signals from the periphery to the brain to help regulate glucose, potentially uncovering a new way to measure blood glucose levels. This finding progresses research into future bioelectronic medicine treatments and diagnostics for metabolic syndrome and diabetes. The findings were published today in the Springer Nature journal, Bioelectronic Medicine.

In humans, glucose is the primary sugar for high energy demanding cells in brain, muscle and peripheral neurons. Any deviation of normal blood glucose levels for an extended period of time can be dangerous or even fatal, so regulation of blood glucose levels is a biological imperative. Prior research showed that the vagus nerve, which connects to many major organs in the body and communicates changes in the body to the brainstem, plays a role in regulating metabolism. Because the specifics of how this was accomplished were largely unknown, Dr. Zanos and his colleagues' sought to identify the specific signals relayed from the periphery to the brain that responded to changes in glucose levels. By deciphering these signals, they can better understand when and how to stimulate the vagus nerve to regulate metabolism.

"One of our goals is to understand the neural code of the vagus nerve as it related to different conditions, because we believe by listening to and stimulating this nerve, we can open new possibilities to diagnose and treat various diseases," said Dr. Zanos. "The vagus nerve is one of the major information conduits of the body with an average of 100,000 nerve fibers, making this code difficult to pick up and decipher, so we have a lot to learn. We're excited to demonstrate in this most recent study that the vagus nerve of a mouse transports important signals from the periphery to the central nervous system related to glucose homeostasis - this discovery gets us closer to new technologies that will have the potential of helping many patients living with various metabolic diseases."

Dr. Zanos collaborated on this study with Feinstein Institutes researchers Emily Battinelli Masi, PhD, Todd Levy, MS, Tea Tsaava, MD, Chad E. Bouton, MS, and Sangeeta S. Chavan, PhD. Also co-authoring the article, titled "Identification of hypoglycemia-specific neural signals by decoding murine vagus nerve activity," was Feinstein Institutes President and CEO Kevin J. Tracey, MD.

"This discovery by Dr. Zanos and our bioelectronic medicine researchers give us new understanding of the body's neural signaling and offers hope for diabetes management," said Dr. Tracey.

Bioelectronic medicine is a new approach to treating and diagnosing disease and injury that has emerged from the Feinstein Institutes' labs. It represents a convergence of molecular medicine, neuroscience and bioengineering. Bioelectronic medicine uses device technology to read and modulate the electrical activity within the body's nervous system, opening new doors to real-time diagnostics and treatment options for patients.

Last year, Dr. Zanos and his collaborators were the first to decode specific signals the nervous system uses to communicate immune status and inflammation to the brain. Identifying these neural signals and what they're communicating about the body's health was a step forward for bioelectronic medicine as provided insight into diagnostic and therapeutic targets, and device development. Those findings were published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Death metal band logos often have a spiky look while romance novel titles often have a swirly script. The jaggedness or curviness of a font can be used to express an emotional tone. A Dartmouth study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B finds that sounds, shapes, speech and body movements convey emotional arousal the same way across the senses. The findings explain why nearly anything can have an emotional tone, including art, architecture and music.

"Our study set out to better understand how we express and read emotional arousal, which is fundamental to our core emotional state. We wanted to see if there is a low-level mechanism that allows us to decode emotional arousal information from the movements and sounds that people and animals make," says lead author Beau Sievers, a postdoctoral student of psychology at Harvard University, who was a graduate student in the department of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth at the time of the study. "Our results show how the spectral centroid, or the balance of high-frequency versus low-frequency energy present in sounds, shapes and movements, allows us to express and understand emotional arousal," adds Sievers.

The spectral centroid is essentially a multi-sensory measure of spikyness. The results explain why Zen gardens and brutalist architecture have very different emotional effects, as well as why things like clouds and lullabies seem to go together even though one is seen and the other is heard: We match them based on the spectral centroid.

"In a series of studies, we demonstrate that people automatically perceive the frequency spectrum of whatever is coming into their ears and eyes and compute the average--the spectral centroid," explains senior author Thalia Wheatley, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth, and principal investigator of the Dartmouth Social Systems Laboratory . "This is how people quickly identify the amount of emotional arousal in a person's voices and movements but also in abstract shapes and sounds, such as why spiky shapes seem to convey higher arousal than rounded shapes," she added.

To test whether the spectral centroid is used to express and understand emotional arousal, the researchers conducted five mini-studies, some of which asked participants to make judgements about the emotional arousal of shapes, sounds and movements. The researchers tested if the spectral centroid of the stimulus could be used to predict participants' emotional arousal judgements. The following are highlights from three of the mini-studies:

The authors used a computer program to randomly create hundreds of shapes and sounds. Participants were asked to look at shapes and listen to sounds and judge their levels of emotional arousal. As the study reports, shapes and sounds which had a high spectral centroid were associated with high-arousal emotions (angry, excited), whereas the lower spectral centroid shapes and sounds were associated with low-arousal emotions (sad, peaceful).

Participants were asked to draw shapes that were angry, sad, excited, or peaceful. The researchers then estimated the spectral centroids of the drawings by counting how many corners they had. The results revealed that angry and excited shapes had between 17 and 24 corners on average, while sad and peaceful shapes had between 7 and 9 corners on average. The spectral centroid could be used to predict the emotional arousal of shapes with close to 80 percent accuracy.

The researchers examined real-world recordings of people's body movements or of people speaking (in German), to see if the spectral centroid of the voices and movements could be used to predict participants judgements of emotional arousal. The researchers found that higher spectral centroids predicted judgements of higher emotional arousal.

The researchers explain that multi-sensory associations with emotions have been known for a long time but why they occur has been a mystery until now.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Move aside, electrons; it's time to make way for the trion.

A research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside, has observed, characterized, and controlled dark trions in a semiconductor -- ultraclean single-layer tungsten diselenide (WSe2) -- a feat that could increase the capacity and alter the form of information transmission.

In a semiconductor, such as WSe2, a trion is a quantum bound state of three charged particles. A negative trion contains two electrons and one hole; a positive trion contains two holes and one electron. A hole is the vacancy of an electron in a semiconductor, which behaves like a positively charged particle. Because a trion contains three interacting particles, it can carry much more information than a single electron.

Most electronics today use individual electrons to conduct electricity and transmit information. As trions carry net electric charge, their motion can be controlled by an electric field. Trions can, therefore, also be used as information carriers. Compared to individual electrons, trions have controllable spin and momentum indices and a rich internal structure, which can be used to encode information.

Trions can be categorized into bright and dark trions with distinct spin configurations. A bright trion contains an electron and a hole with opposite spins. A dark trion contains an electron and a hole with the same spin. Bright trions couple strongly to light and emit light efficiently, meaning they decay quickly. Dark trions, however, couple weakly to light, meaning they decay much more slowly than bright trions.

The researchers measured the lifetime of dark trions and found they last more than 100 times longer than the more common bright trions. The long lifetime enables information transmission by trions over a much longer distance.

"Our work allows the writing and reading of trion information by light," said Chun Hung (Joshua) Lui, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at UC Riverside, who led the research. "We can generate two types of trions -- dark and bright trions -- and control how information is encoded in them."

The results of the research are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

"Our results could enable new ways of information transmission," said Erfu Liu, the first author of the research paper, and a postdoctoral researcher in Lui's lab. "Dark trions, with their long lifetime, can help us realize information transmission by trions. Just like increasing your Wi-Fi bandwidth at home, trion transmission allows more information to come through than individual electrons."

The researchers used a single layer of WSe2 atoms, resembling a graphene sheet, because the dark trion energy level in WSe2 lies below the bright trion energy level.  The dark trions can therefore accumulate a large population, enabling their detection.

Lui explained that most trion research today focuses on bright trions because they emit so much light and can be easily measured.

"But we focus on dark trions and their detailed behavior under different charge densities in single-layer WSe2 devices," Lui said. "We were able to demonstrate a continuous tuning from positive dark trions to negative dark trions by simply adjusting an external voltage. We were also able to confirm dark trions' distinct spin configuration from bright trions.

"If we can use trions to transmit information, our information technology will be greatly enriched," he added. "The major obstacle in such a development has been the short lifetime of bright trions. Now the long-lived dark trions can help us overcome this obstacle."

Next, his team plans to demonstrate the actual transport of information by dark trions.

"We intend to demonstrate the first working device that uses dark trions to transport information," Lui said. "If such a prototype trion device works, dark trions can then be used to transport quantum information."

Researchers from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the University of Bath have developed a satellite-based early warning system that could spot tiny movements in bridges that indicate they could collapse.

Combining data from a new generation of satellites with a sophisticated algorithm, the monitoring system could be used by governments or developers to act as a warning system ensuring large-scale infrastructure projects are safe.

The team of experts led by NASA's JPL and engineers from Bath verified the technique by reviewing 15 years of satellite imagery of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy, a section of which collapsed in August 2018, killing 43 people. The review, published in the journal Remote Sensing, showed that the bridge did show signs of warping in the months before the tragedy.

Dr Giorgia Giardina, Lecturer in the University's Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, said: "The state of the bridge has been reported on before, but using the satellite information we can see for the first time the deformation that preceded the collapse.

"We have proved that it is possible to use this tool, specifically the combination of different data from satellites, with a mathematical model, to detect the early signs of collapse or deformation."

While current structural monitoring techniques can detect signs of movement in a bridge or building, they focus only on specific points where sensors are placed. The new technique can be used for near-real time monitoring of an entire structure.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lead author Dr Pietro Milillo said: "The technique marks an improvement over traditional methods because it allows scientists to gauge changes in ground deformation across a single infrastructure with unprecedented frequency and accuracy.

"This is about developing a new technique that can assist in the characterisation of the health of bridges and other infrastructure. We couldn't have forecasted this particular collapse because standard assessment techniques available at the time couldn't detect what we can see now. But going forward, this technique, combined with techniques already in use, has the potential to do a lot of good."

This is made possible by advances in satellite technology, specifically on the combined use of the Italian Space Agency's (ASI) COSMO-SkyMed constellation and the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Sentinel-1a and 1b satellites, which allows for more accurate data to be gathered. Precise Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, when gathered from multiple satellites pointed at different angles, can be used to build a 3D picture of a building, bridge or city street.

Dr Giardina added: "Previously the satellites we tried to use for this research could create radar imagery accurate to within about a centimetre. Now we can use data that is accurate to within a millimetre - and possibly even better, if the conditions are right. The difference is like switching to an Ultra-HD TV - we now have the level of detail needed to monitor structures effectively.

"There is clearly the potential for this to be applied continuously on large structures. The tools for this are cheap compared to traditional monitoring and can be more extensive. Normally you need to install sensors at specific points within a building, but this method can monitor many points at one time."

The technique can also be used to monitor movement of structures when underground excavations, such as tunnel boring, are taking place.

"We monitored the displacement of buildings in London above the Crossrail route," said Dr Giardina. "During underground projects there is often a lot of data captured at the ground level, while fewer measurements of structures are available. Our technique could provide an extra layer of information and confirm whether everything is going to plan."

Dr Giardina has already been approached by infrastructure organisations in the UK with a view to setting up monitoring of roads and rail networks.

Data from the Morris Animal Foundation Golden Retriever Lifetime Study shows that inbreeding depression, the result of breeding closely-related individuals, reduces litter sizes in purebred golden retrievers.

The study, conducted by Morris Animal Foundation research partners at Embark Veterinary Inc., was one of the first to examine genetic measures of inbreeding in domestic dogs rather than using pedigree-based estimates. The team recently published their results in the journal Mammalian Genome.

"This scientifically proves something we've known anecdotally for a few years; that fecundity, or the measure of how successfully a dog can reproduce, is threatened by inbreeding," said Dr. Erin Chu, Senior Veterinary Geneticist at Embark, a Boston-based dog DNA testing company.

"Breeders need to ensure that the dogs they choose to mate maintain diversity in their lineages to preserve healthy and successful breeds."

Since most purebred dogs are descended from a handful of ancestors, the degree of relatedness between mating pairs is often unknown, but likely closely related.

Researchers sought to genetically identify whether breeding closeness is associated with factors such as adult body size or litter size among female dogs used for breeding.

For the study, the team examined DNA and phenotype data from 93 female golden retrievers enrolled in the Foundation's Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. All the dams were reproductively intact and had been bred at least once.

In addition to the dams' basic biological information, the team analyzed data that captured every aspect relating to the dams' reproduction, such as the timing of their heats, successful conception rates and how many puppies survived to weaning. The researchers evaluated the associations of all these data points against a genomic coefficient of inbreeding, which measures how closely related a dam and sire are. All but one of the associations was statistically insignificant.

The team discovered that the degree to which a dog was inbred influenced the number of puppies it birthed. They found that, on average, a dam that is 10% more inbred than another will produce one less puppy per litter.

Dr. Chu said this work sets the stage for larger analyses to investigate genomic regions associated with fecundity and other measures of fitness, such as negative behavior, mortality and longevity.

"There are definite repercussions to being more inbred with every generation and we want to minimize those as much as possible," said Dr. Janet Patterson-Kane, Morris Animal Foundation Chief Scientific Officer. "This is something to keep in mind to ensure we have healthy breed populations for years to come."

The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is the most extensive, prospective study ever undertaken in veterinary medicine. Launched in 2012, and reaching full enrollment in 2015, it gathers information on more than 3,000 golden retrievers from across the United States, throughout their lives, to identify the nutritional, environmental, lifestyle, and genetic risk factors for cancer and other diseases in dogs.

For the first time, a team there has investigated the fundamental photochemical processes around the metal atom and its ligands. The study has now been published in "Angewandte Chemie, International Edition" and is displayed on the cover.

Organic solar cells such as Grätzel cells consist of dyes that are based on compounds of transition-metal complexes. Sunlight excites the outer electrons of the complex in such a way that they are transported from orbitals at the centre of the metallic complex into orbitals of adjacent compounds. Until now, it was assumed that charge carriers were spatially separated in this process and then stripped off so that an electric current could flow. A team headed by Alexander Föhlisch at HZB has now been able to clarify that this is not the case.

Using the short X-ray pulses of BESSY II in low-alpha mode, they were able to follow each step of the process in an iron complex triggered by photo-excitation with a laser pulse. "We can directly observe how the laser pulse depopulates the 3d orbitals of the metal", explains Raphael Jay, PhD student and first author of the study. With the help of theoretical calculations, they were able to interpret the measurement data from time-resolved X-ray absorption spectroscopy very accurately. The following picture emerges: Initially, the laser pulse indeed causes electrons from the 3d orbital of the iron atom to be delocalised onto the adjacent ligands. However, these ligands in turn immediately push electronic charge back into the direction of the metal atom, thereby immediately compensating for the loss of charge at the metal and the associated initial charge carrier separation.

These findings might contribute to the development of new materials for dye-sensitized solar cells. For until now, ruthenium complexes have routinely been used in organic solar cells. Ruthenium is a rare element and therefore expensive. Iron complexes would be significantly cheaper, but are characterised by high recombination rates between charge carriers. Further studies will reveal what the mediating features in transition-metal complexes are in order for light to be efficiently converted into electrical energy.